The End of Our World?

All through the ages we have had prophesies, visions and predictions of our world coming to an end. Our Biblical context, for example, gives us revelations of an apocalyptic end in its unfolding providential drama of Divine Justice and eschatology. Certain indigenous calendars seem to converge on the coming decade as a crucial transitioning for our human condition and life on earth.  And in recent decades with an expanding awareness of megatrends and patterns on a planetary scale we are more familiar with a growing number of urgent warnings of unprecedented ecological, economic, ideological and political crises that threaten our very sustainability and survival on this planet. 

There is a growing urgent sense in a number of circles that the fuse is short and that if we do not make dramatic changes now in our cultural practices it may be too late to turn things around.  So what are we to believe?  Is our world as we know it about to come to an end?  Are we now at a critical moment in our evolution that is do or die?  Is there any objective validity to the diagnosis that we are in the midst of a monumental crisis which will determine our collective fate? 

One preeminent futurist who expresses well a truly global or planetary perspective concerning the emerging crisis we now face is Dr. Ervin Laszlo who has also been a pioneer in whole systems science.  In his current book, The Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads, he builds on emerging themes from earlier works, Macroshift (2001), You Can Change the World (2003) and Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos (2006) and brings out clearly that we have reached a critical turning point in cultural evolution where we now face crossroads and choices that will determine our fate. He sees this crisis moment as one where we face the specter of global collapse but also the opportunity for a cultural renaissance of planetary proportions.  

He suggests that humanity in the next few years faces crucial decisions and choices to turn around unsustainable megatrends that are at the threshold of an irreversible tipping point beyond which there can be no return.  As he sees it we must either consciously evolve to a higher form of sustainable culture in which the whole human family may co-exist in a more secure, flourishing and peaceful world, or else face a terrible scenario in which there is unprecedented implosion of our social, economic, political and ecological systems. Laszlo's main message is that it is up to us to envision and co-create this new world and he suggests that each of us has power and potential to play a decisive role.

My own journey as a global philosopher, logician, and ontologist over the past four decades has brought me to remarkable convergence with Laszlo and others concerning the main event in the human condition at this time.  The new frontier of global philosophy calls us beyond our more localized perspectives, traditions, worldviews or disciplinary orientations to a higher order global rational space, a higher dimension of rationality and integral science which discloses astounding megatrends and planetary patterns.  In my adventure into this global horizon which invokes a dilated global lens and global perspective across widely diverse worldviews we discover a long emerging tradition of global vision and wisdom that grounds, corroborates and validates the deep diagnosis of the present planetary crisis also uncovered and uniquely narrated by Laszlo. 

So in what follows I will very briefly present some of these summary findings through the global lens and connect them with central themes from Laszlo's work.  It becomes evident that Laszlo's findings are corroborated and validated within an amazing emergent global consensus of the presiding planetary event.  This consensus of global wisdom is grounded in a hitherto eclipsed, dormant yet emergent Primal Integral Science or First Discipline that has been tapped to various degrees by our great global teachers and visionaries through the ages.  This missing Hologistic Science comes to the fore when we make the dimensional shift in global reason and dilate the global lens.  And I link this startling diagnosis of the great planetary crisis of consciousness now before us with our common initiatives through the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, the Club of Budapest and the newly formed World Wisdom Council.

An Unprecedented Dimensional Shift in Global Consciousness

In order to understand the true nature of the planetary crisis we now face—that it is essentially a crisis of consciousness—we need to stand back and gain critical distance from our more localized perspectives, worldviews, ideologies, and disciplinary orientations.  For when we break the powerful circuits of our usually over-powering worldviews and make the dimensional shift in rational consciousness into the more expansive space where our diverse worldviews, cultures and disciplines co-arise, our minds are dilated and a global lens opens that is inter-perspectival. And in this expanded higher order global perspective in which we are able to encounter objective reality in and through the emergent consensus of multiple diverse worldviews and traditions astounding megatrends and patterns in the evolution of our human condition become evident.  This global perspectivity and dilated global lens that is able to hold genuinely multiple alternative worldviews together in one integral rational consciousness reveals a collective global wisdom that has been emerging through the ages.

