State of Emergence Terry Patten

Philosopher, pro-activist and author Jeremy Lent joins Terry in a deep and vulnerable exploration of where we are right now as a species, the underlying nature of our ecological and civilizational crises and how we frame our work to catalyze emerging potential for a rapid collective transformation toward a sustainable future. They consider how a greater understanding of the interconnectedness and wholeness of life — both its evolutionary history and the always-active physical, biological, noetic and cultural patterns animating our reality — can inspire us into a new level of devotion to life itself, and its flourishing. They then explore how such devotion involves trusting and treasuring the difficult passages of our lives — personally and collectively. In fact, Jeremy points out that he’s come to treasure them especially — as they often become the gateways of transformation and new possibility. 
Here are some of the questions that Jeremy and Terry explore in the episode:
What are the differences between “deep adaptation” and “deep transformation”, and what role could each play in responding to our ecological crisis? How can we “trust, let go, and welcome each moment as a sacred treasure, especially the difficult ones?” How can we practice identifying with the flourishing of Life — with the processes and potentials animating all forms — and be catalyzed by Life’s evolutionary will to live? How does the practice of “beginner’s mind” benefit our collective project of re-envisioning culture and systems — and how can we practice it in our own lives? What kinds of relationships, communications, and social experiments can enable us, and many millions of others, to become more firmly grounded in our inherent love of life? Jeremy Lent is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming culture. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct, traced the patterns of thought and deep historical foundations that have led human civilization to the current dominant worldviews and crises of sustainability. Now his new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, offers a very rich and solid foundation for an integrative worldview that could be the basis for a sustainable, flourishing future.
For more information on Jeremy Lent and Terry Patten, check out the following resources: Jeremy Lent’s new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Univers Jeremy’s previous book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning Jeremy’s website Our podcast website, stateofemergence.org Terry Patten’s nonprofit, A New Republic of the Heart Terry Patten’s personal website Would you consider making a donation to State of Emergence?
The State of Emergence podcast is made possible by listeners’ contributions, through the nonprofit A New Republic of the Heart. If you appreciate our work, we would love for you to join us as a Friend of State of Emergence and help the podcast become financially sustainable through a monthly or one-time donation of any size. Also, we explore each episode in greater depth during our State of Emergence live Q&A events and our monthly supporters are always invited to join. A caring community is making it all possible and we’d love for you to be part of it! Register by clicking “Join the Conversation” at stateofemergence.org.

Poet, teacher and interfaith chaplain Fred LaMotte joins Terry to listen, notice, honor and share the mysterious depth that emerges between them, among them and beyond them. Terry begins by reading one of Fred’s poems, and later Fred shares a couple of his favorite poems with Terry. They explore the inner processes and revelations from which luminous poetry, writing and art arises and how Fred practices in relation to his writing. Their shared inquiry continues to find its way back to a place beyond poetry, words, beliefs and ideas as they stay in touch with the “infinitely delicate jolt” of connecting (and reconnecting) with presence and dwelling in the tender receptivity of the miracle of each moment.
Alfred K. LaMotte is the author of three books of poetry. A graduate of Yale University and Princeton Theological Seminary, he has been director of Religious Studies and Community Service at America’s oldest Quaker school, a college instructor in World Religions, an interfaith college chaplain, and a meditation teacher. 
Here are a couple of additional questions they explore in the episode:
How can we care about the outcomes of our lives and our work, while also being released from the karma of identifying with good or not-so-good outcomes? How can the practice of “beholding what is” become a service to life itself and the evolutionary process of life knowing itself at an unprecedented depth? For more information on Fred LaMotte and Terry Patten, check out the following resources:
Fred’s website, yourradiance.blogspot.com Fred's book, Wounded Bud Fred's book, Savor Eternity One Moment at a Time Fred's book, The Fire of Darkness Our podcast website, stateofemergence.org Terry Patten’s nonprofit, A New Republic of the Heart Terry Patten’s personal website Would you like to support the podcast?
State of Emergence is made possible by listeners’ contributions, through the nonprofit A New Republic of the Heart. If you appreciate our work, we’d love to invite you to support it through a monthly or one-time donation of any size. Also, we explore each episode in greater depth during our State of Emergence live Q&A events and our monthly supporters are always invited to join. If you haven’t already joined as a supporter, please consider becoming a Friend of State of Emergence and help the podcast become financially sustainable. A caring community is making it all possible and we’d love for you to be part of it! Go to stateofemergence.com and click Join the Conversation.

