Slightly off topic: The Importance of Enlightenment

[GliderGuider]

This article started out in life as a response in an unlikely discussion of enlightenment on Jay Hansen's "Killer Ape Peak Oil" Yahoo group. Jay is a firm believer in scientism, so that explains the tone of the article.

The Importance of Enlightenment

I'm going to muse a bit about why I think personal enlightenment is an important, perhaps even crucial, response to the crisis of civilization.

Here are my assumptions:

• What we face is a predicament, not a problem. Problems have solutions, predicaments don't.
  
• Humans have a "triune brain", composed of a reptilian complex, a limbic system and a neocortex, each of which is involved with different aspects of the human experience.
  
• Human group behaviour is largely a product of unconscious, limbic-mediated herding instincts.
  
• Some individuals have sufficient charisma and access to mass communications to induce herding behaviour in the rest of the population.
  
• It's only in those leading individuals that "reason" or anything like it might shape the herd outcome.
  
• However, most leaders do not reason. They operate mostly out of their reptilian-complex instincts, so the herding behaviour they promote will serve their personal r-complex needs for dominance, status, survival and mating.
  
• For those few who have the opportunity and ability to become herd leaders, the rewards for the r-complex are so strong that it will not permit behaviour that might jeopardize the rewards. The leader sees no reason to change a successful strategy that fulfills the deepest needs of the organism.

Personal enlightenment (in the Buddhist sense I use) is aimed at reducing the control of the reptilian and limbic brains over personal responses and behaviour. It attempts to do this by increasing our cortical awareness of the influences of the other two thirds of the triune brain. Increasing that awareness allows the neocortex to detect and consciously intervene in otherwise unconscious responses. It's not put this way in the Buddhist lexicon of course, but those are the results I've seen. To a greater or lesser extent, it works that way in everyone who has had an awakening or enlightenment experience (and especially among those who have followed it up with continued inner work aimed at strengthening that ability).

Enlightenment of this kind is not a change of attitudes toward compassion, altruism, cooperation or any other "enlightened" values. That shift of values is a result of the awakening, not its cause or essence.

It's vanishingly unlikely that this sort of enlightenment will be pursued by those in power. As I said before, they have no incentive to do so, and their reptilian complex will actively discourage it. For someone who is not in power however, there is an incentive to pursue this kind of enlightenment.

It gives them more ability to chart their own course, and reduces their susceptibility to being herded. As a result they may be able to accomplish more of their own goals. Of course the level of awakening varies enormously from person to person, but even people who simply develop a light green environmental awareness have brushed against it.

One thing I have observed is that awakening is not necessarily an unpredictable and uncontrollable event. There are techniques that facilitate it. I've experienced it, and have seen it work in much the same way in most others who go through he same program I did. It's still an experiential process that is much more of an art form than a science, but I have seen it work. And of course, many people are awakening in the time-honoured tradition – spontaneously, in response to a crisis whose perception has both limbic and cortical components.

The question that arises immediately is, "So what?" So some individuals are experiencing this awakening – they are still trapped in the cultural and biophysical systems that are part of the problem, and have no ability to change that.regardless of their level of enlightenment. Why should we waste our time thinking about such things? My answer is two-fold.

First, as far as I can tell there is no top-down solution to our predicament. There is no chance that globally ameliorating legislation will be enacted, or that the herd of people sleep-walking towards the cliff will spontaneously cast off their triune yokes and become rational actors. Efforts to bring this about through education or persuasion are, in my opinion, doomed from the outset. As a result, if we are to think about and do useful things, those things must come from some other domain.

My second reason for giving such an idea the time of day is that human culture is an emergent phenomenon. It emerges from the dynamic interplay of human actions, which in turn stem from the complex interactions of the three parts of our brain. I've come to understand recently that our culture is a complex adaptive system that exhibits self-organized criticality. One characteristic of such systems is that they go through periodic phase changes, reversals or other discontinuities (colloquially called "tipping points"), driven solely by the internal dynamics of the system. Within such a system, changes in the behaviour of a small percentage of the low-level components can have dramatic influences on the overall system behaviour.

