WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.460 Well, good morning, celebrators of ideas. 2 00:00:04.240 --> 00:00:10.140 It is very wonderful, let us just say, to see a crowd on our first day 3 00:00:10.140 --> 00:00:15.180 simply here to celebrate the thought and the idea process and humanity, 4 00:00:15.420 --> 00:00:16.820 and we all thank you very much. 5 00:00:17.840 --> 00:00:19.140 What is to be done? 6 00:00:19.960 --> 00:00:24.480 And to get the neurons rolling this morning, Elizabeth Sartouros. 7 00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:29.540 She, as you probably know, is a stunning collection of things. 8 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.620 I don't know what she does in her spare time, and I hate to think. 9 00:00:33.040 --> 00:00:34.780 She's an evolution biologist. 10 00:00:35.220 --> 00:00:40.260 She's a futurist, an author, a teacher, a broadcaster. 11 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:44.140 She's a business sustainable consultant, 12 00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:47.240 and I think that puts her in a most interesting position 13 00:00:47.240 --> 00:00:50.700 because she is right in the midst of teaching and consulting 14 00:00:50.700 --> 00:00:52.380 with the world's largest companies. 15 00:00:52.700 --> 00:00:54.540 So she's not on the other side. 16 00:00:55.340 --> 00:00:58.560 She's been a UN consultant on indigenous people. 17 00:00:58.560 --> 00:01:01.500 She's travelled and lived in many places, 18 00:01:01.780 --> 00:01:05.100 and in particular in Greece and the Peruvian Andes, 19 00:01:05.140 --> 00:01:08.160 learning to, and I love this line, Elizabeth, 20 00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:10.540 learning to see solutions. 21 00:01:11.680 --> 00:01:16.040 Her venues for observation and experiment have included 22 00:01:16.040 --> 00:01:20.800 the World Bank, Boeing, the World Parliament of Religion, 23 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:25.620 and yes, I'm very excited about this, the Australian National Government. 24 00:01:26.740 --> 00:01:28.540 And I do hope you'll tell her that. 25 00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:29.620 I hope you'll tell us a little of what you saw. 26 00:01:30.460 --> 00:01:34.340 You can tell just by looking at her that she is a woman of great optimism. 27 00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:37.860 And I mean that not at all lightly because many of us feel 28 00:01:37.860 --> 00:01:39.440 that we really need that. 29 00:01:40.040 --> 00:01:42.840 She's what we call a princess positive at our place. 30 00:01:43.300 --> 00:01:44.520 It's greatly rewarded. 31 00:01:44.820 --> 00:01:47.600 Out of every major crisis comes an opportunity. 32 00:01:48.500 --> 00:01:51.500 So to speak to us for 25 minutes this morning 33 00:01:51.500 --> 00:01:54.620 and then turn over to you for questions, 34 00:01:54.680 --> 00:01:58.120 will you welcome this morning on Nature's Solutions, 35 00:01:58.120 --> 00:02:02.400 as the key to our future, Elizabeth Sartouris. 36 00:02:10.420 --> 00:02:16.000 You may wonder why an evolution biologist is also a futurist, 37 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:20.040 but I think you have to be a pastist to be a good futurist 38 00:02:20.040 --> 00:02:22.080 because otherwise you don't have a trajectory. 39 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:24.660 Anyway, it's lovely to be here again, 40 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:28.100 and I hope no one loses their job over my being here. 41 00:02:28.120 --> 00:02:31.760 One did at Land and Water after I was there with the government. 42 00:02:32.660 --> 00:02:38.160 I earlier had done a day's workshop some years back 43 00:02:38.160 --> 00:02:40.180 with your National Tax Office, 44 00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:42.800 which was really an interesting challenge. 45 00:02:43.340 --> 00:02:45.180 Anyway, it's fun every time, 46 00:02:45.320 --> 00:02:50.320 and I think the young man who left his job after I was there, 47 00:02:50.420 --> 00:02:51.940 it wasn't entirely my fault, 48 00:02:52.060 --> 00:02:57.820 and perhaps he's better off doing something different. 49 00:02:58.120 --> 00:03:03.960 Anyway, I want to talk to you today about crisis as opportunity, 50 00:03:04.140 --> 00:03:06.680 as Julia introduced me, 51 00:03:07.460 --> 00:03:11.980 because I love looking for solutions to human problems 52 00:03:12.820 --> 00:03:17.320 among the other species who have already faced and solved them. 53 00:03:17.720 --> 00:03:20.740 So that's what I'm going to talk about today, 54 00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:23.240 and you may recognize this as Machu Picchu, 55 00:03:23.300 --> 00:03:25.340 and I'm up there where the little red star is, 56 00:03:25.340 --> 00:03:27.780 on Wainu Picchu. 57 00:03:28.180 --> 00:03:32.780 I early did want to know these big questions about who are we, 58 00:03:32.820 --> 00:03:35.000 where did we come from, and where are we headed, 59 00:03:35.220 --> 00:03:38.360 not knowing they were the great philosophical questions 60 00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:40.480 of the eons, perhaps. 61 00:03:41.600 --> 00:03:43.780 And these trees, by the way, 62 00:03:43.800 --> 00:03:47.220 are the trees I played under when I was the age at the right. 63 00:03:47.600 --> 00:03:51.880 And when I went back to my 50th high school reunion a few years ago, 64 00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:55.320 I was delighted to find my tree friends still there. 65 00:03:55.340 --> 00:04:01.380 I studied biology because I thought that was where I was going to get the answers 66 00:04:01.380 --> 00:04:05.260 to this who are we question, where are we headed, 67 00:04:05.380 --> 00:04:09.020 because I was allowed to roam free in nature as a child, 68 00:04:09.100 --> 00:04:10.620 no grown-ups watching, 69 00:04:10.980 --> 00:04:15.140 and I knew that we were all part of nature 70 00:04:15.140 --> 00:04:17.400 and that it had a lot to teach us, 71 00:04:17.480 --> 00:04:19.240 and that it was friendly. 72 00:04:20.200 --> 00:04:23.160 So science didn't answer those questions. 73 00:04:23.240 --> 00:04:24.980 I was told it was philosophy. 74 00:04:25.340 --> 00:04:30.240 So eventually I decided to just hang it up as a scientist 75 00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:32.420 and go write novels on Greek islands. 76 00:04:32.960 --> 00:04:37.120 I wrote three, burned two, and then wrote a science book again. 77 00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:43.520 Because I loved the ancient Greek definition of science, 78 00:04:43.620 --> 00:04:47.600 or the name of science, as philosophias, 79 00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:49.280 which means lover of wisdom, 80 00:04:49.420 --> 00:04:55.180 and that the purpose of science was to gain guidance in human affairs, 81 00:04:55.340 --> 00:04:56.480 by studying nature. 82 00:04:56.640 --> 00:04:59.120 That was exactly why I had gone into science, 83 00:04:59.320 --> 00:05:06.740 and it was an irresistible drawback into science while I was there. 84 00:05:07.900 --> 00:05:11.020 Now to understand living systems in evolution, 85 00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:13.220 after I had left academia, 86 00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:16.760 I had to just start from scratch and say, 87 00:05:16.860 --> 00:05:20.780 what are the basic patterns that I can observe in nature 88 00:05:21.340 --> 00:05:23.340 from what I've learned as an evolution biologist, 89 00:05:23.480 --> 00:05:26.140 and from what I see myself? 90 00:05:26.900 --> 00:05:30.720 And one of those patterns is what I call a cycle of evolution 91 00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:35.880 that always begins with some unity that individuates, 92 00:05:35.960 --> 00:05:39.520 and when anything individuates, 93 00:05:39.540 --> 00:05:41.680 there is always tension and conflict. 94 00:05:41.900 --> 00:05:43.040 We can count on that. 95 00:05:43.260 --> 00:05:47.160 Now you can think of this as child being born of mother 96 00:05:47.160 --> 00:05:50.260 and growing to that adolescent feisty age, 97 00:05:50.520 --> 00:05:53.460 or I will show you some other examples of that. 98 00:05:53.480 --> 00:05:58.800 But this is basically how far Darwin got in his theory of evolution. 