The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth, back upstream so that Earth's evolving consciousness may explore the headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E. is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.
 
 

Greetings after a long pause. We went to Scotland for the summer. We had a wonderful time; I'm sure I'll make references to our experiences in many issues of Cairns. We came back two days before Chrysalis started up for the year so beginning the school year has kept me busy for a few more months. But now there is time to write another Cairns.

One joy was being able to visit with one of you. We spent a couple of days with Philip Stewart at Oxford. We had a wonderful visit; a perfect beginning to our extended stay in a different country. Philip and I have e-mailed back and forth over the years but it was a great delight to meet and engage in leisurely conversation. Two related ideas I would like to share of Philip's.

I was talking about Chrysalis and how I was trying to learn how to teach systems thinking to children. Philip made a comment that seems to fit with my experiences over the last ten years and so I find myself mulling over its implications deeply. He doubted the effectiveness of trying to teach ecology or systems thinking as a subject. Instead, he was coming to believe that the best way one teaches it is by taking the time (and delight) to pursue tangents-often across discipline boundaries. In other words, one of the main premises of both ecology and systems thinking is the interconnectedness of what might, at first, seem to be separate systems or organisms or thoughts.... The most effective way to counter this notion of the world is to explore, over and over again, enough connections that join these "separate" parts until a new paradigm of understanding replaces that which saw these items as separate. In fact, Philip might go so far as to say that to compartmentalize the teaching of this way of seeing the world into a "discipline" of ecology or systems thinking would reduce the potency of the attempted teaching.

A major delight for me in visiting with Philip was meeting a kindred soul who is fascinated with the same topic but sees it from a different perspective. This creates a depth perception that enhances my feel for the topic I love. In Shifting, I describe the importance two desert canyons had on me. Philip's life-shaping experience was working on forestry in Algeria and realizing how the ecosystem has been shaped by the region's religion. Philip realized that religion is just as an important component of an ecosystem as nitrogen or scavengers or whatever other components go into ecosystem flow charts. One of Philip's main points is that we, as a species, tend not to factor in the human component when we try understanding ecosystems. This is partly because, in our attempt to be scientific, we restrict ourselves to scientifically measurable things. But religion influences how one interacts with the world. Importance of status influences how one interacts with the world. For Philip, the challenge is how to develop an ecological understanding that includes the whole human experience of being alive within this dynamic environment. He calls this "universal ecology". I would like to quote many sections from an article of his he shared with me called "Eddies in the Flow: Towards a Universal Ecology".

"when it came to including our own species in ecology, radical thinking failed, and human and 'the Environment' reverted to being separate....Our relations with our environments of soil, water, plants and animals can be seen as part of human biology, but our relations with our social environment of houses, neighborhoods, markets, transport systems and so on looks like the subject matter of a social science. As for relations with what may be called our cultural environment of knowledge and belief, fashion and tradition, that looks like an arts subject. Faced with the prospect of ceasing to be a 'proper science', ecology shrank back into an increasingly mechanistic biology."

"Seeing the world in terms of pattern is different from seeing it in terms of the enduring entities of western tradition. Patterns ebb and flow, spread and merge, part and fade away."

"One of the fundamental ideas in ecology is that no one species controls an ecosystem; causation is cyclical....Anyone who supposes that humans can control the biosphere or manage 'the Environment' has failed to learn this lesson, but it should be applied also to the ecology of ideas: no idea can securely dominate the planet." Although no species controls an ecosystem, a few may have a preponderant influence, by virtue of their combined biomass, individual longevity, range of activity or some other factor....One of the tasks for a universal ecology is to identify sets of ideas or behaviors that have an equivalent influence."

"Secular ideologies have generally failed to achieve enduring preponderance, partly because they lack any core of ideas of supposedly permanent importance for individuals, partly because they do not propose sufficient rewards or punishments for accepting or rejecting them, partly because they do not make life meaningful."

"Universal ecology therefore faces a very ecological problem: how to take over the territory of a highly successful rival. Newly introduced organisms spread opportunistically, first lodging themselves wherever a patch of suitable habitat appears, then moving outwards to oust rival species. So with ideas, they must first establish themselves in the way of life of individuals and small groups, then expand to those around them."

