Another Foundational Story That Can Assist Us In Envisioning A Positive Future Is To See Ourselves As Being On A Heroic Journey Of Collective Awakening And Development.
We can step back from seeing ourselves as "evolutionary villains" who are ruining Earth and, instead, regard ourselves as "evolutionary heroes" who are facing a supreme test of our collective evolutionary intelligence.
Introduction
Deep down we may sense that the dream of material prosperity is becoming a collective nightmare, as we overwhelm the Earth with our sheer numbers and voracious appetites as consumers. There is a growing urgency to envision new ways our species can live together on planet Earth - sustainably and with contentment.
We currently face the challenges of extensive world poverty, planetary climate disruption, energy shortages, resource wars, and our own tendencies to experience indifference and even despair. When we see these realities, we may wonder whether it is worth making the effort to ask questions about our own role on Earth.
Yet today, the reality seems to be that, as a species, we find ourselves without a compelling sense of direction. It is as if we are wandering into the future: alienated from the Earth, from one another, and from our place in the universe. At a deep level, many of us feel that we are lost and confused.
Where do we find a way forward that expresses a compelling vision and shared journey for the human family?
Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we will actualize who and what we believe we are. The reality is that the archetypes and stories we harbor - at conscious or unconscious levels - (and for better or worse) naturally act as empowering beacons guiding us into the future.
The Need for Fresh Foundational Narratives:
An Heroic Journey
Another deep story that can assist humanity in envisioning a positive future is to see ourselves as being on an heroic journey of collective awakening and development. Within this narrative, we can step back from seeing ourselves as "evolutionary villains" who are ruining Earth and, instead, regard ourselves as "evolutionary heroes" who are facing a supreme test of our collective evolutionary intelligence.
In this story we are moving through an unprecedented, collective rite of passage and confronting the supreme challenge of building a new relationship with the Earth, with one another, and with the living universe that is our home.
The archetype of the hero's/heroine's journey is widely recognized around the world and is found in stories and myths across history.
The distinguished scholar Joseph Campbell summarized the hero's journey as follows: An adventurer hears a call to discovery, separates from the everyday world, and sets out on a search filled with dangers. The hero experiences many difficult challenges and tests, each rich with learning.
Ultimately, the hero confronts a seemingly insurmountable challenge - a supreme test that cannot be overcome with physical capacities alone.
To be successful, the hero must reach beyond their ego where he or she awakens to a new and more soulful relationship with Earth, with other people, and with the universe. With this profound initiation, the hero then makes a journey of return, bringing gifts of wisdom back to the larger community.
The hero's journey of separation, initiation, and return can be expanded from the scale of an individual to the scope of the entire human community. Looking at the human journey, we can see that for roughly 50,000 years we have been on a path of separation. We have been pulling back from nature and gaining ever more power and control as we learned to hunt, farm, domesticate animals, build cities, make wars, and transform the planet. Because our power is now so great, we are obliged to become aware of our profound connection with nature and use radical discernment and restraint in the exercise of power.
We need narratives which empower us to look beyond a future of great adversity and into a future of great opportunity.
Planetary Adulthood
What if the most difficult challenges facing humanity are not devising solutions to the energy or climate crisis - or our other self-generated predicaments?
What if, instead, we are challenged to bring positive images and archetypes of the human journey into our collective awareness?
We need to be able to step back and get our bearings: to first let go of our denial, then disidentify from stories which only concern destruction, and subsequently to raise our vision and see the other side of the coin - the promises inherent in this era.
Seen from this perspective, we are moving through an unprecedented, collective rite of passage and confronting the supreme challenge of building a new relationship with Earth, with one another, and with the living universe that is our home.
The Great Turning
"The Great Turning is a possibility: not a prophecy. The choice is in our hands."
David Korten
Historical Context
The imperative of this moment is best understood via the deep historical context of humans having turned away from "Mother Nature" - and in our species' adolescence - creating an Imperial Civilization replete with centuries of violence and oppression.
Out From Eden
Originally, we humans organized as tribes. Moving with the seasons, we lived in relative harmony with each other and nature - honoring the Earth mother which birthed and continues to nourish us. The Abrahamic religions describe these as the days of Eden.
Our departure from "Eden" began around 10,000 B.C., as we settled into agricultural communities and began to develop the material and social technologies distinctive to our species. We learned to domesticate plants and animals, store food for lean times, design and construct buildings, weave clothing and baskets, make pots, design and construct buildings, and organize ourselves under institutions of law, government, and religion.
As it turns out, these developments set the stage for the imperial context that prevails to this day.
Philip Slater has described this context as "the authoritarian mega-culture." Similarly, Riane Eisler has written in detail about dominator cultures vs. partnership cultures.
The Turn to Empire
Somewhere around 3,000 BC, the more ambitious among us discovered they could dominate nature and other humans. Kings and emperors organized great empires under their personal rule. They expropriated nature's gifts and used the surplus of human labor to feed great armies, suppressing the many and living in self-glorification.
