Monthly Archives: May 2026

Social Soil and Islands of Coherence

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Otto Scharmer (of MIT and the Presencing Institute) has written an article which brings hope as a way forward for humanity. There is a link below. You can read or listen, which only takes 25 minutes. It can feel that the world is accelerating to destruction under the triple impact of extractive capitalism, technology and warfare. These  threaten to “unsolder all”.

The latest threat comes from AI. It is artificial intelligence that gives the clue to a way forward. It feeds on human interaction and destroys it. However when even a small amount of data that it relies on is AI generated then the whole AI structure simply collapses. Our social interaction is necessary even for AI to function. 

Scharmer points to the way in whichwe become aware both of our self and our place within community and our purpose within the cosmos. It sounds grand, but it comes about from small steps we each can make – now – and within our local lives. This vision was prefigured by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his “Phenomenon of Man”. He forecast in the 1940’s that technology would enable and require humanity to connect each-to-each and reach an “Omega Point”. The awareness of the love that is all and which we call God.

Scharmer compares the health of society to agriculture. Productivity starts with soil. Our extractive monoculture has been eroding earth so that it is less and less fertile. However, regenerative farming encourages gloriously fertile earth and it is from this that abundance of plants and harvest flows. The same applies to us. We yearn for the joy of richly connected community which arises from tending our social soil. Smile at someone on the bus. Participate with others in local groups. This can be overwhelmingly powerful. This is a proven route. The Scandinavian folk-bildung movement transformed their society 100 years ago,  led to Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat and inspired Martin Luther King.

Scharmer explains the effect through the work of Ilya Prigogine who showed that when systems are far from equilibrium then small islands of coherence can lead the whole system to a new emergent level. Surely then this is our exciting work? To reach out and take part in building social soil, with others. Starting with small steps. As my son says – smile and the world smiles upon you.

https://www.noemamag.com/we-may-be-entering-a-second-axial-age/

Materialism. Arrogant, Illogical

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“Si materialistes qui fussent les premiers evolutionistes il ne leur venaient pas l’idee que leurs intelligence de savants eut rein a faire en Elle-meme, avec l’evolution” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Teilhard de Chardin is here making a point about materialists in the field of evolution, such as Darwin and the moden day Richard Dawkins. What he means is that materialists imagine themselves as observers, separate from what they comment upon. Yet they, and their brains are a result of and part of evolution.

Another human trait is to feel superior to what you observe. The act of viewing something as separate leads to a sense of boundary; from which follows..

Materialism, arrogant. Illogical.

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Every breath we take..

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Every breath we take affects and changes the universe. Every action and every thought does the same. Each of us is significant.

Oh yes, and death is an illusion.

This is something that is pointed to by religion, philosophy and science.

The oldest religion may be what is encoded in Sanskrit. Put simply (by my reading anyway) Hindu thinking has at heart a truth that all is one whilst we experience it in our own diversity.

Philosophers have also reached this conclusion. I would point to Maurice Merleau-Ponty with his observation about perception and embodiment. His final book talks of the “flesh” of the world which we build by our action and reflections. Carl Jung points to a “universal unconsciousness”. What we think of as separate is really like the peaks of icebergs sharing connection below the surface. Both of these draw on Eastern thinking, which does not share what looks like the philosophical mistake of Descartes (that there is separation between material and intangible).

Scientists working on Quantum Reality point to intimate connection with quantum entanglement. This was developed by David Bohm into a metaphor of the universe as a hologram – where everything contains the imprint of everything else. For him the facts point to an “implicate” universe alongside what we see materially – the “explicate”. Everything is a flow, a river, and one-thing. What we perceive of as material and separate in place and time is an illusion caused by seemingly stable eddies in that flow.

My own conclusion? We don’t understand the whole of reality of which we are part. To pretend that is a mistaken arrogance. However the likelihood and the signs are – that all is connected and we are part of all that is – now and across time. More than that therefore. Everything we do has universal significance. Death is an illusion.