99 00:05:59.440 --> 00:06:05.000 What I observed was that if things don't kill each other off 100 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:07.120 at that stage of tension and conflict, 101 00:06:07.260 --> 00:06:09.320 they begin to negotiate things. 102 00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:14.620 And negotiations can lead to some resolutions of tensions and conflicts, 103 00:06:14.700 --> 00:06:17.160 to actual cooperative schemes, 104 00:06:17.440 --> 00:06:19.100 and in the best case scenario, 105 00:06:19.460 --> 00:06:23.460 to a new unity at a larger and more complex level. 106 00:06:23.480 --> 00:06:26.920 So this is a basic cycle, 107 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:28.920 and I'll show it to you again in a little while 108 00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:31.320 so that you'll really get that. 109 00:06:31.920 --> 00:06:34.780 And half of the Earth's life, 110 00:06:34.900 --> 00:06:35.760 here's an example, 111 00:06:35.980 --> 00:06:38.020 was devoted to bacterial evolution. 112 00:06:38.640 --> 00:06:42.580 Now those ancient bacteria caused a lot of trouble. 113 00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:47.020 They did all that individuation, tension and conflict stuff, 114 00:06:47.080 --> 00:06:48.380 and invaded each other, 115 00:06:48.440 --> 00:06:51.720 and they caused worldwide hunger crises and pollution crises. 116 00:06:51.960 --> 00:06:52.820 Sound familiar? 117 00:06:52.820 --> 00:06:55.840 And then solved them with innovative technologies. 118 00:06:56.520 --> 00:06:58.320 They harnessed solar energy 119 00:06:58.320 --> 00:07:02.640 when they invented themselves as photosynthesizers. 120 00:07:02.840 --> 00:07:04.640 They built nuclear piles, 121 00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:07.720 possibly to keep warm by collecting uranium. 122 00:07:08.020 --> 00:07:09.660 That's why we can mine it today. 123 00:07:10.060 --> 00:07:13.320 And they invented things like the electric motor 124 00:07:13.320 --> 00:07:15.500 and my favorite, the first World Wide Web. 125 00:07:15.700 --> 00:07:19.840 So I feel very familiar with these ancient ancestors. 126 00:07:20.280 --> 00:07:22.180 And some of you are probably saying, 127 00:07:22.180 --> 00:07:22.960 oh yeah, right. 128 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:27.320 So I have to tell you that what I mean by the first World Wide Web 129 00:07:27.320 --> 00:07:31.040 is that DNA information in bits 130 00:07:31.040 --> 00:07:33.740 could be freely traded by the ancient bacteria, 131 00:07:34.040 --> 00:07:37.440 becoming a World Wide Web of information exchange. 132 00:07:37.940 --> 00:07:39.880 They probably invented the virus 133 00:07:39.880 --> 00:07:44.460 in order to send whole information packages abroad without touching. 134 00:07:44.680 --> 00:07:47.460 And to this day, any bacterium on Earth 135 00:07:47.460 --> 00:07:49.880 can trade DNA with any other 136 00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:52.160 without much research. 137 00:07:52.180 --> 00:07:53.600 So, here's the restriction and here's the motor, 138 00:07:53.740 --> 00:07:55.840 because that's the one you really didn't believe in. 139 00:07:56.180 --> 00:07:58.700 These electric motors in bacteria 140 00:07:58.700 --> 00:08:02.060 are very interesting nowadays to nanotechnologists, 141 00:08:02.280 --> 00:08:05.080 which is why you can find pictures like this on the Web. 142 00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:08.420 And they are irreducibly complex systems. 143 00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:13.080 Slow Darwinian accidental changes 144 00:08:13.720 --> 00:08:16.420 when you need more than 40 proteins 145 00:08:16.420 --> 00:08:19.380 that all have to not only be there, 146 00:08:19.500 --> 00:08:20.880 but know how to put themselves 147 00:08:20.880 --> 00:08:22.460 into a particular pattern, 148 00:08:22.660 --> 00:08:25.160 is a very difficult thing to explain 149 00:08:25.160 --> 00:08:27.360 by the Darwinian hypothesis. 150 00:08:28.280 --> 00:08:29.920 So this is a schematic. 151 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:31.580 It fits into the cell membrane 152 00:08:31.580 --> 00:08:34.400 so that it can run itself with a tail. 153 00:08:34.780 --> 00:08:37.740 And this on the left is a bacterium 154 00:08:37.740 --> 00:08:40.240 drawn by someone who didn't know about the motors, 155 00:08:40.460 --> 00:08:42.480 so it isn't really very well done. 156 00:08:42.680 --> 00:08:44.760 But what I want to show is that 157 00:08:44.760 --> 00:08:46.600 there's only one other kind of cell 158 00:08:46.600 --> 00:08:48.100 that exists on this planet, 159 00:08:48.220 --> 00:08:50.860 and that's the nucleated cells that we are making, 160 00:08:50.880 --> 00:08:51.120 that we are made of, 161 00:08:51.180 --> 00:08:53.200 and that all visible creatures are made of. 162 00:08:53.880 --> 00:08:54.900 And they are actually, 163 00:08:56.380 --> 00:09:00.420 should be depicted a thousand or more times bigger 164 00:09:00.420 --> 00:09:01.720 than the bacterium. 165 00:09:01.760 --> 00:09:03.040 You can't do it on one slide. 166 00:09:03.280 --> 00:09:07.180 And these guys end up inside those nucleated cells 167 00:09:07.180 --> 00:09:09.840 as the mitochondria you see near the top. 168 00:09:10.560 --> 00:09:13.200 Now, these single nucleated cells 169 00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:16.740 evolved as colonies of ancient bacteria, 170 00:09:17.080 --> 00:09:20.140 each of which gave some of their DNA up, 171 00:09:20.880 --> 00:09:23.620 binding them permanently to live in this community, 172 00:09:23.860 --> 00:09:27.120 into this central library we call the nucleus. 173 00:09:27.600 --> 00:09:31.080 So it's a kind of multi-creatured cell that evolved 174 00:09:31.080 --> 00:09:33.700 when the cycle went through the negotiations, 175 00:09:34.140 --> 00:09:36.380 figured out the new metabolic cycle, 176 00:09:36.700 --> 00:09:37.960 shared the DNA, 177 00:09:38.200 --> 00:09:40.560 and became a cooperative community, 178 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:43.160 a new unity at a higher level. 179 00:09:43.380 --> 00:09:46.860 It was so successful that it's never happened again. 180 00:09:47.880 --> 00:09:49.900 It's the only other kind of cell 181 00:09:49.900 --> 00:09:51.800 that has been invented so far. 182 00:09:52.080 --> 00:09:54.160 But I will show you in my talk 183 00:09:54.160 --> 00:09:56.260 that I believe the globalization process 184 00:09:56.260 --> 00:09:58.140 is kind of our version 185 00:09:58.140 --> 00:10:02.580 of building a new unity at a larger size level. 186 00:10:03.080 --> 00:10:04.900 Now, everything in the biological world 187 00:10:05.420 --> 00:10:07.580 is at some stage of this cycle, 188 00:10:07.760 --> 00:10:10.560 and therefore we see these dynamic cycles 189 00:10:10.560 --> 00:10:12.520 of competition to cooperation, 190 00:10:12.780 --> 00:10:16.680 and we can point to competitiveness in nature, 191 00:10:16.760 --> 00:10:18.860 and we can point to cooperation in nature. 192 00:10:20.500 --> 00:10:24.880 Now, ecologists divide ecosystems into types, 193 00:10:25.080 --> 00:10:29.580 and a type one ecosystem is populated by species 194 00:10:29.580 --> 00:10:32.300 that take all the resources they can get, 195 00:10:32.380 --> 00:10:33.120 they hog territory, 196 00:10:33.520 --> 00:10:35.260 they multiply as fast as they can, 197 00:10:35.380 --> 00:10:38.360 and they knock out their competition whenever possible. 198 00:10:38.800 --> 00:10:39.820 Sound familiar? 199 00:10:40.860 --> 00:10:44.780 These grasses are about the same evolutionary vintage as humans. 200 00:10:45.220 --> 00:10:47.560 Now, in type three ecosystems, 201 00:10:47.560 --> 00:10:50.540 we find species that are sharing territory, 202 00:10:50.840 --> 00:10:51.680 sharing resources, 203 00:10:52.220 --> 00:10:54.700 helping to ensure the life of other species, 204 00:10:54.820 --> 00:10:56.000 and are way more cooperative. 