By implication, solely a totally moral being is infinitely intelligent. This is what limits the power of evil. All things, other than the process that is God, are finite. God is not a "thing," but our bodies are. Solely our souls, which are infinite parts of an infinitely greater order of infinity, which is God, are in themselves infinite and eternal.
We live on, and are immortal, solely through the creativity we engender in others. Our souls, but not our egos, live on in the infinite process that is God. God is truth. God is infinite truth. Truth is information that does not require a volume in space, matter, and time. This is the reality of Quantum Space (33, 34).
A finite being shall always have a finite intelligence with imperfect ethics. Do not expect your friends, or your neighbors, or even your best friends, or any Esprital, to have the ethics or the intelligence of God. We shall all remain flawed so long as we have imperfect ethics, but our creativity can evolve forever toward infinity, taking us ever closer to God. We never reach perfection. Morality is in the journey, not in the stages of the trip. The universe itself, as we know it, is but one stage in the trip. That is why we do not live in a perfect universe.
The critical threshold of morality for an Ethical State, when ethical evolution becomes irreversible, seems to be the moment when every citizen of the Ethical State is willing to die before diminishing anyone's creativity, including his or her own. This is ethical maturity, when everyone has become an Esprital. This is what can make evolution irreversible and keep us from surrendering to evil through our own fear. This is the beginning of the Moral Society. It may be that none of us have ever reached that degree of ethical development.
I believe that Moses, Socrates, Confucius, Jesus, Spinoza, and Teilhard de Chardin almost certainly reached the threshold. But perhaps many others, such as Zarathustra, Thales, Buddha, Confucius, the Hebrew Prophets, the Christian Saints, Moses Maimonides, Mahatma Gandhi, Dieter Bonhoeffer, Albert Schweitzer, Andrei Sakharov, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, may have also been Espritals and reached this irreversible degree of ethical maturity.
Others who were highly ethical and creative, but perhaps not yet Espritals, were Thomas Jefferson, some of the other Founding Fathers, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Constantin Brunner, Henri Lurié and Buckminster Fuller. We can learn from all ethical persons. We should not reject the friendship, or the ethics, of those whom we regard as less than perfect in their ethics.
Henri Lurié was not perfect in his ethics, but he was the most committed man I ever met; he was dedicated totally to ethical principles. Buckminster Fuller the inventor of the Geodesic Dome, and many other inventions and discoveries based on icosohedral structures, was a loving teacher of all humanity, and a great empowerer of the individual. He seems to have been equally committed to ethical principles during the last two thirds of his life, although he took many wrong turns early in life.
Overcoming The Lower Passions
The lower passions are the animal instincts and emotions with which we are all born. They are what Spinoza also called "The Appetites."
Our first passion is simply not to be in pain. We cannot develop ethically if we are in constant pain.
Our second passion is to not be in need of sustenance. We cannot develop ethically if we are in constant hunger or thirst.
Our third passion is to not be in danger and to feel safe. We cannot develop ethically if we are in constant danger. This is our passion for safety. We never feel safe if we are in pain, lack sustenance, and have no shelter. The mere thought that we may lack these essentials may trigger a feeling of danger, and fill us with an uncontrollable passion for safety. This is fear through the belief that we cannot create what we most need.
Our fourth passion is to feel loved. If we feel unloved, particularly by our parents, we may not develop ethically. And remember that love is the desire for and the act of increasing someone's creativity, without ever decreasing it. It may not be the desire or the act to make anyone happy. This is a false love.
If we feel unloved, we will develop a passion for false love and never mature ethically. A false love exists when we value anyone's happiness, including our own, more than creativity, including our own.
It is the responsibility of our parents, and ourselves as parents, to make sure that children are secure in their basic passions when they are young, or we will have failed as parents, and our children shall not develop as ethical adults, become moral, and reach their full creative potential.
The highest passion we will develop, when we are still quite young, is the passion to learn. If our parents do not share this higher, non-animal passion with us, we may never develop it and never become moral adults. However, if we find the love of other good role models, while we are still young, and learn the passion for learning from them, before the world and our own lower passions have destroyed our ethics, we may still become moral, even if our parents were no more than marginally ethical, and loved us minimally when we were young.
Although the passion for learning is inborn and is part of our ethical nature, it is a late evolutionary programming of our brain, and this higher passion is quite fragile. It is intimately tied to our ethics. People will often replace it with a passion for safety, food, false love, or sensual pleasure. All of these lower passions are good, and essential for our survival as a species, but if they are not eventually given collectively a lower priority than our passion for learning, we shall destroy ourselves as a species.
If we follow our innate ethics, we will eventually learn that the true meaning of love is to value the creativity of another as much as we value our own creativity. Then our love will have become a higher passion. We must learn to value creativity more than safety, food, false love, sensual pleasure, and life itself. This can be done.
If it could not be done, Socrates would not have drunk the hemlock, Jesus would not have died on the cross, Spinoza would not have allowed himself to be excommunicated from the Jewish community and to be turned into a pariah for the rest of his life, and for long after his death, and Sakharov and Solzhenizsyn would not have taken an ethical stance alone, against the entire Soviet System.
When our passion for creativity is greater than all of our other passions combined, then we will truly know the meaning of love. And we will learn to love everyone, including ourselves and our enemies, for their creativity rather than for their happiness.
Once we learn to love ethically, and realize that this has nothing to do with anyone's happiness, but that true love, which lasts forever, is concerned solely with the creativity of ourselves first, then of our spouse, then of our children, then of our best friends, then of our good friends, then of all other friends. Once we learn how to truly love, we are empowered forever and shall never again be motivated by fear and the lower passions. We shall guide our life, and take all of our actions, solely on the basis of ethics.
Fear is the passion that results from believing that we cannot satisfy our basic needs for safety, sustenance, shelter, love, sensual pleasure, and knowledge. Fear is a false belief. This false belief seems to force us to do things that we know, in our most innermost being, are unethical. Therefore, we become drug users, sybarites, sexual addicts, criminals, liars, cheaters, greedy hoarders, jealous lovers, philistines, bureaucrats, politicians, and frauds.
The worst frauds are those who seek to convince their peers that they are intellectually superior, in order to feel secure, and to receive, admiration from others, which is an illusion of love. They become destructive to the ethics and intelligence of others, and never do anything creative in their lives again, while destroying the creativity of those more ethical, but less intellectually mature, than themselves. I have found that these kinds of frauds make up most, but not all, of the faculty in most of the universities. Other frauds, if they are a little less clever and less ethical, may become politicians, bureaucrats, predatory capitalists, unscrupulous lawyers, and other kinds of human parasites. These frauds may occasionally even believe that they are ethical, when they have never done anything creative in their lives since childhood.
Therefore, our obligations, as ethical children, are to educate first ourselves until we can understand the true meaning of ethics. Second, we focus on our own ethical development, if we do not yet have children. Once we have children, their creativity must always come before ours. Therefore, there is a natural hierarchy in our intellectual and ethical development; the latter are always correlated. We cannot grow in ethics without growing in intelligence, but we can grow in intelligence without growing in ethics. The universities, courtrooms, and board rooms of the world are filled with people who have grown in intelligence, without growing in ethics.
If we recognize the true meaning of our inborn ethics, nothing can stop us in our moral development, neither torture nor threats of death. If this were not true, we would not have had in this century people like Albert Schweitzer, Rosa Luxemburg, Mahatma Gandhi, Dieter Bonhoeffer, Bertrand Russell, Teilhard de Chardin, Mother Teresa, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Andrei Sakharov. Why do we not have more people like these?
The Impediments To Ethical Growth
We wish to maximize creativity to the best of our ability in order to grow in ethics, and become maximally creative human beings, but there is a natural hierarchy that we must follow until we have children of our own. This hierarchy is developed as follows:
1. Our parents provide us with at least the minimal amount of safety, nurturing, love, and ethical example to make us clearly ethical, and simultaneously to have some passion for learning, and not be neurotically insecure.Guidelines For Educational Ethics2. We educate ourselves, as best we can, within the existing school system.
3. The school system, mostly by luck, is not so destructive that we lose our ethics, and all joy in learning. It is the responsibility of parents to choose the least destructive schools that will most contribute to the creativity of their children, but this choice is rarely clear.
4. We begin to read, study, and experiment on our own, outside the regular school system.
5. We begin to develop an interest in the opposite sex, which is healthy and ethical, but distracting from our primary obligations while we are still young.
6. We begin to try to be ever more self-sufficient, and we get an after-school job.
7. We begin to have conflicts among our passions for learning, sex, and autonomy.
8. At this point we need to develop new ethical guidelines about how to deal with the ethical problems we are encountering in school, relationships with the opposite sex, and our desire to be autonomous.
Our highest ethical priority when we are young is to continue to educate ourselves and grow in ethics. The type of education that is optimal, in terms of maximizing our creativity, is that proposed in the Lifetime Curriculum given in the Appendix of this book, but this type of education is not available at any price anywhere in the world. It is up to our parents and ourselves to obtain this type of education within the regular educational system. This is very difficult.
At the same time that our passion for learning is growing, our passion for sex is taking up more and more of our time and interferes with our studies. Our parents, society, the educational bureaucracy, and our own passion for autonomy is pressuring us to specialize so that we may become employable as soon as possible. The best we can do, it seems, is to go into a secure well-paid profession. The demands of the profession on our studies, and our working time, are such that we can no longer even approach the educational levels of the Lifetime Curriculum. Therefore, in order to survive we stop being creative, and we regurgitate exactly what we were taught, get good grades, and become acceptable to the profession. Our ethics and our creativity are being destroyed by the educational system.
We cannot solve our ethical dilemma in education unless we simultaneously solve the ethical questions posed by our sexual passions, and our passion for autonomy. An outline of educational ethics is given in the Appendix, and in Chapter 6 of CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION (115).
Economic Ethics
It is good for children to want to be autonomous and economically self-sufficient, without having to depend on their parents. However, if it is at all possible, it is best for young persons to concentrate on their studies, and to remain dependent on their parents until they can continue to educate themselves optimally on their own. This should happen before the age of thirty, which will leave most persons over half of their lifetime to return to the world all that has been given to them. For the most brilliant children, it can happen before the age of eighteen, through scholarships, fellowships, and/or part time work in a field related to their main educational interests (See Appendix).
However it happens that young adults become economically self-sufficient, while continuing to educate themselves, they should always bear in mind the following principles of ethical economics:
1. It is, at best, marginally ethical to be an employee or to have employees.2. It is optimal in ethical economics solely to have partners and to work with those partners.
3. A partner is someone who shares the risks as well as the profits with other partners, although they do not have to share them equally; an independent contractor is more a partner than an employee.
4. An employee is someone who neither shares the risks nor the profits with the employer, but is promised a salary.
5. An employee is a temporary slave who exploits the employer, by working as little as possible for the most possible recompense, and is in turn exploited by the employer, who tries to extract as much work as possible from the employee, while paying as little as possible in salary and benefits. It is clear that not all employees and employers are equally exploitive.
6. Every form of exploitation is unethical, whether we are an exploiter, or an exploitee.
7. We should always begin the practice of economic ethics within the first economic paradigm, which follows:
The First Economic Paradigm
We invest our time in earning the maximum disposable income possible, while assuring that nothing we do to earn our income ever imposes undeserved harm on anyone, and is always in its-self a creative, ethical act.
8. We can earn a good living for ourselves and our families within the First Economic Paradigm, but for any person who is growing in ethics it will eventually lead to great frustration, because we soon discover that those ethical activities which earn the highest income for us, are also the least creative activities that we can imagine. This leads us logically and inevitably to the Second Economic Paradigm.
9. The Second Economic Paradigm.
(WARNING! NEVER FOLLOW THIS PARADIGM!)
In this paradigm we try to maximize creativity for ourselves and others, under the constraints that whatever acts we do in this paradigm, (a) never impose any undeserved harm on anyone, (b) are always as creative as possible, and ( c ) produce sufficient resources to support ourselves, and provide the necessary security and educational opportunities for our family to become maximally creative.
This all sounds very logical, and more ethical, than the First Economic Paradigm, but it is not true. I know this from having worked with this paradigm for over fifteen years. If we follow this paradigm, we will not maximize our family's creativity, nor anyone else's. Furthermore, we will, eventually, always be on the brink of bankruptcy, no matter how rich we were when we started. If we have not provided adequate security and educational opportunities for our family, they will be ethically damaged. We can provide those opportunities, and security, for them, solely within the First Economic Paradigm.
