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Share Guide: May I ask first off, about
your organization, and what's going on there in Santa Barbara with the Foundation
for Conscious Evolution?
Barbara Marx Hubbard: The Foundation for Conscious
Evolution has as it's purpose to bring a new world view, called
'Conscious Evolution,' into the global culture. Because we believe that
it holds within it the most hopeful guidelines for a positive future of
any world view now available. By Conscious Evolution we really mean
that humans have gained the power of co-destruction and co-creation. By
learning that we are actually responsible in some growing way for
guiding the evolutionary process on this planet, means we have to learn
a whole new set of skills, spiritually, socially and technologically.
So we're bringing the new world view of Conscious Evolution into the
global culture. The work we're doing in Santa Barbara, is very exciting
and new. It started in October 1998, when I was doing a speech in Santa
Barbara. After I did my talk on Conscious Evolution, I asked a
question: "What would happen if this community were to experience it's
own potential for Conscious Evolution?" Now I had never asked that
question before. I said, "Would anybody here be interested?" And about
180 people put their names in a box. So then a group formed to bring me
to Santa Barbara to do some kind of introductory teaching, which I did.
And I said, "There are some things I think we need to know, to realize
our full potential. First, we need to know our new story of creation,
which is "cosmogenesis." The universe is, has been, is now evolving
through us. And in that process of evolution, it has led to higher
consciousness and greater freedom through more complex order. So we're
placing ourselves as humans in the process of cosmogenesis. Also, we
need to know that we--wherever we are in our personal lives,
whether we're depressed or full of motivation--that the
universe is in us, moving us. And it's my theory that there's a whole
crop of people evolving into what might be called a "universal human."
Share Guide: Is this what you
refer to in your book as "Cultural Creatives?"
Barbara Marx Hubbard: It's more than that. It
includes that, but it's deeper than that. Cultural Creatives are people
changing their values towards a more planetary and global culture, and
this is certainly part of it. But I'm seeing something deeper. I
believe that there's an emerging species in humanity that has been
pre-figured by the great avatars, Jesus, Buddha, and so forth. But that
is becoming a new norm, as we expand in consciousness, expand in
empathy, expand in connectedness, expand in creativity. I believe that
we are, in a way, a transitional species, between the self-conscious
homo sapiens, and what might eventually become a truly universal
species. And by that I mean spiritually and physically. Because we're
going to be moving outward; we are already working and living in space.
By the third millennium, we'll be a solar system species, if we don't
blow ourselves up. By the fourth millennium, we may well be galactic.
Share Guide: So the Cultural
Creatives are a step along the way?
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Exactly. But there's
something of a deeper nature happening among the Cultural Creatives,
and others, which I call "Emergence." I don't know if you've felt this
yourself, Dennis, but it feels almost like a shift of identity, from
the separated self-centered stage to a more unified stage. And in that
shift of identity, there's a maturation of our consciousness, and our
creative responsibility, that I think is the harbinger of what we may
be 2,000 from now. We've had homo habilus, homo erectus, homo
neanderthal, homo sapiens…I think we're becoming homo universalis, a
universal humanity.
If you add the
capacity for unitive consciousness for self-healing, and even
eventually regeneration, and the capacity for the information
revolution, and the global brain, and the capacity to live and work in
space, and so on, you begin to see radical new powers. I'm taking it
spiritually, socially and technologically, putting it all together, and
saying this is a quantum jump. We humans, who are living through this
period of transition on the planet, are potentially an emerging new
species.We need to know our own story of creation, and that we're part
of it. And we need to know that we're an "emergent human," and that our
growth potential literally has no limit. Part of this is that we need
to learn co-creative relationships, and how to find our deep life
purpose. The concept of finding vocation is part of the emergent
species. Women are shifting from maximum procreation to co-creation, to
an expansion of creativity. As we move into that kind of action, we
seek to model the changes we'd like to see in the world by the way we
create. So we don't just create more bureaucracies, and more
competition and more violence. We want to go out and create what I call
"Resonant Cores--connecting to the heart with one another.
And then the last thing is, we need to develop processes for social
synergy and co-creation. In Santa Barbara, we're learning all of this,
and we're aiming at a community-wide synergistic event, with a local
"Peace Room." The Peace Room is an idea I used when I was running for
vice-president. Basically, it's a new social function that scans or
maps and communicates what's emergent, what's working, what's
innovative, what's already transforming the world.
