The Human Race hits the Mother Lode

For thousands of years, patriarchal societies have systematically denied women’s rights, independence, and intelligence. From Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages, women were treated as minors and as property, literally “given away” in marriage, as possessions. In early modern Europe, under the patriarchal religion of the day, 40 000 to 100 000 “witches” were executed – most of them women. The US Constitution left women with zero rights and zero representation.

At the time, most of these patriarchal abuses were considered appropriate, just – even natural. Today, society would be appalled at the very thought of the witch-trials in the Inquisition, and think of not giving Constitutional rights to women as barbaric. But are we still making decisions based on patriarchal prejudice? In 150 years from now, will historians look back at our era as inhumane and barbaric? Let’s look at where we’ve been – and at where we still need to go. Not only the treatment of women, but in the context of poverty, the military and the way we treat our planet environmentally – we will look back at ourselves with disbelief.

Women’s suffrage

The “first wave” of the feminist movement was fighting for the right to vote, in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course women had rebelled against their lot for hundreds of years before – most famously Christine de Pizan (15th century) and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792. But only in 1918 did women get the right to vote in Britain – if they were over 30 and owned houses! In 1928, this was changed to all women over 21, while in 1920, all US women got the vote. For most of us, this means our grandmothers’ mothers couldn’t vote.

Equal rights

Having the vote didn’t bring equal treatment. Swathes of discriminatory laws remained and the prejudices of a patriarchal society were deeply embedded. Pay wasn’t equal, women lacked civil rights and family planning support, contraceptives were illegal in some US states, marital rape was legal, as was discriminating against pregnant women, the Military Academies didn’t accept women, and many universities and colleges were men-only. The “second wave” of feminism, in the 1960s and 1970s, campaigned against all this, with massive legal success – and they changed not just the laws, but also many of the social attitudes towards women.

Breaking the “glass ceiling”

Nevertheless, many of these attitudes persist, and changing the law doesn’t change people’s behaviors. The City of London, district of stockbrokers, is notorious for rampant sex-discrimination and New York’s Wall Street is no better. But the world is still changing.

With female Prime Ministers and Presidents elected all around the world and the additional influence of women within the three branches of the U.S. Federal Government, the glass is starting to crack. Women are graduating at a higher rate then men from college and about a third of family breadwinners are now women.

It’s easy, and tempting, to conflate women with feminine energy. Certainly, our cultures encourage men to develop masculine-energy traits & women to develop feminine-energy traits. Often, showing the opposite trait is heavily criticized – women are called “bitches”, men are called “wimps”, and so forth. But as the last post discussed, both sexes work better with both energies. Women having higher positions in society doesn’t necessarily mean they bring feminine energy. For one thing, not all women are necessarily dominant in “feminine” energy, plus those values are traditionally undervalued compared to the “masculine” counterparts, so achievement is often through masculine energy in both sexes. Nevertheless, as our society learns to revalue women, so it learns to revalue “feminine” values.

The “feminine” impact on society

In the United States, since the signing of 19th Amendment, many compassionate laws and social programs would soon follow in the United States. Social programs like unemployment benefits, Medicare and Medicaid, and social security were provided to the most vulnerable. The Civil Rights Act, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the Americans with Disability Act followed to protect the minority citizens of a society. These social programs, laws and amendment were about creating a more evolved and vibrant society, as proposed by FDR’s New Deal, JFK’s New Frontier, and LBJ’s Great Society . With the year 2012 upon us, the next “feminine” agenda should address saving our planet — how about BHO’s “New World”? These great social program and initiatives aren’t exclusively credited to women – but we can credit them to a renewal of feminine energy and values: the soft, inward, receptive, intuitive, creative, multi-tasking, compassionate, and loving.

