PunkMonk San Francisco’s blog

VII.  The dance of Sakti and Indra

Once…
Upon a long ago time
In Sakti's journey on to paradise,
There appeared Indra
Leaping like a spark from the shadows.

Indra's face was fiery, sweet

And tempting,

Like…
The taste of honey,

And his eyes gleamed brightly,
Shining like wildflowers
In their pride.
Blushing and feverish
With desire,
He bowed and kissed the ground

And Sakti's heart wept.

Sakti whispered through her tears,

"Tell me your name, that I may know your truth."

And Indra whispered,
    "My name is Celebration,
        Redemption,
            Desire"...

And he smiled
A telling smile

And his eyes laughed

Skillfully

As if to entertain.
Sakti looked but for a blush
Into cold November sky,

And said,
    "Love me! Love me
If you dare!"
Indra laughed in many colors,
    Spinning
Threads of
    burgundy and gold
And said,

"my favored one,
My sweet dew blossom,
Only by your pleasure!"
    An eternity away
A smile was born
There up in the heavens,
That today even illuminates
    the stars.

VIII.   In anticipation of stars
Tremble in the living fields.     Tremble on the cliff-sides.
For death has been undone,
    (And a child's voice
        Has been heard above the thunder)

"be it done with me as you say."

Love sits laughing
At the foot of the stairs,
    Laughing at moon beams
And stars in the dome of the sky.
She sings a song
    And whispers a prayer.

Clutching her breast with tiny hands,
Beauty feels star bursts.
    Across ten thousand thousand
Years and miles,

Piercing her skin,
    Piercing her heart.
The universe's child
Has called her name
    And clothed her in purple linen.

IX.   In the beating of wings
The secret lies
    (Hidden and warm)
In the palms of her hands;
The seed of expectation,
    Of new life,
        Of resurrection.
Even the stars whisper and dance
Upon her breast

"It’s time."

    There, in the tall grass,
As the sun sets
Upon a plentiful land...

    There in the tall grass
She catches her breath

    And darkness curls
           upon the celebrating ground.

Standing in shadows
    Before the dawn of mystery;
        Beneath the shadow of wings;
            Beneath the shadows of
Oak trees and memories,

Near the old stone hedges;
Where we honor old bones,

        "It's time."

The tall grass sings praises
    To new life,
        To new foundations.
Out in the lazy fields,
Where seedlings, 'neath
Bone bare feet
Reach out needy arms in praise,
Our life begins anew
    With promise.
        With hope.
In faith.

X.   Of the weeping of stones
Take me to where
The stones cry,
    Out by the tide pools,
        By the sandy shore.
There, at the foamy edge,
A footstep from abundance,

Beyond the feeding roar
They cry, longing
Longing in their thirst

(beyond all satiety)

To feel the waves'
Sweet kisses;

    O foolish Narcissus, why did you leave me?

Sharing sorrow with the moon
They cry, they share
Her need... strong enough
To pull the waters closer,

    Yet not enough
        To feed her,
            Not enough to touch

Nor draw her back
Into that womb
Where mountains drink their fill.

    O foolish Narcissus!

Take me to where
The stones cry,
Where the moon cries
Waiting for the tide
    To condescend
        To reach her...

Much too far away
To see herself
Reflected on the surface...

    Cradled and caressed
By kissing waves;

Much too far to hear
The great womb whisper
Of the greatest love.

    O foolish Narcissus, why did you leave me?

XI.  For covenants and promises
How full of yesterdays
You are...how
Solitary in this moment;
giving birth to tomorrows and
Tomorrows.

Onward,
    At the wing's soft edge,

Look there...the sweet
Soft, radiant dove,
pendent, in between
Currents at the crossing

Of east wind,
    west wind,

Old world and new,

Blue sky
    and watery horizon.

May this one comfort our sorrow!
    Zeh-yenahamenu.

Look there,
    leeward bound,
Seeking some lonely cliff-side,
    Some small island to rest the sole of her foot.

We painted our future
Somewhere

    between
The lush green life of
The olive branch
    and the fragrant sweetness
    Of the vineyard;

Between the receding
Waters of yesterday, and
The hillside promise
    Of burnt offerings.

Where is your refuge
Sweet solitary dove?

Somewhere is a clutch
Of straw, somewhere
    A place where leggéd beasts

May shuffle on the
Hardened ground;

Somewhere a place
    Beneath the singing stars;
Somewhere a place

Large enough

    To hold the promise of tomorrows.
In this moment
    At the wing's edge,
In this moment
    That spans from a longing moon to her reflection
The stars hold their breath...

And the waters pant
And gasp, pushing forth
Mountains to the surface,
    Striving and struggling
        To fulfill their charge...

Bear fruit and be many!

Let us stand,
As leggéd beasts,
Reverently at the strand.
    Awed beneath the cliff-sides,
Let us reach into the waters
    And draw the moon
        Into the palms of newborn hands.
Such sweet kisses on the shoreline.
Such sweet kisses on the moon face.
Such sweet kisses at the wing's edge.
Such sweet kisses...

Kisses large enough
    To hold the promise of tomorrows.

XII.  In answer to the question of colors
A spark, awakens to a soul aflame
Burning like a star at birth,
A color, far to bright to see
Or capture, like a painted sky.
Within, my heart

The whole creation shines and smiles
....are you ready?

Yes...I believe,
    I am newborn.
        I am clay.
            I am anticipation unfolding.

Whose tiny hand... ?

The child reaching in the dark
To caress a broken world.

    Will you love me?

Yes Lord...with my soul.
    I need... I love... you know I will.
For I was made for such as this.

Mindful of the sky's need
For an answer to its color
    A heart beats;

And a cry in chorus with
The stars calls us
    To our meaning,
        To salvation.
Are you willing?

