"You
can't solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that gave rise to the
problem"
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
See how
you resonate with the 16 ideas that hallmark this 'new' kind of thinking ...
1. I am
part of the world. The world is not outside of me, and I am not outside of the
world. The world is in me, and I am in the world.
2. I am part of nature, and
nature is part of me. I am what I am in my communication and communion with all
living things. I am an irreducible and coherent whole with the web of life on
the planet.
3. I am part of society, and society is part of me. I am what I am
in my communication and communion with my fellow humans. I am an irreducible
and coherent whole with the community of humans on the planet.
4. I am more
than a skin-and-bone material organism: my body, and its cells and organs are
manifestations of what is truly me: a self-sustaining, self-evolving dynamic
system arising, persisting and evolving in interaction with everything around
me.
5. I am one of the highest, most evolved manifestations of the drive
toward coherence and wholeness in the universe. It is the same essence, the
same spirit that is inherent in all the things that arise and evolve in nature,
whether on this planet or elsewhere in the infinite reaches of space and time.
6.
There are no absolute boundaries and divisions in this world, only transition
points where one set of relations yields prevalence to another. In me, in this
self-maintaining and self-evolving coherence- and wholeness-oriented system,
the relations that integrate the cells and organs of my body are prevalent.
7.
The separate identity I attach to other humans and other things is but a
convenient convention that facilitates my interaction with them. My family and
my community are just as much "me" as the organs of my body. My body
and mind, my family and my community, are interacting and interpenetrating,
variously prevalent elements in the network of relations that encompasses all
things in nature and the human world.
8. The whole gamut of concepts and ideas
that separates my identity, or the identity of any person or community, from
the identity of other persons and communities are manifestations of this
convenient but arbitrary convention. There are no "others" in the
world: We are all living systems and we are all part of each other.
9.
Attempting to maintain the system I know as "me" through ruthless
competition with the system I know as "you" is a grave mistake: It
could damage the integrity of the embracing whole that frames both your life
and mine. I cannot preserve my own life and wholeness by damaging that whole,
even if damaging a part of it seems to bring me short-term advantage. When I
harm you, or anyone else around me, I harm myself.
10. Collaboration, not
competition, is the royal road to the wholeness that hallmarks healthy systems
in the world. Collaboration calls for empathy and solidarity, and ultimately
for love. We are part of the same whole and so are part of each other.
11. The
idea of "self-defense," even of "national defense," needs
to be rethought. Patriotism if it aims to eliminate adversaries by force, and
heroism even in the well-meaning execution of that aim, are mistaken
aspirations. Comprehension, conciliation and forgiveness are not signs of
weakness; they are signs of courage.
12. "The good" for me and for
every person in the world is not the possession and accumulation of personal
wealth. Wealth, in money or in any material resource, is but a means for
maintaining myself in my environment. Exclusive wealth is a threat to all
people in the human community.
13. Beyond the sacred whole we recognize as the
world in its totality, only life and its development have what philosophers
call intrinsic value; all other things have merely instrumental value: value
insofar as they add to or enhance intrinsic value. Material things in the
world, and the energies and substances they harbor or generate, have value only
if and insofar they contribute to life and well-being in the web of life on
this Earth.
14. The true measure of my accomplishment and excellence is my
readiness to give. Not the amount of what I give is the measure of my
accomplishment and excellence, but the relation between what I give, and what
my family and I need to live and to thrive.
15. Every healthy person has
pleasure in giving: It is a higher pleasure than having. I am healthy and whole
when I value giving over having. Sharing enhances the community of life, while
possessing and accumulating creates demarcation, invites competition, and fuels
envy. The share-society is the norm for all the communities of life on the
planet; the have-society is typical only of modern-day humanity, and it is an
aberration.
16. I recognize the aberration of modern-day humanity from the
universal norm of coherence in the world, acknowledge my role in having
perpetrated it, and pledge my commitment to restoring wholeness and coherence
by becoming whole myself: whole in my thinking and acting -- in my
consciousness.
If you had an "aha experience" while reading even
just one of these ideas, you have the foundations of Akashic [Unity]
consciousness. And if you had this experience all the way through, you already
possess this crucial consciousness.
Ervin Laszlo
