Singing a song of wholeness

Most of us understand that our bodies are made up of cells, and that those cells are constantly dying and regenerating. But did you realize that over the course of a year ALL of the cells in a hand die and are replaced by new cells?

And yet the hand looks the same. This hand, in the picture, a year later will still be Allan's hand; maybe a little older-looking, but still recognizable -- and still with the memory of how to play my guitar. How is this possible?

Scientists have learned that it's possible because each of the cells in Allan's hand contains not only the data about its own role but also a complete DNA imprint for Allan as a whole. Each of Allan's cells contains what Buckminster Fuller called "pattern integrity", also referred to by Rupert Sheldrake as a "morphic field;" a kind of social identity.

And it turns out that "when a cell's morphic field deteriorates, its awareness of the larger whole deteriorates. A cell that loses its social identity reverts to blind undifferentiated cell division, which can ultimately threaten the life of the larger organism. It is what we know as cancer."

This quotation is from a book I was reading yesterday about transformational change, called Presence. The authors of this book, led by Peter Senge and Otto Schwarmer of MIT, contend that those of us who deal with institutions persist in treating them as if they were mechanical in nature: if a part breaks, fix or replace it and it will be as good as new.

But in fact, they say, because institutions are made up of humans, they have this same organic quality of wholeness that humans have. Which to me would explain two things I know to be true: that institutions, organizations, and communities have what I would call "institutional memory;" and that when members of that community lose that sense that they are part of a whole, the effect can be cancerous.

It seems to me that there are positive and negative aspects of both of these features. For example, we as Americans carry an institutional memory of democratic principles -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." And this is surely a good thing.

At the same time, you will note the use of the word "men" in that first sentence. It has taken centuries to bring this institution around to the thought that it is not just men but humans, male and female, who were created equal. And though we legislate that now, the institutional understanding has been very slow to die out.

...and the departure of that institutional memory can be traced, in part, to what I would call the positive effects of cancer: at some point some members of the community decided that their own objectives -- in this case, to consider males and females equal -- were more important than the established pattern. To effect change, they had to cut themselves off.

And yet I would also claim that the reason change has occurred over time is because new members, new cells -- our children, growing up in a world where we at least give lip service to the idea that women are equal -- come along with a slightly modified institutional memory.

But I did not start this post with the intent to write about feminism. What I really wanted to talk about here is community. I think that if we understand that institutions and organizations have this intriguing organic quality, then we also understand the importance of keeping the sense of community alive in its members. I would claim that to some extent it is an understanding of this that drives such activities as reciting the pledge of allegiance, memorizing the declaration of independence, and singing the Star-Spangled Banner at baseball games.

I also think that when we, for whatever reason, lose that sense of connection, of being part of something larger -- of which we have some communal understanding -- then the results can be cancerous.

We can blame Al-Qaeda all we want for the devastating attacks of 9/11. But I think the problem began when we as Americans began to lose the sense that ALL humans are created equal. Like the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm, we began to believe that "some animals (in this case, American ones) are more equal than others." And in stepping apart, claiming so much for ourselves without thought for the needs of the rest of our world community, we created the seeds of the cancer that came back to claim us, and that even now is eating away at our economy.

So how do we heal? How can we regenerate the understanding of wholeness and community? Clearly some think it requires radical surgery: eradicate Al-Qaeda and all possible related threads, and life will get "back to normal." But I think the disease goes deeper than that, and that that particular cancer will continue to recur in different forms until we reach a new understanding of connectedness and wholeness that is all-inclusive. And as I write this I realize I have come full circle to the song of which I last wrote:

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Perhaps if artists, poets, and musicians continue to paint for us a vision of true wholeness, the repetition and recitation of that vision, singing that song of wholeness, will help to plant that understanding more deeply in our institutional memory.