Ask, Know, Do: Without Faking

What is "Just Right" Living?

Are the laws of physics fine-tuned to support life?

Many scientists hate this idea--what's often called "the anthropic principle."  They suspect it's a trick to argue for a designer God.  But more and more physicists point to various laws of nature that have to be calibrated just right for stars and planets to form and for life to appear. 

For instance, if gravity were just slightly stronger, the universe would have collapsed long before life evolved.  But if gravity were a tiny bit weaker, no galaxies or stars could have formed.  If the strong nuclear force had been slightly different, red giant stars would never produce the fusion needed to form heavier atoms like carbon, and the universe would be a vast, lifeless desert.

British-born cosmologist Paul Davies calls this cosmic fine-tuning the "Goldilocks Enigma."  Like the porridge for the three bears, he says the universe is "just right" for life.  Davies is an eminent physicist who's received numerous awards.  His 1992 book, The Mind of God, has become a classic of popular science writing.  But his new book, The Cosmic Jackpot, will challenge even the most open-minded readers.  Without ever invoking God, Davies argues for a grand cosmic plan.  The universe, he believes, is filled with meaning and purpose.

What Davies proposes is truly mind-bending.  Drawing on the bizarre principles of quantum mechanics, he suggests that human beings--through the sheer act of observation--may have helped shape the laws of physics billions of years ago.   What's more, he says the universe seems to work like a giant computer.   Indeed, it's possible that's exactly what it is, and we might just be living in a simulated virtual world.

Source: "We are Meant to Be Here" by Steve Paulson, www.salon.com July 3, 2007

What is Intelligent Design?

Intelligent design (I.D.) is not what people often assume it is.

For one thing, I.D. is not Biblical literalism.  Unlike earlier generations of creationists, proponents of I.D. do not believe that the universe was created in six days, that Earth is 10,000-years-old, or that the fossil record was deposited during Noah's flood.  Nor does I.D. flatly reject evolution: Adherents freely admit that some evolutionary change occurred during the history of life on Earth.

The movement's main positive claim is that there are things in the world, most notably life, that cannot be accounted for by known natural causes and show features that, in any other context, we would attribute to intelligence.  Living organisms are too complex to be explained by any natural--or more precisely, by any mindless--process.  Instead, the design inherent in organisms can be accounted for only by invoking a designer, and one who is very, very smart.

All of which puts I.D. squarely at odds with Darwin.  Darwin's theory of evolution was meant to show how the fantastically complex features of organisms could arise without the intervention of a designing mind.  According to Darwinism, evolution largely reflects the combined action of random mutation and natural selection. 

I.D. advocates point to two developments that, in their view, undermine Darwinism.  The first is the molecular revolution in biology.  Beginning in the 1950s, molecular biologists revealed a staggering and unsuspected degree of complexity within the cells that make up all life.  This complexity lies beyond the abilities of Darwinism to explain.   Second, they claim that new mathematical findings cast doubt on the power of natural selection.  Selection may play a role in evolution, but it cannot accomplish what biologists suppose it can.

But there are biologists that point out different ways Darwinian evolution can build irreducibly complex systems.  In one, elaborate structures may evolve for one reason and then get co-opted for some entirely different, irreducibly complex function.  Design theorists have made some concessions to their criticisms but emphasize that, while irreducibly complex systems can in principle evolve, biologists can't reconstruct, in convincing detail, just how any such system did evolve.

Source: "Master Planned: Why Intelligent Design Isn't" by H. Allen Orr, The New Yorker, May 30, 2005

When Politics Undermine Science, Economic Growth Suffers

Scientific innovation has long fueled economic growth but there is a danger that "the U.S. will no longer be dominant in innovation," says G. Wayne Clough, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology and a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

"Countries that never had a tradition of cutting-edge biomedical research now have an entree as a result of U.S. [stem-cell] policy.  Americans are at a disadvantage in not having the opportunity to develop the technical know-how," says Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute, La Jolla, CA, a leader in stem-cell research.

An interesting battle will come when a lab in Singapore or Seoul or Britain uses embryonic stem cells to develop a therapy for diabetes or Parkinson's or heart disease.   Its use in the U.S. would require approval by the Food and Drug Administration.  Will opponents of stem-cell research demand that the FDA reject it and deprive patients of their only hope?

Source: Science Journal, The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2005

What are morphic fields?

Morphogenetic fields have a holistic property that is not present in chunks of matter.

"Morphic"--pertaining to form.  "Field"--a force that can cause action at a distance. The force is the cause, or agent, that puts an object at rest into motion or alters the motion of a moving object...such as nuclear, electromagnetic and gravitational.

The idea is that organisms are organized by fields: morphogenetic fields within and around these organisms. 

An analogy would be magnetic fields.  If you chop up a magnet into small pieces, what you get are not just lots of fragments of the magnet or fragments of the field.  You get a lot of little magnets, each with a complete magnetic field.

This is analogous to what you can do with lower animals like flatworms.  You can chop them up into pieces and each piece can regenerate into a whole worm.  You can cut up a willow tree into hundreds of thousands of cuttings and each one can form a willow tree.