In an instant of a gasping world
At daybreak, suddenly aware,
She holds him up in offering
    To the world… a gift,
And hope is born again
In a blaze of glory,
And in some brief eternity of moments

    The world is saved.

Tags: cantos, poetry, punkmonksf,

Poor little raggedy child,

      "Never be any better than your Father."

Such a sorry state,
      Mmm hmm,
Such a sorry, sorry state!
What’s the matter,
Can't ya dream boy?
Can't you find faces
In the clouds?
Sure you can...
        "Probably all you're good for.
                     Day-dreamin'!"

O yes ma'am!
I can dream!

I see stars exploding
Light-years away,
Flying like lightening
       Through space and time,

Ions and particles smaller than you, smaller than me
On their way
      Through ten thousand thousand
              Years and miles.

I can see them in the clouds.
         I can feel them
Pierce my skin,

Leaving pieces inside of me
And taking me with them,

Changing me,
      Making me
            more me;

Making me the universe's child.

I stare at the moon sometimes,
beams so lovely and
So sweet to the touch.
I am star child,
            Moon child,
And I belong right here where I'm standing.

I am the moon
Watching myself
              In the dome of the sky,
Reminiscing about my beauty
And feeling my pull
            in the tide.

          I know my place,
          I know where I belong.

'Cause somebody's mother said
                    'Yes!'
            When the thunder called,

And God heard,
And remembered his people.

Tags: poetry, cantos, annunciation

V. Of clay jars and golden vessels

Love lays weeping
At the foot of the stairs;
      Sings a song,
Whispers a prayer,
Clutching her face
     With new hands.

Who am I?
Servant girl, harlot,
Empress, dove?
Shall I wear scarlet?
Bathe myself in purple linen?

O tender ewe-child
Seek not the fairness of it!
Seek not reason, neither
Seize upon your
New found lowliness.

Tender shoots spring forth,
From the untilled soil,
            In the nature of things,

At his command.

        And God heard and remembered his people.

Love lays weeping
At the foot of the stairs.
Fear not!
For he has remembered.

Outside, under the autumn bough
The thunder whispers,
       Whispers to the trees,
               Whispers dangerous, wondrous things...
Things meant only
To be carried on an angels wings.

Fear not the thunder
Whispering your name.

Who am I Lord but a jar of clay?
Am I remembering this moment?
Is it a
butterfly kiss
On the back of this tiny hand,
Or have the heavens moved
And dashed my soul into pieces?

Who am I but weeping,
Whispering
       and clutching?
And who are you
Who calls my name
        by thunder?

Are you Judgment, Savior,
Servant or King?

Love lays weeping
At the foot of the stairs,

For God has remembered his people.

Tags: poetry, cantos, annunciation

Fourteen billion years ago, more or less, the Universe came into being in a tremendous explosion of creative force. Into nothingness, that may have been very large or very small... since there was as yet no such thing as time or space... a great explosion of cosmic force accelerated outward, expanding into reality in the blink of an eye or less into the massive thing we call the Universe.

Out of this roiling and churning, forces beyond our understanding coalesced into vast systems that created galaxies made up of gasses. Chaos settled into order and the complex forces of gravity and entropy began to work to create matter. Stars were born and died in great bursts called super novas that tossed vast quantities of carbon matter into space that settled into planets.

Again... the system began to create order out of chaos, always moving and shifting until these forces shaped into patterns. On our planet, at least, and probably many others, these chaotic forces led to the emergence of atmospheres, and water, and ultimately life. Simple life to be sure, which over time grew increasingly complex until multi-celled creature emerged, and a complex biosphere emerged, and intelligence emerged, and human societies emerged, and culture, and stories, and the search for meaning.

If one takes a moment to stand back and look objectively at the emergence of this vast reality called the Universe and Everything, the ultimate Reality, one can see an incomprehensible process of creative emergence leading to increasing complexity which has so far culminated in intelligent life capable of self-reflection and awareness.

We are not separate from the Universe... we have emerged from it. We are a part of it, utterly and completely, and we are a manifestation of its process of creating complexity and order out of chaos.

From the sub-atomic level to the vast reaches of space, we have become aware of the grouping of things into order producing clusters that are self-perpetuating. Galaxies do it... and so do cells. Protons and electrons do it, quarks do it, and so do solar systems. And so do people, and our ideas from musical systems to social systems to moral systems.

And eventually, everything ungroups... from stars that go supernova destroying the gravity center that holds a solar system together, to plants and animals and people that die and decay into dust and are then recycled back into the biosphere, to ideas and social systems and moral systems that fall apart when new ideas come along that challenge old assumptions and accepted knowledge.

In this third part of this article, I will explore the implied ethics that arise from an understanding of the great cosmic reality of the Universe as an ever evolving process of creative emergence. I suggest that an awareness and appreciation of the Reality of this process is imperative as a starting point for a moral system capable of addressing the great crisis of morality that has beset us in our current time.

Starting Points for Evolutionary Ethics

There are, as in any moral system, a set of underlying statements upon which such a system is built. The problem with current moral systems is that not all of those underlying statements are accepted by all people as factual. In fact, they cannot be considered as such. Religious tenets are things which by their very nature can never be proven or dis-proven. They are not facts. This does not mean that they are not true or that they cannot be believed. It simply means that the specifics of the private revelation of religious truths cannot be objectively known.

The specific tenets of proven scientific fact, however, can be neither believed nor disbelieved. Contrary to scientific theory... which we are not addressing here... scientific facts simply are. We know that DNA exists, we have seen it... and we know increasingly more about how it determines biology. We know that dinosaurs lived and approximately when, and we know that species on this planet evolved from other species on this planet. And we know that ideas have evolved in human culture and society, effectively supplanting former ideas and that this process will never stop. As in the time of Galileo, there may have been those who simply refused to accept that the earth moved around the Sun, but the force of supporting evidence over time has prevailed.

So what can we discern from the facts of evolution that can act as starting points for a discussion of a new moral vision?