10. Stay in the First Economic Paradigm until you have provided all the security and educational opportunity your family will ever need. Then go on with your ethical development.
11. After achieving the goals of the previous step, within the First Economic Paradigm, and avoiding the Second Economic Paradigm, leap to the Third Economic Paradigm, which follows:
The Third Economic Paradigm
We do our best to utilize the resources in-hand, and solely those resources, to maximize creativity, according to the dictates of our conscience alone, while ignoring all economic risk, or gain, and making sure that we never impose undeserved harm on anyone. This includes not risking the resources that are essential for our family's security. Never count on any resources that are not already have in-hand, even if they are promised to us by the most reliable people and sources we know. Remember, the most valuable resource we have is our own life. Use and risk solely those resources which are not essential to maintain our own life, and the well being of our family.
This paradigm works perfectly, once you have fulfilled your ethical obligations to your family. I know, because I have been working with this paradigm, exclusively, for the last ten years. It never fails. Use it, and you will maximize creativity for yourself and others, if, and only if, you have first fulfilled your ethical obligations to your family, otherwise you will fail. Nothing must ever come before the maximization of the creativity of your family, including your own survival. A more detailed discussion of the Third Economic Paradigm, without naming it as such, is given in Chapter Seven of my previous book (115).
12. Once we have passed through the Third Economic Paradigm, so that we have full confidence in it, we are ready to enter the Fourth Economic Paradigm, which follows:
The Fourth Economic Paradigm
We take all the experience and confidence that we have in the Third Economic Paradigm, as well as all of its ethical principles, and do our best to create an Ethical State before we die. If we believe that we know how best to do this, we do it, and do not just talk about it. An Ethical State is the best legacy that we can leave our children. If we do not have confidence in our own ability, or we believe that someone else has a better strategy, then we become a citizen of their Ethical State, until we can create a better one of our own.
If you understand and follow the economic ethical principles above, you should become economically secure by the time you are thirty, if not much sooner. Economic security comes from having reached a minimum level of practical creativity, not from being independently wealthy. It is at this time that you can ethically begin a family, and then fulfill your obligations to them, before leaving the First Economic Paradigm and leaping to the Third Economic Paradigm, while avoiding a fall into The Second Economic Paradigm, which can easily trap us. It trapped me for fifteen years, and it took me another five years to get out of it entirely and learn to work solely in the Third and Fourth Economic Paradigms.
A more detailed discussion of Economic Ethics within the Third Economic Paradigm, is given in Chapter 7 of CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION (115). However, it is best to stay in the First Economic Paradigm until you have provided adequate security for your family. Once you understand the Evolutionary Ethic and commit to its principles, it will become increasingly difficult to function in the First Economic Paradigm.
However, what most interferes with our ethical duty to educate ourselves, at least while we are young, is not so much our economic needs, or passion for autonomy, but our sexual passions, which can easily trap us in an unwise marriage to someone who is not our Complement, and does not love us ethically. We can avoid this trap by understanding and following Sexual Ethics.
Sexual Ethics
Sexual Ethics follow very simply and directly from the Evolutionary Ethic. However, popular mass culture, which has become hedonistic, and our own emotions make it very difficult to understand sexual ethics. In my previous book, I thought that sexual ethics were so simple that I left them as an exercise to the reader, with a few hints. I will now go a little deeper into sexual ethics, but these conclusions may not be obvious to the reader. I may have to write an entire book on sexual ethics some day to make their derivation from the Evolutionary Ethic clear. Do not worry if they go against your emotions and desires. Follow your own conscience, but remember that your conscience may be driven by fear or lust, and that the more primitive parts of your brain are fooling the more advanced (ethical) part of your brain when this occurs.
Our sexual passions are natural and programmed into the the brain by at least 200 million years of evolution. These passions can easily overcome our ethical needs and judgments, if we do not have a good system of ethics to guide us, one which does not conflict with our biology and our true sense of right and wrong. Jewish sexual ethics are much closer to this type of guide than are Christian sexual ethics.
Christian sexual ethics do not come from the teachings of Jesus, but primarily from the teachings of Saint Paul and the bureaucracy that succeeded him. Jesus always claimed to be nothing other than a Jew, and that his teachings were solely for other Jews. He said "I come to fulfill the law and not to change it. I shall not change a single letter nor jot in the law.... Do not throw pearls before swine." The latter comment of Jesus was in reference to whether his teachings were for non-Jews. All the early Christians had to convert to Judaism before they could become Christians. Saint Paul changed all this by saying that baptized Christians were circumcised in the spirit.
Saint Paul was a high ranking Jew, a Jewish aristocrat and a member of the Sanhedrin. I believe, along with some Biblical scholars, that he was a latent homosexual (176).
Male homosexuality was a capital offense among the Jews of this time. Killing a man for engaging in homosexual acts seems unethical to me, but this was Jewish law. As Spinoza first noted, not all Jewish laws or the Torah itself were consistent with the true system of ethics taught by Moses (412).
I believe that the true ethical teachings of Moses are best expressed in Genesis and Exodus. Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, I believe, represent a corruption of the ethics of Moses, produced by the Hebrew priests as they began to acquire ever more temporal power. There are no existing copies of the Torah produced before hundreds of years after the destruction of the First Temple in the sixth century BC.
Therefore, a person in Saint Paul's position could not even think about coming out of the closet, and becoming a practicing homosexual. The only feasible alternative for an ethical, Jewish homosexual was to be celibate. Homosexuality is a congenital condition, not an ethical choice (117). We should have love and compassion for homosexuals, not the fear and contempt taught by some religious fundamentalists.
This situation produced an anti-sexual neurosis in Saint Paul, which manifested itself in claiming that celibacy was the highest moral state for any human being. This is completely contrary to Jewish law and the Evolutionary Ethic, which claim that the married state is the highest moral state for both men and women. As the Bible tells us, "You shall leave your father and mother, and cleave unto your spouse, and you shall become as one flesh."
Homosexuality was probably originally disparaged by the early Jews because it inhibited the natural increase of the Jewish people, who have always been a very small minority among the nations of the world as are even more so the Espritals. Furthermore, this minority was always on the verge of extinction. It also might be that homosexual culture, somehow, decreases the Evolutionary Ethic within a society. The Evolutionary Ethic gives highest ethical priority to children and families. These are values largely absent in most homosexuals. I have never met nor heard of a homosexual who was an Esprital, but there are many ethical homosexuals, which precludes persecution of homosexuals.
In order to give full vent to his neurosis, as well as his considerable ethics and intelligence, Saint Paul built Christianity in his own image, and created a basically anti-sexual religion, which sees any form of sexual activity outside of marriage, and many a form within marriage, as an immoral act, and holds that the most ethical life that one can lead is the celibate life. In the words of Saint Paul, "It is better to marry, than to burn with lust." This is, of course, contrary to biology, Judaism, Evolutionary Ethics, and good sense.
The most ethical life that anyone can lead is the most ethical life that everyone should lead. If everyone were celibate, then the human species would become extinct. The extinction of humanity is not an ethical act. Therefore, Christian sexual ethics are false, from the point of view of Kant's Categorical Imperative.
The Catholic Church, in demanding that all its clergy be celibate, is behaving unethically. This unethical behavior has been used primarily as a form of control over the clergy, so that they will not give first ethical priority to their families, as they should. This will lead to an ever greater concentration of ethical homosexuals and other sexual deviants among the Catholic clergy, which will make the Church ever more out of touch with other Christians. But the almost universal Christian ethic that all sexual activity outside of marriage is a sin is also a false ethic. We need to be guided by the Evolutionary Ethic, which never leads to its own contradiction.
Our sexual passions are among the strongest, and most natural, good passions that we will ever have; it is very difficult not to be dominated by them when we are still young and have not yet developed a love for learning that is greater than our sexual passions. For some, this conflict begins to diminish after the age of about twenty-five, when the sex drive apparently begins to very slowly diminish, for most men. For most women the sex drive does not seem to diminish until about the age of forty or so. For those who will grow ethically all their life and perhaps become Espritals, the Evolutionary Ethic is well established in their mind by the time they are twenty-five, although they may not be consciously aware of it. More important than a diminishing sex drive is the development of sound sexual ethics to put in its place.
Therefore, the first thing to understand in true sexual ethics is that sexual desires are natural and good, but that not all sexual behavior is good under all circumstances. The most important ethical consideration regarding sexual behavior is that we not produce any children until we are prepared to assume full responsibility for their welfare, and put the welfare of our children ahead of our own.
We are usually not prepared to do this until we are well educated, ethically mature and economically secure. However, the most important aspect of ethical maturity is that we have learned how to love.
If we do not love our spouse and our spouse does not love us in return, we have not provided an adequate family for our children. The greatest love of an ethically mature person is love for children yet unborn, particularly one's own children. Until we are ethically mature, we are not fit to be parents, no matter how intellectually mature and economically secure we have become. We can neither learn to love nor become ethically mature through reason alone. We need to be open to both the mystical paradigm and the scientific paradigm.
Ultimate goals, such as the Evolutionary Ethic, have no basis in logic. They are ends in themselves, not means to an end. We will never choose the Evolutionary Ethic as an ultimate goal if we are closed to mysticism. True ethics come from God. This communication with God is a mystical experience, which people who are totally closed to the mystical paradigm will never have. True love is also a mystical experience, which also comes from God; the experience of true love is even more profound than the Evolutionary Ethic. Anti-mystical people will never have it.
Although both ethics and love can be understood and explained at a purely intellectual level, they cannot be taught without love. They must be taught by personal loving example, or we will never learn them. The teachings of Moses gave us the ethical basis for creating an ethical society, but it is the teachings, and example, of Jesus that taught us the meaning of true love. That is why Christianity has been much more effective in communicating Jewish Ethics to the world than has been Judaism itself, although Christianity has been contaminated by the mistaken teachings of Saint Paul, and few Christians live up to the teachings of Jesus.
God is truth, but God is also love. True, or ethical, love is based on giving at least as high a priority to the creativity of another as we give to our own creativity. This shall always seem irrational to someone who has not learned to love and is anti-mystical. In our families, we must love our children and our spouse more than ourselves, or we shall have a dysfunctional family based on false love. A false love for our spouse is based in the notion, "I will marry you, and love you, so long as you make me happy. When you no longer make me happy, I will leave you, and if necessary destroy our family, because nothing in the world is more important than my happiness."
So long as we seek sexual partners on their ability to make us happy, rather than on the basis of who will be the best possible parent to our yet unborn children, we are still ethically immature, and should have no children. We should have no sexual relations with a partner whom we do not love ethically, and who does not love us ethically in return; we owe it to ourselves, and to our unborn children.
We know that we are ethically immature so long as we have not learned to love ethically and seek sexual partners primarily for the pleasure they bring us, rather for the love we give them. If we love someone, we will never knowingly do anything to harm them, even if they desire it. If we have a sexual relationship with someone whom we do not love, we will almost certainly eventually harm them in some way, particularly if we have children with them. The highest manifestation of our love for another is to wish to have children with them, if, and only if, they wish to have children with us, and we are both sufficiently mature ethically, intellectually, and economically to have children, and both of us will give their creativity the highest priority in our life. Next to this our happiness is trivial.
Therefore, sexual ethics takes more than intellectual maturity and an ethical nature. It takes these things together with the capacity to love. The capacity to love truly and deeply takes an openess to mysticism. We will never learn to love without the example of someone who has loved us. What we learn from this example is what cannot be learned from books or in school. We learn to have empathy, compassion, patience, and trust, based not on reason, but on love. Without this kind of a capacity to love, we shall never understand nor follow the sexual ethics that come from the Evolutionary Ethic.
Sexual ethics as herein developed are intended primarily for young heterosexuals. The entire concept of the Ethical State is optimized for heterosexuals who are committed to the Evolutionary Ethic and what is best for their children. It is not intended to accommodate the needs of homosexuals or anyone who is not committed to the Evolutionary Ethic. If they cannot fit into the Ethical State, they should form their own societies and not seek citizenship in the Ethical State, although they shall all be tolerated within the Ethical State, so long as they obey its laws. No one who has not yet learned to love shall ever understand well the Evolutionary Ethic, or the sexual ethics that follow. Still, this leads us to the following summary of true sexual ethics that maximize creativity; I hope that it is of some use to you.
