THE GREAT GROWING UP
Being
Responsible for Humanity’s Future
by
John
Renesch
Smashwords Edition
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Published
on Smashwords by:
HOHM PRESS
P.O. Box 2501
Prescott, AZ
86302
800-381-2700
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The
Great Growing Up
Being Responsible for Humanity’s
Future
Copyright 2012 by John Renesch
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover Design: Accurance, Bloomington, Illinois
Interior Design and Layout: Kubera Graphics, Becky Fulker, Prescott, Arizona
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Advance Praise
“John Renesch, renowned futurist and prolific author, has written a deeply provocative book to inspire the evolution of a new humanity. The Great Growing Up brilliantly captures the critical importance of the present moment and outlines a trajectory for achieving a mature, peaceful future for all. John’s roadmap to our collective future is clear, compelling, and transformative. His new book is important and empowering. I highly recommend it.”
—Lynne Twist, co-founder,
The Pachamama Alliance
“Like a master painter, John Renesch provides a broad interpretive mural of the last half-century along with a sweeping and sense-making depiction of how humankind has encumbered itself with less than a fully human milieu. But he does not leave us in stoicism or anomie. He encourages hope that we can rebuild our future through new forms of conscious leadership. One is left with both an understanding of our past and a renewed sense of mission regarding a future on which mankind’s very survival depends.
—Andre L. Delbecq,
J. Thomas and Kathleen L.
McCarthy University Professor,
Santa Clara University
“John Renesch is a Renaissance Man who lives in the twenty-first century. In The Great Growing Up he shows how, through conscious evolution, we can put our predatory past behind us and create a dignitarian world. Prophetic yet practical, The Great Growing Up integrates science, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology into a compelling vision of a world that will work for everyone.”
—Robert W. Fuller,
former president, Oberlin
College,
author of All Rise: Somebodies,
Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity
“This book is about the art of the possible despite all odds in these turbulent times. It is a manifesto for all of us as humans to lead rather than follow our own evolution.”
—Mark Thompson,
bestselling coauthor of Success
Built to Last
“In his new book—The Great Growing Up—John Renesch challenges us with authority, humanity, energy and optimism, to address the key issues facing society today, both globally and personally—and these two dimensions are closely linked. It is full of valuable insights, as well as being a call to action. These messages need urgent attention if we are to survive this century, let alone see a better world in the years ahead. Time is not on our side.”
—Bruce Lloyd,
Emeritus Professor of Strategic
Management,
London South Bank University
“Ever the optimistic realist, John Renesch makes clear from the beginning that The Great Growing Up intends to make us uncomfortable with the lies we tell ourselves about our world and our place in it. In debunking the myths that we think guide us, John offers a transformative manifesto of what is possible for humanity with the emphasis on “human.” But this is not new age mumbo jumbo; John’s background in business and the physical sciences is evident throughout. Read this book and share it.”
—James A. Autry,
author of The Servant Leader and
Looking Around for God
“In The Great Growing Up, John Renesch meticulously describes today’s dysfunctional societies and the dissatisfactions they have created. However, a well-functioning society is possible through ‘conscious evolution, ’ the use of human intention to create alternative money systems, transformative learning, gender parity, energy independence, and a host of other paradigm changes. The Great Growing Up contains a vivid description of contemporary society that is as accurate as it is depressing; however, Renesch gives his readers a ‘Great Dream’ for the future that is rooted in the writings of the founders of the United States, yet rebooted for the tattered world of the 21st century . . . a splendid book.”
—Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.,
Professor of Psychology,
Saybrook University,
coauthor of Personal
Mythology
“John Renesch has been a pioneer and visionary in the search for human values based on reciprocity and relationship rather than self interest and dominance. His search has led him to the threshold of a new awareness that he aptly calls The Great Growing Up. His book is an invitation to cross that threshold and together remake the world.”
—Alan Briskin,
author of The Stirring of Soul in
the Workplace and
coauthor of The Power of Collective Wisdom
“John’s thinking and work about the direction we humans have to take is both challenging and timely. In The Great Growing Up we are given authentic hope. This book provides both an analysis and template for deep contemplation and action.”
—David Kyle,
author of The Four Powers of
Leadership
“Inspiring, practical and thought provoking . . . The Great Growing Up challenges each of us to develop and stretch our capacities to generate a global reality that secures a preferred future ‘that works for everyone’.”
—Angeles Arrien, Ph.D.,
cultural anthropologist,
author of The Four-Fold Way and
Second Half of Life
“Have you ever wondered whether our planet is engaged in some epic transition to a better society? One where individuals, due to massive new technological and social interdependences, come to see themselves as part of a single integrated ‘organism’ or ‘global brain, ’ as well as free, individual moral actors? Teilhard de Chardin called this coming event ‘Planetization’ and some foresight scholars see it as part of the natural developmental future of Earth. If we are to responsibly integrate our incredible new powers for self- and environmental change, and protect against ongoing environmental degradation and destruction, such a consciousness shift must occur. Read this sublime book, and start being the change yourself, every day. You’ll find very few routes to deeper universal insight, peace and happiness that are as direct and valuable as this book.”
—John Smart, President,
Acceleration Studies
Foundation
“John Renesch is not only a smart man, but also a wise one. The Great Growing Up offers a conscious choice for the kind of future we want to create and the role we each want to play in bringing it about. Don’t just read this book—do it!”
—Alan M. Webber, cofounder,
Fast
Company magazine
“The Great Growing Up gives us vital and wise guidelines to the unprecedented emergence of ourselves as cocreators of our world. It is an important work for our own conscious evolution, self and social.”
