Heroes Not Zombies

For many years when I’ve taught about the different ways in which we develop an identity I’ve described a line with two poles.

At one end is “I”, the unique, separate, different “me”. We have a whole body system, the immune system, developed to be constantly on the alert for what is not “I”, whether it be a virus, another person’s genetic material, or a chemical substance from “outside”. The immune system is primed to quickly recognise any such foreign material and isolate or remove it.

At the other end is “we”, the connected self, the “me” which is part of “we”, whether that be in relationship with another single person, or with a group.

We all need to know that we are unique, that we are different and separate from others. What can come with that however, is a sense of disconnection, or loneliness. Just as importantly we need to know that we are connected, that we belong, that we “fit in” and that we love and are loved. What can come with that can be a loss of personal identity, a feeling of just being a number within the group.

I pointed out that this line with its two poles didn’t have a point somewhere along it where everything was balanced. It doesn’t work like that. We move continuously along the line, back and forth, changing our focus, our awareness and our sense of self, but never wholly living at only one of those poles.

Then last year, I read two books which mentioned concepts which fitted right in to this simple diagram. Thomas Berry’s The Great Work, where he beautifully describes the twin polar opposites of “wildness and discipline“.

When first the solar system gathered itself together with the sun as the center surrounded by the nine fragments of matter shaped into planets, the planets that we observe in the sky each night, these were all composed of the same matter; yet Mars turned into rock so firm that nothing fluid can exist there, and Jupiter remained a fiery mass of gases so fluid that nothing firm can exist there. Only the Earth became a living planet filled with those innumerable forms of geological structure and biological expression that we observe throughout the natural world……….The excess of discipline suppressed the wildness of Mars. The excess of wildness overcame the discipline of Jupiter. Their creativity was lost by an excess of one over the other.

The greater the wildness, the greater the emphasis on “I”, on separateness. The greater the discipline, the greater the emphasis on “we”, on the bonds, the connections.

And Howard Bloom’s The Global Mind, where he picks out five characteristics of complex adaptive systems and highlights the first two as “diversity generators” and “conformity enforcers”. Diversity generators increase the wildness and the sense of “I”, whilst the conformity enforcers increase the discipline and the sense of belonging.

I now have two lists with a line connecting them, and it still didn’t look right. It wasn’t a simple spectrum for example, and it wasn’t a line where there was some balanced point half way along where we “should” be. So, I turned the horizontal line into a vertical line running between the two lists, and then I bent the line into an “S” shape. Drawing a circle right around the whole image turned it into a yin yang symbol and I thought, “Yes, that’s it” – that’s the heart of the universe.

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“lub dub, lub dub, lub dub”

That’s what I was taught to listen for when I was first shown how to use a stethoscope. This was the natural sound of the heart. It was a beautiful rhythm. I think you can’t help being impressed, or even moved by it. I remember the first time I was taught to use another, similar, but different device – the pinna. A pinna was a plastic cone which you placed on a pregnant mum’s tum to listen to the baby’s heart beat. So fast, but so amazing. Thrilling every time. But it was a kind of private thrill because nobody else could hear it. These days, we use technology to show the beating heart of the baby, or to play the fast lub dubs through speakers so everyone can hear it.

The heart beat is a constant alternation of opposite states – systole, where the heart muscle is contracted and the chambers of the heart are emptied, and asystole, where the muscle rests and the chambers fill with blood. There is a such an amazing truth in that observation.

At the heart of the universe there is creation. There is a story of the universe, from The Big Bang, to the emergence of hydrogen and helium, the cycles of growth, expansion and contraction of the great billions of stars, to the creation of Planet Earth, at first lifeless, then rapidly (in universe timescales!), creating simple, single celled life forms, complex, multicellular ones, plants, creatures of the sea and the land, right up to our continually developing, evolving human race with its most peculiar characteristic of consciousness. This story is the the story of constant becoming. It’s a story of ever increasing amounts of uniqueness. The universe loves diversity. And it loves to make connections.

This is the heart of the universe. Two opposite processes, tightly bound together – diversification and integration.

We need both the diversity generators and the conformity enforcers as Howard Bloom refers to them in The Global Brain.

Can you hear it?

This constant creative heart beat?

Lub dub, lub dub.

Right here inside you, right here and right now, in your unique and singular life, the amazing, constant rhythm of becoming…..

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