The Teilhard Discussions: #1--On Smelling The Wind

[FVoehl@aol.com]

Last week, Ed Baker posed some questions for Frank Voehl and other DENizens:

>1. What evidence is there that human consciousness has evolved, can evolve, 
>and will evolve in the way that Teilhard suggested? 

>2. When one says "evolution," does one imply (in a theological sense) a 
purpose, end state toward which we are somehow being guided? After all, isn't 
"evolution" a word we use (non theologically) to retrospectively understand 
how the biological-living world came to be?

>3. Do we properly distinguish between complexity and confusion and 
complication?
>
>4. How might we translate Teilhard's concept into terms that each individual 
person can use?>>

Ed Baker poses four great questions to use as a starting point for this 
discussion.  I will attempt to answer one per week, starting next week, if 
that is acceptable to the DEN.>>

Well, it seems that this well acceptable to many on the DEN so here were go 
with this little experiment I call The Baker Act, after the originator of the 
Four Questions which, like the four principles of SoPK of Dr. Deming, are 
interrelated in their own right as we shall see.  Perhaps Ed planned it that 
way, perhaps not.  The plan is to do one question a week, perhaps about one 
each day time permitting, giving us a total of thirty posts or so, give or 
take a couple gaps for travel and rest and days off.  Each days post will 
consist of the central theme to be developed around three or four arguments, 
with their conclusion being continued into the next days discussion.  Sort of 
a To-Be-Continued SuperSerial.
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Discussion #1: On Smelling The Wind

Prologue:  Let me begin this little experiment with a bit of background that 
the DEN might find useful and to which I have supplied our 
never-closing-but-sometime-dozing moderator a full copy for posting on the 
DEN archives.  My first contact with the great French philosopher Father 
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin came at the age of ten years of age when, as a boy 
in NYC at the time, I had the most unusual good fortunate and supreme honor 
and blessing in having come into the shadow and *tutulage* of this great man 
of God.  My father was the traffic cop on the corner where the Jesuit 
monastery stood and where the great Father Tayer--a name that he preferred to 
be called at the time--resided with a family member and second cousin/nephew 
to my Aunt Bina, a Father Assing.  My dad had the habit of befriending 
priests and at the time Father Tayer really needed a friend.  The timeframe 
was 1952-1956 and his teachings and dogma were under siege by his 
counterparts in a big-time but rather meanspirited and two-bit way.  In fact, 
you might say that he was being theologically crucified on a cross of 
misunderstanding of shame, ridicule, and ostraschism.  He was not yet 
officially published in the states and the only form of his works that were 
readily available were the original French manuscripts, of which I still have 
a precious few, and some loosely translated material , none of which had the 
raw power and energy-beauty of the later works by Rene Hague.

Father Tayer would take me on walks in the park when I was in the Big Apple 
with dad (maybe four or five times a year, although it could have been more 
or less, who knows 45 years later).  During these walks, usually lasting for 
an hour or two, the time together seems magical and full of delight, just a 
man and a boy exploring the world, and I was awakened, as much by his 
incredible love of life and life of love, for I was with this wonderful old 
man of God who constantly seemed to be falling in love--in love with the 
world, with life, always being seized with a wonder and astonishment over the 
simplest of things.  He would point to the birds and the butterflies and the 
clouds in the sky, and I would think that they were his pals on this strange 
and wonderful journey into life of his.  

He told me stories of the wind and how wonderful it was.  He would say to me 
"Francois, smell the wind.  Jesus smelled the wind, Napolean smelled the 
wind, the President smelled the wind, your dad smells the wind each day on 
his post by my monastery-house where I stay.  So sniff the winds of Sir 
Francis Drake, and be filled to your being with the winds of history."  Now, 
I am told that he said the same to others about the wind and would 
personalize it each time, but nobody had ever told me to smell the wind 
before.  So I smelled the wind!

Question #1. What evidence is there that human consciousness has evolved, can 
evolve, and will evolve in the way that Teilhard suggested? 

To answer this first great question of Ed Baker's, we should start with a 
discussion of Teilhard's principle of the evolution of human consciousness.  
The beginning point, which constitute three arguments, is Teilhard's (or as I 
will continue to call him by the name that I first came to know him by) 
Father Tayer's work on The Atomism of Spirit, from his master work on Activati
on of Energy (Harvest Books, 1970, French Edition 1963, page 39-43):

Argument #1: On the Law of Molecularization
 *First of all, the Curve of Moleculization (as he called it) is extended 
into the future and it enables us to forsee the awakening, and perhaps the 
explosive awakening, of irresistible inter-human abilities that are yet 
unsuspected.  Hithertho, in spite of external forces whose influence is to 
bring them together, the relations between spiritual atoms seem to be 
governed by an inflexible internal repulsion.  The more planetary ties tend 
to force us together, the more do we feel the need to disengage ourselves 
from one another.  Action and Reaction:  even in the domain of spirit that is 
how the work involved in everyday synthesis can be expressed.

If, as I am maintaining, it is true that we all, each and every one of us, no 
more than the elements of a vast unit still to come (italics mine) than once 
the last forms of resistance have been overcome-once the piston has passed 
into dead center--we must expect to sink into that profound zone in which our 
forces of mutual attraction are dominant.  The greatest of the energies of 
the universe still holds in reserve, and certain indications allow us to feel 
it is stirring, without doubt is not the energy we are trying to release by 
breaking up the atom:  it is made up by the still dormant affinities that one 
day will hurl together the most conscious elements of the universe--in other 
words, ourselves!*

Argument #2:  The State of Unanimity or Spirit of Earth
* We next have the problem of determining, in an initial approximation, the 
higher term still to come towards which ewe are being led by the 
transformation in which, in common with the world, we are involved.  We can 
see it (for any other picture of the world would contradict the law of 
Molecularization) only as a state of unanimity (italics mine).  Such a state, 
however, that in each grain of thought, now taken to the extreme limit of its 
own individual consciousness, will simply be the incommunicable, partial, 
elementary expression of a total consciousness which is common to the whole 
earth, and specific to the earth:  a spirit of the earth (italics mine).

Argument #3:  The Coming of the SuperTeam
It is at this point that we meet a final question, which brings the whole 
discussion back with a new urgency.  In just what form are we to picture this 
spirit of the earth?  The thing which is coming to birth in us and from us, 
through an ascent into the super-complex, is some sort of SuperFamily, 
SuperTeam, SuperCulture, SuperNation, in which no element, however high its 
position in the totality of the hierarchy, will experience or synthesize 
itself in itself the totality of the SuperWhole?  Or is it rather, as has 
already happened once in nature, some SuperIndividual that is going to 
appears at the term of our coming together?

When the collective is taken to its upper limit, is it still collective or 
does it issue in a SuperPerson?  Is it multi-centered, or a uni-centered 
organism?  Hyper-polyzoic or hyper-metazoic?  Towards what are we moving?  
And is it possible to answer that question?  And if it is, what influence 
will the solution have on the interior of our lives?

This concludes discussion #1.  Look for Discussion #2 to begin tomorrow, Lord 
willing.  We should be able to have the full answer to Ed Baker's great 
question #1 settled by next Friday or so.

Frank Voehl (FVoehl@aol.com)
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