1 - There is nothing in the Universe... in all of Reality... that did not originate in the first moment of that cosmic explosion of emergent creativity. Every atom, every subatomic particle, every element, every cell in every thing - living or not, animate or inanimate - comes from the same originating source.

2 - Everything groups. Every instance of the creative process evolves into a self-sustaining, interdependent part of the whole Reality, grouping with other instances of creative emergence to form systems.

3 - Everything ungroups. Eventually, these systems either destroy themselves or are destroyed making space for other creative emergences. This is equally true for galaxies as it is for human societies.

4 - The entire process of creative emergence moves toward increasing complexity.

5 - Diversity emerges as an expression of creative Reality. So does intelligence. In fact, it is appropriate to say that the whole process accelerates toward them. They are the natural culmination of emergent complexity.

6 - Intelligence, as a part of emergent creativity, has culminated on this planet in a species capable of making meaning of itself and of the Reality within which it has evolved. The human species is, in short, the Universe's acquired ability to be self-reflective and meaning making.
 
7 - The emergence of creative Reality is not finished.

So what do we do once we have set out the fundamentals of an evolutionary moral vision? Necessarily, we need to begin to determine what the implications of such a cosmic process are for our species in particular. We need to humanize the ethical vision and see what the imperatives are. We need to make meaning... something that we are uniquely capable of and qualified to do.

Making Meaning of Things

Making meaning requires interpretation. And it requires language. The complexity of human language as significant of meaning cannot be underestimated. We human beings speak about the factual using one kind of language because the conveyance of information is different from the conveyance of meaning. When it comes to meaning making, we use a different kind of language altogether. We use something called metaphor. The language of religious vision relies a great deal on metaphor, because religion... after all... is a meaning making endeavor.

When it comes, however, to articulating a moral vision based on fact-based science, we for the time being will attempt to minimize the use of metaphor as much as possible. I will save the real use of metaphor for the final part of this paper which will deal with the integration of science and my particular religious tradition. 

So what can we extrapolate as a moral vision based on the starting points listed above? Where do the facts of evolution as an emergent creative process lead us?

The first is the interrelation of all things - and not merely the fact that all human beings are interrelated - but that we and the very planet we inhabit are one and the same on a fundamental subatomic level. We are all made from the same stuff, emerged from the same process, and utterly and completely interdependent. We have the same story in deep time in spite of the divergence of cultures and societies during our evolutionary processes. And we share this with absolutely everything that is, everything known and unknown in the Universe. This is not mythology, this is Reality. To harm one thing is to harm everything. To help one thing is to help everything.

We have the good fortune of being a part of a vastly complex system that has grouped for the purpose of creative emergence. As a species, we have plugged right in. We have created language, music, art, philosophy and meaning and we have created technologies capable of radically shaping and altering not only the future of this planetary system, but the shape and future of our own evolution into new species capable of marvels as yet unknown. And while most things in this ultimate Reality group without the benefit of sentience, we are capable of choosing where and how to group in order to advance the emergent creative process. Consciousness now allows the Universe, in its self-reflexive incarnation as the human species, to CHOOSE how to adapt in order to advance the emergent complexity of the evolutionary process. Some evolutionary psychologists refer to this as "conscious evolution."

While we can choose to group, we can also choose to ungroup, consciously aware that we are not beyond complete destruction in order to make space for a new creative emergence. This destruction is a necessary component of the evolutionary process and we are not divorced from it or independent of it. We are equally capable of destroying ourselves or being destroyed as any star system. Yet, while we have no control over whether we are destroyed by an outside force such as a comet crashing into the planet and demolishing everything... there are choices within our purview. From the disappearance of the Maya to the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire... we know that even human societies that ungroup will either disappear entirely or fold back into the evolutionary process to emerge with greater depth and complexity elsewhere. We can choose not to ungroup, knowing that entropy leads to the collapse of systems and their death.

Complexity will naturally arise from the system. Fighting against it, ignoring it, fostering hostility towards it will not prevent complexity from arising. It is what the entirety of Reality does. Emergent complexity is the very reason we are here in the first place. Therefore, should we not understand and embrace that change is expected and normal and, hence, be willing to do what components of other systems do in nature... adapt? Without emergent complexity we would still be banging sticks on rocks to make music rather than enjoying the benefits of Mozart. Without emergent complexity we would still be communicating in grunts rather than the hundreds of existing languages.. .spoken and unspoken... that make up the human vocabulary.

Diversity is a tremendous boon to complex systems. Without it, systems would die entirely for having no adaptive components that could survive a single threat to that system's existence. Without diversity, systems would stagnate. Is it any wonder that the Universe strives for it in order to advance the creative emergence of the new? Therefore, diversity must be celebrated and enjoyed as a life-giving, necessary, and saving part of the whole of Reality... without which we would surely perish.

The term "intelligent design" is one that wildly misses the mark, for it assumes that there is some agent outside of the generative and creative process of Reality that not only brought it into being but, like a maestro, conducts the orchestra of the Universe on a cosmic scale. Instead, evolution shows us that intelligence is WITHIN and emergent from the process. The creativity of cosmic evolution HAS intelligence because we (and other intelligent life arisen in other places of the Universe) are a part of the process of emergent creativity. And, if that intelligence is in us, then it is within the entirety of creative Reality because the human species cannot be seen as separate from the rest. Intelligence is our greatest asset in that it can be applied to the complexity of the system from which we have emerged and can be used to guide the choices we make. The solution to our pressing problems is, in fact, the deep application of our intellect.. rather than the exaltation of stupidity disguised as simplicity that our current American culture tends to promote. Human intellect can be leveraged to solve our most pressing social and environment issues rather than being used to demonize scientific discoveries that interfere with religious convictions no matter how deeply held. And while human intelligence is not the only characteristic trait that we can use - for example our meaning making, our faith, hope, and trust, our creativity and ingenuity - without our intelligence we are surely doomed.

