First, a bit about my background in the legal arena. My name is Dan Leftwich. I live in Boulder, Colorado with my wife and 3 children (when my daughter is not away at college). For nearly 20 years, I fought tooth and nail against some of the world's largest corporations as a plaintiffs' class action litigator, primarily with my former law firm in Washington, DC, called Berry & Leftwich. Most of our work centered on representation of small to mid-size businesses and consumers in antitrust class actions alleging monopolization, price fixing, and conspiracies to exclude competition in many different markets. These cases often involved damages to the public and private businesses in the hundreds of millions of dollars or more. As contingent fee lawyers, we measured success only as prevailing at trial or reaching a favorable settlement for our clients. By that measure, we were very successful.
I had moved from the Washington, DC area to Boulder in 2003 to escape the post-911 craziness in the city and to rekindle my spiritual work that had remained mostly dormant as I wore my battle gear as a DC litigator. Along about the Spring of 2007, as the final darkness of the Bush era descended on the nation and the problems of the world were closing in, threatening my family's future, a strange thing happened. The compression I felt from the weight of all the world's problems led to an expansion of my consciousness in terms of the way I began to see the evolution of the crises facing the planet and the potential for solutions. How that expansion came about is a longer, and much more complicated, story that will be told in due course. For now, it is enough to say that I came into contact with the writings of the great eco-philosopher, Thomas Berry, primarily his book "The Great Work," and his beautiful, dire, shocking, and hopeful narrative about the monumental evolutionary shift happening in our lifetimes. That call to action, along with similar hopeful but urgent nudges from Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ervin Laszlo, and others, served as a catalyst for a monumental shift in every aspect of my professional life.
Unfortunately for me, I did not have the opportunity to meet Thomas Berry in person before he merged back into the Universe last year, at the age of 94. However, like many others around the world, I did take to heart his call to service. I began to ask myself, "what's my big idea for the world?" Without really knowing the answer to that question, I had a felt sense that the world needs a Picasso of the Law -- someone who will turn the Law onto its head, put the eyes in the wrong place, bring a form of Surrealism to a straight line legal system. Over the course of the next year, I transitioned away from my traditional litigation practice and Evolutionary Law was born.
So, now that you know who I am, allow me to explain what I am up to with Evolutionary Law. You could start by visiting my Evolutionary Law website, and downloading an essay I have written titled "Evolving From Dominion To Communion: How Legal Rights For Nature Can Exist In Balance With The Rights Of Humanity." Thomas Berry stated the case for Evolutionary Law in the following passage from The Great Work:
To achieve a viable human-Earth situation a new jurisprudence must envisage its primary task as that of articulating the conditions for the integral functioning of the Earth process, with special reference to a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship. Within this context the various components of the Earth—the land, the water, the air, and the complex of life systems—would each be a commons. Together they would constitute the integral expression of the Great Commons of the planet Earth to be shared in proportion to need among all members of the Earth community.
In this context, each individual being is supported by every other being in the Earth community. In turn, each being contributes to the well-being of every other being in the community. Justice would consist in carrying out this complex of creative relationships.
This is no small task, to be sure. However, as Lao-Tzu put it: "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with the first step." My first step is to identify the primary reasons why we are where we are. This "big picture" view must include the evolution of the cultural stories, or "memes", that govern humanity's consciousness and the ways in which we interact with Nature, and each other. In my view, a meme of human dominion over the planet, based in fear and individualism, has led us to an unsustainable trajectory toward extinction, through resource depletion, environmental devastation, species destruction, perpetual warfare, and corporate dominance of nearly all political and financial systems. This simultaneous evolution of memes and laws is described in my essay, including a description of the new memes that I see emerging on the planet.
How the legal system will evolve to support and extend these new memes will be the primary topic of discussion on this blog. On the Evolutionary Law website there is a link to legal issues that are a starting point for this discussion. I will explore those topics in no particular order as the discussion progresses, hopefully, with your comments and posts adding seeds to the organic soil of the garden. In this process, wild ideas are encouraged. Just imagine what Picasso went through as he began to experiment with his new art form. He once remarked: "The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?" That is how I have approached the Evolutionary Law inquiry. If we cannot experiment with new principles for the legal systems of the world, we will simply continue to experience incremental change, when spontaneous evolution is needed.
Evolutionary Law is a project under an umbrella that I call MindDrive Ventures, LLC. The basic premise of MindDrive Ventures is the following: "All solutions are found in the MindDrive. We enter that sacred field through the doorway of the Present Moment." This is the beginning of what I hope to be a fruitful journey in the Present Moment. If this resonates with your own journey in some way, please stay in touch as we enter the MindDrive and see what happens. Namaste and welcome.
Dan Leftwich
How the legal system will evolve to support and extend these new memes will be the primary topic of discussion on this blog. On the Evolutionary Law website there is a link to legal issues that are a starting point for this discussion. I will explore those topics in no particular order as the discussion progresses, hopefully, with your comments and posts adding seeds to the organic soil of the garden. In this process, wild ideas are encouraged. Just imagine what Picasso went through as he began to experiment with his new art form. He once remarked: "The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?" That is how I have approached the Evolutionary Law inquiry. If we cannot experiment with new principles for the legal systems of the world, we will simply continue to experience incremental change, when spontaneous evolution is needed.
Evolutionary Law is a project under an umbrella that I call MindDrive Ventures, LLC. The basic premise of MindDrive Ventures is the following: "All solutions are found in the MindDrive. We enter that sacred field through the doorway of the Present Moment." This is the beginning of what I hope to be a fruitful journey in the Present Moment. If this resonates with your own journey in some way, please stay in touch as we enter the MindDrive and see what happens. Namaste and welcome.
Dan Leftwich