Women’s impact on society

The empowerment of women has immense benefits for a society. When women are educated, baby and child deaths decrease and family health improves – regardless of whether the woman’s income changes. Their children are more likely to be educated, and to do better at school. The Microcredit Campaign found that women are a better credit risk, and the UNCDF proved they are more likely than men to invest new income in their families and societies – when a woman benefits, so does everyone around her. A World Bank report showed that societies that discriminate against women are poorer, with worse government, a lower standard of living, and slower economic growth. Women are less prone to corruption and nepotism, are more politically active when they’re educated, have a lower carbon footprint and are more likely to take personal action to help the environment. Women’s rights don’t depend on them being so all-round-brilliant, but it’s a foolish world that refuses to benefit from all this!

A mother lode of feminine energy

So, after thousands of years of patriarchies, it’s obvious what a positive impact this influx of feminine energy has had. Empowerment for women reaps extraordinary benefits. More feminine energy is essential to balance the yin & yang and unravel our current patriarchal world – and this burden should not be placed on women exclusively. With the year 2012 approaching, and the Age of New Enlightenment upon us, we need feminine energy to increase the vibration of the planet.

The meek will inherit the earth...

For hundreds of years, we’ve divided our energy into “masculine” and “feminine” – whether we call it masculine and feminine energy, yang and yin, or left brain and right brain.

Masculine (Yang) Hard Outward Projecting Rational Logical Focused Firm Purposeful

Feminine (Yin) Soft Inward Receptive Intuitive Creative Multi-tasked Compassionate Loving

We’ve convinced ourselves that if we want to achieve anything, masculine energy is better. So look at the feminine energy again. Look at what we’ve tried to stamp out from our personal success – how our society runs – how corporations and governments function – how we treat our planet. Does part of you read that list and think “weak”? Can we afford to live without those qualities? Can we live without those qualities?

Every aspect of human life works better with a balance of feminine and masculine energies.

Individuals

We live in a competitive society. We want good, healthy, fulfilling things – a home, family, good food, our loved ones safe, a sense of purpose and achievement, the chance to do something that matters. To get these things, we have to compete, at school, in job interviews, at work, for money and bonuses, on the housing market, for promotion… So yes, we do need to be hard, outward, projecting, rational, logical, focused, firm, purposeful.

Masculine energy shows us HOW – feminine energy shows us WHY. It’s a cliché and a truism that wealth doesn’t bring happiness; equally true, lack of money can bring unhappiness. But it’s not the money or success – that’s only our HOW. We all know the trope of a wealthy man or woman, sitting in a palatial home, surrounded by fine art and expensive carpets, desolate and sick with emptiness. Feeling like somewhere on the road to achieving all their dreams, they lost something priceless. It’s true. They have. But not lost – perhaps, just buried.

We are emotional people. Whether we like it or not – and many of us don’t. In The Man Who Tasted Shapes, 1998, the neurologist Richard Cytowic showed that our decisions are not rational, logical, and purposeful as we like to think – they are, ultimately, emotional. Research continues in this area. Our rational brain plays, at most, the role of consultant. Even the most hardcore-logical person can never escape their emotion. It’s at the base of who we are. Our motivations, our WHY, is ultimately human, and emotional. It’s soft, inward, receptive, intuitive, creative, multi-tasking, compassionate, and loving.

If we keep the HOW and we lose the WHY, we end up tired and unfulfilled. We know what we’re trying to achieve – but none of us dares ask “What’s the point of it all?” Why? Because we’re compassionate and loving, that’s why. Because unless we’re dead, we care.

Society

Let the WHY back in, for a moment. Let yourself feel. Let yourself care about this: 50% of the world’s wealth goes to 2% of the human race. Most of the world goes to bed cold, hungry and illiterate. 100 million children live on the street. 17,000 children died of hunger today. And yesterday. Another 17,000 will die again tomorrow. And the day after. Yes, without the HOW there’s nothing we can do about this. But by all that is sacred, let the WHY back in.
Why? Because we can. We can fix this. “Handouts don’t work,” you say – yep, apparently so. And equally clearly, microcredits do work. We can’t say the HOW is impossible – HOW is what we’re good at, all we’ve been good at. But if we ignore WHY, we don’t.

