BIOLOGY OF LOVE By Humberto Maturana Romesin and Gerda Verden-Zoller (1996)

We human beings are love dependent animals. This is apparent in that we become ill when we are deprived of love at whatever age. No doubt we live a culture in which we are frequently in war and kill each other on different rational grounds that justify our mutual total denial as human beings. But doing that does not bring to us happiness, or spiritual comfort and harmony. Love and aggression – are they polar features of our biology or, of our cultural human existence? Are we genetically aggressive animals that love occasionally, or are we loving animals that cultivate aggression culturally? Our purpose in this article is to maintain that we are loving animals that cultivate aggression in a cultural alienation that may eventually change our biology. To this end we shall speak about the following themes in short but basic statements:

A) the systemic constitution and conservation of human identity;

B) the origin and development of the self in the mother/child relations;

C) the evolutionary origin of humanness in the conservation of neoteny and the expansion of the female sexuality;

D) the biology of love.

A selection of articles by Humberto Maturana on Systemic and Meta-Systemic Laws, Metadesign, and his contribution to Constructive Psychotherapy

Systemic and Meta-Systemic Laws Reproduced from: http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/may-june-2013/systemic-and-meta-systemic-laws Authors: Ximena Yáñez, Humberto Romesín This essay is the result of our reflections over the course of many recursive conversations in the space of our collaboration at the Matriztic Institute in Santiago, Chile on the interplay of biology and culture on human living. We propose these Systemic and Meta-Systemic… Read More

The Biology of Business: Crisis as a Gifting Opportunity | Elisabet Sahtouris

As an evolution biologist, it is obvious to me that we humans are part of Nature and that Nature has been doing business for billions of years, if we take a broad definition of business to be the economy of making a living, of transforming resources into useful products that are exchanged, distributed, consumed, and/or recycled. So, to talk about the biology of human businesses, I could simply point out that all our businesses are systems made up of people, who are living beings, and that therefore businesses are living systems or biological entities. However, to say something more useful I need to go back through history to show why most human businesses, despite being made up of people, do not function like living systems, at least not like healthy living systems. Those few that do are swimming upstream against the norm, usually with great difficulty, and that just should not be, need not be, and must not continue to be.

Our businesses, unlike those of other species, are organized and run in a socio-political cultural context, and that context has a history. Historical context has a great deal to do with what we believe about ourselves and our world, and when I sort through that socio-political history looking for the most salient influences on contemporary business from my own perspective, I am naturally drawn to the history of science.

“Education as viewed from the biological matrix of human existence” (2006) by Humberto Maturana and Ximena Paz Dávila

Extracted from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001455/145502e.pdf prelac journal THE BIOLOGY OF KNOWING AND THE BIOLOGY OF LOVING Education as viewed from the biological matrix of human existence Humberto Maturana and Ximena Paz Dávila Biologist, Chile. Matrix Mentor, Chile. The responsibility for education: whose court is the ball in? It seems to me important to reflect on questions that arise… Read More

The Economics Of Life And Death (Boston, 1991) by Prof John McMurtry

ABSTRACT: This paper begins with an explanation of the “life sequence of value,” which is defined by the formula Life->Means of Life->More Life (L->MofL->L1). The analysis then contrasts this general sequence of value to the “money sequence of value,” which is shown to have three autonomous forms not before distinguished: (1) Money->Means of Life->More Money ($->MofL->$1); (2) Money->Means of Life Destruction->More Money ($->MofD->$1); (3) Money->More Money->More Money ($->$1->$2->$3->$n). I explain how the first money sequence of value, analyzed by Marx in his classical formula of industrial capital (M->C->M1), has mutated so that the standard sequence of (1) assumed by economists has, in fact, been increasingly displaced by sequences (2) and (3). The argument shows that these sequences of economic “growth” increasingly dismantle environmental and civil life-fabrics, but remain unproblematic to the dominant economic paradigm whose measures of value do not register life-losses in their value accounts. It is concluded that a regrounding of economic understanding in the life sequence of value is required to avoid a cumulative breakdown in the conditions of social and planetary existence.

SUBVERSION FROM WITHIN: How the Freeloaders Gerrymandered Their Way to the Top

This paper explores the systemic mechanisms by which economic, political, and cultural elites — “the freeloaders” — have subverted cooperative human instincts and restructured societies to serve their own interests. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology, memetics, affective neuroscience, and political economy, it argues that humanity’s natural predisposition toward altruism and group cooperation has been hijacked through institutionalized manipulation of narratives, laws, credit systems, and collective meaning-making processes. The ruling classes have “gerrymandered” not only electoral and political boundaries but also the very cognitive, emotional, and cultural landscapes of societies, producing widespread inequality, normalized predation, and a misrepresentation of human nature as inherently selfish and competitive. The article integrates perspectives on group selection, memetic fitness, and cultural evolution to explain how these elites exploit structural vulnerabilities in cooperative systems, creating “subversion from within” at multiple levels — from biological drives to planetary governance. It concludes by calling for a reclaiming of our cooperative heritage and collective agency to repair systemic damages and restore life-supportive cultural evolution.

“150 Years After Capital: Reading Marx as Life Grounded” by Prof John McMurtry

“One basis for life and another basis for science is an a-priori lie” – Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1845.

Marx’s Base-Superstructure Theory (BST) has long been a major object of controversy. It is deeply embedded in a monumental corpus of system-challenging analysis while secondary interpretations are deeply conflicted and rarely reliable. In general, partial takes and opposed propagandas militate against primary-source understanding. Within the last 35 years, a sea-shift of global culture to anti-foundationalist relativism has uprooted the very idea of a common base or ground.

A SPECIAL ISSUE DEVOTED TO AUTOPOIESIS – CYBERNETICS FORURM (1981)

Reproduced from: http://www.univie.ac.at/aoc/asc/Periodica/X_2_3_1981.pdf IN THIS ISSUE: Foreword by the Special-Issues Editor, Klaus Krippendorff Autopoiesis Today, Milan Zeleny Autopoiesis: The Organization of Living Systems, Its Characterization and a Model, F.G. Varela, H.R. Maturana and A. Uribe The Organization of the Living: A Theory of the Living Organization, Humberto R. Maturana Self-Organization of Living Systems: A Formal Model… Read More

“The Productive Base as the Ground of Society and History. Marx’s Base-Superstructure Theory” by Prof John McMurtry

Reproduced from: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-productive-base-as-the-ground-of-society-and-history-marxs-base-superstructure-theory/5623772 The Productive Base as the Ground of Society and History. Marx’s Base-Superstructure Theory By Prof. John McMurtry Global Research, December 23, 2017 Theme: Global Economy, History, Poverty & Social Inequality “One basis for life and another basis for science is an a-priori lie” –Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1845. Base-Superstructure Theory (BST) is… Read More

Category: Life