Evolution for Dummies

As Heidi Klum says on her TV show Project Runway, “One day you are in, the next day you are out.”

Do the same evolutionary principles that drive life on earth fashion universal forces as well? 

In my recent Botany and Plant Ecology classes I have learned about the principles that guide evolution. Understanding these principles may help the human species survive.

Evolution is all about the future. The goal of each species is the survival of the greatest number of its offspring. The present matters only as a set of conditions in which the species must prevail. First, the organism must survive the conditions itself. Second, it must be able to produce offspring capable of surviving the conditions under which that generation finds itself.

Because of evolution, the conditions each generation encounters will always change, even if  environmental conditions remain the same. Each successive generation is at least marginally better suited to the conditions that existed for the previous generation. Therefore, if the environment remains the same for both generations, the offspring face better, tougher competitors than their parents faced. Each organism competes not just with its own species, but with all other species as well. Evolution is the ultimate Quality Assurance Continuous Improvement Program.

Evolution is both ruthless and intelligent. It requires death in order to operate. It is utterly objective or “fair,”no favorites or special privileges. Either you cut it or you don’t, same with your kids. But it is excellent at picking winners, rewarding only the most suitable organisms.

But the environment, nature, the universe does change both gradually and suddenly. How does evolution respond? As Heidi Klum says on each episode of Project Runway, “One day you are in, the next day you are out!”  Organisms that thrive in one environment may be utterly untenable in new conditions.  Moreover, it is not the present time or the individual organism that matters. The organism is only important insofar as it improves outcomes for the next generation.

As when the oxygen mask drops down in the aircraft, the parent must first survive at least long enough to insure its child will make it. After that, the child’s own adaptability is the key to its survival. A changing environment therefore favors variety, diversity. If all the organisms of a species are exactly alike, they may all do well in Condition A. But they may all die together in Condition B. The species with the greatest variety has the greatest chance that at least some of its members will survive Conditions B, C, and D. We must recognize the value of diversity and preserve it, not just to be “nice” but to make sure that we have the most different tricks up our sleeves to allow us to adapt to future unknowns.

So mutations, the new and the strange, are nonetheless good because they increase variety. Freak today, hero tomorrow. It is mutations that allow viruses and bacteria to survive each new vaccine and antibiotic we develop to annihilate them.

Humans are beginning to understand the ways in which we are just another organism on the planet. Yes, we may be the most highly evolved, but that only means we have adapted to previous and current conditions. Our cultures are extensions of ourselves and are part of our adaptation. They are a buffer between us and the external environment. Cultures evolve on their own too, as part of our species’ evolution.  But we can and often do make conscious changes to our cultures. Conscious, thinking, language-driven behavior is humankind’s distinctive competence.

It can also be our downfall. Our consciousness and ability to innovate often lead us into a trap…“the Titanic trap” or trap of hubris. We become deluded into thinking that we can control our own destiny. But we cannot. We are subject to the same external forces as all other organisms. It is scary to face this truth, a truth that is the basis of countless box-office thrillers. The cultures that survive may be the ones that have remained the most humble. Didn’t Jesus say “the meek will inherit the earth?”

In addition to humility, evolution teaches us that we must prioritize the future and our offspring ahead of the present and ourselves. American immigrants have always lived by this creed. But history demonstrates that wealth and comfort often lead to complacency about the future.

In an earlier post, I asked the question, “What if Evolution were God?” Do the same evolutionary principles that drive life on earth fashion universal forces as well? As science here and there pierces the veil of mystery surrounding the universe, isn’t each new discovery a revelation of an exquisite orderly omnipotent force inherent in both the most intimate detail and the unimaginable vastness of the cosmos?

The Great American Culture War

Passionate views on gun control epitomize America’s underlying cultural divide

What are we to think of America’s agonizing political stalemate? Scratch the surface and you will find a conflict born of the widely divergent cultural experiences that forged the convictions of the different constituencies. It seems that the country is at some great tipping point, a point of massive resistance just before certain elements that dominated the past succumb to the pressure of an emerging new ordering of cultural priorities.

