GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS OR TECHNO FRENZY?
The global table is set. The quests have arrived. Deeper communion is imminent. For the first time in history nearly the entire citizenship of the globe can be in direct communication. Every thread of tradition is present at the table. A grand new set of choices of post industrial choices is available. For the first time, we can now begin to co-create the very first planetary-wide culture. How, then, shall we begin ?
Some would say we have a second renaissance in the making? The time is ripe. Can we move to a perspective that promotes conscious evolution ? Can we not focus now on social inventions that build on our technical inventions ? Can we say we are creating a new set of realities ?
Houston ....we have contact ! In a century rampant with wonderful technological inventions, with an especially wide range of communications tools, we have recently managed to connect the many cultures of our small planet. There are pervasive new tools like the internet, cellular phones, networked computers, pervasive inter-continental travel and the exchange of goods and services that bind us in new common culture. There is an unreported uprising at hand!
National borders and nation states themselves are just another of the very many ways we divide up the world and our responsibility for it.. And despite the momentum of the larger technically advanced countries, who have created the new mass connection we notice that they may not be the ones most qualified to create the civilization that can follow the contact. Technological excellence, per se, is not the only desirable end state available to us as a planet.
In spite of the many advances in all forms of life... many planetary citizens still wander about amidst the myriad changes around us, slightly dazed, and without much thought of how to set a new civilization into motion. We look around, and we see that the plagues and wars that were with us in the last millennium are still with us, albeit on a smaller scale. As a globe, we still need civilizing. Where's the toolkit?
If you listen to the heads of industrialized nations they would lead you to believe that the next great move is to build a global economy. To be sure, the foundations of fair trade can leaven the chances for peace at every level they are employed. For, as more responsible agreements for goods and services are more thoroughly shared among a greater distribution of the population, the chances for conflict decreases. But, peace like money, technology, and government does not a culture make, and that very same economic latticework and the infrastructure it fosters are now in a position to support a grander mix and first ever planetary civilization.
Something way richer than progress is potentially afoot. Why is it that only a few nations actually have a minister of culture and that is usually done to protect the culture of the past not assemble a thoughtful new one for the future. Isn't creating a culture a way more important outcome than creating an economic system. It is time to notice what forces are actually choosing our future ?
When you think of it the Steven Spielbergs of the world are constructing new social realities for us using a fantasy base. Developers also use imaginary themes but they blend functions in as well. Silicon valley will give us virtual communities where we can play together in a computer landscape where we will be in contact through avatar representations of ourselves on screen. You see this is all part of an emerging reality constructed by social architects who come from many fields.
So, how shall we begin ? If we want to purposefully construct a global culture, where do we start ? One thing is obvious, we can't just leave it to the larger institutions. Nations haven't proven up to the task. World government is not equipped to lead a more conscious, natural and spirited civilization. They could manage the infrastructure for it but large political organizations have proven themselves unable to generate a sufficiently dynamic vision for managing social advances.
We need to distribute the task. I propose that leaders everywhere practice social architecture. Yes, especially the captains of industry. For surely the business cultures we have are the most robust of our tribal entities. Once a reasonable set of perspectives and principles is organized, of course, anyone can participate...the more the better. Because of our wonderful communications infrastructure we are in a position to allow everyone to take a turn at being in charge. The key is in distributing a set of tools that intelligently build upon the industrial infrastructure we have managed to create.
But are we too late ? Is there enough pure culture left to work with? For example, is it too late to capture the best features of the past traditions...the ones fading from view? Interestingly enough, the last of the tribal cultures may be more tangible to most of us than ever before. They and their customs may actually be disappearing very rapidly but the camera coverage of their purest states is available to almost everyone on the planet and is incredibly reflective of their special contributions. Can you imagine not dancing around a real fire? Let's not degrade non-technical cultures who have essensual gifts for us.
We can still choose to stand up in our bodies with the quiet dignity of a Maasai warrior. We can breathe through our hearts like the mountain tribesfolk in the Himalayas. We can learn to roll laughter like Polynesians. We can extend our being out into the land like Australian aborigines. We can mix six very different but magical tastes in the same bowl like the Thais. We can rub noses like the Eskimos. These are just some states of being worth preserving. Our present day states of doing and having need not smother the nature bound treasure of experiencing life more directly.
Imagine a basic state of being like presence. The mind is clear of chatter. The breath goes deep into the belly. The center of awareness is four fingers below the navel. The world is available in every way. So, what do we create to allow such a basic state to be nourished in our everyday world? Then imagine a state of potential. There is spring in the thighs, with a brightness is in the countenance and a snorting good sense of the possible. These are just some of the states of being that could more completely fill our lives.
