our philosophy

We believe that the crises we are facing as species go deeper than even the institutions that organize our societies. We believe that the philosophies and worldviews underlying our major social institutions are fundamentally flawed and incapable of responding to the complex challenges of our current era. Thus a comprehensive alternative is needed. 

We believe that the Philosophy of Wildseed could be the beginning of such a comprehensive alternative. 

The Philosophy of WildSeed is a praxis (a practice of acting, reflecting on that action and then acting again with wisdom gleaned from that reflection) of individual sensing combined with collective meaning making; building and iterating on a world in which everyone can get their needs met with dignity and joy. 

This praxis will naturally look different for different people, in different contexts at different times.It will also be interpreted differently by people with different ontologies.

Most importantly, it will evolve as we learn more about ourselves and the world, possibly even invalidating things we once held dear. 

Yet we believe it is sound enough in its current outline to be the basis on which we build our new social forms, enterprises and institutions for WildSeed. 

In general, the philosophy of WildSeed believes that Science, Mysticism, Philosophy and the Humanities should inform each other so as to best guide humanity’s collective actions.

We see them as nested traditions which have a role to play in answering the questions that arise in trying to live in alignment with the classical Greek inspired categories of the  beautiful, the good and the true. 

It has ten major commitment at this time:

1. An ontological commitment to relationality or process. That is a fancy way of saying a central belief that relationships help define us and everything else that exists; that things can only be fully understood in relation to others things.  
   
   
2. An ontological commitment to holarchy, of a world organized as systems within systems. This follows from the commitment to relationality. It is an understanding that the universe is organized not just in relationships and processes but that those relationships and processes are systemic. A system is a pattern of events whose properties are owed more to the organizations of its parts than the components of its parts.  
   
   
3.   An ontological commitment to consciousness and spirit as systemic properties of existence. Following the work of Joanna Macy and the Dharma of Natural Systems, we believe that spirit and consciousness are the result of the complexity of the universe rather than independent things. Specifically, consciousness is the subjective experience of internal aspects of systems. It is a thing that arises within complex relationships rather than a specific quality of the material that makes up our neurons for example.  
   
   
4. An ontological commitment to the human being as a process of becoming. This means that humans are always in process defined by the quality and nature of our being not by what we do or produce. To be human is not to do rational things or have logical explanations. To be human is to have the capacity to reason true but also to feel, to imagine, to desire, to be connected to the universe and to be able to see the universe in ourselves and ourselves in the universe.  
   
   
5. An ontological commitment to the reality of society. This might be a strange thing to say explicitly but we live in a world in which Margaret Thatcher famously stated there is no such thing as society and then politicians around the globe began to set policy as if this were true.  Yet the Philosophies of WildSeed believes that society exist as something other than the sum of the individuals and materials that comprise it. The realm of the social has properties of its own that arise from the organization of materials and people that comprise it.  
   
   
6. Following from these ontological commitments is a metaphysics (rules that we believe govern the things we believe to exist) based in mutual causality. This metaphysics askews ideas of prime movers or first causes of a created universe. In this view the universe is a self-organizing system that has consciousness (though adherents differ as to whether it has sentience or intent). This self-organization exists in relationships of mutual causality (similar to what in Buddhism is often called paticca samuppada or dependent co-arising.) Under mutual causality all causes are interdependent on each other with no thing, action or single process being determinate.
   
   
7. A metaphysical commitment to systemic polycentrism, a world in which different rules govern different levels of systems. Systemic polycentrism is the belief that different levels of systems operate by different rules. This means that the laws of biology don’t necessarily boil down into the laws of physics. 
   
   
8.  Following from those metaphysics is an epistemology (a theory of what is knowable and how we can know it) of ambiguity. Things are ambiguous to humans and that ambiguity is largely unavoidable because to understand something conceptually we must name and define it. To name and define is to narrow the suchness or vastness of things to make them more delineable and categorizable than they really are. There is a loss of understanding in the rational conception. Thus all language and models are “fingers pointing at a moon” not even a full description of the moon and certainly not the moon itself.
    
9.   In addition to the epistemology of ambiguity is an epistemology of the conditioned brain. This is the belief that our brains and states of consciousness get conditioned through use and experience. Thus, overall, our brains can be said to be finetuned by environment and at least partially culturally conditioned. Thus not only are our identities and institutions socially constructed but the physical infrastructure of our cognition is as well.
   

10.  Following from the metaphysics of ambiguity is an ethic of skillful right action. This means choosing actions from the deepest insight available that most contribute to Liberation as you see it while leaving as many options open for other people to pursue their own interpretations of Liberation as possible.