Given all of the above, here's how I think it might work. First, a growing number of people start to wake up. They form into small affinity groups that reinforce the individual shifts in values and behaviour that resulted from their awakening. Over time, the limbic herding instinct will bring in more individuals to share those new traits. I believe this is precisely what's happening with the mushrooming number of environmental, social justice and spiritual groups identified by Paul Hawken in his book "Blessed Unrest".

At some undetermined and indeterminable point there will be enough of a change at the lowest level to cause a discontinuity in the behaviour of the system as a whole, kind of like a stock market reversal that happens organically when enough people have become convinced to change their trading direction. At that point, the ordering power of the guardian institutions will be overwhelmed in some undetermined and indeterminable manner, and things will change in some undetermined and indeterminable new direction.

Now that doesn't mean that we humans will magically stop listening to our reptilian and limbic brains. What it does mean is that there is a growing number of people who are trying to recognize and ignore the unconscious orders of those parts of their brains. That, coupled with the unpredictable shift in the direction of human culture that has been precipitated by those same individuals, means that we might have a chance at continued existence. And a chance is all we have ever had, or had any right to ask.

[E_Pluribus_Unitarian]

1. Recommend

I don't have enough posts (on my new username) to recommend this...but I do anyway. Thanks!

[GliderGuider]

2. What a cool and clever username!

Thanks for the meta-rec :-)

[tom_paine]

4. Welcome to DU and let me also congratulate you on a great moniker!

:toast:

[tom_paine]

3. Personal Enlightenment is very important, indeed, Paul. Only one problem.

Throughout the recorded history of us semi-intelligent primates, with some small, brief exceptions (VERY small and VERY brief, relative to the whole of 5000 years of recorded history and all peoples everywhere), any sign of Enlightenment has been a signal to the other primates to harass, beat and/or murder those showing signs of it.

Is it any wonder we are where we are now, considering this almost constant process of selection throughout history.

Show enlightenment, get killed. Maybe harassed and then beaten and then killed.

Talk about "natural" selection!

I hate to be the pessimist, in fact I am but a realist. It's human history that is pessimistic.

Hell, even now in spite of Obama's election, one can see the old pattern getting ready to reestablish itself if and when times get really rough and order breaks down.

In all likelihood, the brief "exception" period in which we have lived our lives (at least in the American Empire, though I suspect Canada is not immune either) is coming to a close.

Nowadays, people showing enlightenment only lose their jobs or suffer minor harrassments compared to the beatings and murders of the past. Not for much longer, perhaps 50 years, I prophesy. maybe considerably sooner, depending on how fast TSHTF.

I'd like to be wrong about this, but 99% of all of human history argues that I am right. Who knows? Maybe I am a pessimist and I am wrong about the future, which will look tiresomely like the past as we slide back down the "right side" of the cheap energy Age of Oil bell curve.

Slavery will probably be coming back, too, because the Aristocracy will once again need people-power to move their sedan-chairs. That may be a century or two away. Again, much of it depends on how fast TSHTF.

[GliderGuider]

5. The way I look at it is,

We all need something to do while we wait for the Apocalypse. I choose to do this, and encourage others to try it as well. If it works out, great. If it doesn't, at least we'll have spent our time doing something interesting and useful that felt good at the same time.

If you feel so moved, read up on the Elliot Wave theory and the outgrowth field of socionomics. Socionomics addresses herding behaviour and self-organizing social systems with special attention paid to fractals and the Fibonacci series. For the first time I understand why hem lines track the Dow Jones average. Robert Prechter is one of the current stars of the field -- I'm most of the way through his 1999 book "The Wave Principle of Human Social Behaviour". Illuminating stuff!

[LaurenG]

7. I understand what you're saying but "show enlightenment, get killed"

is passe anymore. Too many people recognize that the way to change is through self (having a leader who does the same does help tremendously.) The situation that you describe above has been discussed in depth by several well known authors as well as groups of people all over the world. The fact that people are conscious of "hive" mentality is giving hope that the tribal mind has taken a dive. It's simple to see that reasonable people versus republicans are playing this out right in front of us all the time.