Futurist, teacher, and author Peter Russell joins Terry in person at his home to connect more intimately and explore several profound considerations about this human miracle and our current predicament. In a previous podcast episode (February 2020), their conversation focused on an essay Peter had written called Blind Spot, in which he explores how human creativity builds on itself, leading to an exponential acceleration of complexity that he believes inevitably exceeds our capacities as a species. Then, he suggested we might be best served by a radical letting-go of our efforts to counteract that destiny. In this new episode, they venture deeper into the how of this letting-go, and how it can open into an uncomplicated relationship to what is right now, dissolving whatever gets in the way of us showing up fully, sanely, and gratefully. Peter and Terry consider together how wonder releases tension in the mind, how gratitude releases tension in the heart, and how a radical practice of letting go, releases the whole being into its true nature — beneath and beyond even our humanity. 


Peter Russell is a leading thinker and writer on consciousness and contemporary spirituality. He is on the faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and a fellow of The World Business Academy and The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The Club of Budapest. In the 1980’s, Peter coined the term "global brain" with his bestseller of the same name, in which he predicted the Internet and the impact it would have on humanity. Peter has studied theoretical physics, experimental psychology, and computer science at the University of Cambridge, and meditation and Eastern Philosophy in India. He also pioneered the introduction of personal growth programs to corporations, running courses for senior management on creativity, stress management and sustainable development. We appreciated Peter’s work to distill the essence of the world's spiritual wisdom and to present it in ways that speak to people in current terms. He is the author of ten books, including Waking Up in Time and From Science to God. His beautiful new book, Letting Go of Nothing: Relax Your Mind and Discover the Wonder of Your True Nature, will be published in August of 2021.


Here are some of the questions that Peter and Terry explore in the episode:


What is it to let go? And what exactly are we letting go of?  Can waking up to the existential severity of our civilizational predicament serve as an initiatory force, drawing us into fuller presence with ourselves, each other, and reality? If we let go of the energy in us that’s opposing our societal predicament, what emerges in its place? If we accept Peter’s thesis that humanity’s creative impulse is contributing to our inevitable collapse, how can we relate in new ways to creativity as it arises within us? How might our doing of good works in the world evolve in the future as we become more rested in Being and trusting of our inherent nature? How can we practice accepting that our conditional perspectives will inevitably keep arising but that their context is unconditional, radiant, vast, beautiful, and more primary?

Would you like to support the podcast?


State of Emergence is made possible by listeners’ contributions, through the nonprofit A New Republic of the Heart. If you appreciate our work, we’d love to invite you to support it through a monthly or one-time donation of any size. Also, we explore each episode in greater depth during our State of Emergence live Q&A events and our monthly supporters are always invited to join. If you haven’t already joined as a supporter, please consider becoming a Friend of State of Emergence and help the podcast become financially sustainable. A caring community is making it all possible and we’d love for you to be part of it! Sign up here.


For more information on Peter Russell and Terry Patten, check out the following resources:

 



Social psychotherapist, political theorist & entrepreneur and community organizer Indra Adnan joins Terry to explore the politics and power dynamics of “waking up” to the “meta-crisis” and to one another. Indra is in contact with the raw nerve of possibility. While many thinkers look at our civilizational predicament with increasing pessimism, she is both brilliantly theorizing about our potential for agency and proactively applying her influence in embodied, practical, and experimental ways, both locally (in the UK) and globally through “community agency networks” (sometimes called by others “collective action networks”.) 


Indra and Terry consider how our societal challenges provide an opportunity for “mutually waking up” through deep conversation and relating with those who do not share their worldviews and frameworks. Indra reflects on how her personal practice nurtures her agency and creativity, and she also shares many practical tactics and examples of how the organization and political platform she co-founded, The Alternative UK, is laying the groundwork for a “future politics that is both global and intensely local.” 


Their conversation then moves on to how we can shift our collective attention from narratives of trauma, disconnection and collapse into the “miracle of our connection” and a radical, embodied certainty that our solutions are available. 


Indra Adnan has been writing, consulting and network-building on the themes of future politics, soft power, conflict transformation, the role of the arts, and integral consciousness. She is Founder and Co-initiator of The Alternative UK political platform, which publishes The Daily Alternative, convenes new system actors and builds “cosmolocal community agency networks.” Indra is concurrently a psychosocial therapist, journalist and author. Through her work on international relations and soft power she has consulted to the World Economic Forum, Indian and Danish governments, NATO, the Scottish Executive and the Institute of Contemporary Arts amongst others. She is Co-Lead in the social enterprise network Bounce Beyond working to cohere the next global economies. Indra’s new book from Perspectiva Press is titled The Politics of Waking Up: Power & Possibility In The Fractal Age.


For more information on Indra Adnan and Terry Patten, check out the following resources:


Indra Adnan’s Website (indraadnan.global) Indra’s new book, The Politics of Waking Up (for pre-order) The Alternative UK (thealternative.org.uk) Indra’s Writing on “Soft Power” Terry’s organization, A New Republic of the Heart Terry Patten’s personal website

Join us as a Friend of State of Emergence


We will be exploring this episode in greater depth during our next State of Emergence live Q&A (date and time to be announced soon). If you haven’t already joined us, we invite you to become a Friend of State of Emergence and join these monthly Q&A sessions with me and other listeners, as well as help the podcast become financially sustainable. A vibrant, intelligent, and caring community is already gathering around State of Emergence and we’d love for you to be part of it. Sign up at stateofemergence.org.

