Healing
our
Wounded Lives through Fairy Stories, Myths and Legends
My
next book...
Gonna
Lay Down my
Sword
and
Shield
A
Complexity Perspective on Human Evolution from our Violent Past to a
Compassionate Future
Articles
by Victor
Fairy
Stories
Complexity
Spirituality
Short
previews
of
all talks
Healing
our
Wounded Lives through Fairy Stories, myths and Legends
My
next book...
Gonna
Lay Down my
Sword
and
Shield
A
Complexity Perspective on Human Evolution from our Violent Past to a
Compassionate Future
Short
previews
of
all talks
|
My
next book....
|
Gonna
Lay Down my
Sword and Shield
A Complexity
perspective on human evolution from a violent past to a compassionate
future
After thousands of years
of ‘civilization’, our society is still racked by high levels of violence. We
read of rapes, murders, wars and other atrocities in the papers or see them on
our television screens every day. Why is it that after all these years we seem
no nearer to living peacefully together?
Over the millennia we have
tried to organise societies in so many different forms and yet we still see
violence all about us. In my own life I have been active in a variety of
social, political and spiritual movements. They have all promised me peace,
whether it was by getting the right people into government, following a
particular religious leader or some meditation technique. I was always left
feeling disappointed and my questions remained.
A turning point for me was
reading Up from Eden, A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution
by Ken Wilber. I gained a whole new perspective on our development as human
beings. It outlined a different perspective on the underlying forces that made
us what we are. Ken Wilber also presented a new future towards which we can
evolve. As I read more and more books on related topics, I started writing and found
the book took on a life of its own, developing in directions I had never
imagined when I started.
Since I began this immense
task it has that has taken over my life. Discovering the world of chaos and
complexity after viewing a television programme about fractals, opened a whole
new framework through which to view the world that helped to make sense of the
chaotic and increasingly complex dynamics we encounter in our everyday lives.
Efforts have been made to
examine cultures other than European based cultures, but a bias remains. It is
Western Civilisation that has had the greatest effect on the dominant culture
of our day and shapes our lives so deeply, but we should not lose sight of all
the tremendous contributions that have collectively made humanity what it is
today.
All too often we hear of
calls for superficial policies to stop violence, such as returning to the death
penalty or increased prison sentences that do not take account of the deeper
causes and influences and accordingly cannot actually be effective. We cannot
hope to create a non-violent society without a clear understanding of the roots
of violence deep within our evolutionary history. I therefore resolved to look
more deeply at the origins of our violence in the hope that it might result in
more effective means of creating a truly peaceful world in which we can all
live.
In my working life, this
took me into working for the last seven years in the criminal justice area with
daily contact with people whose lives were filled with violence. This made me
look at my own violence, subtle and not so subtle, and to acknowledge what was
similar in me to those we label as criminal.
While I do not punch, kick
or stab people, I nevertheless inflict other forms of violence on so many
people around me. So many seemly innocuous actions are actually forms of
violence. The closer people are to me, the worse they often seem to fare.
I certainly do not write
this book as a paragon of virtue, who is beyond violence, but rather as someone
caught in the same pain and distress of life just as you and all the rest of
humanity. I see myself trying to live a good life and yet still finding I live
a life of pain and inflicting pain on others. This anguish leads me to seek
other ways to live my life that may lead me to the fulfillment and inner
happiness I seek.
The first step to move
beyond violence is to understand the patterns of violence and why it has played
such a central role our lives. The next step is to honestly acknowledge the
violence that is within us. Invite you on this journey, so together we can walk
on the path of compassion that will lead us to our peace.
Structure of the
Book
The book is written in five
sections.
The
first section of the book looks at the origins of violence. It examines
our brain structure and how evolutionary psychology can help us
understand how and why we respond to our world the way we do. The part
of our brain that controls basic instinct and emotions can conflict
with our think and lead to many struggles
The next section introduces Chaos Theory and Complexity Theory and the principles behind non-linear dynamics.
The
principles are then woven into Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs to
gain an understanding of the stages we progress through in life.
The
third section explores the world of archetypes and how they shape our
world and how we respond to it. It explores the mythological world and
how we can use it to heal past emotional wounds
The fourth
sections looks at models of consciousness and human dynamics. Ken
Wilber's integral vision shows how so many different aspects of human
life, individual and community, inner worlds and outer world all link
to give an clearer understanding of who we are. Wilber outlines a
vision of an integrated person with all the many parts of life working
on balance.
Spiral Dynamics describes the stages through
which human societies evolve. It proposes that evolve from survival
based bands through to tribal societies, then to empires and
absolutist regimes such as the Christian church or Islam. From there
evolves the modernist , material societies, in which most people today
in the West live. After then is the post modern or Green level,
followed by an integral understanding of life and beyond.
Then
there is discussion of cycling time waves through history and looking
for patterns through the generations. We explore the work of Will am
Strauss and Neill Howe, Volker Bornschier and Kandratiev.
The fifth section looks at various
historical epochs and shows how chaos and complexity and the models
discussed can shed light on our past. We look at the Hebrew people,
Christianity, The Renaissance, the rise of democracy, the colonisation
of America, the history of Russia and more.
The
final section looks at where we are today and what are the challenges
for our future. The ideas of Ervin Laszlo are explored linking the
sub-atomic world of quantum mechanics to intergalactic world of
relativity and the mesoscopic level of human life where the dynamics of
complexity are observed.
From
this an understanding of what we need to do to best cope with the
challenges of the future emerges and gives us a new way of looking at
the world and a new vision and direction for the future |
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