Blowing the Whistle

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate – Carl Jung

Over the past sixteen months I have been completely consumed by the realities of everyday life. Attending to the needs of family and friends, while establishing an international startup at the grand old age of 70, got me thinking about a topic close to my heart. Motivation.

What is this life force that compels me to keep reflecting, inventing, writing and speaking? There must be an easier way to earn a living? What drives any individual to take on more – especially when that “more” is so insanely ambitious? Why is it so important to convince others of the significance of what we are doing? And why should we feel so dejected (rejected even) when what matters to us is not appreciated or fully understood by those closest to us?

In our frenetic, competitive, mostly self-absorbed existence, there are few key factors that keep us purposefully occupied and yes, motivated…

1. Work is commonly assumed to be a fundamental prerequisite for what we regard as normalcy - the sign of a mature functioning adult. A central part of most people’s lives, it is customary for many of us to spend more time in the workplace than we spend with family or friends. The industrial manufacturing model - where goods are produced centrally for distribution and consumption by customers in distant locations - is a relatively recent innovation. But since then work has become the main conduit through which we can learn about other people, develop self-esteem, feel enriched and valued, and gain respect from our peers.

By today’s moral standards it is also an imperative: in exchange for our physical labour, or intellectual prowess, we receive an income which can then be used to provide for our material well-being. In this way we avoid being a burden on others in the community. If we choose not to work, or are incapable of working for some reason, we are reliant on either the state or our families to provide for us. In Western cultures this is deemed to be both unhealthy and irresponsible – at least by economists. If we then become part of the long-term unemployed we must withstand barbs from others who are quick to accuse us of being lazy, incompetent or uneducated – invariably an ethical judgement imposed without much thought to individual circumstances.

The impulse to work for the benefit of society as a whole is therefore generally understood to be an imperative for leading a well-balanced, meaningful and productive life.

2. It is physically and mentally impossible to devote the totality of our waking hours to work. Apart from sleep, leisurely interludes provide a necessary respite from work – the chance to hang out with friends perhaps, take a well-earned vacation, participate in sport, or soak up myriad remedies that provide us with sufficient resolve and restorative energy to return – apparently willingly in most cases - to our menial existence in businesses and government departments.

3. Escapism. If the gladiatorial combats in ancient Rome are anything to go by the import of diversionary public spectacles is not new. But the need for a continuous stream of extreme forms of theatre, and the manner in which these can deflect our attention away from our day-to-day reality, is a contemporary phenomenon - enabled by mass information and communications technologies. By aiding demonstrable affiliations with specific groups escapist spectacles actually play an important role in maintaining social cohesion. But there is a downside too.

Emergent properties of our most life-critical economic, social and political systems, such as the Brexit fiasco and its repercussions in Britain, the staging of an attempted military coup in Turkey, or the forthcoming Olympic Games in Rio, for example, invariably incite curiosity - as do acts of terrorism. And while these things help us to maintain an awareness of humanity’s variety, vitality and impulsiveness, they can also be deeply partisan - provoking division, anger and even dread - especially when they are competitively sensitive or grounded in fundamentalist fervour. 

In a purely mythical sense they sustain societal passivity and civic compliance by invoking a common bond - or sense of unity - on the one hand, while perpetuating the illusion of relevant engagement by groups of individuals in a shared reality on the other.

Regardless of contextual trigger or emotive response, such events are almost invariably psychologically manipulative. Yet it is within this space that we identify strongly and feel most affinity with others. Together we join crowds at the New Year sales, protest the destruction of the environment or gun laws, and wallow in outbursts of patriotism with others who (appear to) share identical values.

But we are also complicit in enabling an unhealthy ethos to emerge – censuring those involved in spectacles we abhor, or in which we have no empathy, and fostering a culture of blame as a consequence. Thus diversionary spectacles strengthen our feelings of connection with some, while fortifying our differences with others.

4. There are also a variety of fantasies in which we indulge. Often these are linked in some way to the diversionary spectacles mentioned above. To some extent they help to keep us sane - purging doubts and resolving uncertainty if, paradoxically, keeping us poised on the edge of ambiguity in situations where deeper existential matters are concerned. Fantasies extend from meditation, virtual reality games and devotion to a certain way of life or credo, to speculation about the nature of consciousness.

