Chapter 4  The Knowledge Function and The Story of the Flowers of the Universe

10:00 AM - Aygust 14, 2014 by Jonathan Burch

 

The Worldview

Principles of Harmony 

How To Create The New Kind of Economy 

How To Create The Necessary Global Peace

    The prescription for successful life in this new global environment is for each person to live in global peace, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness guided by intimate inner friendship with the Divine Harmony.  Now more than ever we need the intimate personal guidance of inner friendship to be happy.  Why? 

    Many changes are happening to us very fast. The great increase in human knowledge in the last 500 years has caused all this change.  It has given us  a  new kind of world to live in, and a new way for humans to live successful human life.  How has that happened?

    The great increase in knowledge showed that uncertainty could not be overcome, so humans could not prove anything for certain.  That propelled us out of the Modern Age into the Postmodern age where everything was uncertain, contingent and plural.  Science concluded this with Heizenburg’s Uncertainty Principle, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem and Einstein’s Relativity Theory.  Religion, in the global community, had to face its many different paths to successful life. Humans could no longer justify forcing each other to live just one right way, because it was right for certain.  No one could know that.  We had to learn to live together with our different ways, because no one could prove which way was right for certain, and different ways worked for different people.  This was dramatic change.

    The great increase in knowledge has also caused a change in culture.  It created a new kind of global economy, based on human controlled machines, which is molding the new global culture that is changing from men dominating women to men and women being equal.  This has produced more dramatic social change.

    

    Further the great increase in knowledge has begun the era of life plus machines on Earth, that includes the creation of new knowledge and existence far beyond what biological evolution can do and ushers in a new stage in evolution, which redefines the human role in the universe.  That is a great deal of amazing, dramatic change happening to us very fast and all at once.  

    How do we cope with all this rapid change?  The answer can be illustrated with a story called the Lathe Story.

The Lathe Story

    There was a man who carved the most beautiful chair legs in Silver Dollar City, and was the highest paid carver.  One day his boss came into the shop, set a lathe down in front of him and said, “The carvers working for my competitors are making chair legs much cheaper on a lathe.  I can’t compete.  You have to learn how to carve on a lathe or lose your job.”

    Then the boss put a dowel of wood in the lathe, turned on the machine, and said, “You have one month to learn how to carve on a lathe or your fired!”  The carver was devastated.  

    Then a man came into the shop who knew how to carve on a lathe.  “What’s the matter,” he asked.   The carver explained his plight.

    “My whole world just changed and I don’t know what to do.  The wood is going so fast in this machine I can’t see the grain to carve!  It’s going too fast.  I don’t know how to begin.”

    Some people today are like that carver.  The new world is going so fast in so many strange new ways they don’t know how to respond to it.  They don’t know how to begin or what to do.  They feel helpless and dejected, just like the old carver.

    The new man said, “That’s no problem.  You are just using the wrong story. You’re trying to carve on a lathe with a knife story.  That won’t work.  What you need is a lathe story.   

    “Put down your knife and pick up the lathe tool.  Now there are only two things you can do with a lathe tool. You can move it in and out and you can move it back and forth, but within those two motions you can carve all the most beautiful curves and swirls your art can imagine.”

    The carver was inspired by the new story, and he tried it.  Soon he was carving, on a lathe, the most beautiful chair legs in Silver Dollar City, and he got a raise in pay.

    What was the difference between being fired for not being able to deal with things going so fast in so many new ways, and being successful with all this rapid change and getting a raise in pay?  

    Having the right story!

    

    We need a new big story for knowing what to do with all this rapid change in the world.  The Story of the Flowers of the Universe told below is the right story for living successfully in the fast changing new global knowledge civilization now growing all around the Earth.  What we need now is a new story that is right for the new global environment in which all humans now find themselves living.  Where does such a story come from and how do humans use such a story?

    All animals have evolved a system for adapting.  For example, bees have a system, for adapting to a new environment.  They find a patch of flowers rich with pollen and build a hive in a nearby tree.  Then they use royal jelly to make a queen for reproduction, and proceed to follow their hardwired social systems which works for the bees to survive, flourish and reproduce generation after generation in this type of environment. 

    Humans use E>N>K>E>C>C.  We have already considered the new global environment and human needs in the new environment.  Now we look at the knowledge function.  