Finally, the story is not over. Once human beings arrived on the scene in this particular location of the whole of Reality, the movement of evolutionary creative emergence did not stop. It continues elsewhere and it continues here. We are not finished yet and neither is this planet, among many, finished with the possibilities of life seeking and finding ways to express itself. Why do we always seem surprised to find new species of plant or animal that we didn't know were there? And why do we continue to believe that we human beings are the last stop on the evolutionary journey towards complexity and intelligence? And why do we continue to treat the delicate environment of this particular biosphere as though it is not integrally related to our health and well-being?

In the fourth and final part of this essay, I will explore the ways in which the private revelation of my own religious tradition can find itself deeply and even more fully expressed when viewed through the lens of this evolutionary ethic. I will ultimately answer the question posed by so many... "how can you be a Christian and believe in evolution?" To that I answer... "IT IS EASY!" I will also answer the unexpected assumption of a close colleague who somehow got the impression that the view I have been discussing here was somehow different from his own requiring God to be at the heart of creation; or that somehow my view of the real world as discussed in these pages was divorced from the presence of God. And to him I say: "My brother... we are talking about exactly the same thing!"

I give this by way of warning that I am about to take a theological turn which for some of you might be entirely unnecessary to what I've discussed so far. For those of you for whom this is a stopping point, thanks for staying along for the ride. I hope that these initial steps toward an evolutionary moral story provide you with a framework to approach the world in a new and life-affirming way. For those of you who wish to come along for the last leg:

Stay tuned for Part IV.

Br. Karekin is a social critic and political activist located in San Francisco and is also the Minister Provincial for Province 8 of the brotherhood of saint gregory. He provides Spiritual Direction for members of the local community, working particularly with members of the transgendered community. He works as Parish Administrator at trinity episcopal church an historic parish in San Francisco. He is also actively involved in the progressive Christian movement aimed at social change.

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Since the appearance of the first part of this article, I have had a great deal of interesting feedback from individuals eager to point out the most obvious concern... how can you claim to be a Christian person and still believe in evolution? It is one of my greater disappointments in the early 21st century that 1) so many self-identified Christians in the United States (over 50%) reject evolution or claim not to believe in it and 2) that so many non-religious people seem to believe that a pre-requisite for being a person of faith is that you must also reject evolution as false. Clearly, something is wrong when Christians and non-Christians alike seem to believe that these two world views are simply not compatible.

Let me state from the outset that, as a person of faith, my religious beliefs are completely and utterly unverifiable, they are uniquely mine in that, while they fall into a broader category of Christian belief, they are also informed by my individual experience, my history, my particulars of family, community, and personal intellectual engagement with the faith's fundamental tenets. They are a matter of my private revelation and they are the lens through which I experience and interpret much of what the world offers me. I believe in God, I believe in and embrace the teachings of the Man of Nazareth, and the implications of his birth, life, and death. I believe that the Holy Scriptures of my Judeo-Christian tradition offer a guide to life and that they contain deep and valuable insights into the human condition that are still being unpacked and interpreted in every generation.

And evolution is true.

Evolution is absolutely, completely, and scientifically verifiable. It is not based on private revelation, it is based on empirical, observable fact. And, in fact, evolution IS... whether or not I believe it... just as the sun IS whether or not I believe it. Evolution does not require my assent, my belief, or my acceptance. It simply is. There are those who try to deny it, there are individuals and religious movements that try to say it just ain't so. However, these people need to utterly disconnect from nearly everything known by science today and uphold a worldview equivalent to a flat earth in order to do so... and they are very selective in their application of this world view. Such an untenable position might be en vogue these days, but it will surely collapse under it's own weight after it's public and very political moment has passed and the continued revelation of the truth of evolution unfolds in our scientifically verifiable endeavors.

Let me reiterate... evolution is fact. The evolution of the cosmos, of this planet, of its species, and of human beings is a fact. It is not a theory. In the theory department, we may have a ways to go before we understand completely whether the mechanisms of natural and sexual selection do indeed work the way that Darwin supposed, or whether there are deeper mechanisms at work... but advances in genetics, biology, geology, archaeology, behavioral science, and quantum physics all make abundantly clear that we as a species descended from ancestral primates, who descended from ancestral mammals, who descended from ancestral reptiles, who descended from ancestral eukaryotes, who descended from ancestral amino acid compounds forged in the fires of an infant planet, in an infant solar system in a nearly 14 billion year old universe (and now maybe even the multiverse!) that evolved from a single point of exploding energy of as yet unknown origin at the dawn of space and time in the event we call the "Big Bang." Evolution is undeniable.

And I suggest... that for individuals, communities, and the planet this is very good news indeed.

One of the real problems we have with evolution in the public sphere is the tendency of those who embrace it to suggest or even promote evolution as something at best morally neutral and at worst amoral. This is one fundamental reason that some religionists reject it... it is seen as a competing moral vision to the one offered by their religious traditions.

In this second part of this article, I will explore these supposedly competing visions of religious tradition and evolution and show that they are only NOT incompatible, but mutually complementary - differentiated only by the fact that one is a private, faith-based revelation and one is a public, science-based revelation and that both are subject to interpretation and re-interpretation in light of the other. And while one need not necessarily embrace a religious vision to have a vibrant moral understanding of the way things are, a basic understanding of evolution is no longer optional for us as a species, but imperative. I will attempt to show that evolution as a public, scientifically verifiable revelation offers the best hope for a unified moral vision capable of transforming society and saving us from the brink of the utter moral bankruptcy and collapse that now besets us in our own society and, increasingly, in the larger global community. Atheists, agnostics, and religionists of varied traditions can find common ground in the vision offered by a deeper understanding and application of evolution to our deepening moral crisis.

