Preview
We have arrived at the turning point. This is it, here and now. A sudden, immense, immediate, complete, radical, global change. No wealth, power, position or privilege, nor any particular or special physical or intellectual capacity will allow an escape from this planetary revolution. Every aware human being sees that the world is in an unprecedented, rapidly expanding state of deterioration. This is a fact. The human being is at the center and is the driving force of this crisis.
The population explosion plus the explosion of technology have created problems that seem to be beyond the scope of man's ability to solve, problems that threaten to turn the planet into a ball of flame, either through the use of nuclear weapons or the greenhouse effect, if we do not first foul, waste, or otherwise destroy the planetary life support system of land, water, and air.
Equally significant, if not more so, is the ancient evil of man's inhumane treatment of his fellow man, which is the dominant thread of our worldwide social fabric. Every form of violence, whether it is subtle- such as competition, greed, envy, apathy, prejudice, rumor, etcetera, - or gross- such as rips and burns flesh, breaks and crushes bone, and ruptures internal organs, - or utterly evil- such as slavery, every form of violence is the norm, a way of life, accepted by all, but a very few.
At the present rate of progress, less than 20 years will have brought us to the end of civilization as we now know it. Awareness of this fact must penetrate the consciousness of mankind in order for the population of the Earth to act as one, all one, for we alone are responsible. There is no other to save us.
There is no authority that will solve all our problems- not from the political, religious, or scientific arenas, nor from outer space, nor from the past or future, nor from heaven or hell. There is no conspiracy of do-gooders to change things from behind the scenes. No unknown mystic poet saint will rise from the masses to save the world. Nor is there an inner authority hidden within our brain, waiting to be let out and take charge. We have created this society which is destroying itself and fouling the environment. We create it, all of us together, each moment, with our thought, which determines our behavior- minute by minute, hour upon hour, day after day, year in and year out.
The manner in which the human brain now functions is the wellspring of man's sorrow. It produces our personal problems and collectively we have produced the present state of the planet. (Yes, the human brain has created many good and wonderful things. But it is not the good that now dominates the world.)
The initiator of human behavior is a genetic survival mechanism of the human brain, passed down to us by our ancient ape-like ancestors. This mechanism, which came into being to ensure the survival of the individual, now controls the whole of human life.
As a guarantor of personal survival there is no equal. Human beings have increased their number in the last one hundred years from one and a half billion to five billion. Man has become the overwhelmingly dominant species on the planet. We have not only explored and mapped the whole planet, we have visited the moon several times. Our influence has altered every aspect of life on Earth. Animals, plants, and microbes are being domesticated, produced, reproduced, and genetically altered or manipulated. We have increased and accelerated the extinction of species alarmingly. (Do we consider homo sapiens invulnerable?)
Our Knowledge and our tools, which originated as vague memories combined with sticks and stones, have developed to a degree limited only by our imagination. We have increased our speed of travel one thousand times in the last one hundred years. We have increased our speed and distance of communication ten million times. Technological miracles in science, medicine, industry, agriculture, computation, recreation, personal convenience, and entertainment are now commonplace, every day occurrences, taken for granted and often abused by those few who may be privileged enough to partake of them.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of us lack a meaningful education, relevant to the actual, sorrowful experience of the whole of human life, or even adequate food, clothing, and shelter, much less an opportunity to appreciate the significance of life.
All too often, for far too many of us, our daily life appears to be an unending series of problems. Our ability to maintain our health and our sanity is taxed to the limit and beyond. Life seems to be a struggle of sorrow ending in death. Our love and our joy is fleeting, hollow, tainted. This aspect of life is part of the basic structure of the human brain. It is so because of the natural evolution of life.
Suffering is not only an attitude or point of view or a particular set of circumstances, but a natural consequence of the over development of that part of the brain that demands we survive.
This brain structure naturally channels our life's energy into a particular direction which is, ultimately and absolutely, a dead end.
This is so simply because there is only so much one can do to avoid death.
Let's begin again.
The whole of life on planet Earth calls forth a symbol from the human brain.
If you do not allow your automatic defense mechanisms to reject it out of hand as too broad or general or naively mystic, visionary, new age, etc., or too intrusive on your private fantasies or fears - you will find there is an immediate, intense energy, an utter urgency that exists within the phrase "planetary revolution".
It may be the most significant symbol created by man because it symbolizes the most significant event of this phase of evolution.
Even the least aware among us senses on a primal level an atmosphere of impending doom. This is an observation born of an intimate contact with an unprecedented magnitude of human sorrow and its manifestations which are exploding the world over.
The global society
in which we find ourselves
is in constant conflict
between divisions of people.
While we attempt to ignore the facts, they are relentlessly intruding upon our consciousness through the mass media and in our families, neighborhoods, nations, and every level of community. This is necessary to the process of human evolution regardless of how painful it becomes. The necessity lies not in the degree of suffering that we experience, rather it is necessary that the old forms and patterns of human relationship end. It is not necessary to feel pain in bringing about the transformation fo the world - unfortunately it is often only extreme pain and fear that calls our attention to crisis.
Then, too, there are those, so stultified by luxury, so insulated from the vagaries of living, that extreme pain constitutes not being able to buy a new car every year or not being able to take that european vacation or keep every hair in place or make it to the country club on time.
The structure of our banally evil society is collapsing of its own weight and no one can/will/should stop it. What emerges from the soil of ruin is what we are preparing the way for now. What we may do is rise up, deconstruct the old world and create a new one, using what is good and discarding what is not.
The change is coming, the question is - will we be crushed or will we become wholly conscious of what is happening and what we need to create?
