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A presentation to the Kendal Forum, Kennett Square, PA
Tonight I want to step back from the immediate issues that
dominate the news, and consider two basic topics: First, understanding
our moment in history, and second, the relation of today's
events to that moment. For it's increasingly clear that we're
not just facing a few critical problems here and there. We
appear to be at some major junction in human affairs. I suggest
part of understanding how best to go forward lies in comprehending
the significance of our particular historic moment.
So I want to begin by quoting three people who provide helpful
perspective.
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Speeches
Speeches by World
Trends Research's Van Wishard
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In 1952, seven years after the greatest military victory
in human history, Rollo May, one of America's leading psychologists
wrote, "[T]he chief problem of people in the middle decade
of the 20th century is emptiness." In May's view, "our
middle of the twentieth century is more anxiety-ridden than
any period since the breakdown of the Middle Ages." Concluded
May, "we live at one of those points in history when
one way of living is in its death throes, and another is being
born."
Two years later in a speech at Columbia University, Adlai
Stevenson asked, "Are America's problems but surface
symptoms of something even deeper, of a moral and human crisis
in the Western world which might even be compared to the fourth,
fifth and sixty-century crisis where the Roman Empire was
transformed into feudalism and primitive Christianity? Are
Americans," Stevenson queried, "passing through
one of the great crises of history when man must make another
mighty choice?"
Finally, in 1957, Peter Drucker noted, "No one born
after the turn of the century has ever known anything but
a world uprooting its foundations, overturning its values
and toppling its idols."
America didn't evaluate these assessments when they were
offered. But it daily becomes clearer that it's only within
the context provided by such reflections that we can fully
comprehend what's happening to America and the world.
So tonight I would like to comment on three trends at the
heart of the transformation suggested by these three Americans.
First trend at the heart of the transformation: For the first
time in human history, the world is forging an awareness of
our existence as a single entity. Nations are incorporating
the planetary dimensions of life into the fabric of our economics,
politics, culture and international relations. The shorthand
for this is "globalization."
We generally think of globalization as the worldwide integration
of economic, financial and political factors. But it's far
more than that; far more than non-western nations adopting
free markets and democratic political systems. At its core,
globalization means that the full scope of western ideas and
modes of living are gradually seeping into the fabric of the
world. At the same time, everyone on earth is having to adjust
to Western technology. As this happens, existing cultures,
traditions, institutions and historic relationships are threatened.
In some cases they're even disappearing. In essence, globalization
is about identity. It goes to the very psychological foundations
of a people.
In my opinion, if pursued wisely and cooperatively, globalization
represents the world's best chance to enrich the lives of
the greatest number of people. One need only look at India
to see a prime example of how globalization can benefit a
nation.
But we must recognize the contradictions inherent in globalization.
On the one hand, it represents a shrinking of the globe that
requires us to expand our worldview and sense of identity.
Such an expansion of outlook happened before to America. At
the time of the American Revolution, most people found their
identity in relation to the state they lived in-Georgia, Virginia
or Massachusetts, but not with something called the United
States. Even after independence, it wasn't until after the
Civil War that a distinctly American identity emerged. In
terms of our culture, it was fifty years after the Revolution
before a uniquely American culture-starting with James Fenimore
Cooper- became apparent.
We're going through a similar process today, only on a worldwide
scale. Easy travel, television, the computer and Internet-and
especially seeing our globe from the perspective of the moon-have
taken this expansion of awareness to a wholly new dimension.
We're being forced to identify not simply with our nation,
but also with other peoples, cultures and nations. We could
be experiencing the fledgling beginnings of what might be
called a global awareness or identity.
But there's a reaction. We feel a threat to an older and
more habitual identity. This threat tends to force us backward
to the familiar patterns of the past. In a time of upheaval
and reorientation, we reach inward for the security of past
certainties, both politically and spiritually. In the process,
life-giving themes that once resonated in the soul of our
ancestors get reduced to hollow clichés. That's a natural
reaction. It's happening across the world as exponential change
overwhelms traditions and beliefs. This reaction undergirds
the fundamentalist sentiment, whether in America, India, or
the Middle East.