It may be that independents/greens/dems are only a bit less driven by tribal mind than republicans but still the quantum leap has occurred as is evident by the people of the world coming up against the unenlightened dregs who are being toppled and fought against the world over.

[XemaSab]

34. If you think people on the left aren't herd thinkers

you got more thinking to do.

And it's the case for ALL positions on the liberal spectrum.

[Psychic Consortium]

10. Times are changing. We will become a more advanced civilization.

It will happen.

[tinrobot]

6. Great article...

Really hits the nail on the head.

A global shift in consciousness is really the only way out of this mess. All the climate legislation in the world won't make a damn bit of difference if people keep acting out of ego rather than awareness...

[HamdenRice]

8. Yet another right wing screed about the environment guaranteed, if followed, to lead to no solution

It is sad that so many people who think they are progressive and concerned about the environment adopt this kind of right wing, anti-democratic thinking that, whether intended or not, completely avoids issues of political economy, corporate power, or the possibility of democratic, humane and human intelligence addressing our most pressing issues.

So putting aside the Buddhist rhetoric, and parsing the actual analysis, what does the article in the OP say?

It says our current environmental predicament is caused by our lizard brains. In other words, we (actually they -- the mob, the commoners, those not "in the know" enough to be reading such articles) don't have the brain power or cognitive ability to recognize the trouble we're in and how to get out of it. People are a "herd," rather than autonomous thinking individuals.

How to get out of this? Meditate. Become enlightened.

If "we" (the elite in the know) meditate, then perhaps "we" (the dumb herd masses) will simply change direction, like an unthinking school of fish changing direction or a stampeding herd of cattle that simply stops.

Notice, in ascribing blame or cause for the looming environmental catastrophe, where the OP specifically does not lay blame or ascribe cause and effect:

Exxon. Royal Dutch Shell. The Republican Party. Neo-conservatives. Fox News.

You get the picture. Screeds of this genre are devoid of political economy. There are no corporate chieftains willing to destroy the planet in order reap massive salaries and bonuses. There is no system of campaign finance that bribes political leaders to go along with them. George Bush didn't forestall action on global warming because his family and entire circle of friends were invested in oil companies; it was because "most leaders" can't think, but "operate mostly out of their reptilian-complex instincts". Yet looking at one's stock portfolio to determine what environmental initiatives to block would seem to take a higher level of cognition than that of a lizard.

Notice also that the OP, in saying that our problem is primarily centered in the brain, which is to say primarily cognitive, is blatantly counter-factual and therefore a kind of fairy tale.

If the theory in the OP were true, "we" (even the elite in the know) would not be able to see that global warming was occurring, nor what steps need to be taken to avert it. It wouldn't just be that powerful vested interests try to obfuscate the problem, buy and disseminate fake science, and stymie the political process, it would be that we actually would not be able to understand our predicament.

But "we" (even those of us in the herd) do actually understand our predicament. So the brain explanation can't be true. The majority of people, even those of the "herd", know exactly what is wrong and what needs to be done.

But our political economy is such that the will of the majority isn't being carried out. So a political economy approach would be to say we need to change our politics, unite in democratic action and hold corporate and political power accountable, rather than sit in our rooms alone and meditate. This, after all, is how every major improvement in human history of the last several centuries has occurred.

By contrast, the OP's approach is more right wing than even George H.W. Bush's, because when Bush the First advocated dismantling the social safety net, he at least also advocated voluntary organizations taking its place ("1000 points of light"). The OP by contrast advocates one point of light hidden under a basket in a solitary room -- which prescription for action, if adopted, of course, would free corporate power to run rampant over the planet while we individuals sat in our rooms waiting for enlightenment.

The real give away in the OP screed, which shows what a bunch of libertarian nonsense it is, is this line: that there is "no top-down solution to our predicament. There is no chance that globally ameliorating legislation..." That of course contradicts 100 years of progressive activism which came to see the democratic state -- specifically educated, politicized masses (energized precisely by what the OP dismisses as mere "education and persuasion") electing representative officials to pass progressive legislation -- as the only alternative to corporate greed and rapaciousness, or what John Kenneth Galbraith called in the 1960s, "countervailing power": Big government and big unions and big consumer groups as the counterweight to big business.

