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September/October 2003 Featured Stories
Agent of Evolution
Interview with Barbara Marx Hubbard

by Miriam Knight

 

MK- Barbara, you are the founder of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution and someone Buckminster Fuller called "the best informed human now alive regarding Futurism", so it is not surprising that Neale Donald Walsh invited you to give the keynote address at the recent Humanity’s Team Gathering in Portland. How does Neale’s vision for Humanity’s Team compare with your vision for the conscious evolution of society?

BMH - I see them aiming in exactly the same direction. I see that we have different functions toward the same goal. Our function has been to provide an evolutionary context and a developmental path toward the next stage of evolution that includes the best of the teachers and thinkers now transforming our world. Evolve [the online Global Community Center for the Foundation] offers a site for all these different groups to find a greater connection with each other for the common goal of the transformation of humanity.

I would say ours is an educational and synergistic process, whereas Neale has a skill, first of all, of calling people together – like the 1200 people (at Humanity’s Team). The fact that he was able to write books that have so deeply touched so many people, has allowed him to call people together and catalyze this movement for a more positive future. By providing the inspiration for leadership for what millions of people have been working on, he can catalyze the larger movement.

I also think that his emphasis on a new spirituality is really the essence of it. Getting rid of old beliefs that inhibit us and developing a new spirituality and a view of God and life that supports the emergence of the co-creative species is absolutely essential. And I feel in real partnership with him on this initiative.

 

MK- How do you see this partnership with Neale evolving?

BMH - Well I could see that what we’re offering through Evolve and Gateway will be a great support for Humanity’s Team. Although Neale has his teaching through the Conversations With God books, there’s a lot more that’s needed for people to come together at the local level and reach out to their community. And much of that is teaching, which is what we are about, as well as tracking and mapping what’s emerging in all fields.

Neale’s focus is the New Spirituality, whereas in our Synergy Center it is to identify leaders in every field that are coming from a New Spirituality. Neale doesn’t even begin to do that, although he knows it needs to be done. So that’s another level of partnership. I also think some of the tools that I’ve been working on over the years, like how to form resonant cores, how to form synergistic convergences, how to activate your deeper vocation and participate in the building of community, will be very helpful to Neale.

 

MK- Can you expand a bit on what Evolve and the Gateway Program are?

BMH - Evolve is really a Community Center for the conscious evolution of humanity, with emphasis on four elements. One is the Living School, which has to do with identifying the teachers and innovators that are healing our world. We turn that into an educational process that people from all over the world can participate in, and, by finding each other, build partnerships and teams to actually transform our world. And I think that’s a unique contribution, particularly since it’s a developmental path, not only to deal with immediate problems, but to lead to a quantum transformation on earth and in space. And we are really at a cutting edge with Gateway; the Living School will have many different teachers, all of whom contribute to the evolution of humanity.

Another is the Synergy Center, which is part of the educational program, but which stands alone. It is a model of a "whole system shift". We call it "12 around 1" model and the 12 represents the sectors of society like health, education, environment, government, and so forth. That process will identify key innovators and innovations in every field that are transforming the world. It will become a tremendous body of information of what’s emergent and creative.

Those who would like to participate can check in and put their own projects in, and see who else is doing what they would like to do, and form a greater team. They will be learning from people who are leaders in the emergent field that they’re part of, so I think it’s actually a really great tool.

And then there is the section called "Communities" where we want to identify and learn from the many efforts to form community, particularly communities dedicated to self and social evolution. People can put their profiles in there. They can find each other. It’s all about community building, really.

And finally there’s a section called "Evolving Media" to identify as many media as we can, radio and television, that are evolving our world.

So the Gateway is a component of the larger Evolve, and anybody anywhere in the world can register for Evolve. If they want to enter their profile, they can pay a small fee. Evolve is a global tool. Gateway is an educational program within Evolve. Evolve is seeking deeper partnerships with groups like Humanity’s Team, such that eventually Evolve will not be just our initiative but will be a collective initiative. That’s our goal.

 

MK- This brings us to the role of the Internet. I don’t think this connection would have been possible without it.

BMH - No. You know I’m a person who came to the Internet late in life and unwillingly, because I have been a book person. But what I saw when I tried to think how to put my curriculum out into the world, is that it had to be on the Internet, because it’s got so many connections. If you tried to write a book with all those connections, you’d be trying to write the encyclopedia of the world. But with the way Internet is designed, you can be connected to everything without having to write these huge tomes; and it’s alive, because it’s constantly self-editing and self-growing.

For my own use of the Internet for evolutionary education and co-creation, it’s an indispensable tool! In the larger sense, I think it’s the extended nervous system of the planetary body. And it’s available to each individual to participate and therefore brings out the uniqueness of everybody involved in their own evolution, because it gets rid of all those gatekeepers that keep you out of the publishing world…that keep you off the radio…that keep you off TV... Here it is available to all.