So in my view, we're confronted not so much with a crisis
between civilizations, as some have suggested, but a crisis
within civilizations. It's a monumental crisis of identity
and worldview. None of the categories of the past-social status,
religion, ethnicity, culture, heritage, region, nation-in
and of themselves alone-is an adequate context of thought
and action in an era that is rapidly becoming global.
This is not simply an American challenge. To varying degrees,
every nation on earth faces this test. In my judgment, while
Iraq is a unique situation, this crisis within nations is
part of what's been going on in the Middle East for decades.
Everything about an emerging global civilization appears to
threaten the identity, social fabric, and even the existence
of Islam, which, we must remember, comprises a billion people.
So some people lash out at what they see as the generator
of globalization. And while we must deal forcefully with threats
to our life and safety, we must do it with the realization
that, in the broader context, and in our different ways, America
and the peoples of the Middle East face the same challenge.
That challenge is how to adapt past traditions and institutions
to radically new conditions; in essence, how to adjust our
worldview. Maintaining world order and stability under such
uncertain conditions is the critical test confronting all
nations, especially America and Europe. We are going to need
what analyst Robert Kaplan calls a "global constabulary
force" simply to maintain a modicum of order.
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What Our Clients Are
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Washington State Association
of Counties:
"Few voices
make coherent sense, or offer direction to people
longing to put America on a new course. You are
one of those voices. Your keynote offered a room
full of bureaucrats new ways to imagine governing."
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In the end, however, the test of globalization is a profoundly
human, not technical, challenge. As Arnold Toynbee suggested
long ago, "Technology can bring strangers physically
face-to-face with one another in an instant, but it may take
generations for their minds, and centuries for their hearts,
to grow together. Physical proximity," he concluded,
"not accompanied by simultaneous mutual understanding
and sympathy, is apt to produce antipathy, not affection,
and consequently discord, not harmony." Therein lies
the human challenge of globalization. And meeting this human
challenge is critical, for we do not have generations, much
less centuries, in which to adjust.
Second trend at the heart of the transformation: We've entered
a new stage of technology development that is without precedent
in the history of science and technology.
At least since Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century we
have viewed the purpose of science and technology as being
to improve the human condition. As Bacon put it, the "true
and lawful end of the sciences is that human life be enriched
by new discoveries and powers."
And indeed it has. Take America. During the last century,
the real GDP, in constant dollars, increased by $48 trillion,
much of this wealth built on the marvels of technology.
But along with technological wonders, uncertainties arise.
Let me interject here that five years ago I had a quadruple
heart bypass using the most sophisticated medical technology.
So I'm a believer. Nonetheless, the question today is whether
we're creating certain technologies not to improve the human
condition, but for purposes that appear to be to replace human
meaning and significance altogether. As the Economist magazine
asks, "Is the speed of technology development exceeding
humanity's moral and mental capacities to control it?"
The experts tell us that by 2035, artificial robotic intelligence
will surpass human intelligence. (Let's leave aside for a
moment the question of what constitutes "intelligence.")
And a decade after that, we shall have a robot with all the
emotional and spiritual sensitivities of a human being. By
2050, for $1,000, you'll be able to buy a computer with the
intelligence equivalent to the combined intelligence of everyone
on earth-ten billion people. By that time, we're told, supercomputers
will go so fast that all life will be transformed beyond anything
we can even begin to imagine today.
Thus arrives what some scientific intellectuals call the
"Post-human Age." This concept of a "post-human
future" is not science fiction. It's the projection of
some of our foremost scientists.
Consider a remark by the cofounder of MIT's artificial intelligence
lab and one of the world's leading authorities on artificial
intelligence: "Suppose that the robot had all of the
virtues of people and was smarter and understood things better.
Then why would we want to prefer those grubby, old people?
I don't see anything wrong with human life being devalued
if we have something better." One of the world's leading
scientists ready to "devalue human life" if we can
create something he thinks is better.
One well-known molecular biologist writes of "a time
when humans no longer exist . . . Progressive self-transformation
could change our descendents into something sufficiently different
from our present selves to not be human in the sense we use
the term now."
Writes a famous computer scientist, "When machines are
derived from human intelligence but are a million times more
capable, there won't be a clear distinction between human
and machine intelligence - there's going to be a merger."
Yet another writes, "I find it impossible to believe
it makes sense to continue, as human beings, in our exact
same form . . . The immensities of cyberspace will be teeming
with very unhuman disembodied superminds, engaged in affairs
of the future that are to human concerns as ours are to bacteria."
