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 Neela Sakaria: Thank you for joining us. Please tell our readers about the title of your book, THE LAST HUMAN SPRING. What does this refer to?
L.S. Heatherly: The title refers to a metaphor for a period of time - the 1960s to the present, alluding to the idea that the West may not have another such springtime of human regeneration. It is not one of the major ideas presented; it sets a backdrop. For the reader, it is optional. The major ideas are carried by the central breakthrough - the human nurturome breakthrough.
Neela: What is the human nurturome?
LSH: Human nurturome is the missing partner to our genome in human evolution, human nature, behavior, and development. They evolved and functioned together in a full relationship, until estranged by artificial adulterants in 'civilization'. Our human nurturome can't be exactly mapped out like our human genome can. The full details can never be agreed upon, as is the case with such ideas as evolution, freedom, justice, democracy, et al. But, the general nature of such ideas must be, in order for human societies to address human well-being and sustainability. More tenets of the Human Nurturome Movement are in the book and at the website mentioned below.
The idea of a human nurturome, like the idea of human evolution before it, defies accepted thinking. Any brief description is, inherently, inadequate. But, accepted thinking views nurture as outside of and supplementary to nature. Hence, the nature vs. nurture debate, or issue, a characteristic of our Age of sci-technic artificialization. The nurturome breakthrough-revelation shows 'civilization' as originally separating nurture from nature, incrementally, during its own development. Employing science, its technologies, philosophy, and theology, a man-made, artificialized nurture and culture is developed. Gradually, and, in time, this artificialized nurture and culture replace our human species' 300,000 year-old nurture and culture - evolved as nurturome - in a full, equal relationship with genome.
Human genome represents and instructs our biologic (body-brain) life. Human nurturome represents and instructs our social-spiritual being. Human physical variations are inherited through genes. Human social-spiritual being variations are inherited through nurturome.
Genes are the instructions for life's body-brain matter waiting for Nurturome, the instructions for life's spirit and being. Life-force evolves toward being-force - toward meaning.
It's a mistake to posit human evolution merely in the matter of the cell, and the individual's response to this matter and material of environment. Human being didn't evolve, and doesn't exist, as single, autonomous entity. Family, community, and ecosystem, singly and the intergrown collectives, respond to and make natural selections regarding individuals. Human evolution is not evolution of the human organism; it is evolution of an organismicity, of social-spiritual being.
Neela: You are described as having "charted your own education." What is your background and what prompted you to write this book?
LSH: By age thirteen, an original, naturalistic, mind, and consciousness had emerged. The close relationship with nature, at times, achieved - in consciousness - a complete reunion, a oneness with all being. With these, emerged the purpose to nurture these, against all artificial conventions, toward some original breakthrough, whether a single aphorism, poem, essay, or a whole book. We are fortunate, those amongst us, who have found at an early age our own identity, mission, and destiny.
The mind, spirit, and soul, if set free, will hunt and gather the nourishments they are programmed by human nature to absorb.
Neela: To be categorized along with Silent Spring and Walden is quite a bold statement. How has the work of Thoreau, Darwin, and others influenced you - if at all?
LSH: The best account of a writer's background is through the books and authors of influence on that background. The authors in "Acknowledgements" begin in this order: " Thoreau, Emerson, Mumford, Theodore Roszak …" Dobzhanski's Mankind Evolving deserves a place.
Bold statements are cheap in our culture of hype. But, action remains unequivocal. The action of writing breakthrough ideas bearing the power to regenerate - even to a small degree - a 'civilization's' spirit, being, consciousness, and culture marks bold literature.
The root connection of classics on nature, and of authors such as Thoreau, Darwin, Muir, Leopold, et al, is also an allegiance (grasping at completeness) to nature, human nature, and human being. To paraphrase Lewis Mumford: "At the essence of romanticism is a grasping to recover the primordial." Until the very recent emergence of 'civilization' socioculture - before science, philosophy, and religion - culture was purely natural. The spear, stone ax, and natural institutions all passed evolution's test of time and its test of being's skills and attributes. But, human being is progressively losing Nature's seal of approval.
What's new under the sun? Losses - of irreplaceable rainforests, ozone, natural species, and parts of our human being, consciousness, and humanness, bequeathed through our nurturome. All 'civilizations' progressively suppress nature and her human nature until Her reality checks on us reach critical mass.
