Book Report
Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future – And a Way to Get There From Here.
by Bruce Liption and Steve Bhaerman
Hay House Publichsers, 2009
Get the story wrong – get the planet wrong. Scientists say we are in the midst of the sixth major planetwide dieoff in the history of Earth. For the first time, this mass extinction is human caused. Because we are captive to the wrong story – we are doing the wrong things. Liption and Bhaerman describe the four ways that we’ve got it all wrong…And, they tell the leading edge science story that is already know which would fix our ills.
I am reviewing this book for two reasons – one is that Bruce Liption is a leading cell researcher who wrote, “The Biology of Belief.” That book gives understanding both of EFT and of fibromyalgia. The second reason for reviewing this book is Lipton’s powerful insight that our organizaing princicples are consistent from the level of a single cell, to the level of a complex animal, to the level of an entire human society. To paraphrase Liption Humans are a collection of 50 trillion cells, all cooperating in perfect harmony. Earth’s human population is just 7 billion – we should have an easy time cooperating and creating a world that works.
Getting our story’s to match our realities is the path towards a cooperative and successful future.
The wrong stories, and the leading edge alternatives:
- Only Matter Matters – our society operates according to the principles of Newtonian Physics, which leads to materialism, determinism, and reductionism. Leading edge science is quantum, that we are energy and consciousness, everything is related. When our story is that only matter matters we reduce everything to matter, from our acquisition of grades, to our collection of wealth. When our story is that we are all part of the same energy field, we get reverence for this material world, and cooperation.
- Survival of the fittest – The Darwinian myth of competition is enshrined everywhere from academia to sports, from businesses to nations. A competing story in Darwin’s time never got traction – that evolution is not “survival of the fittest,” but rather “death of the weakest one.” In essence, the lion kills only the weakest antelope, all the others survive. It’s a cooperative story, unlike survival of the fittest which has justified the accumulation of wealth, stratification of society, and ongoing wars. Cooperation is a leading edge scientific explanation of evolution.
- It’s in your Genes – Watson and Crick gave us the story of “Genetic Determinism” in 1953. Society still lives by this myth, even though scientists now understand that genes don’t determine much at all, they carry out instructions from the environment, and from our thoughts and consciousness. Our thoughts create our reality. When our thoughts are consumed by materialism and survival of the fittest, and when we justify this as genetic determinism, we get what we get, this planet in crisis.
- Evolution is Random – The myth that evolution is random, just chance mutations over billions of years, takes human responsibility out of the equation. So if really the fittest are the only ones to survive, then do whatever it takes and whatever you want for your own personal gain. Leading edge science recognizes that genetic evolution doesn’t happen much in peaceful times – that is the time when only random mutations are occurring – little experiments. Evolution doesn’t fix what’s not broken. But when a stress or a crisis evolves, starvation, toxin, etc, then evolution goes into hypermode. DNA starts spitting out all sorts of copies of itself, but with small changes in each strand. If a modified DNA actually comes up with a solution to a problem, then that DNA becomes the new standard and the cell reverts to its stable mode. Again – cooperation is what shows up under closer scientific examination.
Lipton and Bhaerman are both painfully blunt about the magnitude or our crisis, and also unboundedly hopeful about our thriving future. Yes, we are in a time of crisis, and yes, this is the time when evolution gets creative and new solutions are sought.
Fractal geometry is another reason, perhaps the major reason, that Lipton and Bhaerman are hopeful about our future. Fractals are basically repeating patterns that are similar from the smallest scale to the largest. For example the patter of veins in a leaf resembles the patterns of branches and twigs in the whole tree. It turns out that fractals describe nature. Nature is fractal – nature is filled with self similar repeating patterns from the smallest to the largest scales. And all these fractal patterns in nature are cooperative, not competitive. Our human fractal character is similar from the level of the cell, to the level of the body to the level of many bodies together, society. The basic structure is cooperation – we just happen to be out of alignment with our fractal nature now. Lipton and Bhaerman believe that we are destined, through this crisis of our times, to come back into alignment, as a global society of humans, in a mode of harmony and cooperation, just like the fractal nature of the cells of our body.
This a big book. All the cell biology and quantum brain reading that I’ve done are incorporated in SPONTANEOUS EVOLUTION, but the focus is different – this book looks at society as a whole and our prospects for surviving the 6th great planetary die off that scientists say we are now in the midst of. There are so many examples, and so much reference to our science views that I want to read and reread this book again and again. I have a feeling that Lipton and Bhaerman are correct in their assessment. I hope that we evolve before we cause our extinction.
P.S. How does this relate to EFT tapping and fibromyalgia. EFT is actually in line with leading edge science. EFT is consistent with a quantum energy understanding, and an epigenetic understanding, and a cooperative understanding of personal health. This is in contrast to the current medical understanding of fibromyalgia which approaches the disease from the four wrong worldviews –
- materialism (looking at symptoms, rather than energetic causes),
- Survival of the fittest (people with fibromyalgia have been dismissed by the medical profession as having a disease that is, “all in your head.”
- It’s in your genes –(looking for genetic causes, rather than epigenetic, or life experience causes for the expression of fibromyalgia)
- Evolution is Random – (fibromyalgia just is what it is – there is no trail that goes further back than the fight or flight response being stuck. There is no searching for why that response is stuck on, and how can that response be turned off.)
I will be reading this book again!