Coincidentally (or not), I read that same quotation from Russell two days ago on the train, after finding this little book of his from 1958 in an Oxfam shop. It figures in his enchanting “Portraits from Memory” (p.4). But, what is way more important, he also mentions the following regarding this so called material “evolution”:
“I think the world has swung too far in this direction [the Megamachine] and will not return to sanity until the biological aspects of human life are again remembered.” (p.127)
Swung is obviously an understatement, it might have been a concern in 1958, today is an observable catastrophe. Were he alive now, he might be in agreement with the words of the great Joseph Conrad. As much as I love him, I cannot but disagree (for entirely different reasons, that is):
“I have never been able to find in any man's book or any man's talk anything convincing enough to stand up for a moment against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world.” (p.85)
Finally, regarding that entertaining panoply of the Valleys, what can any intelligent person say?
“Life is the life of life.” (Bhāgavata purāna, i.13.46)
Definition by U.M.: “To each consciousness structure there corresponds a world. When a sufficiently widespread change in consciousness leads to a corresponding change in the world, the consciousness responsible for the change enters its efficient phase. When a change in the world precedes the change in consciousness required to adequately deal with it, the consciousness that resists this change has entered its deficient phase”.
Me: In the first part, a change in the belief in science and philosophy, and the ability of the efficient phase to find more and greater technologies to support that phase, helped in the ability to increase knowledge ascertainable to a growing number of humans (through increased education and communication abilities). An example of one of the technologies was the discovery and utilization of millions of years of stored sunlight to exponentially power the efficient phase. In the second part, when “a change in the world precedes the change in consciousness required to adequately deal with it” - the lack of ability in the efficiency phase of present-day humanity to include externalities of operations and discoveries into their modus operandi formulations and live an ecologically sustainable existence - the initiation of the deficient phase began; we do not yet understand and know by identity the whole of truth, therefore our present level of human consciousness is not capable of fixing ecological Overshoot, its subpart climate change, and the general ecological sustainability predicaments. A new efficient phase will have to emerge to address those predicaments, and because of the present human mental resistance to that necessary evolutionary step, the collapse of global industrial and consumer-driven civilization, along with the extinction of Homo colossus, seems a foregone inevitability. Even though collapse seems to be a done deal, evolution will unfold a higher consciousness as pain, the great teacher, molds Overshoot bottleneck survivors into future gnostic beings.
Coincidentally (or not), I read that same quotation from Russell two days ago on the train, after finding this little book of his from 1958 in an Oxfam shop. It figures in his enchanting “Portraits from Memory” (p.4). But, what is way more important, he also mentions the following regarding this so called material “evolution”:
“I think the world has swung too far in this direction [the Megamachine] and will not return to sanity until the biological aspects of human life are again remembered.” (p.127)
Swung is obviously an understatement, it might have been a concern in 1958, today is an observable catastrophe. Were he alive now, he might be in agreement with the words of the great Joseph Conrad. As much as I love him, I cannot but disagree (for entirely different reasons, that is):
“I have never been able to find in any man's book or any man's talk anything convincing enough to stand up for a moment against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world.” (p.85)
Finally, regarding that entertaining panoply of the Valleys, what can any intelligent person say?
“Life is the life of life.” (Bhāgavata purāna, i.13.46)
Yours
Definition by U.M.: “To each consciousness structure there corresponds a world. When a sufficiently widespread change in consciousness leads to a corresponding change in the world, the consciousness responsible for the change enters its efficient phase. When a change in the world precedes the change in consciousness required to adequately deal with it, the consciousness that resists this change has entered its deficient phase”.
Me: In the first part, a change in the belief in science and philosophy, and the ability of the efficient phase to find more and greater technologies to support that phase, helped in the ability to increase knowledge ascertainable to a growing number of humans (through increased education and communication abilities). An example of one of the technologies was the discovery and utilization of millions of years of stored sunlight to exponentially power the efficient phase. In the second part, when “a change in the world precedes the change in consciousness required to adequately deal with it” - the lack of ability in the efficiency phase of present-day humanity to include externalities of operations and discoveries into their modus operandi formulations and live an ecologically sustainable existence - the initiation of the deficient phase began; we do not yet understand and know by identity the whole of truth, therefore our present level of human consciousness is not capable of fixing ecological Overshoot, its subpart climate change, and the general ecological sustainability predicaments. A new efficient phase will have to emerge to address those predicaments, and because of the present human mental resistance to that necessary evolutionary step, the collapse of global industrial and consumer-driven civilization, along with the extinction of Homo colossus, seems a foregone inevitability. Even though collapse seems to be a done deal, evolution will unfold a higher consciousness as pain, the great teacher, molds Overshoot bottleneck survivors into future gnostic beings.