Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Prologue
How I stumbled into my evolutionary epiphany............................ ix
Introduction.............................................................................................. 1
Poem: Stardust settles on earth to learn........................................ 8
I. Reflections on Evolution and Creation ................................... 9
1. Evolution 2.0: A Big History that embraces
all the sciences ...................................................................................... 11
Poem: Since the Big Bang never stopped ............................... 28
2. The Big CPU.......................................................................................... 29
Poem: The same golden force..................................................... 35
II. Reflections on Evolutionary Activism .......................... 37
3. What is the evolutionary activist worldview?.................................. 39
Poem: Showing up....................................................................... 42
4. My evolution in to evolutionary activism......................................... 43
Prayer: A prayer of evolutionary affirmation ..................... 48
5. What is evolutionary activism?........................................................... 49
Poem: Riotous meadow people ................................................. 54
6. What makes evolutionary activism different
from other forms of activism?.......................................................... 55
Poem: Star story children ....................................................... 65
7. Learning to be evolution.................................................................... 66
Poem: Calling of Creation........................................................ 82
8. Becoming evolution's conscious weavers ....................................... 83
Poem: First of all ........................................................................ 92
III. Reflections on Strategy and Tactics........................... 95
9. Learning from our evolutionary past into
our evolutionary future ................................................................... 97
Poem: That Great Evolving Power ......................................... 112
10. A "Big Story" evolutionary fitness program.................................. 114
Poem: A larger force works through us.................................. 121
11. The strategic synergy of individual and
collective ........................................................................................ 122
Poem: Journey power story questions ................................. 128
12. The evolutionary role of conversation............................................ 130
Poem: The facilitator ................................................................ 144
13. Transformational leverage.............................................................. 146
Poem: Life like spring.............................................................. 153
IV. Reflections on Evolutionary Grace and
Appreciation ........................................................ 155
14. Goodness Gracious: evolutionary integrity
and our engagement with life..................................................... 157
Poem: A powerful Grace ........................................................ 162
15. Active appreciation......................................................................... 164
Poem: The whole knows.......................................................... 170
V. Reflections on Crises and Democracy........................ 173
16. Six degrees of separation from reality ........................................ 175
Poem: Mother Earth's message............................................ 180
17. Something bigger than Life is trying to work through us......... 184
Prayer: Prayer for conscious evolution .............................. 196
18. Building wise democracy as crises emerge ............................... 197
Poem: We are on the edge.................................................... 211
19. Democracy and the evolution of societal
intelligence ................................................................................... 213
Poem: Ultimately global catastrophe
is about life................................................................ 221
VI. Reflections on Systems ........................................ 225
20. Caring and systemic awareness: Does
compassion itself need to evolve?............................................ 227
Poem: What we long for ..................................................... 238
21. What makes a social system conscious? .................................. 239
Poem: You can't hide anymore .......................................... 248
VII. Reflections on an Evolutionary Activist
Movement......................................................... 249
22. A rationale and guidance for nonviolence
as a basis for conscious evolutionary activism...................... 251
Poem: Together at the leading edge ............................... 268
23. Five areas to attend to when building an
evolutionary activism movement ......................................... 271
Poem: Sunshine being meditation .................................. 274
24. Imagining an activist movement for the
conscious evolution of social systems................................... 276
Poem: To Martin Luther King, Jr. ............................ 282
25. Some ways to engage in co-creating this
movement ............................................................................... 284
Poem: Co-aliveness ..................................................... 290
Appendices............................................................... 293
A. An annotated informal glossary of basic terms .................... 295
B. Evolutionary Life....................................................................... 301
C. Models of transformational leverage...................................... 303
Index ....................................................................... 315
About the author .................................................... 335
Acknowledgments .................................................. 337
Praise for Reflections on Evolutionary Activism ....... 341
Poem: Just a moment .................................................... 344