Ecohumanism: The Spontaneities of the Earth, Ziran, and K = 2

Abstract

guy burneko ECOHUMANISM: THE SPONTANEITIES OF THE EARTH, ZIRAN, AND K = 2The memorable notion of the spontaneities of the earth in Thomas Berry's The Dream of the Earth connotes in part the embodiment in ourselves (by our genes, instincts, psyche, and development) of the rhythms and currents of cosmic nature unfreighted by too much egoconcern for the conventional win-or-lose of things. It connotes the authentic and spontaneous expression, in language, body, art, ecstasy, and thought, of experience before it is divided into rational and egoperspectivated categories of self and other, order and disorder, or humans and nature. It also indicates degrees of freedom in interhuman and ecohuman relations that emerge among the patterns of nature without, however, being confined by or reducible to them. Differently put, the natural self-soing of our interhuman and ecohuman relations, to the degree it is authentically open to interbeing, cobecoming, and coevolution without being merely random or, alternatively, frustrated by interfering or coercive imposition-one person or system stultifyingly connected with another-manifests the ziran of unforced mutuality pivoting on the reciprocities of self and other, and those of chaos and order. Living on the yinyang edge of chaos and order is living in a way that is connectedly responsive and novelly coevolutionary with the tendencies of self and psyche, with experience, and with other persons and living systems without being held and fixed; without imposing, trapping, and binding, by and among these, and without being unrelated and dispersed or alienated with respect to these.The spontaneities of the earth as anthropocosmic ziran may be partly suggested also in evolutionary systems theorist Stuart Kauffman's formula, K = 2, in his book, The Origins of Order, where he writes that, "living systems exist in the solid regime near the edge of chaos." 1 In his book At Home in the Universe, Kauffman also notes of living systems and the emergence of naturally self-organizing complexity in the universe that, "just between, just near this phase tran-sition, just at the edge of chaos, the most complex behaviors can occur-orderly enough to ensure stability, yet full of flexibility and surprise." 2 K is the number or density of connections and mutual inputs among any N number of organelles, organisms, and systems. The number of K can vary; and their respective connections (apart from the number of them with respect to N) can also each vary as to their degree of bias, tendency, or activity-for example, active, passive, sometimes one or the other, both, neither-at, above, or below the degree predicted by pure chance or, say, half-on, half-off. "Sparsely connected networks [K = 2] exhibit internal order; densely connected ones veer into chaos and networks with a single connection per element freeze into mindlessly dull behavior." 3 Again, Kauffman observes-on the scaling between, pivoting around, and the interplexing of chaos and order in (computer models of) living, complex, and flexibly self-grow...

CONTEMPLATIVE ECOLOGY:GUAN觀 FOR A MORE-THAN-SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

“…of a genuine heart which feels and comprehend[s] reality by 'feeling and responsiveness' (ganying) from overall viewing." 4 In a contemporized narrative, auto-guan (ziguan?) is the sustainable coevolutionary process whose ontocosmological compresencing and ontohermeneutical self-understanding of cosmogenesis are embodied in the sustainable conduct and consciousness of ecohumane contemplatives maintaining links and manifold identification with the ever-present origin of being and becoming.…”