In time, Nature moves to defend her own. And, that part of us that remembers her movements, moves with her.
The main source of spirituality for some of us remains nature and that pure human nature still intimately involved with nature. For such true believers, despite penetrations by artificial adulterants, the natural soul is not for sale, any more than is its sacred source - Earth. This means human evolution, its human genome and its human nurturome, also, are not for sale.
Neela: You talk about alienation and what you call "evolution's missing story" in your book. Can you explain to our readers what this means?
LSH: In the book, the term alienation is used only four or five times. This concept is inadequate to describe what needs to be recognized; therefore, the concept and term, alienization, is used over fifty times, revealing and denoting, respectively, a deeper problem. We have now approached one of the many corollary breakthroughs carried by the human nurturome breakthrough. Namely, that the alienation thinkers have been writing about for decades is not the full story of the phenomenon they attempt to explain. Alienization is the underlying problem we need to apprehend in order to reveal the solutions to these painful experiences.
To describe how individuals become alienated from family, social units, and society is only part of the reality of what has happened. We all have experienced, and now experience, degrees of various alienations. But, the breakthrough into natural nurture and culture of our nurturome reveals that these human separations and disconnections are wider and deeper than previously understood. The alienation psychologists, philosophers, and others write about are part of a deeper phenomenon - our alienization out of our evolved human nature, humanness, and the relationship to Nature herself.
This brings us to your question about the meaning of "evolution's missing story." The prevailing view of evolution, consisting chiefly of natural selection and mutation, cannot adequately explain the most, conspicuous, destructive phenomena found in 'civilization'. Our genomic view of evolution has no instructions and guidance for treating and preventing the great bulk of human sufferings and inequities; because these emerge from deficient, abusive nurture and deficient, assaulting culture - not from flawed genes and genome. The Human Genome Project inherently fails us. What does the human genome have to say about national wars, world wars, over 5,000 years of cyclical empires marked by genocide, slavery, suppression, subjugation, and other inequities? What advice does it have concerning the holocaust, childhood suicides, schoolyard killings, serial rape and murder, and other newly emerging psychopathic and sociopathic behaviors almost ad infinitum? How will knowledge of the human genome blueprint turn us away from these, and reverse our movement into terrorizations, dehumanizations, family-community-social disintegrations, unspeakable warfares, and human decimation? Where are genome's instructions and guidance concerning the sources of human sufferings and inequities, which are overwhelmingly non-genetic?
Our human nurturome awaits our rediscovery and our journey back into a gradual recovery. It offers a reconstitution of scientific and philosophical inquiry, as well as a renurturing and renaturalizing of human understanding, consciousness, lifeway, and culture.
Neela: What is the "egoself"?
LSH: It defies brief description. But, "Chapter IV, Egoself: Origins, Developments, and Arisings," explains how the egoself has come to substantially displace the natural, whole self evolved for humans. Egoself refers to the mind-body-organism-self, which upon occasions, or even extended periods, becomes separated from the other parts of natural whole self - from family-self, community-self, and the surrounding ecosystem within which they evolve and interfunction with.
Other prominent figures have bemoaned the problems that the ego or egoself presents. Let's take six examples from the book (and compress them). (1) The monumental The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 volumes) states that egoism is a problem that Western Civilization has failed to resolve. (2) Heidegger, a major, existential-phenomenological philosopher of the Twentieth Century came to believe that the west needs to be freed from the grip of the ego by a breakthrough and change in consciousness. (3) Erich Fromm held in his later years that egotism had become in the West a massive barrier to human fulfillment. (4) One recent school of psychology has targeted the ego as the "false self," recommending that people reclaim the child within. (5) Maslow toward the end of his life concluded that "people need to transcend the ego, the self, the identity, to go beyond self actualization." (6) Transpersonal psychology, generally, has abandoned the self as single, independent entity.
Neela: What kind of research went into the production of the book? How long did it take to write?
LSH: Naturalistic creativity entails a reunion of human being with living nature in one's particular mission in life, embracing one's identity and purpose, and directing, as far as possible, one's contemplations, reading materials, and life experiences to be in line with that mission.