In my judgment, what's being proposed here is nothing less
than the cancellation of the five thousand-year quest to create
a moral order for human existence; and the self-destruction
of humanity under the guise of something some people say is
"evolution." It won't materialize in our lifetime.
But as we speak, this is what's being developed for our grandchildren.
The scientists tell us that because their technical creations
are produced by humans, and humans are the product of natural
evolution, their intelligent machines will also be the product
of evolution. Natural evolution over the eons, however, was
not underwritten by the prospect of commercial profit or military
application, as is the research of those now suggesting the
merger of man and machine.
I would emphasize that such views are not held simply by
some fringe group of scientists. Those expressing such views
are at the cutting edge of today's computer, artificial intelligence
and biological sciences.
Now, how are we to think about such a prospect? Personally,
I believe these scientists mistaken in their belief that what
they're predicting is part of natural evolution. Just because
humans create some technology doesn't mean its part of evolution.
Humans have created technology that could destroy planet earth,
which is hardly evolution. What these scientists seem to leave
out is the entire range of human emotions and motivations.
They appear oblivious to their own potential for hubris and
ego-inflation. Let me offer an example. The Washington Post
reported that a professor of computer science at Carnegie
Mellon University was hired as a researcher at Microsoft.
Said the good professor, "To me, this corporation is
my power tool. It's the tool I wield to allow my ideas to
shape the world." This is a classic example of the inflated
power drive, or what the great theoretical physicist, Freeman
Dyson, described as the "technical arrogance that overcomes
people when they see what they can do with their minds."
What we appear to see here is Lord Acton's well-known political
maxim applied to the scientific world: "Power tends to
corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." And
when we're talking about redesigning human beings, we're clearly
talking about absolute power.
The scientists talk of progress. But their progress is totally
in terms of more powerful technology. There is no discussion
of progress in terms of human purpose and needs, or of the
meaning of being a human being in an age of total technological
capability. And certainly no talk of the seventy percent of
humanity who don't have enough electricity to turn on a light,
let alone run a computer. Indeed, progress for some is to
augment human attributes and transfer them to silicon or its
successor. We appear to have ignored Einstein's warning: "Concern
for man himself and his fate must form the chief interest
of all technical endeavors."
It seems to me, we've created a scientific culture that is
an immense complex of technique and specialization without
any guiding moral framework. The highest standard is efficiency.
The defining ethic is, "If it can be done, it will be
done."
We have not yet come to grips with the question Peter Drucker
raised a half century ago: "The problem created by the
breakthrough of scientific knowledge to the core of human
existence is not political. It is spiritual and metaphysical.
It poses the question: What is the meaning of knowledge and
power? What is the meaning of human existence and of human
spirit . . . Both knowledge and power, traditionally ends
in themselves, must now become means to a higher end of man.
Both knowledge and power must be grounded in purpose-a purpose
beyond the truth of knowledge and the glory of power."
Future generations depend on whether we understand the significance
of Drucker's questions, and seek answers to them.
Will such a scenario as the high-tech experts project come
to pass? My guess is probably not.
What these scientists appear to ignore is the whole realm
of the unconscious domain. In recent decades, psychology has
made great gains in understanding the conscious functioning
of the brain. Less attention, however, has been given to the
dynamics of the unconscious. While certain groundbreaking
work has been done, no one of the stature of Jung or Freud
has been able to take their investigation of the unconscious
to a significantly new level. Indeed, with notable exceptions,
the implications of Jung's exploration into the collective
unconscious-that basic layer of unconsciousness common to
all humanity-are generally ignored by the scientific community.
By definition we know far more about our conscious life than
the unconscious. Yet the unconscious may well determine far
more of our collective activity than does the conscious. One
result is that as scientists and technologists pursue their
vision of technological transcendence, unconscious factors
are ignored. It's just these unconscious factors that will
eventually disrupt the developmental path so confidently predicted
by technologists.
Some of these unconscious factors are already manifesting
themselves. It was in the '50s that Jung first diagnosed the
"pathological" character of our art and culture.
The Hannibal Lecter series is only the latest of this genre.
