Victor MacGill Chaos and Complexity
Magic and Mystery
Victor MacGill's website
Mandelbrot Set

My first book..

When the Dragon Stirs

Healing our Wounded Lives through Fairy Stories, Myths and Legends

When the Dragon Stirs Book Cover

The Dragon

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My next book...
Gonna Lay Down my Sword
and Shield

A Complexity Perspective on Human Evolution from our Violent Past to a Compassionate Future

Mandelbrot Set

Articles by Victor

Mandelbrot Set   Fairy Stories
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Mandelbrot Set  Complexity
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Mandelbrot Set  Spirituality
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Short previews
of all talks

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My first book..

When the Dragon Stirs

Healing our Wounded Lives through Fairy Stories, myths and Legends

When the Dragon Stirs Book Cover

The Dragon

LineMy next book...
Gonna Lay Down my Sword
and Shield

A Complexity Perspective on Human Evolution from our Violent Past to a Compassionate Future

Mandelbrot Set

Line


Short previews
of all talks

LineMandelbrot Set      

My next book....

Gonna Lay Down my
Sword and Shield


A Complexity perspective on human evolution from a violent past to a compassionate future

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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.
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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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