This episode of State of Emergence, features an additional conversation with last week’s featured guest, the evolutionary biologist and important social theorist David Sloan Wilson. 


If you haven’t already listened to last week’s episode with David — episode 069, titled “A Human Superorganism — The Higher Potentials of Cooperation” — we encourage you to begin there for a more concise and concentrated overview of his ideas. In this separate unedited conversation (which took place beforehand) David and Terry go into the practical application of his ideas at greater length and explored many nuanced distinctions, principles, and practices — it gives us valuable insight into some of the design principles and practices that can enable social experiments and cooperative communities to succeed and grow. 


They consider the virtues and exploitations of competition, multiple layers of competition, genetic vs. cultural steams of evolution, the role of symbols in evolving our cultural narratives, and the Nobel laureate and political economist Elinor Ostrom’s eight principles for “managing a commons.”)


If you belong to and participate in a community of any kind, we hope this deep dive into the dynamics of cooperation serves you and inspires a new level of practice and efficacy in your group’s efforts.


For more information on David Sloan Wilson and Terry Patten, check out the following resources:


David’s new novel, Atlas Hugged is gifted, not sold, for whatever the reader wishes to give in return, with all proceeds going to Prosocial World. For this reason, it is available only on its website: www.AtlasHugged.world. David’s nonprofit organization, Prosocial World David’s book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution David’s book, Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes and the Welfare of Others David’s book, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society Terry Patten’s nonprofit, A New Republic of the Heart Terry Patten’s personal website

Join us as a Friend of State of Emergence


We will be exploring this episode in greater depth during our next State of Emergence live Q&A (date and time to be announced soon). If you haven’t already joined us, we invite you to become a Friend of State of Emergence and join these monthly Q&A sessions with me and other listeners episodes, as well as help the podcast become financially sustainable. A vibrant, intelligent, and caring community is already gathering around State of Emergence and we’d love for you to be part of it. Sign up here.

Brilliant evolutionary biologist and important social theorist David Sloan Wilson joins Terry to clarify the real implications of what we know about evolution, focusing on how “multi-level selection,” interpersonal cooperation and altruism are no less central to evolution than is competition. Groups of “prosocial” individuals, under the right conditions, robustly outcompete groups of self-interested individuals.  


David shares important concrete principles that can be applied by small and medium-sized groups who are attempting prosocial experiments of their own. He gets specific about which special conditions and shared agreements are required to nurture prosocial behaviors — and, very importantly, protect them. We ask: Is rapid social transformation possible? What kinds of behavior would qualify human beings as a “superorganism” that prioritizes the wellbeing of the whole and responds collectively and effectively to its existential crises?


In the coming week, we will release a second “bonus” conversation I had with David. In it, he goes into much greater detail about the core design principles that enable prosocial cooperation to succeed, and the practices of acceptance and commitment that make them possible.


David Sloan Wilson is a "hard" evolutionary scientist who also champions Conscious Evolution. He is the author of books such as Darwin's Cathedral, Does Altruism Exist? and This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution. His new book is a novel: Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III — a critique of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and its impact on the world. In addition to his writing and university teaching, David is President of the nonprofit organization Prosocial World, whose mission is to accomplish rapid positive multilevel cultural evolution in the real world.


Here are some of the questions we explore in the episode:


How is the latest evolutionary science now contradicting past misunderstandings, and actually validating spiritual and evolutionary perspectives? How do groups of altruistic or “prosocial” individuals outcompete groups of self-interested individuals? What makes individuals & groups “prosocial?” How can groups of prosocial individuals protect their cultures and ways of cooperating from selfish or predatory individuals and groups? Can groups reach a critical level of efficacy or creativity that catalyzes rapid transformation? What agreements, design principles & mechanisms are required?

For more information on David Sloan Wilson and Terry Patten, check out the following resources:


David’s new novel, Atlas Hugged is gifted, not sold, for whatever the reader wishes to give in return, with all proceeds going to Prosocial World. For this reason, it is available only on its website: www.AtlasHugged.world. David’s nonprofit organization, Prosocial World David’s book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution David’s book, Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes and the Welfare of Others David’s book, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society Terry Patten’s nonprofit, A New Republic of the Heart Terry Patten’s personal website

Join us as a Friend of State of Emergence


We will be exploring this episode in greater depth during our next State of Emergence live Q&A (date and time to be announced soon). If you haven’t already joined us, we invite you to become a Friend of State of Emergence and join these monthly Q&A sessions with me and other listeners episodes, as well as help the podcast become financially sustainable. A vibrant, intelligent, and caring community is already gathering around State of Emergence and we’d love for you to be part of it. Sign up here.