By providing world class education, living wages, equal justice and universal healthcare for all citizens, we can create a safe environment that creates success. In a perfect “yin & yang” world, society should create a safety net that doubles as a spring board – compassionate and purposeful.

We have the means. We have the expertise, the technology, and the infrastructure available to take care of the whole world. What are we doing with all that?

Big Business

In its current form, the corporate structure wants the bottom line – at any cost. This environment encouraged the behavior of such companies as Enron and WorldCom, who found the devastation of others acceptable in acquiring their own personal wealth. The Alpha Male environment of our financial institutions, our banks and stock markets, is a recipe for disaster. Three key factors in the banking crisis were:

• • unwillingness to be wrong or appear weak (so you trust yourself against the facts)
• • an intensely male environment (this drives up testosterone, which in turn drives up excessive risk-taking)
• • rewards for short-term success (instead of long-term stability)

This has already devastated us. But corporate and banking culture remains the same, flawed model. And this is some of what corporations control in our society:

Media ~ Finances ~ Agriculture ~ Real Estate ~ Manufacturing ~ Insurance ~ Health ~ Entertainment ~ Transportation

Are you comfortable with that?

Corporations seem like monolithic powerhouses – but they’re not. They’re made up of people, each with their own HOW and buried WHY, and all of us need to return to our why. Otherwise, we’re not only purposeless – we are well and truly screwed.

Of course the masculine HOW is not the only way, however traditionally dominant it is. New management styles are emerging and many corporate leaders and entrepreneurs show profound compassion: Bill Gates, with the Gates Foundation, AIDS vaccine, and malaria research; Omidyar, with the micro-loans; Richard Branson, with Green Energy. Everyone’s a mix of masculine and feminine – and we need both.

Government

Governments are no different. Traditionally and still male-dominated, most maintain a heavily alpha-male environment focused on masculine energy – with all the pitfalls we saw in the banking crisis. It’s not a question of “add more women”. Women are just as capable as men of suiting up in masculine energy. It’s a question of revaluing feminine energies – in men and women. While our masculine energies start wars, snatch resources, and modernize the military to the point of potential self-destruction of the human race, meanwhile failing the duty of care to its own citizens, the problem is obvious. Yet world leaders who do exhibit compassion and offer non-violent solutions – King, Gandhi, and Mandela – go down in history as our greatest. Even Jesus Christ said, “Love your enemies.”

The World

We live in a patriarchal world, emphasized by our need for progress even at the expense of our Earth. Masculine energy sees feminine energy as weak, and meek. But we can make ourselves whole again, and we can evolve. And the meek will inherit the earth

The Mayan Calendar’s promise

What does the Mayan Calendar tell the human race is coming – inevitable Armageddon? Inevitable Enlightenment? Something in between? Nothing at all? Both NASA and the Mayan elders agree: disaster isn’t imminent. Instead, our evolution could take a huge leap forward, through collective intelligence.

Not disaster but enlightenment

Prophecies of doom for December 21, 2012 are plentiful. Planet X is going to collide with us – or possibly Niribu – or a massive solar flare will torch us all – or the earth will turn on its head – or a massive planetary alignment will destroy us all… Reassuringly, no scientific evidence backs up any of these fatal forecasts. Ian O’Neill, an engaging science writer, runs through the misunderstandings behind the different claims in his articles on 2012 and even NASA steps in to reassure us there’s no imminent disaster. The stuff of movies is not the stuff of fact.

Mayans themselves say 2012 is not the end of the world – quite the opposite. Gerardo Barrios, who grew up among the Maya Mam tribe in Huehuetenango, interviewed close to 600 traditional Mayan elders about the calendar and its prophecy. The Manataka American Indian Council website quotes his brother Carlos’s book, Kam Wuj: El Libro del Destino: “They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed.”

