It’s hard for me to believe that I have spent 67 weeks talking about ‘The Great Healing.’ I first introduced my fine items that I have argued are essential to this transformation in part 33 of this current series. For those that haven’t yet grasped my big picture (or are just new to this blog) of the transformation and healing, let me sum it all up in the next couple of posts.
Many years ago, I started reading the Asimov ‘Foundation’ series books. While these are science fiction, I find them metaphorically prophetic in describing our current transformation of human evolution. In the Foundation series books, a psycho-historian-mathematician predicts the collapse of the galactic empire, and then conjures a scheme (the Foundation) as way to greatly reduce the dark-times between the collapse of the autocratic empire and the eventual reemergence of a new and better kind of galactic ‘civilization.’ The main point of this story here is that the rebuilding of the empire first required a plunge into a dark age – a deconstruction preceding a reconstruction.
There is a large number of people (much like my logical idealists) who want a simple transition to a sustainable world – that is believing that just tweaking a dystopian system can somehow get us to a utopian one. Faith in technological prowess is a part of this belief system. There was a possibility that could have occurred in the 1960s but sadly, the global market economy was unyielding in its drive for profits at all costs. Like Asimov’s Foundation story we have to go through our own deconstruction. The market economy in our story is a lot like the empire – unyielding and autocratic. The hierarchies running our planet have been doing this for over 6000 years. Deconstruction is the only solution now. If you want to rebuild your kitchen, you have to go through a messy tearing out of the old kitchen and then rebuild it.
In my new story, the deconstruction is the pulling away from the current global systems and their autocratic corruption, which is collapsing under its own failures. If you are currently doing well in a developed country, you are merely temporarily insulated from the slowly disintegrating global market economy. But now would be the optimum time to begin the transformation we need. Tens of millions around the world have already been pushed into transforming their practices and behaviors for sustainability. For the rest of us, deconstruction will come in the relocalizing of our local systems. The basic five items I have talked about these past many months is my plan for weathering the deconstruction period to find a way to adopt new beliefs that heal both the planet and humanities place within it.
Unlike his Foundation books where Asimov talks about a 30,000 year long dark age that will be shortened to a mere 1000 years through the control of the ‘foundation’ I see our deconstruction period will be a mere 15-25 years – after all I am talking about our planet and not a galactic empire. In my story of hope, we are the foundation of the new sustainable world. Our greatest problem is that we have a global control system that by its very nature attracts socio-psychopathic people into its leadership positions where greed and corruption are expected, which is why I say we need to simply ignore them, not insist on replacing them with ‘better leaders.’ The inherent corruption of the market economic system is the problem that fosters all our other problems. But to get to a new economic system that is equitable and fair can only happen at a local level where we can observe and nurture equitable practices. Along the way we build the new worldviews where we see ourselves as partners of the natural world and not controllers. I believe this deconstruction period is required for us to move away from the material-consumer worldview that breeds lack of compassion. This stop-gap will allow us to observe the benefits of a more enlightened spiritual worldview in which connectivity and compassion become a new norm.
Part of the deconstruction period is necessary for us to find new stories and metaphors that define the human condition. Our metaphors – e.g., the war metaphor – defined our beliefs that promoted human supremacy. While science is inherently neutral, we used the idea of competition as natural order of things to justify the greed and corruption that explains our modern world. We thought that the natural world thrived on competition with the idea of ‘survival of the fittest, so we interpreted science to justify ideas like Social Darwinism. In the past couple of decades, we now understand that the natural world thrives because of collaboration. Yes, there are predator-prey relationships but even they are now seen as collaborative systems in the greater ecological scheme of life on the planet.
As an example of how a mindset affects us. If you play chess, is the purpose of the game to crush your opponent to prove your superiority, or to challenge yourself and your partner to improve. Note the difference that exists in that question – currently most follow the former as competitors; now imagine us all following the latter as collaborators. You can still get joy from winning, but imagine also getting joy from seeing your partner getting better because of your influence.
When I talk about relocalizing now and ignoring the hierarchy, we can do this through a focus on the essentials – the five items. I believe that this is a stop-gap measure to reform ourselves and refocus on a sustainable future in a way that cannot happen with the current globalized systems and worldviews. As the current corrupt hierarchy starts to fail and we live locally (and more sustainably) we will more and more establish and embrace the spiritual worldviews that allow us to live sustainably. Then 15-25 years from now, the current toddler generation (Generations alpha and Beta) will mature, living and thriving through this new set of sustainability belief systems. This Generation will come of age as the old systems have all but collapsed and become too dysfunctional to work anymore. The new leadership will then move back to a nurturing kind of leadership as we again begin to build global systems that this time work for everyone through a new way of thinking, with new metrics, a new kind of economy, locally grown healthy organic food, and local earth friendly energy systems.
The most environmentally minded businesses today were born and run by leaders who grew up in the 1960s and 70s within families that embraced environmental ideals. While some more exploitive minded individuals may have just seen environmentalism as a business opportunity (the greenwashing crowd), the majority of transformative businesses really considered the environment as part of their business plan. This has morphed in the past 19 years into B-corporations where more and more small-medium business people build environmental added-value as a central part of their business and commit to it through organizations emulating the current B-corps.
In essence we need to pull back to allow ourselves to evolve this new way of thinking, doing and being. As we adopt a more ecologically focused worldview, we will see the very notion of collateral damage as repugnant. A lot of us already have this kind of worldview, but the logical idealists and supporters of exploitive living may have to be ‘convinced’ that this transformation is a prerequisite to becoming sustainable. This period of the transformation is not a dark-age but a relighting up of how humanity evolved for more than 250,000 years before it was bamboozled into accepting a dysfunctional hierarchy a mere 6000 years ago. (I have covered this ‘take-over’ throughout this blog – search Quinn or Diamond (Jared) for posts in my blog about this idea).
This transition period should be seen as all about hope for a better future where we start to live anew, being positive, staying grounded in the possibilities of sustainable living, and not getting bogged down in the fear and concern about the chaotic conditions at this time. Deconstruction is needed. We can’t release millennia of bad conditioning without it. If you believe that we can create a better world – and since you are reading this blog, I believe you do – then your ecological worldviews and mindset will make you focused on that ideal, regardless of the negative aspects happening elsewhere as we transform humanity. Be pragmatic in what you can make work and make the effort to make it so. Don’t worry about the many others running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Be responsible for your own ability to move forward with positivity. Don’t let others tell you it is not impossible. We need to collaborate. Challenging each other to improve thus inspiring for the best outcomes – part of the reconstruction.
To Be Continued ………….
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