There is something about these organisms that enables them to retain their wholeness even when their material structure is split up into bits.  Something in field phenomena that doesn't occur in machines; a wholeness that somehow obtains the form and shape of the structure and in turn shapes the material system that develops under their influence.

Source: SHIFT: At the Frontiers of Consciousness, February 2005

What are worldviews?

There are six basic worldviews according to research done by Edward Spranger in the early 1920s.  This may seem outdated, but the fact that the model is still valid shows how powerful the information derived from this survey can be applied to almost every situation today.

Theoretical

Values knowledge and constant search for truth.  How will you survive and grow in a career that doesn’t allow you to learn and grow?   Solve problems or mysteries.  Identifying, differentiating, generalizing, and systemizing.  Get engaged in intellectual process just for the sake of the game.  Identify truths and untruths – discovery main mode of action. 

Utilitarian

If you thrive in an environment that rewards a return on investment of time, talent, resources.  Utilizing resources to obtain results.  Gaining a measurable return on all investments.  Creative application of resources.  Capitalism.

Traditional

If you live by a closed system of principles – play by the rules – stay within the lines.  Pursuit of the Divine in life. Convert others to their system.  Work for worthy causes. Understand the totality of life.  Live and apply their principles to all situations.

Aesthetic

Form, harmony, beauty, balance (natural systems thinkers).  Appreciation, enjoyment, and striving for form, harmony, beauty and balance.  They have subjective experiences – there is no objectivity which makes it difficult for them to get on with engineers.  Understands the feelings of self and others.

Social

A humanitarian drive.  Opportunities to develop potential in others.  To champion worthy causes. Bettering society and elimination of conflict and pain.  Helping people live better lives.

Individualistic

If you have a passion to lead, direct, and control others.  Achieving, advancing position.  Forming strategic alliances. Planning and carrying out a winning strategy. Leading others.  Working in and respecting authority and the chain of command.

What is learning?

Every year, we gain a clearer understanding that without positive change, decline is inevitable.

Still it's easy to lose hope: barriers to change seem to be everywhere. We work in organizations that aren't much fun.  We fail to gain work/life balance that is so important to us but so difficult to sustain.  Looking ahead, the challenge is to recognize that what we are now tolerating can be reinvented.  We can take revolutionary steps to achieve the evolutionary goals that are important to us.

It is very hard to bring about significant change without changes in behavior. 

Powerful countervailing forces appear when we attempt to engineer positive change.  We discover our competing commitments pull us in opposite directions causing us to spend a great deal of energy attempting to satisfy each: "I'm going to lose 20lbs but I really love to eat and drink."

Our overbooked lives and strong immunity to change try to keep us from relearning deeply ingrained habits.  To make our intention a reality takes personal determination, practice, repetition and the support of others.  Self-directed learning is all about developing an aspect of who we are and/or who we want to be.

Today, 64% of people in the US say there is not enough time in the day to get things done.  A poor night's sleep and tight work deadlines adversely affect our work performance.  It's tempting to turn on the TV and pass the time rather than moving forward with focused action to accomplish our good intentions.

The key question is:  Are you ready to reduce your worries, restore balance to your life and work on producing the results that are most important to you?

To take a first step forward: Visit www.MENTORINGandCOACHING.COM for learning resources on how to pay more attention to your intentions.

What is the purpose of emotion?

Mirror neurons (the cells of nerve tissue) are connected to the brain's emotion region, the limbic system, and re-create the experience of others' intentions and feelings within ourselves. 

Your limbic brain (the emotional brain) works in concert and sometimes at odds with the neocortical brain (that directs the abstract mind--the cognitive functions of language, problem-solving, physics, mathematics).

Leaders know, and science has discovered, emotionality's deeper purpose: the timeworn mechanisms of emotion allow two human beings to receive the contents of each other's minds.  

Emotion is the messenger of love; it is the vehicle that carries every signal from one brimming heart to another.

"To function well with other people, we need to understand where they're coming from so as not to misread their intentions," says Regina Pally, a psychotherapist in Los Angeles and a clinical professor at UCLA.  "Mirror neurons are what let us understand
others' emotions."   The same cortical neurons that process the sense of touch also fire when you see someone else touched.  Mirror neurons also let us feel another person's pain.  We feel the sensations of others in our own emotional brain as if we would be having those same sensations.

Within the effulgence of their limbic brain, mammals developed a capacity we call limbic resonance--a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other's inner states.  It is limbic resonance that
makes looking into the face of another emotionally responsive creature a multilayered experience.

Instead of seeing a pair of eyes as two bespeckled buttons, when we look into the ocular portals to a limbic brain, our vision goes deep: the sensations multiply, just as two mirrors placed in opposition create a shimmering ricochet of reflections whose
depths recede into infinity.  Eye contact, although it occurs over a gap of yards, is not a metaphor. When we meet the gaze of another, two nervous systems achieve a palpable and intimate apposition.

Exercise the power of your limbic brain by looking deeply into someone's eyes today.

John G. Agno
Certified Executive & Business Coach

Sources: A General Theory of Love, by Thomas Lewis, M.D., Fari Amini, M.D., and Richard Lannon, M.D.
The Wall Street Journal's Science Journal, March 4, 2005

What is Love?  www.WhatisLove.info

Test for Love?  www.TestforLove.com