Great
changes are driven into being by the failure of the
previous system, a breakdown whose root cause is cultural
decline and whose main marker is a web of crises popping
up in every sphere. The environment in most countries
is being degraded, poverty worldwide is increasing,
and the gaps between rich and poor individuals and
nations are widening. One half of the world's human
population still survives on less than $2 per day.
These people face the prospect of environmental degradation
of their ecosystems that is likely to be exacerbated
by climate change. Yet these local ecosystems contain
much of our planet's biodiversity and are also the
sources of livelihoods and ecosystem services for the
rural poor and indirectly for the global community.
Today’s great change, like those of the past,
is being propelled by crises felt in every field. Think
of education, health care, politics, energy, the economy,
community, justice, and the environment.
Yet,
while these individual calamities grab attention,
it is slowly becoming
clear that the
core problems
cross many boundaries (disciplines) and require us
to begin seeing the “big picture.” Sustainability
Now! works under the premise that a key to halt,
and then reverse, these environmental and socio-economic
trends
lies
in the
application
of system’s thinking combined with sustainability
science in creative approaches to sustainable
development.
Our
way forward is to integrate spirituality and
the evolution of consciousness
into a seamless
view
of physical reality, using serious work from across
disciplines, and taking great care to logically connect
the different fields – taking shape like the
root symbol of an “ecosystem” or “web.” Seeing
the big picture helps connect the dots in our complex
world and make sense of the image the connected dots
create in order to see, feel, and experience the
organic and functional relation between interacting
parts and wholes. It is this big picture that connects
us to the whole, enables us to see across borders
and barriers, turns data into knowledge, and understanding
into sustainability. Only then will our economic
desires/demands become accountable to an ecological
imperative to protect the ecosphere and a social
equity imperative to minimize human suffering.
So,
where machine-age thinkers envisioned a clockwork
unive rse of separable,
streamlined
parts, now integral
thinkers are pointing out that we actually live in
a web world, one Earth in which all things are inseparably
linked. Pondering the ecological nature of all things
means that connected citizens realize the necessity
of stewardship – living in a way that sustains
family, community, civilization, and environment,
even while making money. Aspects
of the web revolution, however, have not reached lay
ears, including Ecological Economics,
Self-Organization Theory, Integral Science, and the
web-based view of genetics, evolution and societal
collapse.
Modern
civilization is in crisis and faces serious dangers
caused chiefly
by its own ways
of being.
Furthermore, because the root cause is cultural,
all the troubles society faces are inseparably intertwined.
Thus, growing calamities in health, education, environment
and economics are but microcosms of one monumentally
complex knot. Not only do environmental destruction,
terrorism and war, water shortages, and adulteration
of food threaten human existence worldwide, but the
infrastructure of civilization itself is failing – education,
politics, medicine, etc. Every field is in trouble – just
ask them!
Invention
of agriculture, the rise and fall of empires,
the coming of industrialism
(modern
culture’s
machine story of life) – all changes our world
has weathered in the past for better or for worse.
Modern culture is now staggering under the weight
of worldliness and greed. In the next two decades
our world will either be dramatically better or dramatically
worse. The one thing that cannot happen is just more
of the same.
Pieces
are spread all over the map. The scope is daunting,
as is the diversity
of language
and concerns.
The challenge before our society as a whole is to
get this disjoint jumble to crystallize into a powerful,
intelligible whole, before crisis turns into calamity – a
consequence which has happened to many civilizations
before us. Luckily, the catalyst we need is also
at hand – system’s thinking – providing
a framework of understanding that helps reformers
in each field organize and make sense of what they
already know.
System’s
thinking refers to the union of these “web” changes
emerging across disciplines, now fused into a logical,
working whole (Integral
Science Institute).
Every facet of our society – from business,
education and medicine to community building, politics
and spirituality – must be recast in kind.
Social change movement needs to assemble a vibrant,
sustainable new stage of civilization by showing
how various partial solutions fit within a larger,
evolving ecological whole. System’s thinking,
with associated scientific understanding, must emerge
as a more solid foundation for understanding what
the cultural creatives can do to make society sustainable.
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