The Crisis of Perception

2) Must transcend the individual/collective dichotomy -- where individualism and community goals merge.

3) Must be plural -- where we accept that “all meanings are true”, for the person who holds the meanings, and in that spirit attempt to truly not only “tolerate” other cultures, but to embrace and learn from them.

4) Must be responsive -- where society becomes a living machine “designed to cope with ambiguity and creative challenge”.

5) Must be bottom-up or emergent -- where front-line citizens make the decisions not top-level bureaucrats.

6) Must be ecological -- where humans are recognized as part of nature and treat nature as part of themselves.

7) Must be spiritual -- where we seek spiritual answers to basic questions of life and society.

8) Must be in dialogue with science -- where we replace the outmoded Newtonian mechanics billiard ball model of social interaction with the newer holistic all-at-once quantum mechanics understanding.

The last item, the dialogue with science, is the major theme of Zohar’s work, fundamentally because the new science is telling us surprising things about the world in which we live, that have direct implications for how we should live. “If we are to rediscover the moral and spiritual roots of our society”, she writes, “we must do so in a way which mirrors, which extends and develops rather than contradicts, the knowledge that science is giving us about the nature of the physical and living worlds of which we are a part.”

Evolution and Revolution 

But all this needs to be translated into a specific programme of action. How do we start to shift our societies in such a new direction? The modes of behaviour that govern the global system, that underpin the conflictual and destructive nature of the international political economy, belong ultimately to what philosopher John McMurtry calls the tendency of “money self-maximization”, itself both rooted in and fuelling a culture of consumerism that defines human gratification by measures of material consumption. But we’ve seen that behind this tendency, this “infection of affluenza” as psychologist Oliver James put it, is a deeper problem of perception, a reductionistic worldview that views life and nature in competitive, mechanistic, materialistic terms in which organisms are pitted against one another in a hostile world. But this underlying way of looking at the world has been increasingly discredited, firstly because it is precisely this reductionistic and fragmentary worldview that is linked directly to the escalation of global crises; and secondly, because the new science increasingly confirms the accuracy of a more holistic and interconnected understanding of life and nature.

“It’s all to do with evolution”, observed John Peterson as we sat in the lobby of the hotel where he was staying in London late last year. Peterson, founding director of the Arlington Institute in Washington DC, had agreed to meet with me during his visit to the UK to discuss their work on global crises. The Institute, set up in 1989, specialises in assessing global trends to make strategic forecasts about the future. “Humanity is on the verge of a precipice. All the trends in energy depletion, global warming and the markets show that we have very little time left. Either we’ll all just drop off the edge of that precipice, a precipice created by our own activities, or we’ll evolve into something that can take flight.” Peterson is not just a run-of-the-mill academic. In fact, ironically, he has a very conservative background. His government and political experience includes stints at the National War College, the Institute for National Security Studies, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council staff at the White House. After founding the Arlington Institute in 1989, he focused his efforts on futurism -- developing new concepts, processes and tools for anticipating the future and translating that knowledge into better present-day decisions.

Species that fail to adapt to the conditions of nature cannot survive. If we’re failing to adapt, and the evidence before our eyes -- the climate change, the economic crisis, the draining of natural resources – proves clearly that we’re failing to adapt, then this means that there’s something seriously wrong with our understanding of nature, and our fundamental modes of existence as a species. If we want to survive, then the theory of evolution needs to become more than a theory; it’s staring us point-blank in the face: We have to evolve.

For Peterson, maybe this is not just doom and gloom. As the only species that has ever been conscious of itself as a species, and therefore conscious of the possibility of extinction, if there is any species that might be able to save itself, it is us. “Humanity may well be at death’s door, but we are simultaneously facing an unprecedented opportunity to become something new, real, and perhaps even beautiful. Maybe this is nature’s way of letting us know it’s time for change? I’m not sure what that new human being might look like, but it will clearly have to involve a new set of ideas and values, a new way of looking at the world that respects life and nature, and a whole new way of life to go along with it.”

For the first time in human history, the imperative to move toward a social order based truly on popular participation, social justice as well as both material and spiritual well-being is not just a matter of choice; but a matter of the survival of the species.

So where do we start? If we’re talking about a programme of action, then such a programme can only begin at the source: our social relationship to nature. As communities, societies and nations, we relate to nature not simply through our ideas and perceptions of the world, but more pertinently in how those ideas and perceptions play out in the way we inhabit and make use of our environment. In other words, we need to ask, how does our understanding of nature link to the way we exploit nature? I use the term “exploit” here quite neutrally to simply mean how we extract materials and energy from the natural world in order to drive and develop our societies. Because underlying all our economic growth, industrial and informational technologies, and everyday commuter-consumer lifestyles is the point-blank fact of energy. The kinds of energy we depend on, and the manner in which we extract, distribute and utilize that energy, constitutes the life-blood of the financial circuits of exchange that are the substance of our economies.

We’ve already seen the extent to which our dependence on hydrocarbon energies, and our continuing neglect of viable renewable forms of energy and associated technologies, is self-defeating. Both global warming and peak oil are tied indelibly to our energy dependence. With all the data showing that both of these crises are set to spiral out of control within the next few decades, it’s clear that we need to go cold turkey on our oil addiction. The question, of course, is how do we do it? What are the alternative energy sources, and are they viable? And how would a post-carbon society look and function, politically and economically?

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