    First we have to figure out how to think about this new world.  Part of the knowledge function is to develop an idea of how all this vast newness can work together to allow human success.  We have to get our collective mind around it so we understand it and not feel lost and overwhelmed by it.  Since we live by our stories, we need a new story that does this.  This kind of a story is called a worldview.

    Peter Berger in Sacred Canopy called this kind of story a nomos, a description of meaningful order which guided a society to live understand and live successfully in an environment.  A nomos is a worldview.  We need a big worldview for our new environment.

    We need a worldview that includes all we know now, for example all we know in science, religion and history, all we are experiencing now.  We need a new story that is big enough to contain all this, make consistent sense of it all, and still have room for more new knowledge.  We need a dramatic, new, comprehensive worldview of where it all came from, where we are, how we got here, who we are and what we do now to succeed in life.  That is a big story, but that is what a worldview is.

    When we ask where it all came from, it seems human of all ages have had the same answer.  Each age typically puts it's answer in the creation story of its mythology, its worldview.   

    A study of the world’s mythology from prehistoric hunter-gatherer times to the modern scientific era shows that all humans for all time have thought that everything came from one, that there is one source of all.   This is the beginning of understand what is going on.  What ever it is, it has all come from one source.  Humans have always seen it that way.

    The dramatic difference in the myths and human religions and philosophies of life is what the source of all is.  These show that humans have very different views of the one source of all.  

    Some believe that the source of all is natural, is somehow a part of physical reality.  Some believe in the supernatural, that the source of all is somehow spiritual or supernatural, beyond physical reality. 

    Houston Smith in Why Religion Matters said humans have viewed the source of all in four mutually exclusive ways:

Nothing Is God

Many Gods

One God

Everything Is God

    Logically you can’t believe in more than one of these at a time, but humans in their wisdom often do.   The problem for humans, now that we live in one global world, is how do we talk to each other about the source of all and share our experiences of how the source of all we all believe in has guided us to live successfully? 

    Humans have sought to learn how to achieve their common goal in life, human happiness, through their religions, but their religions are dramatically different.  Now that all humans live in one global community, they need too learn how to share with each other what they know about how to be happy, even though they live by different religions and ways of life.

    As they move into the new civilization they bring with them the attitudes from the old civilizations.  This means that each one tries to convert the other to his or her religion or way of life, before trying to explain how to live successfully.  

    This won’t work.   Different people take different things for granted as true, so they will not convert, simply to get advice which is not real to them.  They need to get the advice, but in a way that they can apply it within what is real to them, within their own religion or way of life.

    The answer seems to be to have one common name for the source of all.  This way all can talk to each other about how the source of all guides each person to full life.  Each one understands that the source of all being discussed is his or her understanding of the source of all, his or her god or natural source.

    We look around at current human knowledge, and ask what the common name should be.  What shall we call the source of all and why?

    Everywhere we look in the universe and beyond, there is mystery beyond the possibility of human understanding.  We have our new understanding of dark energy, dark matter, the vastness of the universe with billions of galaxies such as ours, each of which has billion of stars such as our Sun, and the possibility of our universe being in a vaster soup of multiverses along with our new understanding of the limitations of the human brain and machines.  All this makes it clear to us that it is impossible for humans to understanding everything.  We cannot prove anything for certain and we are surrounded by mystery.

    It may be mysterious, but everywhere we look in the universe there is order.  What works on Earth works the same way throughout the visible universe.  That is how science has been able to understand what it knows about the universe, because of this universal order.

    Humans believe all of this has come from one source of all, but we do not know if it is natural or spiritual.  In reality, for humans, the answer is shrouded in mystery.  To talk about it with each other, we need a name that covers both.  What shall be the common name of the source of all?  

    Let us use what the universe reveals to us:

Mystery reveals the Divine.

Order reveals the Harmony

The common name for the source of all is the

Divine Harmony

    Now, with our different views of the source of all, we can talk to each other about how the Divine Harmony guides each of us to full life.  By using the common name, we can share with each other our successful experiences with the Divine Harmony, without arguing about which view is correct.  We also can use the common name to describe the source of all in our worldview.

NEW WORLDVIEW

    To survive in the new global community, we need a new worldview that is big enough to include all we know in science, religion and history and have room for more new knowledge.  The new worldview is needs to be big enough so we can make sense of it all and have an idea of how the live in it so we thrive in a meaningful way.  Where did everything come from that we experience today?  We need a new creation story, a new big worldview.

