However our goals, wealth maximization in the shortest possible time for a few fortunate individuals, at the expense of all else—including the biosphere—and all others, were not good. It has been said: “…a bad tree does not bear good fruit.” And now we are reaping the bitter fruits of our folly. What to do?
What we must do is to first change ourselves. We need to literally disillusion ourselves—to strip the illusions away from ourselves—that our existing system has a future, or that its endless chimerical cornucopia of consumer goods are desirable. Then we must embrace change. Everyone has differing talents, aptitudes, interests, skills, and so on. No one person can solve all of our problems, however by focusing on some aspect of our problems, based upon our interests, aptitudes, and abilities, and by working cooperatively with others both near and far in a loose association which operates at all levels from local to planet wide, we can begin the process of creating a new system. As soon as possible, as much as possible, we must disengage from the old system, even as we build the new one.
Major infrastructural components of the old system can be redirected from old to new—universities, agricultural research centers, high technology research, farm land, and so on. A global movement composed of all individuals and groups seeking fundamental change must be allowed to emerge. The more it emerges, the faster it emerges, the faster the process of subverting the old system can proceed.
Not a shot needs to be fired in anger to accomplish this agenda. No secret cabal need be formed. We just need an understanding of the dead-end nature of our present world system along with a dawning vision of a new order.
How would such a new order differ fundamentally from the past? All attempts at systemic reform, throughout all of history, have centered upon distributional justice. This is the idea that a political economy must be fair for all. That all people must have equality of opportunity, along with access to fundamental support services from the community when these are needed. Because extremes of wealth and poverty are antithetical to such a system, these must be prevented from occurring. All people must have an equal say in determining the overall policies of their political economy.
In addition to this, all must understand that the human system is nested into the larger biospheric one upon which we depend for our very existence. We are an integral part of this biosphere, thus our human systemic actions can not be allowed to harm or degrade this surrounding system. When we are able to cherish and respect all other humans—indeed all other living entities—while appreciating the beauty of the whole, within which we have a meaningful role, then we will have arrived as members of an ecologically sustainable, humane, civilization. Such a civilizational system is maximally emergent.
All future ages are contingent upon our actions in the here and now. When we see our emergent human system as part of the unfolding development of life and consciousness across the Universe, then our human centered notions of religion will come to integrate into the cosmos-wide processes which manifest as life and self-awareness. On that day, our species’ long historical journey from gods to god will lead us to God and to our “Kingdom on Earth and in the Heavens.” And the meek shall indeed have inherited the Earth.
Time is short—it is now or never. The time of Total Revolution—of Total Transformation—is at hand!
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