The state of the world is of course dire on every front: ecological; economic; political; moral; spiritual. Worse, is that the people with the most influence in the world — the virtual oligarchy of governments, corporates, financiers, and their chosen intellectual and expert advisers — haven’t grasped the gravity of our plight, and don’t really want to, and are often in denial. On the whole, they simply pursue their own agendas, according to their own established ideologies.
Much of the trouble springs from the inadequacy of present-day, siloed education which leads people – including or perhaps especially the most intensively and expensively educated, of the kind most likely to achieve positions of influence – to look at the world only through their own specialist eyes and imagine that they have thereby grasped the whole picture and know how to react. Thus the policies that descend upon us from on high are not well-informed and well-directed — not wise — but are compounded largely of ignorance, hubris, self-interest, and bluff.In short: our problems are dire, but there is little real sign that humanity is responding appropriately — or that we have the radical vision, or the collective will, or the people in positions of power, that are needed to do what’s needed.
Yet I cling to the thought that human beings are basically sensible, and nice, and eminently capable, and that even at this late hour, with the forests on fire and the sea-levels rising and our fellow creatures disappearing by the hour – all that and the rising tide of human desperation and the ever-present threat or reality of war – we might still rescue ourselves and at least enough of the natural world to make the endeavour worthwhile; and indeed that this, technically, should almost be straightforward. Broadly speaking it’s just a matter of doing conceptually simple things well.
First, though, we have to clear the ground; to re-think everything we now take for granted from first principles, and to re-structure accordingly. Indeed at this stage of the game we require nothing less than a Renaissance; “re-birth”; metamorphosis (change of form) and metanoia (change of mindset). Furthermore, we, people at large, have to make the Renaissance happen. We cannot leave this critical undertaking to the powers-that-be because many of the most powerful people don’t want to know and the few who are up to the task are typically side-lined by those with their eyes more firmly fixed on power.
All-in-all, alas, there is little room for optimism. Yet, as St Paul insisted, we must never give up hope – and there are some good reasons for hope. There is no truly coherent vision but there is no shortage of good ideas or of good will. Billions of people worldwide want the world to be a better place and are willing or eager to work to make it so. Many millions are already on the case, already doing things and developing ideas that could lead us in the right kinds of directions. There are already enough good ideas and thinking people out there to form a critical mass that really could turn the world around. All that’s really needed is a coherent philosophy to hold the whole endeavour together; that, and a little more coordination.
And although wild nature is horribly fragile – often entire ecosystems that seemed forever secure have disappeared almost overnight – it also has remarkable powers of recovery, sometimes springing back from a remarkably low base. So we need never give up trying (and if we do give up then the game is lost).
Further thoughts
5 responses to “The state of the world”
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I agree entirely with you, Colin, about the terrible place we have landed in — on this small planet that deserves a better fate!
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The crux of the worlds problems seem to be rooted in our current societal structure. Spreading the knowledge of what a sham it is in it’s current form is really the first important step to reform that we can all play a part in contributing towards.
In this regard, the most excellent Zeitgeist Movie series, produced back in 2007 by Peter Josef should be brought to the attention of everyone. It is available free to view online. Few have heard of it as no mainstream channels would air it, since our media is largely controlled by the few in whose hands global power truly rests.
A shorter and more straightforward enlightenment into how our fake money system works is another. Free to watch online and well worth viewing – Money as Debt II is a simple to understand, eloquent explanation of how our monetary system is a sham, and possibly the greatest fraud perpetrated against humanity in modern history.
Cryptocurrency is in fact the perfect alternative to replace our modern monetary system. Sadly every effort has been made by the powers that be to undermine it in the guise of trying to find a way to regulate it. To that they have added plenty of reportage in the media under their control that promotes the false notion that it is all a Ponzi scheme. There is fraud, mainly because people do not treat their digital assets with the same care and caution they would afford were it a physical bag of gold coins. They pay out their crypto currencies to people they do not know, are never going to meet, and then wonder why they have lost it.
Finally, we need to end the consumer based society that is fuelled by personal and business credit. A reset, as well as a change of mindset is required. The constant desire to upgrade what we have to the latest bit of kit is unsustainable, but has been essential to keep consumerism fuelled. The old products, despite efforts to recycle, end up in landfill and or polluting our environment. Legislation is needed that requires every product to be upgradable through firmware/software, and spare parts to remain readily available at reasonable cost for a considerable period of time.
We also need to see a shift in the regulation of Big Pharma. Currently they have a stranglehold on prices, and intentionally produce products that produce a cascade of side effects which in both the long and short term require dependence on ever more of Big Pharmas products. This starts with their use in the food chain, and continues all the way through to our own use of them. They also intentionally produce and promote products which alleviate symptoms over eradicating the causes of those symptoms, thus requiring a long term use of the product. None of this is in the best interest of humanity. Their products are widely promoted above natural products that cannot be patented, and considerable money and used of the puppet media is employed to rubbish alternative medicine products.
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The internet created a more informed and compassionate populace. We added a fourth dimension to our seeing: global awareness. It’s an enlightened consciousness which demands compassion, and demands a disinterest in fear. I feel good about that.