In other words the very core of most progressive movements and ideologies of the left, from Marx, to the European Social Democrats and Democratic Socialists, to the American progressive era, to the New Deal, to the civil rights movement advocated getting control of the state and "legislating" "top down" to the corporations, as well as assorted bigots, corrupt officials, and lower level autocrats.

Thankfully, this kind of nonsense is self-containing. Most people who are "educated and persuaded" about global environmental and development issues tend to be moved to collective civic action, rather than the inaction that the OP would promote.

[Astrad]

9. I think you make some good points BUT

I also think the OP's perspective originates in a generalized skepticism in revolutionary political processes. Time and again we see that radical political changes in a state inevitably bring about the same conditions of exploitation that they were intended to replace. It's not by coincidence that the progressive advancements mostly in the 'Western' world were concomitant with colonial expansion. By offshoring exploitation elsewhere (and expanding the pie) it became possible for elites to throw a few crumbs to the unruly masses at home.

[GliderGuider]

13. Well said.

The fact that revolutions are always followed by the eventual reappearance of some variation of the original problem should tell us that the "real problem" isn't just political.

[GliderGuider]

12. Some comments in response

I'm not sure why you object so strongly to people taking different approaches to the problems we are all facing. I don't think there is one sole correct approach to any problem, especially one as complex as the intertwined ecological, social, economic and energy challenges the world is facing right now. I've always believed that having a multitude of perspectives on an issue enriches an investigation and improves the ultimate response.

Your reaction isn't entirely unexpected though, and contains a good summary of the traditional progressive position. I'll address some of your points, in the hopes of clarifying my position a little more.

First, the accusation that my position is "right-wing" is without merit. I adopt a different perspective than you do, but the simple fact that it's different doesn't mean it's right wing. For that to be true, your position would have to be the canonical left-wing position, so that any deviation from it would automatically be to the right. It's kind of like you see yourself standing at the North Pole, and anyone who moves away from you is automatically going South. You do have a position, but it's not a polar one.

I would describe the perspective I take in this article as orthogonal to the left-right dichotomy. I'm attempting to look at the situation in such a way that the conclusions are independent of the political stance one takes, in the hopes that any solutions that present themselves will be applicable regardless of the political milieu in vogue at the moment. That of course means that the hard right will see me as hopelessly left-wing and the hard left may see me as hopelessly right wing. Such is life.

Notice, in ascribing blame or cause for the looming environmental catastrophe, where the OP specifically does not lay blame or ascribe cause and effect:

Exxon. Royal Dutch Shell. The Republican Party. Neo-conservatives. Fox News.

The problem as I see it is that the villains of the piece are fungible. Before Exxon we had the Dutch East India Company. Fox News plays the same role as the yellow journalists of the Hearst era during the Spanish American War. The American Republican party is just the modern version of the Spanish Falange. The neoconservatives are the reprise of every autocratic, monarchist oligopoly throughout history.

There is no question that they are all antithetical to liberal, humane values. Though they need to be reined in, the fundamental problem isn't with these specific organizations. If any or all of them were to implode or be abolished, other similar organizations would simply rise to take their place. The reason is that the underlying cultural matrix supports the worldview that they need to flourish, and the disappearance of one creates a vacuum that another one will rush to fill.

My point is that these sorts of organizations (what I call the guardian institutions) defend the culture they have created so well that ordinary people down to the assembly lines and checkout lines believe their world view is reasonable and even inevitable. The idea that it's not a reasonable world view for the average person is hard to get across because of organizations like Exxon and Fox News, but simply smashing Exxon and Fox won't solve the problem if their role is taken up by others. What's needed is some way to wake people up to the idea that the prevailing cultural world view isn't in their interest, despite the noise of the system telling them that it is. It's there that the awakening or enlightenment process I champion has a role to play.

Notice also that the OP, in saying that our problem is primarily centered in the brain, which is to say primarily cognitive, is blatantly counter-factual and therefore a kind of fairy tale.