Measuring more than time

The Mayan calendar is intricate – unlike our own, it doesn’t just measure the seasonal year and mark the moons. In fact, it uses three calendars simultaneously: the Haab, the Tzolkin, and the Tun.

Thanks to Quantum Co-creation for the basis of this image

Imagine the three calendars as three cogs, each turning one day at a time. The Haab has 365 days – that’s for seasons, farming, and taxes. The Tzolkin has 260 days, and gives the intention of creation for each day. The Tun has 360 days: this is the prophetic calendar which traces the wave of creation. They all start together, and all turn together, but each lasts a different length of time – so to get back to their original starting point takes a very long time. About 5,125 years. (One could spend many happy, meditative / mathematical hours with these numbers.) And that is the Mayan long count. That’s what comes to an end on December 21, 2012. To an end – but also to a new beginning.

It measures not only time, but also the nine levels of consciousness of the human race that lead up to enlightenment. These are the nine underworlds, represented by the nine-stepped Mayan pyramids.

Get this image as wallpaper here

All nine underworlds end at the same time: December 12, 2012. Counting backwards, each one lasts 20 times the previous one. And each one represents a distinct stage in development and consciousness:

Cycle	Consciousness	Event	Starts	Lasts
Cellular Cycle	Action/Reaction	First Live Cells		16.4 Billion years
Mammalian Cycle	Stimulus/Response	First Live Births		820 Million years
Familiar Cycle	Stimulus Individual Response	First monkeys: Australopithecus Afarensis		41 Million years
Tribal Cycle	Decision Making	First humans: Homo Sapiens		2 Million years
Cultural Cycle	Reasoning	Spoken language		102,000 years
National Cycle	Law & Punishment	c. Stonehenge	Aug 11, 3114 BCE	5,116 years
Planetary Cycle	Power		Sep 14, 1756	256 years
Galactic Cycle	Ethics		Feb 28, 2000	12.8 years
Universal Cycle	Enlightenment		April 5, 2012	0.72 years

2012, the time of enlightenment, is almost upon us. Does it really look like the human race is going to make a quantum leap in evolution? Our current behavior is hardly persuasive. But there is something we have access to which could help with such a transformation: collective intelligence.

Collective intelligence

Collective intelligence is a shared, group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration of many individuals. It appears in a wide variety of forms, one being the network of computers and knowledge which is the internet. Mass communication inevitably affects mass behavior. One conscious thought can be shared collectively, in critical mass, all in a single moment. Now just think what would happen if the one conscious thought was to love one another. And how do you think that would affect mass behavior? And would this change in behavior be a quantum leap in our evolution to the new age of enlightenment?

The Mayan calendar, having tracked evolution since the Big Bang, predicts that the human race will evolve to a new level of consciousness in the year 2012. What are the odds, after those billions of years of existence, that this is the moment when we have the capacity to organize a conscious thought to love one another all in a single moment?

Perhaps a critical mass of simultaneous, conscious thought of love can catapult the human race to the next level of evolution. Perhaps this is the evolution the Mayan Calendar predicted – or perhaps our reaction to the Mayan Calendar prophecy can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For want of a nail...

Cause links on to effect, until a single assassination has led to a holocaust, nuclear destruction, and the threat of destroying our whole species. We need to stop this. We need to think in a new way.

At the beginning of the 20th century, trouble was brewing in Europe. The Industrial Revolution had transformed societies, bringing steam trains to quiet backwaters, mass-production, and urbanization. The British and German Empires were flexing their muscles; the Ottoman Empire was declining; the Austrio-Hungarian Empire wrestling to unite its national groups; and Imperial Russia was reeling from its first revolution. These various powers were tenuously held together with a patchwork of treaties and alliances, and at its center, the Balkans: the “powder-keg of Europe”.