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I would like to contribute something to Colin’s discussion regarding those holding the reins of modern society who are, tunnel-vision (and thus catastrophically for all of us), “pursuing their own established ideologies”, having developed “specialised eyes” that blind them to real needs and ultimate truths. As Colin (a profoundly and inherently holistic-minded person and author) clarifies, this is in particular due to the fundamental inadequacy of our “present-day, siloed education”. But, I daresay, we of the modern world—although ever less thanks to the vast quantities of discovered and rediscovered knowledge pouring in during this era—are to a degree still restricted by the Western, linear, non-holistic mindset which, overall, characteristises our entire contemporary lifestyle. This latter has long stood in stark contrast to both the deeply holistic understanding of the Indigenous Peoples (whom we have so contemptuously and heartlessly rubbished and ruined for the past half millennium or so (see e.g., the Doctrine of Discovery, whose devastating impacts continue even today), and, as might not be so well known, to our own Western holistic knowledge of ages past.
Regarding the latter, P. D. Ouspensky, in his “A New Model of the Universe” (Arkana-Penguin, 1989), “encyclopaedic in its character”, provides some very interesting information. He writes (abridged, adapted): “In ancient times, science (based on experiment and observation: but today’s having cut itself sharply off from spirituality, has become an unreliable instrument of thought), philosophy (based on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know: but today’s is simply arid, abstract dialectic surrounding itself with an impenetrable barrier of terminology), religion (founded on revelation: if it is not, it is either ‘bad philosophy’ or a ‘pseudo-religion’), and art (based on emotional understanding of the “soul” of things: but today’s is merely a parody of this or simply a commerce or an industry) were intertwined, forming a single unified means of comprehending the world, with philosophy being “the path par excellence” to understanding our place in the universe and living In-Accord-With that.” The subsequent radical divergence of these disciplines, most decisively in the 18th and 19th centuries, led to increased specialization. Though this resulted in a more intricate understanding of the material world and in great technological advancements, it also created division and conflict [given that, as Jacob Needleman puts it, “the structure of our mind shapes our reality”; thus, division in the mind will inevitably result in division in society], particularly between science and religion, and, critically, it fragmented human knowledge and experience, this resulting in a drastic reduction in holistic understanding and the “disenchantment” of Nature and the world.
In the same work, Ouspensky evokes the Biblical Tower of Babel, eerily reminiscent of our own current societal fragmentation, increasing divisiveness and tribalism, and the unchecked power of technology, potentially leading to self-destruction. “The Tower represents culture. Men dream of building a tower of stone “whose top may reach unto heaven”, of creating an ideal life on earth. They believe in intellectual methods, in technological means, in formal institutions. For a long time the Tower rises ever higher above the earth. But the moment infallibly arrives when men cease to properly communicate, or rather, realise that they have never done so. Each of them conceives in his own way the ideal life on earth. This is the moment when the confusion of tongues begins. Men cease to understand one another even in the simplest things; lack of understanding provokes discord, hostility, conflict. The men who built the tower start killing one another and destroying what they have built. The tower falls in ruins.”
There is, moreover, the ancient Indian parable of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” which brilliantly illustrates the danger of reductionist thinking’s exclusive focus on a single aspect of a complex reality, this leading to incomplete, distorted, and often contradictory conceptions—and applications. The moral: In order to grasp the whole truth, our knowledge must integrate multiple perspectives and not, in one-track-minded fashion, fasten upon one single partial view and call it ample and absolute. As Colin highlights in, inter alia, his wonderful works “The Secret Life of Trees” and “The Secret Life of Birds”, “all living things are deeply connected, and understanding one part of nature—like trees or birds—provides insights into the whole.”
To conclude, a quote from a 2010 online interview with Jacob Needleman discussing his book “What is God?” “There are certain questions which the intellect can ask but which the intellect can never answer. Our modern view of knowledge more or less limits itself to what we may call “mental knowing” and “mental information”… Because in the modern world we study things mainly through the “head”, the isolated intellect, our knowledge races far ahead of our capacity to feel the real value or dangers in what we know; and it races far ahead of our ability ethically to apply what we know for the good of humanity. We have locked ourselves inside the prison of merely the physical part of the human mind and have become increasing alienated from the spiritual part. In stark contrast, all the traditional spiritual teachings of the world address their knowledge not only to the intellect but also to the heart—by such means as myth, symbol, ritual, music, and by spiritually transcending the isolated intellect and all matter”. We definitely need to dial down the isolated and isolating intellect and dial up our holistic and spiritual transcendence.
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I would like to thank Peter Post who responded to Colin’s above essay by insightfully noting, inter alia, “how our monetary system is a sham, and possibly the greatest fraud perpetrated against humanity in modern history”, as well as by recommending the movie “Zeitgeist” and the YouTube “Money as Debt II”. I in turn recommend Rory Mackay’s “Insolvent Apocalypse: Why Money Isn’t Real But Is Destroying Us and the Planet” (2018), along with other fascinating articles of his.