Thirty years ago, major corporations didn't have to think
much about mental health. Now, mental health is the fastest
growing component of corporate health insurance programs.
Corporations are providing employees with special rooms for
relaxing, meditation, prayer, taking naps or listening to
music.
Other indicators tell of further disturbances. The suicide
rate among women has increased 200% in the past two decades.
Teen suicide jumped 300% between 1960-90. Books are now written
for eight and nine year-old children advising them how to
recognize the symptoms of stress, and to deal with it in their
own lives. Character controlling drugs are taken like aspirin.
Rage has assumed a culture-like place in the national fabric.
The hard truth is, our very mode of life has now become our
principle cause of emotional and mental disorder.
Why is this happening? One clear reason is the overload of
accelerated change that is swamping people. What we're experiencing
is not simply the acceleration of the pace of change, but
the acceleration of acceleration itself. In other words, change
growing at an exponential rate. The experts tell us that the
rate of change doubles every decade; that at today's rate
of change, we'll experience one hundred calendar years of
change in the next twenty-five years; and that due to the
nature of exponential growth, the 21st century as a whole
will experience almost one thousand times more technological
change than did the 20th century.
Now, project forward the predicted increased speed of computers
and the resulting ratcheting up of the pace of life over the
next two or three decades, and you end up asking, "How
much more of this can the human metabolism take before social
breakdown occurs?" Actually, it's not the case that sooner
or later something will give way. Multiplying social pathologies
indicate that individually and collectively, psychological
integrity is already giving way.
It's not as if we haven't been warned about the consequences
of overreaching. From earliest times, everything in human
myth and religion warns us about trying to become as the gods.
These myths and stories warn that there are limits to both
human knowledge and endeavor; that to go beyond those limits
is self-destructive. No one knows exactly where such limits
might be. But if they don't include the effort to create some
technical/human life form supposedly superior to human beings,
if they don't include the capacity to genetically reconfigure
human nature, if they don't include the attempt to introduce
a "post-human" civilization, then it's hard to imagine
where such limits would be drawn.
We must remember that myths are more than fanciful stories
left over from the childhood of man. They emanate from the
unconscious level of the psyche, that level which connects
us to whatever transcendent wisdom may exist. It's a level
at which, as quantum physics suggests, there may exist some
relationship between the human psyche and external matter.
Mind and matter may be but two dimensions of some larger reality,
some fundamental pattern of life common to both that is operating
outside the understanding of contemporary science. In other
words, we may be fooling around with phenomena that are, in
fact, beyond human awareness; possibly even beyond the ability
of humans to grasp. For at the heart of life is a great mystery
which does not yield to rational interpretation. This eternal
mystery induces a sense of wonder out of which all that humanity
has of religion, art and science is born. The mystery is the
giver of these gifts, and we only lose the gifts when we grasp
at the mystery itself. In my view, Nature will not permit
arrogant man to defy that mystery, that transcendent wisdom.
In the end, Nature's going to win out.
Some people are already searching for the wisest way to approach
such potential challenges as the new technologies present.
Bill Joy, cofounder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems
and described by the Economist magazine as "the Edison
of the Internet," suggests we've reached the point where
we must "limit development of technologies that are too
dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge."
His concerns are based on the unknown potential of genetics,
nanotechnology and robotics, driven by computers capable of
infinite speeds, and the possible uncontrollable self-replication
of these technologies. Joy acknowledges the pursuit of knowledge
as one of the primary human goals since earliest times. But,
he says, "If open access to, and unlimited development
of, knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction,
then common sense demands that we reexamine even these basic,
long-held beliefs."
Third trend at the heart of the transformation: I suggested
earlier that what we are facing is not a crisis between civilizations,
but within civilizations. I believe this is true for all civilizations
today-for what once was called Western Civilization, for Islam,
as well as for the Chinese and Hindu civilizations, albeit
this crisis moves at a different pace in different parts of
the world. In fact, I'd even suggest that what once was called
a "civilization" is increasingly a less apt description
of any particular peoples. For a civilization presumes a shared
worldview, commonly accepted standards of conduct, a shared
perception of values, and above all, a collective spiritual
expression that represents life's highest meaning.
Such a condition certainly no longer exists in America. When
we talk of an "American worldview," whose worldview
are we talking about? Are we talking of the worldview of some
forty-eight million fundamentalists who, according to Time
magazine, believe the world will come to an end in their lifetime?