Share Guide: Is there such a
Peace Room now? And is it supposed to be the opposite of the war room?
Barbara Marx Hubbard: No, there isn't one yet. But
it is the opposite of the war room. We're designing it now in Santa
Barbara, which has self-selected to be a prototype community, to see
how this actually works. I've been carrying these ideas for many years,
but what I realized, this last October when the community responded, is
that it takes whole communities to ground the idea of this new world
view. It's not just self-help. It's not just social action, it's a
whole system transition. So, that's what we're doing here. Let's just
say I have a vocation now to bring this into the world. But I have to
develop a team. I can't do it alone. And as I develop a team, the way
we relate to each other, the way we do the work that we're called to
do, we want to have that way model the change. In other words, it's the
famous saying, "Be the change you'd like to see." And we don't mean
just personally. First of all, in small groups, and eventually in
communities. If the community can be the change it wants to see, that's
the most effective thing it can do.
Share Guide: Right, sort of the
town meeting hall. The village center, which is lacking in suburbia
frankly.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Totally lacking. I call these
synergistic events, which are like town meetings in the round. Instead
of having people voting on issues, we have people in circles by
function, health, education, government, science, the arts, media,
culture, saying what they want to create, and then matching needs and
resources with each other to co-create at a community level. We are
designing that type of event along with a peace room, which would be a
way for people to track and map what's actually working. I think my
most important insight, that moved me from San Rafael to Santa Barbara,
was that it takes a community to consciously evolve.
Share Guide: To take it beyond
your own household.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Yes. And a community is the
appropriate size... You know, like Hillary Clinton said, "It takes a
village to raise a child." It takes a community to bring forth the
creative potential of it's people. And the way nature has worked for
billions of years, is through separate parts joining together, to form
a greater whole, through synergy. Synergy doesn't mean that everybody
has to become the same, or do the same thing. It means everybody gets
to do more of what they are uniquely creative in, by interacting with
other people doing the same.
This is my
hypothesis. I tested it out during the 70s, in the inner city of Los
Angeles, and in the nation of Jamaica on the beaches, with people who
didn't know how to read. Also in sophisticated places, like Washington
D.C. When you create an environment that facilitates synergy and
co-creation, it's totally natural, because people need each other to
create. And we ask people three simple questions, in every sector of
the wheel. "What is your current passion to create? Where is the juice
for you?" Number two, "What's blocking you?" And, number three, "What
resources do you have to share?" And when they respond to those three
questions, even at a table of ten, there will be people who have
something, a resource to match the need. Then the different sectors
join together, and present this to an assembly of the whole. Let's say
the health group says, "You know, here's what we want to create. Here's
our needs, here's our resources." Another sector will say, "We have a
resource to meet that need." And before you know it, the whole thing is
synergizing. It's very exciting.
Share Guide: I would like to
know ways that people can take action in our local area, county by
county. Any tips or thoughts on how we can do some of these things
you're suggesting in our area would be good.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: We have a website, it's www.evolve.org. We'd like to have people
check into that, because it's the beginning of the Peace Room. We ask
people to put their projects into the peace room and then, as we
develop that further, we will have instructions and guidance...how
we're
doing it, so that others can learn from us, and we can learn from them.
Share Guide: One thing that
I've told my friends who were not entrepreneurs over the years, is when
you've got a job, you're walking a course that's already laid out for
you. In our case, we're kind of dreaming it up, as we go. So I
understand you're in the creative mode, even while you're in the action
mode.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: We're discovering as we go,
because we've attracted about 150 people to form a kind of team, who
will be practicing the resonant cores, and studying conscious
evolution. And then, moving out into the community to find the growing
edge in every field, and bring people into synergistic events. So we're
going to connect that which is emergent. Connect that which is
innovative. And it's through the increased interaction of that which is
already emergent, that you take the leap. This doesn't mean just a well
known artist, and leaders&endash;it also means kids and older
people, wherever they're at their creative edge. We want this to be
very much grass-roots. Very open, with a wonderful diversity and
mixture.
