New Dimensions; Brain/Mind; Part 1

<v Michael Toms>[music] It is only through a change of consciousness that the world will be transformed. <v Michael Toms>As we bring mind, body, psyche and spirit into <v Michael Toms>harmony and unity, so also will the world be changed. This is our responsibility, as <v Michael Toms>we create and explore new dimensions <v Michael Toms>of being. [music] <v Michael Toms>Welcome to New Dimensions. My name is Michael Toms and I'm going to be your host on

<v Michael Toms>today's journey, journey into the wonderful world of being human <v Michael Toms>and being alive. <v Michael Toms>Today we're going to be talking with Marilyn Ferguson. <v Michael Toms>Marilyn is the editor and publisher of Brain Mind Bulletin, a twice monthly international <v Michael Toms>newsletter dealing with consciousness research. <v Michael Toms>She also- also wrote a book called The Brain Revolution a few years ago. <v Michael Toms>And she has a forthcoming book called The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social <v Michael Toms>Transformation in the 1980s. <v Michael Toms>We're gonna be talking with Marilyn about her work and in the process exploring lots <v Michael Toms>of things that are going on now and things that are coming in the future. <v Michael Toms>Stay with us. We'll be here for two hours. [music] It's <v Michael Toms>nice for you to visit with us.

<v Michael Toms>I think perhaps a good way to begin. <v Michael Toms>And let's begin this way. <v Michael Toms>What led you to write the brain revolution and got your interest into the whole subject <v Michael Toms>of the brain in the first place? <v Marilyn Ferguson>We all get caught some way, huh. [laughter] There were several <v Marilyn Ferguson>things that seemed to come together at once. <v Marilyn Ferguson>One was I had gotten interested in parapsychological phenomena. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I'd had some personal experiences all of a sudden. <v Marilyn Ferguson>My father died in another part of the country, and I heard my name <v Marilyn Ferguson>being called. I was alone. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And after that happened, I thought, what can be involved here? <v Marilyn Ferguson>What does anyone know about this? <v Marilyn Ferguson>I began to find out that there was research actually going on and this was in 71, <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think, and it hadn't yet become popular in public as it is now. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And it seemed to me to be very significant. My younger brother also dragged me into <v Marilyn Ferguson>transcendental meditation and I was very <v Marilyn Ferguson>impressed with the changes I experienced and the phenomena.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>I didn't realize that not everybody who I assumed that, everybody <v Marilyn Ferguson>who started saying Monterey's was getting the flashing lights and stuff that I was <v Marilyn Ferguson>getting. I was selling it to all my friends on that basis. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And some of them were a little disappointed. But it was like- I think what I <v Marilyn Ferguson>call in the Aquarian Conspiracy entry point for people <v Marilyn Ferguson>varies. And it often is a kind of a fascination in the beginning. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I was interested in - had that time. <v Marilyn Ferguson>My three children were small and I had become convinced that what we think of as <v Marilyn Ferguson>intellectual giftedness is something that any normal human being is capable <v Marilyn Ferguson>of any- any normal baby that's born has that potential because there is an <v Marilyn Ferguson>incredibly plastic brain. I found out that there was research relating to that. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I had been writing professionally since I was 17, and <v Marilyn Ferguson>I was trained to think how I might put all of this together in a single format <v Marilyn Ferguson>so that I could do research in this area that I was increasingly interested in. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I thought of the idea of relating it all to brain research and consciousness

<v Marilyn Ferguson>research. And that was what happened. And then the brain revolution became kind of an <v Marilyn Ferguson>industry after it came out, because apparently the timing was just right, <v Marilyn Ferguson>and-. <v Michael Toms>So it was very popular book at the time. Still is around too. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Yeah. Yeah. It just came out in a new- it's- it's not a revision, but ?inaudible? <v Marilyn Ferguson>put a new cover on it and um, but that led <v Marilyn Ferguson>me into uh-. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Once you start doing your own personal research, you get <v Marilyn Ferguson>on your own path in that field. It's pretty hard to let go of it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I never quit doing the research. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It was just- it really became a way of life. <v Michael Toms>So that kind of evolved into the Brain/Mind Bulletin. <v Marilyn Ferguson>The Brain/Mind Bulletin yeah. There seemed to be a need for something that was timely. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Journals are so slow in their publication and the <v Marilyn Ferguson>new- you know, like typically an article will be submitted to years before it's <v Marilyn Ferguson>published. And it seemed to me that in something that was so dynamic and exciting, <v Marilyn Ferguson>there needed to be some more timely way of getting the news around besides grape