Are we talking about the worldview of the high-tech visionaries
who believe that when computers go millions of times faster
than today, the world will reach an "Omega Point"
and all life will be transformed beyond anything we can conceive
of today? Or the postmodernists who believe there is no reality;
that life is but a social construct? Or the computer scientists
who see everyone eventually linked to an electronic consciousness
and "Global Brain" via the Internet? Or the intellectual
who believes rational intelligence is life's highest authority?
Or those molecular biologists who assert we've reached the
end of the Homo sapiens epoch, and that our descendents will
not be human as we now use the term. Or the traditional Christian
who believes the chief end of man is to "Glorify God
and enjoy Him forever"?
I could go on, but I think the point is clear. The crisis
within civilizations is a spiritual and psychological crisis
that, in America, has been building for at least the past
century. We're now reaching some sort of critical moment.
Historically, all religions have been a collective, not an
individual phenomenon. The psychological function of religion
has been at least threefold: to validate a certain moral order
within a given civilization; to offer myths that connect a
civilization to life's transcendent dimension; and to link
the individual's conscious life with its unconscious grounding.
How do we best gauge the spiritual and psychological life
of today's America? By public opinion polls that tell us well
over ninety percent of the American people say they believe
in God? By how many people attend a place of worship? By the
proliferation of over 1500 so-called religions in America,
including some anomaly called "Catholic-Buddhists"?
By our bookstores' bulging sections on religion and spirituality?
That's one way to look at America's spiritual condition.
Another way is to examine our culture and what it's telling
us. And here we find a different story. This is important,
because culture is to a nation what dreams are to an individual-an
indication of what's going on in the inner life, in the unconscious
realm, which is the crucible of consciousness. In this sense,
the unconscious is the crucible of civilization.
I think it's fair to say a crucial theme of American culture
since the First World War has been the supposed "meaninglessness
of life," a thought antithetical to any authentic religion.
We see it in The Great Gatsby as Daisy says, "I'm pretty
cynical about everything. I think everything's terrible anyhow.
Everybody thinks so-the most advanced people." This was
written in 1925 as new technologies were creating new industries,
and the stock market was booming. Daisy's lament was followed
in the '50s by Holden Caufield in Catcher in the Rye, and
later by Rabbit Angstrom in John Updike's novels. Indeed,
nothing could denote the alienation of twentieth-century American
literature better than the name of Updike's main character,
"Angstrom." As the poet Archibald MacLeish, a former
Librarian of Congress and three-time winner of the Pulitzer
Prize, described Western post-war art and philosophy, "life
had been found out at last-life was absurd."
We need to evaluate what the creation and marketing of such
cultural artifacts represents. For the fact is, there wouldn't
be a market for the alienated and psychotic themes of our
movies, TV and literature if such themes weren't resonating
with something going on in us as a people. Culture is simply
a mirror held up to a people's psychic life. Taken as a whole,
Western art, literature and cinema have long revealed a profound
reorientation taking place in the depths of the Western psyche.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald's biographer, Andrew Le Vot, wrote
about the meaning of The Great Gatsby, it is "not men
who have abandoned God, but God who has deserted men in an
uninhabitable, absurd material universe." In one sense,
The Great Gatsby represents a turning point for America. It's
publication and subsequent resonance in the American psyche
signaled that while there are still millions of Christians
in America, the historic religion of America and the West
was no longer the informing dynamic in the soul of America's
"creative minority" who give us our literature,
theater, cinema and music. At the same time, in Europe T.S.
Eliot, Wassily Kandinski, W.B. Yeats and others were signaling
the same message. The "falcon cannot not hear the falconer,"
with the result that we are "hollow men."
We might digress for a moment and consider that when thoughtful
Muslims view the West, they see the de-Christianization that
has taken place. They see the social and psychological crises
that have accompanied secularization and modernization. And
while we may say-as some do in Washington-that we must "change
the psychology of the Middle East and bring them into the
modern world," thoughtful Muslims are concerned that
the Western model of modernization may ultimately mean the
very extinction of Islam.
This contributes to what is a particularly relevant aspect
of this worldwide spiritual/psychological reorientation-the
increasing presence of fundamentalism, whether Christian,
Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Shinto. It's worth considering this
phenomenon, as it's a growing force in national politics and
world affairs.