The Functions of a Moral System

We'll begin with some fundamentals that identify what is meant by morality and how it functions in a society and in the individual. General morality, as synonymous with ethics, is a system of fundamental assumptions that allow us to determine right behavior from wrong. Morality in this sense is about order - order in a society and in the passions of the individual. Moral attitudes function to allow us to:

1 - Locate individuals within groups by means of personal identity;
2 - Regulate the animal instincts that trigger rampant competitive desires inherent in groups and which threaten individual and collective well-being;
3 - Foster cooperation which allows a greater number of groups or individuals access to the resources necessary for life and health; and
4 - Create order and identify the relative value of the component parts of increasingly complex systems.

The issues evident in the breakdown of our current moral systems can be traced to how well they continue to function in the four areas noted above. The moral systems of religious traditions based on private revelation do indeed locate individuals within their group and give them personal identity. However, they do so by creating boundaries between those who belong and those who do not... and increasing sectarianism and modern tribalism locate more individuals outside than inside of the group. These boundaries, as they become increasingly rigid and conditional based on acceptance of dogmatic propositions, fail to include larger and larger portions of society.

Regulation of our competitive desires is symbolized by taboos. Each religious tradition from our earliest animistic revelations to our more current (historically speaking) religious revelations have these taboos in evidence. They are, however, not only culture bound but are also bound by the pre-scientific world views of their originators. In large measure, these taboos were also about establishing individual and group identities over and against the other. Taboos were often about eliminating competitions for resources including food, land, and even sexual partners. While scientific understanding of biology, genetics, and behavioral science have advanced, these lists of taboos have not only not been revised, some religionists have seen fit to proclaim their continued relevance. Thus, even the religious traditions still evidenced in human society today continue to be bound to assumptions about the origin of our behaviors and what is necessary to temper the instincts to competition in a globalized environment. Our traditions have failed to adapt to new understandings of human behavior, genetically programmed instincts, and deeply rooted psychological responses to increasing complexity. Thus, in the realm of private revelation, our current interpretations of religious tradition are no longer functioning to temper our competitive desires.

Cooperation, as deeply programmed in our biology as competition, is symbolized in our religious traditions as rules of behavior toward the stranger, the orphan and widow, the hungry and the poor. Proper behavior in these moral systems is enumerated by the call to feed and clothe others who do without, visit the sick and the lonely, and in acts of forgiveness toward the transgressor in order to welcome them back into the realm of access to entitlements such as food, shelter, and community. However, traditions that have fossilized and failed to adapt to the increasingly complex social and cultural systems of today are left struggling to apply these simple, pre-scientific mandates to social issues that have largely outgrown the capacity of individual acts of compassion or localized tribal cooperation.

Moral systems as determinants of order, or as systems for assigning relative value, are likewise trapped in pre-scientific world views. Information technologies have given us, as individuals and communities, increasing access to facts, ideas, alternatives, and information systems; and advances in science promise to increase exponentially the number of component pieces of information necessary to account for in our ordering and attribution of relative value to them in our society. In basic terms, it is easier to attribute order and relative value in simple systems than in complex ones. And there is often a competition between the orders assigned by individuals in their own lives over and against that as determined by the local community, or the nation, or a globalized society such as we now inhabit. Our sacred scriptures, written when and where they were, do not speak directly to the kinds of complexity we now face. It is not, however, that they cannot be re-interpreted to do so in new a creative ways, but as yet our institutions have failed to attempt this kind of re-interpretation. Instead, we try to force the new information into the old world views, discarding what doesn't fit, or applying pre-scientific understandings to things which science has proven either more complex or utterly different than could have been known by the originators of our religious stories.

A system of moral value must be able to accomplish all of these functions in a way that honors an evolutionary understanding of the world as moving toward ever more complex systems. It must succeed in giving all people a life-affirming identity and place within the whole global society. It must succeed in bringing more individuals into the realm of cooperation and sustainability. It must be compelling enough to temper our competitive desires by providing us with a clear understanding of where those desires originate. And finally, it must be able to accommodate not only our current understanding of the complexity of life as revealed by the sciences, but must also be capable of adapting to new information as it arises and place it all within a framework of relative value that is scalable and life-giving.

Most importantly, it must be a moral system capable of making room for individual private revelation of religious faith. Evolution as a scientifically verifiable reality can provide this framework and the extrapolation of an evolutionary environmental ethics can provide not only the fundamentals of a new moral vision, but can allow those of us from a religious perspective to re-interpret our old stories in ways that are make them relevant, affirming, and sustainable for the future.

Evolution as a Moral Story

The story of Evolution as a meta-narrative for human kind can surely provide every individual and group of individuals a sense of location and identity in the whole of reality. The fact of evolution allows us to reclaim that we are as a species, in fact, not separated from the rest of the globe... it's structure, processes, and abundant life. Every living creature of this planet is a part of the process that has developed long enough over time to give rise to the human species. We are evolved from the most simple of living organisms to a level of complexity that is now capable of being self-reflective. Human beings are the species uniquely capable of producing stories about where we have come from and hence where we are going. We are the universe itself which has finally evolved to the point of being able to look at itself in awe and discover our origins.

We have evolved as a species, and as cultural and social communities within that species in an ever increasing spiral of creative emergence. And we are not independent from the whole of nature and the order it has found... we have arisen out of it... from it... to a unique place in cosmic evolutionary history. Therefore... we can no longer continue to force the natural order into our program... but we must incorporate the human project into the rest of the natural order.

And... no matter how human communities have adapted, changed, and independently of the cultural and social orders that have arisen in varied times and places... we are all fundamentally of the same origins. All of life is... sharing no less than 50% of our overall genetic code with the lowliest of species and as much as 99% with our nearest primate relatives. We are all connected!

