TIme to reflect on ourselves and our paradigm for true evolution to occur....

Here's an excerpt from Hazel Henderson's 1978 book "Creating Alternative Futures" which points to the need to evaluate our perspective as a core mechanism of progress....

"The dreams of technology-based hedonism, where machines would work and people would be trained for leisure, were, I believe, premature and based on inadequate ecological models. They will remain beyond our reach until we learn to control our population, reduce the impacts of our technology, and share our resources more equitably. It is time for the science and technology of industrialism to realize it's conceptual limitations. The stakes have never been higher for human survival. We need a new scientific paradigm, more suitable for a science that stands at the brink of nuclear disaster and genetic manipulation, a science that has the potential of enhancing human evolutionary possibilities or turning us into a race of what John Leonard calls, 'bionic junkies.' This new scientific approach must be self-reflective. The old, innocent view - 'scientist observing phenomenon' - will no longer suffice. Today we must pull back one 'photo frame' and include a new composite view: 'scientist observing her or himself observing phenomenon.' This reflective paradigm exists in psychology, where those seeking to practice psychoanalysis on their fellow creatures must themselves submit to a prior psychoanalysis."

"Now, perhaps we should urge all scientists to undergo psychoanalysis to understand their own deeper motivations, impulses, and ego needs....

.... Perhaps William Irwin Thompson is right when he notes that we need to rediscover the Pythagorean tradition in science rather than to continue to pursue today's Archimedean science with its seeking to control nature through prediction and experimentation. Thompson notes that he Pythagorean approach embraced a mystical view of science that was integrated with art and religion. Fritjof Capra, in "Tao of Physics" draws the same conclusions and shows how physics has progressed in this century to an ever more metaphysical world view, more consistent with the direct, experiential insights of Eastern religious traditions than with the atomistic, mechanistic view characteristic of the now receding industrial age. Dr. John Todd of the New Alchemy Institute typifies the new reverence which now must inform our scientific enterprise. He sees evolution not as pre-programmed, but as a continual sacred dialogue with our planet.  Radical horticulturalists Alan Chadwick and John Jeavons of California share this view of their methods of producing astonishing yields. Such augmenting of natural productivity and reintegrating our activities into biospheric processes is already leading to a design revolution and a rethinking of many problems of production and of energy and materials management.....

... Our own capabilities and imaginations will be stretched by our current crisis. Millions of us are transcending our old fragmented viewpoints and rising to anew levels of human awareness and many academic fields are undergoing creative ferment. Time is short; but we can all do no less than play our part in this human evolutionary struggle."