1. Have no children until you are ethically mature, well educated, and sufficiently economically secure to support a family, entirely by yourself; this applies equally to both men and women; the most important gift we give our children is an ethical home, with an ethical mother and an ethical father; it is unethical, and irresponsible, to have children unless we can provide all these things for them.Polygamy may be ethically optimal for the individual, but almost always harmful to our children and spouse. If we love our spouse and children ethically, we will have a monogamous relationship with our spouse, no matter what the creative opportunities are for having sexual relationships with other very willing, attractive, and maybe even uniformly superior partners. The commitment of love that we make to a spouse for their sake, and for the sake of our children, is to be monogamous, no matter what the temptations. Our first ethical obligation is not to inflict harm on anyone, ever, for any reason. We do not leave our spouse, unless he or she is systematically destructive to us or our children.2. Never have sexual relations with any person unless you love the person.
3. The minimum amount of love that should exist between people who have sexual relations is that they love the other at least as much as they love themselves.
4. If you cannot commit to eventually giving first priority to the creativity of your sexual partners, over your own, then you do not have enough love for them to have sexual relationships with them. A spouse is a sexual partner whom you love more than your self.
5. If you would never have a sexual relationship that would lead to a child exactly like your partner, you do not have enough love for them to have sexual relations, even if you believe that your sexual relations will never lead to children, because of age, health, or birth control. Remember, it is unethical to be certain.
6. If neither of you can jointly give all your children's creativity first priority over your own, then you do not love each other sufficiently to have children or sexual relations together, even if you believe that you can never have children together, and that you are using the most fool-proof method of birth control in the world.
7. You should avoid all coital activity, but not, necessarily, all sexual activity, until you are sufficiently educated and economically secure to care adequately for any children you might have. Until that time arrives, practice solely safe sex, or better still remain celibate.
8. If it is biologically or psychologically impossible to control your sexual desires from interfering with your education, then make sure they are limited to sexual activity that will not lead to children, i.e. practice solely safe-sex, but recognize that you can easily lose control and end up with children, whom you must then give first priority in life for the rest of their lives, thereby possibly failing to develop full creative potential for yourself, your spouse, and your children.
9. Never use abortion as a form of birth control; accidental pregnancies should be handled by adoption, never abortion, unless the life or health of the mother is threatened.
10. Abortion solely for convenience is almost always an unethical act, but it is a private act that should always be at the discretion of a woman and her doctor. It is her body, not the fetus', much less some fundamentalist busybody's. It is up to the man to choose a sexual partner who will not abort his children, and who will be a good mother to them; this is his ethical obligation.
11. Women who engage in any kind of coital activity will almost always eventually become pregnant, if their health and age are adequate, no matter what form of birth control is used. A couple I have heard of, where the divorced woman had a tubal ligation to make sure she had no more children, and the divorced man she had recently married had had a vasectomy to make sure that he had no more children, much to their amazement had a baby boy within a year of their marriage. They named him Houdini.
12. Be very careful not to contract or spread any of the sexually transmitted diseases, which are now ubiquitous. It is an unethical act to contract, or spread, any sexually transmitted disease. We are ethically responsible for making sure this does not happen, which means we must never surrender to casual sexual passion. If we cannot control our sexual passions before marriage, we must practice solely safe-sex with those we love enough to gladly marry; we must not be promiscuous.
13. Sexual activity without adequate precautions and love between the participants can be very harmful emotionally, spiritually, and physically to our partners and ourselves; any such harm is an unethical act.
14. Whatever your gender, sexual orientation, or age, do your best to be celibate until you find a person of the opposite sex, who is truly your Complement.
15. Always seek out as many Complements as you can find for the rest of your life, but try to keep your relationships platonic, until you are both ready to commit to each other and to your children first.
16. Solely marry and commit exclusively to someone who is your Complement if there is mutual sexual attraction between you. After this you must do your best to assure that the love between, you and all your other Complements is purely platonic, and is in no way sexually based.
17. Never try to make a mate or a spouse out of someone you are not attracted to sexually; keep him or her exclusively as a platonic Complement. Sexual attraction is a way nature tells us that we are genetically compatible with another, although sexual attraction can occur without ethical compatibility, and the latter is what is most important.
18. Never engage in any sexual activity which seems wrong to you, particularly if you do not like it, or if it has any significant potential for inflicting harm on anyone, including yourself.
19. These ethical guidelines are intended primarily for young heterosexuals, but they also apply in great part to other persons.
20. Ethically committed heterosexual monogamy is the most creative form of sexuality, but other types of sexuality are not necessarily unethical; they may, however, border on the trivial, if they have no purpose beyond mutually desirable pleasure. Sex without ever any possibility of reproduction, may at best be trivial and at worst destructive. Happiness that does not affect creativity is the definition of triviality. Trivial behavior always increases entropy in the short run, and decreases creativity in the long run.
Every polygamous society in the world seems uniformly inferior in its collective creativity to every monogamous society. The greater the social, economic, and political equality between men and women, the more creative will be the society, and our primary ethical obligation is to maximize creativity, not to have many meaningful pleasant sexual experiences, even if they are more creative than the one we have with our spouse. Our ethical obligations are first to our children, then to our spouse, then to ourselves, then to the rest of the world. We cannot ethically maximize creativity for ourselves and others, while decreasing creativity for our spouse and children. Unethical means can never produce ethical ends.
Hopefully, these ethical guidelines, although not logically derived here in detail from the Evolutionary Ethic, are sufficient for avoiding the traps of unethical sexual relationships and premature marriage, which can easily destroy our creative potential for the rest of our life. It is our responsibility as ethical beings to be guided by ethics in everything we do, and not by our animal passions. When we reach this degree of ethical maturity, we can begin an Ethical Republic. However, not all citizens of an Ethical State need be this ethically mature. The sexual passions are very difficult to supercede. We should be patient, loving, and compassionate with those who cannot overcome them. "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone." However, there is one last lower passion that we must overcome in order to reach our full ethical development, as well as our maximum creative potential. This passion is our fear of death.
The Ethics of Death
Fortunately, when we are young, we have little fear or thought of death, that is why the young make the best soldiers. The main fear of the young is the fear of pain, and secondarily of permanent damage to their bodies. But eventually all these fears come together in the passion for life, and a fear of death.
Fear is based upon the belief that we cannot create. We must learn not to fear death, and know that our major ethical responsibility in life is not to stay alive, but to never decrease the creativity of anyone, including our own. At the same time, we inevitably come to the logical conclusion that we cannot create once we die, and that we eventually all die. Therefore, our creativity ends with our life.
The major focus of almost all organized religion is to counter this fear with a fantasy, for which there is no objective proof at all, that the ego is a part of the soul, and that the soul, as the immortal part of us, lives on and continues to be creative, either in heaven or in a new reincarnated body.
These beliefs in continued creativity of the soul or the ego after death, are I believe, false beliefs. However, false or true, they are irrelevant to our ethical obligations, which are (1) never to decrease anyone's creativity, including our own, (2) to maximize creativity while we are alive, (3) to go on living so long as we are creative, and (4) to die when we are no longer creative. That is how we maximize creativity in general.
When our creativity has sunk to the level where we can no longer create the resources that we need to stay alive, then the only creative act left for us to do is to die, and not to be a parasite on those who love us and may choose to adopt us as their dependent. We should certainly not expect those who barely know us to tax themselves to keep us alive as an uncreative parasite. However, this does not mean that the essence of what we are dies with our body.
We are immortal in our souls, which live forever in the creativity that we have engendered in others during our life, and through our creations perhaps long after our deaths. We are also immortal in that every creative act that we ever do becomes an eternal part of the infinite mind of God, i.e. part of quantum space, the implicate order (33, 34, 410-412). But our ego is a product of our body, and it dies with our body.
Therefore, part of our ethical development is to overcome our attachment to ego and the consequent fear of death, and replace them entirely with the highest passion, which is to maximize the creativity of the universe. If we are not willing to die before decreasing the creativity of our neighbor, or ourselves, then we are not yet moral. If we are not yet an Esprital, then our contributions to the creation of an Ethical State may not be as great as those of an Esprital, but they will not be irrelevant. We can always help those we recognize as Espritals, as best we can, in creating the Ethical State. One does not have to be a Esprital to be a citizen of the Ethical State, merely understanding and doing one's best to live up to the Evolutionary Ethic is enough.
If we have become Espritals, we are ethical warriors, and follow the code of a warrior, which is never to surrender. Part of our ethical obligation in life is never to surrender to evil, allowing another to control or destroy our creativity. This must be resisted to the death. But most of us are not there yet, and enough pain, and/or threats of death, can force us to surrender to evil, which turns us into a destructive force in the Universe. All we can do is the best we can, and try to adopt the ethics, courage, and warrior's code of an Esprital, and that is enough to create an Ethical State.
Espritals never see themselves as Espritals; they are too well aware of their own imperfections. But they recognize other Espritals, and do their best to love them and serve them by diffusing their ethical message and their wisdom. However, sometimes the followers of Espritals forget that they were flawed humans, and turn them into mythical, imagined paragons of virtue. This happened to Moses, whose fundamentalist followers believe had the entire Torah dictated to him directly by God, letter by letter. It also happened to Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tse, Socrates, and Jesus. The latter was turned into the literal, biological son of God, who was resurrected from the dead and rose directly into heaven, by his followers. The teachings of Mohammed, who was turned into the last and greatest of all the prophets of God, who also rose directly into heaven, were also distorted by his followers. It has happened to many others who have become anointed as saints and prophets.
This would have happened to Spinoza, had he not been so reviled by virtually all the Jews and Christians of the world, and had he not written his greatest thoughts, and left them for us exactly as he had them, and not as his followers would have distorted them. The distortions of Spinoza's teaching did, in fact, occur, and led to the teachings of Jefferson, Hegel, Marx and Lenin, but most of their followers did not know that they were following a distortion of the teachings of Spinoza.
Spinoza is my Rabbi, and I am his devoted follower, according to my own interpretations of his teachings. He was also the Rabbi of Constantin Brunner and Henri Lurié. Henri accepted Constantin Brunner as the greatest Esprital he ever knew. And I accept Henri as the greatest Esprital I have ever known, and he had many, many ethical flaws, as did Constantin Brunner.
Although I encountered Teilhard de Chardin shortly before he died, I never knew him except through his books. He is the Rabbi who first raised my ethical level so that I was willing to greatly risk my life, but not yet quite die, for ethical principle. It was the love and the implicit evolutionary ethics in Teilhard's writings that so moved me, not his greatness as a scientist. Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest.
Today Moses, Jesus, Spinoza, and Teilhard are jointly my Rabbis, and I have done my best to bring all their ethical teachings together in my books, and to teach and disseminate the common ethical message that they all brought to the world. This common message is something worth dying for.
Judaism says we should do anything to stay alive, short of idolatry, murder, and engaging in destructive sexual practices. I go a little further, and say we should die before decreasing anyone's creativity, including our own. Once we accept this Ethical State for our own mind, we shall never again fear death, torture, or surrendering to our own fear. It is a liberating experience that comes from simply understanding, and following, the imperatives of the Evolutionary Ethic.
It is unethical ever to nurture a parasite. A human who is never able again to create at least as many resources than he or she will consume has become a parasite, and should accept death gladly, without expecting or wanting anyone to nurture him or her. However, this is sometimes difficult for those who love us, who will often try to keep us alive, even after we have become parasites. If those who love us nurture us after we have become parasites, they are diminishing their creativity, as well as the collective creativity of humanity, and doing us no favor. However, it is highly ethical to comfort, and in every possible way communicate love to dying friends and all those we love. Communicating love to those we love is among the most creative things we can do, for enhancing our own creativity.
We shall all become parasites if we live long enough. Fortunately, many of us die before becoming parasites. I would rather die than become a parasite. And I ask all those who love me to allow me to die when I can no longer nurture and/or care for myself.