The politically and economically dominant white males of the Baby Boomer mega-generation are ungraciously unwilling to surrender their power to more worldly, multi-ethnic, technology-driven, and environmentally-oriented younger generations. The youngsters’ world-views were shaped by more rainbow-colored influences than the black and white post-World War II culture that set the stage for the young Boomers.

The evolving future colliding with the vestigial past is the cycle of death and rebirth inherent in all natural processes. Competition and conflict are inevitable. Sometimes the rough waters of cultural cataclysms can be navigated with skillful political leadership. Teddy Roosevelt was able to usher the country through the post-industrial upheaval of the early twentieth century, in part because he embodied elements of both the elite and the common man. Lyndon Johnson’s consummate negotiations with Congress enabled him to legislate a new domestic cultural agenda in the turbulent 1960s.

It is appropriate that gun control is emerging as the iconic clash of the Great American Stalemate. Past irresolvable cultural divides in American history have resulted in our two great civil wars.

The American Revolution was the country’s first cultural tipping point. The political system devised by the Founding Fathers was a revolutionary break from the old European monarchy, the birth of a new society that explicitly valued individual freedom.  The new government was a manifestation of the evolving political philosophies of the Enlightenment, including the concept of government as a social contract between the people and their leaders. Religious leaders likewise urged a break from tyranny as part of a religious Awakening that “reached across socioeconomic lines to encompass rich and poor, men and women, frontiersmen and townsmen, farmers and merchants.” The precipitating factors of the military conflict, however, were economic, as the French and Indian War changed the economic dynamics between England and America. Colonial resistance to the autocratic imposition of new taxes to recoup British war costs culminated in the Boston Tea Party and eventually the declaration of independence from King George III.

The American Civil War was America’s second devastating culture war. The southern states’ secession and the ensuing bloody conflict ended slavery and the plantation-based southern economy spawned by colonial economic forces. American colonization had primarily been funded not by European governments, but by individual investors who expected a return on the large sums of money spent in this highly risky endeavor. The lucrative tobacco and cotton trade seduced both Americans and the British to accept a race-based rationale for enslaving the workforce needed to grow these labor-intensive crops. After the Revolutionary War, southern raw cotton was shipped to factories in an increasingly industrial north. The cultural differences between the more urban industrial north and the agrarian rural south heightened unresolved tensions over states’ rights and slavery.

The Confederacy was able to muster an army because of cultural solidarity between yeomen and plantation owners with very different economic interests. The perceived superiority of the white race, the desire for freedom from outside oppressors, and solidarity with the home state were some of the ties that bound a diverse southern coalition.

Our understanding of the underlying causes and motivations behind these great American cultural disruptions have developed and ripened with the passage of time. Our personal stake in the current crisis distorts our ability to discern its true nature. How does history enlighten us?  Economic interests are a primary factor now as in the past. The paradoxical conservative alliance of rural folk and the rich urban business class follows the pattern of revolutionary and rebel coalitions whose shared religious and cultural beliefs trumped divergent economic priorities. And a common insistence on the “right to bear arms” should not be surprising in a country whose most beloved cultural icons include colonial revolutionaries, southern rebels, and frontier pioneers.

President Obama quickly seized upon the gun control issue in the wake of the eerie concurrence of mass shootings that ended with the Newtown tragedy. He may be trying to use the emotional energy surrounding these events as a wedge to break apart the heterogeneous conservative alliance. After all, what more powerful symbol of the threat to the future of our country could there be than the violent deaths of children and their teachers?

Get Ready for What’s Goin’ On

Just who capitalizes on 21st century capitalism?

My brother and I talked today about his employer refusing to deal honestly with him about his retirement benefits, after a 30-year career with 2 corporations now merged into one company. We agreed that big corporations all too often take advantage of their employees. 

Ken Lewis, former CEO of Bank of America where I once worked, is being sued by shareholders for misleading them about the size of Merrill Lynch losses prior to the 2008 shareholder meeting to approve B of A’s ill-fated acquisition of Merrill.

