Evolving Public Culture

How We Respond to Post Truth And Fake News Matters

We stand at a moment in time when the weaponizing of sex and the manufacturing of scandals is used to undermine leaders and manipulate politics, religion and culture via digital communications at a faster rate than any other time in history. The recent emergents of a post-truth society and fake or distorted news now generate more engagement than truth on social media and are having an enormous impact on the shaping people’s viewpoints and beliefs.

If you use the internet for any form of communication including…

  • Writing emails
  • Posting and commenting on social media
  • Sharing articles and blog posts
  • Creating or viewing videos
  • Participating in live broadcasts (FB Live, Google Hangouts etc..)
  • Reading the news

…then you are participating in digital culture.

The question is, does your participation contribute to the awakening and evolution of culture, or does your participation contribute to the perpetuation of false negative memes and distortions of the truth?

It’s not an easy question to answer, because most of us believe that our actions are well intentioned…. for instance:

  • You share an article with friends because you think it’s about an important topic and worthwhile read but you have not taken the time to see if the information in it is verified…
  • You make a critical comment on a social media post because you want to engage in a conversation that’s meaningful to you but you have made assumptions about what’s true in the story you are commenting on…
  • You sign a petition to take a stand against something such as sexual abuse, but are unaware that your own confirmation bias has lead you to believe the information being shared is fact…
  • You write a blog post or article about a cause or topic that you’re passionate about but you haven’t verified the information from both sides of the story before publishing it…

You see, if you don’t understand the basic tenets for discerning whether or not a post or an article is fact or simply opinion, stated as fact…and if you don’t take the time to weigh your opinions with basic moral and ethical standards before you press ‘publish’ or ‘post’, then you unconsciously become an instrument for the advancement of a post-truth society. In a post-truth America, justice, integrity, and basic goodness are sacrificed on the altar of click bait, political smear campaigns and corrupt grasping for profit or power.

Our response to post-truth and fake news was to create a series of blog-posts dedicated to restoring the fundamental principles of human dignity, fair process and integrity in the digital age. It’s called Evolving Public Culture.

The invitation of Evolving Public Culture is to become an activist for a planetary awakening by contributing to the conversation and choosing to take a bold stand for truth, integrity and justice.

Read some of our blog-posts below:

Evolving Public Culture2023-06-17T08:02:16-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni: From the Failure to Participate in the Conspiring of Reality to Conspiracy Theory

On the Failure of Eros, First Principles, and a Portal to Evolution’s Next Step

by Dr. Marc Gafni

This article is an edited Transcript from One Church – Episode 189 – May 24, 2020. You can watch the whole episode on the Watch page of the One Mountain, Many Paths Website. One Mountain, Many Paths is a project of our sister organization, the Foundation for Conscious Evolution.

Read below or download the article here:

The Great Conspiring of Reality: What Do Conspiracy Theories Get Right?

On every news channel in the world in the last six or seven weeks, the conversation is around one thing. The conversation is around conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory has moved from the periphery of culture, from its fringe to its center. Why has conspiracy theory moved from fringe to center, at this particular moment in time? And why do we need to talk about it, why does it matter? In newspapers in Asia and in Europe and in South America and in Africa, all over the United States, Mexico, Canada, why is conspiracy theory in the mainstream media the lead item? Why is it so critical for us to understand this?

Because it’s actually speaking to something unbelievably important. The sensemaking that we need to do is to understand this in the largest light. The sensemaking that’s being done around conspiracy theory, there is some truth, there are some good things being said, but it’s so shallow, almost insipid, pallid. Neither the conspiracy theorists don’t understand the mainstream media, the mainstream media doesn’t understand the conspiracy theorists. Both of them dismiss each other. It’s an expression of the larger polarization, the larger culture war.