    Here is a new creation story that is big enough to serve as the worldview for the new global knowledge civilization.  It is called

 The Story 

Of 

The Flowers of the Universe

Out of the harmony The Divine Harmony

Created the universe

Created the potential for existence in the universe at ever higher levels of organization with new emergent attributes of existence at each level that would not exist at lower levels

Created a method for creating that existence, the process of evolution, where a whole divides into parts (the Big Bang) and parts combine to form larger and larger wholes at each level with new emergent attributes for each whole

leading to the rise of existence in the universe

Created a plan for the universe when it had that unimaginable 

high-level existence in it

Started the universe going with the Big Bang

    After the Big Bang the history of the universe unfolded in four stages of evolution.  Each stage had its own creativity engine which produced most of the new existence during that stage.  Each stage produced existence at much higher levels of organization than the prior stage.  Here is a diagram of the four stages showing the rise of existence in the universe:

 

    The first stage was expansion evolution and the creativity engine was symmetry-breaking.  The original fireball expanded and cooled, and like ice forming out of cooling water, the four forces and matter froze out.  The four forces were the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force and gravity.

    When the universe had expanded and cooled enough for the particles of matter to slow down enough to be captured by the forces, the second stage of evolution began.   This was chance evolution.  The creativity engine of this stage was chance interaction of self-organizing systems.  For example two dry gasses at room temperature, with two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, would come close enough to each other by chance for the forces to bind them and hold them together into a new whole, a water molecule, and the new attribute of wetness at room temperature emerged into existence.  

    The parts at the part level were combined into a new whole at the higher whole level, which produced the new emergent attribute. If the new whole survived in the environment, it became a stable part for a still larger whole.  This is how the rise of existence in the universe progressed upward naturally level by survivable level.

    The second stage of evolution produced much of the existence in the universe today.   It produced quarks, particles, atoms, molecules, gasses, nebula, galaxies, stars and star furnaces which produced the elements above hydrogen (1 proton), helium (2 protons) and lithium (3 protons), which were produced before stars. Star furnaces combined these simple atoms to produce the higher elements all the way up to uranium (92 protons).  Chance evolution also produced planets, land, water, atmosphere, macromolecules, RNA, DNA and cell membranes.

    Then on one planet, so far as we know, these big molecules and cell membranes combined to form the first cell of life, and the third stage of evolution began, biological evolution.  The creativity engine during this stage was the living species.  It continued the rise of existence by producing living plants and animals of larger and larger size and more and more complexity.  

    It produced humans, and humans produced machines.  It took 13.7 billion years to get here, but the rise of existence in the universe continues to still higher levels of organization.

    Humans produced machines that allowed humans to extend their human abilities and do more than biology had equipped them to do physically.  The secret was the brain which biology had equipped them to use.

    The great increase in human knowledge allowed humans to connect themselves together into a global marketplace and global community, where billions of creative individuals could produce and share new knowledge and existence far faster and at far higher levels of organization than is possible with biological evolution.  

    In biological evolution new existence is created by the slow mutation of genes and trial and error over many generations. This new stage of evolution is based on the direct creation of new knowledge of how to cause change from existing knowledge, and efficient testing of new ideas in computers and test devices, before committing the energy to build a whole new type of existence.  Also since knowledge can be shared with the machines allowing storage and retrieval available to every human over the Internet, billions of creators can work on billions of new ideas at once.  

    Biological evolution was based on genetic mutation and generations of living phenotypes.  Knowledge evolution is much faster and more efficient, because it is based on using knowledge to create more new knowledge and existence. Therefore it is called knowledge evolution. 

    The creativity engine of the third stage of evolution, biological evolution, was the living species.  The new creativity engine of the fourth stage of evolution, knowledge evolution, is a knowledge civilization.  It is a self-sustaining community that houses the billions of creative humans and their machines, which produce the new creativity.  It has an economy that produces new knowledge and existence at ever higher levels of organization.  It carries on the rise of existence in the universe to unimaginable high levels. 

    A knowledge civilization produces a continuous blossoming of new knowledge and existence in the universe.  Therefore it is called a flower of the universe.   

    A symbol of the knowledge civilization in this era of life plus machines includes a representation of life, of machines and of the new knowledge and existence they are producing in the universe.  This is the evolutionary role of the knowledge civilization: to continue the rise of existence in the universe at ever-higher levels of organization, far beyond what biological evolution can do.