At least 60% of Americans believe the prophecies of the Book
of Revelation will come true. Opinion polls tell us that thirty-six
percent of the American fundamentalists who support Israel
do so because they believe Israel must control all of Palestine
before Christ will return. A well-known senator argued on
the floor of the senate that Israel should maintain control
of all of the Palestinian territories "because God said
so. Look it up in the book of Genesis." The "Left
Behind" series of books is a publishing phenomenon, having
sold some forty million copies.
For Christian fundamentalists, the Book of Revelation is
a focal point of reference. It spells out the "end times,"
the Apocalypse, and it is taken literally by millions of people.
And herein lies perhaps the basic difference between fundamentalists
and what might be termed traditional Christians. The latter
take Revelation symbolically, as did St. Augustine, not literally.
This difference between literalism and symbolism is at the
core of the difference between fundamentalists and traditionalists,
be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Hindu. All fundamentalisms
tend to divide the world between insiders and outsiders, between
true believers and unbelievers, the saved and the sinners,
"us" and "them."
The implicit question raised by Revelation is, what is meant
by "end times"? Those who interpret Revelation literally
believe it means the end of the world. As I mentioned earlier,
at least forty-eight million Americans believe it will happen
in their lifetime. But another interpretation might be that
it means the end of the Christian eon. The Church fathers
long ago prophesied the end of the Christian epoch, but no
date was given as to when it would happen. The meaning of
the Apocalypse may not be the end of the world, but the end
of a particular way of interpreting transcendent reality,
while a new spiritual dispensation emerges. It's happened
several times before in history.
The word "apocalypse" comes from the Greek meaning
"revelation, an uncovering of what has been hidden."
According to the late depth psychologist Edward Edinger who
wrote a book on the psychological meaning of Revelation, there
are four features of the image of the Apocalypse: revelation,
judgment, destruction and renewal. Revelation discloses new
truth about life. Judgment assesses the state of contemporary
conditions in light of this new truth. Destruction is the
collapse of old forms that are no longer effective within
the context of the new truth. Renewal is the recreation of
civilization according to the requirements of the new truth.
The Western psyche has focused on the destruction aspect of
the Apocalypse, virtually ignoring the renewal that is to
follow.
Against this background, from a psychological point of view,
the story of the 20th century might be seen as the working
out of these four features of the meaning of the Apocalypse.
In all areas of life, humanity has gained more new truth about
nature and the workings of the universe in the 20th century
than in all previous history combined. Against the background
of this new understanding of nature and the universe, we have
judged the effectiveness of former beliefs, relationships
and institutions. This assessment is at the heart of the spiritual
search taking place in America today. It's the cause of our
redefining the status of social relationships, or the role
and authority of the nation-state. Then has come the destruction
or collapse of old forms of how we have organized our affairs,
forms that are no longer effective in light of the implementation
of our new discoveries. This collapse is seen in our need
to reinvent all our institutions, from education to new modes
of self-government. And finally comes the birth of some new
pattern of civilization based on the new truth or understanding.
A harbinger of this new birth is seen in a greater openness
and opportunity for the individual, whatever his or her background
or social status. It's also seen our expanding sense of identity
as we learn more about other cultures and peoples.
Given this interpretation, it appears the Apocalypse doesn't
mean the physical end of the world. Rather, it suggests the
end of a particular view of the meaning of human existence,
while some new dispensation comes into fulfillment. For those
with a literal rather than symbolic interpretation of Revelation,
it is literally world shattering. As Edinger wrote, however,
"Revelation lays out the final scenario of the end of
the Christian eon, and describes symbolically the concluding
events of the Judeo-Christian myth, the myth that has been
the womb and metaphysical container of Western civilization."
This same process took place as the ancient gods of Rome
gave way to Christianity. This is what Adlai Stevenson was
referring to in the earlier comment I quoted. During the shift
in the Roman world, the poet Lucretius wrote of the "aching
hearts in every home, racked incessantly by pangs the mind
was powerless to assuage." Sounds pretty much like today.
This process took several centuries to work itself out after
the Roman period. As Toynbee noted, the contemporary process
has been under way at least since the eighteenth century.
