cosmos – https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cosmos
- the universe seen as a well-ordered whole
- a system of thought
Origin Middle English: from Greek kosmos ‘order or world’.
syntropy – http://www.dictionary.com/browse/syntropy
- The occasional tendency of two diseases to coalesce into one.
- The psychological state of wholesome association with others.
- A number of similar structures inclined in one general direction, such as the ribs.
“In the late 1960s we were called upon to develop a test for NASA that could help them to identify the scientists and engineers that were most imaginative in order to assign them to the most difficult problems. The test we finally worked out functioned very well and someone on our team suggested that since it was such a simple test that we give it to children and find out how they did on the test.
With the support of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, we pulled together a random sample of 1,600 children between four and five years of age.
We were all astonished at the results of the creativity tests. Ninety-eight percent of the children at age five scored in the very high range, what we identified as the “genius” level of ability in imagination. We decided to turn it into a longitudinal test. So, we tested the same children five years later. The exact same test was given. At age ten the very highest scores dropped to only thirty percent with the same test population.
We gave the very same test five years later to the same children at age fifteen. The test scores dropped to twelve percent of the group. The research project ended at that stage. We think because most of the test administrators got depressed.
We know from testing thousands of adults that only about two percent of the adult population, at an average age of thirty, is expressing a “genius” level in their imaginative ability. We have learned well how to suppress human creativity; we have learned not to “rock the boat.”
Newsweek reported that Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this, after analyzing almost three hundred thousand Torrance creativity scores of children and adults. Kim found that creativity scores have consistently trended very downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America, from kindergarten through sixth grade, for whom the decline is “most serious.”
The central questions for us had been whether imaginative thinking is learned or is it genetic and where did their creativity go? And can we get it back?
The answer, as we can all see, is that imagination is not learned; imagination is unlearned. Bucky Fuller once said, “All children are born geniuses and society de-geniuses them.” Or as Einstein commented, “It is a miracle that any curiosity survives formal education.” He also concluded, “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
We could speculate endlessly as to why we might have designed an educational system to restrain creativity, from economic to sociological factors. The fact is that most school systems around the world produce learning what to think rather than how to think. We are taught to continually judge and critique everything, the very mental activity that inhibits imaginative thinking. Unlearning this perpetual evaluation activity of the brain and being able to turn it off at will is one of the most critical ways to release our latent creative capabilities. We can tap into that five-year-old’s mind that still lives inside us.”
Land, George; Jarman, Beth. Nature’s Hidden Force: Joining Spirituality with Science (Kindle Locations 2149-2172). Humanist Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
“The Principle of Syntropy — The Law of Creative Connecting
Nature universally and continually creates more and higher levels of connectivity among things, ideas and peoples. Its purpose leads to total unity in the cosmos.
There is simply no reason to continue to separate science and spirituality, or science and religion, for that matter. Each can learn from the other. Each can gather insights and intuitions that can reveal ever more truth about our wondrous universe.
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity.” Albert Einstein, 1954.17
17 Fraser Watts and Kevin Dutton, Why the Science and Religion Dialogue Matters (West Conshocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2006), p. 118.”
Land, George; Jarman, Beth. Nature’s Hidden Force: Joining Spirituality with Science (Kindle Locations 1206-1213). Humanist Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
“…What unifies spirituality and science?
From the Science Side
The principle of progressive bonding redefined the entropy part of the second law of thermodynamics. The two correct answers in the theory of special relativity are active in Creative Connecting through bonding in subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, gene exchanges, and evolution. This proves that the merging of the forces of ordering and disordering continually produce new, novel, and unpredictable complexity — emergences and creations that produce greater and greater wonders and unity.
From the Spirituality Side
The principle of Creative Connecting continually brings greater unity in our lives and in the universe.
Active in Creative Connecting are objects, knowledge, ideas, and people. It is a process that continually improves life and our relationships, human to human, and human to all of nature. This profound principle is supported by “love one another,” “The Golden Rule,” and acts of compassion, kindness, caring, empathy and love and our highest morality and joy.
The identical force of Creative Connecting thus unites science and spirituality.
Creative Connecting shows how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things, demonstrating our unity with the stars in the vastness of space, with the most minuscule particles of matter, with all living things and with the sacred and higher power of the universe.
“And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3: 14).
Love is the greatest connector of all.“
Land, George; Jarman, Beth. Nature’s Hidden Force: Joining Spirituality with Science (Kindle Locations 1189-1205). Humanist Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
“We had better define what we mean by our use of the word “creative” or “creativity” in this book. Basically creativity occurs when two or more “things” (materials, designs, words, concepts, ideas, and movements – as in dance) are connected and bring about something that is new, novel, and different from the past. It is more than the sum of its parts. Creativity is unpredictable, more complex, and connects well with the environment…
…Creative acts have a giant range but all share the same attributes — novel, new combinations, more than the sum of their parts, unpredictable, different from the past, more complex and connect well with their environment. Forgive us for repeating. The idea of the creative or emergent is just too often misunderstood.”
