Musing on Evolution

Leonard Shlain

Leonard Shlain is a pioneering laparoscopic surgeon who holds several patents on innovative surgical devices and is also a bestselling author. His commitment to an integrally informed approach to medicine and evolutionary studies have won him friends from varied camps across the globe and found his work translated into multiple languages.

 

Stuart Davis

With eleven full-length albums to his credit, Stuart Davis has carved out a unique wavelength in the musical spectrum. Taking the topics of God, sex and death, and crafting them into inimitable pop songs with lyrical flair and unforgettable hooks, Stuart continues to be one of the great undiscovered singer/songwriters around.

 

 

Stuart Davis, Integral Life's veteran guest host, notes that some of the trouble we see today might be the result of exterior forms of development outstripping the interior development needed to wield those technologies responsibly. An integral approach to human growth suggests that different lines of development can indeed evolve through various levels or waves of development relatively independent of each other, and so these kinds of imbalances are an unavoidable pitfall of the evolutionary process.

Leonard takes this opportunity to speak about an imbalance he has noted in his own work. Part of the thesis of his book, Alphabet Versus the Goddess, is that up until the widespread adoption of the written word (at least by those in power), nearly all ancient cultures worshiped the feminine. Then, with the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the textual authority bestowed on them by a transcendent (male) God, the feminine, and particularly the feminine divine, lost power and prominence in the public domain. This (over-)emphasis on the written word, he suggests, has reverberations that have continued well into today.

An integral/AQAL perspective would hesitate to assign a causal link from the development of the written word to the downfall of the feminine, but it would certainly agree that a more balanced, comprehensive, and integral approach is the only way to move forward. And as Stu comments, Leonard is obviously not saying that writing per se is bad—he is, after all, the author of three books! In fact, Leonard comments that the Renaissance wouldn't even have been possible without the invention of the printing press, and the resulting boom in literacy across all social classes.

Leonard and Stu finish up with a discussion of Leonard's book-in-progress, Leonardo's Brain. As Leonard explains, Leonardo da Vinci is one of the very few people in history that made revolutionary contributions in both science and art. The book suggests that da Vinci managed to balance the use of both hemispheres of the brain in a rather extraordinary way, and perhaps that kind of balance should be a model for the future.

As always, we hope you enjoy the dialogue!