QUANTUM SHIFT IN THE GLOBAL BRAIN

HOW THE NEW SCIENTIFIC REALITY CAN CHANGE US AND OUR WORLD

ERVIN LASZLO

INNER TRADITIONS                    2008

www.InnerTraditions.com

PART VIII

Chapter 5: A New Vision (Cont.)

 

Six particularly dangerous myths

1. Nature is inexhaustible. The origins of the myth that nature is an infinite source of resources and an infinite sink of wastes go back thousands of years. It would hardly have occurred to the inhabitants of ancient Babylonia, Sumer, Egypt, India, or China that the environment around them could ever be exhausted of the basic necessities of life – edible plants, domestic animals, clean water, and breathable air – or fouled by dumping waste and garbage. The environment appeared far too vast to be much affected by what humans did in their settlements and on the lands that surrounded them. Over the course of centuries, this proved to be a dangerous belief. It turned much of the Fertile Crescent of biblical times into the Middle East of today: a region with vast areas of arid and infertile land. In those days, people could move on, colonizing new lands and exploiting fresh resources. But today there is nowhere left to go. In a globally extended industrial civilization wilding powerful technologies, the belief in the inexhaustibility of nature gives free rein to the overuse and thoughtless impairment of the resources of the planet and the unreflective overload of nature’s self-regenerative capacities.
2. Nature is like a giant mechanism. This myth dates from the early modern age, a carryover from the Newtonian view of the world, according to which causes have direct and singular effects. The idea of the world as a giant mechanism was well adapted to creating and operating medieval technologies – water mills, windmills, pumps, mechanical clocks, and animal-drawn plows and carriages – but it fails when it comes to living organisms and the world that sustains living organisms. Yet the myth persists that we can engineer the environment as if it were a machine. This created a plethora of “side effects,” such as the degradation of water, air, and soil, the alteration of the climate, and the impairment of local and continental ecosystems. The myth that nature is like a mechanism, although not as old as the myth that it is inexhaustible, is becoming just as dangerous
3. Life is a struggle where only the fittest survive. This myth dates from the 19^th century, a consequence of the popular understanding of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. It claims that in society, as in nature, “the fittest survive,” meaning that if we are to survive we have to be fitter for the struggle of life than others around us: smarter, more ambitious, more daring, and richer and more powerful than our competitors. Transposing 19^th century Darwinism to the sphere of society can be lethal, as the “social Darwinism” adopted by Hitler’s Nazi ideology has shown. It justified the conquest of territories and the subjugation of other peoples in the name of racial fitness and purity. In our day, the varieties of social Darwinism include but also go beyond armed aggression to the more subtle but in some ways equally merciless struggle of competitors in the market place. No-holds-barred competition produces widening gaps between rich and poor and concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a shrinking minority of unscrupulous managers and speculators. It relegates states and entire populations to the role of clients and consumers, and if poor, dismisses them as marginal factors in the equations that determine success in the market place.
4. The Market distributes benefits. The myth of the market is directly related to the survival-of-the-fittest myth and is often cited as justification for it. Unlike in nature, where the consequence of “fitness” is the spread and dominance of the species and the extinction or marginalization of others, the market myth tells us that in society there is a mechanism that distributes the benefits instead of having them accrue only to the fit. This is the free market, governed by what Adam Smith called the “invisible hand.” It acts equitably: if I do well for myself, I benefit not only myself, my family, and my company, but also my community. Wealth trickles down from the rich to the poor: a rising tide lifts all boats. The market myth is comforting for the rich, but it disregards the fact that the free market distributes only under conditions of near-perfect competition, where the playing field is level and the players have a more or less equal number of chips. In the real world, the playing field is not level and the distribution of wealth is strongly skewed. Not surprisingly, in today’s world the poorest 40% is left with 3% of the global wealth and the wealth of a few hundred billionaires equals the annual income of three billion of the worlds poor people.
5. The more you consume the better you are. According to this myth there is a strict equivalence between the size of your wallet and your personal worth as the owner of the wallet. The equating of human worth with financial worth has been consciously fueled by business; companies did not hesitate to advertise unlimited consumption as a realistic possibility and conspicuous consumption as the ideal. Fifty years ago retailing analysts Victor Lebow gave a clear formulation of the consumption myth. In his book How Much Is Enough? Alana Durning quotes: “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. The economy needs things consumed, burned, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.” The consumption myth remains powerful today, even if it is not as brazenly stated as before. In constant dollars the modern world has consumed as many goods and services since 1950 as in all previous generations put together – and with China and India entering the consumption spree, it will consume as much again in much less time.
6. Economic ends justify military means. The ancient Romans had a saying: “If you aspire to peace, prepare for war.” For them this made sense: the Romans governed a global empire, with rebellious peoples and cultures within and barbarian tribes at the periphery. Maintaining it required a constant exercise of military power. Today the nature of power is different, but the belief about the use of war to achieve political – and now economic – objectives is much the same. Like the ancient Romans, during the Bush administrations the U.S. believed that maintaining world supremacy called for “sending in the marines.” But the 21^st century world is not the classical world: it is more interactive and interdependent, and its social, economic, and ecological systems operate dangerously close to the edge of sustainability. In this world the belief that war is the way to achieve economic and political objectives is a myth and – in view of its human, social, and even ecological consequences – it is a dangerously obsolete myth.