205 00:10:56.580 --> 00:10:58.000 And I asked myself, 206 00:10:58.280 --> 00:10:59.900 if you talk to ecologists, 207 00:10:59.960 --> 00:11:01.080 they'll say it's just succession, 208 00:11:01.300 --> 00:11:02.460 there are different kinds of species, 209 00:11:02.660 --> 00:11:04.820 and they come in and take over 210 00:11:04.820 --> 00:11:07.380 when the pioneer species have kind of plowed the ground. 211 00:11:07.640 --> 00:11:09.720 And I said, well, how do they get that way? 212 00:11:10.460 --> 00:11:12.340 How do they get so cooperative? 213 00:11:12.860 --> 00:11:17.540 Is it possible that we could call type one ecosystem species young, 214 00:11:17.540 --> 00:11:21.500 and type three ecosystem species mature species, 215 00:11:21.900 --> 00:11:23.740 and see a learning curve in evolution, 216 00:11:24.100 --> 00:11:26.280 where they learn that it's more cost effective 217 00:11:26.280 --> 00:11:27.740 to feed your enemy, 218 00:11:27.920 --> 00:11:29.900 to build up his infrastructure, 219 00:11:30.260 --> 00:11:32.220 than it is to knock him out? 220 00:11:33.240 --> 00:11:34.860 Now, the second concept, 221 00:11:35.040 --> 00:11:36.720 now you know the cycle of maturation 222 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:37.940 and why I call it that. 223 00:11:38.100 --> 00:11:39.720 The second concept is 224 00:11:39.720 --> 00:11:42.480 holons and holarchy comes from Arthur Kessler, 225 00:11:42.620 --> 00:11:44.740 and it's simple, simple, simple. 226 00:11:44.980 --> 00:11:46.220 It's just embeddedness. 227 00:11:46.220 --> 00:11:48.620 You're a whole hierarchy of cells in organs 228 00:11:48.620 --> 00:11:50.140 in organ systems in a body. 229 00:11:50.400 --> 00:11:51.940 Here's a single-celled creature 230 00:11:51.940 --> 00:11:54.080 that lives within a multi-celled creature 231 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:56.120 that lives within a local ecosystem 232 00:11:56.120 --> 00:11:58.100 that's part of a larger ecosystem. 233 00:11:59.120 --> 00:12:02.120 Here's a self-organizing toroidal storm 234 00:12:02.120 --> 00:12:04.620 that lives within a self-organizing planet 235 00:12:04.620 --> 00:12:06.360 within a self-organizing galaxy. 236 00:12:06.440 --> 00:12:07.320 Get the idea. 237 00:12:07.500 --> 00:12:09.340 Just simple embeddedness. 238 00:12:09.860 --> 00:12:11.880 Now, Earth, as Lewis Thomas, 239 00:12:12.200 --> 00:12:13.660 that wonderful essayist 240 00:12:13.660 --> 00:12:16.060 who wrote books like Lives of a Cell, 241 00:12:16.220 --> 00:12:19.600 or Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony, 242 00:12:20.940 --> 00:12:22.700 he's the first one who proposed 243 00:12:22.700 --> 00:12:24.900 that the Earth was like a giant cell. 244 00:12:25.520 --> 00:12:27.040 And within it, of course, 245 00:12:27.160 --> 00:12:28.860 we evolve many smaller cells. 246 00:12:29.520 --> 00:12:32.220 Now, the Earth sometimes has huge crises, 247 00:12:32.300 --> 00:12:32.980 as you know. 248 00:12:33.060 --> 00:12:34.200 They're called extinctions. 249 00:12:34.220 --> 00:12:35.780 We happen to be in one now, 250 00:12:35.880 --> 00:12:38.220 the first one that a single species 251 00:12:38.220 --> 00:12:40.180 has the distinction of causing. 252 00:12:41.080 --> 00:12:44.660 And after such crises on the Earth, 253 00:12:44.660 --> 00:12:48.120 we find that opportunity has been seized 254 00:12:48.120 --> 00:12:49.940 to create new kinds of species. 255 00:12:50.380 --> 00:12:52.660 And after each of these critical situations, 256 00:12:53.480 --> 00:12:56.960 you find a huge flowering of new species. 257 00:12:57.180 --> 00:12:58.400 Not one new species 258 00:12:58.400 --> 00:13:00.820 and then a slow Darwinian lineage 259 00:13:00.820 --> 00:13:03.880 to others branching off from it, 260 00:13:03.960 --> 00:13:05.780 but all of them found at once 261 00:13:05.780 --> 00:13:06.920 in the fossil record. 262 00:13:07.320 --> 00:13:10.500 We also have now over half a century 263 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:12.960 of scientific evidence showing 264 00:13:12.960 --> 00:13:14.640 that evolution of life 265 00:13:14.660 --> 00:13:18.180 occurs when DNA responds to stress 266 00:13:18.180 --> 00:13:20.760 within or outside of the organism 267 00:13:20.760 --> 00:13:23.960 and reorganizes itself to make new proteins, 268 00:13:24.120 --> 00:13:25.660 to build new metabolic cycles, 269 00:13:25.820 --> 00:13:28.560 to do things that enable it 270 00:13:28.560 --> 00:13:30.100 to live beyond the crisis. 271 00:13:30.420 --> 00:13:32.580 We know that genomes repair 272 00:13:32.580 --> 00:13:34.640 the mutations that happen 273 00:13:34.640 --> 00:13:37.880 and put new genes into service as needed. 274 00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:40.540 This planet is riddled with DNA. 275 00:13:40.940 --> 00:13:42.340 Your own DNA, 276 00:13:42.620 --> 00:13:44.200 you have so much of it 277 00:13:44.200 --> 00:13:44.640 that if you don't have it, 278 00:13:44.660 --> 00:13:46.980 you could stretch out the DNA in every cell, 279 00:13:47.140 --> 00:13:48.280 put it end to end, 280 00:13:48.460 --> 00:13:51.640 and fly a jet plane down your DNA stream, 281 00:13:51.800 --> 00:13:53.880 it would take 23,000 years 282 00:13:53.880 --> 00:13:55.240 to get to the end of it. 283 00:13:55.720 --> 00:13:58.200 Every one of your hundred trillion cells 284 00:13:58.200 --> 00:14:01.180 has 30,000 recycling centers in it. 285 00:14:01.380 --> 00:14:03.540 We haven't begun to grok 286 00:14:03.540 --> 00:14:05.400 the complexity of the micro world, 287 00:14:05.540 --> 00:14:07.600 but it's the most fascinating frontier 288 00:14:07.600 --> 00:14:09.100 in science at present. 289 00:14:10.260 --> 00:14:12.320 And I call myself, therefore, 290 00:14:12.420 --> 00:14:14.640 a post-Darwinian evolutionist. 291 00:14:14.640 --> 00:14:17.880 Because I believe life is too intelligent 292 00:14:17.880 --> 00:14:19.700 to proceed by accident. 293 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:22.640 As do I think these guys who seem to say, 294 00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:23.780 what, us accident? 295 00:14:24.100 --> 00:14:25.080 I don't think so. 296 00:14:26.760 --> 00:14:29.700 No creature is a thing in itself 297 00:14:29.700 --> 00:14:31.580 apart from all others. 298 00:14:31.780 --> 00:14:34.260 We have to learn to see 299 00:14:34.260 --> 00:14:36.500 not rabbits in habitats, 300 00:14:36.820 --> 00:14:37.820 but rabbitats. 301 00:14:38.060 --> 00:14:40.320 So that we can get evolution 302 00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:43.580 as co-evolution of everything at once. 303 00:14:43.580 --> 00:14:45.960 The earth evolving itself 304 00:14:46.580 --> 00:14:48.920 with all the different species and habitats 305 00:14:48.920 --> 00:14:52.360 and everything being like the ecology of a body. 306 00:14:53.020 --> 00:14:56.880 And nature doesn't do our human either or thing. 307 00:14:57.100 --> 00:14:59.220 It's profoundly conservative 308 00:14:59.220 --> 00:15:01.060 when things are working well. 309 00:15:01.220 --> 00:15:02.860 And it's radically creative 310 00:15:02.860 --> 00:15:04.060 when things don't work. 311 00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:06.600 That's why usually crisis 312 00:15:06.600 --> 00:15:09.040 has to push nature into evolution, 313 00:15:09.360 --> 00:15:11.180 into getting resourceful. 314 00:15:11.420 --> 00:15:13.560 And maybe now you see the connection 315 00:15:13.580 --> 00:15:16.100 with what's going on with humanity. 316 00:15:18.580 --> 00:15:20.440 Why doesn't our evolution theory 317 00:15:20.440 --> 00:15:22.360 reflect patterns like this? 318 00:15:22.420 --> 00:15:25.120 Which seem once you see them rather obvious. 319 00:15:25.680 --> 00:15:28.680 And I think that to understand that 320 00:15:28.680 --> 00:15:31.260 I have to go back through a little bit of history. 321 00:15:32.400 --> 00:15:35.160 When Magellan's people managed to get 322 00:15:35.160 --> 00:15:36.520 all the way around the globe, 323 00:15:36.820 --> 00:15:39.920 they established that the world's territories 324 00:15:39.920 --> 00:15:41.960 were finite and ownable. 325 00:15:41.960 --> 00:15:46.700 And Columbus gained supreme importance 326 00:15:46.700 --> 00:15:49.520 for commerce through his trip 327 00:15:49.520 --> 00:15:50.900 and across the Atlantic. 