I'm Trevor Lewis and I'm here with Chris Lurgent,
Founder of the Seventh Academy,
And we're continuing our series on ancient world wisdom.
This talk is about two different world views.
Chris,
Over to you.
Thanks very much,
Trevor.
So one of the things that's pretty common in the ancient world,
But not so common in modern philosophy,
Is to say there are two quite different ways of looking at the world.
Now this is overly simplified and this is just a model,
And these two models are useful for right now.
There could be a third or fourth or fifth or sixth one coming up in the future,
But the one that we're looking at on the left has more to do with,
Again,
What Rian Eiser calls a controlling mentality or controlling society,
And it tends to focus just on specific things,
But it doesn't see things as hanging together in an ecology or whole system way.
So when something comes up in the atomistic side,
People feel more intimidated by it,
And so they have wars on things,
On each other,
On diseases,
On problems,
And so on.
And as a result,
It's this focus on the little teeny tiny specific things,
That's why we refer to it as atomistic,
But it's always reducing everything to those things.
It's as if I'm walking through a forest on the holistic side,
But Rian Eiser calls the partnership side,
The process side,
The whole system side.
I'm seeing the whole forest as a context to make sense of everything.
You can imagine if I'm walking through a forest and I've never seen a squirrel before,
And this little furry thing turns up on this tree,
I can freak out and think,
Oh my god,
Where did this thing come from?
It is some kind of monster,
And do I have to make a war on it?
It's going to hurt me.
That's the atomistic side,
And it's got that controlling and also very much a fear element to it.
On the holistic side,
It says,
No,
Look,
Everything behaves like the forest,
Like the whole ecology.
These things are all contributing,
So it's this partnership,
And the aim is not to have a war on things,
But to create harmony.
And so again,
We've already emphasized the sense of the holistic approach,
That it's a path,
It's a big adventure,
It's ongoing,
As opposed to some fixed,
I have to arrive at some fixed place.
Just think of kids in school.
We have kids who are being told right now that they have to have the right grade,
And the right classes,
And the right schools,
To get the right job,
To have the right life,
Not be homeless,
And da da da da.
And what do we have?
Kids seven,
Eight,
Nine years old on anti-anxiety medication,
And no clue what it means to be wise or creative.
No idea what they have to offer.
I taught in universities,
Kids would come in with no sense at all of they got born for a big reason,
And they have something to offer.
But the holistic side,
The partnership side,
Says,
No,
You're involved in this big path,
This big adventure,
And the universe drew you in to engage in that,
Because you have the ability to pull that off.
You got born for that adventure.
You got born for that path.
So these two worldviews give us a kind of map,
A very generalized map of reality.
And again,
They're overly simplified,
But it's what we're doing in the Great Transformation is moving from the more atomistic,
More on violent one,
Rigid one,
To the more holistic partnership,
Harmony,
Big path one.
And Chris,
Just as my extra interjection here,
Having a discussion earlier this week,
And the idea of putting Newtonian physics on the left-hand side and quantum physics on the right-hand side.
That would be a good one,
Because Newton was informed by John Locke,
And John Locke the philosopher had this idea of a universe of things with certain qualities,
And in a whole mechanistic universe,
Because machines were hot,
Right?
And by the way,
The best machine movie I've ever seen is Hugo,
Martin Scorsese's wonderful film,
Shot for 3D,
Interestingly enough.
And you get a sense of that,
Yeah,
That's the machine world.
That's how it would make sense.
But when you had new physics with Einstein and relativity physics and quantum mechanics,
That's when people started saying,
Okay,
Universe does seem to behave more like a big mind than a big machine.
So we have a very different way of looking at the world.
And that informs us differently,
Because we think each one is kind of like an expression of that consciousness,
As opposed to being some,
Just some cog in the machine that if you're not working,
We'll take you out and put somebody else in,
And no big loss that you're not there anymore.
Whereas in the consciousness one,
Each one is an extension of the consciousness,
An expression of that.
So each one is valuable.
Thank you,
Chris.
Thank you,
Everyone for joining us today.
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Comments,
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Again,
Ancient World Wisdom,
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Thank you.