<v Marilyn Ferguson>vines and telephones. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And so that was how I happened to do that. <v Michael Toms>There's an interesting story there I think I'd like to explore a little deeper just <v Michael Toms>about, you know, kind of creating your own reality, like you were interested in brain <v Michael Toms>research and so you wrote a book about it and then that brought a newsletter which keeps <v Michael Toms>you involved in it and so forth. Could you tell us a little more about that? <v Michael Toms>How that was for you and how you went about doing it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Well, let's see the. <v Marilyn Ferguson>In a way, I hadn't thought of it as creating my own reality, but I guess I did. <v Marilyn Ferguson>We start naming things and they exist. [laughter] <v Michael Toms>Yes, they become real. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Yes. Yes. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And that's what's happened in terms of the new book that I'm working <v Marilyn Ferguson>on, that I'm almost finished with, The Aquarian conspiracy. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I began suspecting there was one. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And as I talked about it did- it began to come together, I think, a little bit more than <v Marilyn Ferguson>it had before. <v Marilyn Ferguson>The- the Brain/Mind Bulletin, I think <v Marilyn Ferguson>was not so much my creating that reality as it was

<v Marilyn Ferguson>a community creating that reality. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It was the people doing the research and the interaction I found among us <v Marilyn Ferguson>and the support networks that made it necessary <v Marilyn Ferguson>almost to do it. in a way. Michael, I think it's- it's a sense of vocation that we begin <v Marilyn Ferguson>to experiences as we become involved in our own consciousness <v Marilyn Ferguson>and in the- in the old fashioned sense of vocation of being <v Marilyn Ferguson>called to do something that it's like you begin cooperating with whatever <v Marilyn Ferguson>it is that's happening. And it's like magic. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I'm sure you found that with New Dimensions. <v Michael Toms>Oh for sure. Have you ever had any any scoops from your come across something that nobody <v Michael Toms>else came across and are able to put it out? [laughter] <v Marilyn Ferguson> In a way, I think what happens is that because I <v Marilyn Ferguson>don't have I have a certain amount of hutzpah about what I do <v Marilyn Ferguson>that I wouldn't have if I had had a more sophisticated training <v Marilyn Ferguson>in science in the first place. So I'm more intuitive about what seems to me to be

<v Marilyn Ferguson>really important in the big picture. <v Marilyn Ferguson>What is coherent with what I sense this new paradigm is. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And occasionally- what happens is that I understand <v Marilyn Ferguson>something that maybe has been written somewhat obscurely or is quite technical <v Marilyn Ferguson>or esoteric in terms of its accessibility, <v Marilyn Ferguson>and I kind of get a feeling about it and- and stay with that until I understand <v Marilyn Ferguson>it. And then I- I report it in more ordinary language <v Marilyn Ferguson>or in clearer language than it originally was reported in. <v Marilyn Ferguson>There is uh- there are a lot of brilliant scientists <v Marilyn Ferguson>and theorists who have come upon things that are very <v Marilyn Ferguson>important, but they have a lot of difficulty in translating them <v Marilyn Ferguson>across um, bridging across that that paradigm shift that they made. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And uh, I think when I understood what Karl Pribram was saying <v Marilyn Ferguson>about his his idea of a holographic reality,

