Evolutionary
biologist, Elisabet Sahtouris’ imaginal discs / caterpillar [from The
Cultural Creatives, p. 266]: “The
biological story is that the caterpillar eats many times its weight per
day and then when it forms a chrysalis, it goes into the quiescent
state. … At that point,
precellular entities called imaginal discs start to form.
They’re not full-fledged cells yet, and when they first appear,
the immune system actually wipes them out.
So long as the discs are independent and separate, they are
snuffed out as if they were foreign bodies.
But as the metamorphosis goes on, more and more discs are
created, and soon they start coming quicker and faster and clustering
together and the immune system just breaks down.
At that point, the body of the caterpillar begins to turn to a
soupy nutrient fertilizer that nourishes the butterfly.
It’s a real kind of chemical transmutation, a natural force.
… You know, the Cultural
Creatives are acting as the imaginal discs for the new culture that is
evolving. They can be the
transition to the butterfly.”
From: The
Cultural Creatives by Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
===
set up a LINK to the following temporarily
"Elisabet
Sahtouris" "imaginal cells"
The Caterpillar and the Butterfly,
Generation 2! [Elisabet
Sahtouris]
http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/sahtouris.html
London
: How do you keep your spirits up considering the enormous ecological,
social, and political problems that confront us today?
Sahtouris: I try to remain
optimistic in the face of terrible statistics. The ozone hole is growing
by leaps and bounds. Some say that by the year 2012 there won't be any
ozone at the current rate of destruction — without adding to the
current problem. And we all know about the polluted oceans and the dying
forests and the poisoned rivers and air and soil and so forth, the
increase in desert land when we really need more agricultural land.
These are all terrible statistics, but what do we do about them?
There is no time in the future at
which we have to turn things around. Things are already turning around
in the sense that a lot of alternative ways of living have been
developed around the world, whether people are creating their own money
systems, or developing communal agriculture, or organic agriculture,
alternative education systems. These are all the new forms of the
future.
I like to use the metaphor
of the butterfly. In metamorphosis, within the body of the
caterpillar little things that biologists call imaginal discs or
imaginal cells begin to crop up in the body of the caterpillar. They
aren't recognized by the immune system so the caterpillar's immune
system wipes them out as they pop up. It isn't until they begin to link
forces and join up with each other that they get stronger and are able
to resist the onslaught of the immune system, until the immune system
itself breaks down and the imaginal cells form the body of the
butterfly.
I think that is a
beautiful
metaphor for what is happening in our times. The old body is going into
meltdown while the new one develops. It isn't that you end
one thing and then start another. So everybody engaged in recycling, in
alternative projects, in communal living, in developing healthier
systems for themselves and each other is engaged in building the new
world while the old one collapses. Its collapse is inevitable. There is
no way around that.
We must, for example, shift to
organic agriculture. There is so much unemployment in the world that
it's very feasible. It can now be done with computers on the farms, with
culture coming in, and with farm sitters, as in
Denmark
that permit the farmer to go to the city for a while. There are
many ways to do it. Indigenous cultures show us that it can be done much
more simply, much more efficiently. You've got John
Jevins here in California doing his biointensive agriculture. He is already up to 4 to 7 times the
production of large-scale agriculture.
In
the recreation of
pre-Inca
agriculture in
the altiplano of
Bolivia
and
Peru, the production went from two
and a half tons per hectare to forty tons per hectare in five years [[[16
times more!!!]]], and it is an agriculture that requires very little
work. It's possible to do really healthy agriculture that's more
productive than green revolution agriculture, and far, far more energy
efficient and far, far less destructive.
So
that is a place, agriculture, where our technology has been used totally
inappropriately and purely for the sake of profits for a handful of
people. It's inhuman to perpetrate that kind of agriculture in the face
of the starvation it brings.
On
the other hand, our communications technology is vital, so that we can
connect self-sufficient living communities with each other into a global
web. So I think this is where we integrate native techniques and modern
technology — that we have the have the communications system to share
the way we work at the local level in the bioregions working in healthy,
organic community.
London
:
Journalists often talk about positive changes like recycling, solar
energy, or organic farming as if these are passing fads, the whims of a
small minority of people at the fringes of our culture.
