Holistic Systems Practice - the door to ethical culture
The Holos Earth Project
International network of leading edge holistic thinkers and practitioners rising to the meta-crisis of global challenges
Jiddu Krishnamurti put it starkly: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." We will argue that a healthy society is one in which the culture is ethical - and that means it is regenerative. Holistic Systems Practice offers the portal.
Understanding culture
Culture has at least three definitions. One tends to focus on aesthetics; the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement - as in a cultured person or society.
Another is societal, relating to the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society - we will examine whether there is such a dominant global culture.
From the biological perspective culture is a verb; maintaining the conditions suitable for tissue cells, bacteria, etc. to grow. We will offer a way to participate in generating culture.
We in the Holos.Earth Project suggest that all three definitions can be synthesised into contemplating what an ethical paradigm might look like in this era - and so we offer the notion, conceived by Daniel Christian Wahl, of regenerative cultures.
The 'frame' and the 'game'
Someone said: "Where there's a 'frame' there's a 'game'. Our 'frames', call that mindsets or world-views that inform our behaviours, our 'game', are generally unconscious. Culture then is the factor that largely accounts in humans for unconscious automated response.
In the non-human living kingdom we might see rudimentary culture as the instinct of the species. Rupert Sheldrake echoes Jan Smuts' emphasis on the creative role of subtle informational fields. In his view the intergenerational transfer of information, and hence behaviour, occurs via morphogenetic ‘fields’, with these acting on the genes.
Culture - good, bad and indifferent
In human experience the functionality of any given culture can be evaluated by its capacity to enable collective behaviour that tends to be supportive of eco-systemic coherence. Anthropologist, Maurice Leenhardt, in studying the way of life of the Melanesian Islanders, described their culture as being eco-systemically coherent - he described that condition as ‘cosmomorphism’. We can see such a capacity to agile adaptation with natural systems as dynamical eco-systemic coherence.
In the cognitive human kingdom, layered on top of our inherited human instinct, our unconscious response then results from the process of 'enculturation'. Our unconscious immersion and replication of the prevailing precepts, assumptions, attitudes and behaviours are now also known to physically shape the 'social' brain. We argue that with our fixation on material wellbeing, we remain trapped in a global cultural paradigm of extraction - this is the antithesis of eco-systemic coherence.
But now, with further insights into the neuroplasticity of the human brain, we know that with deepening consciousness, culture can, and indeed does, evolve further. Smuts described the process of such a deepening of awareness as the process of cultivating 'inwardness' towards the development of holistic Personality.
Regenerative Culture
It then becomes apparent that the emergence of culture can be a function of two dominant qualities of experience. In a context lacking coherence, with the inevitable accompanying frustrations, disappointments, fears and aversions, that culture is likely to be acquisitive, protective and defensive. On the other hand in a facilitated context, where participants actively seek coherence, through dialogue and collaboration, defined ritual and practice can help engender a coherence enabling culture. Such a context we describe as Holistic Systems Practice. Let's call that enabling regenerative culture.
It starts with nature
In an article published in 'Christ College Journal', 1893, 'Law - a Liberal Study', 23 year old Jan Smuts wrote:
"That individual has the greatest culture who has, through association with nature, and the individual and collective life of humanity, past and present, learned to think deepest, feel most, and see farthest."
At that young stage of his life, he had already intuited the development of culture as a function of holistic process. For him it was about deep identification with nature and an understanding and compassionate engagement with the human evolutionary process. From his perspective thus the manifestation of deepening of culture would be reflected in:
*?? Rational inquiry (thinking deepest)
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*?? Visceral and empathetic engagement in 'being' (feeling most),
*?? Foresight in detecting 'patterns' (seeing farthest).
Virtue ethics
Now was can contemplate Rembrandt's painting of Aristotle with the bust of Homer. In his 'Nicomachean Ethics' Aristotle proposes virtue ethical theory to be a field distinct from the theoretical sciences. Its methodology, how to respond to life's challenges and opportunities must, he emphasised, be relevant to the context. Generalisations, that is preconceived religious, ideological and legal precepts and principles, won't do. For example the law, Smuts stressed in the above article, offered only the faintest definition of the nature of the human person. That is why Aristotle said we study ethics to improve our lives; meaning that the main concern of ethics is the nature of human well-being. He questioned Plato’s idea that to be ethically virtuous we must acquire an understanding of goodness through training in the sciences, mathematics, and philosophy.
The whole
Rather, he said, to live well we need an appreciation of the way in which the experiences of life fit together as a whole. Then, to apply that general understanding to particular cases, we must acquire, through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to see, in each instance, which course of action would offer the 'good' in respect of the whole. Practical wisdom, in ancient Greek 'phronesis', won't be acquired simply by learning general rules. Rather Aristotle stressed, we must also acquire, through practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable us to put our general understanding of well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each occasion.
Holistic Systems Practice
This then is the essential opportunity being offered with Holistic Systems Practice. And, accordingly, this is where Homer's image above comes into the picture. His story of Ulysses in the Odyssey is seen as a quintessential quest that?relates to one's passage through life to wards rational and emotional maturity.
In Jan Smuts' holistic creative process this is the journey of 'inwardness' in which we embrace into our personal identity an ever-increasing dimension of the life-giving ecology in which we exist. We are therefore developing our own personal experience of greater cosmo-morphism on our journey to a fuller more meaningful, Self-hood.
Personal Holistic Integration
That is why our Holistic System's Practice training program is offered in two parts. During the first three-month semester, commencing September 22, the focus will be on personal holistic integration. During the second three-month semester, and considering the biological definition of culture, the focus will be on developing the insights and facilitation skills to promote the emergence of regenerative cultures.
This theme is to be continued ...
Meanwhile join us next Thursday, 25th July, for a free introductory workshop in Holistic Systems Practice - where we will highlight key insights and describe the program going forward. Holos.Earth invites you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Holos - Holistic Systems Practice introductory workshop
Time: Jul 25, 2024 07:00 PM Madrid
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 825 9057 0304
Passcode: 085626