An appreciation of evolution and of the cosmic time scale that has guided it can also help us understand the animal instincts that continue to plague us by creating competing desires and engendering conflicts in human society. Genetically programmed into our DNA are behaviors that hail from the times that we were still a primitive species not yet human... and which ensured our survival and our ability to propagate our genetic code for survival. These behaviors, however, which may have served us while we were swinging in trees or slopping around in the muck of the swamp may now compete with behaviors necessary the for socially organized creatures we have become.

The pre-frontal lobes of our species which regulate our abilities to reason, create story and meaning, delineate right from wrong by creating moral systems.. these are a relatively new addition to our species. Our reptilian brain, that part which regulates body function, hunger, sex drive, is a remnant of our previous incarnation as an earlier species. Likewise, our proto-mammalian ancestors left a part of their brain still embedded in ours that create instinctual reactions. Evolutionary science is capable of providing us with a deeper understanding of the human brain and its function so that we can recognize and tame behaviors which emanate from our genetic ancestors.

Evolution shows us that it is not quite the amoral mechanism that some would suppose, but a continually emerging creative phenomenon that has been as equally responsible for fostering cooperation in and among species as much as competition. And often as not, that cooperation does not have selfish or genetically self-serving motives. It simply happens. Yet, even if those motives were completely self-serving, an understanding of them makes one conscious that evolution as a process is not finished yet... and we as a species are still playing a part. To care for the environment becomes a mandate since our survival depends upon the whole. To care for those members of our species who are hungry, poor, disenfranchised... to make sure that diversity in our gene pool has ample opportunity to propagate, is to make a decision to consciously guide the ongoing evolutionary processes that ensure our species survival into the future and our further evolution into whatever the universe in process would create.

Finally, evolution gives us a picture of a system evolving into increasing complexity. The natural processes of gravity and entropy, the grouping and ungrouping of things on the micro and the macro levels, the necessary death of some systems in order to give emergence to newer ones, is an affirming and awe inspiring thing. Applying these evolutionary dynamics to the vast accumulation of information and ideas allows us the necessary perspective to see when it is time for old things to pass away in order to make room for the new. It allows us to be adaptable in new periods of creative emergence and adapt our stories and our self-understanding when new information arises. Applying an understanding of these dynamics to the systems we create gives permission for these systems to be adaptable.

In the next part of this paper, I will discuss an implied evolutionary environmental ethics, and finally in the fourth section for those who are interested, show how this understanding of the forces at work in evolution can breathe new life into old interpretations of religious moral story.

Stay tuned for Part III...

Br. Karekin is a social critic and political activist located in San Francisco and is also the Minister Provincial for Province 8 of the brotherhood of saint gregory. He provides Spiritual Direction for members of the local community, working particularly with members of the transgendered community. He works as Parish Administrator at trinity episcopal church an historic parish in San Francisco. He is also actively involved in the progressive Christian movement aimed at social change.

It doesn't take a religionist or even a conservative to notice the moral decline of American culture. A simple glance at the current Administration and our national government is all that is needed to notice that immorality is rampant at the highest levels of our public life. Hypocrisy, an appalling lack of ethics, rampant, greed-driven economics that destroy the environment and create modern wage-slavery all point to a system that is deeply immoral and in which advantage is leveraged by individuals who are so corrupted by the system as to be unwilling to change it.

In these reflections I will talk about the noticeable moral corruption reflected in our society at present, it's core attributes and causes, and possible scenarios for changing course before it leads to not only further erosion but a complete meltdown of civil society. I will touch on the religionists and the conservatives and their attempts at imposition of morality through the political machinery of American government, and I will talk about the liberal progressives and secularists that attempt to do the same, albeit under a set of different assumptions and couched in different terminology. But essentially the same.

I should clarify from the outset that I am a member of the latter category, a decidedly and unapologetically progressive person who wears the label "liberal" with great pride in a long standing tradition of thinkers who believe that we have a responsibility to care for one another in a free society, especially those whom society casts aside and marginalizes. I should also clarify that while I am a deeply religious person, I believe that my personal revelation of faith and its assumptions can never be set as a standard for the public sphere. This is because the language and metaphors of that journey will not and can not ever resonate with more than just a few of my contemporaries who perhaps share them in some form or another... and as such do not qualify to offer societal solutions to our most pressing moral problems.

In this first part of this article, I will talk about what I view as a deeply rooted, continuing, and destructive moral collapse in our society and the various participations and responses of our political system in that collapse. My intention is to do so while wearing my social critic hat which is one of my personal favorites. As such, I suspect I will offend quite a number of readers, and while this is not my intention, I have had enough experience while wearing this hat to know that most people will assume that they and their particular social group are a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem. As such, I will probably manage to offend not a few but most.

Onward...

Being a product of Generation X, I have a built in response to be distrustful of everything, most especially institutions that try to impose rules from the outside. But, having been born in rural Pennsylvania and spent a great deal of my youth in that area, I did have the advantage of a small town upbringing by good decent folks. I was taught by my parents that certain things were true and necessary to a good life; treat others with kindness, respect your elders, don't lie, cheat or steal, and give everyone a fair shake no matter their race, color, creed or social status. It was this set of values, I was taught, that would make you a good person and set you up for success in your life.

Of course, reaching adulthood, society provided me with a different set of assumptions rooted in the cynicism of a consumer capitalist society; "nice guys finish last," and "you snooze... you lose." It's a dog eat dog world out there! And while I spent some time in the corporate world working as a wage-slave, I quickly ran into a wall that I couldn't manage to reconcile... the world was not as altruistic as the values I was raised with.

It has gotten worse the older I get. Over the last 20 years I have watched a noticeable decline in basic civility or common courtesy that has become increasingly uncommon. And I've watched an increase in immoral behaviors that has become startling. Now... when I speak of immorality... I'm not talking about the "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" kind of immorality so often spoken of by politicians who want labels on records and video games, or who fail to see the wisdom of legalizing marijuana or who want to legislate who can marry and who can't. I'm talking about the kind of immorality epitomized by someone like Karl Rove who sat on a talk show last week and spoke the most audacious, outrageous, unmitigated public lie I've ever had the misfortune of hearing from a politician in my life by stating that Congress forced the President's hand to go to war.