Land, George; Jarman, Beth. Nature’s Hidden Force: Joining Spirituality with Science (Kindle Locations 184-197). Humanist Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
“Can we creatively change our thinking to combine different traditions, ideas and people to create new solutions?
It will require a new kind of leadership to build new bridges of understanding to renew our planet and move beyond deep seated prejudices and conflicts. It is up to each one of us to consciously participate in this evolutionary leap in human thinking.
In 2004, the Learning Innovation and Technology Consortium convened the CEO Forum on Education and Technology. They identified creativity as an essential skill, and suggested that educators find ways to encourage creativity, curiosity, inventive thinking, and risk-taking in students. Innovation draws on creativity, but not as an end in itself. Innovation is about applying creativity to solving problems.
They concluded:
Often, we only recognize true innovation in hindsight — when we see the breakthrough that engendered other ideas or acted as a catalyst for new products or processes. So, what does LITC mean by innovation? True innovation can be identified by both the process and the results, so we define it this way: Innovation means the process of thinking and acting creatively to solve an identified problem with the outcome being a new process or product that acts as a catalyst for new cycles of development. Thus, innovation inspires more action — not simply more ideas, but more innovative approaches to putting ideas to use. Innovation thus increases potential and opportunity, and sparks new cycles of thinking — revolutionizing how we learn, how we live, and how we work.
It will require building new alliances and partnering with those with whom we might disagree. The challenge is to be nonjudgmental and inclusive. This leap in human consciousness is calling for a new kind of leader, a leader who is dedicated to finding not just common ground, but to rising to new creative solutions, not just compromises.
Land, George; Jarman, Beth. Nature’s Hidden Force: Joining Spirituality with Science (Kindle Locations 2022-2036). Humanist Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
“Matthew Fox argues that “Creativity is seen as a spiritual, inwardly-driven activity, directly influenced by a Higher Power, or God. That is the ultimate in inspiration for me: to know I have “permission” to be creative and to be a creator too.” 6
Spirituality is seen as a pathway to God. When we see science in the new light of purpose of unity, of Creative Connecting, we also find a pathway to “God.”
When we say “God,” we are not necessarily referring to a being even remotely like the God described in the Bible, the Koran, the Iliad, the Bhagavadgita, or any other scriptural account of the supernatural. We are talking about the natural impulse to Creative Connecting that we have demonstrated exists throughout the universe. An impulse that, like a deity, we cannot explain. An impulse that is as important to us as any deity is to any religion, and that is surely worth “reverence” in the same way traditional religions command “reverence” for their particular deities.
This pathway has been followed since the universe began. It reveals a universe of creative intelligence that spawns offspring from subatomic particles to human beings, to carry out its purpose.
Science and spirituality do not merely co-exist, but they support and reveal and sustain one another.
Nature, it has been said, has no way of guiding “oughts” or “shoulds” or revealing ethics or morality. What do we say then of the way atoms or cells combine to create something new, or the way the cells in our bodies collaborate or ecosystems of mutualism develop. Nature at its deepest level is a model of morality.
Testing this kind of model of collaboration, Niles Lehman of Portland State University looked at early self-replicating molecules and pitted selfish self-repairing molecules against collaborating molecules. The collaborating molecules won out and showed that they could create even larger networks of cooperating, mutualistic, complex molecules. They showed that real molecules can do this.7 Nature strives to achieve creative collaboration.
We have designed institutions that teach conformity, competition and conventionality — not creativity! This limits thinking in most situations to the one “right answer”! This actually suppresses imagination and creativity. This does produce stability and predictability — for a time. But remember the cells that grew so successfully by replicating that they started to crowd and compete for resources so that, over time, conditions demanded a radical change. That change required a shift from competition and even combat for survival to a step into a world of collaboration and mutualism. Perhaps, now is that time with people. Today our global growth has brought about many problems; old solutions simply make things worse. We can learn from nature — from the universe.
And perhaps the old foundations of normative science and engineering and mathematics (that can’t express creativity) might not be the proper focus for our current emphasis in education.
We might do much better to devote resources to reigniting our inborn creative talents, to innovating and even imagining new ways to get along with people who are different from us. We can start by cooperating with people who look different from us. All people have the same human needs for mutual respect, life, safety, food, healthy children and vital things that enhance life rather than denigrate it or take it.