 

Shedding outdated myths and beliefs

How does one shed obsolete myths and beliefs – how does one make the leap to a vision that embraces the human being in his and her planetary environment? In contemporary societies a number of factors hinder the shift to a better vision. The way children are raised depresses their faculties for learning and creativity; the way young people experience the struggle for material survival results in frustration and resentment. In adults this leads to a variety of compensatory, addictive, and compulsive behaviors. The result is the persistence of social and political oppression, merciless competition for resources and markets, cultural intolerance, crime, and disregard for the environment. To live with each other and not against each other, to live in a way that does not rob others of the chance to live, to care what is happening to the poor and the powerless as well as to nature, all this calls for a more mature outlook – a significant measure of inner growth.

In today’s world achieving true inner growth is not easy, yet some people have achieved it nevertheless. Some among them have had life-transforming experiences. Astronauts, for example, had the privilege of looking at Earth from outer space; they have seen a precious world without boundaries, a home to all humans and all living things. They came back different people. They realized how petty and superficial it is to squabble over privileges and powers when we live on a resplendent planet unique in this corner of the universe.

Another life- and mind-transforming experience is the experience of coming back from the portals of death. People who have had a near-death experience return to everyday life with a deeply altered consciousness. They no longer fear dying. They achieve inner peace, have empathy for others and reverence for nature, and have a fresh appreciation of the wonder of existence.

Deep religious and spiritual experience is also conducive to inner growth. People who engage in intense meditation or prayer know that differences among people, whether due to sex, race, color, language, political conviction, or religious belief, do not mean that they are separate from each other. They recognize that William James was right: we are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep. There are levels of existence through which we not only communicate with each other – we become part of each other.

There are more accessible paths to inner growth as well. We can train ourselves to achieve greater unity between our bodies and minds. Most of us have lost contact with our bodies. We are constantly occupied and preoccupied with tasks and aspirations, with hopes, fears, and worries. We use our bodies as we use our cars or computers: giving them commands to take us where we want to go and do what we want to have done. We live in our heads, with little time and inclination to live in our whole bodies. We are losing the ground under our feet.

Grounding ourselves in our bodies, is a first step; it needs to be followed by another. The stresses and strains of existence also impact our emotional lives, and those too need attention. It is not that we have lost contact with our emotions – we are only too aware of them much of the time. But they are often the wrong kind of emotions. Negative feelings, such as anger, hate, fear, anxiety, suspicion, jealousy, contempt, and indifference, dominate the tenor of life in modern societies. They result from lifetime experiences that are mainly negative. With some exceptions, even childhood education is based on negative reinforcements such as punishment and the threat of failure. Positive emotions of love and caring are the preserve of the family and our circle of friends, but these aspects of life are often sacrificed to the pressure of work and the struggle to secure our livelihood. Positive emotions can be created in the context of loving and caring relations with those around us and can also be generated by experiences of nature: beholding the tranquility of a sunny meadow or a calm lake, the beauty of a sunset, the majesty of a mountain, or the awesomeness of a stormy sea.

The ten commandments of a timely vision

The vision we need to live on this planet without destroying ourselves and its delicate web of life can be formulated in reference to ten “commandments.”

1. Live in ways that enable other people to also live, satisfying your needs without detracting from the chances of others to satisfy theirs.
2. Live in ways that respect the right to life and to economic and cultural development of all people, wherever they live and whatever their ethnic origin, sex, citizenship, station in life, and belief system.
3. Live in ways that safeguard the intrinsic right to life and to an environment supportive of life of all things that live and grow on Earth.
4. Pursue happiness, freedom, and personal fulfillment in harmony with the integrity of nature and with consideration for the similar pursuits of others.
5. Require that your government relates to other nations and peoples peacefully and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing the legitimate aspirations for a better life and a healthy environment of all the people in the human family.
6. Require of the enterprises with which you do business that they accept responsibility for all their stakeholders as well as for the environment, and demand that they produce goods and services that satisfy legitimate demand without reducing the chances of smaller and less privileged entrants to compete in the market place.
7. Require of the public media that they provide a constant stream of reliable information on basic trends and crucial process to enable you to reach informed decisions on issues that affect your life and well-being.
8. Make room in your life to help those less privileged than you to live a life of dignity, free from the struggles and humiliations of abject poverty.
9. Encourage young people and open-minded people of all ages to evolve the spirit that could empower them to make ethical decisions of their own on issues that decide their future and the future of their children.
10. Work with like-minded people to preserve or restore the essential balances of the environment, with due attention to your neighborhood, your country and region, and the whole of the biosphere.

 

Chapter 6: A Planetary Ethic