Intimidated by the global omertà? plain unawareness? brainwashing?….I hesitated to bring up this subject previously. I’m glad to see now that there are people fully aware of this situation…and loudly protesting. This is encouraging. We have to stare truth in the face and cease being or else acting unaware, remote, indifferent—while also, pretty split-mindedly, bitterly complaining about rock-bottom salaries and skyrocketing prices, etc., etc., when we are literally playing with fire—as regards money, but also by glorifying so-called progress and growth—all this and more resulting in planetary breakdown. We close our minds to what is widely acknowledged—that fiat currencies have a limited lifespan. This gleefully but blindly created bubble could explode at any moment…possibly in the midst of our soaring prices for dozens of foodstuffs….due to climate crisis (while foodwaste is a global disaster, with over a billion meals wasted daily…and the very waste further fuelling climate calamity), of populations’ needs/demands in many places spiralling upwards, of zillions being needed to ‘save’ the planet…? Why such madness….and chaos? Evidently, we have no real respect for either God or Caesar.
In his “Money and the Meaning of Life” (Doubleday, 1994), Jacob Needleman describes (abridged) “the TWO opposing aspects of reality, a universal teaching long predating Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Egypt, Sumer, Babylon…”“There are two movements of all energy/life—one toward and one away from the unity and wholeness of the universe. While materialism acknowledges only the movement outward toward multiplicity and diversity, ancient, traditional patterns of living operate to open human consciousness to BOTH 1) the movement outward (=man’s participation in an expanding social/physical world) and 2) the movement inward toward unity (=man’s innate yearning to participate in the consciousness that created the universe, which encompasses pure energy, awareness, joy [Sanskrit Sat, Chit, Ananda]. Jesus’ famous words “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22-23) underscore our need to attend to BOTH our secular and non-secular obligations.”
Through his analysis, Needleman offers an extremely interesting and little known perspective on the role of money in the pursuit of the above sacred ideal. He reminds us that money in certain early cultures of the Western world was made available to the populace for a very express purpose: that of relieving people of excessive focus on their materialistic, civic responsibilities (e.g., payment of taxes) and, by extension, on the often gruelling work involved in earning a living, plus the many associated material needs, thereby vitally allowing them the greatest possible opportunity/time for spiritual contemplation, then generally held to be paramount.
However, this ‘strategy’ was abandoned with the decline of the Church in the West. Turning to Robert Thurman’s “Inner Revolution – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness” (Riverhead Books, 1998), we read that (abridged): “[Although during the Western Renaissance] the Europeans began to intellectually expand their horizons, the misfortune for them was that the partial success achieved in the development of human consciousness was accompanied by a short-circuiting of the Christian monastic institution….this leaving the social space open for militarism and conquest to dominate…. European energies began to boil over—with society’s new self-confidence being centred upon materialistic mastery of the physical world….” [How this Western phenomenon contrasted with the Tibetan “Inner Revolution” being steadily developed during the same age is detailed in Thurman’s book.] With Europe’s adoption of new economic systems, such as capitalism, to support people’s increased materialism and individualism, inevitably, as a whole, Western society came to place all its attention on ‘Caesar’/matter/money/‘Mammon’, leaving contemplation of ‘God’, ever more on the sidelines.Thus, generally speaking, the ‘technique’ to preserve humans’ balanced handling of both the material and the divine on Earth was eventually totally abandoned in the West—the final ‘blow’, I would say, coming in 1971 when the dollar was disconnected from gold and became ‘fiat’ [Fiat—not Lux but Lucre?]…which would give societies free rein to exclusively and limitlessly “worship Mammon”, accumulation of wealth even being seen as evidence of Divine Favour and Blessing by some Christian denominations. After all, could we have wrecked the planet so thoroughly, possibly irreversibly, without the more-than-half-century prop of ‘boundless currency’—which latter, ironically (though there is no irony…if we can see ‘ahead’ and ‘round the corner’), is now ‘drying up’, tearing people and countries apart in their struggle for more Matter/Mammon, due to collapse at any moment… This explains why we now have “no time’…and “no money”…and “no planet”…..and everything is crashing….. And why “We know the price of everything…but the value of nothing” (Oscar Wilde, “Lady Windermere’s Fan).
Jacob Needleman in “The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders”, Tarcher, 2003, pointedly explains: (abridged): “We deplore our “materialism”, “commercialism”, “consumerism”—but, in fact, all that is but the result, not the cause. The true root of our outer world of materialism is our general poverty of insight into the inner world of full consciousness. Materialism is an impoverishment of the mind starved of realisation. The way to escape the tyranny of money is to realise that the only true wealth is self-understanding. The inner adventure is more vivid, exciting, and alluring than the external appropriation of possessions, status, or power. Waking up to what money can and cannot buy is the beginning of Wisdom in this material world.”
We are colliding and collapsing—since we are forever “committing fraud and intentionally producing and promoting products that alleviate only the symptoms of materialism, without ever eradicating the causes of those symptoms”, which is ABSENCE of access to Wisdom.
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