"In the Cartesian system of education, knowledge is broken up into subjects taught by specialists, and there is no explicit over-arching framework that includes all branches of knowledge; at the most there is mathematics, which serves all the sciences. The usual way to introduce a new set of ideas is to insert a new subject into the curriculum. If universal ecology is a framework for knowledge rather than a subject, then it will not fit into this scheme at all. Rather than be taught explicitly, it will need to be conveyed through the teaching of whatever is taught. Young children certainly do not divide their knowledge of the world into compartments....An ecologically minded teacher should have no difficulty in helping pupils to see that each of them is part of everything that happens around them."

"In the longer term, the spread of a universal ecology, if it comes about, will put an end to the division of knowledge into subjects. People will instead start from centres of interest and will seek out all the relevant knowledge in widening and overlapping circles."

 "One of the effects of the cult of expensive science has been to destroy people's confidence in personal research. If reliable knowledge has to be handed down by experts, the ordinary person becomes a passive receiver with no control over the advancement of knowledge....The word 'expert' means simply 'experienced', and everyone can hope to become expert in living his or her own life, and making judgments about new knowledge relevant to it. It is not even a matter of high intelligence: every bird or mammal that survives is expert in how to live. The kind of knowledge that has come to be known as scientific differs not in dispensing with feeling but in demanding ruthless honesty in discriminating between those feelings of rightness that are based on the evidence and those that come from a comfortable fit with other beliefs, from social approval and so on."

"The ability to feel your own feelings confidently is not something trivial that can be taken for granted; on the contrary, it is a skill that needs to be patiently developed and sturdily defended."

"'Integration' is from Latin integer, whole, from the same root as 'intact' - untouched, unspoilt. Another derivative, 'integrity', has come to have the moral sense of being whole, pure or honest (in French entier, entire, from Latin integer) . The English 'whole', cognate with Greek holus, from which 'holistic', is at the root of the word 'health'. It is appropriate that the integration of knowledge should awaken all these echoes. Its effect should be to enable the knower to relate to life as a whole, to achieve health and integrity, and to give meaning to actions. It is common experience that wholeness is very difficult to achieve. We muddle through from one thing to another, not so much borne along on a stream of consciousness as groping our way between the irregular flashes of a strobe of consciousness. We waste thought on trivia and casually allow important decisions to take themselves. We are overwhelmed by present circumstances and ignore what is out of sight."

"If we are to understand our place in the whole, there has to be a fiercely honest critique of the selves that create frontiers across the unity of the world. Where does my self and the rest of the world begin? What does my self really need from the world? What does the world need from me? Is there any difference in kind between my being and the being of the world? Does the self have any permanent and separable existence at all? These questions are posed not for abstract philosophical speculation, but for careful self-observation in the business of everyday living. Out of personal research into such questions, we may hope to achieve a heightened consciousness, becoming aware of more of the processes in which we are involved, and of our interactions with the human and non-human world, moving towards greater wholeness in our personal lives. We may hope to adapt and readapt ourselves, balancing flexibility and constancy, realizing in personal evolution our membership of the living planet, finding and creating a wealth of pattern, and preparing eventually to let go of self in death. If a universal ecology provides people with a framework in which to fulfil themselves in such ways, it can indeed be said
to open the way to a new Renaissance."

Finding oneself on the Lost Coast
In mid-October, I took the most mature 8th graders from Chrysalis on a 5 day hike along the Lost Coast, a somewhat remote section of California coastline that has miles of hiking and camping along the beach. We didn't hike that much because I wanted most of the kids' time focused on unburdened mind/bodies interacting with the wild sea. The trip turned out even more magic than I anticipated. As we drove over, some of the kids were joking that maybe we would find ourselves on the Lost Coast. That got me thinking about the phrase "finding myself". Does it imply that I somehow got lost and I was finding myself again or does it mean more like a discovery - finding oneself for the first time? Anyway, I went into the week thinking about whether the kids would "find themselves" and what that means and how does it happen and why do wild places have a reputation as good places to find oneself.

