Where are we going?

The World we live in

It is not unusual for people to analyze the state of the world in their generation – and to find it in a state of troubling change. The difference today is that the change is happening faster than ever before in human history.

First of all, what is happening?

- The Middle East’s Arab Spring has collapsed, and violent groups have re-emerged in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

- Syria’s civil war is now in its sixth year and is spawning a refugee crisis that is spreading worldwide, especially in Europe.

- Africa’s troubles continue to produce refugees as they flee north.

- Oligarchic separatist governments (under the guise of populism) are on the rise (Brexit, Trumpism, rising ultra-right parties in Europe).

- Many Latin American political parties are shifting to the right.

- The Russian empire is rebuilding.

- The Chinese empire is expanding in Southeast Asia.

- The USA empire is waning, despite Trump`s efforts to revive it.

Causes

With such a plethora of events, it would seem pointless to try and find any one underlying cause. However, in much of this, one fact stands out. A sense of community, both personal and regional, is declining; individualism and separatism is increasing. The system is fracturing. Inequalities are growing. Old networks are weakening. New isolationist groups are emerging.

If we look closer to home, what do we find? Old structures that emphasize community are weakening. Centres of wholesome spirituality and communal action are in decline. A widespread consumer oriented secularism is taking hold. 

Even the family, that last bastion of community, is changing. In the developed world at least, we are now living in a world of personal entitlements. Is “me and my entitlements” which now reign supreme. The internet connected world which was supposed to unite us has allowed us to live in our own isolated bubbles. Self-interest is surging.

Analysis

In an earlier evolutionary era, a stubborn life force allowed species of all kinds to survive through their own inbuilt self-interest. All the various life forms competed with each other. The only way a species could survive was by pursuing its own self-interest, sometimes in cooperation with other groups, but more often in direct completion with others.

Our early ancestors lived and survived in a world of danger and scarcity. They had to fiercely compete to survive. Not being sure of what the future would hold, they seized any resources that they could get, whenever they could get them. This is now deeply imbedded in our thinking. Therefore, we now overconsume resources of all kinds. In a previous age, overconsumption was a security against an uncertain future. Now it can lead to our destructive collapse.

Through a long and tortuous history, humankind has developed an elaborate and affluent societal structure. In this society, self-interest has not diminished but instead remains strong and dominant. That which enabled us to survive in an earlier primitive environment may now hold the seeds of our own destruction. We are confronted with destructive self-interest.

What am I talking about here?

- Our fragile environmental system is under threat by contamination caused by excessive resource extraction. Yet we deny this and continue on in our short-term, narrow self-interest path.

- As the affluent part of society advances, wasteful and excessive spending on the military and our own personal luxury items grows. As a result of this, the world’s inequality is increasing with possibility of very negative consequences. The affluent world’s over consumption and growing inequality is destabilizing!

Solution?

We are now faced with a monumental spiritual problem. Rationally we know that we should probably reduce our excessive consumption and share more. But our inherited self-interest denies this. Only a deep spiritual revolution will alter this. From whence will it come? Science and technological development has brought us here. Can it now save us? Can our highly evolved consciousness find a better way forward?

What we need is a renewed sense of community, one that has deep roots and yet is still open to others. This new ethic needs to be peaceful and constructive, not belligerent and destructive. Our new ethic has to help us to rise above our natural selfish desires. Ancient religious and spiritual based movements have assisted mankind in this quest in the past. Now again, new communities will need to draw new directions from their deep reservoirs of the Spirit. Can it be done? Time will tell. Let us continue searching.