Centration: the universe and the doughnut

From its earliest years, the cosmos has been turning in on itself in an ever-evolving process of centration. The early clustering of the original elements into stars. Swirling arms of galaxies gathering them together and creating more centers as new stars form. The dust of the universe collecting itself into planets around those stars, pulling matter into moons and rings.

Centered planets within centered solar systems within centered galaxies. Without this gravitational gathering, the earliest matter of the universe would have floated off into infinite space. We would never have arrived and found a place to stand and contemplate it all

There are more: cells are centers, gathering together disparate working elements within an intelligent membrane. They then form into one nexus after another, getting more and more complex. Eventually, a conglomeration of centers — brains, lungs, stomachs — turns into bacteria, algae, plants, fish, animals, birds, us.

Water vapor gathers and falls as rain or as snowy crystalline centers. The currents of the great waters flow in curves around the globe. The winds do the same, sometimes sweeping into great storms, whirling water and wind, centers of great intensity.

This endless process of centration is one of cosmologist Brian Swimme’s powers of the universe. These are the great energies that continually form and reform the cosmos and every element in it. I have been exploring what these great energies can teach us about moving toward a regenerative future. “The role of the human,” Brian says, ‘is to enable the creative powers of the universe to proceed in a mutually enhancing way.”

Even our desire for such a way forward, he feels, is centering around the basics of life: nurturing ourselves and our young. We do this by gathering into families and communities in ever-expanding circles of connection. “The universe is aiming to bring forth life that will carry life forward.”

Given nature’s minimal interest in straight lines, it’s intriguing that we humans have, unlike any other species, surrounded ourselves with them. We live in a built world of squares and rectangles. This, Brian suggests, extends to our thinking about the entire cosmos. It’s “a box with a lot of things in it and a lot happening.” The society inside the box has “become like a machine, a vast network of interactions focused on its own perpetuation.”

One line that we’re particularly attached to is the idea of linear progress. We have created a culture in which our measurement of prosperity is that we create and get more and more things. If the more is nutritious food, comfortable shelter, and useful education, then the gain is positive and potentially sustaining.

If by more we mean more possessions, larger houses, bigger cars, vaster shopping centers, then the gain is going to overwhelm the planet. But this is the line we measure in the gold standard of progress: gross national product, or GDP.

This linear view of progress is insidious. It fosters the thinking that because we have more things, we are better, more civilized, more advanced than those with fewer things. That some people, species, places are worth less than others, and beyond that, expendable.

This attitude underlies the idea that people living in poverty somehow deserve their state. That species protection is incompatible with human endeavor. The resources of the planet exist for our use.

I’ve been thinking about all of this because of an economist and firecracker-in-human-form named Kate Raworth. She has written a riveting book called Doughnut Economics. She uses that delicious shape with its circling double lines of permeable membranes to enfold a well of conditions for human prosperity. It’s a perfect example of using the power of centration as we proceed into the 21st century.

In the ‘hole’ of the doughnut are twelve things required for a just and humane presence living within the bounds of the planet. These include housing, equality, a role in politics, peace, health, food, and water.

Falling into the center of this hole means we have a shortfall of these necessities. Outside of the doughnut is where we go into overshoot. There, we use up resources faster than we can replenish them, discarding more than air, water, or soil can absorb. 

Though we’ve largely ignored the idea of a circular economy in the linear make-use-trash market we have today, it isn’t new. This is what Raworth calls the butterfly economy, a cradle-to-cradle model.

Resources used to create goods are recycled back into the same goods, as with modular pieces, recycled into other goods, or repaired. Such ideas have been a touchstone of sustainable thinking for years and are excellent examples of using the power of centration.

But the doughnut is different. It’s not only an economic model, it’s a place. One where the planet can live comfortably and the thriving of our species doesn’t threaten the flourishing of any others. A circular economy is part of the doughnut, as is building a robust commons.

Raworth’s suggestions include freeing intellectual rights from the overuse of patents on knowledge collectively developed. Looking to nature to learn from its billions of years of experimentation and know-how. Creating cooperative businesses and endeavors. Understanding the utter interdependence of everything on earth. Designing equitable distribution and regeneration into the economy.

The “fundamental question,” she writes, is “what enables human beings to thrive?” What will create “a world in which every person can lead their life with dignity, opportunity and community within the means of our planet?”

What allows for all humans to prosper? Not just those blessed to be in situations that favor them, at the expense of those in less favored circumstances. What is prosperity? Merely accumulating money and things? Or a world where everyone’s basic needs are met by design, not just a few by default?

Economic growth has proven to be effective in relieving deep poverty. But it’s based on the idea that we can just keep making things forever. Producing mountains of garbage and overusing Earth’s supply of water, clean air, and resources. Even if we could recycle everything, we’re still measuring our well-being by a GDP that “only values what is priced and only delivers to those who can pay.”

If you have asthma from a nearby toxic dump, every visit to the doctor counts toward the GDP. It’s thus included in ‘progress’. In our current economic thinking, there isn’t a usable measurement for no asthma and no toxic dump. Health and the ability to enjoy your neighborhood don’t count. By law, corporations are responsible for maximizing profit for shareholders, not for creating and maintaining a living, prospering world.

Raworth points out that since the 1970s, the word consumer has replaced the word citizen. We’ve lost the broader values, roles, and responsibilities the latter word invokes. We disregard the unpaid work that goes into our households, families, and neighborhoods. These are the foundations of our ability to thrive in the world and yet they have no recognized worth.

The doughnut changes this. In it, we shift from tracking “the flow of income to understanding the many distinct sources of wealth — natural, social, human — on which our well-being depends.”

This will require a different way of thinking, a different set of values. “Reversing consumerism’s financial and cultural dominance is set to be one of the twenty-first century’s most gripping psychological dramas,” Raworth says.

There are many who aspire to live within the means of the planet and want all beings to blossom. But everyone may daunted by the need to recalibrate what we cherish and desire. To decide what we’re willing to live without in order to live with our fellow creatures and the earth we share.

It will be a challenge to subsume the modern version of the mythic rugged individual — the larger-than-life entrepreneur — into the need for communal centering. As Raworth notes, “Suddenly the words ‘neighbors’, ‘community members’, ‘community of nations’ and ‘global citizens’ seem incredibly precious.” They are the keys to a just, sustainable future.

The universe itself tells us that our current approach is unsustainable, and guides us forward. For all its long life, it’s been gathering information about what works and moving past what doesn’t. It provides us with its flexible, generative energy, continually centering, gathering elements of itself to create every new being or mode of being.

This intelligent, vital force, Brian Swimme says, ‘has been roaring for 13.7 billion years and now it’s roaring into our lives. It’s been shaping the universe all this time, and it’s inviting us into the shaping itself.’

Both of my mentors here, despite the vast destruction we’ve wrought and how much work there is to do, are excited about our opportunities. Kate Raworth recognizes that a regenerative economy must be supported by regenerative economic design.

“Making it happen calls for rebalancing the roles of the market, the commons and the state. It calls for redefining the purpose of business and the functions of finance.” But, she says, “taking on this redesign task is surely one of the most exciting opportunities for the twenty-first century.”

She sees many examples worldwide of a new, emerging paradigm. The power of centration tells us that these energies can be drawn together and strengthened into nurturing ways of living.

There is a great, sustaining joy in such a task, Brian says. In “feeling part of a greater self, rooted in energies that go back to the beginning of time…Feeling the partnership and participation.” This exhilaration is “what the primordial energy of the universe feels like.”

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All of my Powers of the Universe essays can be found HERE.

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