The first culmination of this missionary lifeway, for this author, occurred in early March of 1977 in the form of the breakthrough-revelation into the human nurturome and its natural nurture-culture. At that time, the term, genome, had not gone public. Hence, natural culture was employed to denote nurturome. For years the breakthrough and the prospect of presenting it and its ramifications in manuscript form was overwhelming. The second culmination of this missionary consciousness consisted of the eleven years of writing, interruptedly, producing the manuscript.
Neela: Who is the audience? Is your book only meant for students of science and evolution? What kind of a response has it gotten from readers?
LSH: It didn't require genius for the American colonists to realize 5,000 years of tyranny's rule over human freedom was enough. And it doesn't require genius to realize that 3,000 years of Western Materialism's rule over Human Spirit is enough.
A powerful idea is a volcano waiting to erupt. Nature and her human being select the day to release it upon humanity's fields of being. Its truth and reality are tested and determined by time and being, beyond ethnocentricity.
Visionary perspective (and genius) is not genetic. It arises from original physical-mental-social-spiritual-ontological circumstances.
A reawakening of natural intelligence through rejection of artificially programmed consciousness, is the major prerequisite for human rebirth.
The depth, breadth, and revolutionary import of the book - to laymen, professionals, and students, and the everyday life of Western Humanity - required a manner of writing that is substantially accessible to all of these audiences. Over 150 subheadings provide helpful rest stops. Some have reportedly used it for periodic readings. That is in line with this offering - a nearby canyon for periodic hikes into new terrain and rediscoveries of nature and human nature.
Optimism easily emerges from the early responses of two alert souls: (a), "It is an amazing book, truly ground-breaking,…I acknowledge [the] vision …I hope [the] book is widely read." - Gary Snyder, Pulitzer prize-winning Author, Ecoleader, and Poet Laureate of the Environmental Movement. And (b), "I commend [the Author's] diligence …engaged in what Thomas Berry calls the 'great work' of restoring harmony between humans and the rest of nature." - Bill Devall, one founder of the Deep Ecology Movement.
Delayed listing with most bookstores delayed promotion. We should keep in mind that Freud's idea of the subconscious mind was openly laughed at by his peers. And, Darwin's idea of evolution was likewise slow to catch on; and, over 130 years to be officially accepted by Catholicism. Powerful life-changing ideas must overcome the artificial antibodies and automatized, programmed consciousness of commercialized sci-technicism.
The idea of evolution initiated a long, reluctant journey into a new understanding of human nature; the idea of nurturome initiates a second expedition that prefers human growth, well-being, and sustainability over the material treasures of the first.
Neela: Towards the end of the book, you include a series of poems. How do these poems fit into the framework of The Last Human Spring on the whole?
LSH: The last chapter, Ch. XI, consists of 47 poems written from 1998 through 2002 re-expressing some of the breakthrough ideas in the language of poetry.
Neela: Is there anything else you'd like to share with our readers?
LSH: There are plenty of frontiers of unrooted knowledge around these days. The last, best, authentic, human frontier has now been opened by the breakthrough into human nurturome. Professionals, laymen, professors, and students will stake their claims, each according to their diverse aspirations for themselves and humanity. The Human Nurturome Movement has begun. Nurturome liberation drives toward the rightful remarriage of Nurturome to Genome, Nature's original couple.
Underneath all human freedoms - those of individuals, women, minorities, communities, ethnicities, races, et al, lies the freedom to nurture with, and be nurtured by, our evolved human nurturome.
Genome, Life's Book of selfish matter, confronts Nurturome, Life's Book of caring spirit-being.
To rejoin human being, running deeper than our time,
to release the soul from the ego's grip,
to awaken the conscience from programmed mind,
to behold the social-spirit script,
To know the conditions of our being,
to speak our social-spirit body,
to reignite what should have been,
to recover the spirit of the matter:
This is the recovery of human nurturome.
Remarriage planning continues at www.Nurturome.org, home, also, to the Human Nurturome Project and Human Nurturome Prize. Prize awarded annually Nov 30, for best (Student) and (Nonstudent) article/response inspired by the human nurturome breakthrough. (Length: 800 - 2,000 words. Prize: $500; Runners-up: $50.)
The Last Human Spring
ISBN: 1-4010-6834-0
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