I'm talking about the kind of immorality that allows someone like Hillary Clinton to say out of one side of her mouth that she opposes continued military intervention on Iraq while she signs on to the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment that ensures we will stay there in order to deal with the "Iranian problem." All the while hundreds of thousands of dead human beings pile up for a war that is essentially about greed and domination. I'm talking about an Administration that denies funding for health insurance for kids, and that makes certain people amass debt and then, when over their heads, have no means of recourse.

I'm talking about war and rumors of war, and belligerence on the national stage epitomized by refusal to engage in basic diplomacy. I'm talking about spying and torture and illegal renditions, denial of habeas corpus and lies, lies and more lies.

There is a trickle down effect to this kind of immorality, one that seeps into our societal consciousness and grants license to commit smaller acts of immorality without impunity but not without consequence. Why should anyone obey the rules of basic civility when our public servants show us that there are no consequences for NOT doing so. I watch as seemingly normal individuals pursue what they want with such singular devotion as to not weigh the cost of doing so over and against the greater good of society and others. Our culture revels in watching the self-destruction of our celebrity idols, we create entertainment that exploits the demons of others (remember Whitney and Bobby Brown, or Anna Nicole?), and we look for most every opportunity to get over on the phone company, the local cashier, or the tax man. We explode in road rage, air rage, we excuse celebrities who engage in murderous dog fights, we apologize for athletes who use steroids and then lie about it. We listen to politicians who tell us to fear and hate immigrants and so we do by treating immigrants terribly. We know that oil dependence is killing our planet and yet we continue to find excuses for why we need that SUV. We pay $3000 for Hannah Montana tickets because we have learned not to say "No" to our kids. We say "No" however, to homeless shelters that open in our neighborhoods and housing projects for the economically disenfranchised. The list goes on.

The truth be told, there is no longer a single unifying moral vision embraced by our nation. There is no common mission embraced for righting wrongs, eliminating injustice, or holding politicians and CEOs accountable for unconscionable behaviors. We ignore or minimize or deny the effects of our consumer culture on the environment and on other societies upon whose labor and resources we strive for greater excess.

Some would have us believe that there is no unified set of moral rules that can apply to a society. The right often accuses the left of this kind of "moral relativism." Some actually do believe it, but it is a substantially small subset of our population.  I will say, however, that we live in an increasingly difficult age that makes moral absolutes... the kind for centuries that has been arbitrated in the religious realm... less workable for our larger culture.

The advent of globalism has presented what I believe to be the single greatest challenge for us in this new century. Change happens at such a fast pace that it seems near impossible to keep up. It is largely marked by a spiraling sense that things have moved far beyond our control. New ideas and ideologies spring up, compete with our own traditional and national systems of moral value, and they have opened up shades of gray in places we believed were long black and white. It is the influx and threat of competing visions for a definitive moral story that have led to many of the most polarizing topics in American culture today. We call this the "culture wars." Our fascination with them has been most recently demonstrated in a series of presidential debates that have spoken barely a whit about the most pressing issues we face in the world today, but instead have been focused largely on competing moral visions. Presidential candidates in most recent Republican YouTube debate were asked some of the most bizarre questions in a debate whose magnitude given our current political and social crises should have been much weightier. Real issues such as economy, the war in Iraq and pending military action in Iran, issues of American competitiveness, declining health care options were never discussed. Instead, the focus was on what defining moral stories were going to guide the next potential president in their decision-making. Such is the current import of those stories on what many feel to be our declining moral health as a nation.

Responses of the Right versus the Left

Much of the response of the religious right to "moral decline" in this country can fall into a category I call the "new tribalism." It is a retreat away from the new moral challenges and ambiguities into a small and protected subset of our population that now lashes out with anger, frustration, and fear at the pace of change. The religious right's use of the language of persecution shows how deeply threatening this new world is to old world views. In a way, I sympathize with them, even though I see the world very differently.

Their solution, however, has been to organize politically in order to impose a moral order onto the rest of American society from within the tribalist mentality of Christian fundamentalism. They toss away time tested interpretations of the constitution in an attempt to impose a single theocratic vision on American society that is not only at odds with our foundational history, it is at odds with our identity as a nation and our promise as a nation for all people. A single religious vision is hardly a workable solution for a society that epitomizes globalization probably more than any other in the world... a society made up of nearly every ethnic, religious and racial group in the world. Additionally, If morality is propagated by the living example of a community engaged in that moral vision, how can one take seriously the right's attempts to push a Christian morality on the nation when as individuals, it hardly makes any difference in their own behavior... many of the public faces of that vision continue to lie, cheat, steal, and swindle the poor to benefit the rich, ignore the impact of corporate capitalism on the environment, idolize profits over people, and threaten war and engage in war for the flimsiest of reasons. Obviously, the moral vision they try to promote as the only legitimate one for our nation doesn't even work well enough for them to reign in their own behavior.

The collapse of religious institutions in the United States marked by the decline of mainstream Protestantism, the scandals of the Catholic church, and the fundamentalist push to reject scientific knowledge for the sake of propping up an untenable worldview has left us without the very institutions which for thousands of years were responsible for guarding and communicating the moral vision of entire peoples. Governments were for laws, religious institutions were for morals. And with religious institutions seeing a decline in the public trust, the political sphere has sought to fill the vacuum by attempting to become the arbiter of a public moral vision. It is not surprising that they have sought to impose a religious moral vision in the absence of any other compelling moral story. Similarly, atheism is not the answer. Atheism as a world view is uniquely suited to corporate capitalism... if there is nothing in the after life to look forward to... if there is no reward and punishment... why not get what you can while you can?