Global Wisdom and Vision:  Some Astounding Findings

That this shift to the global lens and awakening of the global mind is a dimensional shift in rational capacity becomes quite clear when we hold our diverse great philosophical, religious, spiritual, cultural and disciplinary traditions together in a hologistic or synoptic vision.  In thus standing back from privileging any one more localized worldview or tradition we are able to discern larger millennial patterns and megatrends in our cultural evolution through the centuries.  One such striking pattern is that our great traditions across the planet have all sought to name and articulate some primal, boundless, originating and generative source whence all that appear to us arise. 

Whether "It" be named Tao, Aum, Yahweh, Sunyata, God, Allah, Christ, Nature, Spirit, Energy, Mind, Matter...(the list goes on)...it becomes clear that there is a Primal Grammar or Logic to this Infinite Originating Source and ReSource that is the global ground of all that appears in all possible worlds and perspectives.  Our Global Lens enables us to bring these diverse narratives or cosmologies together and reveals an emergent deep ontology or cosmology of objective reality that is not as directly accessible from more localized perspectives.  It becomes clear that Reality is, and must be a Primal Infinite Unified Force-Field of boundless inter-connectivity. It also becomes evident that this global inter-perspectivity discloses a long sought for missing Primal Discipline or Global Integral Science/Philosophy—which opens a deeper encounter with scientific reality.  Reality is a dynamic field of relations that is Integral, Hologistic and Dialogic.  It takes an Integral Mind to process this Integral Objective Reality.

We Are as We Mind:  Our Worlds are Mind-Made

This higher order Global Wisdom and Vision with its Integral Global Science brings out the latent consensus of global truth across widely diverse worldviews and disciplines. In this breathtaking vista across millennia on a global scale we see diverse traditions unfolding in mutual corroboration through the ages and converging on clear evolutionary patterns.   One of the astounding disclosures is that we humans play a direct role in co-creating our living realities through the conduct of our mind and consciousness.  Indeed, one great global truth is that "We are as we mind"—meaning that what appears to us as "reality" is directly co-created through our own mental activities and the mental lens that has been shaped in and through our personal and cultural habits and practices. 

Here we need an active word—"minding"—to capture this proactive world-making aspect of using our consciousness.  It is not just that we have a lens (or lenses) in and through which we interpret and render all that appears, it is also that we employ "mental programs", so to speak, in processing and shaping all the "information," "language," or "phenomena" that shows up on the screen of our awareness. A more technical word for this "minding activity of world making" is "logistic", suggesting a certain logic, calculus or technology of minding or mental programming in co-shaping all that appears to us as reality.  As we will see in a moment, this great Global Truth that "We are as we Mind" is a key to understanding how and why the urgent crises we now face on a planetary scale is at heart a "crisis of consciousness" precisely because our present human existential condition is the cumulative holistic effect of millennia of reality shaping mental activity.

Egocentric Minding Produces Ego-mental Worlds

Furthermore, the collective wisdom of the ages is quite clear that in our human evolution and development there is a pervasive stage of egocentric minding—analogous to a technological stage of development—in using our minds to co-create our living realities.  Our great traditions have in diverse ways discerned and diagnosed this stage in our mental development in which we naively identify what appears to us through our mental lens as reality itself, and have no critical rational awareness that our mental activity and practices play a vital role in what appears to us.  This “rational,” pre-critical naiveté tends to privilege our localized worldview with little or no awareness that it is one worldview or perspective amongst boundless others, nor that we are co-creating our reality field.