I recognize that suicide is unethical if it has no purpose but to end suffering. However, I respect everyone's right to commit suicide, with or without anyone's help. But no one ever has the right, except in necessary self-defense, to end the life of another without his or her clear consent, before impartial witnesses, solely to end their suffering. Suicide, as with any form of self-harm, is, at worst, a private unethical act.
I shall finish this section by reproducing a copy of my own living will, which I left for my family in case I become incapacitated and can no longer make decisions concerning my medical treatment.
The Living Will of John David Garcia
I wish to live as comfortably and simply as possible so long as I remain creative. My major creativity is in writing and teaching. If I become so ill that it is no longer likely that I will ever be able to write or teach again, then I wish to die as soon as possible.
While I was in Mexico in December, 1999, I became incapacitated for a period of four days. If I ever become incapacitated again, so that I cannot make decisions for myself, I do not wish any heroic or invasive medical procedures to be used to keep me alive, unless there is a good chance that I will fully recover my creativity. Therefore, unless I am likely to recover my creativity, I do not wish any life support, surgery, invasive procedures, or anything to prolong my life performed on me.
If I am ever in a condition where I am not likely to recover my creativity, I wish to be allowed to die as quickly, painlessly, and peacefully as possible. I give full authority to my wife, Bernice, and/or my daughter, Karen, because she is a physician, to act for me in these conditions, with my other daughters, Miriam, Jackie, and Laura, in that order, acting individually in their place, if Bernice and/or Karen are unable to assume this responsibility.
Witnessed and Testified to on February 13, 2000 by,
John David Garcia Witnesses
Death As A Creative Act
Death is essential to life. Without death there can be no evolution by natural selection, since then higher life forms could never replace the less evolved life forms. It is inevitable that as we grow older, we eventually begin to decline in creativity, until our life costs more in the creative efforts of others to maintain than what our total creative output will be for the rest of our life. At this point the most creative thing we can do is die and allow someone else to take our place in the ongoing experiment that is evolution.
The sole value and meaning of our life is the creativity that we engender in others. Each human life is an experiment in evolution. It will have been a successful experiment, if we leave the biosphere a little more creative than we found it. If we have had a good life, someone will be able to build on the part of our soul that we left behind, and help humanity take one more step along the road that leads to the Ethical State, the Moral Society, and ever closer to union in God. Solely moral beings achieve true union with God, solely they can continue to grow in creativity forever. Solely morality, can engender immortality.
There can be no evolution by natural selection without death. Only highly ethical moral beings can continue to evolve forever, and contribute to the Evolution of the Universe, without having to die. Until then, we have an ethical obligation to die and make room for another experiment in evolution. Dying is the last creative act of our life, we need not fear it.
Therefore, we learn to ignore death, and focus on maximizing creativity without any expectation of reward or fear of punishment, knowing that we are contributing to the creativity of the universe by dying, and that we have done the best we can. That is all we can expect from life, knowing that we did the best we could, that we refused to surrender to evil, that our creativity has come to an end, and that it is time to die. Our soul will continue to live forever in the creativity that we have engendered in others. This seems to me to be the only heaven there is. We should expect no other reward, nor fear any punishment. Even if there were a hell, in which I do not believe, all other suffering is trivial, if we can no longer create. At this time we should welcome oblivion, and the final annihilation of our ego. It is the end of pain.
If we succeed as a species in creating a Moral Society, then our descendants may become irreversibly moral and grow in creativity forever, without having to die, but we are not there yet. Our death is the last gift we leave for our children, and all our future descendants, as well as the descendants of those we love. It's not such a bad deal. In any case, it is the only deal that God offers us. The rest is fantasy.
How to Begin an Ethical Republic
An Ethical State begins with ourselves, and must evolve into an Ethical Republic over time. The first thing that must be clear in your own mind, before you begin an Ethical Republic, is what its constitution should be. I have given you one example in the previous chapter. I gave another, inadequate, and I now know impossible, example in my first book (116). But you should write your own constitution if you find mine inadequate. When you have written what seems to you, according to your own conscience alone, the best constitution you can think of, then you can begin creating an Ethical Government, but not yet a republic, by creating an Octet for yourself.
Do not consider political expediency at all. Do what is most ethical, and creative, not what will sell politically. Every ethical compromise you ever make for political expediency will fail, and lead to the destruction of what you are trying to create. This is what happened to Jefferson and the Founding Fathers. They should have been prepared to lose the Revolution and hanged, before compromising on the issue of slavery. Stand alone all your life if you must. But always seek citizens for the Ethical Republic you are trying to create, listening to their feedback, but not compromising on what you believe is ethically necessary. If you cannot create, for yourself, a single Ethical Octet with four men and four women, you will never be able to create an Ethical Republic.
Compromise is not what is needed. What is needed is a totally ethical political structure, and a totally ethical political plan and strategy, no matter how politically infeasible it may seem within the current political realities in which you live. Listen to others, they can help you correct your errors, but be guided solely by your own conscience alone. Unethical means can never produce ethical ends.
Therefore, your first task is to develop enough ethically and intellectually to create an Octet. I have been trying to create an Ethical State for thirty years. I have created over a thousand Octets in several countries over the last twenty years. Almost all of them were failed experiments, which gradually taught me what not to do, and to understand the fragility of people's ethics, and how they can easily sink into fear, particularly into the fear of not being loved, the fear of being an outcast among their social and religious community, the economic fear of not having the bare essentials of security, the fear of being persecuted by the current political system under which they live, and finally the fear of death, which leads them to accept the comforting lies of the popular religions.
SEE teaches a one week intensive seminar in Eugene, Portland, and San Francisco in how to overcome all fear and begin to lead a maximally ethical life, in such a way that anyone who understands these things can create an Ethical State on their own. There is no charge for this seminar, but participants pay their own expenses and the out-of-pocket costs that they impose on SEE by taking the seminar.
This seminar also teaches the participants one set of techniques and strategies for creating Octets and beginning an Ethical Government. There may be other, much better ways of doing this. I do not know them. Hopefully you can improve on what I have learned.
Those who take the seminar and understand well the Evolutionary Ethic may become citizens of the Ethical Republic that is starting in Eugene, under the sponsorship of SEE, or they may take what they have learned and do it on their own. For those who wish to continue studying with SEE, there is an apprenticeship program that leads to full citizenship in the SEE based Ethical State.
The most important thing to learn is how to work in Octets by unanimous consensus. The particular form of Creative Synergy which I call "Autopoiesis" appears to be very effective, but it needs further experimentation under more highly controlled conditions (115). Anyone who can come up with a more ethical and creative technique for achieving consensus within Ethical Octets is ethically obligated to do so and then communicate it to others.
A strategy for creating Ethical Octets, for those who have taken my seminars, understand autopoiesis, and thoughly studied my books (115-117), including this one, follows in outline form:
1. Form as many Complementary Pairs as you can, investing a minimum of time in interacting with persons who do not share the Evolutionary Ethic with you.
2. Begin working in Octets, with your best Complement as soon as possible. Try never to have more men than women in the Octet, but it is alright to have more women than men, so long as the maximum number of persons does not exceed 10; a single Complementary Pair can also engage in autopoiesis (115). Meet at least once per month, but not more often than once per week. Be extremely scrupulous about keeping your commitments to one another within the Octet; come when you say you are going to come, and arrive on time or slightly early. Try never to be late; it decreases creativity for those on time; it is an unethical act.
3. Focus, at least, the first eight to ten autopoietic sessions on solving whatever personal problems are put forth by each member of the Octet, until each member of the Octet has posed his or her most pressing problem of the moment to the Octet at least once, and has confidence in the joint power of the Octet. All Octet transactions should be held in highest confidence, and never discussed outside the Octet without unanimous permission of the Octet. Constantly review and keep the Contract for Creative Transformation (115), or a better contract for ethical cooperation, if you can create it.
4. Call SEE whenever you meet as an Octet if you have any questions about the process, but first brainstorm all problems classically without autopoiesis before addressing them autopoietically. Record and transcribe the brainstorming, autopoietic, and consensus sessions on how to solve each problem; make a book out of them. Remember that everything is done by consensus, including giving a classical interpretation to the autopoiesis.
5. Study CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION (115) and ...POLITICAL ETHICS individually and collectively until you all reach consensus on what everything in the books means. I recommend reading the books in sequence, out loud, within the Octet, each person reading one paragraph at a time, and then discussing jointly the meaning of that paragraph, in light of everything that has preceded in your studies of the books, and everything else you know, or think you know. Correct whatever errors you find, and expect to find them. The only time we know that we know is when our alleged knowledge enables us to predict and control something new without diminishing anyone's ability to predict and control anything else. Remember, you can always call SEE, as an Octet, at any time to ask any question. SEE never charges for any of its services.
6. When you have finished studying CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION and ...POLITICAL ETHICS, and you have all had at least one brain storming session and one autopoietic session on a pressing problem of your own, then you can continue this First Phase of autopoiesis, which is called "the Social Phase," until, by consensus, you are all satisfied, and also by consensus go on to the Second Phase, which is called "the Common Interest Phase."
In the Second Phase you all choose by unanimous consensus a project which is an end in itself for all of you, and can readily be implemented by all of you with the resources you have on hand. The project must be solely, and entirely, in the Third or Fourth Economic Paradigm. The resources should primarily be your own creative labor and minimal material resources, which should be equally burdened on each person. No one should ever receive resources, subsidies, or charity of any kind, including loans, from anyone else in the Octet, but all should try to equalize their contributions to those of the greatest contributor. In Phase 2 try to avoid material contributions. All may trade equitably among each other, by consensus, for their time and resources, but I recommend avoiding all commercial transactions among yourselves, until you have become an Economic Octet.
7. When you have all by consensus finished the project of common interest, you may all decide, again by consensus, to go to Phase 3 or to stay in Phase 2 for one or more projects of common interest until everybody is ready to go on to Phase 3. Good, ongoing Phase 2 projects would be to develop the curriculum and educational ideas leading to the Lifetime Curriculum (See Appendix), one level at a time, to meet the needs of your children or of yourselves within the environment in which you live.
Remember that all important decisions of the Octet affecting the whole Octet are always made by 100% consensus; never let the need for expediency impede your working by 100% consensus. No one should ever be forced to go against his or her conscience.
8. Phase 3 is called "the Economic Octet," where you begin investing, in an equitable way, your time and resources in projects that might require more than creative talent, and may consume considerable resources. All Phase 3 projects should be done solely within the Third or the Fourth Economic Paradigms. Use the First Economic Paradigm solely to fulfill your obligations to yourself and your children. Never enter into any economic project or any paradigm with persons who do not share the Evolutionary Ethic with you. If necessary stay in the First Paradigm entirely by yourself until you find ethical partners.
It is possible to work simultaneously in the First, Third, and Fourth Economic Paradigms. But be sure to avoid the Second Economic Paradigm. Balance your activities so that you are providing adequate security for your family until you are ready to move to the higher paradigms. BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL TO AVOID THE SECOND ECONOMIC PARADIGM.
You share any profits from economic projects in proportion to the value of your investment in time and resources, all agreed to by 100% consensus before the project is begun. Yet you should expect no profit, nor consider any material risk, in the THIRD or FOURTH ECONOMIC PARADIGM projects, but simply do what you all agree is the most creative thing you can do with the resources you have at hand. The sole risk, which must always be considered, is not to inflict undeserved harm on anyone, including yourselves.
Also have a plan so that anyone who wishes may withdraw from the project, at will, and have an equitable distribution of the resources he or she invested, and the profits, if any, made in the project. This formula should also be agreed to before the project begins. Put all your agreements in writing, and make sure you all agree in advance on what each agreement means. Write and keep your consensus agreements by yourselves, without involving lawyers or the courts. You may use neutral Octets or the Magistrates to resolve disputes or disagreements; avoid the systems of injustice typified by the courts of the host countries.
Remember always that these are Third and Fourth Paradigm activities, where you consider neither economic risks nor profits, but solely choose, by 100% consensus, to do maximally creative projects where you have on hand all the resources, human and material, to finish the project. But you may still engage, individually and collectively, in First Paradigm activities, where your objective is to maximize your income under the ethical constraints of solely engaging in at least minimally creative activities, and totally excluding unethical, destructive activities. Keep completely separate the activities of the different paradigms, or you may fall into the Second Paradigm.