<v Marilyn Ferguson>when I got what he was saying, which was difficult for people <v Marilyn Ferguson>to get, and I didn't get it until I think maybe the third or fourth time I heard him <v Marilyn Ferguson>mention it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I reported on that, I think in a sense it was a scoop and that it was a <v Marilyn Ferguson>popularization of- of a very important idea which has since- has been picked up by any <v Marilyn Ferguson>number of people in publications and conferences and workshops and so on. <v Michael Toms>It's interesting what uh- just focusing on a little bit on what the power of the printed <v Michael Toms>word is [laughter], how you can just write a headline and suddenly it becomes <v Michael Toms>a reality. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Yes. Yes. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think, uh, where what I'm doing is is useful <v Marilyn Ferguson>is in showing connections across disciplines. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And like from something here from psychology and something here from anthropology and so <v Marilyn Ferguson>on, because it's all part of the same thing. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Albert Szent-Gyorgyi said, 'Nature isn't divided into units. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Nature doesn't know biology and chemistry and physics as separate <v Marilyn Ferguson>things. It's all connected and somehow we're living in a very specialized world.'

<v Marilyn Ferguson>And these are- I covered a neuroscience conference in <v Marilyn Ferguson>Anaheim a year and a half ago, and I found that the brain researchers who were there, the <v Marilyn Ferguson>neuroscientists, most of them, if they went into a seminar that related <v Marilyn Ferguson>to a different brain region from the one that they specialized in or a different type of <v Marilyn Ferguson>cell or something, were not understanding. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It was so specialized. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And they have nothing to do with the psychologists who have very little to do with the <v Marilyn Ferguson>educators and on and on. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And so I think that anything any of us can do towards synthesis <v Marilyn Ferguson>at this point is- is a social service, is a calling. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I'm- in a way, I think the Brain/Mind subscribership <v Marilyn Ferguson>reflects that interest in terms of people who really want to know what the big picture <v Marilyn Ferguson>is. And so that's what I'm- what I'm working on. <v Michael Toms>What is- how many subscribers does Brain/Mind have now? <v Marilyn Ferguson>About 7,000. And, uh, there, uh- it's a- it's a really interesting <v Marilyn Ferguson>range of people. I would say about 90 percent of them are have

<v Marilyn Ferguson>a professional interest, but it's a whole range of professions, psychiatrists, <v Marilyn Ferguson>psychologists, educators, biofeedback <v Marilyn Ferguson>people, publishers, it's, uh, Playboy and Cosmopolitan. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I mean, it's a really funny mixture of things, kind of a who's who in psychology. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And they're - but they're people who are generalists, <v Marilyn Ferguson>whatever their specialty, they're- they're generalists. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And they're trying to- I think, in the public at large now there is <v Marilyn Ferguson>a need to know. There are two things happening. <v Marilyn Ferguson>One is that people have a kind of a spiritual hunger or a hunger for something <v Marilyn Ferguson>non-material, something that our society hasn't been giving them. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And on an- and- at the same time, there is a need to know. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It's like there's a kind of a right brain need, a left brain need - If we can lapse into <v Marilyn Ferguson>those current cliches- that we <v Marilyn Ferguson>want- we really want to understand. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I was amused when when Adam Smith did his book, Powers of Mind, he mentioned