—Barbara Marx Hubbard, founder,
Foundation for
Conscious Evolution
“In The Great Growing Up, John Renesch has given us an astute diagnosis of what ails us as individuals and as a global community. He then gives us a prescription for treatment. But rather than a bitter pill to swallow, we have a recipe filled with hope for a renewed spirit.”
—Gregg Magrane, Ph.D.,
geneticist, University of
California San Francisco
“In The Great Growing Up John Renesch has brought together an impressive range of sources to provide a readable overview of our prospects for a renewed civilization. He manages to capture the essence of many concepts and ideas and to make them accessible. You don’t need a Ph.D. to read this book—merely an open mind and a willing spirit.”
—Richard Slaughter, futurist,
Foresight
International, Brisbane, Australia
“This is a beautiful easy-to-read book. Renesch weaves together the external and inner challenges humanity faces—ageing, inequity, gender imbalances, spiritual poverty, lack of reflection—and provides us with solutions forward. Humanity is like an adolescent, the transition to adulthood is not always easy, but through the work of John Renesch we are given an exploratory map on how this could be possible, and even more important, his book provides us with a pause, a time to reflect, on how each one of us can play a role in the transformation ahead, now.”
—Professor Sohail Inayatullah,
Tamkang University,
Taiwan and
the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
“The American Dream is under siege instead of being seized and society is at a significant crossroads. The Great Growing Up not only warns us of the destructive path our world is heading down, it provides a vision for a brighter, better future that our children can inherit. The good news is that we are still in control: we each can make a difference and John Renesch shows us how.”
—Brian Feinblum,
Planned Television Arts,
Chief
Marketing Officer, VP
“John Renesch challenges us to examine where we are in our evolution and squarely face the challenges confronting us as a species. Then he offers us the opportunity to transcend our conditions and engage in a global transformation of epic proportions. Will we squander this opportunity or act on it? Provocative, engaging and, most importantly, essential to the conscious evolution of humankind.”
—Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D.,
best-selling author of
sixteen books, including
With Purpose: From
Success to Significance in Work and Life
“I welcome this important book which maps the unprecedented challenges and opportunities for humanity in this era. John Renesch, as always, is an expert guide to this phase of human development and he lays out our options with deep understanding and compassion.”
—Hazel Henderson, President,
Ethical Markets Media
(USA and Brazil),
author of Ethical
Markets: Growing The Green Economy and Beyond
Globalization
“Once again, John Renesch gives us the benefit of his accumulated wisdom and experience with The Great Growing Up. He points the way to a new vision of infinite possibilities, which is available to everyone. If you’re interested in changing the world for the better, then The Great Growing Up is a must read. You’ll be glad you did!”
—Michael Toms,
Founding President, New Dimensions
Radio;
author of the bestselling An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in
Conversation with Michael Toms and True Work: Doing What You Love and
Loving What You Do
“In his new book, The Great Growing Up, John Renesch explodes the myths that have kept us bound to a dying world and awakens us—our minds and spirits—to the new possibilities. His deep reflections help us regain our inherent balance between how we choose to use the resources of the world and the resources of the spirit within—choices which allow us to ‘take a stand, ’ standing on both feet, and walk into a new and more alive world. Congratulations on creating a really excellent book for our time!”
—Pat Lynch, Founder and CEO,
Women’s Online
Media and Education Network
“The Great Growing Up invites you into an inspiring, big-picture vision of a world healed by changes in how we think, work, and live as individuals. John Renesch stands with you before the mirror of time to examine what we have created through our sometimes unconscious, careless freedoms. He plants seeds of change in the process, creating a space for you to discover a deeper sense of contribution through your own personal transformation into The Great Growing Up the world badly needs.”
—Debbe Kennedy, founder,
Global Dialogue Center
and Leadership Solutions Companies,
author of Putting
Our Differences to Work: The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership,
and High Performance
“In his new book, John Renesch makes an insightful and honest assessment of our past and maps the way forward for us as a society and individuals. His call to action is both critical and timely, empowering each of us to create the world we can be proud of—unified, just and profoundly human. The wealth of information and wisdom that is contained in this book is amazing.”
—Julia Balandina Jaquier, Ph.D.,
Head of
Sustainable Investment Group,
AIG Investments, Zurich
“A powerful visionary beacon for our evolving humanity. John Renesch shows us how to be the change we would like to see—in humanity.”
—Debashis Chowdhury, author of
In
Our Own Image: Humanity’s Quest for Divinity via Technology
“With so many of us struggling, we all need a vision of hope that looks at life, business and the dark side of human behavior right in the eye. That’s what John Renesch does in this provocative, comprehensive guide to the future—and our role in constructing it.”
—Patricia Aburdene,
author: Megatrends
2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism
“The Great Growing Up is packed with some of the best thinking this century has to offer about how to secure our future. The book is easy to read and will feed anybody with a hunger for change. Thought provoking, practical and inspiring.”
—Mike Zeidler, founder,
Association of
Sustainability Practitioners, London
“An invitation to participate in an enhanced future for the human species, John Renesch’s The Great Growing Up presents frightening evidence of the myths and trends propelling us down our current unsustainable path backed by an eloquent and inspirational vision for achievement of the shared peace, prosperity, and fulfillment that is the promise of all humankind, should we all only have the guts to overcome our fears, embrace meaningful change, and stand our ground.”
—Darrell J. Brown,
Vice-Chairman and Editor,
Leaders Magazine
“An inspiring, visionary book detailing both the dangers and the opportunities before us, John Renesch persuasively shows how, despite the turmoil of our times, we can collectively rise to the occasion and create the society that we all know in our hearts is possible.”