It is best to separate your First Paradigm activities from your higher paradigm activities as much as possible, and to do no First Paradigm activities with your Octet. You can count on SEE's help, at no cost, in separating the various paradigm activities, as well as in keeping you from falling into the Second Paradigm, which is easy to do when considering material risk and/or profit in any way.
9. The most important higher paradigm activity is to become as fully self-sufficient as soon as possible in every aspect of existence in this order of priority: a) education, b) economics, c) food, d) clothing and housing, e) research and development, f) every form of manufacturing for which your Octet is a major consumer, g) energy and transportation, h) health, i) defense, and j) everything else. SEE will help you in this, on equitable partner terms, when you are ready to enter Phase 3. SEE sponsors projects in self-sufficient living, as well as the educational projects given in the appendix. Also go to the Buckminster Fuller Institute at www.bfi.org, and visit TRANET in Rangely, Maine.
The best laboratory for maximizing creativity for any Octet is to become totally self-sufficient. You should expect to invest several years of your life in the Creative Transformation process, before you are ready to begin Phase 3. Remember you can count on SEE's help at each step along the way, but SEE will give different kinds of help in each phase. SEE will always give you the help that SEE believes you need at each step. This help is freely given according to the capabilities of SEE, in the hope that it will make you a maximally creative, self-sufficient Economic Octet working entirely in the higher paradigms. AVOID THE SECOND PARADIGM.
All Octets may begin as a SubOctet with a single Complementary Pair and may at first include individual members who are not yet in a Complementary Pair. Complementary Pairs or other gender balanced subgroups from the Octet can form new First Phase Octets to incorporate new persons into the Octet after the new candidates have understood CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION and ...POLITICAL ETHICS, and made the Contract for Creative Transformation, quantum and classical, among themselves (115).
REMEMBER, try never to have more men than women in the Octet or Suboctet at any time, but make sure that they are not all of the same gender, while never incorporating more men than women.
SEE's creative investment in your Creative Transformation is at SEE's risk. Your risk is solely your personal time. The least that you will profit is to learn that SEE was wrong. SEE will profit, solely, if at least one of you becomes a full Phase 3 Octet member in the Third or Fourth Paradigm, is never again in the First Paradigm, and avoids falling into the Second Paradigm where one tries to maximize creativity while constraining risks and assuring minimum profits for one's activity. SEE's profit will have been to create a partner who is a citizen of the Ethical State, and who maximizes the creativity of the Universe. In this way we shall create one another, thereby creating an Ethical State, and a Moral Society.
10. You are welcome to do the best you can alone, but try to take advantage of SEE's experience by seeking advice about projects, paradigms, and other problems your Octet may encounter. Remember, this advice is free, but it is never given unless it is solicited.
Observations And Suggestions: Beware of False Prophets
All the persons likely to read this book are probably ethical persons of high creative potential, or they would not have gotten this far. However, you must all generalize in areas outside of your specialties. But never forget to seek more depth in every area while generalizing. A start in this is to read and understand my earlier books, particularly PSYCHOFRAUD AND ETHICAL THERAPY, which is my simplest book (117).
It may be that we are all vulnerable to psychofraud while we are intellectually and ethically immature, because of an ignorance of scientific method and its rigorous applications to every aspect of human existence, which require a good knowledge of probability and statistics. Remember, science does not create new knowledge; it merely tells us whether any information is possibly true or probably false. In order to be maximally creative, we must be scientific and generalized in our mysticism, as well as mystical and generalized in our science; alone both paradigms are entropic.
The purest science, which I recommend to all of you, is to study the equivalent of getting a bachelor's degree in Physics. The mathematics learned in this process is necessary and a good start, but it is not sufficient in the long run, if you wish to master the Lifetime Curriculum (See Appendix).
Learn to be skeptical, including of what I say. In any case, do the best you can in this direction, even if you might not finish studying the equivalent of a bachelor's in physics during the rest of your life. If you cannot handle physics, try chemistry and other physical sciences first, and if you cannot handle those, try biology, but keep coming back to the physical sciences the rest of your life, if necessary, until you have the equivalent of a bachelor's in physics, and can then go on with the rest of the Lifetime Curriculum, as best you can. Getting any degree in the social sciences is mostly a waste of time. I know, I have one of my degrees in Psychology. One survey course in each of the social sciences is enough, until you learn to read and study these things on your own.
It is difficult, but not impossible, to learn mathematics and natural science on your own. Focus on Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics in your formal studies, until you are sufficiently mature to tackle the Lifetime Curriculum on your own. We learn a subject best by teaching it, and by using the knowledge to develop practical technology in the business world. SEE can help you.
Remember, the objective increase in creativity is the sole criterion for good, and the objective diminishing of creativity is the sole criterion for evil. This is the only irreversible decision that I have made, and will continue with so long as I live.
There are certain unethical behavioral characteristics which we should all be sensitive to. We go into a purely ethical exchange mode, with no scientific, technical, or otherwise objective information given whenever we perceive them in anyone, including me; I am not immune. Beware of false prophets. These characteristics are as follows:
1. Beware of people who are method oriented rather than goal oriented. If we have no ethical goals, our methods can at best achieve solely trivial ends, can at worst destroy, but can never create. Solely combined ethical methods and goals work. Those who tell you otherwise are false prophets.
2. Beware of people who constantly repeat the same solution to every single problem, and who believe that they have found a method that solves all problems; these people may be destructive. They are false prophets.
3. Never accept notions or do things which violate your innate sense of ethics, your sense of right and wrong, your conscience. If you do, you will fail in creating an Ethical State, at even the Octet level. You may be following false prophets.
The only hypothesis that seems feasible, in this context, is that the moral structure of the Universe is such that good will always triumph over evil in the end, because evil will always destroy itself. However, evil can also destroy much that is good before it destroys itself, e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Castro. The worst evil is the evil which masquerades as ethical principle, e.g. Nazism and Communism.
Humanity can destroy itself by surrendering to evil, i.e. its own fear, and yet other parts of the Universe can continue to evolve into the Moral Society.
However, becoming a negative example to the Universe is not what maximizes creativity. Our ethical responsibility is to evolve forever, by maximizing creativity to the very last breath of our life, thereby paving the way for our descendants. Each destructive act by a human being diminishes the probability that humanity will ever be part of the Cosmic Moral Society. Only morality can engender immortality.
4. Remember that all paradigms are, at best, incomplete, and at worst false. Never surrender your conscience to another, no matter how persuasive the arguments or rigorous the "scientific" evidence contrary to your conscience. Always do what your conscience tells you is right; never do what seems wrong; then verify scientifically that you took a good alternative. Avoid unethical contracts; they are always with false prophets.
Weak ethics can mask our fear as conscience, and lead us to accept falsehood as truth. We do not have to believe anything. We should be guided solely by goals, never by methods alone. We can always improve our methods. We cannot improve on the Evolutionary Ethic. Every other ethic will lead to its own contradiction.
Many paradigms are popular because they are both original and good. However, usually what is good is not original, and what is original is not good in popular paradigms. What is best in all paradigms is what often comes from the implicate-order, holographic model of David Bohm (33,34). Many paradigms incorporate this model as a form of mysticism, and that is what makes many people believe that they have a lot in common with the Evolutionary Ethic, when in fact there is no shared ethical base.
However, the essence of what I say is in my original concept that C=IE, and that it is more important to become maximally ethical than to become maximally intelligent, because creativity is negative when ethics are negative. This would be true even if David Bohm were totally wrong. What is most popularly attractive in false models, although it is abhorrent to me, and probably impossible, because of the ethical structure of the Universe, is that one may obtain a maximum potential of power without ethical commitment or development. The Satanic myths are metaphors for this model. Belief that anything that leads to maximum power is what is good will always be a false paradigm.
When the model of maximum potential is essentially one of maximizing intelligence by maximizing the amount of true information at our disposal, without considering ethics, then this is a false paradigm. It is the foundation of the Academic Bureaucracy. Increasing intelligence without increasing ethics is suicidal. Remember, Ethics are always more important than Intelligence. Never get trapped by the notion of power without ethics. If you do, you will have surrendered to evil, the dark side of the Force, at best you will be an Academic Bureaucrat, at worst you will be a Politician.
6. Our ability to receive and utilize negative feedback is an essential indicator of our ethical development. Persons who are closed to negative feedback are always false prophets.
Recall that it is unethical to be certain about any cause and effect relationship. We can be certain solely about the existence of our thoughts and perceptions, never their causes. Ultimate goals have no basis in logic. We can only be certain about an ultimate goal as a thought or a choice that is not a means to any other end, solely if it does not lead to its own contradiction, as has been the case for all forms of false ethics, Majority Rule and Socialism.
However, there seem to be only two ultimate goals, creativity and happiness. Solely the goal to maximize creativity does not lead to its own contradiction. This is the only criterion of optimization by which the social sciences and their techniques can be ethically evaluated and compared.
7. Recall that in order to be maximally creative we must be completely scientific in our mysticism as well as completely mystical in our science. Placebos can make us happy and cure any disease, but they cannot increase creativity. For example see PSYCHOFRAUD AND ETHICAL THERAPY (117).
8. Finally there is something wrong with a person who cannot even imagine an alternative to his or her paradigm at the metaphorical level. This is true of all religious fundamentalists, and of their modern counterparts, such as the Marxists, socialists, cultists, existentialists, and other ideologues. These persons will always be false prophets, who live parasitically off of others and never create.
We use creativity as the sole criterion by which we evaluate all social science. Increases or decreases in creativity must be evaluated scientifically. If we have decreased a single person's creativity, then we have done an unethical act, which damages that person, his or her descendants, and of many of the people with whom they interact. We should always avoid such acts. This is impossible, to the best of my knowledge, without the full use of scientific method, which is based on experimental validations of what a paradigm predicts.
Remember that to decrease any particular set of symptoms of any disease is not a creative act unless the person was ethical to begin with. We begin by maximizing ethics, not intelligence. We can never know with certainty who is ethical or unethical, and we must treat everyone as if they were ethical, but limit our information exchange solely to ethical information until we know that a person is not systematically unethical in his or her behavior. We judge acts, not people.
The crucial thing is not to substitute one set of symptoms for another, such as by turning a socially unacceptable psychopath into a socially acceptable bureaucratic parasite. That is not Creative Transformation, which is all I have taught you. Ask yourselves, " what have I or my teacher done to discover scientific laws, invent machines, create great works of art, or help others do these things." If you answer "nothing" then you have solely learned, or taught, psychofraud and nothing else.
Creativity is its own reward; we need do nothing other than maximize creativity in order to have on hand all the resources necessary for continuing to maximize creativity. Beware of anyone who needs someone else to provide the resources so that he or she may maximize creativity. If we are creative, the least we can do is to be creative with what we have at hand, and not depend on others to nurture us or our projects.
Everything I have said or written may be error. Only the ultimate goal and choice of maximizing creativity, the Evolutionary Ethic, cannot be error, because it is an ultimate end beyond logic, which leads to no contradictions, as do other ultimate goals. Clarify your ultimate goals and concentrate on achieving them without ever being married to any method or paradigm, my own, or anyone else's. It is ethical to doubt; be skeptical; avoid certainty; avoid false prophets.
There Are Alternatives
SEE invites all people who share the Evolutionary Ethic to come and visit us in Eugene, with your families, for one week at a time to study Creative Transformation. You pay only your own expenses. There is no charge for what we teach.
If it ever seems that we can work together within the Fourth Paradigm, you can be partners with SEE, if you wish it. But first try to understand CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION and ...POLITICAL ETHICS, and progress through Phase 2 on your own. SEE is only a phone call away.
SEE will help you create an Ethical State, if that is what you want, and if you accept the Evolutionary Ethic as the basis by which you will guide your life. The essence of what I have to say is now on-line, and is summarized in my last two books. You can take all the information that is on- line, copy it, and use it, at no cost, so long as you keep each essay and book together in its entirety, or very clearly indicate from where the information came if you use it selectively. If you have understood well CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION and ...POLITICAL ETHICS, then you do not need me or SEE in anyway. You can do it all on your own. But we are always available, God willing.
If SEE's educational strategy is not for you, but you still wish a better understanding of the Evolutionary Ethic, you can come and study with SEE, and then go out on your own and use your own strategy.