    The symbol of a knowledge civilization has a lotus flower representing life, a computer chip in the middle representing machines and laser beams going out in all directions from the lotus petals representing the knowledge civilization creating and sending the new knowledge and existence out into the universe.  Here is the symbol of the knowledge civilization:

 

    One knowledge civilization can reproduce to form other knowledge civilizations.  It can create a platform in space and transfer to it a few billion humans, their machines and a copy of its knowledge base.  Then the new knowledge civilization can set off into distant space to blossom and reproduce on its own.

    One flower of the universe becomes two, two become four and on and on, until the universe eventually becomes a garden blossoming in full bloom with unimaginable high-level existence.   This is the era of the Flowers of the Universe.  Here is an example of what it would be like:

 

    Every point of light in the background is a galaxy of billions of stars like our Milky Way galaxy.  This picture was taken by NASA with the Deep Field Imager on the Hubble Space Telescope.   The knowledge civilizations have been added to show the era of the Flowers of the Universe.

    Biological evolution began presumably with the first cell of life.  Knowledge evolution begins with the first  knowledge civilization to evolve.

    So far as we humans know the first knowledge civilization to evolve anywhere in the universe is here on Earth now.  Humans evolved to the point where they could create machines to extend human abilities.  That allowed us to connect all humans together into one global marketplace and one global community.  In our global world we are each creating and marketing new products and services with each other, and creating and sharing new knowledge and existence with each other and with the universe.  When this began to happen the first knowledge civilization was born.

    It is impossible to pick an exact date when such a large change happened, but Allen Greenspan and the author separately picked the same symbolic date.  The author described it in this poem:

On the evening of November 9, 1989

The free market wind blew down the Berlin Wall

And began building a greenbelt of market economies 

all around the earth

Forming the global knowledge market economy

The foundation of the global knowledge civilization.

    Greenspan in his 2007 book Age of Turbulence said that after the wall came down the stark contrast between the dismal failure of the East German managed economy and the glorious success of the West German market economy convinced the Communist counties to abandon managed economies and adopt some form of market economy.  

    Greenspan predicted it would take forty years from approximately 1990 to 2030 for the transition from managed economies to market economies to be complete around the world.  Then all these local market economies will be merged by the Internet and global transportation into one global knowledge market economy, a market economy of billions of creators and consumes connected together one-to-one and one-to-many, the most powerful economy the world has ever known. 

    This new global knowledge market economy is the foundation of the new global knowledge civilization on Earth, the first flower of the universe, the beginning of the fourth stage of evolution, knowledge evolution.

    A knowledge economy has as its main product, and source of new value, knowledge.   It is an economy that is hungry for the creation of new knowledge so its eager consumers can have products and services that are newer, better, faster and cheaper.  That is what they will buy.  That is what the producers must sell if they are to survive in the global marketplace.

    The new global knowledge market economy is based on mass creativity.  Mass creativity requires the creativity of all the people, which means both men and women must be equally creative, which means men and women must be equal in society for this economy to flourish for the people.

    The equality of men and women requires the equality of the masculine and the feminine principles in the global culture.  Most religions in the world have a masculine God.  Therefore to provide balance between the masculine and the feminine, we need a feminine name for the global knowledge civilization.

    The global knowledge civilization all around the Earth is the first to evolve, so far as we know.  With its continuous blossoming of new knowledge and existence it is the First Flower of the Universe.  It also reproduces all the other knowledge civilizations, so it is the Mother of all the other Flowers of the Universe, and can be named E V E after Eve the mother of all the living the Bible in Genesis 3:20. 

    The global knowledge civilization all around the Earth is E V E, the First Flower of the Universe, the Mother of all the other Flowers of the Universe.

 

    The symbol for E V E is a knowledge Civilization with the Earth in the center.  It looks like this:

 

E V E 

The First Flower of the Universe

The Mother Of All The Other

Flowers of the Universe

    What is the role of humans in E V E?  What do we do in the global knowledge civilization to live successfully? 

    We humans are part of the flow of evolution according to our latest understanding of science.  With all that we know it makes the most sense to us.  If this is so, we are a natural part of a larger flow of history in one direction toward a conclusion.  Our story tells us the conclusion is that when the universe has enough high level knowledge and existence in it, then Divine Harmony’s plan for the universe may be fulfilled.  We can not know what that is but we are an evolved, critical part of it.

    We see the rise of existence continuing since the Big Bang to produce all the wonders of the universe.  Then we realize it has been by the process of evolution, the Divine Harmony’s process. 