There is also a really interesting set of emerging cultural building-blocks in addition to states of being and ancient tribal practices. Modern inventions like full spectrum music and entertainment systems will allow a profound set of new sensory combinations that could constitute an improved incubator for the new culture. So we can have essence and excitement in choiceful settings. That is not to say that pop culture cannot play with ideas and textures in a less purposeful way.
The newly created social fabric could also celebrate unity with diversity ...consciously. A native American woman from the Tewa pueblo recently reminded us that the only reason to have a common language was to be able to share our differences and really appreciate them collectively. So, language will be a principle tool for social architects. Building new language allows us consciously to acquire new thinking.
This is not to say that culture cannot also be created from more spontaneously generated challenges. In fact, most probably the majority of cultural traditions we have today were generated in times of challenge and just stuck because of their timely poignancy.
Some say that culture "begins" when the organization "hits the wall". It is at these moments that raw truth surfaces. This is a time when the normal "political" bureauspeak must give way to something more bonedeep. We live in times when the culture in place does not meet the needs of the culture in transition.
And, yet this begs the question....what should we consciously aim to become in order to balance the present chaos with a little more harmony? Do we need to get out of the reactionary loop where we change just because the system we have...fails? Lets change because we know what we want to become.
For example, we could aim straight for collective states of grace. Yes, if we gathered the most magical events that have occurred and set them down together to constitute a pallet for the next millennium then we would begin by knowing we had aimed for the top...perhaps sought out our highest purpose.
Then there were the days when medieval leadership employed teams of artisans who tumbled, danced, acted the fool and told stories that very often suggested solutions to the problems at hand. Royalty also had heraldry departments at their disposal to color, crest, emblazon, and trumpet key ideas that needed propping up. Today's senior managers, the leaders of the planet's most potent tribes, have forgotten that these cultural tools are still available to them. So, culture can be also be shaped by an ancient set of cultural craftsworks.
Culture can occur naturally. Culture can also occur mindlessly like the cultures we find in modern corporations that are replete with standard corporate trappings copied from the industry at large and largely without deeper behavioral purpose. I am referring to suits, ties, office partitions, the latest pop hardware, power-point presentations, voicemail and flavor of the month customs that are dangerously close to being traditions.
This is not to say they are useless events. But, they are usually not selected because the leadership has thought through what kind of behavior they actually evoke. And now they are being unconsciously exported to other countries who think they are integral parts of business practice and not arbitrary cultural habits. Dragons beware!
It seems as if we're sort of stumbling our way into a planetary civilization. The same is true of our leading corporate tribes. It's as if the management science business with its control bias, has usurped our capacity to expand our thinking about life.
A trance of productivity over culture began, I believe, in a very seductive way with the organizational charts created for the army just before WWII. Yes, the army had not fielded more than a division or two since WWI. All of a sudden, almost one hundred divisions needed fielding. The war department called upon two social scientists to handle the dilemma of introducing so many untrained officers into a situation more complex than they were trained for. The solution was to build a span of control diagram that would discipline the structure so that each officer was responsible for no more than three other officers in the chain of command. It was a pure control issue.
Interestingly enough that little military line and box convention ... the org chart... became the corporate building block for the organizations created after the war. Can you imagine the difference it would have made if they had chosen the circle as a diagram ? It had been used for centuries by tribal groupings deciding upon matters of war and other concerns ?
What's so shocking is that nobody has seriously reinvented that basic tool embodied in a diagram. That's because current civilization is visually semi-literate. Maybe better said...they don't realize that symbols are as easily changed as are words. Body posture is a complete language and images especially with primary relationships suggested are a complete language system. The thought that words are the only language on the earth worth reckoning with is a perfect example of sacred cows in action. What of mythology? Art?
It would be a shame if the conventions suggested on this journey became tyrannies instead of principles. It is possible for customs and traditions to become obligations. Some say the French, for example, are over-civilized. So, beware the new social invention that becomes a status symbol and then an obligation.
We have actually eliminated work as the industrial age promised and now we complain because there aren't enough jobs in the workplace. Is this a mindless loop ? Social architecture is here to help reinvent more life...not more work.
So, as an introduction to the need to have a social architecture for the creation of a meaningful planetary civilization, this may have bruised your tissues bit. But, hopefully we are going to move to a stage where we take responsibility for our creative gifts and not just relinquish the magic to another completely arbitrary set of previously appropriate conventions. We can wake up to our responsibility as creators of culture. Where the hell is our spiritual courage ?
So, here we go! As many have intimated, like Einstein ....we can't get
out of the situation we created with the same mindset we used to create
our present state. So prepare yourself for the tools of disassembly as
well as the tools of reassembly. Social architecture has arrived. Please
add to this toolchest. Our civilization awaits.
CHALLENGE
The introduction to this journey
is over. Should you now wish to gain the specific skills and unique
perspectives suggested...stay with us.