If you decide to work with SEE, then you can expect to go through the following steps:
1. Study with SEE until you understand the Evolutionary Ethic, and the SEE based Constitution for an Ethical Republic, well enough to become a citizen of the Ethical State.SEE exists solely to help people better understand the Evolutionary Ethic, and evolve into the Ethical State, when they believe they need this help. SEE will form the basis for one kind of Ethical Republic. There may be an infinity of better alternatives, if you can think of them. I cannot. But, if I ever do, I will do my best to put them on-line and keep them there. I hope to hear from you. I would like to be a good friend to you.2. SEE will train you to work as a teacher within the SEE schools, or selectively help you start your own business in the First Economic Paradigm, if that is where you feel most comfortable and can best fulfill your obligations to your family (see Appendix).
3. All teachers and Octets within the Ethical State will contribute to the creation of a full educational system for implementing the Lifetime Curriculum (see Appendix).
4. The entire system will be managed by an infrastructure designed to evolve into a sovereign Ethical Republic (see previous chapter).
5. The emphasis, at first, will be on recruiting and training teachers.
6. Then we will start a nursery school adding a grade year by year, until the full curriculum is available to all citizens of the Ethical State, their dependents, and any other ethical person.
7. The lower levels of the Government of this embryonic Ethical State will all either be teachers or help pay for teachers with their taxes.
8. The intermediate, or Magistrate, level of Government will be school principals, headmasters, and department heads, or will manage, and financially support, these functions for the Ethical State, as well as building and maintaining school buildings and other physical resources necessary for the SEE school system.
9. SEE is currently an Oregon not-for-profit educational foundation, which will be totally incorporated as part of the Ethical State. This will enable the citizens of the Ethical State to concentrate their wealth in the form of educational opportunities for themselves, their families, and all their future descendants, instead of having it squandered, or worse, by the bureaucratic governments, local, state, and federal, of the United States.
10. The Congressional Level Octets will be the managers and department heads of the higher level schools within the Ethical State, financing their activities, and choosing the best possible teachers for the schools.
11. The Senatorial Level Octets will be the deans of the university level schools, as well as partners with citizens who are entrepreneurs, and who prefer to contribute to the Ethical State through its Free Enterprise System, working mostly within the First Economic Paradigm. All net profits in excess of 50% in all such enterprises shall go entirely to the educational system of the Ethical State.
12. The Executive Octet will engage in similar activities in conjunction with the Senate and the President. They will form the Board of Education for the Ethical State. They will jointly be the board of directors of the Credit Union, which will evolve into the Central Bank of the sovereign Ethical State, and which will help protect the wealth of citizens of the Ethical State from the machinations of the Federal Reserve Board, Government Bureaucracy, the Politicians, and Corporate Monopolies.
13. The President will be the equivalent of the Superintendent for Ethical Education and/or a University President within the Ethical State, and will coordinate all educational, security, preventive medicine, and economic activities, under the close supervision and cooperation of the Executive Octet and the Senate.
14. In addition to their educational activities, the higher level Octets shall invest in First Paradigm Ventures, for the benefit of the Educational System, as well as disseminating information on preventive medicine and family security. The higher level Octets shall also engage in lobbying, and in the defense of all the citizens of the Ethical State against criminals and abuse by agents of the governments of the host country, all according to the laws of the host country.
APPENDIX
Proposed Program of Education for Citizens of the Ethical State
(From a Draft Brochure For a SEE Nursery School in California)The School of Experimental Ecology (SEE) was founded and incorporated as a school in Oregon in 1981 by John David Garcia. SEE's sole goal from the start was to discover what environmental factors _ physical, biological, and psychosocial _ would help children and adults maximize their creativity. It was this ecology with which SEE experimented.
The concept of "creativity," as used by SEE, refers to any act which increases truth in any way for at least one person, including oneself, without decreasing truth for any person, including oneself.
"Truth" is any information that increases our intelligence or ethics without decreasing anyone else's intelligence or ethics.
"Intelligence" is our ability to predict and control our total environment _ physical, biological, and psychosocial.
"Ethics" are the set of rules that we follow to make sure that we use our intelligence to best maximize intelligence, including our own, and not to diminish anyone's intelligence, including our own.
Intuitively, creativity is the process by which we discover scientific laws, invent machines, produce works of art, and nurture and teach others and ourselves to do these same things. The most creative thing we ever do for ourselves is to help another maximize his or her creativity.
These notions of creativity lead to the following summary of what is ethical:
(1) Any act that increases anyone's creativity without decreasing anyone else's creativity is an ethical act, or it is an example of a person behaving ethically at that time. This is the meaning of "good."
(2) Any act that decreases any person's creativity in any way is an unethical act, or is an example of a person behaving unethically at that time. This is the meaning of "evil."
These notions of creativity and ethics lead to a natural, scientific ethics that are in complete harmony with Judaeo-Christian ethics in general and modern science in particular. We call this system of ethics "The Evolutionary Ethic" because it grows naturally and logically out of the scientific facts that are known about the process of evolution, about which we still have a lot to learn. The Evolutionary Ethic states:
We should do our best to maximize creativity without ever decreasing anyone's creativity.
The Evolutionary Ethic can be used scientifically and rationally to optimize any social science or process. This is particularly true about how best to educate our children and ourselves.
Traditional educational systems, throughout the world, emphasize learning to regurgitate information exactly as it was given to us. This requires intelligence, but not ethics. These same systems seem to destroy imagination and creativity in children. Almost all children enter primary school still highly imaginative and creative, but they usually leave high school devoid of imagination and creativity. Something in the traditional educational process destroys the children's imagination and creativity.
After many years of working with these concepts and doing experiments with thousands of persons of all ages SEE has come to the following conclusions:
Creativity (C) is produced by an interaction of Intelligence (I) and Ethics (E). This interaction may intuitively be expressed, in its simplest form, by the equation C = IE.
In trying to maximize anyone's creativity, it is more important to maximize their ethics than their intelligence, because, although Intelligence (I) is always positive, Ethics (E) can be negative, thereby giving us negative Creativity (C). Negative Creativity is what we call "destructiveness." Negative Creativity is intelligence used to diminish another's intelligence and/or ethics. Positive Creativity always increases another's intelligence and/or ethics, without diminishing anyone's intelligence or ethics.
Traditional schools do not diminish intelligence. Rather they diminish, and eventually destroy, ethics by punishing creative behavior, and rewarding repetitive, non-creative behavior. This teaches the student to value happiness more than creativity, and that happiness can be maximized by conforming to authority and never displaying any independent or imaginative thinking, since the latter usually leads to some form of punishment.
SEE has developed an educational program that not only maximizes creativity while strengthening the child's ethics, but enables the child to acquire all the traditional educational information many times faster and more coherently. This is done by teaching the child through a process of rediscovery, where all subjects are taught in the same order and context as the human race learned these things.
Instead of merely regurgitating information, the child is encouraged to use its imagination, and its own creativity, to reinvent the accumulated knowledge of humanity, in the same order and context as humanity invented and discovered this same information. This takes patience and creativity on the part of the teacher. Traditional methods of teacher training seem to destroy creativity for both the teachers and their subsequent students. Therefore SEE does things in new ways, never before tried.
Children at SEE are never punished in any way, or forced to do what they do not wish to do. Instead they are given ever growing creative opportunities specifically tailored to their individual abilities and inclinations. These opportunities are both the intrinsic rewards for their creative actions, as well as more attractive, interesting alternatives to their destructive actions.
They are encouraged, but never forced, to cooperate with other students by learning from them and teaching them. The students can learn on their own, work with others, or just play. The teachers merely present them with opportunities to be maximally creative, and then help them realize those opportunities. No form of coercion is ever used on the students, but they are constantly given ever greater opportunities to become maximally creative at their own pace, and in their own way.
The sole form of discipline required of the child at SEE is not to be destructive to him or herself, or to the other students and teachers. This is done by reasoning with the child in the most loving way possible, giving creative alternatives to destructive behavior, and by consultation with the child together with his or her parents. Parents of students at SEE must be involved in the educational process of their children.
If the child cannot desist in its destructive behavior, it will be suspended from SEE for a period appropriate to the situation. If after being readmitted to SEE, the child persists in destructive behavior, it may be expelled. SEE recognizes that it has failed with any child that it must expel for the welfare of the other students, and the child itself. All children are inherently creative.
SEE has learned that almost everybody learns best in small groups of eight cooperative students who voluntarily choose to work together. These groups are optimized if they are half males and half females who have voluntarily chosen to work and study together. We call these small groups "Octets," and encourage, but never force, students to form Octets of their choosing.
Because of the optimal student grouping in Octets, SEE expects, on the average for older students, at least one teacher for every eight students. For the American nursery school students, SEE has planned at least one-full time teacher for every six full-time students. SEE has an appropriate number of teachers for the part-time students.
All SEE teachers are partners with SEE, engage in profit sharing, and earn an average income over twice as high as the average California nursery school teacher. SEE teachers are chosen primarily on the basis of their ethics, creativity, love and kindness toward children, and a thorough understanding of SEE's philosophy and goals, which is also required of all parents.
SEE will provide written materials and free seminars for parents to help them understand what SEE is, what it is trying to do, and why it does what it does. Parents should become thoroughly and intensely involved with SEE in determining what is the best way to educate their children. The SEE teachers will make whatever time is necessary to interact with the parents of the SEE students.
A brief description of SEE's educational philosophy follows.
SEE'S EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
We can transform ourselves so that we are ethical, totally loving, devoid of fear, and totally creative in all our acts. But that is not enough to maximize creativity. We must also maximize our intelligence, because C = IE. We have two impediments to maximizing intelligence. The first is our own fear, which inhibits our ability to learn and forces us to specialize. The second is negative ethics, and their consequent fear and destructiveness, in others.
All creative persons, if they do not always treat all destructive persons with love, are susceptible to the destructiveness of others. If we increase the intelligence of unethical persons, we merely increase their ability to destroy. Even ethical persons, if they are too intelligent and not yet highly ethical, are occasionally destructive; their destructive acts may lead to imposing serious harm on others. Young children and ethical adults are the only persons who are always more creative in their behavior than they are destructive. Creativity is best maximized with young children.
To maximize creativity, an educational system must take into account the relationship between ethics and intelligence. At the same time it must not inhibit the flow of information to ethical persons. A technique for accomplishing all these objectives is to create an educational system based on love, in which an increase in ethics is inextricably interwoven with an increase in intelligence.
Education in secular schools is inevitably separated from any ethical considerations. In seeking solely to maximize intelligence, they minimize creativity, by specialization and the destruction of ethics through conditioning by fear.
Religious schools often corrupt their ethical teachings with dogma and compulsive ritual based on fear, thereby alienating those who are scientifically and creatively oriented. As a result, religious schools tend to produce few scientists and the least creative psychosocial specialists.
In order for an educational system to maximize creativity, as opposed to merely increasing intelligence, it must have the following characteristics:
1. It must be based entirely on the Evolutionary Ethic.Many of these objectives will be accomplished simultaneously by organizing the students into voluntary, cooperative Octets of four males and four females, who learn as a group and decide by consensus what they should focus on next. Students should join the Octet whose pace and inclination for learning is most compatible with their own. Students may change Octets any time they cannot reach consensus in their Octet, or if they find a better Octet for themselves.2. It must emphasize the growth in ethics and love along with the growth in intelligence, and give preference to the former over the latter when and if conflicts arise.
3. It must in no way use fear to condition the student.
4. It must encourage love and cooperativeness, rather than competitiveness, among students.
5. It must at all times provide the opportunity, not the obligation, for the student to generalize in all fields of knowledge, including the arts, rather than specializing in a single field. Conversely, a student must always be free to specialize by choice while being told the consequences of that action.
6. It must provide objective feedback to the students about how well they are learning without in any way having this feedback serve as reward or punishment. Solely the act of learning is a reward. The sole punishment is not learning. The objective results are necessary solely to avoid self-delusion. The students should learn to find at least as much joy in discovering their mistakes as in discovering their successes.
7. Creative independence of the students should be encouraged and never criticized before the fact, even when it seems obvious that the students' ideas will be wrong. We learn by our mistakes, using objective feedback, which should be given solely after the students have tried their innovative ideas, under close supervision so that they do not hurt themselves or others. In this way students are encouraged to recreate the knowledge they acquire, and to use their creativity. They are taught solely what they can create.