Share Guide: It sounds like a
good way of going about getting people to do more than dream about it.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: It does. Everybody gets to do
more of what their passion is. That's why it works so well.
Share Guide: Are you familiar
with something called, Green Plans, and Green Planning?
Barbara Marx Hubbard: No.
Share Guide: It's basically
something that's grown out of the Rio Summit, in the early 1990's. It's
being adopted county by county, and state by state in our nation. But
the leaders in the world are the Netherlands, and New Zealand, who've
basically re-organized their government to deal with their
environmental problems. It's the most inspiring thing I've seen. I will
get some information to you, because the Netherlands is very polluted
and over-crowded. So, they're creating the future model. They've had to
take the bull by the horns, and create a nationwide 25 year clean-up
plan.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Oh, I see, that's great.
Share Guide: Yes, and I want
you to know that the July/August 1999 issue of Share Guide had an
article by Marianne Williamson in it, and I know she and Neale
Donald Walsch
have an organization, American Renaissance Alliance. We're learning
about more people who are not only writing books, and giving
presentations, but creating websites and different ideas and ways of
working together.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Right. Well, I'm a member of
that Global Renaissance Alliance board. And I think what Marianne is
doing so valuable, because she wants it to be an alliance. It's not
just one person's work. And if I could put my finger on two things that
I think are most needed in our movement, one is greater synergy among
that which is already being created. And number two is more continuous
outreach into the larger media. I would like it if we would become the
news. There is a real disaster area, called the "news." The headlines
in the newspapers... If you didn't know that anything was emerging on
this planet, you would think we're going to hell, and we're already
there.
Share Guide: Well, of course,
that's a visualization that some people have, and they sell papers with
it.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: To some degree, there is hell
going on, on this planet. But you know, I had a wonderful phrase
occurred to me, and it sounds outrageous, but I'll tell you the phrase.
"But it's springtime on the planet." What I mean by that, if you know
how everything looks, let's say in February, or early March, you have
nothing but dying things, and dead things. But right under it are
shoots of green, but you can't quite see them. Then a couple of weeks
later, the lawn is green, and the crocuses are out, and the daffodils
are out. I think under the surface of the dying cultures, where we have
the vast military build up, and the ethnic cleanings, and the
inequities which are horrible&endash;everywhere there are green
shoots of new ways of doing this, that are cooperative and loving. But
they haven't shown up yet. So it's springtime on the planet, very early
springtime.
Share Guide: Well, your 44
million cultural creatives, that's a big number.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: It's a very big number, and
that's just the beginning of it. If you looked all around the world,
and you looked at all that's emerging, that's created, and loving, and
leading to a more positive future, you'd find there's already an
emerging culture. So, I think that the idea of the Peace Room, which is
to scan for those initiatives, to map them, to connect them, and to
communicate them, via all the media is the missing social function. The
Peace Room is just a phrase I use to contrast the sophistication of the
war room. Because the vision of the peace room really is as
sophisticated as the war room. And, if you can imagine Dennis, people
really scouting out in every field and function, what's working, and
putting that into both the internet, and into smaller social
gatherings, where people connect, you begin to see how to accelerate
what's already happening.
Share Guide: Yes, to help the
snowball grow.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: The two things I think are
missing are the linkages among that which is already emerging, and the
consistent communication of it, not just as an isolated bit of good
news, but as an emergent humanity. It has to have the dynamism of the
emergence, of what has been longed for by the human species, which is
it's own ability to connect with itself, with nature, and with spirit.
And there are millions of people who are doing that now. I call these
people a "new norm." We're not extraordinary spiritual geniuses. We are
a whole crop of normal humans who are exhibiting some new
characteristics.
Share Guide: Exactly. I was
sort of a bored Catholic as a child, and then I wound up in the
humanistic psychology department at Sonoma State University. Then I got
turned on to Ram Dass, and seeing East and West, after living in
ashrams, and recognizing I'm an American, I'm going to live here. I
discovered the natural foods movement was really a pretty big movement,
even though in the early 1970's it was just taking off. When I went to
my first trade show, as a little local distributor, I saw that there
were quite a few people like me, around the nation. It was really
inspiring to find that I was part of a movement.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Yes, exactly.