If corporate management tramples employee and shareholder interests, just who do they serve? Their customers?

Earlier this week, I called Duke Energy to add electrical service at a new address. Because I was going to have 2 accounts for a couple of weeks, my call did not fit the pattern that the automated phone service is programmed to handle.  I had to go through numerous automated menus before I was able to get a real person on the line to help me. At the end of our conversation I was transferred to someone else to “verify the transaction.” Prior to “verifying the transaction,” he insisted on trying to sell me something I did not want or need. I couldn’t get a real person to help me with what I did need, and I could not get rid of the person selling me something I did not need.

I think that many big corporations are clearly not focused on serving their customers.

In the 1980s when I worked for the bank, customer service Quality Assurance was just coming into vogue, and management gave QA the required lip service. But lip service was all it was, because then as now, top corporate managers primary focus is serving themselves.

Since participating in the May 9 Make BofAPay protest in Charlotte, I receive emails from protest organizers. Today a group called Jobs With Justice sent me an email with this content:

A Powerful Spring for the 99% – What do you think?

Submitted by Jonathan Williams on June 7, 2012

This Spring has been unprecedented.                         

In April, we launched the 99% Spring, a nationwide effort to train 100,000 people in organizing and direct action. Hundreds of people were trained, and within weeks they were hosting their own trainings for thousands of others.

99% Power turned that training into action. In a wave of protests confronting the worst corporate abusers, we’ve faced off with Wellpoint, Walmart, Sallie Mae, Verizon, Bank of America, and more.

And we weren’t alone. This shareholder season saw a record number of resolutions introduced by the shareholders themselves to cut CEO pay and to disclose lobbying expenditures. Shareholders of Citigroup, one of the largest banks in the U.S., successfully voted to reject a fat CEO compensation package. Meanwhile, dozens of companies have dropped ALEC, the shady organization responsible for creating model legislation such as the Stand Your Ground law that has received national attention in the Trayvon Martin shooting.

More importantly, we’ve begun to name names. We have begun to name the individuals responsible for destroying our economy and widening the gap between the 1% and the rest of us. Many executives were shocked to find their names and faces on signs lining the streets outside of their shareholder meetings.

Now, we’re continuing the fight from every angle.

This week, guest workers at CJ’s Seafood, a supplier to Walmart, went on strike. The workers, who were hired under the federal H-2B temporary worker program, even went to the police to complain of forced labor and being physically threatened for not working fast enough. When manager Michael Leblanc found out, he threatened violence against the workers and their families in Mexico. Terrified, the workers courageously went on strike and filed a U.S. Department of Labor complaint against the company. You can learn more about the CJ’s Seafood guest workers on our blog.

Yesterday, Walmart opened an investigation–acknowledging that something has gone very wrong in their supply chain. While the nature and timeline of the investigation are still unclear, their acknowledgement of potential wrongdoing is a significant step forward in our campaign to change Walmart.

Our online petition, shareholder actions, and direct worker organizing have forced Walmart to acknowledge abuses in their business practices. Now, we must take the struggle forward. It will take a massive movement along every point of the Walmart supply chain to change the largest retailer in the world, but winning will change more than just Walmart, it will transform our economy.

The Old Testament, written long ago, tells the archetypal story of David and Goliath, the little guy against the giant. Google it if you don’t know who won.

Wake up America!

Expect chaos when the political process breaks down

Today, Occupy organizers sent me a very disturbing link to information about an upcoming Ku Klux Klan rally in North Carolina, my home state. The group is planning a cross-burning on May 26 in Harmony, North Carolina. Can you believe the irony of such a hate-filled event in a place with a name like that?

Because my international readers may not be familiar with the Ku Klux Klan, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about this group and its history:

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism. Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been anti-communist. … (I)t is classified as a hate group…estimated to have between 3,000 and 5,000 members as of 2012.