8. There should be no educational time constraints whatever on the students; they should move at the pace which is most satisfying to them. Slow students should be free to move at their pace without feeling rushed. Fast students should be free to move at their pace without feeling bogged down by others.
Students who wish to work individually, or in other-sized groups, should also be able to do so and should be encouraged to change their organizational structure to whatever structure is most creative for them. It may be that the available octets are not optimal for all students at all times during their lives. Students should have an opportunity, not an obligation, to work and study in voluntary, cooperative Octets. The prediction is that those who choose to work in these Octets will maximize their ethics, their creativity, and their intelligence; if not, our educational methods can be changed.
Given this background, we now focus on the curriculum and the educational organization which maximize creativity. It is our intention to eventually make this curriculum and educational organization available to the maximum number of persons, regardless of their economic means, by offering work-study scholarships to all parents and their older children.
Click here to see complete curriculum outline.
First Day of Nursery School at SEE(Author's Note: I could not have written this outline of the first two days at the SEE school without the invaliable help of Gabriela and Salvador Espinosa, who founded and operated the first SEE primary level school in Mexico. SEE's major effort in the US has been to train teachers.)
During the first day of school, children will follow, as elected by the child, aspects of the following program according to their individual abilities and interests. The following program will be easy to follow by most mature five to six year olds. Younger children, over three years of age, will have the program individually tailored and adjusted to their own elections, interests, and abilities. Children under three or over seven are not accepted in this program.
7:00 AM- 8:00 AM: Parents leave their Children with at least one of their smiling, loving home room teachers. Parents receive a receipt signed by one of the teachers. They return the receipt when they pick up the child or sign a form to this effect.These activities continue in the same spirit for the following weeks and years until the full Lifetime Curriculum, for the first three years, is covered for the nursery school children. If there is sufficient interest, and it is economically feasible, the following ten years of the Life Time Curriculum will be added, one year at a time, so that some children will be able to maximize their creativity, instead of having it destroyed in the traditional school systems which dominate the education of all children throughout the world. This is the main focus of SEE at this time. This curriculum and educational philosophy is explained in detail in literature available from SEE, and in the free seminars available from SEE for interested parents and educators. Also go to our website at www.see.org.
No one, except the parent, can pick-up the child without a signed letter from the parent authorizing them to pick-up the child. At least one of the home room teachers will be responsible for the child at all times, until the child is properly picked-up. The child should have had a good breakfast before being dropped off. All the children will wear an identification badge or bracelet, provided each day by SEE, with the child's name, address, phone number, and parents' names and their alternate phone numbers.
After the child has been turned over to one of his home room teachers, the child engages in elective supervised play in a clean, orderly environment with colorful, happy illustrations on the walls. Soft music appropriate for young children is playing. In the center of the general purpose room there are cushions and quilts in a circle and materials for developing fine coordination, such as three dimensional puzzles, drawing materials, cutting and pasting materials, illustrated children's books, table games, mechanical toys and dolls. The children continue here until 8:00 AM.
Note: The first day of school is difficult for the younger children; it may be the first time that they are separated from their parents. These children usually cry a lot and they feel sad and afraid. Teachers must be very patient, understanding, and loving toward these children, approaching them slowly and carefully and showing affection toward the child, if the child permits it. Children who reject this approach should be respected and allowed to cry. But the teacher must continue to slowly, and carefully, gain the trust of the child with great patience, comforting words and gestures, and much love, until the child allows him or herself to be treated with love and affection.
Children who continue to cry during the day can come the next days during the first part of the morning sessions or in the afternoons solely, thereby giving the child the necessary time to become integrated into the school. Parents may remain with the children until 8:00 AM, if they wish it, and the children need it. But it is better that parents allow the teachers to begin their work without the parents. In this way the children will learn to trust and feel safe with their teachers.8:00 AM-8:30 AM: New soft music is put on or a soft bell is sounded. The children from each home room, which shall have, no more than twelve children, and at least one male and one female teacher, form a circle around their two or more teachers, after the teachers and students gather up all toys and materials to produce an orderly environment.
The teachers place a red candle in the center of the circle, and explain to the students that the red candle is to remind us about the lesson of the day, which is about the virtue of patience. "Wait your turn and respect others with patience." Thus we light the candle and relate several personal examples of how we, the teachers, wait our turn and show respect for others.
The children introduce themselves to each other giving their names, ages, details about their parents and siblings, tell each other about their family life, where they were born, what are their favorite toys and games, what their home is like, how they feel, what are their dreams and hopes, and what they would like to do in this new school.
When a child speaks everyone listens without interrupting; all wait their turn. We can use a bottle or a wooden object, which must be held in order for anyone to speak. When any child takes hold of this object, he or she is asked to repeat what the previous child just said. The teachers explain to them important rules about how to treat each other and their teachers with respect, and why these rules are important for their creativity and security. The children are then shown the facilities, bathrooms, classrooms, workshops, play areas, etc. and the school limits, beyond which they should never stray. The home room, and other teachers, shall enforce these rules for all the children. Children who cannot, or will not, follow the rules will have to leave SEE, if counseling with the child and its parents by the home room teachers and the school counselor cannot remedy the situation, and help the child become more cooperative for its own welfare and safety as well as for the mutual welfare and safety of all the students at the school.
At the end of this session, we ask each child to take a small glass, with its name on it, put water into the glass, and then drink it. This is their first exercise of the "Brain Gym".8:30 AM - 9:30 AM: The studies and all the activities of the day are integrated so that the child knows what it will be doing and why. Children who wish to follow a different path will be encouraged to do so. After consulting with the child, the home room teachers are obligated to accommodate the elections of each child and try to arrange the child's day so as to maximize the child's creativity, keeping the child in safety, and not imposing any activities on the child.
During this period the children are introduced to ethics and why we have an obligation to never do anything to harm anyone, including ourselves, why we should always try to do our best to increase our own creativity and the creativity of everyone with whom we interact. The concept of "creativity" is discussed with all the students, and they give their own opinions on the subject.
The child is introduced in very simple terms to what is creativity and what is harm. The concepts of harm and creativity are discussed by the teachers with all the children in each circle. The children are introduced to the concept of patience, and why we should always wait for our turn.
They are taught how to show respect for each other, their teachers, their parents, their siblings, and everyone else.
These lessons are combined with free drawing, painting, and simple songs. The children are taught about the themes they will be studying during the day in physical, biological, psychosocial sciences, as well their integration through ethics, humanities and art. The themes of fire, water, air, earth, the human body, the school, the home, the family, our neighbors, positive and negative emotions, the sun, colors, ego, and ecology are all touched upon and integrated with the sciences, ethics, humanities, and art. This process will continue during all future days of study at SEE, except the discussions shall become more sophisticated and comprehensive.
The children sing the simple integrative song(s) they have learned. They go to the school garden or other nature area to gather twigs and sticks with which they will learn how to make simple pencils in a workshop with white and black sheets of papers, files with which to turn the twigs and sticks into pencils and styli, carbon, and powdered chalk with which they will write on the white and black papers respectively, after dipping their pencils in water. After having discussions with the students about how to discover making pencils and drawing with the materials at hand, they will experiment with the materials and try drawing something related to what has been discussed. They will then gather the materials, clean their work areas, and recall the songs that they learned earlier. Finally they will put away their creations in their private cubby holes.9:30 AM - 10:30 AM: The children will then go to the history section of the general purpose room. Here each child will tell its own personal history. Videos and pictures of how children develop in their mother's womb and then grow into mature adults shall be given. Later in the year, the children will learn how to use computers and the Internet to learn on their own. The cultural and biological evolution of the human species shall be touched upon. The evolution of the family as the basic unit of evolution shall be briefly discussed. A short story about family life with grandparents, parents, and children shall be told and discussed. The concept of society as an extended family shall be discussed.
Questions and discussions with the students shall ensue about how they were born, and where; how they grew; where have they lived; with whom; what experiences and memories do they have of their own family life; when did they live these experiences? Materials will be provided to express these histories and personal experiences. They will express this as best they can, and the teachers will write a narration to accompany each individual expression.
The teachers will then explain the history of the lever and how the lever evolved from simple branches found in nature to all the complex tools of today. Videos and pictures will be shown and examples will be given with demonstrations of how we use the concept of the lever. Stories about the evolution of the lever will be told by the teachers. The teachers will then ask the students, collectively and individually, questions about the importance of the lever and its history. The students will be given material to express this history.10:30 AM - 11:00 AM: Snack Time. First the students wash their hands and are told about germs and why it is important to wash your hands before eating. They then take a snack break in which the students learn to prepare a healthy snack of fruit and fruit juice. The fruit juice maker will be noted as an example of the use of the lever. The students will be able to experiment with trying to extract fruit juice with and without the fruit juice maker, and see how important the lever is in this application.
The older students will learn to use dull metal knives to prepare the fruit. The younger students will work with play wooden knives. In addition to the fruit, the students will also be given whole grain crackers and nuts.
The students learn about the health benefits of different fruits. They learn about vitamin C in citrus fruits, and how fruits give us fiber and other nutrients which are important to good health. The ethical obligation of maintaining good health will be discussed with the student. The ethical obligation of never decreasing anyone's health, including our own, is also discussed. The students will be asked what kind of fruit and other food they most like, and what they would like to eat the next day. An effort will be made to give the students the food they most like, which is consistent with good nutrition and good health.11:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Recess. Free play in playground or garden, with jungle-gym, sandbox, tires, toys that can be pulled and pushed, slides, swings and teeter-totters to illustrate the use of the lever.
11:30 AM - 12 Noon: Story time. Stories for the students, according to their interests, about the origin of the universe and the evolution of the elements in the stars; about the family; the seasons; the sun; prehistory and paleolithic events; fantasies illustrating the concepts of cause and effect; and science vignettes. After listening to the stories the students wash their hands and are told again why it is always important to wash their hands before eating. The ethics of cleanliness is discussed.
12 Noon - 12:30 PM: The students are served a prepared healthy lunch with salad, cereal, whole grain breads, vegetables, fruit, vegetable juice, and/water. Each student gets his toothbrush from his cubby hole and is encouraged to brush his teeth, with help, if necessary.
Biological Orientations Begin
12:30 PM - 1:00 PM: Play Centers. Make a circle and do a moment of silence and calm. Choose a place to be silent and calm in the circle or in the general purpose room. Pay attention to what can be heard outside, inside the school, inside the general purpose room, inside your own body. Exchange comments on what was heard - an airplane, a car, laughter, voices, your breathing, your own heart, your stomach grumbling, etc.
Each child shares with the rest what they would like to do in the play centers. The teachers take notes on what each child expresses, to help the children integrate their play with the lessons of the day, and show the child how their play contributes to or detracts from their creativity.1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Free play. They play at whatever they wish without interruptions, but under the close supervision of their teachers, who will keep notes on the activities of the students, and later use them for optimizing the student's individualized curriculum, such that the student's creativity shall be maximized. The teachers should never, unnecessarily interfere with the child's voluntary play. The only interruption which is permitted is that which is necessary to protect the safety of the student, or the other children. If the children are willing, and it seems appropriate, the teachers may participate in the play of the children. The following play centers will be available to the students.
Water Play: Body sensations within the cold or warm water; care with rapid changes when they are wet; no touching of electrical appliances or cables when the body is wet; care of not breathing in water while in the pool or other water facility; benefits of drinking a lot of water; benefits of bathing or showering every day.
Sandbox Play: Covering different parts of the body with sand; care of not getting sand in eyes, ears, nose, or mouth; making holes, tunnels and sand castles.
Outside Play: Use of the body with different movements; lying down, dragging the body, crawling, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, jumping, vaulting, dancing, and other movements; care with not falling or causing others to fall, as form of protecting our creativity and that of others.
Reading Center: Illustrated books and encyclopedias about the human body and its care. House or Store Play: Nutrition for the body; cooking in the play kitchen; gathering nutritious food in the play store; what does my body need; what do I need to eat; resting in the play bedroom; why do we need to rest; cleaning the store, house, and bath rooms; washing food before eating; silence and the need for sleep; personal hygiene; care of our clothes.