—Peter Russell,
author of The
Global Brain, Waking
Up in Time, and other books
“Humanity is bound to live soon through either a breakdown or a breakthrough on an unprecedented scale. The Great Growing Up explores how we can improve the chances for the breakthrough.”
—Bernard Lietaer,
author of The
Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World
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Other Books Authored or Compiled
by John Renesch
Steven’s Choice
Getting to the Better Future: A Matter of Conscious Choosing
Leadership in a New Era
New Traditions in Business
Setting Goals
The
New Entrepreneurs
(with Michael Ray)
The
New Bottom Line: Bringing Heart and Soul to Business
(with
Bill DeFoore)
Rediscovering
the Soul of Business
(with Bill DeFoore)
Learning
Organizations
(with Sarita Chawla)
Working
Together: Producing Synergy by Honoring Diversity
(ed.,
Angeles Arrien)
Intuition
at Work: Pathways to Unlimited Possibilities
(eds.,
Roger Frantz and Alex Pattakos)
Community
Building: Renewing Spirit & Learning in Business
(ed.,
Kaz Gozdz)
When
the Canary Stops Singing
(ed., Pat
Barrentine)
* * * * *
Contents
Chapter 1: The New Great Dream
Chapter 2: Our Present Reality
Chapter 3: The Power of Consciousness
Chapter 4: Choosing Transformation
Chapter 5: Forces for Transformation: Category I: Forces Pushing for Change
Chapter 6: Forces for Transformation: Category II: External Attractors
Chapter 7: Forces for Transformation: Category III: Internal Attractors / Inspiration
Chapter 9: Let It Begin with Me
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Preface
There are two windows of opportunity for human beings in motion right now. One is closing fast while the other is slowly opening wider. The one that’s closing fast is made up of all the threats to the quality of life as we know it—deforestation, population growth, deteriorating water and air quality, and all the other trends that make headlines each day. When this window closes, human beings may have to make one of the toughest mass adjustments in history if our species is to survive. This is the window of bad news.
The window that is opening is the good news: ever-increasing numbers of individuals seeking self-actualization, growing in consciousness, and willing to take on leadership roles in bringing about the first conscious evolution of our species. This window represents a somewhat invisible global movement of historic proportions. This collective choice is choosing adulthood over the largely adolescent ways we have been relating to one another and to our planet Earth.
Just about every system we have created—economic, government, healthcare, international security, education—is in crisis. At their best these systems are dysfunctional, and at their worst they’re doing more harm than good. The signs are too obvious to ignore. It’s time to grow up and be responsible as adults for what we have created as adolescents.
The Great Growing Up shows us how we can make this historic transition while both windows of opportunity are open.
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Personal Note
My earliest motivation in life was to assure the survival of my younger brother and myself. I was thrust into the role of “head of household” after barely starting school in the post World War II years, with a brother four years behind me. At the time, survival looked like maintaining the remnants of a family, making sure my kid brother and I got fed and wore clean clothes and that my mother was taken care of when she was drunk, which was almost every night and weekend. Luckily, our mother managed to hold down a daytime job, so we had some money. I could wake her from her stupor, get her signature on a check, shop for groceries and fill in the amount. Not bad for a pre-ten-year-old kid!
When my mother remarried and it became apparent that our family home would be stable, I began to relax about mere survival and looked around to see what the rest of the world was doing. I was now in my mid-to-late teens, having skipped most of my childhood and taken on what I understood “grown-up behavior” to be.
After a decade or two of entrepreneurial adventures—starting businesses that looked like fun to me—I started growing out of my own egocentric ways and began experiencing the entire world. Well into my thirties, I started identifying with the pain and suffering I saw in the news and, sometimes, in my own communities. As I became interested in developing as a person, in getting to know myself and growing emotionally and spiritually, I somehow learned to distinguish between the feelings I was taking on from others, through empathy, and my own emotions. This was enormously helpful and lightened my emotional burdens whenever I confused the two.
At last it felt safe to feel love for everybody. By this time I was almost fifty.
This was also when my work became a calling, when my purpose found me. The Great Growing Up is the culmination of my work for the past quarter century. But I did not get here by myself. I must thank many people for their support and wisdom.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
First, let me thank some of my heroes—people who have inspired and influenced me positively, some still living, and others who have passed on. These people include thought leaders, authors, futurists, social scientists, spiritual leaders, champions of transformation everywhere, friends and teachers, my health professionals, philosophers, public servants, social entrepreneurs, the founders of the United States of America, and the many inspirational leaders from all over the world.
I am so grateful to my parents, Jack and Ellen, for giving me life so I could have this incredible ride. And what a ride it is! My father gave me his family name, which seems to have run its course, given that I may now be the last Renesch left on Earth. My mother gave me many qualities of character that I cherish.
Much appreciation and love also goes to my stepfather, Joseph Ruebel, for his contribution to my family’s stability when it really mattered.
I also want to acknowledge my sole biological sibling, Bob Ruebel, for whom I was a surrogate father in early childhood. Knowing nothing about parenting, I did the best I could with what I knew at the age of seven or eight. I love him today as much as I did then.
A huge thank you goes to my maternal grandparents, Henry and Wilhelmina Dusterberry, for their love, and for doing all they could to make up for a difficult situation in my childhood.
Much appreciation goes to all those colleagues who have supported me by proofreading and editing my many articles, op-ed pieces and editorials over the years.
Thanks to all my business clients—those who have booked me for keynote talks as well as those I have coached or mentored over the years. You’ve helped me grow into my “elder” status, and learn as well. I love the reciprocity! My versatile life in business prior to becoming a futurist (or whatever you call me these days) has been blessed by you all.
