Some people I know have started a unique university just down the street from where we lived and worked in the 1980’s in Mountain View, California. Instead of a multi-year curriculum, the Singularity University condenses today’s most important leading edge technologies and futures research into a 10-week intensive that accepts no more than 80 students. The classes are taught (from 7AM to 11PM) by some of the world’s leading thinkers and do-ers in their respective disciplines.
A few weeks ago at TED, the Singularity University threw a party where I met up with some of my friends, and met others involved with the new venture. The most memorable (and lengthy!) conversation I had that evening was with Singularity’s professor of synthetic biology, Andrew Hessel. I was impressed with both his formidable knowledge of genetics and bio-engineering, and his ability to see the merging of new bio-technologies from a futurist’s perspective. Andrew is clearly one of the planet’s leading thinkers on our bio-genetic future.
So I was pleased to stumble upon Andrew’s recent lecture at MOMO Amsterdam just a few weeks ago. The lecture is called The Internet of Living Things and in 45 minutes presents a bird’s eye view of today’s most important developments in bio-genetic engineering and futures research. I encourage you to watch it.
Author Don Miller blogged a story today about a practice in his religious community of asking people to leave if they are not “contributing.” Actually, it’s not his community that asks, it’s the professional clergy on stage. Although he didn’t intend it this way, Don presents yet another example of why increasing numbers of people are leaving inherited religion. The underlying issue at Don’s community, and virtually all religious institution, is the model of gathering which prioritizes formula over relationship.
An authentic communal voice (versus the voice of a spotlighted religious expert) is organic, shared, and participative. The very nature of stage-centric, clergy-centric “service” prevents this kind of all-body inclusive interaction. Rather than a simple meeting of fellow strugglers, “church” becomes an inorganic religious hierarchy. I suggest that Don’s story summarizes how we’ve lost the essence of ecclesia. He asks, “are churches supposed to be warm and inviting to everybody?” By its very nature, the Constantinian assembly is decidedly not “warm and inviting.” It says, “come in, sit down, face forward, and let the experts run the show.”
As I’ve written here before, good sociology has shown that at least 10%, often as much as 30%, of any community represents a “creative class” – the force behind most social change. Yet it is the 1% clergy class that effectively sets agenda and defines the boundaries of religious community. I would suggest that our inherited 1% religious models routinely suppress their 10-30% core creatives. Don’s “my way or the highway” clergy story reinforces this theory.
I would add that virtual-ecclesial community is in some ways a corrective to the imbalances of the localized lay-clergy model. Virtual community is organically driven and distributed, not centralized – fluid not static – more generative than factional – inclusive to a fault. People participate by showing up. Virtuality reflects the collective wisdom of all participants rather than the narrow interests of a few.
The line was continually blurred between perpetrator and victim, between hero and villain. In time, the labels that heretofore defined my perceptions of the world became meaningless. You see what you want to see. You see it the way you want to see it. You see what you can bear to see.
– Peter van Agtmael
The structure of the current global economy is not designed for equitable, plodding growth; it’s designed to reward opportunistic, risk-seeking innovators. Were one to construct an investment portfolio of illicit businesses, it would no doubt outperform Wall Street.
A nice little pitch-placed montage of pop scientists singing the praises of objectivity. I resonate with this thread. Science is a kind of poetry of shared reality. As Dawkins chirps, “science replaces private prejudices with publicly verifiable evidence.”
World religion is fragmented into hundreds, perhaps thousands, of competing frameworks, with no central mediating idea. And while science can boast of central unifying tenets, it cannot address the depths of the human heart, the human spirit, the reality of hope (see Havel quote prior post). Maybe someday it will, but for now most of us embrace metaphysical metaphor to help make sense of mystery, death, and self.
It is here: where objectivity meets mystery — where science meets spirituality — that our most important conversations are taking place. The world of religion can learn much from the scientific method, yet religion persists in trying to jam its clumsy superstitions into elegant, well-establish meta-patterns. Conversely, science, in its assumption that it can eventually objectify all reality, misses the fact that it hasn’t. Science would be well-served by integrating an engaged, conversational respect for the views of transcendence that currently fuel many of the planet’s greatest hopes and dreams.
I’ve encountered a number of scientists who, while remaining atheistic or agnostic, have developed a healthy posture towards spirituality. Fact is, most scientists do maintain a sense of spirituality and/or faith. It’s a serious problem that the 5% militant extremes (on both sides) are often seen as the norm.
As I mentioned here some years ago, physicist, astronomer, and atheist Marcelo Gleiser (Dartmouth) weighed in on the war between science and religion. He warns fellow scientists that they are becoming “as radical as the religious extremists, as inflexible and intolerant as the movements we seek to exterminate by our oh-so-crystal-clear-and-irresistibly-compelling rationalizations.” Gleiser admits that science cannot offer the humanly essential qualities of hope, peace, charity, and spirit. He concludes, “It is futile and naive to simply dismiss the need people have for spirituality… either science will teach us humility and respect for life or we will exterminate this most precious cosmic jewel. I am optimistic that scientists will teach people these lessons, instead of simply trying to rob them of their faith and offering nothing in return.”
My public journal (aka blog) exists, in part, because of my desire to see greater consilience between science/technology and faith/spirituality. Numerous science/spirit resources can be found in the sidebar. What’s needed in today’s rapidly connecting global culture, especially religious culture, is a way towards understanding the nature of unhealthy bias – how it clouds our thinking. Philosopher/scientist Massimo Pigliucci (NYU) offers six simple ideas that can help us overcome this “meta-bias” — our “not wanting to be wrong.”
- Divorce your belief from your self
- Think of disagreements as collaborative, not adversarial
- Visualize being wrong
- Take the long view
- Congratulate yourself on being objective, not on being right
- If you can’t overcome your competitive instinct, re-direct it
Until we “become fine with being wrong” we will continue to harbor survival techniques which force us to hold on to irrational meta-biases. I journal this more as a reminder to myself than anyone else..
Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.
– Vaclav Havel
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
- Clay Shirky
If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try to go to sleep with a mosquito in the room.