<v Marilyn Ferguson>in there that he had gotten curious as to whether how people <v Marilyn Ferguson>felt about meditation, and that he had said to them, <v Marilyn Ferguson>as you- as you know, the original research on transcendental meditation was <v Marilyn Ferguson>done, most of it by the earliest research by Herbert Benson <v Marilyn Ferguson>at Harvard and was one of the two who did most of the early research. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And Benson later developed something he called the relaxation response was, which was <v Marilyn Ferguson>like an Americanized version of transcendental meditation. <v Marilyn Ferguson>But it used the word one. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And there's some controversy about the whole thing, whether it really was or wasn't. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Anyway, Adam Smith said he was curious as to whether people in general, he began polling <v Marilyn Ferguson>his friends and acquaintances, would you rather have a meditation that was handed down <v Marilyn Ferguson>some ancient tradition with the Sanskrit mantra? <v Marilyn Ferguson>Or would you rather have a system that was developed by a Harvard scientist? <v Marilyn Ferguson>And he said what he found was they wanted some ancient system with a Sanskrit word that <v Marilyn Ferguson>was verified by a Harvard scientist. [laughter] So we want it all.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>And in a way, I think that's what's happening. <v Marilyn Ferguson>We want- we want to have some insights into- into <v Marilyn Ferguson>how- we- we don't want to- we seem to be at a point and culturally, uh, <v Marilyn Ferguson>and historically where we don't want to give ourselves mindlessly <v Marilyn Ferguson>to any tradition ever. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It's like there such an increase in autonomy in people that it's all kind of provisional. <v Marilyn Ferguson>We will- we're open. <v Marilyn Ferguson>We want to understand. We want it. We want to experience, and we want to understand at <v Marilyn Ferguson>the same time. <v Michael Toms>What are some of the most memorable things that have happened to you as the editor <v Michael Toms>and publisher of Brain/Mind? Just name one. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Memorable.Um, well, <v Marilyn Ferguson>I guess the astonishing reaction to the special issue on the holographic theory was <v Marilyn Ferguson>probably a real milestone. <v Marilyn Ferguson>The day that, uh, it began hitting people's mailboxes, saying we had 15 <v Marilyn Ferguson>calls from around the country from people. And that was very exciting.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>I felt that I had made a real contribution there because to me, that <v Marilyn Ferguson>model accounted for all kinds of phenomena that nothing had accounted <v Marilyn Ferguson>to up to that point and offered a framework for parapsychological phenomena as well as <v Marilyn Ferguson>for in altered states of consciousness, the benefits <v Marilyn Ferguson>from those and so on. So that was probably the big one. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And there have been- there are all sorts of funny little ones. <v Michael Toms>I'm talking with Marilyn Ferguson, the editor and publisher of Brain/Mind Bulletin. <v Michael Toms>We'll be right back. [music] <v Michael Toms>Marylin, you are certainly one of the people in the vortex of change

<v Michael Toms>as the editor of this publication and the work that you've been doing over the last <v Michael Toms>several years. <v Michael Toms>There are a number of questions I have for you about that whole process. <v Michael Toms>But perhaps the first one should be, what do you see happening? <v Michael Toms>What do you see happening now? What do you see that we are as a- as <v Michael Toms>a species, perhaps? What do you think we are and where we're going? <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think it depends in a way, on your geography, <v Marilyn Ferguson>because there are areas of heightened in a sense social evolution <v Marilyn Ferguson>on the globe, on the planet. It's like the, uh, United States is <v Marilyn Ferguson>more actively involved in this process, I think, than other countries, although there <v Marilyn Ferguson>certainly are networks in Europe. And I hear from a lot of people there and I know that <v Marilyn Ferguson>there are alternative publications and a lot of other countries interested in <v Marilyn Ferguson>consciousness. California in this country is <v Marilyn Ferguson>5 to 10 years old- I'd say at least 5 years ahead

<v Marilyn Ferguson>of what's happening in the rest of the country in terms of how integrated it's <v Marilyn Ferguson>becoming in popular life. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Just, you know, the man on the street that you would stop and say, would you know about <v Marilyn Ferguson>this? That was the other thing. And the acceptance of new paradigm ideas. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It seems to me, Michael, that we are going through something historically unprecedented <v Marilyn Ferguson>but not, uh, unforeseen. <v Marilyn Ferguson>One of the things that I've been doing in the Aquarian conspiracy is tracing the kind of <v Marilyn Ferguson>genealogy of this alternative world view, which of <v Marilyn Ferguson>course, is is ancient in terms of mystical tradition, but that within the last <v Marilyn Ferguson>hundred years and particularly last 50 years, there were a number of people who <v Marilyn Ferguson>envisioned that such a change shift might begin to take place, that a new consciousness <v Marilyn Ferguson>would be get a new world. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And there were there was Edward Carpenter in the around the turn of the century <v Marilyn Ferguson>and there have been any number of people since. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Particularly in the 30s, there were statements being made by the- 20s

