“But this realization has not yet dawned on most of our political leaders. The recognition that a profound change of perception and thinking is needed if we are to survive has not yet reached most of our corporate leaders, either, or the administrators and professors of our large universities.” Capra Turning Pooint [p 4]

On the same page as worldview at the beginning of the first chapter is the above quote. Again I find this an irritating academic quote. Occupy brought into focus the terminology of 1%, but bourgeoisie was not a new idea. Whilst there was a clear recognition that the corporatocracy was powerful Occupy has changed that focus into a recognition that Wall Street controls government.

But in truth these realisations are not new. Yet throughout we continue with the academic rhetoric of not “dawning on our political leaders”. This is compromise, it is the compromise forced on academia, a compromise that many academics readily accept, that the problems we face are a lack of awareness on the part of and branch of the 1%. And why do they present things in this way? To maintain the false delusion that academia can change with awareness, that academia is not controlled by the forces now known as the 1%.

Awareness hasn’t reached the corporate leaders, administrators and professors. Absolute rubbish. When awareness reaches these people, mostly they walk in the other direction. A typical example of their response “what can we do about climate change?” Since Capra wrote this book (1996), these same scientists have been bought off and afre providing us with denial science. Is this awareness? Absoultely not, it is money. They keep their jobs if they get funding, and where is the funding? In the dastardly lies of the 1%.

In Free to have a worldview?, I said much the same thing – the 1% control the knowledge through funding. Similarly they control awareness though funding and influence. Our academics learn to control aspects of their minds, and in that control they do not open their minds to knowledge but close them off – close them off so that their perspectives can be funded. Of course they do not present this delusion as awareness, and maybe even for some their blinkered vision triggers an exclusion mechanism where they eschew all that is true or all that is too difficult to do anything about. In reality all they are saying is that I will only seek knowledge where the funding will allow me to go.

There is of course a negative aspect to my continually raising this point, and that is aversion. When the point is raised once the mind might engage with it, when it is raised several times the mind reacts emotionally and rejects it – aversion. So should I continue because of this aversion? And the answer quite simply is this – what is the truth? Does funding control knowledge? Yes. is the search for knowledge fettered by funding – by the 1%? Yes. If academia is to be considered the institution that searches for knowledge, does it need to recognise this funding reality and do something about it? Yes. Is the discomfort of aversion a necessity?

Absolutely. Consider the post-hippy compromise years. Throughout society, especially including academia, there have been a sprinkling of these hippies whose message of the 60s and 70s could have opened us up to a wiser future. But they compromised. They said that they will work from the inside to seek a solution. And what happened? Their energies were used by the system to give the system greater credibility. The system never compromised. Of course there were token victories along the way, but in the end they were unwilling captives of the system.

Do I point the finger at Capra or others and blame them? Absolutely not. How they lived their lives is their decision. I point the finger at myself, of course. I made myself ill fighting. I love teaching and I had to retire early – although I teach a bit now. I can say about myself, I gave the system credibility when the students gave the system credibility because of my dedication. And what about the system as a whole? How much has this system benefitted from the outpourings of wisdom that was the undercurrent of the 60s and 70s? It is worse, far worse. War continues unabated, science through drone technology now makes war more easily accessible to the 1% and its politicians because the people of the metropole don’t have to die. The 1% tell us we have a financial crisis whilst they increase their profits and syphon off more funds into their personal bank accounts. People lose their homes whilst they add zeroes to their Cayman contents.

And science talks about awareness, it was never awareness it was always intentional exploitation of scientists who choose to wear blinkers.

So what should science do? What one name is associated with Hiroshima? Truman who gave the order. No Oppenheimer who invented it. Scientists, are you to blame? If you continue to wear blinkers and accept the channeling of knowledge into the profit-making ventures your funding defines, then you are to blame.

But then what, science, is your course of action? Can we walk away from the search for knowledge? Absolutely not. What can science do? That is so hard to answer, and is an individual decision. But honesty has to help. And to describe the problem as an issue of corporate, political and administrative awareness is not honest.

Can we find knowledge without funding? Perhaps genuine science needs to say that we will search for knowledge without funding. Who can know? But Fritjof, awareness is not the problem.

Updated almost immediately:-

After finishing this blog I ate and began listening to HHDL’s Consciousness in a Single Atom. Almost the first thing that hit me was Richard Gere saying “Because I am an internationalist at heart one of the qualities that has moved me most about scientists is their amazing willingness to share knowledge with each other” [CD1 Prologue 1 of 2 – 3.26 mins]. Whilst I don’t accept this is true of 100% of the scientists, and whilst this willingness to share becomes less so as science becomes increasingly dominated by the need for funding, I do not take this quote as a refutation of my argument. When one can observe that, given this genuine desire for the search for knowledge and its sharing does exist, the body of knowledge that makes up science has narrowed and has become focussed on technology, then we can assess that this narrowing is because this technology is a platform for profit. Given that scientists desire to share knowledge this shows that the dominant force of discovery is not the scientists’ search for knowledge but the influence of the 1% in its channelling towards profit.

He concludes the section on p4 with:-

“A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations.” This, in a nutshell, is the great challenge of our time: to create sustainable communities that is to say, social and cultural environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations.”

This is in direct conflict with the interests of the 1%. How can sustainability work with the singular corporate motivation of increasing profit leading to increased personal wealth of their CEOs? Whilst this conflict does not negate the purpose of this book, it does indicate a cloistered solution, one that is academic and not relevant to daily life.