From my motorsports’ days in the 1950s and 1960s, my work as an event organizer through the 1970s, involvement in real estate and investment securities in the 1980s, my shift to the published word and social transformation in the 1990s, and all those ventures—for profit and not-for-profit—amongst and between, thanks to everyone with whom I’ve worked.
It’s been over fifty years of fun and challenges, heartache and elation, great successes and heartbreaking failures, fellowship and discord. For those with whom things ended harmoniously, as well as for those with whom things ended otherwise, thank you all for the learning and the experience.
I am also incredibly grateful for my relationship with God, my Higher Power. I definitely have a very intimate relationship with both the feminine and masculine face of the divine and feel gratitude each day for my physical life, my spiritual life, the wonderful people in my life and my surroundings. I am truly blessed.
Also, I wish to thank those scholars, authors, researchers and theorists whose work I have found valuable and are referenced in these pages. As a self-confessed nonscholar who lacks the temperament to dig for so much information, I truly appreciate the work you’ve all done that allows me access to your wisdom. I hope you feel I’ve treated it with the respect it deserves.
Thanks to all those people who looked over early drafts of this manuscript and offered their comments, including my colleagues who penned advance words of praise. I have much gratitude for Faith Kuczaj and her early editing support and for my agents Bill Gladstone and David Nelson at Waterside Productions and their efforts on my behalf. A special thanks also to Jackie Miller, Tom Eddington and Partnerships for Change for their support in getting this book out there in the world. I especially wish to thank the people at Hohm Press—Dasya Zuccarello, Regina Sara Ryan, and Bala Zuccarello—who worked with me in the final birthing of this work.
* * * * *
Introduction
What do the experts predict about the future of the world? What is the prognosis for us and the legacy we are leaving to those who follow us?
Regardless of whether the future will be good or bad for the human race, the changes will be happening much more rapidly than in the past. According to Ian Morris, Stanford Professor of Classics and History, there will be much more social development amongst our species in this century: four times as much—for better or for worse—as has taken place in the past 15,000 years!1
The global think tank the Millennium Project reports there is plenty to be hopeful about as well as plenty to concern us. After nine years of research, they tell us, “it has become increasingly clear that humanity has the resources to address its global challenges; what is less clear is how much wisdom, good will, and intelligence we will focus on these challenges.” As published in its Executive Overview, the Project states that “we can create the will to act more decisively” in addressing these challenges and “win the race between the increasing proliferation of threats and our increasing ability to improve the human condition.”2 These 2,000 experts from around the world agree that we are in a race and that the outcome is uncertain. But, they affirm, there is hope. The Great Growing Up is about building on that hope, pointing to the opportunity we have at this time to tip the scales in favor of making things not only “better,” but transcending the existing conditions.
WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?
I offer the following tests for compatibility, since I know what’s ahead, and you, dear reader, do not.
The vast majority (nearly seven billion) of us worldwide don’t make enough money in one month to buy a book. Many of us could care less about reading anything when every day is focused on finding a scrap of food or a few drops of decent water for our families. So book buyers are a privileged lot, perhaps a single-digit percentage of the global population. Even in “developed” countries only a small minority buys and reads books. This means that you are most likely one of an elite group of privileged people who can read, afford to purchase this book, and have the leisure time and desire to read it.
The Great Growing Up is for those who want to see a world that supports human life and allows us all to grow, learn, and have families who feel secure, nurtured and free. If you’re feeling so helpless that you’ve given thought to doing something radical but are not yet committed to it, then read this book. If you feel either so forlorn that you’d like to be lifted out of your misery or are sure that there is a better future waiting for us all, then I invite you to read on.
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR HUMANITY’S FUTURE
I will identify the potential enemies of this transformation to a better world, as well as our allies in making the shift. We are far closer than we may think to the first consciously chosen leap in our evolution.
This book is about taking responsibility for humanity’s future by becoming a more conscious society. How do we take lessons from all the developments in past decades and apply them to ourselves as a species? How can we all live together? How can we have secure lives in a nurturing environment that is healthy and sustainable, just and neighborly?
The 2008-2009 economic meltdown has taught us that we have been living beyond our material/financial means for quite some time and need to become more fiscally conservative. Simultaneously, we have been living well below our spiritual/emotional means. This book is my attempt to help us get more adventurous and imaginative in the spiritual/emotional aspects of being human.
Before we start, let me clarify something. Much of what is written in these pages might appear to be the thinking of a philosopher or the ramblings of a philosopher wannabe. My background is business and my “on the job training” as a businessman and entrepreneur for several decades taught me pragmatics. My early education was in mathematics and the physical sciences. I consider myself well-grounded. What I portray in this book is completely possible. Whenever I’ve seen so much possibility for creating something wonderful I’m compelled to go for it. How can I turn my back on such an incredible opportunity?
I urge you to join me as we break free of the straightjacket of established thought and give ourselves the freedom to explore new realms.
ENGAGED OPTIMIST OR RESIGNED PESSIMIST?
While I occasionally get a bit down or despairing about the future of humankind—and the trends can be pretty discouraging—I consider it an occupational hazard. These are the times when I must focus on the optimist inside me and look for the positive that is bringing us to a tipping point—not to a worse future, but to a better one.
Another battle that goes on within me sometimes is whether to repair or transform existing systems and institutions or to move on and consider what new structures would better serve the conscious evolution of our species. We often make dysfunctional institutions stronger and more resistant by trying to change them. Putting our energies into those efforts may be counterproductive. In other words, there frequently comes a point when the more we try to improve them the worse they get! What a downer that could be to cogitate!
One of my heroes is inventor R. Buckminster (“Bucky”) Fuller, who writes, “You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
By feeding the optimist inside me I am able to focus more on the positive vision I have for our future—what I stand FOR—rather than focusing on all the negativity confronting us and being AGAINST that.