Most movies that show kids "finding themselves" in wilderness settings show danger, conflict, bravery as the path to finding oneself, becoming a man, whatever. Fending off a bear, canoeing down a white water river, rock climbing, crossing a high log bridge... But watching my students, what happened happened very differently from that. It was like this wild place gave a shot of adrenaline directly into their "true selves" (whatever that is. Maybe they don't know at first). (One could investigate whether the adrenaline shot lay in the good air or the lack of "official" rules or the open space or the constant pounding beating of the waves or...) But whatever, one receives an energy jolt to one's core, lifting one's true self to a higher energy state. And so who one is gets expressed more pronouncedly. One rides one's enthusiasms more enthusiastically.

If, concurrently, your companions are going through the same thing, then a feedback loop forms, in which one's own inner delight makes more room for other people to be themselves which makes it easier to express one's own inner delight which makes more room for other people... And so after many days, one has a deeper, more extended experience with parts of oneself that might have lain inactive within a web of social expectations that can mold one away from one's true nature. So in that sense, finding oneself is like rediscovering a path that has become overgrown from lack of use.

Eddies
Yesterday I went hiking up in Lassen National Park. The wind gusted all day, dispersing millions of seeds from the cones of the mountain hemlocks. All day, the seeds twirled through the sunlight across the meadow. That afternoon, poking along a tiny stream, I saw an eddy upon which floated a hundred hemlock seeds. Because the small seed at one end was denser than the wing at the other end, the seed end floated deeper in the water and so was the end the current pulled along most strongly. As a result, the seed end was always the bow; the wing end was always the stern. The seeds circled within the eddy like little boats, all of them always oriented with the current. A hundred circling boats always alighned with the current made a beautiful pattern that revealed the dynamics of the eddy. The eddy was not circular. In fact, in no way was the eddy symmetrical. As the eddy came round parallel to the adjoining current, the seeds accelerated for the entire length of the parallel journey. The moment the eddy turned away from the current, the seeds quickly slowed down. The entire back-flowing side of the eddy moved slowly and uniformly. As the seeds neared the head of the eddy, they began turning towards their next encounter with the current.

One thing that struck me was the asymmetry between the two sides. The side of the eddy going with the current was narrow, fast, and soon over. The side eddying back upstream was broad and slow. That asymmetry reminded me of a convection current. Heat rising (like a thermal) is like the side adjoining the current. That is the side where energy is accelerating things. The downdrafts are slower and therefore fill a much larger volume of space.

As I watched the eddies, I could see a white smear sitting stationarily on the stream's surface at the lower end of the eddy. I've noticed these before, always with a slight sense of yuck. But this day, I saw them freshly and I'm pretty sure they were spider silk. Not from webs that had fallen but from gossamer by which young spiders balloon and disperse. I had seen lots of drifting gossamer that day.

There was only one drowned insect in the eddy. That also made sense for I had seen no flying insects. There were still a few old grasshoppers crawling slowly through the brown grass and 1 or 2 backswimmers left in the ponds where there are usually thousands. I realized with a smile that eddies are like newspapers that accumulate and concentrate news of what's happening (at least among the things that float-which is dominated by life). "Hemlocks dispersing seeds today. No insects around to eat them." I will have to read eddies more carefully in the future.

Cattail convections
I've been teaching weather to my students at Chrysalis. One of the important principles, both locally and globally, is convection. We've been doing convection experiments (such as letting a helium balloon circulate throughout the classroom). A classic convection current forms where land meets water. Warmer land warms air. It rises, pulling in cooler air off the water. This cooler air is replaced by cooling air sinking down from above the pond. I had never realized the implication this has for cattails, whose seeds are at their floatiest during the heat of midday. Breezes then will tend to lift them aloft and then, a bit later away from the already existing patch of cattails, downdrafts will drop them as they circle back over water. There is then a good chance that the breeze will push them towards shore. My point is that I had always thought of the wind as "mindless" and yet there is a certain pattern, logic, and rhythm to it which seeds can evolve to for their own benefit.
 
 

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