This
article summarizes the author’s forthcoming book, Quantum
Shift in the Global Brain, to be
published by Inner Traditions.
The production of essential biological and
physical resources has already peaked. Forests, species of fish, and coral
reefs are damaged and disappearing, soils are impoverished by overcropping and
by chemicals; diversity is reduced by genetic manipulation. More than half the
world’s population faces water shortages whilst climate change threatens to
make much of the planet unsuited for food production and habitation.
With this comes growing insecurity within and
between countries, and greater propensity to resort to terrorism and war. Fundamentalism
and fanaticism are spreading and the gap is widening between rich and poor.
Eighty percent of the world’s wealth belongs to one billion people while the
rest is shared by five-and-a-half billion. One in three urban dwellers live in
slums, shantytowns and urban ghettoes.
We have consumed more of the planet’s
resources in the six decades since World War II than in all of history before.
We produce more waste than the environment can absorb, and extract more
resources than the biosphere can regenerate. This is not sustainable. In regard
to food, for example, we know how much is sustainable: it is the produce of 4.2
acres of land for each person. But the average today is seven acres (and would
be far more if the poorest countries would not have an untenably small
footprint).
If we continue in this way famine and
frustration will fuel terrorism and trigger wars. The delicate balance of our
global interdependence will be torn apart. In the ensuing global collapse no
country, no population will be spared. Hamlet’s famous question, to be or not
to be, has become extremely timely. The question is not whether we need to
change in order to be. To survive on
this planet we need to change. Sooner or
later we will want to change. But when
we do, will there still be time to change?
Gandhi said: ‘Be the change you want to see in
the world’. How can you do that? First of all, get rid of old thinking and the
values and beliefs that support it. As Einstein said, you can’t solve a problem
with the same kind of thinking that produced the problem. When we shed obsolete
beliefs and adopt new thinking, we change our values and our thinking and
change ourselves. In these critical times that change can be the “butterfly”
that triggers a storm. It could spread far and wide, and in the end it
could change the world.
New thinking is not utopian or unprecedented;
it is already emerging at the creative edge of society. In a number of
“alternative cultures” people think and act in a more positive way. They share
two fundamental beliefs. One is that the ancient saying “we are all one” is not
just fiction but has roots in reality. This is borne out in the latest
developments in the sciences: subtle but real signals and energies connect all
particles in the cosmos and all living things in the biosphere. The second
belief regards the sphere of human responsibility. If we are truly connected
with each other and with nature, our responsibilities do not end with
ourselves, our family, our country and our company; they encompass the entire
human community and the whole of the biosphere. Living up to these wider
responsibilities is not charity; it is solid common sense. If we are part of
humanity, and humanity is part of life on the planet, what we do to others and
to nature we do also to ourselves.
A living species can cope with changes in its
environment–up to a point. When those changes accumulate, the stress
reaches a critical point and the species dies out unless, of course, it
mutates. In relatively simple systems critical points lead to
breakdown. In more complex systems these critical points are tipping
points: they can go one way or another. They do not lead inevitably to
breakdown, they can also lead to breakthrough.
In 1989 a group of East German refugees crossed
the iron curtain to Austria. For the
communist world of Eastern Europe that was the tipping point. In a matter of weeks
the Communist-bloc countries seceded from the Soviet Union, and less than a
year later the Soviet Union and its Republics had ceased to exist, transforming–not
without crisis and turbulence–into more open societies.
Modern civilization itself arose out of the
cultural mutations of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The new culture
was shaped by the belief in the power of reason and the development of a
materialistic and mechanistic view of the world. Today, however, in our age of
global information, communication, interdependence and social and environmental
stress, the mechanistic-materialistic worldview has become obsolete and
counterproductive. Its view of the world has been transcended in the sciences,
but the technologies it generates and the behaviours it inspires are with us still.
The civilization that dominates the
contemporary world is no longer sustainable: if it is not to breakdown, it must
transform. We must create a civilization that enables six-and-a-half billion
people to live with dignity, in harmony with each other and with nature. The
Worldshift from a civilization based on
materialistical and mechanistic short-term thinking to one based on integral
thinking and longer and wider horizons is possible. We have the knowledge, the
technologies, and the necessary human and financial resources. The presently marginal global-thinking
alternative cultures could become the mainstream. When a critical mass of people changes its
values and priorities, the leadership catches on, and the world itself will
change.
It may well be that the global tipping point
will come as soon as the end of 2012, the much prophesied watershed in humanity’s
tenure on the planet. It will certainly come within the lifetime of most of us.
Whenever it comes, we must begin to change now, to ensure that it is not a
prelude to breakdown, but a breakthrough to a truly peaceful and sustainable world.