With the advent of instantaneous global information technologies,
it has been vastly accelerated, for information technologies
transmit not only information, but psychic states of mind
as well.
Let me briefly summarize what we've been discussing. (1)
Globalization-possibly the most ambitious collective experiment
in history; (2) a new stage of technology, the objective of
which is to supplant human meaning and significance; and (3)
a long-term psychological and spiritual reorientation. These
are only three of the basic trends moving us between two historic
epochs. And it's because of the magnitude and significance
of such trends that I suggest the crisis is not between civilizations,
but within civilized life itself. Thus the next three decades
may be the most decisive thirty-year period in human history.
How do we respond to such a situation? We're already responding
in the most sweeping redefinition of life America has ever
known. We're redefining and restructuring all our institutions.
Corporations are redefining their mission, structure and modus
operandi. In education, we're trying countless new experiments,
from vouchers to charter schools to home schooling. Alternative
dispute resolution is helping lift the burden off the back
of our legal system. Civic and charitable organizations are
assuming functions formerly undertaken by local governments.
There are countless efforts underway to redress the severe
environmental imbalance we've created. More people are involved
in efforts to help the elderly and those in poverty. In fact,
it's estimated that well over fifty percent of all adult Americans
donate a portion of their time to non-profit social efforts.
In the Kennett Square area alone, there are some 40 citizen
volunteer programs involving over 2,000 people.
Against the background of the three trends I mentioned, perhaps
this is a modest start, but at least it's a start. Clearly,
there's another level of effort to move to. As Bill Joy suggests,
such efforts must include a decision whether or not to continue
research and development of technologies that could, in Joy's
words, "bring the world to the edge of extinction."
Obviously, such an examination must be done in a global context
if it's to be valid.
But another question is, how are you and I to live in a world
that's changing faster than individuals and institutions can
assimilate? How do we maintain anchorage and balance when
we're in between two historic ages?
I believe the starting point is understanding, simply to
understand the underlying changes taking place in the world
and in us as individuals. As it says in Proverbs, "With
all thy getting, get understanding." This may sound a
bit too simplistic, but there's a psychological reason the
scriptures say this. The great scriptures of the world are
not the expression of the rational intellect as it has evolved
over the past five hundred years. Rather, they're the expression
of the unconscious, more particularly the collective unconscious.
So it's our link with the source of transcendent wisdom that's
telling us to "get understanding." And we must get
it not simply on the intellectual level. We must assimilate
it so it becomes a part of us.
I think the reason for this is that there seems to be a transformative
effect about absorbing understanding. Intellectual understanding
doesn't change us deep inside. Assimilated understanding does.
And unless our understanding aligns our approach to life with
the needs of the times, it's of minimal ultimate value.
Possibly one place to start is with the some of the subjects
we've considered tonight-globalization, where technology is
taking us, what's our culture telling us, and what's the meaning
of the spiritual/psychological reorientation taking place.
I would add a further category, which there hasn't been time
to discuss tonight. That's the increasing separation of human
life from most other manifestations of life, and the virtual
war we have waged against non-human life, be it the sea, the
soil, the sky or other species. I've offered my views on these
topics, but you may come to different interpretations.
In summary, we live between two ages. There's a new epoch
of human meaning struggling to take shape for all humankind.
Through the chaos and the killing, through the heartache and
inner emptiness, the birth of a heightened consciousness is
fighting its way out of the womb into the light.
The womb that nurtures this New Time is nothing less than
the human unconscious, especially the deepest strata that
is the source of humanity's greatest potential. The key to
unlocking this deeper realm is to know ourselves in a new
and deeper way; to become aware of life's opposites-the persona
and the shadow, the good and evil, the loves and hatreds-that
dwell within each of us, all of which constitute the totality
of who we really are. The task is to strengthen the dialogue
between consciousness and the limitless creative powers of
the collective unconscious, wherein resides life's highest
meaning.
Some eternal, infinite power is at work in each of us, as
well as in the universe. This power is the source of renewal
of all man's most vital and creative energies. With all our
problems and possibilities, the future depends on how we-each
in his or her own unique way-tap into that eternal renewing
dynamic that dwells in the deepest reaches of the human soul.
What we've considered tonight are only some of the challenges
at the heart of our moment in history.
Thank you.
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