Costumes and Make-up Play: Make-up for different parts of the face; importance of cleanliness and not getting make-up in the eyes or mouth; costumes for different parts of the body; cleaning face, teeth, ears, nose, etc.2:00 PM - 2:30 PM: Meeting with other play and study groups. Each group has at least two students, but not more than twelve students. Cleaning and ordering the general purpose and dining rooms is done. Each group shares its experiences with the other groups. Discussion of discoveries, ideas, and insights.
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM: Snack break with healthy food. Raw vegetables, whole grain bread, vegetable juice, pure water - discussion while eating about the healthy way to eat, and our ethical obligation to maintain our health in order to become maximally creative.
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Rest time. On comfortable mattresses with quilted covers, the students take naps or remain quiet and calm, while listening to soft soothing music, cradle songs by the teachers, and are generally communicated love and affection by the teachers. Students who cannot sleep or are restless can discuss the activities of the day among themselves or with their teachers, or go to see an appropriate children's film or video covering the concepts of cause and effect, body care, the lever, and other themes from the day. Speculations about changing the history of the world, and our own personal history. Discussions about patience, school, home life, body care, nutrition, simple songs, drawing, plastic arts, and the virtues of simple silence and rest.
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Sports and Other Physical Activity. Cooperative Sports emphasizing cooperation between students rather than competition. Emphasis on personal improvement in whatever we do rather than being better than someone else. Activities are chosen by individual students. Activities include martial arts, nature walks, bicycle rides, team and individual sports such as basketball with light ball, softball, soccer, skating, gymnastics, swimming, relay races, etc.
5:00 PM - 5:30 PM: Plastic Arts. Various plastic arts tables are set up for drawing with pencils, thick crayons, and water colors and brushes. Also tables for cutting and pasting patterns, clay modeling, and other plastic arts. Children exchange art works as their parents come to pick them up.
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM Children who wish it continue to work on plastic art projects of their choosing or engage in supervised free play of their choosing, while waiting to be picked up by their parents. All children must be picked-up no later than 6:30 PM.
Parents are given home work and asked to give their children various photographs of their family to be brought to school the next day and used to relate their personal history. Children may also bring their personal tricycle or bicycle the next day.THE SECOND DAY OF SCHOOL
7:00 AM - 8:00 AM: Children enter the all purpose room and find the same environment as on the first day. Their identification bracelets are put on their wrists or they may choose an identification badge that they may decorate as they wish with thick crayons. They engage in play of their choice until the beginning of the first period at 8:00 AM.
8:00 AM - 8:30 AM: With the music or bell of the previous day, the children sit in their morning circle, and the red candle, symbolizing patience, is lit. There is a collective discussion of how successful the children were in waiting their turn, and their complaints about the children who did not wait their turn. We discuss on how better to treat one another with patience and respect.
The dynamics of the discussion circle are discussed.
Afterwards the children are asked to listen in silence to the music CALVERIA RUSTICANA of Pietro Mascagni. At the same time they will try to locate appropriate art work on the walls. They will then try to imagine a story associated with the music and try to draw an appropriate artistic expression of that story. When they finish the expression of the story they will listen to the music once more. The next day they will discuss their art works and stories. Later in the week they will be told the story of the music of CALVERIA RUSTICANA, and eventually they will be shown the entire opera on video.
Note: This work serves to concentrate the attention of the students. More will be said of this later.8:30 AM - 9:30 AM: We continue with the lessons in physical science of the previous day on cause and effect and the history and use of the lever. If the weather permits and the children are willing we go outside into the garden and begin making a compost pile for our organic garden, all the time illustrating the use of the lever.
The children put on gardening smocks and get, for their personal use, small shovels as well as larger shovels; potting soil; natural fertilizer; leaves; hay; green plants; kitchen waste; and water. If the garden is large, the compost pile may be made in bins or large wooden boxes. The children will place in their compost piles first a layer of soil, then a layer of fertilizer, then the green vegetation, then they wet it all down with plenty of water. In placing the subsequent layers, they are asked to do it alternately with the shorter or the longer shovels, or with their hands. We ask them if they can tell the difference? How does the principle of the lever help us move the material for the compost pile?
Explain to the children how a shovel is an example of a simple lever, and how it helps us do heavy work. Ask the children to give other examples of levers and how they help us. After wetting down the compost piles we cover them with dark plastic to keep in the heat. We tell the children about how important it is to keep turning over the compost piles at least once per week, and how useful it is to have a shovel with which to do this. The children now wash their hands, brush their nails with soap and a proper nail brush, and when they are clean they form a new circle. The children are then told a story about cause and effect. Examples of these stories are:
a) A real story about the cause of impatience and not waiting your turn on the health and emotional well-being of other children, and how this decreases their creativity.
b) Or a story about how being patient and waiting your turn helps produce positive emotions in others and helps us produce harmony, good communication, gratitude, love and maximize both our creativity and that of others.
c) Stories about fantasies from Walt Disney or Hans Christian Anderson which involve cause and effect relationships, clearly showing the relationships of the causes to their effects.
d) Science fiction stories about space travel which involves cause and effect relationships.
We always try to emphasize that everything we do is a cause for an effect: everything we think, feel, say, or do always has an effect on us, others, or the world at large. It is always important that we pay attention to what we are doing, saying, thinking, or feeling in order not to hurt others or yourself. Why we must be careful and treat others and ourselves with respect.9:30 AM - 10:30 AM: Mathematics and Biology. We take the children to the mathematics center which has been prepared by the teachers to help the students observe, investigate, and/or play with the following concepts: the pink tower of Maria Montessori, the big and small of toy vehicles and dolls, plasticine of various colors, mathematical drawing books using thick crayons, posters of the human body of adults and children, images and photographs of the human body and of small and large objects, illustrated story books about the human body and small and large objects, puzzles and toys about the human body allowing comparisons between large and small objects, a large mirror.
The students have at least 15 minutes to explore freely all the previously mentioned materials.
Then the teachers will invite the children to participate in several exercises to more fully understand the materials. For example: how to use the Montessori tower; how to order the toy vehicles and dolls by increasing size; make small and large spheres with the plasticine and order them by size, color, and geometry; seek out the largest and smallest objects in the classroom; imagine a small, a large, and a medium sized set of objects that are not here, draw the objects in your notebook with crayons; observe the posters and images of the human body then look at yourself in the mirror; which parts of your body are the largest, which are the smallest, which are the same size as other parts of your body; how are the different parts of the students' bodies becoming larger?
At the end of each time exercise each student will work on the three times of Maria Montessori:
is this large, medium, or small, which is largest, smallest, or medium; point out the smallest, largest, and medium objects; which is this particular object? The children then go to wash their hands and go on to their snack.10:30 AM - 11:00 AM: Snack Time. The same as the snack process of the first day of school.
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Recess. The same as the day before, emphasizing the concepts of large and small during play, for example, look at how large you seem on the jungle gym, look at how small your smallest friend is, etc.
11:30 AM - 12 Noon: Story Time. The children wash their hands and come into the classroom. They find many stories about fantasies, space travel, voyages around the world, poetry, literature, fables, story books solely with illustration and no words, etc. The children lie down or sit on the cushions and quilts where they can cover themselves, if they wish. Here they will read and observe the stories that are read to them. The teachers come close to the students to ask them what they think the stories are about, and if they can repeat the story to the teacher. The teacher should allow the student to tell the story in his or her own way, without correcting the student. Later the teachers can tell the story as it actually is to the students, and ask the students: Which story do you like most, the one you told me or the one I told you? Tell the student that both stories are fine. Help the student feel secure in their imagination and their intuition.
12:00 Noon - 12:30 PM: Lunch. A healthy lunch as in the previous day after washing hands and going over the need for good hygiene in order to maintain good health, and become maximally creative in our own life, without ever decreasing the creativity of another.
Psychosocial Learning Centers
12:30 PM - 1:00 PM: Exercise of Silence. We are going to make a lot of noise with our hands by clapping, with our feet by stomping on the floor, with our voices by yelling, etc. When you hear the drum or the bell we must become absolutely silent. You should hear nothing but the silence.
The silent period should be longer than the noise period so that the children may relax and learn that silence can bring us interior peace. We then ask the students: What do you feel when there is a lot of noise? What do you feel when you listen to the silence? When do you feel best?
We then discuss with the students the concepts of planning and projection.1:00 PM - 1:30 PM: Free, spontaneous play for the children as in the previous day, where the children are observed, but not interfered with, except for the sake of their safety.
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM: Key Experience, How to communicate, The exchange of information. The children form themselves into study groups of their choosing with at least two students, but not more than twelve students. If the children choose to change groups they give their reasons for doing so to the other students. We will eventually discuss with the students how well they learn in different groups of different sizes. The children then go to their personally and collectively chosen study centers. The study centers are as follows:
ART: drawing with crayons, chalk, thick pens, pencils, etc. to communicate an idea or a feeling to others; painting with small brushes and water colors; sculpting with clay, play dough, and plasticine; the children exchange their art works and discuss them with one another.
MUSIC: the children make music, as best they can, with play instruments at hand; or they choose a song to sing to communicate something important to others; they explain the meaning of their music or song to the rest of the students.
THEATER: They invent a play or skit using solely facial expressions and gestures but no words to communicate something important; others invent a play or skit using words and gestures; the plays and skits are presented to the other students and discussed among all the groups. This as well as the other activities may extend into the future week or weeks.
WATER: Communicating through the use of movements and sounds in water.
SAND: Communication with sand through sand structures.
PLAY HOUSE OR STORE: Communication at home or in the store playing father, mother, siblings, store keeper, customers, etc. How does television interrupt our ability to communicate? How do the telephone and the computer help and interfere with our communication? Communicate while playing store selling, buying, sorting, displaying, etc. How are communication and education related?
CONSTRUCTION: Use construction materials of the previous day such as wooden blocks, Leggos, Tinker Toys, etc. to build two play cities with various means of communication such as, bridges, roads, highways, radios, telephones, offices, businesses, and so on. Exchange ideas with other groups for bettering communication within your play city.
OUTSIDE PLAY OR BODY EXPRESSION: How do we communicate with our body without speaking. Do Charades. Experiment with new types of expressive movements. Try to understand and imitate the body movements of others.
READING CENTER: Communicating through stories and personal histories. Interchange information telling one another the stories we read with words or pictures.
COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP: The same as with the theater above, changing our appearance to reflect different personalities. How can we use these techniques to engage in two way communications? How does our appearance communicate how we feel?2:30 PM - 3:00 PM: Snack Time. Healthy snacks of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts with a discussion of good nutrition and good health, as in the day before. How do we communicate to others the principles of good nutrition and good health?
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Rest and Sleep as in the previous day. In the videos and films for the children who do not wish to rest or are restless we emphasize the concepts of large, small and medium, spheres, and communication.
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Physical sports of the student's choosing as in the previous day, under close supervision so that the students do not hurt themselves or one another.
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM: The activities of the day are integrated by music and song while the parents come to pick up their children. All the children must be picked up no later than 6:30 PM.
As of early 2000, the sole SEE school established for very young children has been in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. It was established by Gabriela and Salvador Espinosa as an adjunct to a public rural school for very poor children. These children blossomed and became much more creative than all the other equally poor children in the many other comparable schools in the region. SEE is currently focusing its time, energy and resources in training teachers for its educational programs. There is no charge for this training. Whenever the teachers are available, SEE will set-up a school, wherever there is enough interest from parents and students to make the school feasible.
SEE is currently focusing all its attention and training in the Eugene, Oregon area. A very small metropolitan region within a largely rural county. However, the University of Oregon is in Eugene, and many other colleges and universities are nearby, including Oregon State University in Corvallis.
Eugene also has most of the amenities of a large city including an opera house, and a Hilton Hotel. There is a major airport served by United Airlines and other airlines. Portland is 100 miles away. Consider moving to Eugene, and working with SEE, in the best interests of your family.
A Note to Persons Who Have Read The Ethical State:
Our Ethical State is structured, for people who choose to become citizens of the Ethical State in affiliation with SEE. It is not necessary to work with SEE to be a citizen of the Ethical State, but it is necessary to be a citizen, to work with SEE on a mutually committed, permanent basis. This is what SEE is doing now. We would like to hear from anyone who has a better idea of how to create an Ethical State. E-mail John David Garcia.
© John David Garcia, 2001, All rights Reserved.