Then the keg blew. On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed by Serb Nationalist Gavrilo Princip during a formal visit to Sarajevo. This triggered a series of diplomatic events that led to the beginning of World War I, 15 million deaths, and the eventual devastation of Germany.

Rather than "the war to end all wars", WWI just led to worse. The severe punishments dealt out to Germany allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to power. This in turn led to World War II, with 73 million military and civilian deaths, a holocaust and attempted genocide – and the use of nuclear weapons by the United States. This weapon started its own chain: the United States and the USSR started a cold war, stockpiling nuclear weapons. The fate of the human race hung on Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD): if one side fires, both will end up dead. (Similarly, before World War I, Europe thought its “balance of power” would keep it from war.)

More powder-kegs were created. As well as advancing weapons of mass destruction, World War II led the UN to create Israel as a country for the Jewish people. This attempt at peace-making has led to tension, hostilities, and outright war in the Middle East for the last 60 years. The cycle of hatred, fear and violence just keeps going.

Was it all down to one death? What if Archduke Ferdinand had never been assassinated? What would the world look like—dramatically different, or is the cycle of fear and violence inevitable? Were the dominoes already in place; was it only a matter of time before first domino fell? Nobody knows. But we do know that when that first domino fell, the world wasn’t such a dangerous place. We weren’t capable of destroying our own species.

Can we carry on like this? In 2010, almost 100 years later, knowing that we’re able to kill our whole species, can we blindly wrap ourselves in our own flag, quiver at the sounds of our own politicians’ preaching the fear of the unknown, and hope and pray MAD will keep us safe from people who want to harm us? I believe we can’t. And it’s the natural selection of our own species that will end this level of thinking.

Albert Einstein once said “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them”. In response to having invented the H-bomb, he and Bertrand Russell wrote in the Russell-Einstein manifesto, “We have to learn to think in a new way … Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”

With Einstein’s wisdom, with our instinctive survival mode of natural selection, I believe it is time for the human race to evolve and raise its consciousness to a new level of thinking. It’s not enough to stop the next domino from falling: we need to remove the dominoes from existence completely.

The cycle for fear and violence has to end. So what’s the solution? I think, deep in our hearts, everyone knows the true solution – TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER. The most difficult thing on the planet to do is what the human race needs to do now. And I believe we have it in us, as a species, to evolve to this challenge.

But the greatest of these is Love

How can religion, a touchstone of morality and compassion, seem to create hatred? Perhaps it’s not religion that’s at fault, but how we attach ourselves to religion. If we detach our egos from our beliefs, we can follow our beliefs more truly – and learn to love.

How can religon invoke hatred? Some argue that the problem is believing in one true God. If you believe that, you have to be partisan and believe the other religions just have it completely wrong. But let’s look more carefully at the monotheist religions. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all Abrahamic religions, named after Abraham, the father of Israel. Abraham had two sons: Isaac, through whom the Christian and Jewish lines descend; and Ishmael, the ancestor of Muhammad, the Muslim prophet of God. That first divide sowed the seeds of the Crusades: almost two hundred years of bloodthirsty war. Christianity and Judaism separated with the birth of Jesus. Years of anti-Semitism and persecution followed, while Judaism and Islam still fight a horrific battle over their shared Holy Land. Did religion cause this violence?

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all preach love – above all. In the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus says, “The greatest of these is Love.” Judaism says that God chose the Jewish people to set an example of holiness and ethical behavior, through what they do. In Islam, one of the five pillars of faith is charity, or zakāt. This is literal charity, giving 2.5% of their wealth to the poor, but it’s also more: it’s sharing happiness among God’s creation, be it through kindness, smiles, or taking good care of the environment and animals. Sikhism, another major monotheist religion, declares that everyone is equal and should be treated equally, and that a good life involves meditating on God and good deeds to others.