The first Klan flourished in Southern United States in the late 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. Members adopted white costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities. The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid 1920s, and adopted the same costumes and code words as the first Klan, while introducing cross burnings. The third KKK emerged after World War II and was associated with opposing the Civil Rights Movement and progress among minorities. The first and third incarnations of the Klan have well-established records of engaging in terrorism and political violence…

Here’s what the Occupy organizer’s email had to say about this event:

We need to take this very seriously especially in light of the international, unprecedented capitalist crisis that has caused mass unemployment. Fascism started to rear its head a few years ago with Tea Party, fortunately there was a Left response from the Occupy Wall Street movement that helped shut down most that energy, or atleast the mainstream media’s obsession with it. These fascists are very dangerous, so we should also keep this in mind we decide to mobilize to counter protest. Our best self-defense is with a mass crowd and counter-rally. Comrades in FIST are beginning to mobilize for this rally on Saturday, anyone else down?

Here’s what I have to say about it:

This is very, very scary. We are living in dangerous times, and people need to be aware of what is going on. Our country is upside down and people are becoming desperate. Now that I am out of the rich enclave where I lived for many years, I meet people literally every day who are in very dire straits. Wake up, America! There is trouble ahead. The way of life that has evolved since WWII is about to blow up.  In America, when the political process is in gridlock as it is now, direct political action by grass-roots organizations is inevitable. Turn to the pages of American history written by the the 1960s protest movements to learn about just one of many episodes of such grassroots action in our past.

I turned to those pages myself today, and I was surprised by what I learned. Both protestors and police in Charlotte viewed the May 9 protest as a practice round for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this September. When I learned this, I recalled  vivid images from the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that I watched on black-and-white TV as a 14-year-old. I remember watching police clubbing protestors’ heads as clearly as I remember where I was when President Kennedy was shot. Both events were major shocks to the American political system.

In Charlotte I learned that protestors provoke police to get media attention. The 1968 police violence in Chicago demonstrates that this is a very dangerous game.

Police arrest protestor at May 9, 2012 Occupy Bank of America Protestthat this is a very dangerous game.

But here’s what surprised me. I thought that the anti-war protestors were successful, and ultimately they were. But an outstanding, balanced 4-part You-Tube video about the ’68 Chicago convention reminded me that the violence the protestors evoked from the police backfired big-time. In the 1968 election, Republican Richard Nixon defeated the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, whose campaign was associated with the chaotic images televised the night he won his party’s nomination. The Vietnam War that activists were protesting went on for another 7 years.

The ’68 Democratic Convention now appears to me to be the event that pushed the political pendulum in the opposite direction, beginning the long swing toward ever more extreme conservatism that has brought us to where we are today.

I also made an interesting observation when I looked at a summary of political party control of the presidency and Congress since the early twentieth century. Prior to the financial system meltdowns of the Great Depression in the 1920s and the Great Recession starting in 2008, political control of both the presidency and Congress was held by the Republican party. This is fact, not opinion. It is my opinion that unchecked political power controlled by wealthy conservatives protecting their personal financial interests was a significant contributing factor to both financial meltdowns.

Yes, a Ku Klux Klan rally in a place called Harmony is ironic all right. But I learned long ago that God lives in irony and paradox, where opposites interact in attention-getting ways. God, the Spirit, Divinity by whatever name you want to call “It” is the Invisible Hand pushing the pendulum back and forth. At least, that’s what I think. And I do think. Not everybody does. Some people just act and react without thinking. That leads to trouble.

Takin’ It To The Streets

Reclaiming my idealism in the streets of Charlotte, NC

I’ve been getting a lot of criticism lately for being angry. I realize my anger makes other people uncomfortable. But anger is part of human nature for a reason. Anger is a motivator. When our souls are on fire, we are moved to take action. Anger gets us off our butts watching people on TV do things and causes us to take action ourselves.

Just in case you’ve been wondering, the Occupiers didn’t go away. Like sensible creatures, they holed up for the winter, planning their next move. Their planning has offered me a good outlet for some of my anger–Occupy Wall Street South, a march against Bank of America on Wednesday, May 8, in Charlotte, NC, where I lived for 30 years until July 2011.