Share Guide: And now, decades
later, this is all bigger. Now we have the internet as an opportunity
to link us up faster. After a decade in natural foods work, I got tired
of flying around the nation doing trade shows. I decided to do this
journalism thing. I was also disgusted with how the mundane news was so
negetive. You know, it wasn't even 50% good news and 50% bad news. I
was thinking that if they could at least show some good things that
were happening, and some possibilities it would be good. Well, kind of
out of frustration, Share Guide started.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: See, it's so valuable what
you're doing, really. All the smaller journals, and smaller radio
stations and all, it's the building of that.
Share Guide: Right. Well by
now, on our website, we're linked with over 200 holistic sites, that
are either regional like us, or some of the big ones, like New Age
Journal. Some are in other nations. One of my big goals now, and
it'll be helping to spread the word about you too, is to get this
information that I've been gathering out to the other positive media.
Beause, many of them, like mine, are much more of a guide, a new age
yellow pages, than really informative in-depth articles and interviews.
So, I'm going to take this network and figure out to get this word out
further through the network. The reason I wanted to interview you, more
than anything, was this business of the social potential movement. In
college, it was called human potential movement. It was just the
phrase, and it just feels like your phrase is the next one.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: I believe so. The reason
we're having the social potential movement is because there was so much
of a human potential movement. It moved us out from where we've been.
All the values, and the personal growth. And, now those values are
being taken, and applied, and social transformation is happening.
Share Guide: Sometimes you see
all the problems happening in the world, and you just feel like
sticking your head in a hole, and going to work, and watching TV, and
leaving it at that, you know. But there are so many sprouts coming up,
that people need to be re-inspired.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Well, that spring time on the
planet, early springtime, is a really nice image. Think of all those
little green shoots coming up out of the dying embers of the past.
Share Guide: You see people
everyday who are completely asleep. But you see others who have an
inkling, and would like to know more, and make a change. Those are the
transitional people.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: That's right. I have a
metaphor for this, that we're undergoing a planetary birth. It took 15
billion years to get a planetary system that became aware of itself as
a whole, that realized it had to stop over populating. That realized
that women had to shift from maximum procreation to co-creation, which
means finding life's purpose in meaningful creativity. Which relieves
the men from having to take care of the huge families. Which starts the
realization that we have to manage a whole planetary system. You know,
we have to coordinate food, we have to understand to switch to
renewable resources. We never had to do any of that before.
Share Guide: This is really a
new paradigm.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Because of the crisis of
birth. The species has got the evolutionary driver forcing us to learn
how to co-evolve with nature or die. Now if we learn it, it means we're
going to be universal. Because we will restore this earth, and we will
bring the human environment into space. And we will, finally, probably,
travel to the billions of galaxies.
Share Guide: Non-polluting
energy sources are known already. We're just, you know, holding the
patents down by the companies that are making the money.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: We obviously have to shift
the economic system. How do we create a planetary economic system
that's just and sustainable, and allows for the new creativity at the
same time? That's a very great challenge, we know that.
Share Guide: We need to have
ethics as part of creating a corporate charter, as well as making money.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Well, I think eventually
people will experience that community, and creativity, and reciprocity
will supplant competition and commercialism. The reason for that is,
ultimately it doesn't satisfy the human heart. Ultimately
commercialized, individual, alienated society does not satisfy. People
who've been through the materialistic phase of western culture, are
already seeking something new.
Share Guide: That's right,
we're beyond just wanting that.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Like, in China, you can't
tell the Chinese, "Well, you shouldn't have a washing machine."
Because, they want washing machines. But people who've had washing
machines and cars...We may not want to give up our washing machines,
but
we know that more washing machines will not make a difference. We know
that more cars will not make a difference. The most innovative people
on earth are those that already have enough, and are moving into a new
phase of social transformation, personal transformational, co-creation.
I think that's the growing edge of evolution, wherever it's happening.
Share Guide: One key point
about this Green Planning I mentioned, is that when people decide to
pollute less, they ultimately find they're saving resources. And that
they're more profitable. So it helps for the economy. Plus, the
countries who are learning to clean up first, they're now on the
cutting edge of technology. Other countries want to buy their
technology.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Wonderful.
For more information about Barbara Marx Hubbard and the Center
for Conscious Evolution, please visit www.evolve.org
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