Other religions also put love and compassion at the center. For example, the Hindu ethical code, Dharma, asks its followers to act in service to God and to humanity. Shinto, a Japanese faith, promotes harmony and purity in everything – not just in actions, but in a pure, sincere heart. Paganism says, “An’ it harm none, do as you will.” Buddhism has five precepts that all its believers should follow, and the most important is "Avoid killing or harming any living thing."

So what’s going wrong? The hatred and violence didn’t end with the crusades. It’s not restricted to the war in the Middle East, or to terrorists. It breathes every time we look at hate and suspicion at those who don’t follow our beliefs. It breathes when we condemn people who don’t do what we think is right. It breathes when we think like the Pharisees. It breathes in every angry hate-filled campaign. But however strongly we feel about something, hate, anger, and violence can never be right. You can’t defend your religion by breaking its most important rule – love. So what do we do?

The religions aren’t wrong – they preach love. We’re wrong. It’s not religion that’s at fault, it’s how we relate to our religions. The problem is the ego-mind, which says “my beliefs”. The important word must never be “my” – it must be “beliefs”. The belief must always matter more than ourselves. We have to let go of our egos and our need to be right, so we can put the true message first. And the true message doesn’t say hate the unbeliever, scourge them into obedience, harangue them into belief – it says LOVE. Love everyone. Help everyone. Hurt no-one. And as that little voice rises up saying, “Yes, but…” – let go of it. That’s not the religious creed speaking: that’s the ego, needing to be right. Let go.

The key is detachment. The ego will always exist and want to be right, but we don’t have to obey it. We can put our beliefs above our egos. And until we do, we’re like hungry people holding a recipe for cake, saying “Isn’t this great?” But the recipe isn’t the cake – it’s how to make cake. Having the recipe is not eating the cake. We have to follow the recipe. The recipe says, in every different language, love one another. This has to be more important than being “right” and not following the recipe can never be right.

In the end, no matter what religion you practice, spirituality is not an intellectual exercise that is either right or wrong. It's a state of being, where you experience light, love and a feeling of connection. The need to be right only puts up a wall to this state of being. Detachment from our ego-mind’s need to be right tears down this wall and opening our hearts magnifies the experience of this state. And for the human race to learn how to detach ourselves, while practicing our most fundamental beliefs, will be the corner stone of our spiritual growth and evolution.

How can we detach? The ego says, “But they’re wrong!” – let go. We mustn’t attach to religion, pinning our egos to it – we must follow the beliefs. And the same is true of this blog: this is not The Way, this is a way. And here are some of the ways to detach. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

• • Christianity: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (New Testament)
• • Christianity: “Now these three remain – faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (New Testament)
• • Islam: “Yet of mankind are some who take unto themselves (objects of worship which they set as) rivals to Allah, loving them with a love like (that which is the due) of Allah (only) - those who believe are stauncher in their love for Allah.” (Al-Baqara)
• • Hinduism: “One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus is untouched by water.” Bhagavad-Gita
• • Buddhism: "Whenever thinking imbued with sensuality [or ill will or harmfulness] had arisen, I simply abandoned it, destroyed it, dispelled it, wiped it out of existence." (Thanissaro)
• • Buddhism: “When his mind is rightly-gone, rightly developed, has rightly risen above, gained release, and become disjoined from sensual pleasures, then whatever fermentations, torments, & fevers there are that arise in dependence on sensuality, he is released from them. He does not experience that feeling.” (Thanissaro)
• • Sikhism: “The answer is simple: without this absolute surrender of the last vestiges of ego and selfhood and without such complete absorption in the object of one's love, one cannot attain that unwavering concentration of all one's faculties which is the prerequisite of all inner progress. Absolute love and self-surrender are only other aspects of complete and flawless concentration.” (Adi Granth)
• • Judaism: "You shall not covet...anything that is your neighbor's... You shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or anything that is your neighbor's. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also". (Old Testament)
• • Baha'i: “by detachment is intended the detachment of the soul from all else but God.” …and… "The essence of detachment is for man to turn his face towards the courts of the Lord, to enter His Presence, behold His Countenance, and stand as witness before Him." (Tablets of Baha'u'llah)
• • Taoism: “Fame or Self: Which matters more? Self or Wealth: Which is more precious? Gain or Loss: Which is more painful? He who is attached to things will suffer much. He who saves will suffer heavy loss. A contented man is rarely disappointed. He who knows when to stop does not find himself in trouble. He will stay forever safe.” (Tao Te Ching)