Also it’s almost an infinitely malleable nervous system. If you get into quantum computing and going up into the higher realms of what computers themselves can become, then you see we’re dealing with a new form of intelligence here, whether it ends up being silicon based life or a tremendous extension of human intelligence, just when we need it.

I would also say that people like The Foundation for Human Evolution are offering a contextual coherence whereby things can be mapped or self-mapped according to the function that they’re playing, so that you can get some sense of the higher pattern. Otherwise Internet can be so much information that you can be overwhelmed by it. What we hope to offer, because it’s developmental, is a certain coherence.

We’ve seen a developmental path on a biological scale; we’ve seen a developmental path on a planetary evolutionary scale – from the Big Bang through the formation of Earth, to life, animal life and human life. What we’re adding to that is a developmental path for our species from where it is currently – in its crisis of overpopulation, pollution, etc. – to a future equal to our potential. We are enlarging the developmental path to be seen as something that has coherence and integrity, just as we’ve learned that cosmic evolution does, and biological and even cultural evolution. But this is actually conscious evolution of a species aware that it is affecting its own evolution, and that it could render itself extinct or transformed. That is new.

You know, we’ve been evolving for billions of years, but there has never been a species that knew that it could make itself extinct by what it was doing. That is the biggest evolutionary wake-up call. And once you get awakened, you say, "OK, where do I go to find out?" We hope that Evolve and Gateway and the Living School can be a place where you can go to see what people are finding out about exactly how to evolve. There are no experts and no universities to consult as to how a species evolves, and yet, it’s the biggest question there is! All existing knowledge can serve it, but it’s not structured to serve it. I see the evolutionary spiral as the spine of the new education, and everything – all the sciences – contribute to the understanding of the evolutionary process which is now becoming self-aware in us.

 

MK- So are you saying that the task of Gateway and Evolve is to put some structure into the information available?

BMH - I wouldn’t want to be so arrogant, but what we are doing is offering a coherent structure within the Internet with as many linkages within that coherent structure as we can find. I feel personally like a map maker just before Columbus headed out. But he had a map that indicated that he wasn’t going to fall off the earth. Even though he didn’t know there was a continent there, the map was good enough for him to dare to go!

I think we’re mapping what we’ve learned so far about how we might evolve consciously. And we expect that the map is going to continually improve. My dream is it would become sufficiently dynamic that we could always be pulling in new information, becoming a tremendous resource for how humanity can evolve.

 

MK- What about the vast majority of the planet that does not have the skills or access to the Internet?

BMH - I think we have to start with the educating and connecting of those who do, because they are the ones who have to help. You know, if you’ve been given the privilege of an education and a certain amount of freedom, that means that you’re the one who has to go help the others in some way. But you have to be educated to know what to do.

Going back to Humanity’s Team, I’m very much excited by a group of people who realize that the way we’re going is not working– 30,000 children are starving every day! You have to go outside the box to figure out how it could work, and that’s why I love the idea of Humanity’s Team moving out of the box of what we’re currently doing to think of some new way – without discarding what works. A lot is working, but it’s always the small scale; it’s usually not connected, not funded and not communicated. It’s like the body is healthier than it actually looks, but you don’t know it.

 

MK- How optimistic are you that the evolutionary curve is going to cross the self-destructive curve before we do ourselves in?

BMH - Well I call myself not an optimist or a pessimist, but a potentialist. A potentialist sees the potential of us making it and acts on that potential as though it were possible. That’s extremely important, because if you are just optimistic, then you’ll think "well it’s going to work" and then you’re not motivated. If you’re a pessimist, then you’ll think it won’t work, and you’re also not motivated. But a potentialist sees the possibility and knows that it will only happen if each of us acts on it.

You don’t know for sure, but the knowing that it’s possible makes it possible. Whatever your view is becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, so I am a potentialist. I am very aware that the image of the future we’re going to have affects the future we’re going to create. And it absolutely behooves us to use our imagination to envision the future we want, and move towards creating it. I don’t care how bad the situation is, we still need to do that. I really think that is very important.

MK- Thank you Barbara. I hope for humanity’s sake that Evolve is a great success.

Barbara Marx Hubbard is a world-renowned futurist, citizen diplomat, social architect, and global politician. She is founder of the Center for Conscious Evolution and a founding board member of The World Future Society. She is the author of The Revelation: A Message of Hope for the New Millennium and Conscious Evolution.  For more information about Evolve and the Gateway program go to www.evolve.org or contact the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, P.O. Box 4698, Santa Barbara, California 93140-4698.
Phone: 805-682-3222; Fax: 805-682-6795; E-Mail: fce@evolve.org