Problems that arise at one cultural level can only be resolved at a more comprehensive level. So, over time, there is a strong push to shift into a more embracing paradigm.
It now appears that we are living at the edge of a new worldview. It falls to each of us do our part to forge a new era for humanity.
If we are fortunate, our next phase will involve comprehending the fragility of our planet's ecosystems, a necessary experience of grief and remorse, a commitment to repair the damage we have already done, and a re-connection (through both faith and direct experience) with the Divine Life-force. If we are to survive, we must turn our attention to discovering how the human family can live sustainably and cooperatively on Earth.
In truth we have been on an epic journey. To review: approximately 2.5 million years were needed for our earliest ancestors to move from the first glimmerings of self-recognition to the initial stage of reflective consciousness. Individuality was overshadowed by membership in the tribe.
It then took some thirty thousand years to move through the era of hunter-gatherers. It took five thousand years to move through the stage of agrarian-based civilizations. This was followed by three hundred years during which a number of nations to travel through the stage of industrial civilization.
Throughout this time, both the rational mind and the development of the sense of separate ego have been strengthened; yet, this development has now hit a wall. The rational mind and egoic sense are encountering their own limits. Philip Mumford states:
"With the invention of the scientific method and the depersonalized procedures of modern technics, cold intelligence, which has succeeded as never before in commanding the energies of nature, already largely dominates every human activity" [Currently] we find scientific ideation and technical skill at the mercy of an infantile scheme of life, seeking extravagant, super-mechanisms of escape from the problems that [individuals and any] mature society must face."
Mumford also archly observes that - although no practical means for the disposal of nuclear waste has yet been found - the nations of the world continue to explore the widest possible exploitation of nuclear energy for military and peacetime uses: "These compulsive acts resolutely ignore the fact that errors committed through miscalculation or ignorance cannot be corrected."
He goes on to equate post-historic man with Herman Melville's obsessive Captain Ahab, who in a sudden moment of lucidity proclaims: "All my means are sane: my motives and object mad."
Mumford continues:
"Never before was man so free from nature's restrictions, but never before was he more the victim of his own failure to develop in any fullness, his own specifically human traits. This extreme state of post-historic rationalism [may very likely] carry to a further degree the paradox already visible"
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