They are at once comforting yet testing - exposing our relative insignificance in terms of scale. Measured against factors like the sheer numbers of people on the planet, for example, or the immense vastness of the universe, we quickly realise our inconsequentiality. By its very nature, much of the content arising from fantasizing is unfathomable; a form of truth-seeking that is impossible to prove conclusively, yet equally impossible to deny. Perhaps that is part of the allure.

5. And then there are the rules. But while we are mostly conscious about work, leisure, pleasant and not-so-pleasant diversions, and most of the fantasies in which we engage, the rules are buried under the paraphernalia of being and belonging that manifest as our civilisational model. Undisclosed, disguised and secreted from open view, our awareness of them remains nebulous. We do not talk about them. It is not even possible to say with any confidence whether the rules are deliberately contrived, or are just an accumulation of nascent patterns arising from the way humanity has chosen to interrelate through the ages. Yet they guide and impel our collective beliefs, and subsequent attitudes and acts, as surely as a mother’s umbilical cord nourishes a foetus.

So what are the rules? Very simply put the rules are an intrinsically consistent, values-driven, corpus of assumptions that shape humanity’s shared worldview; the underlying system of beliefs that has guided in one form or other almost all human activity for the past few centuries. Neither inherently good nor evil, yet effortlessly transcending geography, history, political dogma, as well as diverse socio-economic models, the worldview is a universally accepted “community of mind” that manifests as a discernible, tangible and coherent world-system. If push comes to shove we tend to describe this world-system as the truth, authentic reality, or quite simply our personal experience of being in the world.

Which is all very well. Except that because these rules are not overt, but rather veiled from our routine readings of events, they usually go unnoticed, unknown and unchallenged. Some of us may intuit the power of their presence within the worldview. But we can only discern their evolutionary impact through observing humanity’s collective behavioural responses to events through the prism of the world-system - the tangible world as well as a pathological state derived from the prevailing worldview that encompasses every subtlety within the worldview. We usually refer to this state as the human condition. In other words the world-system is a manifestation of a shared worldview. This worldview is responsible for the state we now find ourselves in as a species - a state where extinction has become a distinct possibility.

At this juncture it is important to note that the human condition is possibly the source of almost every life-critical problem facing the humanity. It is the global problematique writ large and a predicament best expressed as a seemingly irresolvable paradox: namely that we seem compelled to commit horrific acts of aggression and inhumanity towards each other when greater benefit clearly flows from cooperation, trust, generosity and love. This paradox can only be fully appreciated within the context and logic of the worldview.

Over the ages we have tried to comprehend and resolve this puzzle - but in vain. It has become so disheartening that we prefer not to dwell on its cost to our humanity. As a result the human condition has been allowed to deteriorate to the extent that we now stand on the edge of a cultural abyss. We are the first species in history to have advanced to a point where our tools and inventions can eradicate all life on the planet - including us!

And so the most serious question facing human beings is whether we are wise enough to survive our success. We have not yet grasped that a solution to this paradox is within our reach. But escape from this trap only becomes possible if we can willingly transcend our ingrained obstinacy, hubris and greed.

In contrast to the human condition our worldview, together with the rules that inform it, is neutral, singular and constant – its nine tenets true reflections of every civilisation’s credo throughout history:

1. A ruling power elite attended to by an underclass of consenting serfs

2. Information, power and wealth protected by political, legal, military or state apparatus

3. Competition in all its forms – from access to education right through to warfare - sustained as an integral driver of the economy in addition to ensuring stability in the social order

4. All aspects of economic production and distribution controlled by the elite with wealth extracted from those who labour and channelled to those who own material assets

5. Propaganda and entertainment used at scale to distract, manipulate public opinion, and generate civil passivity

6. Nature exploited as a “god given” human right

7. A prevailing knowledge base used to validate and bolster decisions made by the elite

8. Explicit myths of a higher creative intelligence demanding subservience

9. A dominant narrative endorsing the beliefs and actions of the elite. In the current paradigm this means continued economic growth and competitive constructs within a context of scarcity.

This worldview is distinct from the individual theories-in-use – mindsets - each one of us employs in order to make functional sense of the worldview. Mindsets, once few and distinct, are now multiple and diverse - cultural shards of the unique social systems into which we are born and programmed. Our mindset functions instinctively, outside of our immediate awareness, filtering, translating and interpreting the dominant worldview - each one of us according to our means and circumstances.