<v Marilyn Ferguson>and 30s, people like H.G. Wellls, Henry Miller, D.H. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Lawrence and so on, there was- it's like in a way, this was a vision that artists <v Marilyn Ferguson>had long before social critics and people like that had it, uh- <v Marilyn Ferguson>Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, of course, was the real visionary of what's of this <v Marilyn Ferguson>transition that's happening and what he said was this- once we have become <v Marilyn Ferguson>aware of our own evolution, our evolution will change. <v Marilyn Ferguson>There's no way it can't. And one of the things that- when I was trying to translate the <v Marilyn Ferguson>terminology of this movement into- into, uh, ordinary <v Marilyn Ferguson>English in terms of writing about it, um, for the book, <v Marilyn Ferguson>I started thinking about the terms that we use. <v Marilyn Ferguson>For instance, we talk about consciousness, the consciousness movement, conscious work, <v Marilyn Ferguson>consciousness or that, this doesn't mean very much to people who are not into <v Marilyn Ferguson>it and they think, 'Conscious? That means I'm not in a coma.' <v Marilyn Ferguson>Right [laughter] And I realized that what we mean is the consciousness of consciousness,

<v Marilyn Ferguson>the awareness of awareness. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Once we begin realizing that we have that process happening, we begin seeing <v Marilyn Ferguson>our- our own conditioning and we see that we have choices, and that <v Marilyn Ferguson>culturally there are so many people doing this now <v Marilyn Ferguson>that it's becoming- it's beginning to have <v Marilyn Ferguson>a great social impact and that you see these transitions happening <v Marilyn Ferguson>in every realm of life, like the most obvious is in medicine. <v Marilyn Ferguson>That's- that shift started first, maybe because it was the most desperate crisis <v Marilyn Ferguson>that we had and has become quite assimilated into the culture. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It's happening in education. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Educators are realizing now in the high levels of, uh, <v Marilyn Ferguson>policymaking that no educational reform is going to work until teachers <v Marilyn Ferguson>change. That the personhood of the teacher is important <v Marilyn Ferguson>and that they are now engaged in something called the facilitative

<v Marilyn Ferguson>behaviors movement, which is making teachers aware of what they do, <v Marilyn Ferguson>making them, trying to teach them to listen. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Teaching them to facilitate learning and not talking at students. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And this is a- this is harder than it sounds, because when the teachers become involved <v Marilyn Ferguson>in this process, what they found, for instance, in the L.A. <v Marilyn Ferguson>school district, where they have some of these projects underway, <v Marilyn Ferguson>the teachers find it changes their personal lives. <v Marilyn Ferguson>That's the major effect. It just changes everything. <v Marilyn Ferguson>You can't take a little transformation. <v Marilyn Ferguson>[laughter] You can't say, OK, I'm going to transform my work situation and it's not going <v Marilyn Ferguson>to affect any of the rest of my life because ultimately work is transformed. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Politics is transformed. The way we relate to other people- And <v Marilyn Ferguson>it ultimately becomes whether you want to call it that or not a kind of a spiritual <v Marilyn Ferguson>journey. There's no way around it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And now we have millions of people in this culture who are engaged in that process. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And that's, I think, historically unprecedented.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>It was always, you know, a few yogis, a few Zen masters, a few mystics, <v Marilyn Ferguson>people who couldn't help themselves almost rather than a whole big cultural <v Marilyn Ferguson>phenomenon. <v Michael Toms>Don't you think that perhaps this may be true, what you're saying? <v Michael Toms>And at the same time, I see that there are a lot of missing connections that <v Michael Toms>there seem to be within this movement, if we can call it a movement. <v Michael Toms>There seemed to be compartments where connections aren't being made. <v Michael Toms>Like I don't see a whole lot of connections being made between the holistic health <v Michael Toms>movement and Christian reborn movement. <v Michael Toms>[laughter] Yeah, they may be part and parcel of the same energy, but yet the connections <v Michael Toms>aren't there. I'm sure there are lots of other examples as well that you know about. <v Michael Toms>How do you see them? <v Marilyn Ferguson>Well, I think that what happens is that there is something. <v Marilyn Ferguson>There are many ways that we have of changing. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And that well, there are two primary ways. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I would say one is what I call a pendulum change. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And the other is paradigm change.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>Pendulum change is you have been a devout believer in something, and then you become <v Marilyn Ferguson>a devout unbeliever or you have been <v Marilyn Ferguson>a political radical and then you become a political conservative or <v Marilyn Ferguson>you go from one belief system to another. I think that in the search for something else, <v Marilyn Ferguson>a lot of people simply give up one form of of <v Marilyn Ferguson>false security for another form of false security. <v Marilyn Ferguson>They give themselves over to some cult or something because <v Marilyn Ferguson>they know they want something else, but they don't know what it is and they're not yet <v Marilyn Ferguson>ready to- to be autonomous. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And so they think for a while they may think now I have found it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think that the paradigm change when people make that kind of connection, <v Marilyn Ferguson>among other things, they realize that it has to be inclusive, <v Marilyn Ferguson>that there were truths in the old and that they have to include them in the new. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And they accept uncertainty, everlasting uncertainty, that the real <v Marilyn Ferguson>illusion is looking for some kind of formula and that-

