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TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Modern Western science defined reality in a very limited way. Initially, limits were set to make things appear to be as understandable as the mechanisms being invented by society at the time science was formally founded. It was a way of convincing ourselves that we could understand and control mysterious, unfathomable nature; an expectation that nature will unveil herself at our request. Science was quickly put into the service of a developing technological, manufacturing elite who claimed they would solve all human problems. This is where science remains today, desperately in search for technological solutions to the ever greater problems caused by technology. Western science has been instrumental in developing technologies, but in the course of this development we are destroying the natural context on which our survival depends. Western science is currently failing us as a science for survival. The real problem is that Western culture deeply assumes its superiority over all other cultures and that Western science has set itself up as the only science, the only arbiter of what is real and what constitutes a valid understanding of reality.
Sense of separateness: Human beings of the West have abandoned being part of a human community and have turned themselves into a collection of separate self-seeking, self-indulging individuals. A sense of community, of togetherness, a feeling of oneness with all has died in them. The emphasis on individuality has resulted in a sense of separateness from nature and from one another. Western people are slowly being destroyed by their egoism, their arrogance. The loss we Westerners sustain in our extreme individuality, our denial of nature's intelligent process, and the human connection with it at all levels is an irrevocable loss. Western culture has erected intellectual barriers between ourselves and the rest of nature that prevent communion with it. Losing communion with other beings of nature can be a painful experience when the lose is suddenly realized.
Mechanistic science: A dominant myth of modern society is that the essential characteristics of human nature are to be understood as the consequence of an evolutionary succession of random events and natural selection, i.e., accidental without purpose or meaning. This myth excludes consciousness as a causal factor in the creation of reality. That exclusion forces scientists to seek only mechanical explanations for physical reality. The technological prowess and awesome complexity of modern reductionistic, mechanistic science has been allowed to conceal from our view the mischief caused by its presumed "monopoly" with regard to truth. Reality is much too rich to be fully represented solely in the sorts of models and metaphors that are the stuff of Western science.
Intelligent organics: When experience contradicts science, the science must change--it must shift from dumb mechanics to intelligent organics. Nature's improvisational dance of change and alteration is filled with experiential lessons. As physical manifestations of that invisible essence which lies behind physical form, we are the students while the invisible essence is the teacher. Experiential reality is the "blackboard" on which the lessons are "written."
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