What we "know" about the world can change

Quantum physics gives us bizarre paradoxes which challenge the most basic facts we know about the world. We can argue against them and pretend it’s not true, or we can change the way we look at the world – and see that actually, we’re connected.

Quantum physics gives us some bizarre paradoxes. It tells us things which contradict everything we “know” about the world. Think of the last time you sat on an airplane – on the screen they have a picture of where the plane is and how fast it’s going. The pilot has to know that, or the plane won’t arrive!

But what if you have an electron, instead of an airplane? Then we meet Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This says you can know an electron’s speed or its position, but not both. The more accurately you measure its speed, the less you know its position. The more accurately you measure its position, the less you know its speed. So if you can’t say where it is and how fast it’s going, how do you work anything out? Heisenberg used a probability distribution – an equation saying all the places it might be and all the speeds it might be traveling at. He even said that the electron actually was in all those places, at all those speeds. It only chooses its path when we measure it. Bizarrely, this works just fine. Even more bizarrely, the electronics in that airplane are using quantum physics!

For our picture of the world, this is mad. Nothing can be in two places at once, never mind lots of places. Everyone finds quantum physics bizarre, including quantum physicists. And so they come up with different explanations and interpretations, trying to figure out what this tells us about how the world really is.

The most standard explanation is the Copenhagen interpretation – but even within that, there are differences. These break down like this:

• atheism: of course the electron isn’t in all those places! That’s ridiculous. It’s just a mathematical model. “What cannot be observed doesn’t exist.” (This was Bohr’s stance. It’s called “positivist” or “subjective”, and is similar to the Ensemble interpretation.)
• agnostic: we have no idea whether the electron’s in all those places or in one place. But who cares? The math works just fine. (This was Von Weizsäcker’s view.)
• believer: it’s all real. The electron really is all those places, and/or none. Its path comes into existence when we observe it. (This is “realism”, and it’s Heisenberg’s approach.)

(And if you think that’s weird – another widely-accepted interpretation is the many-worlds theory: each possibility gets its own world to happen in.)

Quantum physics contradicts what we “know” about the universe. The atheist view, positivism, says that everything we knew before is right, an electron can’t be in more than one place, and that’s that – no matter what the math says! The agnostic view just shrugs. This blog goes with realism, the “believers”: the math works, and it’s true. The electron changes when we observe it. It’s all real. The observer is influencing reality – if not actually creating it.

What we “know” about the universe can be wrong – and we can learn, and we can change. We don’t have to cling onto what we used to “know” was true. We can learn new truths. We can create new paths.

But surely this only applies to particles? Quantum physics is for very tiny, very fast things, and Newtonian physics is for normal things, like cars and people and rolling balls and airplanes. Right? Not quite. Scale up the calculations, try making a mega-equation for every electron in the airplane. If the math doesn’t kill you, you’ll discover this: it predicts the same thing as Newton’s laws. Newton’s laws are just quantum-physics-for-big-stuff. In fact, most classical physics is now seen as a special case of quantum physics. (There is gravity, though – gravity affects large objects, like us, and not tiny particles. Physicists would sell their souls en masse for a theory which combines gravity & quantum physics.)