I worked for nine years for NCNB, a Bank of America predecessor bank. I had been educated in business, a BA in economics from Duke and an MBA from UNC Chapel Hill. I call those nine years with NCNB “The Period of My Disillusionment.”

I still remember the day in 1981 when the bosses came around and “suggested” I contribute to the NCNB-PAC. I had just finished business school. There, students had presented papers in my “Business and Society” class, the class that was supposed to cover ethics. For some reason, many of these presentations had been about PACs (Political Action Committees). Student presentations are boring so I hadn’t paid any attention. But ever since the Enron scandal I have thought that we should have spent more time in that class talking about ethics. Filling class time with student presentations was a cop-out for that professor, a foreshadowing of the ethical cop-outs MBAs subsequently helped to unleash on a gullible world that had entrusted them with our collective assets.

I am proud to say I had the courage to decline the arm-twisting to contribute to the NCNB-PAC, a bold move for a new employee.  Later I did contribute, when I understood that inter-state banking legislation was needed so that U.S. banks could get large enough to compete in increasingly global markets. I contributed  because I understood the issue, not because of corporate pressure.

In my bank job I managed the budget process for the operations subsidiary, figuring out how to quantify and track cost savings from our mergers with out-of-state banks. This was important stuff, so I worked up close and personal with senior executives and got to see how these people think. Their behavior, what they thought and cared about, is what disillusioned me. These men–and they were all men at the time–cared far more about ego and self-promotion than they did about the business of banking.

People say women are emotional and catty. These men were consummate back-stabbers, slammed doors on the executive floor, pouted and sulked, and were never happier than when they got big fat raises to spend on luxury cars and extravagant houses. Some did their jobs well, some didn’t. If you were a corporate executive, it meant you had played the corporate game well and picked the right coattails to ride on.

My observations are not sour grapes. I didn’t get fired, I quit my bank job in 1990 to focus on raising my children.  So the behavior I witnessed was way back in the 80s, when Ronald Reagan had made greed and excess acceptable again after the idealism of the 60s and 70s. Greed and excess became increasingly out of control until the 2008 financial crisis, which wiped out the financial security of hard-working people all around the world.

I don’t think Americans really understand the pain that our culture of greed has exported to the rest of the world. The recession is deepening in the Eurozone, where unemployment has risen again to almost 10%. In France recently, I was surprised by candidate posters in a primary election railing against the havoc wreaked by Wall Street and demanding retribution. In hard-hit Spain, citizens try to cope with a drink called the Anti-Crisis sold at bars for an affordable single euro.

It makes me angry that the unethical, self-motivated executives and their political accomplices who got us into this mess continue to live lavishly, while ordinary people who trusted these leaders suffer.

I am grateful to the organizers who are giving me a chance to participate in this protest in Charlotte. I did not participate in the protests in the 70s because I knew I did not fully understand the issues. I have always tried to think for myself. Most people don’t. Most people look to others to lead, and they follow.

Our corporate and political leaders led the world into disaster and I am not ashamed to be angry about it. After living in Charlotte for 30 years, I know a lot of people there, and my actions will make a lot of them uncomfortable. But you know, a lot of people all over the world are damned uncomfortable right now.

I am glad to be taking my anger to the streets of the town that trashed my idealism. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Love and survival

Love and survival: Male deer licks doe giving birth in prehistoric cave art

What really matters after all?

Money is not God. Greed is not good. Neither is the big pile of stuff that you can buy when you have a lot of money, because it gets in the way of what is good. It makes it harder for you to see what is important. It trips you up.

God is the divinity that lives within each individual. Each individual is unique, like a snowflake. Why? Because each person has something to contribute to our collective good.

God is also the natural process that propels life, evolution, what we call nature, the universe. Stuff fell from stars onto earth to make life possible. We are stardust. That makes us one with the universe. This is a fact, not some philosophical belief. It’s science, not religion.

Now here’s one that we hear so often it sounds trite. God is love. It almost embarrasses me to write it. But you know, for a long time, I didn’t understand what those three words meant. Maybe because it was so obvious, right in front of me like the nose on my face. Or maybe because I hadn’t experienced enough true love in my life to understand what love really is.