Some ruled in the name of a god. Others claimed to be gods.
Then as now, the ruling classes commandeered the wealth created by nature and human labor - squandering it on wars and opulent luxuries, as well as military, police power and prisons, by which they have secured their privilege.
An Epic Choice
At present the ruthless exploitation of imperial civilization has reached the limits of what the living systems of Earth and society can endure. We face an epic choice: "Grow or Die."
We can either join in common cause to transition to an ecological civilization of peace, sufficiency, equality, and partnership designed for the well-being of all... Or, we can perish together in a final grand display of excess, violence, and oppression.
In the coming decades Earth's collapsing environmental systems may provide the imperative impetus to reverse humanity's current suicidal course. A growing seamless global communications web can help provide us with the means to do so.
This unique convergence of events creates a brief moment of opportunity to give birth to an ecological civilization that 1) brings people, Biosphere and planet into balance; 2) nurtures innovation and creative expression; and 3) provides to all an opportunity for material sufficiency and spiritual abundance.
This is not a wishful fantasy or a hopeful pipe-dream.
Rather, it has now become a necessity:
The Big Picture: Our Predicament
Edgar Morin:
"All that which made up the radiant face of Western civilization is becoming its darker side. For instance, individualism, one of the great achievements of Western civilization, is now accompanied more and more by such phenomena as fragmentation, egocentricity, disintegration of solidarity. Industry, which mass-produces inexpensive consumer goods to satisfy the requirements of large numbers of people, is the source of the pollution and degradation that is threatening our living environment.
"So, perhaps one might say that the myth of progress has actually collapsed we [are beginning to realize that globalized] development (originally viewed only in an economic aspect) does not preclude human and moral underdevelopment."
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In the midst of this accelerating fragmentation the powers-that-be are demonstrating a frenzied desire for certainty and control.
As early as 1956 Lewis Mumford stated that this process can be considered a dangerous mutation - akin to a form of "de-evolution." In The Transformations of Man Mumford proceeded to these inexorable conclusions:
"With the invention of the scientific method and the depersonalized procedures of modern technics, cold intelligence, which has succeeded as never before in commanding the energies of nature, already largely dominates every human activity. [Currently] we find scientific ideation and technical skill at the mercy of an infantile scheme of life, seeking extravagant, super-mechanisms of escape from the problems that [individuals and any] mature society must face."
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Jean Houston, too, has described humanity as walking the edges of an ambivalence that can "either destroy or transform."
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In a speech delivered at the 1993 conference of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society John Mack asserted that the stark reality is that the existence of life on our planet hangs by a thread, and that:
"Unless we act quickly to take responsibility for our fate, we [all] may well be like the 'good Germans' of the 1930's and 40's, permitting the final holocaust to be committed in our names."
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Riane Eisler and Ervin Laszlo have both asserted that human evolution is at a crossroads. Lazlo emphasizes that in our crucial epoch we "cannot leave the selection of the next step in the evolution of human society and culture to chance."
However, as Dan Goleman has said in Vital Lies, Simple Truths, there is an almost gravitational pull toward putting out of mind unpleasant facts, and sinking into oblivion, adding that our collective ability to face threatening facts is no greater than our personal one:
"To avoid anxiety, we close off crucial portions of awareness, creating blind spots. [This] diagnosis applies both to self-deception and shared illusions. The cure [and the very first step] is "insight - seeing things just as they are."
Our predicament is similar to that of the alcoholic whose first step in joining AA is to admit and accept that his or her "life has become unmanageable." Like the alcoholic, we may need to hit bottom before significant transformation becomes possible.
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There is no question that the classic hero's journey is arduous. And, in all tribal initiations which open the door to adulthood, there is no guarantee that the young person will survive.
Yet also, as Alcoholics Anonymous has made clear, breakdowns can lead to breakthroughs.
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Mega-Crises Imply Mega-Opportunities
But, what might our planetary adulthood attained through the hero's/heroine's journey look like?
A few of the great souls among us have offered clear hints:
"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive."
The Current (14th) Dalai Lama
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"We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
Martin Luther King Jr.
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"The world today forces us to accept our oneness, our interrelatedness, at least intellectually. And more and more people are awakening to the urgency of arresting the accelerating madness around us...
"A tender, loving concern for all living creatures will need to arise and reign in our hearts, if any of us are to survive. And our lives will be truly blessed only when the misery of one is genuinely felt to be the misery of all. The force of love is the force of total revolution. It is the unreleased force, unknown and unexplored as a dynamic of change."
Vimala Thakar
(Article changed on Nov 22, 2023 at 3:29 PM EST)
(Article changed on Nov 22, 2023 at 3:44 PM EST)
(Article changed on Nov 23, 2023 at 1:29 PM EST)
(Article changed on Nov 24, 2023 at 3:08 PM EST)
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