Look all around the globe... what you see is a series of failures on behalf of religious stories and traditions to address the concerns of globalism by doing anything other than retreating into fundamentalist tribalism. Tellingly, these stories only offer identity over and against the "outsider" that is demonized. Morality is seen as something that defines us as apart from that "other" who represents everything that is wrong with the world.

Some humanists think it best to follow the lead of countries like France or Turkey by retreat into abject secularism which offers no better alternative. The secularlist would say that no "religious" morality belongs in the public sphere. While I am a deeply religious person, I agree with the secularist on this point. However, some morally generative story is utterly necessary to the good order and benefit of society. And the mere decision of individuals or collections of individuals to act morally is not enough. We've known this since the Holocaust revealed to us that human nature alone cannot be counted on the move in moral directions. Neither could a religious based morality effectively guide a nation's morality even if one could be found that would not alienate or offend entire portions of our society. Private revelation of religious faith is just that... private. It is fine to allow the moral gleanings of my religious faith to inform and supplement a general moral attitude that governs my actions in society, but contrary to the increasingly disturbing trends in American politics... what matters in the public realm is not my religious faith and what role that plays in my decision making... what matters is the agreed upon story of our common culture in a globalized society and the moral attitudes that I glean from participation in it.

The political left, instead of offering an alternative public vision, still seeks to compete with the right by simply offering an alternative "religious" moral vision based on a progressive interpretation of the same story offered by the right. Politicians compete with each other to prove they are just as faithful to the defining myths of Christianity as the right. Granted, while I share in their interpretation... I believe it is a huge mistake to try and offer a "religious" moral vision to the nation upon which, however compelling, no one will ever agree. Private revelation does not belong in the public sphere. Similarly, the left also tries to legislate from this moral vision and runs up against the same resistance from folks who, while they may share the desire for the end results, do not share in the initiating story that compels them to make the changes. The right often refers to this kind of legislation as "nanny" legislation... same kind of government intrusion into the private sphere, motivated by a religious vision, albeit with different goals. In other words, if you pass enough legislation, society will simply get better and morality will naturally stem from the results of a happier society. The truth is, morality will not result from legislation, nor will it result from imposition. It initiates from a shared story that demonstrates our commonality and need for cooperation in a grander vision than is capable of being offered by one or another subset of the population, and certainly can't come from attempts at pushing the private revelation of religious faith into the public sphere.

It is not sufficient that morality begins from the bottom (the individual) up, or in the family unit, or in the general community. These tribal units can nurture moral attitudes, but they will just as often clash with the greater culture if the unit is insular enough. What we need is a moral story that is powerful enough, compelling enough to lay a foundation of morality for society that is indisputably based on facts, not theories or myths or religious traditions that have become fossilized or largely irrelevant to large segments of society. The days of religion being the agency responsible for arbitrating public morality are, thankfully, coming to a close.

Let me clarify from the outset... the private revelation of religious faith and vision will never go away. And whatever takes it's place in the public sphere must be demonstrated to be compatible with these stories... in fact must act as a container for them within which individuals are still free to bring their personal revelations to vibrant moral life. But we must have a unifying vision that sets all of these private revelations in context, demonstrates their commonality, and opens the way for new interpretations of old stories. The new story must validate a public moral vision capable of unifying us as a people and foster new levels of cooperation to solve our pressing global problems.

So... what criteria needs to be used to determine what guides and informs a new public moral attitude? Whatever it is needs to be separated out from the myriad "private revelations" epitomized by our varied religious traditions. No totality of individuals in a society like ours is going to buy in to any one of these private revelations as normative. The other alternative, nationalism, has also been exploited by the political machinery in an attempt to cow public attitudes. We all, I think, are aware of just how dangerous this has now become in an era where nation-states around the globe are crumbling and devolving along ethnic lines and sectarian tensions. Even in our own society, the polarization is so pronounced that some have suggested that a sovereign and united American nation cannot much longer withstand the inevitable pressures of global economics, destructive imperial power struggles, and competition for resources resulting in the utter rape of the environment by global markets.

The new story should be capable of uniting all individuals and groups of individuals under the banner of a verifiable, fact-based, system of ethics capable of generating a moral vision for our globalized society. And it can be found in the very place that generates so much hostility in those who continue to seek to impose the alternative moral vision of religious revelation onto the rest of society... in science. Particularly in the area of environmental ethics. And that takes us logically to the starting point for any discussion of an alternative story that in the next generation will take primacy over any of our former religious stories... evolution!

Stay tuned for Part II...

Tags: morality, ethics, environment, politics, globalism, religion, socialcriticism

Saw this morning on the way to work... at a local Chevron station:

$3.79 9/10 per gallon.

Tags: gasprices

http://thisisby.us/index.php/content/who_told_you_these_things

Please check out the homepages and blogs of the authors of the new wikiklesia book project "Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolution."

Also, Paul Walker, an Anglican blogger, is blogging one chapter a day of the new book over at Out of the Cocoon. Check it out!

Andrew Jones
Andrew Perriman
Bill Kinnon
Bob Hyatt
Brad Sargent
Brother Maynard
Calvin Park
Cynthia La Grou
Cynthia Ware
David Hayward
Derek Flood
Drew Goodmanson
Ed Brenegar
Heidi Campbell
Jo Guldi
Joe Suh
John La Grou
John Sexton
Br. Karekin Yarian, BSG
Katharine Moody
Kester Brewin
Len Hjalmarson
Matt Reece
Michael Lissack
Mike Morrell
Mike Riddell
Peggy Brown
Rex Miller
Rick Meigs
Scot McKnight
Scott Andreas
Scott McClellan
Scott Ragan
Stephen Garner
Stephen Shields
Steve Scott
Steve Knight
Stuart Murray Williams
Thomas Hohstadt
Wild Grace

Tags: wikiklesia, participative, ecclesia,