But turn on your radio. I bet the first song you hear is about love. And the next song. Count how many songs you hear before you hear one that isn’t about love. Longing for love. Getting turned on by a loved one. Being willing to do anything for, give everything to the beloved. Missing a lover who is not near. Thinking about a long lost love. The love between parent and child. The things a spurned lover wants to do when their soul has been crushed by their beloved.

Let me say that again: love is about the soul, the spirit.  And souls are all we really care about, whether we know it or not. We don’t write many songs about our stuff, about how much we care about our granite kitchen counter tops. How many times have you heard a survivor of a natural disaster, someone who has lost all of their material goods, say that they would be okay, because, thank God, their loved ones survived? The material things survivors care about the most are pictures of loved ones or sentimental family items. Hearts are broken when beloved pets, worthless mutts or generic cats, are lost. But people don’t grieve for clothes and furniture bearing impressive designer labels, for useless knickknacks tossed to the winds, or for the swimming pool that Mother Nature ripped out of the ground, having decided it was no longer needed.

Some people do grieve when big old trees are lost. Or when a place of natural beauty is ruined, usually because a bulldozer comes and turns it into one more generic monument to greed and materialism.

I have just come back from seeing prehistoric cave art that was drawn, painted, etched on cave walls in southwest France, some created as long as 25,000 years ago. I am still thinking about what I saw, trying to grasp its meaning.

But that art told me that God is also the struggle for survival, the continuation of the spiraling upward trajectory of life. God is an ever-higher consciousness. God is working collectively, intricately, harmoniously with all that exists in the universe, so that the story of life continues.

Some parts of the storyline play supporting roles for a while, then die out. Neanderthal man is an example.  Countless species of plants and animals did their part to generate a sequence of DNA, then exited stage left. The earth has passed through many geologic stages to create what is here now. Those eras ended, their story recorded in the earth, creating the set for our act in the drama of life.

I think the culture of greed and materialism that arose as a byproduct of industrialization is one of those story lines with a dead end. Money and the stuff it buys is a false god. Striving for our collective survival, trying to love whoever and whatever crosses your path, is the story that will go on. Christians, you have read the New Testament haven’t you? I am pretty sure that is the plot.

If you are young, prepare yourself to audition for a role in the Survival of the Species. Be careful, the Survival of Me is a knock-off, and we all know how that story ends. If you are not so young, regroup, retrain, rethink what you are doing. It ain’t over ’til its over. And we never know when that is going to be.

Man in the Cave

Prehistoric cave art: my personal pilgrimage

In the beginning, Man and Nature were One. This oneness is an enduring truth, but the difference was that initially, Man felt at One with Nature. Somewhere along the way, we have lost our sense of oneness, or at least most people have, especially in “advanced” societies. But Nature herself is guiding us back into her embrace, which can be rather fierce at times, as the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan so graphically showed.

Several years ago, when I was first thinking of myself as a writer, I wondered if I would ever write a book, and if so, what would it be about. I thought that I would want to write a book to my children about the importance of “religion” to their lives.  I knew that”religion” was important, because earliest prehistoric man had painted drawings of sacred animals on the walls of caves. Our “religious” nature was therefore an innate part of ourselves that we should not ignore.

I even sat down to write an outline of this book. When I did, I discovered that I knew nothing more than what I have just written in the paragraph above—that early man had painted pictures of animals on the walls of caves, and that this behavior seemed important to me. Period.

So I put my book-writing plans aside and went on with my life. It never occurred to me that my life’s activities were preparing me to write this very book. I noticed that the world’s major religions contained many similar messages,  so I read Huston’s Smith’s classic book on world religion to learn more. I read Elizabeth Lesser’s The New American Spirituality, described on the cover as an “account of a modern pilgrimage.” I explored mysticism, and learned that the mystic traditions of all religions all had Love at their core.