Join me in an adventure into some large-scale pragmatic idealism. Let’s revive ourselves from our cynical slumber and engage a future beyond anything we thought possible: the Great Dream.
* * * * *
Chapter 1
The New Great
Dream
Most people have experienced at least one transcendent moment, perhaps even more than just one; a time when life was so precious, so filled with wonder and awe, the experience was indescribable. While ineffable, the experience can be recalled and relived in the privacy of our own memories. It may have been walking in the woods, during the birth of a baby, being in a state of meditation or some other altered state, or hanging out with a special group of friends where one really feels extraordinarily safe and secure. It was probably quite palpable at the time, like a dizziness or a unique lightness or weightlessness. Perhaps it was a feeling of being connected to everything! And while most of us have had one of these highly personal peak experiences, few of us talk about them. We find them difficult to articulate.
Through the ages, people have yearned for a connection with something beyond themselves, something called by many different names, taking many different shapes. Throughout human existence there has been this quest. It is part of being alive. Let’s call this our spiritual dimension. Meanwhile, we live in a material world where we have physical needs. These needs call for our attention, sometimes more strongly than the spiritual and usually with greater immediacy, yet this material dimension cannot be substituted for the spiritual.
We humans are physical beings living in a material world, while yearning for greater connection with our spiritual side. Both dimensions reside within us, one very obvious and one not so conspicuous, one quite visible and tangible and the other invisible and intangible. In fact, just to make it more challenging, the latter is also ineffable. We have trouble verbalizing the spiritual but nonetheless seek it out.
It’s interesting how we’ve dealt with these two dimensions of being human throughout our time on Earth. On occasion, mystics and philosophers have seen the possibility of integrating them and ending this schism of Self. I believe the founders of the United States saw this possibility.
But it has been more popular to pit these two parts against each other, as though one is better, one is worse. In the extreme, this leads us either to some sort of fundamental religious stance and a disowning of the material, or to fundamental materialism with a disowning of the spiritual. Both demonstrate radical fundamentalism in action. Either point of view is like standing on one foot—forcing us to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy struggling to maintain our balance.
While these various ways of compartmentalizing these two dimensions of human existence may be popular, they are artificial. Both insert a boundary between the spiritual and the material dimensions. This boundary is artificial. We made it up. Or, better stated, our minds made it up.
Why have we done this? Why do we insist on creating a divide between the two? Largely because it is more convenient for our thinking to do so. It is easier to comprehend. Does it make better sense to our rational minds if they are separated? Never mind that these dimensions were never meant to be separated; never mind that they are both part of the human experience; never mind that it is unnatural to subdivide these two parts of our essential beingness. We do it because it appears to make “sense.” Yet it doesn’t! Look at the world and it’s obvious that this boundary is bogus. Still we persist in reinforcing it through adamant attachment to our thoughts, those sacred core beliefs that will surely lead us to extinction unless we take another path, transform our thinking, and reintegrate ourselves into wholeness.
So forget what I said a few paragraphs ago about balancing on one foot. I lied. It is time to stand on both feet!
This stand is what this book is about. It is about awakening latent potentialities in the human race, unleashing our social consciousness as thoughtful and soulful beings. This stand is about ending the lies we tell ourselves, dispelling the myths that keep us prisoners of our circumstances and prevent us from seeking a higher destiny for humankind.
People are stronger together than they are separately. We are also much wiser together. We are at a stage in evolution where we need each other to get past this plateau in our development, where we can break loose and reach our true potential as human beings. Our diversity is our strength. It will allow us to transcend our limitations, both those external to us and those we harbor within. With six-and-a-half billion of us we have a hell of an opportunity! Why bother trying to be like the other person? Let’s become fully alive individually, uniquely ourselves at full power, and together create this new possibility.
HUMANITY’S PROMISE
While we claim to admire people and groups who achieve great things —achievements most people think of as impossible—many of us “lead lives of quiet desperation,” resigned to taking various anesthetics to make things more tolerable. Record amounts of antidepressants are consumed, and addiction to various substances and behaviors is standard fare. Clearly we have become a society that has renounced its idealism and traded it for lives of busy nothingness. The best available explanation is that we find it too painful to maintain our idealism; the disappointment is too difficult to handle. But we pay a price for renouncing our idealism. We give up a piece of our soul—as people, as nations, and as citizens of the world.
Americans have apparently given up on the dream that gave birth to the United States in the mid-1770s. That idealistic dream which embodied a spiritual core so empowering that our founders formed a brand new country based on a radical new idea for governance—a government by and for the people. An idea untested on such a grand scale.
I find it fascinating that so many historical milestones took place around this time—each a major piece of our nation’s founding. Thomas Paine wrote one of the most influential works on this radical idea for American governance in his 1776 booklet Common Sense, which remarkably sold 500,000 copies, a number which would rank it as a “blockbuster” bestseller nowadays. In 1775, James Watt perfected his steam engine—an invention that marked the beginning of the Industrial Age. In the very next year, moral philosopher Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations—his famous treatise on free market economics that has since become the “bible of capitalism.” In the same time period, the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings—which had legitimized autocratic dictatorship for much of human history—was coming to an end. All of these milestones occurred on the coattails of what became known as the “Age of Enlightenment” in the eighteenth century.
The age of the machine, modern democracy, free markets, and thinking for ourselves were all significant milestones in humanity’s evolution—all converging in historic alignment. Adding to this bundling of significant events, philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote about “daring to know” in his 1784 essay “What Is Enlightenment?”—well after this distinctive period got underway. He identified dogma—or adopted belief, usually accepted teachings of another—as the “ball and chain of man’s permanent immaturity.”
