Innovation, Punk Science and Villagers with pitchforks

Last week,  I was a speaker at a conference which was very different from the events I am usually invited to speak at. It was a conference discussing innovation in science and technology in Europe and was attended by quite a few former heads of State with other top current politicians sending presentations by remote link. This was definitely an 'invite only' event and I was asked to speak as someone in the organising committee is a friend of my partner's and is aware of my work and the excitement it is generating with young people around the world. 

My first impressions having sat through the first day was that there was an awful lot of talk, speakers rotated around every few minutes and there was little or no audience interaction. Each presentation was basically a variation on the same theme that Europe needed more innovation in science and technology or risk great losses to the economies of the member countries, a process which seems already under way. However, we did not hear from the people who are really on the ground creating tech companies i.e. entrepreneurs who would have been a great asset to the proceedings. 

In informal chats after that evening's gala dinner, I gleaned that actually some of the major issues were emotional. Europeans are less likely than Americans to celebrate success or want to be a tall poppy as they see that as being a bit vulgar. Being 'bi-cultural' myself, I do witness that the English are highly reticent to put themselves forward. Obviously all this shyness is not helping European innovation. 

However, it was the second day that really delivered a clanger and beautifully demonstrated why science and innovation has come to a standstill in so many arenas. I was speaking on a panel discussion on science and education. Note that this is not my usual subject of explaining the actual science but talking about science which is something I don't normally do. Now I am not naive. I know full well that people such as myself are hated by the scientific establishment so checked ahead with the organisers who indeed asked me to be 'out of the box'. 

So 'out of the box' I was, delivering a short presentation on how, although numbers of students studying science may be falling in schools, they are rising in the science and spirituality/ consciousness arena I generally speak in, even though people attend those events in their spare time and pay for them out of their own pockets. 

I pushed the boundaries way out of the box outlining the meagre statistics we have that suggest that we have a rise in people who call themselves spiritual and that there are many young people now who are experiencing phenomena such as angels, psychic abilities and healing. They need a science that is going to reflect their lives and if they don't find it in school, they will go elsewhere. Well as you can imagine, some scientists present, including another speaker decided to attack me and suggested that I should not have been even present at the conference. 

Although very rude, it was not an unexpected reaction. However, it did seem rather comical that in the middle of such a high level conference on innovation and 'out of the box' thinking, the only talk that really pushed the boundaries resulted in a reaction akin to being chased down by villagers with pitch forks. So in other words, people make a lot of noise about innovation, but in reality they only really want whatever follows the established patterns. 

The main reaction to my talk is that what I was discussing was not science. This is a classic sign of a dogma. I was describing how people now see their world which now more often includes phenomena such as angels etc. This includes children who are experiencing these changes, even when their own families do not understand or are even hostile to these ideas. 

Yet the scientific method begins with observation of the universe. If the observations of human beings are changing, science should reflect this. We look back to the past at the ideas about the universe that our forebears had in eras such as the Middle ages and wonder how they could be so restricted in their viewpoints. Yet perhaps this is because of an actual evolutionary process in humans that we have yet to understand and maybe the same is happening again and we are going through another paradigm shift in how humans view their reality.

The whole experience left me with a greater understanding of what people such as myself are doing in the Science and Spirituality/ Consciousness movement. We are actually moving science forward whilst existing out of the mainstream as there is no longer any innovation in the mainstream, nor can there be as long as it remains a self similar pattern, only allowing ideas which perpetuate the status quo. This is really the reason why the establishment is collapsing. 

Although initially science was a rebellious movement away from the restrictions of the church, the original more free thinking pioneers have been replaced by the people who came after, whose emotional patterns are all about following what has already been established and perpetuating the status quo.  And so the system lacks innovation and therefore starts to die. Hence politicians gather to discuss how they can resurrect the situation. 

But in the mean time, scientific innovation is moving forward in the only way it can - away from where it is being stifled. In fact, many of the previous innovations in our history have actually come from people outside the mainstream academic system for the very reason that it cannot survive within it.

I left with the feeling that if I had any illusions that this was where it is all happening, they were shattered. We walked out of the conference and into a taxi for the airport and the taxi driver gave us such a brilliant appraisal of the European economic situation, we wondered why he had not been a speaker. It seemed a sign somehow. 

Myself with Lynne McTaggart on the set of Punk Science - the Movie.

The attitudes shown to me at this conference just underline that we are where it is all happening. We may not have the massive budgets, but we are out there and changing consciousness and science. The heroes of this movement such as Bruce Lipton, Elisabeth Rauscher, Jude Currivan, Gregg Braden, Joe Dispenza, Lynne McTaggart, Amit Goswami and many more are not only shifting minds, they are actually the place where the scientific paradigm is moving forward, where the human race is evolving and moving on. When it comes to the two now polarised parties, one is decrying the lack of innovation and the other is just getting on with it and the numbers are growing. I know where I would rather be and I am glad that I am there.