<v Marilyn Ferguson>that people who then make a paradigm change go into the process. <v Marilyn Ferguson>They go into the dy- the dynamic process of what's happening. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And that as- little by little, I see the connections being made all the time. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I agree. Thhere are whole networks of people doing something over here, <v Marilyn Ferguson>say in business, networks of people who are really interested in uses <v Marilyn Ferguson>of the human potential movement in business who don't know the Association for Humanistic <v Marilyn Ferguson>Psychology. And over here is a whole network of people who are <v Marilyn Ferguson>interested in using what somebody called meta-technology, using computers <v Marilyn Ferguson>to network around the country. And those people are quite technically oriented people. <v Marilyn Ferguson>They have an interesting consciousness, but they don't know anything about some other <v Marilyn Ferguson>aspect of it. And, uh,- but the day by day, week by week, those <v Marilyn Ferguson>networks are overlapping and linking and those connections are being made. <v Michael Toms>So let's go into the- the bridges are happening. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Yeah. And Edward Carpenter had said something are very

<v Marilyn Ferguson>visionary about that. That there would be- that the way the society would change would <v Marilyn Ferguson>there be networks of people and little by little, those networks would enlarge and they <v Marilyn Ferguson>would overlap and they would link with each other and that would be the transformation of <v Marilyn Ferguson>society. And he wrote that I think in 1905 or something. <v Michael Toms>So we may be moving from the historical Western civilization <v Michael Toms>mode of the power of the individual to the power of many individuals realizing-. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Aligned power aligned-. <v Michael Toms>They're together, connected and those two things are are interrelated. <v Michael Toms>It's like moving from one- one belief system that's lasted for hundreds of years to <v Michael Toms>another. [sounds of agreement] <v Marilyn Ferguson>Yeah, it's a major shift ,and it's easy to see why it's misunderstood <v Marilyn Ferguson>by those people who haven't who haven't felt it or participated in it, that <v Marilyn Ferguson>the surface manifestations of it can be very confusing if you don't have the new context <v Marilyn Ferguson>for it, these things. Well, what is this? <v Marilyn Ferguson>You know, it's like people are doing their own thing, and yet they don't realize that in <v Marilyn Ferguson>the autonomy that many people are experiencing is also a new willingness to cooperate but

<v Marilyn Ferguson>in a different way. It's a- it's a provisional joining of <v Marilyn Ferguson>forces that, um, I maintain my autonomy. <v Marilyn Ferguson>But I want to work with you. <v Marilyn Ferguson>But basically, it's like we always did things with hierarchies and organizations, OK? <v Marilyn Ferguson>We want to work together with the president. Who is the vice president? <v Marilyn Ferguson>Let's appoint a committee.