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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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Our three natures -- a useful paradigm?
#22307614 - 09/29/15 11:18 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Away back in college, I had a course taught by a psychology professor entitled "Our Three Natures." It is a way of ordering the world, a sort of cosmology, that I thought I would run by you guys. His thesis is as follows:
First Nature is matter and energy, physics, chemistry -- the physical. After about ten billion years, first nature complexified and organized into Second Nature, which is life -- all organic systems, from the bacillus to the orangutan, from pterodactyls to the pope. And speaking of the pope, Second Nature complexified and organized into Third Nature, which comprises ideologies and institutions, complex culture -- civilization, due to the emergence of self-reflective, symbolic thought in the Neolithic.
It is suggested that the fragmentary nature of Third Nature is what has led us to some of the big problems facing the planet today. It is further suggested that some sort of Fourth Nature will be required to bring the planet back into balance.
Does anyone else find this a useful and highly appropriate model? I like it quite a bit.
P.S. Interestingly, humans in their natural state (hunter-gatherers) would be considered part of Second Nature. The emergence in the Neolithic of self-reflective, symbolic thinking is what eventually led to Third Nature and our major problems today.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Jokeshopbeard
Humble Student

Registered: 11/30/11
Posts: 26,088
Loc: Deep in the system
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Re: Our three natures -- a useful paradigm? [Re: DividedQuantum]
#22308023 - 09/29/15 12:32 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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I really like it man. It's pretty succinctly sums up where we went wrong in my eyes..
-------------------- Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not. --Jac O'keeffe
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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Re: Our three natures -- a useful paradigm? [Re: Jokeshopbeard]
#22308376 - 09/29/15 01:38 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Yes, I think it is a very succinct and constructive way to order things. And I think it is quite accurate.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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Re: Our three natures -- a useful paradigm? [Re: DividedQuantum]
#22327897 - 10/03/15 12:10 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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"Although tensions, at times fierce ones, have existed, and continue to exist, between various institutions (e.g. religion and polity), the institutional order has adaptively self-organized and evolved mostly symbiotic relationships. For example, the system of law has codified many religious and political principles and regulates the flow of capital, and all institutions work together to keep human behavior under control and in conformity with the survival needs of the order as a whole." --William A. Johnston
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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