328 00:15:51.060 --> 00:15:54.200 We immediately got trade going 329 00:15:54.200 --> 00:15:56.880 in both directions, including the slave trade. 330 00:15:57.180 --> 00:15:59.080 So this was a globe now. 331 00:15:59.140 --> 00:16:00.700 This must have been a very heady time. 332 00:16:00.900 --> 00:16:02.700 The globe is round, it's finite, 333 00:16:03.360 --> 00:16:05.440 it's real estate is ownable. 334 00:16:05.840 --> 00:16:08.120 What are we with the ships going to do? 335 00:16:08.340 --> 00:16:10.980 And Pizarro, of course, went to the, 336 00:16:10.980 --> 00:16:14.000 found the Inca Empire in the Andes, 337 00:16:14.020 --> 00:16:15.720 where I've spent quite a bit of time. 338 00:16:15.920 --> 00:16:19.360 And it was a civilization in many ways 339 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:21.640 beyond the European civilization. 340 00:16:22.140 --> 00:16:23.920 And what did they do with it? 341 00:16:24.040 --> 00:16:28.240 Well, you know the story of Atahualpa's ransom. 342 00:16:28.660 --> 00:16:32.740 Over 24 tons of exquisite art treasures 343 00:16:32.740 --> 00:16:34.960 all melted down into gold bricks. 344 00:16:35.980 --> 00:16:39.340 Now this was an influx, along with other gold and silver, 345 00:16:39.500 --> 00:16:40.960 stolen from the New World. 346 00:16:40.980 --> 00:16:44.100 That created a wealth in Europe 347 00:16:44.100 --> 00:16:45.520 that was sudden and unprecedented. 348 00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:50.240 And it did a lot to fund the Industrial Revolution, 349 00:16:50.560 --> 00:16:53.400 which was, of course, then continually funded 350 00:16:53.400 --> 00:16:54.900 by underpaid labor, 351 00:16:55.060 --> 00:16:58.160 so that profits were extracted from labor 352 00:16:58.160 --> 00:17:02.280 and you got wealthier and wealthier industrial classes. 353 00:17:02.420 --> 00:17:03.800 Which eventually, 354 00:17:04.060 --> 00:17:07.200 because they saw the value of science 355 00:17:07.200 --> 00:17:10.020 while the Church had not seen the value of science, 356 00:17:10.020 --> 00:17:13.700 replaced this power structure of church and state 357 00:17:13.700 --> 00:17:15.780 with industry and science. 358 00:17:16.160 --> 00:17:19.880 And I think that's a very interesting human trajectory 359 00:17:19.880 --> 00:17:24.960 because it meant that the mechanistic worldview of science 360 00:17:24.960 --> 00:17:30.040 became the official story of how things are in our universe, 361 00:17:30.120 --> 00:17:33.820 replacing that of the God-created universe 362 00:17:33.820 --> 00:17:35.760 in our modern culture. 363 00:17:36.180 --> 00:17:40.000 Now in 1600, Queen Elizabeth granted rights to, 364 00:17:40.020 --> 00:17:41.180 the East India Company, 365 00:17:42.020 --> 00:17:42.760 monopoly rights, 366 00:17:43.040 --> 00:17:45.400 to challenge the Dutch-Portuguese trade. 367 00:17:45.940 --> 00:17:50.780 And the East India Company became a huge multinational. 368 00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:52.740 There were eight branches of it. 369 00:17:52.820 --> 00:17:55.740 There was a Swedish East India Company, 370 00:17:55.860 --> 00:17:58.240 Dutch, British, French, Spanish, Portuguese. 371 00:17:59.160 --> 00:18:02.520 So this was a global multinational. 372 00:18:02.900 --> 00:18:05.560 And of course it was very multinational 373 00:18:05.560 --> 00:18:08.220 that the American settlers rebelled against 374 00:18:08.220 --> 00:18:10.180 with the Boston Tea Party. 375 00:18:10.360 --> 00:18:12.420 And then we adopted its flag 376 00:18:12.420 --> 00:18:13.660 by having Betsy Ross 377 00:18:13.660 --> 00:18:16.580 sow 13 stars over the British field in it. 378 00:18:17.120 --> 00:18:18.840 Now Thomas Malthus 379 00:18:18.840 --> 00:18:21.760 was head of the economics department 380 00:18:21.760 --> 00:18:24.560 of the British East India Company, 381 00:18:24.800 --> 00:18:27.780 heading the research through Haleybury College. 382 00:18:28.420 --> 00:18:31.100 And his conclusions, as everyone knows, 383 00:18:31.400 --> 00:18:33.660 were that the world was going to end soon 384 00:18:33.660 --> 00:18:35.040 because human population 385 00:18:35.040 --> 00:18:37.660 was going to overwhelm food production. 386 00:18:38.220 --> 00:18:41.240 And that justified this us-or-them policy 387 00:18:41.240 --> 00:18:44.360 of acquiring as many of the resources 388 00:18:44.360 --> 00:18:45.980 of the earth as possible. 389 00:18:47.760 --> 00:18:52.280 And Malthus was a family friend of Charles Darwin's. 390 00:18:52.400 --> 00:18:54.040 And some of you may know 391 00:18:54.040 --> 00:18:56.240 that it was in fact Malthus 392 00:18:56.240 --> 00:18:58.980 who inspired Darwin in his search 393 00:18:58.980 --> 00:19:00.820 for a theory of evolution. 394 00:19:01.480 --> 00:19:05.020 Darwin finding the marvels of nature wherever he went, 395 00:19:05.360 --> 00:19:08.140 and then adopting Malthus's theory 396 00:19:08.140 --> 00:19:10.540 of competitive struggle in scarcity 397 00:19:10.540 --> 00:19:12.640 as his own theory of evolution. 398 00:19:13.060 --> 00:19:14.480 And here's the quote. 399 00:19:14.840 --> 00:19:18.340 Nothing is easier than to admit the truth 400 00:19:18.340 --> 00:19:20.760 of the universal struggle for life, 401 00:19:20.880 --> 00:19:23.680 or more difficult than constantly 402 00:19:23.680 --> 00:19:25.920 to bear this conclusion in mind. 403 00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:29.500 Yet unless it be thoroughly ingrained in the mind, 404 00:19:29.520 --> 00:19:32.420 I'm convinced that the whole economy of nature, 405 00:19:32.580 --> 00:19:34.880 with every fact on distribution, 406 00:19:35.360 --> 00:19:37.320 rarity, abundance, extinction, 407 00:19:37.320 --> 00:19:40.100 and variation will be dimly seen 408 00:19:40.100 --> 00:19:41.760 or quite misunderstood. 409 00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:45.200 It is the doctrine of Malthus 410 00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:47.700 applied with manifold force 411 00:19:47.700 --> 00:19:50.700 to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. 412 00:19:51.100 --> 00:19:51.860 Quote. 413 00:19:52.120 --> 00:19:55.140 And society has of course taken this to mean 414 00:19:55.140 --> 00:19:56.860 that we are doomed permanently 415 00:19:56.860 --> 00:19:59.340 to win-lose economics and warfare. 416 00:19:59.860 --> 00:20:03.040 Now I think it's time to update this theory 417 00:20:03.040 --> 00:20:06.360 to acknowledge that it comes from a socioeconomic 418 00:20:06.360 --> 00:20:10.080 background and to look again at nature 419 00:20:10.080 --> 00:20:16.000 and see whether Darwin thought humans have to inject ethics into nature. 420 00:20:16.040 --> 00:20:19.460 Humans have to transcend this terrible struggle of nature. 421 00:20:20.360 --> 00:20:23.180 No indigenous culture sees nature that way. 422 00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:27.400 Many ancient cultures that were quite advanced 423 00:20:27.400 --> 00:20:32.400 in their urban development did not see it as such a hostile place. 424 00:20:32.820 --> 00:20:36.340 Now let me show you once again the cycle of evolution, 425 00:20:36.340 --> 00:20:37.920 all at once. 426 00:20:38.460 --> 00:20:42.840 How in the now can a cycle like this play out 427 00:20:42.840 --> 00:20:47.340 from the tension conflict to the resolution and harmony? 428 00:20:47.960 --> 00:20:50.340 Think of your own body's holarchy, 429 00:20:51.060 --> 00:20:54.280 cells within organs within organ systems within a whole body. 430 00:20:54.540 --> 00:20:55.280 Okay? 431 00:20:55.360 --> 00:20:58.960 Every level of that holarchy has self-interest. 432 00:20:59.980 --> 00:21:04.020 And therefore the dialogue, 433 00:21:04.120 --> 00:21:05.260 the negotiations, 434 00:21:05.260 --> 00:21:08.180 the negotiations are forced between the levels 435 00:21:08.180 --> 00:21:10.140 and between the individual cells. 436 00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:14.360 And those dialogues constantly lead to negotiations 437 00:21:15.260 --> 00:21:19.400 that maximize or optimize self-interest at every level. 