Sahtouris:
There is nothing more fundamental than food and air and water. If people
are demonstrating that food can be produced not only more efficiently,
more healthfully, less destructively, but also cheaper, in organic ways,
that is only going to be labeled a "fad" by those whose
interests it opposes. It will never be labeled a fad by those who get to
eat the food produced in that way.
It's the same as writing the idea of
Gaia off as "just" a metaphor, when all science is based on
metaphor. Food production is done either in a healthy way or an
unhealthy way. We know now that there are huge interests at stake in
producing food in unhealthy ways. Our television sets now tell us that
one third of the chickens in
Los Angeles
are contaminated and yet people continue to walk away from the
television set and buy them. They
don't realize that the supermarket food which is often so contaminated,
is often much more expensive to produce than organic food. But it's
subsidized by the government. Again, we are not taking on the
responsibility of democracy. We are not saying, Why is the government
subsidizing the production of unhealthy food when it could be
subsidizing organic farmers and keeping us healthy? Why can't
Clinton
change the health system? What is going on in
Washington
?
London
: In closing, tell me something about what you are working on at the
moment.
Sahtouris:
I'm trying to help the five indigenous groups I work with in the Andes
to develop a cultural center that will revive and promote Andean culture
with its wonderful agriculture — the most intensive and productive
experiments in history were done in the Andes, and over half the food
eaten in the world today traces back to the Andes. Their music is very
healthy and alive and good for people. Their natural-dyed weavings and
arts, the wisdom of their elders, their language, these are all things
we are trying to preserve. I think that the world at large would benefit
very much from learning about them. The
Incas social organization was a kind of paternalistic
welfare state that guaranteed
food and housing and jobs and didn't overwork people. There are some
positive things we can learn from that.
So
I'm trying to help to promote this ancient culture to the world at large
as well as preserve and protect it for its own descendants in the
Andes
. I think the
Andes
are a very important place in the world, spiritually and physically.
Many Tibetan lamas are coming there saying that there is a shift in
energy from the Himalayas to the
Andes
. We hope that is true and that great lessons can be learned from that
source.
I'm also working on some music
festivals to try to connect Andean music with other parts of the world. I'm beginning to work on the Internet. I'm interested in cyberfests and ways of having
people exchange information, music, and other aspects of culture around
the globe as rapidly as possible toward transformation. The Internet
itself is a giant self-organizing living system that is a bit chaotic at
present but has the potential for being the first real democracy in the
world, for example. So those are a few of my interests. I keep
writing and traveling and working in those areas.
London
: It's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you.
Sahtouris: Thanks, Scott.
|
MYTH LIST
|
|
1.
|
The
phenomenon of EHEs of this age -- ultimately awakening all of us
to the MORE that we are as Human, transforming us one person and
one experience at a time [Rhea A. White] |
|
2.
|
The
Universe Story [Thomas Berry and
Brian Swimme; Teilhard de Chardin] |
|
3.
|
The Caterpillar and the
Butterfly, Generation 2! [Elisabet
Sahtouris]
|
|
4.
|
The New Isis Myth [Rudolf
Steiner]
|
|
5.
|
Reimagining the Center [David
Spangler]
|
|
6.
|
The
Ten Thousand Mirrors [Paul H. Ray and
Sherry Ruth Anderson]
|
|
7.
|
Incarnational
Spirituality [David
Spangler]
|
|
8.
|
Something
along the lines of Limitless Love and Truth's Revelations? [David
Spangler]
|
|
9.
|
We
have much more creative control over our lives and so-called
deaths that we ever imagined! [Mellen
Thomas Benedict] |
|
10.
|
??
[PMH Atwater]
|
|
11.
|
The
Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily--an initiatory myth; how about
a global myth on this theme? [Johann W.
von Goethe]
|
|
12.
|
The
Gnostics' story so relevant to NOW!
|
|
13.
|
The
Cosmic Christ; the Earth Logos; the Sun Being who incarnated
for our sakes and for the Earth [David Spangler; Rudolf Steiner,
...]
|
|
14.
|
Oneness
[Rasha; David Spangler; Rudolf
Steiner, etc.]
|
|
15.
|
We
are wakening to our innate creative / co-creative powers as
Self-Aware, divine beings [Abraham-Hicks;
Neville; AK Mozumdar; etc.]
|
|
16.
|
Ishtar-Tammuz
[suggested by Joan Borysenko in
The Fabric of the Future]
|
