Seeing the macro-level: our current situation
Duane Elgin (Promise Ahead and Choosing Earth) has observed an apparent reality that seems to lie at the heart of the evolutionary process. Species, including our own, often seem to grow only through the push of dire necessity.
As was discussed in the previous essay, we as a world, are already experiencing the radically increasing signs of decay, impotence, and the unworkability of large systems. Due to the current momentum of nation-states and non-affiliated elites, this state of affairs can be expected to worsen in the coming decades. It was suggested that we are in a state of trance marked by the "dominator paradigm".
Our current challenges - which are predicted to intensify - include dramatic global climate change, huge migrations of refugees, unrelenting world population growth, dwindling supplies of non-renewable natural resources (including water and cheap oil), resource wars, the demise of democratic structures, civil unrest and our regressive attitudes in response to chaos, as well as a radical ramping up of fear and despair.
In turn, the latter emotions are known for disrupting our capacity for rational, problem-solving ability.
However, it is also possible that, in the coming decades, our witnessing of mass suffering may awaken compassion and soften our hearts by burning though the unconscious greed, fear and denial that now divide us. A new human alloy may emerge from the furnace of the next superheated decades.
If we can face our predicament with solidarity - rather than denial or intergroup conflict - these formidable challenges may also appear to be designed to provoke the crises needed to awaken capacities of consciousness that we will need to assure the human species' long-term survival, by expanding our awareness and understanding.
It is conceivable that - faced with collapse - we, as a species, will make (as the Buddha said) a turnabout in the deepest seat of consciousness - essentially evolving a new mind and new world.
This new level of seeing could bring about a time of deep reconciliation - economically, ecologically, and politically - and extend to reconciliation among races, ethnic groups, genders, ages and religions.
It is also predictable that this shift will not occur without a monumental struggle both internally and externally.
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It appears that during the next forty years we will be heading for a collapse of both our ecology and our technological industrial system itself.
In addition, it is certainly possible that nihilistic, control-mad leaders may well manipulate events and plunge us into a very dark age.
If humanity chooses to remain passive and is unwilling to work for the advance of all, the world will likely collapse into resource wars, misery, and poverty. Calamity will descend upon the planet.
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