438 00:21:20.260 --> 00:21:25.000 But when any level takes only its self-interest into account, 439 00:21:25.280 --> 00:21:27.140 you get something like cancer, 440 00:21:27.300 --> 00:21:30.920 where the other levels are no longer negotiated with. 441 00:21:31.220 --> 00:21:32.080 Five minutes. 442 00:21:33.260 --> 00:21:33.520 Great. 443 00:21:33.520 --> 00:21:34.620 We're going to make it. 444 00:21:35.660 --> 00:21:37.460 Now look at evolution theory. 445 00:21:38.940 --> 00:21:41.540 Darwin said it's competition among individuals. 446 00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:45.280 Then someone noticed how much altruism there was within species. 447 00:21:45.740 --> 00:21:49.060 So they decided it was actually competition among species 448 00:21:49.060 --> 00:21:51.900 for niches in the ecosystems. 449 00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:55.820 And then Richard Dawkins came along and said, 450 00:21:55.840 --> 00:21:57.020 no, no, you're both wrong. 451 00:21:57.140 --> 00:22:00.840 It's competition among selfish genes at the genome level, 452 00:22:00.980 --> 00:22:03.380 trying to express themselves in the gene pool. 453 00:22:03.380 --> 00:22:04.100 Okay? 454 00:22:04.500 --> 00:22:05.720 Here's my version. 455 00:22:06.080 --> 00:22:07.680 You can probably guess it. 456 00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:14.960 Self-interest at all ecosystem levels simultaneously leads to the tensions 457 00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:18.260 as well as to the negotiations and the cooperative modes. 458 00:22:18.540 --> 00:22:21.200 And that's how you get mature ecosystems. 459 00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:27.800 Now, suppose our body was run economically 460 00:22:27.800 --> 00:22:29.760 the way we're running the world economy. 461 00:22:31.140 --> 00:22:33.360 We're going to call the organs north of the body, 462 00:22:33.380 --> 00:22:35.460 the diaphragm, the northern industrial organs, 463 00:22:35.540 --> 00:22:40.400 heart, lung system, giving it the power to exploit bone marrow all over the body, 464 00:22:41.380 --> 00:22:46.280 and then ship it up to these northern industrial organs, 465 00:22:46.400 --> 00:22:51.480 purify the blood, add the oxygen, make the final blood, 466 00:22:52.380 --> 00:22:58.860 announce its price, and ship it to the organs that can afford it. 467 00:22:59.380 --> 00:23:00.020 . 468 00:23:02.260 --> 00:23:05.140 Would our body stay healthy in that kind of an economic system? 469 00:23:05.320 --> 00:23:06.740 I can tell you don't believe it would. 470 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:08.300 Can our world? 471 00:23:08.620 --> 00:23:11.200 You see, we haven't been taught to think whole-archically, 472 00:23:11.840 --> 00:23:15.100 but we know what it takes to make a body healthy. 473 00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:19.740 We know that in a family, everybody in the family has to be doing okay 474 00:23:19.740 --> 00:23:21.740 for the family to do okay as a whole. 475 00:23:21.820 --> 00:23:26.100 But no one's taught us that world economies are just as much living systems 476 00:23:26.100 --> 00:23:28.260 as individual bodies and families, 477 00:23:28.440 --> 00:23:30.000 and that communities are just as much living systems as individual bodies and families. 478 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:32.660 And the key to it all is right there. 479 00:23:33.260 --> 00:23:38.060 So, globalization to me is a natural evolutionary process. 480 00:23:38.780 --> 00:23:43.940 In many ways, we have already demonstrated that we are capable of global cooperation 481 00:23:43.940 --> 00:23:49.020 in the arts, in travel, in our communications, all the way to the internet, 482 00:23:49.260 --> 00:23:51.160 where we're having many-to-many conversations, 483 00:23:51.980 --> 00:23:54.920 exchanging money across all languages and culture, 484 00:23:55.100 --> 00:23:57.340 having international space stations, 485 00:23:57.600 --> 00:23:59.980 more and more world parliaments of religion, 486 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:03.540 a united religions initiative, etc., much dialogue. 487 00:24:03.880 --> 00:24:09.160 The United Nations, our first experiment at a global governance system. 488 00:24:09.680 --> 00:24:11.980 Much cooperation in science. 489 00:24:12.100 --> 00:24:15.100 All these things demonstrate very clearly to me 490 00:24:15.100 --> 00:24:19.120 that we are quite capable of cooperating as a global species. 491 00:24:19.760 --> 00:24:23.720 But we must think glocalization, 492 00:24:23.960 --> 00:24:28.600 and not leave the word globalization to unfair win-lose economics, 493 00:24:28.600 --> 00:24:34.400 and recognize that every level of the wholearchy up to the world 494 00:24:34.400 --> 00:24:36.920 has to be able to express itself interest 495 00:24:37.600 --> 00:24:40.000 for us to have a healthy global economy. 496 00:24:40.480 --> 00:24:41.800 Here's another version. 497 00:24:41.920 --> 00:24:45.040 Think of an individual within a community, 498 00:24:45.340 --> 00:24:48.780 within a species, within an ecosystem, within a planet. 499 00:24:49.280 --> 00:24:52.600 And of course, if you're thinking triple bottom line in business, 500 00:24:52.880 --> 00:24:57.100 you would see that accountability to all those levels 501 00:24:57.100 --> 00:24:59.280 gives you the triple bottom line. 502 00:24:59.660 --> 00:25:01.980 Now I could not resist this slide, 503 00:25:02.120 --> 00:25:06.980 and those of you who can see the organ will see why above the stage. 504 00:25:07.900 --> 00:25:10.360 I had this slide in my collection, 505 00:25:10.440 --> 00:25:11.960 and I stuck it in for you today, 506 00:25:12.060 --> 00:25:15.520 for the visual as well as for the content. 507 00:25:15.880 --> 00:25:18.840 The Maori talk about mana a kitanga, 508 00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:22.620 respect for the conscious mind of the individual, 509 00:25:23.100 --> 00:25:25.300 the whanao, the family, 510 00:25:25.460 --> 00:25:27.080 the extended whanao, 511 00:25:27.100 --> 00:25:29.180 the hapu, the village, the iwi, 512 00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:31.020 and our global community. 513 00:25:31.520 --> 00:25:33.940 Every indigenous culture I've known, 514 00:25:34.080 --> 00:25:37.160 the wisest elders always thought holarchically. 515 00:25:37.320 --> 00:25:41.600 They always thought about how decisions would affect every level. 516 00:25:44.980 --> 00:25:46.680 Here's the business version. 517 00:25:47.180 --> 00:25:47.900 Okay? 518 00:25:48.080 --> 00:25:51.980 Investors and employees are within the suppliers and markets, 519 00:25:52.060 --> 00:25:55.340 within the communities, within the ecosystems, within the world. 520 00:25:55.860 --> 00:25:57.080 Accountability at all. 521 00:25:57.100 --> 00:25:59.080 All levels gives you triple bottom lines. 522 00:25:59.860 --> 00:26:01.960 So we know what to do. 523 00:26:02.100 --> 00:26:03.340 We can see it clearly. 524 00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:10.100 And Tachi Kiuichi, a friend of mine who was CEO of Mitsubishi Electric, 525 00:26:10.380 --> 00:26:12.100 a large multinational company, 526 00:26:12.260 --> 00:26:16.240 when he retired, went into rainforests all over the world 527 00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:19.040 with Bill Shireman, an ecologist, 528 00:26:19.380 --> 00:26:21.160 and then they wrote a book called 529 00:26:21.160 --> 00:26:23.400 What We Learned in the Rainforest, 530 00:26:23.720 --> 00:26:26.900 saying not only there's no better business model than the rainforest, 531 00:26:27.100 --> 00:26:31.280 but saying no problem ever faced by any business 532 00:26:31.280 --> 00:26:34.220 has not been faced and solved in a rainforest. 533 00:26:34.680 --> 00:26:38.880 And the book is full of examples of how businesses can apply these principles. 534 00:26:39.340 --> 00:26:42.660 People don't want to be treated like machine parts anymore. 535 00:26:43.060 --> 00:26:46.940 And our businesses, as well as our medical systems, schools, 536 00:26:47.160 --> 00:26:48.780 all our governments, everything, 537 00:26:48.980 --> 00:26:53.260 has been modeled on the machinery of the mechanical scientific view. 538 00:26:53.680 --> 00:26:57.080 So Kiuichi's first principle is that 539 00:26:57.080 --> 00:27:01.160 a bold and visionary corporate mission 540 00:27:02.080 --> 00:27:06.440 will envision how your company can maximize the creation of value 541 00:27:07.080 --> 00:27:10.340 for your stakeholders and through them your shareholders. 