First, since globally we use the Gregorian civil calendar (despite many other types of calendars used locally around the world) a Happy New Year to all my readers. Secondly, my worldviews commentary was sidetracked for a few weeks with my Ishmael discussion to frame our modern problems from a historic perspective. So back to that with more ideas for our transition to a better world using the Ishmael framework.
So, how do we use that information about Takers and Leavers to change the world? A new year begins, so perhaps it is time to look at those ancient beliefs that control your thinking. They were never yours to begin with; you (and 20,000 generations before you) just act as if they are yours. They were myths pushed onto your ancestors long ago by some leaders that believed they had the right ideas to save people and must remain in control. Stuck with these beliefs, we rationalized that this was our story, and quickly forgot our original story. Time to start living some new beliefs that you can donate down the line. Beliefs, and not just technology, that make a better world.
The Taker mindset (worldview) is about the myth of authority, the myth of scarcity, the myth of need for a hierarchy and authoritarianism, the myth of money, the myth of competition, and the myth of ‘other’ that created a system of divisive, authoritarian, hierarchical, and power-driven partisan politics that we see all over the world today. That was powerful story our ancestors bought into, but that is all it was, a story, the Taker story. The 0.001% started it all those millennia ago. It worked for them. It never worked for the rest of us. Its not how humans evolved, or how we would live given the option to change.
We need to look at the Leaver mindset (worldview) – towards more inclusive, participatory and compassionate leadership models where leaders are merely facilitators of collective wisdom of the people. WE need leaders, we just don’t need despots that dictate to us. We need to reclaim individual sovereignty, equal opportunities with elected (and uncorruptible) decentralized governments that respond to our needs, not unelected hierarchies. We can live from natural law and justice with moral law promoting equality and freedom using a kind of non-aggression principle. Let’s not get bogged down in political terms that create separation.
Leaver cultures practice self-sovereignty in which no person can dictate what another must do, but where individual social-contracts set up rules of conduct and behavior for inclusion into any group (e.g., tribe). It is becoming more and more evident with every passing month that we are living in a dystopian hierarchical driven world. Now my question is, ‘If hardly anybody sees this lifestyle and its consequences as something we want, then why are we doing it?’ Time for a change? And that revolution so many of us wish for, is just a change in consciousness – we need to find the courage to choose differently.
For those who have a hard time letting go of the Taker story (which is a lot of people), consider our current global situation of ecological problems. As yet, we have ‘no magic environmental management formula.’ We do seem increasingly to recognize, however, the importance of framing rational, realistic sets of environmental management principles and values on which to base crucial judgments on broad environmental issues. Perhaps out of this complex flux will come integrated programs and practices consistent with new knowledge in both the natural and social sciences, finding their expression through public policies, private management decisions, actions of business and labor, consumer behavior in the market, and voter behavior at the polls. A nice dream, but since we have a hierarchically driven economic system that places profit above everything else, and funnels wealth up to the hierarchies, what do you think are the possibilities that the hierarchies will do this? It’s in our interest but not theirs.
The question of whether modern humans can ever achieve complete harmony with their environments is predicated on how we think about technology. It seems certain that we must develop new ecologically harmonious technologies, and it is possible that we already have, but powerful corporations currently control it all from the Taker story perspective. For now, the important thing is to make the effort – that is, to strive. We cannot afford to accept arguments that an action is impossible or a position untenable. We have to work with each other to become certain that we understand what the action or the position actually entail. By the same token, we must analyze carefully any arguments that claim that any possible action is appropriate; just because “we can do it, doesn’t mean we should.” For instance, in the Global Climate disruption issue, there are numerous monetarily very costly and highly technological geo-engineering solutions proposed to counter global warming, e.g., Mylar mirrors in geosynchronous orbit to reflect solar energy away from the planet, seeding the atmosphere with aerosols to artificially cool the planet, and various carbon sequestration techniques, all with unknown side-effects. Yet the simplest solution is highly debated – to simply not burn the remaining fossil fuels and develop renewable energy systems that will only get better over time.
If we work at it, it is reasonable to expect that progressively more enlightened individual and societal environmental worldviews than those currently in vogue will emerge and gain meaningful levels of acceptance. These worldviews have the potential to result in more responsible, more mutually satisfying, more ethically consistent, and more sustainable relationships between humans and their environments than those now in evidence. The sustainability revolution is one major change that is showing excellent promise as both an avenue of action and a developing worldview focusing on all aspects of society and the environment, while not ignoring economic needs. But we must rethink economics as a tool and not an end point-in-itself, which is what stimies us at this time.
Although they do not make reference to the Leaver mindset, the following authors do describe the need for this change. “We live in a world of such rapid and dynamic change as [humanity], in hundreds of thousands of years of existence, has never known. What we today believe to be a fact may tomorrow prove to be illusion. Many of the truths [people] have lived by must be accepted as delusion in a new frame of reference” William Vogt, 1948.
“The only thing that can be said with certainty about the future is that it will be different from the present. Any attempt at long-range prediction is bound to be wrong either in whole or in part. But there is no escape from the fact that Homo sapiens is but one among many species sharing a limited and fragile earth. We cannot separate ourselves from the natural environment, and, if we choose to ignore the links which bind us to our natural habitat, sooner or later the chain will be drawn tight around us” Davies and Davies, 1975.
I have spent the last three decades championing a peaceful ‘Sustainability Revolution’ that derives from a new worldview. To me it is so obvious, yet for many years, I had to ponder why so many of my colleagues in Environmental disciplines were so resistant to my ideas and many still are) believing that if we could just educate better about the environment that we would develop a magic environmental management formula (see back 6 paragraphs) that resolves our global problems. They accept the Taker story without question. Until we come to terms with how pervasive this story still is, change will be difficult.
Rather than argue whether the next COP29 will eventually create a formula, we should stop and look at our global cultural story, the Taker story. To solve a problem, you first have to know what the problem is, and then from a new perspective see it in a new light. For us, that means going back to the source of our problem several millennia ago. “A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on” C. S. Lewis.
Academic Steve Taylor in his book The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era makes a similar argument to Daniel Quinn about how an ancient mindset created our modern world. The Leaver story is about a spiritual connection to the world. Taylors argues that what I have called the Taker story, is also about a rise of egoic materialism – an ego explosion. So, how does that frame into a sustainability revolution?
To Be Continued ……………..
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