This naive "egocentric" or "egomental" rational attitude takes in the worldviews of Others through the filers of its own ego-lens not realizing that this is a form of distortion, deformation and violence to the life-world of the Other, not to mention it-self.  In this respect, the egomental attitude or habit of mind is myopic or "monocentric" and fails to truly open itself up to an authentic encounter with the world or perspectivity of Others or the irreducible Otherness of the more objective Field of Reality for that matter.  Our global teachers through the ages have all singled out this egocentric mental practice as a vice that produces all kinds of polarities, fragmentations, divisions, dualities, and is seen to be at the core of diverse forms of violence and other personal and cultural pathologies.  And one of the reasons why this egomental habit generates chronic fragmentation is because this mentality cuts itself off from the deeper surrounding Integral, Holistic and Unified Force-Field of Objective Reality which is dialogic and requires the more mature integral and global rational technology or logistic to adequately process Reality.

One finding of Global Wisdom may be summed up as the "Law of Integral Minding".  Simply stated, the more Integral the Minding, the greater the Meaning, the greater the Truth-Value, and the more in touch with Objective Reality we are; hence the greater wholeness, well-being, knowledge and flourishing.  Conversely, the more dis-integral and fragmenting the minding, the more alienated and cut off from Objective Reality, authentic Meaning, and Truth we are; hence the greater suffering, violence, un-sustainability and pathology.

The Great Event in Human Evolution & Development: Outgrowing Egomentalism

In this light one of the remarkable megatrends in the evolution of consciousness and cultures through the ages is precisely the shift from egomental habits of world-making to a more holistic, dialogic and integral technology of minding which is found to be the pathway of moral, spiritual and scientific awakening and hence the path of natural human maturation and development.  Our great wisdom traditions concur that we become truly human as we awaken our consciousness to the integral and hologistic dynamics of Objective Reality.  We mature as whole and flourishing rational beings when we are able to awaken the global lens and experience our deep connectivity with our Selves, Others, other cultures and worlds, other disciplines and ideologies, and of course, with the Earth, with Nature, with the Universe.  In short, one of the great lessons of human evolution and development through the global lens is that the main event in the human condition is this profound and perhaps painful shift from egomentalism to Integral, Hologistic or Global Minding.  Nothing less than the essence of what it means to be Human is at stake.  And it is now clear in this global perspective that now our very survival as a species is at issue.

The Planetary Crisis of Consciousness: Our Main Event

Although we can only give a very brief and summary sketch on this occasion we may now be in a better position to take a deeper look at the main event facing humanity today through the global lens.  Our global perspective and the deeper diagnosis of global wisdom and its Integral Holistic Science suggest very clearly that there have been two great counter-forces driving and emerging in and through human evolutionary development over millennia.  Whatever the reasons for egomental habits of minding, the consensus of our wisdom traditions is that it is the primary source of personal and cultural pathologies and dysfunctions. 

This consensus suggests that the inner drive of Reality itself calls us to evolve and mature beyond such pernicious egomentalism to a higher form of rational, integral, dialogic and holistic form of life and minding.  These dialogic rational forces have been at work in our human condition as a counter-force to the egomental momentum and inertia.  In the global narrative space it may be said that every great step forward for humanity has been a step beyond egomental vices and pathologies towards the more humane and awakened integral rationality of genuine dialogic encounter, moral compassion and care, freedom of expression and individuality, personal empowerment, scientific knowledge, dignity, and liberation. Egomental patterns of minding break us apart, while Integral and Hologistic Minding lifts us into deeper communion, community and sustainability.

What is Happening Now in Planetary Evolution

The diverse crises we face on the planet today are the direct causal, cumulative result of our mental practices through the ages.  So the current state of our world is the net effect of our individual and collective minding practices over time.  From the Integral Rational Power of the global lens it becomes clear that the cumulative and compounded effects of egomentalism through the ages have brought us to the current untenable and unsustainable world.  But it is also true that the cumulative and holistic effect of the awakening forces of consciousness have been also growing in momentum through the ages as a counter-force to the fragmenting and dis-integral forces of egocentric minding. 

