One Crisis

MIND SHIFT: A gap in our thinking hides the basic nature of reality. Language, vision and "objectivity" make it easy to think of the world as separate things, people, places and events; and they make it hard to see how everything is related. We have lost our sense of relationship - connectedness - to each other and to the earth.

MIND SHIFT: The essence of life and mind, and a gap in our thinking. Our idea of time is very different from our experience in time. Thinking detaches us from the reality of this real present moment. We have no clear mental picture of the pace of our lives, the speed of natural change, or the momentum of industrial culture.

MIND SHIFT: Habitual thinking imagines only the narrowest possibilities. Obsolete thinking denies possibilities exist. We can't predict change with memory or wishful thinking, but we think we can. If we can't imagine the worst case, we drop our guard. If we can't imagine the best, we'll never try to create it.

MIND SHIFT: Human civilization is crossing a historic and dangerous threshold. But the evidence that should be obvious has not crossed the threshold of our attention. Information has to cross two thresholds to make us think, but we don't know what they are.

ISSUE: The wars on Iraq and "terror" are just the newest and ugliest symptoms of the larger crisis. The Iraq War is an environmental war; the US NeoCons waged it to control an environmental resource (oil) and a geographical region. What we call terrorism is simply the "blowback" to sixty years of US foreign policy mistakes. Did you know? The US overthrew lawful and popular governments, in both Iraq and Iran, in the 1950s and 60s.

ISSUE: It's hard to find meaningful and rewarding employment in an economy based on War and Waste, run by an obscenely Wealthy elite. This is not free-market capitalism. It is outlaw capitalism run amok. If we are to survive the crash of this lemon economy, we have to design a new model fast.

ISSUE: In a free, democratic culture, education is the essential foundation for decision-making and for a critical understanding of information. The squeeze on public funding cuts two ways: when War, Waste and Wealth consume so much money, education becomes "too expensive;" and an educated population would only question, and eventually reject, such an insane system.

ISSUE: The immigration conflict, like most of the employment problems in the US, is a direct result of the failed "free-trade" policies started by the Clinton administration and put on steroids by the Bush gang. Most illegal immigrants have been forced to flee their local economies, now devastated by GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.

ISSUE: This one goes deeper than the wells. The global environmental crisis is an outgrowth of at least three forces: our individual need for physical power, the corruption of political power and the side effects of the industrialization that links personal power to global warming.

ISSUE: As the Bioneers say: in the coming years the environment will emerge as the central issue facing the human species. All other issues will correctly be seen as contributing to or coming from environmental issues; even human rights struggles will organize around our children's right to a sustainable planet.

ISSUE: ALL OF THE ABOVE: All the crises RELATE to the ENVIRONMENT or to HUMAN RIGHTS, and to the exercise of corrupt POWER and WEALTH. The COMPLEXITY and SPEED of the many developing crises make the larger picture harder to see, and the necessary solutions harder to imagine. Each crisis affects the others. Their combined threat becomes truly catastrophic. All the INFORMATION and tools we need to transform our economy and our culture are at hand. But our DENIAL blinds us to the CRITICAL STATE, and to the need for radical change. CLOSE.

ARGUMENT: MANY CRISES IN ONE: The word has begun to lose its meaning. Fear mongering and fake ALERTS make us irrationally FEARFUL, or numb, or cynical about their RELATIVE significance. Real threats are dismissed as "alarmist," "hysterical," "unbelievable." Technological revolutions with global consequences expand FASTER than experts can evaluate, or governments regulate. Population, water, climate, agriculture, and money interests are locked in an apocalyptic battle that is MISSING from the news and TABOO in the public conversation. We should be talking about the rapidly approaching Meta-Crisis. The US is the driving force in this collision of crises, but most Americans remain oblivious or in DENIAL. It is here in the US that a MIND SHIFT is most essential and urgent, yet it is here that resistance to change is greatest. EINSTEIN suggests we face "significant problems," that we can "solve" them, but that it will require us to THINK at a different LEVEL. Can we contemplate or IMAGINE what that would mean? Your answer to that question will reveal your ability, or your willingness, to participate in this discussion. CLOSE.

ARGUMENT: SEVEN REVOLUTIONS: Human civilization is in the middle of at least five global revolutions that we don't recognize or discuss as such. Industrial-technological, social, political, economic and information revolutions are transforming the planet, and our RELATIONSHIPS to it, faster than we can measure, understand or control. These five revolutions are triggering a sixth, a revolution in the condition of the global ENVIRONMENT. A SEVENTH REVOLUTION, in thinking, will come inevitably, one of two ways: 1. in hindsight as civilization skids into the chaotic meta-crisis we have made for ourselves, wondering "how did we NOT see this coming?"; or 2. consciously, intentionally, collaboratively if we can simply understand the INFORMATION surrounding us, and decide to adjust our thinking before it's too late. see ARGUMENTS. CLOSE.

Every time a new "crisis" is announced, it's urgently stated, "we have to THINK DIFFERENTLY about this." But no mention of how to get out of habitual and obsolete thinking. Beyond asking more questions and a willingness to admit mistakes, what would it mean to "think differently"? THINKING, IMAGINATION, MIND SHIFT, PARADIGM SHIFT. CLOSE.

THINKING / LEVELS: Flexible thinking can begin to free us from the habitual and obsolete, from self-deception and the potent power of the unconscious. Flexible thinking balances a knowledge of history with an open sense of possibility in the present; it plans logically but it tries to imagine unintended consequences, both short and long term.

THINKING / LEVELS: Thinking gives us a measure of rational control of ourselves and the world. This power leads us to rely too heavily on conventions and familiar patterns of thought. Mindsets, stubbornness, prejudice, "taking for granted": mental habits like these constrain the future to conform to our limited expectations.

THINKING / LEVELS: Our world is changing so fast - faster than our individual lives in many cases - that our thinking cannot keep up. Safety regulations can't keep up with technological change; we adapt to new tools and media without noticing their side-effects; events accelerate and information about them is delayed or missing; life and death decisions are made too late. The rules have changed. The revolutions of the last hundred years will take a whole new mindset to manage ... if we are to give our children a sustainable world.

PARADIGM SHIFT: We need a widespread and rapid change in the way we human beings think about our relationships with each other and with the planet. Rule 1 of Globalization is "IT'S A GLOBE!" We have to figure out how to share it with each other in peace and sustain it, and we have to do it fast.