Why are we attracted to conspiracy theory? Why is it driving the click bait structure of the virtual world? What is attractive in it? Where is the allurement? Where is the attraction? That’s the deep question. Anyone who believes every conspiracy theory is a fool. Anyone who doesn’t believe any conspiracy theories is also a fool, perhaps a greater fool.

(more…)

Dr. Marc Gafni: From the Failure to Participate in the Conspiring of Reality to Conspiracy Theory2023-06-17T12:26:43-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni: On the Crucial Import of Good Spiritual Sense Making in Times of Crisis

Note: This is the lightly edited, updated, and expanded transcript of an oral talk given by Dr. Marc Gafni towards the end of March, 2020. The original talk is found here.

Welcome, everyone. It’s a hard time. It’s a painful time. What we want to do in this short article is what we might call sense making. It’s a time when we need to do sense making – both personal and collective.

Part of meeting this challenge – and any challenge – is having a common thread, a shared understanding of the truth, both subjective interior and objective exterior truth, based on the best information we have, the best cumulative wisdom we have drawn from all of its sources, contemporary as well as ancient. We might call this shared sense making common sense. We need common sense making to understand everything that is happening and our place in it. But it is not only an interior necessity for our internal well-being and sanity – which of course has enormous impact on our external health [see PsychoNeuroImmunology and all of the extensive literature on the feedback loop between interiors and exteriors] – but it is more than even that.

It is deeper than that. This is a moment where we need to come together deeply – as One People, One World, One Cause, One Love, One Heart, to fight for the common good against a common enemy. And yet although it is not New Age, politically correct, it is appropriate to call a virus that kills people a common enemy. Obviously viruses are not the enemy. We are each constituted by 380 trillion viruses. We are viruses. But this particular virus that is killing us is in this moment our enemy. To fight it and other deadly mutations of the virus in the future we need however not only to create a vaccine but to do deeper sense making and understand as best as we can the deeper fact patterns that caused the virus. To do that we need common sense or common sense making, a shared story, a narrative thread of meaning that we can all locate ourselves inside of…

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Dr. Marc Gafni: On the Crucial Import of Good Spiritual Sense Making in Times of Crisis2023-06-17T13:25:49-07:00

The Apocalypse of the Modern World-System & Related Possibilities for Democratizing Enlightenment

By Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Zachary Stein

Abstract: Two narratives about the nature of our current historical moment are brought together in the interest of provoking a reconsideration of “collective enlightenment,” or what we term the democratization of enlightenment. World-systems analysis is a transdisciplinary field focused on the evolution and future of the modern world. Leaders in this field have charted long-term limits and end games, placing our current era in the heart of the modern world-system’s epochal and final crises. Esoteric religion and mystical traditions have also located our era at the heart of a world-transformation. From Teilhard de Chardin to Process Theology, a divinely inspired turning point in Earth’s evolution has been argued to be immanent. The process of replacing the modern world-system involves the widespread democratization of enlightenment. Engaging in concrete utopian theorizing, we suggest that tomorrow’s world will involve certain widespread “social miracles”— making enlightenment an everyday thing. Drawing on mythic and biblical imagery, we suggest the apocalypse of the modern world-system will be accompanied by widespread transformations of collective consciousness—a Planetary Awakening through Unique Self Symphonies.

Download the PDF Version of the Paper
The Apocalypse of the Modern World-System & Related Possibilities for Democratizing Enlightenment2023-09-02T06:38:01-07:00

Unique Selves in a Self-Organizing Universe: A Politics of Evolutionary Love by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Zachary Stein

From an unedited draft of the forthcoming book Towards a New Politics of Evolutionary Love

by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Zachary Stein

Dixit-Motiwala-unsplashThe core structural principle from Integral Meta-Theory involved in the formation of a Unique Self Symphony is the scientific principle of self-organization. The idea of self-organization is according to many the single most important scientific idea to emerge in the last sixty years. It exists at every level of reality and across all four quadrants. While many scientific accounts focus only on self-organization in systems and structures in biology or cybernetics (i.e., Lower-Right reductionism), there is a whole history of work in psychology and social theory dedicated to modeling how minds and cultures are complex dynamical systems, that evolve and self-organize in remarkable ways.

