February 2018 Book Club

   February 14, 2018
   John Michael Greer
   126 Comments

   This week's post is the eighth of a monthly series of open-discussion posts
   focusing  on books  I've  written. Our  theme for  the  present is  Mystery
   Teachings  from the  Living  Earth,  and this  week  we're discussing  "The
   Seventh Law: The  Law of Evolution" (pp.72-84). I'd like  to ask readers to
   keep their questions and comments focused  on that chapter and the ideas it
   contains; we'll have another Ask Me  Anything post later this month, and of
   course a substantive monthly post or two in due time.

   In place of an outline, here's the Seventh Law, as it appears in the book:

   Everything  that  exists  comes  into  being by  a  process  of  evolution.
   That  process starts  with adaptation  to changing  conditions and  ends by
   establishing a steady  state in balance with its  surroundings, following a
   threefold rhythm  of challenge,  response, and reintegration.  Evolution is
   gradual  rather than  sudden,  and  it works  by  increasing diversity  and
   accumulating possibilities,  rather than following a  predetermined line of
   development.

   The rest of this section of the book expands on the concept this definition
   sketches out. It's not an easy concept for a lot of people these days; it's
   become standard practice to confuse  evolution with progress, and to assume
   that  progress  amounts  to  identifying whatever  we've  already  done  to
   extremes and then taking it to the point of absurdity. For that matter, the
   thought that  evolution might  not have a  direction - that  we may  not be
   caught up  in a  lockstep (or goose-step)  march toward  some predetermined
   future, either  glorious or ghoulish,  but rather might be  moving outwards
   toward no  particular destination at all  - terrifies a great  many people,
   since it relates to one of the  things most people love to praise and can't
   bear to practice-that is, freedom.

   Questions? Comments?  Discussions? Have  at it-subject,  of course,  to the
   usual rules.

                                **************

   In other news,  I'm delighted to announce that my  annotated translation of
   Giordano Bruno's  On the Shadows  of the  Ideas-the most important  work on
   the  Art  of Memory  by  that  art's greatest  Renaissance  practitioner-is
   now  available from  Miskatonic Books  in a  gorgeous, heavily  illustrated
   hardcover edition. Check it out.