542 00:27:10.980 --> 00:27:12.160 Stakeholders first. 543 00:27:12.340 --> 00:27:16.020 And he actually says, create value for the poorest people on earth, 544 00:27:16.220 --> 00:27:18.640 and then you will have a good business. 545 00:27:19.060 --> 00:27:22.760 Creative economics lie in all people everywhere 546 00:27:22.760 --> 00:27:25.180 if we don't interfere with them, 547 00:27:25.180 --> 00:27:28.580 if we don't stop them from expressing. 548 00:27:29.380 --> 00:27:33.800 So I leave you with the thought that we need a world that works for all. 549 00:27:33.900 --> 00:27:38.000 These images are from the Greek Olympics this past year. 550 00:27:38.260 --> 00:27:41.840 And I was very proud to be a Greek citizen. 551 00:27:42.040 --> 00:27:44.080 Sat through all four hours of it, 552 00:27:44.100 --> 00:27:46.260 and it was just a spectacular show. 553 00:27:47.060 --> 00:27:50.780 So I'm saying it's our evolutionary mandate 554 00:27:50.780 --> 00:27:53.860 to create sustainable global economics 555 00:27:53.860 --> 00:27:57.520 and truly become a global family. 556 00:27:58.560 --> 00:28:00.840 And I end with the Rumi quote, 557 00:28:01.020 --> 00:28:01.380 whoops! 558 00:28:02.860 --> 00:28:07.540 Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? 559 00:28:08.260 --> 00:28:10.180 Nature is on our side. 560 00:28:10.240 --> 00:28:10.920 Thank you. 561 00:28:12.060 --> 00:28:13.740 Thank you all for sitting up. 562 00:28:17.180 --> 00:28:19.560 I'm happy to answer questions from here. 563 00:28:26.220 --> 00:28:29.920 Elizabeth, thank you for doing exactly what we all wanted you to do today, 564 00:28:30.020 --> 00:28:32.420 which is to lift the horizon to here. 565 00:28:32.920 --> 00:28:34.840 We have some time for questions. 566 00:28:35.100 --> 00:28:38.500 Would you just raise your hand if you are somewhere near the microphone? 567 00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:42.560 We have one on the ground floor and upstairs as well. 568 00:28:43.260 --> 00:28:44.640 How sound, people? 569 00:28:45.860 --> 00:28:47.020 It's right centre. 570 00:28:47.860 --> 00:28:49.680 It's right centre. Thank you. 571 00:28:49.980 --> 00:28:51.720 And up to the... 572 00:28:51.720 --> 00:28:53.760 And up to that side. 573 00:28:53.860 --> 00:28:54.680 That side, upstairs. 574 00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.420 If you have a question, could I ask you to move straight away to the microphone 575 00:28:59.420 --> 00:29:01.820 because Radio Adelaide's recording, 576 00:29:02.300 --> 00:29:03.700 and so we can all hear. 577 00:29:03.880 --> 00:29:06.480 Feel free to wander up when you want to ask a question. 578 00:29:07.120 --> 00:29:10.660 What you've put so beautifully, wonderfully and clearly, 579 00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:14.640 I've took down as much as I could in my notes. 580 00:29:14.920 --> 00:29:17.920 I must confess I haven't read any of your books, 581 00:29:18.080 --> 00:29:19.320 but I will now. 582 00:29:19.540 --> 00:29:21.180 What you've spoken about today, 583 00:29:21.900 --> 00:29:23.340 to source that again, 584 00:29:23.860 --> 00:29:26.280 is that in any of your books or all of your books? 585 00:29:27.080 --> 00:29:29.340 The Darwinian story is not, 586 00:29:29.460 --> 00:29:32.140 because I actually dug it up fairly recently, 587 00:29:32.140 --> 00:29:34.740 since the publication of my last book. 588 00:29:35.540 --> 00:29:40.020 But the whole concept of holarchy and the cycle of maturation 589 00:29:40.020 --> 00:29:43.700 are certainly there in Earth Dance, Living Systems and Evolution. 590 00:29:44.440 --> 00:29:47.160 And there's a great deal on your site, your website. 591 00:29:47.500 --> 00:29:48.080 Yes. 592 00:29:48.100 --> 00:29:51.600 One of my websites, which is, 593 00:29:51.600 --> 00:29:53.860 if anyone wants to take it down, 594 00:29:53.940 --> 00:29:56.020 well you can Google my name and find it, 595 00:29:56.140 --> 00:30:02.700 but radical spelled with a T dot org slash life web 596 00:30:02.700 --> 00:30:05.460 has a whole copy of Earth Dance 597 00:30:05.460 --> 00:30:07.940 that you can peruse chapter by chapter 598 00:30:07.940 --> 00:30:10.160 and at least 30 articles. 599 00:30:10.500 --> 00:30:12.580 So you'll find things there. 600 00:30:12.720 --> 00:30:14.180 And you'll find the festival, by the way, 601 00:30:14.180 --> 00:30:16.860 has links on its own home site to Elizabeth's book. 602 00:30:16.860 --> 00:30:19.220 My other website is satourist.com, 603 00:30:19.380 --> 00:30:20.480 which is easy to remember, 604 00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:21.980 if you know how to spell my name. 605 00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:25.620 And if you click on an article on satourist.com, 606 00:30:25.700 --> 00:30:27.660 it'll actually take you to the other website 607 00:30:27.660 --> 00:30:30.200 and you can click the home page button there. 608 00:30:30.780 --> 00:30:32.160 Do we have another downstairs question? 609 00:30:32.180 --> 00:30:33.120 Lots of free literature. 610 00:30:34.620 --> 00:30:37.220 My question is, you mentioned indigenous societies 611 00:30:37.220 --> 00:30:41.100 and how they have a, their world view is as a holarchy. 612 00:30:41.760 --> 00:30:42.920 Hope I've said that right, I think. 613 00:30:43.900 --> 00:30:46.580 Considering the fact that we, as the industrialised world, 614 00:30:46.660 --> 00:30:49.720 are systematically erasing them from the surface of the planet, 615 00:30:51.420 --> 00:30:54.840 how do you see that as far as the sort of global evolution 616 00:30:54.840 --> 00:30:57.980 of the species, considering that they have had this world view, 617 00:30:58.040 --> 00:31:01.720 have this world view, and we have sort of silenced them 618 00:31:01.720 --> 00:31:05.720 in many ways, considering our history 619 00:31:06.300 --> 00:31:08.040 in the last sort of few hundred years and plus? 620 00:31:09.080 --> 00:31:14.540 Well, I think you probably got that I see our Western civilisation 621 00:31:14.540 --> 00:31:18.720 as being in the, right at the stage where you move out of adolescence 622 00:31:18.860 --> 00:31:21.420 into more cooperative maturity. 623 00:31:22.920 --> 00:31:26.860 So, and I think many indigenous cultures went through 624 00:31:26.860 --> 00:31:29.640 some of those phases earlier than we did. 625 00:31:29.800 --> 00:31:32.660 So as I said, things are, just as different species 626 00:31:32.660 --> 00:31:36.560 are at different points on the cycle, so can different human cultures be. 627 00:31:37.000 --> 00:31:39.680 And of course we hear a lot about that kind of thing 628 00:31:39.680 --> 00:31:43.760 through Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics and other models today, 629 00:31:43.900 --> 00:31:47.160 or we can think of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. 630 00:31:47.240 --> 00:31:48.840 And the reason why I have this question, 631 00:31:48.860 --> 00:31:52.260 why I have confidence in this as an evolutionary maturation cycle, 632 00:31:52.440 --> 00:31:57.760 is because it's reflected in so many other aspects of life, 633 00:31:57.960 --> 00:31:58.920 that same kind of maturation cycle. 634 00:31:58.920 --> 00:32:01.760 Elizabeth, could you give us an example, because I love this thing 635 00:32:01.760 --> 00:32:04.040 that you go around the world trying to see solutions. 636 00:32:04.260 --> 00:32:04.500 Yes. 637 00:32:04.500 --> 00:32:08.320 You see them in indigenous science and in our past. 638 00:32:08.780 --> 00:32:08.960 Yes. 639 00:32:08.980 --> 00:32:11.840 Give us an example, if you could, of something you've seen recently 640 00:32:11.840 --> 00:32:15.780 that shows that we're starting to proceed through intelligence 641 00:32:15.780 --> 00:32:16.960 rather than by accident. 642 00:32:16.960 --> 00:32:20.940 We in our Western culture, our dominant world culture. 