In fact I don't say the problem is cognitive, I say precisely the opposite. The problem arises because the non-rational messsages we get from our reptilian and limbic brains are so powerful that they overwhelm our cognitive processes. This is where climate change denial comes from. People have plenty of information about climate change, but they refuse to believe it. The reason is that the information is processed by the neocortex, but the emotional reactions are provided by sections of the brain that don't participate in the reasoning process. When you say, "The majority of people, even those of the "herd", know exactly what is wrong and what needs to be done," it's true, as far as it goes. However, your approach doesn't address the fundamental conundrum, "If we know what needs to be done, why aren't we doing it?"

In light of all that, more information isn't going to solve the problem. We need to find some way to keep the unconscious, emotional reactions of the r-complex and the limbic system from interfering with the more subdued cortical response to the information. The enlightenment process can help with that, and can in fact turn people into more rational (i.e. reasoning rather than reactive) creatures.

I'm not out to make you wrong. I agree that Exxon, Fox, the GOP and the American Enterprise Institute are anti-human organizations, to be resisted and if possible abolished. However, I'd like to probe a little deeper to see if there is some way we might avoid simply having to deal with a new parcel of rogues if that were to happen. Why have we created a global culture in which such organizations play key roles? I've followed that question back into the structure of the human brain. You may not like my conclusions, but I assure you they are anything but right wing.

[tinrobot]

20. Another way to sum it up -- it's about fear.

The conservatives, and particularly Fox News, love playing to people's fears because it works. On the flip side, many liberal organizations and environmentalists also play to fear, though not as overtly.

Fears originate in that primitive part of the brain - the part that drives the ego and creates a self-centered worldview. Those who are ruled by fear don't act with the proper intent needed to make change stick, because the next fear-inducing screed will just make them herd in another direction. Fear is reactionary, not proactive.

Fear is based on the selfish desire to survive, and not just physical survival, but the survival of the ego as well. When people's beliefs or worldviews are threatened with extinction, many will act as if they're facing death. They're not facing death, however, only their egos are facing death.

We need to step away from fear and act with more compassion. Instead of looking out strictly for ourselves which is essentially fear-based, we need to act out of compassion for all and take the entire human race and planet into consideration.

As someone who does meditate, I will say that my experience has been that moving towards a higher level of awakening significantly reduces fear and increases compassion. For that reason alone, I think awakening is of great value to all. Awakening may not come through meditation, however, because there are many paths to enlightenment. Whatever form or path awakening takes will be good.

[GliderGuider]

22. +1

:thumbsup:

[joshcryer]

16. Oh, I agree with a bottom up / grassroots approach. But I don't see much on offering in the essay.

There's nothing there other than a spiritualist motivation without any concrete details. The problems don't just fix themselves.

[pscot]

29. Political economy is the tobaggan

we are all riding down the slippery slope. Political economy got us where we are today. Political economy is what stands in the way of ameliorating legislation. If you really think there's a countervailing public will that yearns for a solution to the problem of global warming, I suggest you head down to your neighborhood tavern and strike up a discussion about the need for higher energy taxes. Be ready to duck.

[joshcryer]

11. The author is using their primitive brain if they cannot think of solutions to our problem.

And that makes the author, in my mind, part of the problem, and experiencing the same symtpoms he accuses others of having.

[GliderGuider]

14. As I said above

We all know what we have to do, so why aren't we doing it? That's the really interesting question to me: Why aren't we doing it? You may not like the answers I've come up with, but that's OK. Asking the question is the first step on the road to awakening.

[joshcryer]

15. We aren't doing it because technology is not emancipated enough yet.

We will do it in due time. You can sit idly by waiting for collapse, which would usher in far more destruction than current industrialism. If you think it's bad now, wait until oil runs out and people are cutting trees down for warmpth. Wait until people start hunting whales again for oil. Fun times.

It doesn't take that many people to put environmentally friendly technologies in the hands of the masses, the key is to make it "more affordable" than current technology. People buy gasoline because it is a relatively cheap mode of transport and because their cities are designed to facilitate petrol usage. Start building your own communities that are self-sufficient, able to use technology without negatively impacting the environment.