Multiple scientific fields, when held in an Integral embrace, tell us that self-organization is a basic principle of reality at all levels. Most forms of evolutionary emergence are a function of this ubiquitous tendency of all life and matter toward self-organization. This leads to the idea of an inherently creative cosmos, always evolving and organizing at higher and higher levels. Throughout the evolution of the world it appears that self-organization is often catalyzed via the leveraging of uniqueness. When you look at the emergence of complex processes in nature that display remarkable forms of self-organization, such as an ecosystem like swamp or rainforest, they are always complex symbiotic systems in which there are an endless number of unique niches.

This is why one of the core ideas behind the new politics of outrageous love is enabling self-organization at the level of human culture. So we must ask, what enables self-organization at the level of human culture? The answers is clear and in keeping with both the best of what we know about evolutionary theory and the best of our ideas for political and personal Enlightenment: the catalyst of self-organization in human socio–cultural systems is the Unique Self. Paradoxically, this means that the “shape” every human needs to assume in order to contribute to the creation of a healthy social organism is unique. Strange as it may sound, a just and healthy society needs to “socially engineer” for uniqueness, especially the institutions that shape human personalities and self-understandings: schools, news media, entertainment industries, computer technologies industries, etc. The whole social system would be like an incubator for uniqueness.

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Unique Selves in a Self-Organizing Universe: A Politics of Evolutionary Love by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Zachary Stein2023-09-12T09:57:06-07:00

Unique Self Health & Medicine by Drs. Venu & Vinay Julapalli

Read this White Paper by Board Members Venodhar Rao Julapalli, M.D. and Vinay Rao Julapalli, M.D., F.A.C.C.

There is a dire need for the integration of the art, science, and morality of medicine. This paper explores the deep implications of the Unique Self in integrating medicine. Co-authors and physicians Venu and Vinay Julapalli call on their extensive understanding of the promises and pitfalls of modern health care to reconceive the practice of medicine. The paper provides the framework to evolve medicine through the emergent Unique Self insight. At stake is no less than the future of how we care for ourselves and each other.

Unique Self and the Future of Medicine

Abstract:

Medicine is at a critical crossroads in its evolution from antiquity to our modern age. This article aims to reconceive the future of medicine. Key to this conception is an understanding of the evolution of individual development. To this end, the discussion will first outline the stations of the selves, on the path to what has been termed the Unique Self by spiritual thinker Marc Gafni. Next, the discussion will distinguish between two poles of development and outlook, in order to understand how the insight of Unique Self integrates these dualities. It will then view the Unique Self from three perspectives, or four quadrants, of reality and also illustrate how Unique Self appreciates the balance between part and whole. The discussion will subsequently correlate the stations of the selves with the history of medicine and further examine dualities in medicine that parallel those of the self . It will then elucidate how an understanding of Unique Self fundamentally shifts our envisioning of the practice of medicine. This shift renews the unique calling that is the art and science of healing.

Introduction

Universal to the human experience is care of our health. Medicine is defined as “the science and art dealing with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease.” The topic of medicine is therefore relevant to all of humanity.In the United States, the practice of medicine has reached a critical crossroads. National spending on health care has been estimated to total $2.8 trillion in 2012, which is 18% of the gross domestic product (GDP). It is projected to increase to about 25% of GDP and 40% of total federal spending by 2037. Few dispute that this trajectory is unsustainable.

The dispute begins in how to alter this trajectory. The debate has raged on from multiple perspectives. Some have focused on the structures of payment for health care, while others have investigated the sources of health care pricing. Some have proposed the standardization of health care delivery with an emphasis on maximizing value through evidence-based medicine, while others have highlighted the role of the social determinants of health in influencing the rising costs of medical care. The Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March 2010, expanded health insurance coverage for Americans and introduced programs designed to slow spending on health care. However, there is no clear consensus on its ultimate effect in bending the health care cost curve down.