If we look at the intractable economic quandary facing the U.S. and other countries today it is fairly clear that attempting to return to the past, regenerating manufacturing for example, will not take us into the future. Simply “fixing” education will not transform our economy.
There is a solution. We can take advantage of our inborn capability for creativity — a capability now being ignored or even suppressed in our schools. It will take very little re-tooling to incorporate creative thinking into our educational system. Much less, in fact, than redoing math education.
This would be a revolution!
It would transform our economic system as innovation becomes widespread. In every economic study innovation proves to be by far the most powerful driver in any economy. Innovation comes from prepared minds. Mountains of data verify that just about everybody can learn to innovate! Yet we continue to teach conformity.
We must have the imagination and the will to change our educational system.
We must rethink how we think! This is what Einstein meant when he said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
It is the only answer to creating a new and better future.
Our emphasis on the creative might pay other big dividends — like creative peace. We could give it a try, even at home between political parties and cultural divisions.
Perhaps we will recognize our replicative vulnerability and demand that we open our minds to our great potential for creativity and a mental and spiritual awakening.
This, after all, is what the god we describe here, nature and science combined, is now telling us.
And on the moral side, the universe provides us with a compass to guide us on our path: our moral and spiritual compass. It guides the carbon and oxygen atoms and the rest. It points the way to the good. It helps restructure after the bad has happened. The bad will always be mixed in with the good, but will never overwhelm it. The bad provides room for a new good.
Recall that connecting is the source of our pleasure and disconnecting the source of our pain.
Isolation removes us from life, just as love connects us. Is this the physics of love? What is the physics of deep spirituality — our sense of connection with the universe, with one another, and with love itself?
Up to now we have spoken in thinking terms, of cognition. What about emotion — feelings?
We ask you once again to imagine, to recapture an experience of a time when you felt at one with the universe. Perhaps at church. Perhaps standing on a beach at sunset holding the hand of a loved one. Perhaps it was captured looking out over the Grand Canyon, or just looking at a candle flame. Perhaps it was hearing a sound of music that transcended time, or gazing at a great painting. Imagine one of those transformative moments when you were wrapped in that kind of joy that defies words.
You were connected with everything, everywhere — beyond time or space.
We can talk about what we have observed, about what we believe. We can talk about what living a creative life can be about, and how working together creatively could make things better. In the end, what it is really all about is what you individually feel and cannot describe.
6 Matthew Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet (New York: Tarcher/ Putnam, 2002).
7 Nature, DOI: 10.1038/ nature11549
Land, George; Jarman, Beth. Nature’s Hidden Force: Joining Spirituality with Science (Kindle Locations 2320-2375). Humanist Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
How do we accomplish nature’s Creative Connecting process?
- By tapping into our latent creative capabilities, we can imagine and share new and different solutions that far transcend the answers from the past. Cells tapped into that latent capability by sharing their different “ideas” in the form of genes, which then in these new combinations make up new “solutions.”
- By recognizing that a new “nervous system” is bringing us into more and more connectedness among things, peoples, knowledge and ideas. Just as cells shared neurons and adapted to local conditions and made new connections, we can make new organizations and technologies that bring people together.
- By creating new bonds with people who are “different” and combining into collaborative relationships — like different types of cells such as fungi, for instance, combined with algae and a multitude of other mutualistic interactions throughout nature where differences provide the enrichment that nourishes creativity.
Land, George; Jarman, Beth. Nature’s Hidden Force: Joining Spirituality with Science (Kindle Locations 1972-1980). Humanist Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
“One Love / People Get Ready”
One Love! One Heart!
Let’s get together and feel all right
Hear the children cryin’ (One Love!)
Hear the children cryin’ (One Heart!)
Sayin’: give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Sayin’: let’s get together and feel all right. Wo wo-wo wo-wo!Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One Love!)
There is one question I’d really love to ask (One Heart!)
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs?One Love! What about the one heart? One Heart!
What about – ? Let’s get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (One Love!)
So shall it be in the end (One Heart!)
All right!
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let’s get together and feel all right
One more thing!Let’s get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One Love!)
So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One Song!)
Have pity on those whose chances grows thinner
There ain’t no hiding place from the Father of CreationSayin’: “One Love”! What about the One Heart? (One Heart!)
What about the – ? Let’s get together and feel all right
I’m pleadin’ to mankind! (One Love!)
Oh, Lord! (One Heart) Wo-ooh!Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let’s get together and feel all right
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let’s get together and feel all righthttps://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobmarley/onelovepeoplegetready.html
One thought on “ONE LOVE / PEOPLE GET READY! A syntropic fully life-coherent creative connecting cosmos.”