Don't sit idly by hoping for something the article itself is guilty of doing, essentially nothing.

The author writes, "Efforts to bring this about through education or persuasion are, in my opinion, doomed from the outset." Agreed. Actions speak louder than words. You can only learn to do by doing.

But then the author writes, "Over time, the limbic herding instinct will bring in more individuals to share those new traits. I believe this is precisely what's happening with the mushrooming number of environmental, social justice and spiritual groups identified by Paul Hawken in his book "Blessed Unrest"."

So which is it? Persuasion doesn't work but it does?

I think we can be persuasive and I think we can coerce the masses into being environmentally friendly (even from their own self-interested point of view). But I don't think we can do it through the abstract non-solutions proposed by the original author.

The closest thing we have is The Zeitgeist Movement: http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/

And even it has its problems. But at least these are *actors* and not "players" who want to just ride along. They're trying their best to build their own technologically based communities that can be self-sufficient and able to meet the needs of the modern human without negatively impacting the environment.

I don't agree entirely with TZM, but it's a heck of a sight better than the other claptrap I hear from the "environmentalist" movement.

Don't get me started on Derrick Jensen.

[GliderGuider]

17. There is lots we could be doing without waiting for the emancipation of technology. Why aren't we?

You say:

So which is it? Persuasion doesn't work but it does?

The kind of "education and persuasion" I was referring to is cognitive. As long as there is an opposing message coming up unrecognized from the r-complex and limbic brain, cognition will lose. The herding I mentioned in connection with the the activist groups is a very different animal. It doesn't depend on knowledge, it's triggered either by a positive emotional response or by a deep-seated feeling that by doing this one's status will be enhanced (i.e. one is joining a group that is gaining power). The cortex will dress all this up post-facto as it normally does, to make it look as though the information was what did it. In fact the information was there all along waiting for an emotional trigger to activate the behavioural change.

I've noticed the accusation of "doing nothing" has come up a couple of times, here and elsewhere. Awakening is just one of the things a person may do during their growth. In many ways its similar to going to school -- anything that changes one's understanding of the world or oneself will cause changes in behaviour. Think of my position as one of encouraging people to go to school (i.e. pursue enlightenment) so that they will become more effective human beings. I don't see that as useless inaction, I see it as promoting a powerful lever for change.

Who mentioned Jensen?

[joshcryer]

18. I showed you a link with people who are doing those things.

Simply changing ones mindset is not going to do jack squat. You can't "intellectually grow your way" out of not using industrial pesticides and fertalizers in agriculture, you have to invent things like greenhouses that don't waste as much water (much of agricultural water evaporates away), you have to invent (or improve upon) hydroponic or aeroponic growth methods. Alternatives. Not status quo, not current methodology.

Basic behavior isn't going to change. People need to eat. 6 billion of them, in fact. You either figure out ways to feed them or you announce your support of depotism. (ie, Jensen)

[GliderGuider]

19. You seem to want to talk about Derrick Jensen.

????

[joshcryer]

21. That's the view I am getting here.

Are you saying the essay suggests more than that?

[GliderGuider]

23. What aspects of Jensen's philosophy do you see expressed in my essay?

My take on Jensen is that he's well out to the ecodefense/monkeywrenching end of the anarcho-primitivist spectrum, which is a position I investigated just long enough to reject it.

I do use anarcho-primitivist ideas as expressed by John Zerzan and Daniel Quinn to inform my critique of how civilization got to the state it has. However, I feel A-P has nothing useful to say about where we might be heading, should be heading, or how we should get there. Also, A-P is just one school of thought that I have investigated in my quest. Others include Charles Eisenstein's thoughts on dualism and separation (which dovetail nicely with the triune brain model), Gandhi's thoughts on non-violence and being the change, various Deep Ecologists, and a variety of thinkers like William Catton, Garrett Hardin, Thomas Berry, Stuart Kauffmann, Robert Prechter etc.

In terms of influence on my thinking, Jensen is way down the list.