An emerging new idealism and the death throes of old ideas gave birth to the United States of America. Ideas of legitimated autocracy, being told what to think, horse and oxen-power travel and farming, and privileged commerce gave way to democratic governance, thinking for ourselves, free market economics and mechanized power. The Industrial Age, capitalism and modern democracy took life-giving breath as people dared to know and freed their own thinking from some biological back burner, while the tag team of church and state dictated the wisdom du jour for the masses. Is it any wonder the very DNA of American culture is comprised of free thinking, entrepreneurial, freedom-loving and technology-driven ideologies when it descended from such a powerful alignment of chromosomes?
The original American Dream was filled with idealism. It represented the dreams of the founding fathers and all their constituents who felt so strongly that they could create an exciting free society.
The dream of the revolutionary generation was derived from the Enlightenment, that our leaders would be “men of merit” who governed only in the public interest and possessed “natural virtue.” Thus, as U.S. cultural historian and social critic Morris Berman asserts, “Love, in effect, would be the social equivalent of gravity, the principle of attraction that would hold everything together.” A unique characteristic of this dream was the separation of church and state. New America Foundation fellow Noah Feldman explains the thinking of the country’s founders:
For roughly 1,400 years, from the time the Roman Empire became Christian to the American Revolution, the question of church and state in the West always began with a simple assumption: the official religion of the state was the religion of its ruler . . .
But the “radical idea” introduced during the American Revolution was that the people were sovereign. He continues:
This arrangement profoundly disturbed the old model of church and state. To begin with, America was religiously diverse: how could the state establish the religion of the sovereign when the sovereign people in America belonged to many faiths—Congregationalist, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Quaker. Furthermore, the sovereign people would actively believe in religion instead of cynically manipulating it and elite skeptics would no longer be whispering in the ears of power. Religion would be a genuinely popular, even thriving, political force. This model called for a new understanding of church and state, and the framers of the American Constitution rose to the occasion. They designed a national government that, for the first time in Western history, had no established religion at all.1
Founded as a republic based on nondenominational spiritual principles, the United States offered hope to the world. Our founders started a great experiment in human society, based on a philosophy that inspired people worldwide.
The original American Dream was achievable, a vision to which people could commit themselves. It was unprecedentedly bold, a compelling and powerful idea, backed by conviction and deed, and shared by the American patriots who knew they could implement their dream. They dared to know they could achieve their dream, something quite new after centuries of people being told what they should know by “authorities” like the church or the throne.
Nobel Laureate and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu once stated, “When people decide they want to be free . . . there is nothing that can stop them.” The American Dream was so powerful it began attracting people from other nations by the thousands, later by the millions.
WHO ARE WE AND WHAT DO WE WANT?
Some years back, before voicemail, a friend of mine recorded a memorable message on his answering machine. As I recall, it went something like this: “Hi, this is Gary. At the sound of the beep please tell me who you are and what you want. If you think these are trivial questions, be reminded most of us have been trying to figure this out all our lives.”
These kinds of questions have been the focus of philosophers, mystics, clergy and teachers of all varieties. Anyone who has embarked upon some level of self-examination, personal development, vision quest, or other inner exploration has most likely ventured into this inquiry as well.
When Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Smith stepped onto the moon in 1971 and proclaimed, “there’s a fundamental truth to our nature; man must explore,” he was affirming a deep-seated need of human beings. Once we have satisfied our survival needs like food, sex, shelter, relationship and safety, we human beings are compelled to explore the unknown. We have wondered about everything, searched the Earth, are still exploring space (the macro) and the world of subatomic particles (the micro). Wherever there is a frontier, a horizon beyond which we cannot see, humans need to check it out. Indeed, we must explore!
We have made huge technological advances in recent years. We have gained widespread wisdom from sages throughout the ages. Yet some of us wonder why we haven’t achieved the peaceful and secure existence here on Earth that we claim to want. Who are we and what do we really want?
In the past century we have experienced breakthroughs of all kinds that allow us to create the kind of world we want for ourselves. So it isn’t a matter of the conditions being right. We have the wherewithal.
The cynics cry, “It will always be the way it has been.” This is a disillusioned perspective, resigned to the present reality being as good as it gets. This is hardly the song of an adventurous human eager to explore the unknown, setting out on the quest for what lies over the horizon. The cynic has lost the spirit of adventure, the spirit of exploration, and, perhaps, the spirit of being human.
Let us reengage that inner explorer in us and leave space to NASA and the other outer-space experts. Let us leave the oceans to the people already engaged in those explorations and leave the study of subatomic particles to the world’s scientists. With all these people and organizations fully engaged in their adventures into these uncharted territories, there are still at least five billion of us who could start exploring who we are and what we want.
We have everything we need to pull it off except, perhaps, the will. The first step is to choose. We must decide that the promise of humanity is important enough to stand for it . . . and stand tall for it with all our might. Then we may get closer to answering the question of who we are and start acting more consistently with what we want.
FROM PREDATOR TO COLLABORATOR
Human evolution has taken us from an era when we lived as predators toward a more collaborative way of life. As we solve certain survival issues, we have begun to learn that positive evolution comes with collaboration, so that our first instinct is not to slay someone but instead to engage with them.
We are a far cry from being a society of collaborators, but we certainly are closer than ever, while still possessing some of our predatory instincts. On this continuum—from completely predatory to complete collaboration—we sit midway, with some of us embracing the collaborative approach while others of us maintain our predatory ancestral trait. Our roots may lie in predation, but we possess the ability to transcend them through conscious evolution—an option we human beings possess exclusively. We have the ability to evolve on purpose.
