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Nations and plurality. November 2009 transnationals meeting.

 Through the eyes of nature we are but one species, even though we come in many colors and have a multitude of different social and winterizing habits. That, which we perceive as universal and unifying, are all characteristics of us as a species. That, which we perceive as universal and dividing us, are our big ideas. What is essential about ideas (eg. the idea of ’nation’, ‘plurality’, ’capitalism’, ‘morality’ etcet.) and the way, over time, they have shaped our reality? We have allowed mere ideas to form rigid realities from which we can hardly escape. Realities so big that they need many generations and sometimes centuries to evolve. Quite similar to the slow evolution we see in our human gene pool. 

Yet a new idea can be conceived within a fraction of a second. I’ll draw a parallel with epi-genetics here, where changes on our genetic level due to environmental influence translate to impressive physical differences after only one generation. It strikes me as odd that nature is capable of such smooth flexibility where we as a species, remain notoriously slow at adapting our realities to new ideas. Is it scale that works against us there?

At our meeting, scale wasn’t a problem. In my humble opinion it was how reality had shaped our ideas, which chained our feet to the ground.