Joel Barker Joel spoke of a series of ideas that he has been examining for the past ten years. The dilemma is the search for similarity. We see it in the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, religious warfare in the middle east, reappearance of Nazism, and fundamentalists showing complete intolerance to others. The work of George Land helps us to understand the growth patterns of everything from individuals to ecological systems. Think of an infant.
Accretion looks selfish, but it is a required stage of survival.
In this stage connection with similar entities are sought for support and acknowledgment. In this stage other entities look and act like the organism itself. Identity comes from likeness. In human development the teen-age years are replication. In this stage there is search for new combinations based on heterogeneity.