643 00:32:21.120 --> 00:32:21.260 Yes, the world now. 644 00:32:21.420 --> 00:32:24.960 Yes, well when I showed all of those ways in which we're already cooperating, 645 00:32:25.560 --> 00:32:26.540 that's part of it. 646 00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:29.340 And you know, even some of the things we don't like, 647 00:32:29.420 --> 00:32:33.420 like the oil cartel was built up during Second World War, right? 648 00:32:33.780 --> 00:32:37.660 And the problem with that, the good side of that was 649 00:32:37.660 --> 00:32:39.880 that these businesses were cooperating. 650 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:42.660 The bad side of it was that they were cooperating 651 00:32:42.660 --> 00:32:44.080 to everyone else's disadvantage. 652 00:32:44.600 --> 00:32:46.940 So now that we're globalizing, we don't have to do that. 653 00:32:46.940 --> 00:32:49.220 We have to think in terms of global cooperation, 654 00:32:49.800 --> 00:32:52.240 creating value for the poorest cultures. 655 00:32:52.420 --> 00:32:54.940 And we have to be very careful how that's done. 656 00:32:55.140 --> 00:32:58.780 For instance, I was talking to Sainat, 657 00:32:58.920 --> 00:33:02.300 whom many of you, maybe all of you, heard last night, 658 00:33:02.940 --> 00:33:06.960 talking about working with the poorest people of India. 659 00:33:07.360 --> 00:33:12.720 And microcredit, which was a way of beginning to develop local cultures, 660 00:33:12.940 --> 00:33:15.700 has now been taken over by the banks and NGOs, 661 00:33:15.700 --> 00:33:21.160 and so they're trying to control it from another level of holarchy now. 662 00:33:21.540 --> 00:33:26.920 And unless we give full expression to the most local communities, 663 00:33:27.300 --> 00:33:29.400 the system isn't going to work. 664 00:33:29.480 --> 00:33:32.440 It would be like trying to run your body at the expense of your cells. 665 00:33:32.620 --> 00:33:35.180 It cannot be done in a living system. 666 00:33:35.440 --> 00:33:39.420 We must care about how our cells are. 667 00:33:39.660 --> 00:33:42.620 We have to give them enough water and enough oxygen and things 668 00:33:42.620 --> 00:33:44.140 to stay alive, right? 669 00:33:44.140 --> 00:33:48.480 And in the body, if something happens, 670 00:33:48.540 --> 00:33:52.720 you cut your big toe, nobody in the body is saying, 671 00:33:52.820 --> 00:33:55.920 oh, don't send aid to the big toe, it hasn't been very nice lately, 672 00:33:56.040 --> 00:34:00.220 or it doesn't have the same faith that I do and the same God or whatever, 673 00:34:01.160 --> 00:34:04.140 so we'll re-hold the aid back from it. 674 00:34:04.200 --> 00:34:07.400 No, your body knows that if something goes wrong, 675 00:34:07.520 --> 00:34:10.140 help whoever it is to get on their own feet, 676 00:34:10.680 --> 00:34:14.120 not in a dependent way, but in a way that permits 677 00:34:14.140 --> 00:34:18.260 that local part to fully express its needs in its way, 678 00:34:18.360 --> 00:34:20.380 through its language, through its eyes. 679 00:34:21.720 --> 00:34:24.900 So it's very clear that that's what we have to do. 680 00:34:24.980 --> 00:34:26.040 And there are good examples. 681 00:34:26.400 --> 00:34:28.840 I worked long ago for Oxfam. 682 00:34:29.020 --> 00:34:32.900 And Oxfam's giving a few cows to a village 683 00:34:32.900 --> 00:34:36.960 and then asking the village, when they had doubled the size of the herd, 684 00:34:37.040 --> 00:34:40.240 to give back those cows to pass them on to someone else. 685 00:34:40.560 --> 00:34:43.880 I think these were good, helpful developments. 686 00:34:44.140 --> 00:34:48.280 And we have to look very carefully at how it is, 687 00:34:48.360 --> 00:34:54.200 that tsunami aid was an outpouring of people's love and wanting to help. 688 00:34:54.360 --> 00:34:58.500 That was a true living systems response, right, that we wanted to help. 689 00:34:58.720 --> 00:35:02.340 However, we then find out that this stuff, of course, 690 00:35:02.360 --> 00:35:07.840 gets controlled by armies in Indonesia, by governments, by NGOs, by whoever, 691 00:35:08.180 --> 00:35:12.560 and the stock market goes up, as Sinat told us last night, 692 00:35:12.640 --> 00:35:14.120 because now, you know, 693 00:35:14.120 --> 00:35:16.940 the people who suffered are not benefiting, 694 00:35:17.180 --> 00:35:20.660 but the people who already have wealth now gain more wealth. 695 00:35:21.200 --> 00:35:23.120 So we're trying this out. 696 00:35:23.220 --> 00:35:24.460 We're an adolescent species. 697 00:35:24.740 --> 00:35:28.840 We're trying to get how to be a cooperative, mature species. 698 00:35:29.140 --> 00:35:31.480 And there are as many ways of doing it 699 00:35:31.480 --> 00:35:34.400 as there are creative individuals to participate in it. 700 00:35:34.540 --> 00:35:37.080 We have to work at this in many, many ways. 701 00:35:37.420 --> 00:35:39.660 And I think we're moving along. 702 00:35:39.780 --> 00:35:42.700 As I go through the world, I see many hopeful signs. 703 00:35:42.880 --> 00:35:44.100 And I'll just add one more. 704 00:35:45.680 --> 00:35:48.900 After my government's response to 9-11, 705 00:35:49.140 --> 00:35:53.060 the image of the United States changed dramatically in the world, 706 00:35:53.080 --> 00:35:54.760 as I think I don't have to tell you. 707 00:35:54.980 --> 00:35:58.640 The good side of that is that I see in Brazil, 708 00:35:58.820 --> 00:36:00.700 and I see it in New Zealand and Australia, 709 00:36:00.880 --> 00:36:03.100 and I see it in other countries, 710 00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:06.980 they're beginning to develop on their own in their own way, 711 00:36:07.120 --> 00:36:11.380 rather than looking to the U.S. as the role model for how to develop. 712 00:36:11.620 --> 00:36:13.600 And I think that's a very healthy thing. 713 00:36:14.120 --> 00:36:14.740 Thank you. 714 00:36:15.140 --> 00:36:18.420 I'm not able to see, but is there someone upstairs who has a question? 715 00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:23.320 Anyone at the mic up there? 716 00:36:24.460 --> 00:36:27.980 I'd be really thrilled to think that after a crisis, 717 00:36:28.040 --> 00:36:30.900 a bunch of new, wonderful species will evolve 718 00:36:30.900 --> 00:36:33.260 and a whole new world to look forward to. 719 00:36:33.440 --> 00:36:38.200 But I feel really attached to the familiar and the not-so-familiar 720 00:36:38.200 --> 00:36:41.000 kind of peculiar, beautiful species that we already know. 721 00:36:41.400 --> 00:36:42.660 How do you feel about that? 722 00:36:42.660 --> 00:36:44.580 Oh, I'm totally with you. 723 00:36:44.640 --> 00:36:46.100 You know, my son used to say, 724 00:36:46.220 --> 00:36:50.440 Mom, why do you want to save a species that's such a disaster on the planet? 725 00:36:50.900 --> 00:36:52.860 So I had to think about that, and I said, 726 00:36:52.900 --> 00:36:56.360 You know, I live, eat, and breathe as a human. 727 00:36:56.540 --> 00:37:02.200 I have survival instinct like any other species member of any other species does. 728 00:37:02.560 --> 00:37:05.240 So as long as I live and breathe as a human, 729 00:37:05.320 --> 00:37:09.260 I will work for the survival of my species. 730 00:37:09.520 --> 00:37:11.660 Not just its survival, but its thrival. 731 00:37:11.840 --> 00:37:15.540 I think we're a fabulous investment of nature. 732 00:37:16.300 --> 00:37:18.680 I don't want to lose that investment. 733 00:37:19.080 --> 00:37:23.500 I believe that we've always shown our potential in the great leaders, 734 00:37:23.680 --> 00:37:28.940 whether they were Muhammad or Jesus or Socrates or Einstein or whoever. 735 00:37:29.300 --> 00:37:32.640 You know, we've had our role models all through history. 736 00:37:32.740 --> 00:37:37.300 We know the wonderful ways in which we can express ourselves at our best, 737 00:37:37.400 --> 00:37:41.080 and I want to see our potential fulfilled here on Earth. 738 00:37:42.440 --> 00:37:44.060 Is there another question upstairs? 739 00:37:46.020 --> 00:37:48.000 Let's try one downstairs. Anyone nearby? 740 00:37:48.580 --> 00:37:53.000 Hi. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on how evolution works. 741 00:37:53.060 --> 00:37:54.640 I'm much more in the kind of mechanistic camp. 742 00:37:55.260 --> 00:37:58.220 But I think one of the things we'd agree on 743 00:37:58.220 --> 00:38:01.220 is that well over 99% of species have gone extinct 744 00:38:01.220 --> 00:38:02.980 in this whole evolutionary process. 