[joshcryer]

26. Jensen speaks of a similar awakening. In fact, you cannot join his website forums...

...without having agreed to the general premise (to be banned immediately upon disagreeing).

The basic idea is that if you don't "believe in a certain perspective of the world" then something is inherently "wrong" with you.

In the end the real parallel between the essay and Jensen's writings is that neither offer alternatives or solutions. The end result is a do nothing attitude that accepts the end of the world as something which only true believers can survive.

[GliderGuider]

28. That's it?

Pretty flimsy, no? Lots of people have awakened and have posted general analyses of the reason for the state of affairs on the intertubes. We're not all Derrick Jensen. If you don't like my approach to things, you won't hurt my feelings by ignoring me.

[joshcryer]

30. Well, I thihnk it's paramount that progressives don't go down this same road of inaction.

I think we have an opportunity here, to show how the current methodology is wrong and how it is destroying us slowly but surely. When I read insubstantial claptrap I feel compelled to make my opinion known.

[GliderGuider]

32. So, does that risk make exploring avenues like this illegitimate in your view?

To you and some others what I'm exploring seems like "insubstantial claptrap", while to others it seems to be a valuable alternative perspective. It's all in how we each interpret the world internally. Try thinking of it this way: "When I read what I feel is insubstantial claptrap I feel compelled to make my opinion known."

When I catch myself saying things like that I always ask myself two questions. The first is, "Is my inner state colouring my reaction and causing me to feel it's insubstantial claptrap?" The second is, "Why do I feel compelled to make my opinion known?"

I ask myself the first question out of the conviction that my reactions, no matter how strong they may be, are not a measure of Objective Truth -- me feeling that something is claptrap doesn't make it so. I ask the second question out of the certainty that my compulsions have little to do with saving the world, and a lot to do with validating my sense of self by insisting that others share my beliefs.

I find that when I ask myself those questions I'm more likely to open up enough to hear what others are saying rather than just hearing my own reactions. It was very difficult for me to do that at first, because I had very strong beliefs -- just read some of the earlier articles on my web site to see just how strong they were. I have found that the more I practice this reflex, the more productive my discussions become, and the more I learn.

[joshcryer]

33. What do you expect the result of this enlightenment phase would look like?

Let's go best case scenario. Everyone becomes enlightened. What then? What would things look like?

[GliderGuider]

35. One thing I've learned about the future

is that no matter what you expect, it never looks like that. Could the thinkers of the original Age of Enlightenment have predicted American suburban blight? Not likely, but it's the direct descendant of Enlightenment ideas. Fortunately, so is the United Nations.

My deepest wish is that spreading personal enlightenment would result in a systemic awareness our our interconnection with the other species, an acceptance of responsibility for our actions towards them, a moderation of our personal demands from the Earth and its biosphere, and a strengthening of the movement back to human-scale communities.

A lot depends on how fast the awareness spreads. If Paul Hawkens' assessment of the global growth in environmental and social justice groups is correct (about 60% per year over the last 5 years), and if the spread of awakening serves to underpin a similar growth rate for another 10 years, it's conceivable that by 2020 that social movement could consist of up to a billion people. That's way more than enough to create the conditions for a social tipping point, since with that kind of penetration the herding of the rest of the population into that position would be irresistible. By the way, The Zeitgeist Movement you linked to earlier is a perfect illustration of the kind of groups this movement is made up of -- they don't need to have awakening or enlightenment as a stated goal, by their very nature they are part of the awakening.

The outcome of such a shift is utterly unknowable, because it would represent a true social discontinuity. The potential impact could be far greater than any specific technology or new set of environmental regulations -- the force of the entire human population working voluntarily toward a harmonious outcome would be enormous.

Now that's a pretty Utopian view, and I still have enough residual cynicism not to expect anything quite so halcyon. The guardian institutions of the current culture are tremendously powerful, and they will do anything and everything in their power to oppose such a shift. In addition, if a collapse gets going in earnest it could derail the whole thing, as people retrench in self-interest under authoritarian leaders selected and supported by the oligarchy.

