Human Energy Podcast
Human Energy was founded to share a new scientific & cosmic story introducing the noosphere as a source of meaning for future generations in our globalizing world.
Today we face the unprecedented challenges of rapid social change and new technologies which, together with the scientific picture of an aimless universe, have created a crisis of orientation. Human Energy was founded by scientists, scholars, artists, and storytellers to highlight the causal conditions to our challenges and provide solutions for current and future generations. We articulate these solutions through the "Third Story" worldview (https://humanenergy.io/the-three-stories-of-the-universe/) with focus on the emerging noosphere.
We are beginning to visualize the noosphere’s formation; study its potential future scenarios as humanity takes more and more control of its future course; and explore how human beings connecting across the world may realize themselves socially and individually in its development.
Human Energy Podcast
Beyond Sovereignty and Submission: The complex role of the modern individual within the noosphere - Ari Makridakis - N2 Conference 2023
Beyond Sovereignty and Submission: The complex role of the modern individual within the noosphere
Presented by Ari Makridakis as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at University of California, Berkeley
Alongside the emergence of the noosphere, the modern period has witnessed the birth of another, radically new planetary power: the autonomous, psychological individual. In this presentation, I will explore the relationship between these two titanic forces, asking what role sovereign, self-oriented individuals are meant to play in the creation of the noosphere.
Within the academic community, this relationship is described in wildly different ways. In one camp, thinkers such as Brian Swimme proclaim that the rise of the noosphere depends crucially on the unique sensitivities and personal passions of self-empowered individuals. From this perspective, the flourishing of the modern individual self and that of the noosphere would appear to be synergistic — and even mutually implicated — processes. According other scholars, however, the modern self's ever-increasing fixation on personal fulfillment and self-centered satiation represent the largest impediment to the birth of the noosphere. To avoid becoming a cancerous growth within the Earth's nervous system, modern individuals must therefore relinquish their narrow, self-interested desires and allow their activities to be governed by planetary goals instead.
In this talk, I will examine how the framework of systems theory can shed light on these divergent views. Drawing on the work of Arthur Koestler, Gregory Bateson, Stuart Kauffman, and Alicia Juarrero, I will attempt to offer a more nuanced view of the relationship between increasingly empowered individuals and an increasingly integrated planetary mind.
Learn more at https://humanenergy.io