On my own blind pilgrimage, I became disenchanted with what I perceived to be the regular doses of guilt dished out by the Presbyterian church I attended regularly.  I explored the history of the Christian church and the integral role of the Roman Empire in shaping church dogma. Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing was ground-breaking for me, ushering in the understanding that the story of the garden of Eden was the story of Man’s divorce from union with Nature. In this story, not only was Eve subordinated to Adam, but all of creation was decreed to be under the dominion of man.

On a personal level, Inside Out by Larry Crabb made it clear that individuals must attend to the needs of their souls, especially to be successful in such rigorous interpersonal relationships as marriage and child-rearing. A personal breakdown made it clear that I had failed to attend to the needs of my own soul. During my recovery from that breakdown, the books that I needed to read seemed to literally fall off library and bookstore shelves into my hands.

But nowhere was my learning more profound than in my garden.

Tomorrow I set off on my journey to visit the prehistoric caves in southwest France. First, I will visit my daughter in Seville, Spain where Christian and Muslim religions have been intertwined for centuries, often catastrophically so. In France, Neanderthal man and Homo sapiens coexisted for a time, until Neanderthals failed to survive the evolutionary struggle.

The Neanderthal brain did not have the ability to articulate symbolic thought, which is what the cave drawings represent–a symbolic depiction of man’s interrelationship with the natural world. Ivory flutes have also been found in these caves. So our early ancestors even created music, perhaps the most transcendent, spirit-touching art of all.

I hope that I will bring back from these caves a spirit-touching message for our own times. 

How does my garden grow?

Mother Nature is a gentle teacher

I have acquired what I think of as wisdom by observing and thinking about nature, including my co-evolution with my garden.

I grow a lot of native grasses and wildflowers from seed. Each year, some plants take over more ground and some recede. I can choose to intervene and change the mix more to my liking, or I can let nature take its course, que sera sera. I have an overall plan for my garden, but within certain boundaries, serendipity plays a big part.

I like it that way. For one thing, it is a lot easier to work with nature than against it. In the end, nature usually seems to win, but not always. For instance, by relentless pulling of  a certain invasive weed, I succeeded after a number of years of ridding my property of that particular intruder. More often, though, I allow desirable plants to expand their turf if they are prospering, and I simply observe the effects as the mix of grasses and wildflowers changes each year, a garden kaleidoscope. But it is totally within my purview to give a favorite an assist, like when I moved some black-eyed susans so the summer phlox could spread its wings.

Plants that make me happy one year because they have spread quickly become a nuisance in following years when they become overgrown and must be divided and moved.

I learn a lot about evolution, and about life, working in my garden. I have learned that evolution is an iterative process, and that it is not possible to reach your goal all at once, but only through a series of small steps. Moreover, fixed goals are hard to reach in an ever-changing environment. Nature can seem to conspire against you, but sometimes in the end, the results are even better than you could have imagined.

Some of the iteration is between my garden and me. I know a little more each year because of what happened the previous year.  I know which plants flourished and floundered, and sometimes I’ve figured out why. I have a better idea how much sun and shade each spot gets at different times of the day and as the seasons proceed, an important factor that is constantly changing as leaves come and go and the trees grow.

I give unknown plants a chance to show their stuff before yanking. I admit that this policy has sometimes had undesirable results, such as colonies of weeds that must be purged. But the prettiest thing blooming in my yard right now is a wild arugula, returned to its natural state from the hybridized plant I grew in my yard last year.

Vibrant and full of promise in May, overgrown and stressed by the August heat, refreshed with late bloomers and a little pruning in the cool of fall, structural and quiet in the winter, a garden is a cyclical thing. It refreshes me to participate in this natural cycle.

And, as with our spiritual selves, nothing degenerates more quickly than a garden that is left untended.