In all likelihood the situation will aggregate out somewhere between these two poles, as things usually do. We might see a world in which pockets of progressivism were mingled with regions mired in the most dire misery, with the boundaries between them in a constant state of flux. This could happen, for example, as a result of geographic fragmentation brought on by a collapse in the transportation infrastructure, and the stability of such a situation would depend entirely on where the boundaries between the fragments fell.

So there's no way of telling how it will work out, but in my opinion the potential upside is far too great to ignore. We're talking about the inherent leverage of large numbers here, which is why I don't see my Quixotic quest to encourage enlightenment to be useless inaction or insubstantial claptrap.

[tinrobot]

24. It's not all about technology

It's also about mindset.

The best, greenest, most efficient energy technology in the world means nothing if people only use it to perpetuate things as they are today. If we continue pursue limitless growth with ego-centric goals, then we're still screwed.

Greed and ego can't be solved with a new type of battery or solar cell. It requires a change in consciousness. We must be less self-centered and more compassionate towards the planet as a whole if we are to continue.

[joshcryer]

25. A green technology cannot be easily used to perpetuate damage to the environment.

For instance, if you were to take hydroponic greenhouses that recycle waste, and remove the waste recycling component (and flush the waste into rivers) then what you wind up doing is breaking the operation of those greenhouses. Then you'd have to use natural gas to synthesize ammonia nitrates, and basically ship in fertalizer from the various producers in the world.

But then the tech isn't green, is it?

Going from green and recycling back to polluting and wasteful is a lot harder than going from what we have now to being green. The infrastructure would fall apart, the large industries built specifically to make nitrates from natural gas would shut down, they'd have to be rebuilt to bring us back to a process of environmental exploitation. But we can already make plastic from biomass, PLA, we can grow food without soil, so it's a pretty simple set of technological steps to convert all agriculture to something that's green. I plan to do it eventually, myself, on a little ranch I'm buying.

I think we need to be more self-centered, I think we need to be more independent, I think we need to be more selfish. Because the problem that we have stems directly from our global interdependency, it stems directly from our collectivization. We look at the globalized world, and while the living standard is undeniably improving for every single being on the planet, the environmental destruction continues as growth goes on an unsustained basis (note I said "unsustained," not "unsustainable." Unsustainable means it cannot ever be sustainable, that is not reality). What we have are countries, due to their interdependency, producing everything from cash crops to relying mostly on one export good. Exporting *your* resources around the world does not help *you*, it helps the person who is importing. Every time the US ships grain around the world, and every meter of Great Midwest Aquifer depletion, is solely because the US is a part of the global interdependency that our society has created.

[tinrobot]

27. The definition of "selfish"

From Websters:

"Concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others"

I think this just about sums up current Western culture, and it is the root of our consumer-driven, self-centered,
perpetual growth driven society. It is, at it's foundation, unsustainable.

You're right in that the systems required to support our mass-market consumer economy are "interdependant" but that isn't the root of the problem. The root of the problem is consumerism, driven by our selfish nature, our desire for more and inability to think outside of ourselves.

I think of "interdependant" as the ecosystem of this planet. We are very interdependant on the natural systems that comprise this planet, and yet we're very myopic, only choosing to see it through our own selfish desires.

[joshcryer]

31. Can that definition fit a society that shares?

I think it most certainly can. If you look at, say, piracy, it becomes pretty obvious that it works just fine. People selfishly download movies and TV shows and video games and music with bittorrent, leechers they call them, and what is the magical result? Their very act of leeching is providing bandwidth to the swarm as a whole.

Likewise, if you selfishly ate every morsel of food on your plate, demanded the highest quality of foods, with the most luxurious of delecasies, in the end your poop would go into the big reclaimation store to be recycled to regrow all of that food all over again.

Selfish, as the current society sees it, is the act of taking but not giving, is the act of greed. This is wrong and it obviously is not sustainable.

Our absolute dependency on one another is distinctly different from the ecosystems interdependencies. Indeed, what we are currently experiencing is Social Darwinism. Darwin had a lot of brilliant observations, but in the end his observations cannot and do not apply to a given species or society. Except for an exception, the insect societies.

But as Asimov said, "Specialization is for insects."