Our assumptions about the world have to change. People try to say, “The world doesn’t work like that!” and find they’re arguing with hard math which says, “Oh, yes, it does.” We assume we’re separate. How can we affect an electron just by observing it? But we’re not – we are connected. Literally, physically. Our assumptions often rest on science, and science often rests on our assumptions, but sometimes newness enters the world. This gives us a new way of looking at the world: connection. This is the new age of enlightenment.

Instead of assuming we’re all separate, we assume we’re connected. We’re not isolated individuals, each trapped in our own lonely box of skin – we’re connected, with light and love humming a web between us. Between each other, between us and the world. We’re a part of it.

Instead of assuming we only have an effect when we choose to, we assume we’re having an effect all the time. Our happiness leaps from person to person, like a smile from a stranger on the way to work. Our sorrow reaches out into the world, asking for help. The more we know this, the more we live it, the more it’s true.

A new age of enlightenment

Welcome to Science and Spirituality – a new blog to open up conversation and about our nature as human beings and how we’re changing. We want to be part of a paradigm shift – a shift that is already happening, towards compassion and connection: towards a new age of enlightenment.

We believe humans have the capacity for change, and that we stand on the brink of a fundamental change – in how we understand the world, live our lives, and relate to each other. We are a changing race. The evolution of our bodies allowed our brains to grow, and allowed us to carve out a new niche for ourselves – to use tools, to develop speech. Our consciousness awakened. Our brains are the key to our survival – the things we’ve invented, the things we’ve built. But our brains are also our downfall – the things we’ve destroyed, the people we injure. It’s time to take the next leap forward in evolution: from body, to mind, and now to spirit. We know how much a change in our thinking can change our world. We’ve seen it before – in the Enlightenment, in the 18th Century.

The 18th century Enlightenment was the Age of Reason – it said arguments should be based on reason and logic. It said everyone was equal and everything could be analyzed and criticized – nothing was too sacred. This was a massive change in how people thought about knowledge and the world around them, including their traditions, morality, and institutions like the government and the church. So many of the values we cherish sprang from this: the importance of freedom and democracy, religious tolerance, the scientific method, the belief – above all – in being rational. Immanuel Kant’s motto for the Enlightenment was “Sapere aude!” – Dare to know! That Enlightenment brought the freedom to use one’s own intelligence. Today’s Enlightenment is the freedom to experience one’s own spirit.

The new Enlightenment’s motto is, “We are connected.” In terms of physics, we’re connected to matter, our observations changing what happens in an experiment. In our lives and souls, we’re connected to a universe far beyond ourselves. In society, we’re connected to each other. The wellbeing of every individual is wrapped up in the wellbeing of their society and the wider world. What benefits one person in a group can’t help but benefit the rest of the group. Good generates good – and sometimes in the most unexpected ways. For example, increasing a woman’s literacy raises her child’s life expectancy – regardless of her income, her social class, or where she lives. Globally, it’s increasingly obvious that we are connected at every level: economically, environmentally, politically, socially. No country can stand alone; no person can untangle their fate from the world’s. So let’s use that – instead of trying to live despite the world, let’s embrace it. Embrace it: accept it, but also hug it close, because it is a power for good stronger than we realize.

Let’s build on these connections – intellectually, but also spiritually. Intellectually, let’s help develop our emerging, new way of thinking: the understanding that we’re all connected. Just like the first Enlightenment showed, a massive shift of assumptions is possible: changing the way we think can change the world. But for the new Age of Enlightenment, our hearts need to be signed up too. Love: light: connection: optimism: however we phrase it, this is a change we need to feel. The world may seem to be teetering on the edge of darkness, with recession, and wars, and climate change – but all around us we can also see green shoots sprouting, new promise. People’s unstinting generosity to each other, when it’s needed most. A concern and horror for war that we’ve never seen before in human history. An energy for change and a willingness to sacrifice our own pleasures for the good of the planet. We hope you’ll join us – thrashing out ideas on the blog, spreading the word, and changing the paradigm to…

• compassion
• love
• connection

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