Together we can do what we cannot do separately. Our challenges are beyond the heroic actions of the few. This means that collaboration is essential to make the shift to a new consciousness, a new reality.
GROWING INTO GLOBALISTS
I’ve always liked what Paine said a few centuries ago. While he identified largely with the United States, he nonetheless saw himself as a global citizen. He stated, “My country is the world. My countrymen are mankind.” He writes, “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” He never meant this egocentrically but saw the principles underlying America’s Declaration of Independence as ultimately applicable to all humanity, addressing issues of importance to people everywhere.
Visionary inventor Buckminster (“Bucky”) Fuller saw the whole world as his home and offered a wonderful metaphorical phrase that has stuck with me since the early 1980s. He writes:
In all reality I never “leave home.” My backyard has just grown progressively bigger and more globular until now the whole world is my spherical backyard. “Where do you live?” and “What are you?” are progressively less sensible questions. At present I am a passenger on Spaceship Earth and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category, a highbred specialization. I am not a thing—a noun. I am not flesh. At eighty-five, I have taken in over a thousand tons of air, food, and water, which temporarily became my flesh and which progressively disassociated from me. You and I seem to be verbs—evolutionary processes. Are we not integral functions of the Universe?2
We humans have done very well in developing our abilities to distribute information, travel easily, entertain one another, produce and merchandize our goods and, generally, manage our material reality. However, as great as our material achievements are, we have not kept pace with our internal development.
Somewhere the vision of the founders of the United States got skewed so that the focus came to be only on the material aspects of their dream and not the mystical or spiritual—what Benjamin Franklin called “superintending Providence.” Washington saw liberty as obedience to what is highest within ourselves and within the community, not simply having the freedom to pursue selfish interests. But somewhere along the line, the pursuit of happiness started walking on one leg—the leg of materialism—and the spiritual part of the dream, what was referred to as “inner wealth” by the founders, atrophied and we started deferring to structures of doctrine, dogma and interpretations by others rather than exploring our inner selves.
The meaning of the American Dream shifted and became much more about possessions and material abundance. I witnessed this personally when I was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s. Perhaps it was a reaction to the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression in which people of my parents’ generation suffered so much, but “a chicken in every pot” gave way to “two cars in every garage.” Along the way, a big part of the American Dream became owning one’s home. It seems we have been measuring our happiness by what we own for several generations now.
Philosopher Jacob Needleman writes, “America is a nation formed by philosophical ideals that have been thought through by human beings—it is the only nation in the world that is so constituted.” This country was born from this convergence of ideals amidst a world that was steeped in older ways.
Now is the time for a similar birth—an intentional birth based on a more mature humanity—but for our entire world. Now is the time for humanity to take a stand for its greatness—owning a destiny that has been lying dormant on the social level, but still sought by people in their private reflections and deeper yearnings.
The American Dream was meant to be a fresh start. It was unleashed idealism, free to roam in an entirely new country. Now, having run out of “new frontiers,” we need to bring the dream home, wherever that may be. Besides, we are too small a world these days. A resurrected American Dream for the exclusive benefit of people in the United States is no longer an option. For better or for worse, the world has become Fuller’s Spaceship Earth, and all humans are passengers. One big difference between a spaceship and an airplane: on Spaceship Earth we are also crew members. You can’t sit back in your luxury seat, expect to be waited on and remain passive. We each have personal responsibility for how our spaceship does and whether or not we all survive.
Becoming wealthy and powerful as individuals or as nations no longer provides assurance of security or safety. We are all in this together. It is time for a new renaissance in which we bring new commitments and values and approaches to our world much like America’s founders tried to do over 250 years ago for their country.
What the U.S. founders referred to as “one nation, indivisible” can now be paraphrased as “one world, indivisible,” consistent with the Spaceship Earth metaphor.
It is time to resurrect the spiritual context for happiness, not continue walking on the one leg of materialism. It is time to explicitly engage that ineffable quality the founders attempted to instill in America’s essential DNA—what some of them called “Providence” and others called “Reason.” A 2005 article in Time magazine focused on Americans’ happiness. It reported that “there’s evidence of a creeping dissatisfaction too. Why else are so many of us flocking to therapists, consulting divorce lawyers, scarfing Prozac? Why do so many reach middle life with a surprising sense of emptiness? Why does the self-help book remain such a reliable cash machine? In a society as wealthy and privileged as in the U.S., what, after all, does it take to find real satisfaction in life?”
According to research done at the University of Illinois and in The Netherlands, money can only buy happiness up to a point. As Radical Middle newsletter reports, “Beyond a certain minimum point, more stuff won’t make us happy. Beyond a certain minimum point, you need to go after happiness directly—via family, friends, ‘good work’—via whatever gives you a larger sense of purpose and meaning.”
Let us come together, in a global community, allowing our innate desire to be connected to catalyze the triumph of the human spirit over the problems and conditions we currently experience. Let us come together as people, not as separate nations or tribes or nationalities but as human beings with a yet-unfulfilled destiny, sharing this experience here on Earth, and cocreate the new dawn for the human spirit. We have so much to learn from one another. The United States can learn much from Europe, Asia and so many others, and vice versa. The Northerners can learn much from the Southern Hemisphere peoples, and vice versa. South Africa has so much to teach us all about reconciling generations of deeply instilled hatred and patterns of violence and vengeance. There’s so much more we can all be together, as global citizens; so much more than all of us proceeding separately.
THE MATURE HUMAN
You know how teenagers crave their freedom from their parents’ control but are less excited about taking responsibility for it? This awkward stage of maturation is where we humans find ourselves right now, on the brink of a new enlightenment—a step toward a wiser, more adult human being. Kant writes, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.” Maturity calls for responsibility to accompany the freedom we can enjoy as adults, not freedom without accountability like so many adolescents seek.
