The "Holons" of the World

Yesterday I finished Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything.

Phenomenal book. Phenomenal thinker. His worldview is next level.

These are my thoughts that came from the experience.

Imagine the world as an all-encompassing web. A web of matter, life, space. Everything is connected. Everything is built upon another. This is what systems thinking is all about.

You can connect every system to another. Try nature for example. Everything is made up of atoms. Matter, plants, animals, humans, the air. The bricks are the same. We are built from Space itself. This means we are connected by Space itself. You cannot destroy atoms, it would collapse everything else as well. A big system. A holon.

Holons are built from its parts. Matter is built from atoms. Life is built from matter. And so on. Each system, each holon, has the previous holon as its building blocks. This means life builds plants, plants build animals, animals build humans, humans build societies, societies build the world.

We cannot single out one holon as more important than another. They are connected. Built upon each other. It’s all a big web. Destroy one, all the higher levels will be destroyed as well. We have to be careful with our footprint on the world. Nature is fickle, and we depend on that system. We are built on that system. We have a responsibility to protect it.

Now, if we take Society as a holon. What is it made of? People. What are people made of? Body, mind, spirit. How to make Society work better? Make its parts work better. How to make people better? Make its parts better. Body, mind, spirit. If we are to make the World a better place, we need to be better as single units, and as a whole society. This is not a small challenge.

Humanity has always thought of itself as separate from nature. It used to be Nature is above Us. Now, We are above Nature. Always a power-struggle. Forgetting we are MADE from nature. Nature is the parts that build Humanity. We are dependent on them, but they are not dependent on us. Remember, a holon destroyed means the higher levels destroyed. The lower levels will be fine.

Nature destroyed means we are destroyed. Humanity destroyed means nature is alive and well. It would mean a new holon would emerge in place of Humanity. Evolution will not stop with us. It’s just a question of which level would evolve: us, or nature.

The next level in Human evolution comes from Society, and the World-Consciousness. The World-Consciousness is the level of thinking where everything is part of the World. The highest system currently known. Everything is part of it. It’s made of Everything.

Humanity is not just people anymore. Humanity is not just society anymore. Humanity is the whole world now. It’s time we start acting like it. We have a responsibility to make this a better place. We are made from nature, and the world is made from us. We can build the parts better, so the whole will be better.

Building nature to its highest potential means we can build people to their highest potential. If people are at their highest potential, society will be at its highest potential. Society built to its highest potential means the whole world will be at the highest potential.

We are trying to build Humanity, but destroying Nature in the process.

We need to realize the lower levels need to be built up beforehand. Else we are doomed.