The spirit within you

I forwarded this blog post to my children, suggesting that they cultivate their intuition because it is God within them. By quoting this post in my own blog, I forward this important message to my readers as well. Credit goes to fellow blogger Yogaleigh whose blog is listed in my blogroll as Journey to Higher Consciousness. Enjoy: When I decided to try yoga in 1986 I was living in Chicago. Although there were a number of studios there wasn’t the plethora that now exists and I quickly realized that the long travel times to many studios would lead to skipping lots of classes. As soon as I decided I wanted to find someplace closer I parked across the alley from my apartment building and when I stepped up on the curb I found myself starting at a sign on the door in front of me: “Hatha Yoga, Tuesdays 6:30 p.m.” Well, that was close enough! I didn’t know enough about yoga to know that there are different styles (less then than now) or how to distinguish whether one might suit me more than another and it didn’t occur to me to research the teacher (for you young ones, I couldn’t have googled it, most people didn’t even have a computer then and the internet barely existed).  It just felt right and I showed up the next Tuesday and began my love affair with yoga. The teacher was Bill Hunt, who’d practiced for about a dozen years at the time and taught on the side from another job. He was studying with Goswami Kriyananda (Temple of Kriya Yoga) and became a swami while I studied with him.  I’ve taken other classes—including a then-famous Yoga Journal teacher (my least favorite ever)–and followed various TV teachers like Lilias and picked up many tapes and DVDs. Bill Hunt has remained the best yoga teacher I ever encountered. I attended his classes faithfully for five years, even twice a week whenever he offered a second class, including through the nine months of teacher training at the Temple of Kriya Yoga (he taught some of that too).  If I hadn’t moved away I’d still be taking his classes. Bill is now the director of Oak Park Yoga in Oak Park, IL. I feel the universe sent me the perfect teacher at the perfect time and place and it changed my life.  My instinct, when I saw that sign on the door was that I’d found the right class.  If I’d second-guessed myself and searched for more classes or hesitated I might have turned off to yoga or have never started.  When instinct and all the elements come together, magic happens if you pay attention and say yes.

The World on Pause

The year is 2012. Lots of people worldwide are more or less aware that something significant is supposed to happen this year. The Mayan calendar …yada yada yada. Many think it is probably a bunch of wacko nonsense. But the world scene is nonetheless both unsettled and unsettling.

America and the rest of the West are certainly cowed, weakened by the financial debacle of 2008 and unable so far to recover. American politics is a farce, and the European Union plays hot potato with debt crises. In the East, the China tiger has been temporarily tamed by a lull in demand for its products, and Japan still reels from tsunami and nuclear fallout.

Have you noticed? The news scene seems kind of quiet to me. No recent uprisings, wars are winding down. The biggest recent disaster  is a cruise ship foundering and lying on its side in shallow water. Metaphorically, that image seems appropriate for this moment, a bloated luxury mega-machine, undone by the hubris of its captain, lying helplessly on its side, threatening the environment.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in college is that socio-economic events are propelled through time by a pendulum-like momentum. Newton’s third law–for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction–applies to human behavior as well. As political and economic behavior reaches an extreme in one direction, forces come into play that begin to shift the momentum in the opposite direction. Thus, the conservatism that began in the 80s and seems to be reaching it most extreme at the present time, is a reaction to the extreme liberalism of the 60s and 70s.

When a pendulum is at its apogee, or farthest point from the center, it holds the greatest potential energy for change. Is there a momentary hesitation at the apogee, before the pendulum begins to move in the opposite direction? Because that’s the way the lull in world news strikes me–that we are in a momentary pause before socioeconomic energy begins its inevitable retreat from the extreme, and swings through the middle before, sadly, moving toward extremism in the opposite direction.

Don’t be surprised that the laws of physics–the laws of nature–apply to human behavior as well. Mankind is most definitely a biological creature, despite all the technological advances that often obscure this important fact.

Also take note that the apogee is a moment for optimism, as the potential for change is at its maximum. The nature of socio-economic change is determined by people, by us.

As the great ship lies on its side–an image that I find very compelling–people worry about environmental damage from fuel spilling from its tanks into a pristine and vulnerable eco-system. I am an avid environmentalist myself.  But I have heard learned nature lovers point out that our worry about the planet is in some ways myopic.  The planet will be fine, they point out, as it has immense powers with which to take care of itself.

People, on the other hand, are not so invulnerable. We need to worry about and take care of people. And at this moment of apogee, we have the greatest possible potential to direct our energies toward doing just that.