I’m not saying that any one – or more – if these things can’t happen. However, if history is any indication, disruption and transformation are inseparable.
Throughout humankind’s 200,000+ year history, it has only been responses to the pathologies and problems of the existing worldview that has shaped us into ever-unfolding more complexity and ways of thinking and perspectives. The worldviews humanity has moved – and is moving – through have basically been archaic, magical, mythical, rational-scientific, informational, and finally to what some are calling the integral age.
It doesn’t take a genius or the most complex worldview available to humankind to see what’s happening in the physical world – the manifest realm – and right now it’s not looking too good.
I probably don’t have to tell you that the complexities humanity has created and faces today are pretty overwhelming problems:
- Economic Collapse: Fragilities in the current global economy could tip the developed world into conditions not seen since the 1920s…or worse.
- Political Chaos in the form of growing totalitarianism.
- Peak Oil/Energy: Petroleum has powered the modern world for almost 100 years; today, many industry insiders say that we may be reaching a permanent peak in oil production.
- Global Water Crisis: Over the last 50 years the human population has nearly tripled, while industrial pollution, unsustainable agriculture, and poor civic planning have decreased the overall water supply.
- Species Extinction: Certain species that human beings depend upon for our food supply are going extinct; if their numbers fall too low we may face extinction ourselves.
- Rapid Climate Change: While the debate rages on about the causes of climate change, global warming is an empirical fact. The problem is both a curse and blessing, in that people from different cultures will either have to work together or face mutual destruction.
Each of these overwhelming inter-connected problems we face will be interpreted by whatever stage of development we happen to be at, and that defines who we blame for them, which is one of many reasons that we can’t seem to stop our bickering and concentrate of solving these inter-related problems. It’s becoming more and more obvious to more and more people that unless we solve all of these problems that a best-case scenario will be massive depopulation. The worst-case scenario will be our own demise as a species.
As an example of limited-thinking perspectives and blame, I have an acquaintance on Facebook who recently posted the photo
Never before has awakening been more important than it is right now, because for the first time in humanity’s short term on this planet, we have the ability to commit ecocide through all of the above bullet points. By awakening, I’m not talking about some great shift of all humans, although I’d gladly take that…I’m talking about the apparently not-so-simple shift in awareness of the magnitude of our problems so we can do what needs to be done in order to solve them.
We are out of time. We clearly have to grow up and join together, Occupier and Tea-Partier, Christian and Muslim, black and white, rich and poor, masculine and feminine, and more, at every level of consciousness and demand that our leaders everywhere – and us – stop our petty bickering. It’s going to mean some extremely radical changes, especially to those of us – yes, me included – who already have too much and have taken too much, for us to make it through what’s already begun.
Quite simply, there are no other choices. We are, quite literally, at the “the lifeboat is too small” moment. It is precisely the disruption we can see in every aspect of our lives that gives rise to our awakening. We’re at a point where we either learn to stand together or we die together. Either we make the choices consciously or they’ll be made for us…and it won’t be pretty.
© Gary Stamper 2013. This article may only be reproduced with author credit and a link back to this page.