    Since it is the Divine Harmony’s process of evolution, it is good and as a part of this whole we are good,.  We realize that evolution occurs in stages and that the third stage, biological evolution has been overcome by the fourth stage, knowledge evolution, with its new creativity engines, knowledge civilizations, that carry on the rise of existence far beyond what biological evolution can do.

    Then it dawns on us, who is the center of this new level of creation in the universe?   Who does the new creation in the knowledge civilization?  Humans!  

    The machines produce what we create, but the humans do the creativity.  We use our inspiration to conceive it and our innovation to design it.  Then we direct the machines to produce it, market it and store it for future use.

    We humans realize we have a new cosmic duty we never had before.  We humans are now the leading edge of new creation in the universe.  It is no longer random genetic drift in living species.  We are now the leading edge of creation of new knowledge and existence at higher levels of organization, with new emergent attributes at each level, far beyond what can be done by biological evolution or any other system in the universe, so far as we know.  

    It us up to us, for our time, to carry on the rise of existence in the universe which began with the Big Bang and is going on to the fulfillment of the Divine Harmony’s plan for the universe.  So far as we know, we are alone in the universe.  We have the first knowledge civilization to evolve in the universe, to begin this fourth stage of evolution, which will continue the rise of existence in the universe to its fulfillment.  It is up to us. 

    According to biological evolution it all started with the first cell of life.  Suppose the first cell of life had not worked very well.  A cell has parts called organelles.  Supposed the organelles refused to work together, but instead fought each other and destroyed each other, so that eventually the first cell of life died before dividing to produce the second cell.  There would have been no living species and no us!  The rise of existence in the universe would have stopped with the death of the first and only cell of life.  The Divine Harmony’s plan for the universe would not have been fulfilled.

    Now we live in the first knowledge civilization.  We have to live fully as we evolved to live to do our part to make the knowledge civilization work smoothly to carry on our part of the rise of existence in the history of the universe.

    If we don’t do it, the rise of existence in the universe, which began with the Big Bang, may stop with us.  We can do our evolved part and carry it forward for our time, or not live as we evolved to live and let it stop with our extinction as a species.  It is solely up to us now, so far as we know.   What do we do? 

    It is our cosmic duty, to nurture E V E to full bloom and reproduction many times to launch the era of the Flowers of the Universe.  How do we do this?  We do it by each one of us living as we evolved to live, to do our part in our species, to each live a fulfilled life as a whole organism, a whole person, in short to be happy.

    If we each become fully ourselves, we will be fulfilled.  We will be all we evolved to be.  We will contribute our talents, abilities and creativity to the evolved mission of the global knowledge civilization.   

    If we will live in global peace, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness, we will do our part. We will be creative, as none other can, we will nurture others to do the same, and we will make the global knowledge market economy produce the continuous blossoming of new existence needed by the universe.

    Here is how evolution designed it to work in its natural harmony:

Fulfillment of the Individual as a Whole Person (Happiness)

Leads to

Fulfillment of the Knowledge Civilization

Fulfillment of the Knowledge Civilizations

Leads to

Fulfillment of the Universe 

    This is the natural harmony of the universe.  This is how it all works together to accomplish the Divine Harmony’s plan. 

    If we live as we evolved to live, what is our reward for doing our part?  Our human reward at the beginning of the fourth stage of evolution, knowledge evolution, in our global knowledge civilization, is to live in global peace, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness each guided by intimate inner friendship with our understanding of the Divine Harmony.   

    What we get is fulfilled life as a whole person, happiness and contentment in “this life” and being in the unity and love of the Divine Harmony forever.  “This life” may be one human lifetime leading to Heaven, or many lifetimes on the Wheel of Life leading to Nirvana or Oneness with the Infinite.  

    In the end we all end up in the unity and love of the Divine Harmony forever.  We have all served ourselves, each other and the Divine Harmony’s plan.

This Concludes

 

The Story of the Flowers of the Universe

    This is the Story of the Flowers of the Universe.  It is the worldview of the new global knowledge civilization that helps us understand all that is going on around us and our role in it to do our part and live successfully. It is a big enough story to include all we know in science, religion and history, have room for more discovery, make sense of it all, and show us how to live succesfuly in such a world.  This is the world view of E V E , the global knowledge civilization now growing all around the Earth.  It is offered as the worldview for the new Gloabl Age.