Inevitably, in a world where once again we are so peripatetic, mindsets have morphed into fragmented, variegated, hybrids of three primary groupings - the Sinic, Indic and Occidental - and a host of relatively lesser groups like the Mayan, Aztec, Incan, Ubuntu, Koori and Inuit, for example.

But whereas initially the primary sources seemed to have had more or less equivalent status for large sections of the human family, the domination of the Occidental mindset in life today is clear. Like a giant succubus it eclipses and stifles all others. Effectively the closest in ethos to the prevailing worldview, it has become an embodiment of it. The gravitational pull of this mindset is palpable in human affairs. It is therefore, inadvertently, an amplifier of the human condition.

The Western approach to the management and financialization of human affairs, most often equated with the economic success of capitalist empires - is increasingly the canon imposed by the powerful upon unsuspecting nations, through neo-liberal trade pacts for example. But it is also the mindset that has most appeal to many emerging economies, possibly because of the perceived affluence of countries like the US, Japan, Germany and the UK - nations that represent the epitome of this particular mindset.

So where is all of this leading? I have written often and at length about the course humanity is on. It is a course that deliberately sets out to take rather than to give; a path that will inevitably rob our children and their children of a prosperous and healthy future.

Along with many others we are awakening to the hazardous nature of this passage. The settings are foolish, and the results toxic. Like a cork bobbing up and down on the waves we are adrift and need to do something about it.

Exploring and rediscovering what it means to be human gives us a chance to transcend the human condition – to rise above the extremes of good and evil. This will mean changing our destination and intentions as a family. But changing this destination requires us to adopt new rules, reinvent the current worldview, and adjust to a wiser path. In order to create a viable post-capitalist future this path must aspire to:

• Unite rather than divide humanity
• Share the wealth we create equally rather than skewing the economy to reward those who are already affluent by penalising the less fortunate
• Collaborate, rather than compete, as a primary impulse
• Celebrate and encourage human diversity rather than pursue uniformity
• Credit the abundance surrounding us rather than confining our accounts to narrow financial measures that confer virtue on scarcity and austerity
• Discourage the most harmful and primitive of superstitions while honouring more rigorous and methodical explorations of what it means to be human
• Nurture emancipatory rather than repressive cultures
• Disseminate knowledge premised on a variety of experiences and indigenous wisdom rather than promoting a single authoritarian monologue.

By blowing the whistle on our toxic worldview I will no doubt be accused of being just another socialist – an incorrigible “leftie” and an impractical idealist. After all the elite have much to lose and segregation followed by ridicule is their most powerful weapon. They will stoop to anything within their ambit to prevent paradigmatic change of the kind I am suggesting here and intellectual apartheid is being already being used to impede paradigmatic transformation.

I know what to expect. Years ago when I ventured to suggest to senior officials in a large energy company and a government department that coal was best left in the ground I was scorned and made to feel a pariah. But this happens to far more accomplished people than me. When journalists of the stature of John Pilger and George Monbiot call out the evil of the industrial war complex they are ridiculed and denounced as fools or fanatics. When eminent scientists such as James Hansen and economists like Lord Stern convey the truths regarding global warming they are ignored or their views taken as worst case scenarios. When Edward Snowden and Julian Assange make public the unscrupulous and corrupt nature of our own administrations they are hounded and outlawed.

If these whistle blowers failed in their moral and social duty to tell the truth about the human condition and the toxic nature of our worldview how would we see the truth? After all one needs to become aware of the system before it can be changed.

According to the online dictionary a whistleblower is “a person who informs on a person or organization regarded as engaging in an unlawful or immoral activity”. It seems the elite don’t much like whistleblowers. It flies in the face of decorum and of a desire on the part of the establishment to maintain control.

But perpetuating the current worldview is deeply offensive to me. Besides it perpetuates the untenable nature of the human condition. This is why I feel obliged to blow the whistle on the increasingly untenable nature of our world-system and a worldview that is the source of so much injustice and inequity.

Centre for the Future has a 100 year agenda. We have called this agenda Mindful Uprising. The intention is to reinvent the frameworks identified here, system by system, until a new civilisational model can be visualised, adopted, and the world works better for everyone. That is the source of my motivation.