Most of the recent discussions on the practice of medicine have preferentially approached health care as an object. Evidence-based guidelines, quality measures, value-based metrics, and pay-for-performance programs presuppose an objective perspective on medicine. The increasingly acknowledged urgency of controlling spiraling health care costs has certainly advantaged this perspective, along with desires to improve patient safety and even out regional variations in health care delivery.

Somewhat drowned out in the recent movements in medicine is the voice of medical humanism. This voice presents medicine from a subjective perspective, as it highlights the individual values, goals, and preferences of a patient with respect to clinical decision making. From this perspective, paramount are factors such as honoring the dignity of patients and their families, acknowledging their cultural and ethical sensitivities, sharing clinical decision making between the patient and the physician, and upholding the autonomy of the patient in making medical decisions. Physicians voicing humanism in medicine feel that the subjective aspect is crucial in maintaining medical professionalism, demonstrating good clinical judgment, and caring for patients near the end of life. They question the effectiveness of health care based merely on utilitarian medical decision analyses, rather than nuanced conversations between the patient and physician on the patient’s perception of his/her illness and its treatment.

The two perspectives, medicine as an objective science and medicine as a subjective art, are often diametrically opposed to each other. Health care objectivists regret that “Our current health care system is essentially a cottage industry of noninteg rated, dedicated artisans who eschew standardization.” They criticize the current system as one that “overvalues local autonomy and undervalues disciplined science.” In subjective medicine, “‘Good doctors’ are celebrated for their unwavering dedication to doing whatever it takes to care for their individual patients.” In their view, this leads to excessive tests and procedures, a fragmentation of care, limited oversight of such care, and ultimately wasteful and unreliable medicine.

Health care subjectivists, on the other hand, lament that “Reducing medicine to economics makes a mockery of the bond between the healer and the sick.” They eschew the replacement of terms such as “doctors” and “nurses” with “providers,” and “patients” with “customers” or “consumers.” They feel these terms are “reductionist; they ignore the essential psychological, spiritual, and humanistic dimens ions of the relationship – the aspects that traditionally made medicine a ‘calling,’ in which altruism overshadowed personal gain.” In objective medicine, the “discourse shifts the focus from the good of the individual to the exigencies of the system and its costs.” In their view, this results in diminished independent and creative decision making, dehumanization of the patient and professional, destruction of the trust so crucial to the patient-doctor relationship, and ultimately a demeaning of medicine.

How best can we reconcile these two positions in a way that includes and transcends them both? Is there another perspective that honors medicine both as a science and as an art, without congealing the two sides into a muddled compromise that satisfies neither?

Acknowledging the instability of the current system, can we evolve medicine to a practice of greater value, efficiency, meaning, and purpose?

In the rest of this discussion, we aim to reconceive the future of medicine. Key to this conception is an understanding of the evolution of individual development. To this end, we will first outline the stations of the selves, on the path to what has been termed the Unique Self by spiritual thinker Marc Gafni. Next, we will distinguish between two poles of development and outlook, in order to understand how the insight of Unique Self integrates these dualities. We will then discuss the Unique Self from three perspectives, or four quadrants, of reality and also see how Unique Self appreciates the balance between part and whole. We will subsequently correlate the stations of the selves with the history of medicine and further examine dualities in medicine that parallel those of the self. We will finally outline how an understanding of Unique Self fundamentally shifts our envisioning of the practice of medicine. Our discussion will highlight the physician as the exemplar of the medical professional but can apply to any professional involved in caring for patients. All are included in the future of medicine.

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Unique Self Health & Medicine by Drs. Venu & Vinay Julapalli2023-09-12T10:00:41-07:00
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