To truly see the enormity of the great drama we are now living through we do need the long-range integral vista and aperture of global vision and wisdom over millennia.  The hologistic and integral powers of the global lens enables us to connect the dots, make significant connections and discern mega-patterns that are not available to the dis-connective and dis-integral habits of egomentalism.  Those visionaries who have the capacity to connect the dots, and the integral imagination to discern the workings of whole systems, like Laszlo, are better able to see what is so urgently before us, and overlooked through ego-eyes.

Twin Forces and Twin Crisis:  A Struggle for the Soul of Planet Earth

In this larger planetary and evolutionary drama, then, the two great technologies of minding with their two images of the true "human being" are in a decisive power struggle.  So to get a deeper fix on the nature of the crises we now face we need to see a certain complexity in multi-facets of this evolutionary moment.  One face of the crisis is that the egomental forces in the human condition appears to have dominated our personal, cultural and institutional lives throughout history and are peaking now in a run-away uncontrolled scenario.  When we focus on this aspect it appears that egomental forces have won the day and have taken us to a precipice of cumulative pathologies from which there is no hope of return.  We seem to have arrived at a critical tipping point as a result of unbridled egomental consciousness dominating our reality making through history.  This "negative" reading would be one rendering of the current global crisis. 

The End of Egomental Cultures and Worlds

But at the same time, from the global lens, it is also apparent that the awakening forces of integral consciousness have also been working in shaping our human condition through the ages and also appears to be gaining evolutionary momentum and arriving at a critical threshold as we enter the 21st Century.  From this point of view, the crisis for the egomental cultures is that they have run their course, are clearly dysfunctional, in decay and dis-integration and are facing their evolutionary and historical termination and extinction.  As a critical mass of humans on this planet awaken to our true human form and come of age in awakening our global mind, rising to global rationality and world making, the older dysfunctional patterns of egomentalism shall inevitably be left behind.  But the mirror-image crisis for the awakening global citizens is the challenge now of unprecedented self organization, radical networking and community building on a planetary scale so as to co-create a critical mass of awakened global humans of sufficient proportions to head off and turn around the destructive megatrends of egomental cultures that may well bring us all down.

So the stakes are high and our survival on this planet is in question.  This evolutionary drama of course did not take place overnight, it has been long brewing and churning and has reached a boiling point.  Ironically, the egomental force of world making is peaking and reaching its "tipping point" even as the counter force of integral awakening is also reaching a certain unprecedented ignition point.  It appears that more and more people are sensing in an exponential way an awareness that our old dysfunctional cultural habits are taking us down, and are in a growing readiness to advance to higher ground.  

Clearly we face grave dangers at this moment in our evolution, but this crisis is also a threshold of amazing new possibilities where everything is to be gained.  And people do wish to flourish in wellbeing when we have the appropriate knowledge and awakened consciousness to realize it is our choice—in our hands.  We have a choice only when we have the requisite wisdom and awareness to know we do, to be clear about what is coming down, and how to change our worlds with new patterns of minding. In this global light the main crisis of our time is our crisis of consciousness or mentality. Worlds are mind-made, and when we rise together in awakened global and integral rational consciousness we have the opportunity and responsibility to bring forth higher forms of sustainable cultures and worlds.  A new global civilization awaits.

Global Vision and Our Urgent Collective Work

We are in a better position now to see the historic power, urgency and significance of the vision and work of transformative organizations such as the World Wisdom Council or the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality.  When we examine our current world situation through the Integral Vision and Global Wisdom of the global lens we can hopefully see more clearly the scope, validity and contextual grounding of the collective deep diagnosis and prescription.  It appears that we are in the midst of an unprecedented planetary crisis that calls forth unprecedented individual and collective global awakening.  Laszlo, for example, suggests that we are now at a "decision window", and we face a critical "tipping point".  He sees the imminent danger to our collective survival if we do not wake up, pay attention, realize our enormous power of choice and take creative action through wisdom, foresight and courage.