745 00:38:03.500 --> 00:38:05.380 And I wonder how that compares, 746 00:38:06.500 --> 00:38:09.820 how you draw that parallel into the current human situation 747 00:38:09.820 --> 00:38:11.820 of businesses and governments and whatnot. 748 00:38:11.840 --> 00:38:12.540 And then, in the context of the world and whatever in competition, 749 00:38:13.280 --> 00:38:16.560 in this new, more synthesised world that you see, 750 00:38:16.660 --> 00:38:21.560 will that be a world in which 99% of businesses and cultures have fallen over? 751 00:38:21.700 --> 00:38:24.780 Or will something else happen? 752 00:38:25.060 --> 00:38:27.580 Well, I would say your guess is as good as mine, 753 00:38:27.700 --> 00:38:30.700 but we certainly can look through our historical trajectory 754 00:38:30.700 --> 00:38:33.760 and see that civilisations tend to rise and fall. 755 00:38:34.300 --> 00:38:38.840 And as Arnold Toynbee was first to show, 756 00:38:38.840 --> 00:38:46.280 show that there are common factors in their demise. And the common factors he isolated, 757 00:38:46.580 --> 00:38:54.360 as many of you probably are aware, were the extreme concentration of wealth and the inflexibility 758 00:38:54.360 --> 00:39:00.160 when change was called for, which is what we're seeing in my administration at present. 759 00:39:00.200 --> 00:39:05.680 For instance, it's trying to go backward, to be more rigid, to preserve the oil economy 760 00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:14.100 to their dying gasp. And that's okay. That's their role in the human drama. So I'm not angry 761 00:39:14.100 --> 00:39:20.140 with them, but I have to discern what the pattern is to see which way I want to go and what role I 762 00:39:20.140 --> 00:39:26.460 want to play. And I see an old and a new civilization coexisting right now. It's like a 763 00:39:26.460 --> 00:39:33.800 caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly. When the butterfly cells first arise in the form, 764 00:39:33.860 --> 00:39:35.660 in the body of the caterpillar, they're going to be the same as the caterpillar cells. 765 00:39:35.680 --> 00:39:42.960 In the chrysalis stage, the caterpillar's immune system attacks them. And it's only when they come 766 00:39:42.960 --> 00:39:49.540 up faster and link together, like cultural creative, if you like, that the immune system 767 00:39:49.540 --> 00:39:56.640 of the caterpillar fails and its body melts down and becomes a nutritive kind of soup for the rest 768 00:39:56.640 --> 00:40:04.040 of the butterfly cells to form. So we used to think it would all get really bad and then there'd be 769 00:40:04.040 --> 00:40:05.500 some point at which it would turn around. 770 00:40:05.680 --> 00:40:14.180 And now we can see that there's this phase during which the old and the new coexist. So I tell people, 771 00:40:14.320 --> 00:40:19.760 don't go to the Bush administration to get them to fund alternative energy. It's not their job. 772 00:40:19.960 --> 00:40:25.580 Their mission is to save the oil economy as long as possible. And our mission is to create 773 00:40:25.580 --> 00:40:30.800 alternative energy and make it an attractor. Show people that it's cheaper and cleaner and 774 00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:35.420 more efficient and things. So we have to work within the whole. 775 00:40:35.680 --> 00:40:43.300 And we have this glorious diversity. It's important for us to see the role models of what we don't want to become. 776 00:40:43.600 --> 00:40:49.920 I'm worried about the children because with controlled media, they're seeing the role models of the old culture, 777 00:40:49.960 --> 00:40:56.320 not the role models of the new culture. And as Jean Houston in the United States, and many of you have met her 778 00:40:56.320 --> 00:41:04.200 here in Australia, said to a huge press gathering, please look at the most exciting things that are happening 779 00:41:04.200 --> 00:41:05.300 in the world today. 780 00:41:05.680 --> 00:41:14.980 Where Wangari Maathai gets an international Nobel Peace Prize because she got women to plant millions of trees 781 00:41:14.980 --> 00:41:22.640 to recreate ecosystems on which their livelihoods depended after they had been raised by the people that you, 782 00:41:22.720 --> 00:41:28.940 the questioner, are talking about. So yes, we've got destruction. We've got new building, just like we've got 783 00:41:28.940 --> 00:41:35.560 in nature extinction and new species arising. And it's anyone's guess. There will be continuity in the new 784 00:41:35.560 --> 00:41:41.960 culture. There always is. A Minoan culture doesn't come out of thin air. It has roots in other cultures. 785 00:41:42.100 --> 00:41:49.600 The people came through generations that can be traced, right? And so in the future, as long as there is humanity, 786 00:41:49.940 --> 00:41:57.040 that humanity will know its ancestry, I presume, and will know what kinds of cultures it came out of, 787 00:41:57.120 --> 00:42:05.360 will know lessons from the past, and will develop newly and creatively. And so it's what we all do to 788 00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:05.540 create a new culture. 789 00:42:05.560 --> 00:42:11.740 It's what we all do to create the world. It's the visions we hold, the trajectories we commit ourselves to, 790 00:42:11.920 --> 00:42:17.940 that will determine that future civilization. We and everyone on the planet with us. 791 00:42:18.140 --> 00:42:21.260 So we must learn to dialogue with each other. 792 00:42:21.540 --> 00:42:28.020 I'm glad you said that because just to conclude, and we have only minutes left, we must learn to dialogue with each other. 793 00:42:28.220 --> 00:42:34.980 We're so used to dialogue, meaning putting positions to different positions, the win-lose. 794 00:42:34.980 --> 00:42:41.840 You've talked a lot about that. And I heard you say, as we did, I'm not angry with my government, you said. 795 00:42:42.260 --> 00:42:49.280 It's such a natural reaction if one feels unrepresented in the controlling forces, and I think many here would. 796 00:42:49.420 --> 00:42:58.960 It feels so natural to be furious and to rage. Are you saying we have to smile, not love the other side, feed the enemy? 797 00:42:59.280 --> 00:43:01.960 What do we do while we're doing that ourselves? 798 00:43:02.440 --> 00:43:04.960 Well, the reason for not getting angry... 799 00:43:04.960 --> 00:43:08.800 Not angry, but discerning rather than judging is. 800 00:43:08.900 --> 00:43:13.540 You must discern. You have to know what the human drama is about to choose your role in it. 801 00:43:13.700 --> 00:43:20.340 And you don't want to blind yourself to all the misery and suffering that's going on and to who's causing it and things like that. 802 00:43:20.520 --> 00:43:27.080 But you can do that without wasting your own energy on just being mad at them, which doesn't hurt them a bit. 803 00:43:27.800 --> 00:43:33.740 It's like all my luggage was stolen recently in one of my travels, including my computer and all that. 804 00:43:34.060 --> 00:43:34.580 Right. 805 00:43:34.960 --> 00:43:38.140 Favorite jewelry, clothes, you know, big exercise in letting go. 806 00:43:38.340 --> 00:43:43.000 But I realized immediately that if I were going to suffer over this, I was only hurting myself. 807 00:43:44.120 --> 00:43:49.160 It wasn't going to hurt the thieves. They hadn't a clue whether I was suffering or how or what or didn't care. 808 00:43:49.980 --> 00:43:55.760 And I only hope that they will be able to make their livings in better ways in our future society. 809 00:43:57.120 --> 00:43:58.900 While listening to not as much. 810 00:43:58.920 --> 00:44:04.300 Really, it made me recommit to wanting to build a world in which people didn't have to make a living that way. 811 00:44:06.240 --> 00:44:08.060 Elizabeth Sartoris, thank you so much. 812 00:44:25.200 --> 00:44:29.080 Late night thoughts while listening to Marla's Ninth Symphony. 813 00:44:29.120 --> 00:44:30.640 Did you take the notes for that one? 814 00:44:31.560 --> 00:44:32.360 Thank you. 815 00:44:32.380 --> 00:44:33.220 I'm Julia Lester. 816 00:44:33.280 --> 00:44:34.540 It's been lovely cheering today. 817 00:44:34.540 --> 00:44:37.260 We have several days of fabulous thinking. 818 00:44:37.540 --> 00:44:38.360 Do enjoy.