Duane Elgin has worked as a senior social scientist with the think tank SRI International, where he coauthored numerous studies on the long-range future for government agencies such as the National Science Foundation. He has also worked as a senior staff member of the joint Presidential-Congressional Commission on the American Future. In his 2009 book, The Living Universe, he describes what this maturing process may look like:
Eventually we will see that we have an unyielding choice between a badly injured (or even stillborn) species-civilization, and the birth of a bruised, but relatively healthy, human family and biosphere. In seeing and accepting responsibility for this inescapable choice, we will work to discover a common sense of reality, identity, and social purpose.
This is maturity. And, like physical maturing, it may not be easy. Elgin continues:
Finding this new common sense will be an extremely demanding task. Only after we have exhausted all hope of partial solutions will we be willing to move forward with an open mind and heart toward a future of mutually supportive development. Ultimately, in moving through our initiation, we will grow from our adolescent ways as a species into our early adulthood and consciously take responsibility for our relationship with the Earth, the rest of life, and the universe.3
It is immature to defer to others and let them tell us what to do—a way of avoiding responsibility for our actions and thoughts. Such avoidance happens in groups such as cults where a leader has undue influence over how others think and what commitments they pay lip service to. Our ancestors deferred to the monarchies before the Age of Enlightenment, and as individuals we all did it as children and later as teenagers. There was some comfort in having someone tell us what was right or wrong, what to do or not do. However, taking comfort in this abdication of responsibility as an adult is a cop-out.
Kant writes:
Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if its cause is not lack of intelligence but lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence!4
Futurist Walter Truett Anderson poses a deep and thought-provoking question in his 2003 book The Next Enlightenment: “Are we more free than we wish?” Isn’t this a challenging question—especially for Americans who claim freedom as their master franchise?
Are we truly afraid of awakening to full liberation and maturity? Much like the frightened teenager who’s too proud to admit it, are we facing a historical choice to either grow up or continue living at home under the influence of Mommy and Daddy—being told what to do? Have we fully grown into the maturity of the Age of Enlightenment offered us a couple of centuries ago, or are we still weaning ourselves from the mother’s milk of the dictates of church or king—or of Mommy and Daddy?
Like teenagers, who demand independence but know, and secretly value, that they can rely on their parents to cover for them if they get into trouble, are we prone to this sort of fundamentalism—believing what others put forth and avoiding our own innate knowing? Anderson refers to “the shock of recognition” when we first realize that we know what we have been denying we know. When this shock occurs, we can either embrace the knowledge that we do in fact know, or run away from it, scurrying down our underground tunnels pretending we never recognized it to begin with.
This new Age of Enlightenment requires explicit recognition of not only what we’ve been pretending we don’t know, but the full recognition of our spiritual nature—our interconnectedness with a power greater than ourselves. Recognizing these truths is key to becoming mature adults, not only for the population of the United States but for the entire world. Engaging this new stage in human evolution allows us all to transcend the conditions in which we seem so hopelessly stuck.
This recognition requires a new level of maturity, taking responsibility for the whole, being accountable for our choices, individually and collectively. We must grow up!
In the spring of 1996, a few months before he learned he had a fatal cancer, visionary social scientist Willis Harman wrote an article in which he suggested that the constant push for greater productivity and consumption, combined with growing unemployment, was a spiritual crisis rather than an economic one. This certainly goes against the consensus, as matters of employment, GNP and economic growth dominate our culture, our media and our work lives. He writes, “The modern world has more or less equated society with the economy, and contribution with having a job in the mainstream economy.” He then challenges the reader to acknowledge that the old ways of job creation and economic production are no longer viable—something any mature, thinking person must see if they look beyond the immediate future. He states the old way “no longer works, and may never again work, may at first seem alarming (or so threatening it is denied). Viewed differently,” he offers, “it is a challenge that may induce us to create the good society we all know is possible.”5
The Great Growing Up is about what Harman calls “the good society we all know is possible,” which is certainly an idea whose time has come. I say this boldly because almost everyone knows we can do better.
Here again, we are challenged to acknowledge that we know what’s possible. We also know the likely outcome if we continue denying what we know, or pretending that we don’t know. Despite how our minds react to this assertion, and how defensive we might get initially, if we take the time to ask ourselves in deep introspection, most of us will cop to it and admit we really do know. We know what is needed, what is wrong, and that there is a possible better future waiting for us if we put our minds to it.
Michael Dowd was trained as a Christian minister yet managed to reconcile the often opposing views of religion and science is his 2009 book, Thank God for Evolution. He addresses this “promise of possibility” of historic proportions:
We are on the verge of the greatest spiritual awakening in history. It took centuries for the Copernican Revolution to transform humanity. Thanks to global satellite telecommunications, the Internet, and all the other technologies that link us, it is quite possible that our own paradigm shift—from seeing nature as an artifact, to seeing Nature as the primary revelation of divinity (and inseparable from that divinity)—will prevail over the course of decades rather than centuries. That the shift will occur eventually is almost certain. How fast it transforms our institutions depends on how rapidly and thoroughly we are transformed as individuals, and where we choose to invest our collective creativity as awareness expands.6
CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION
It is time to stop thinking about what might happen in the future and start thinking about what we want to happen, about what needs to occur now to bring that desired future about. This is “conscious evolution.”
Many find this term a kind of oxymoron because evolution is thought of as survival of the fittest, something seemingly left to chance and random circumstances. But as we evolve as human beings we are also growing in consciousness, and, as we do, we have more and more choice in how we evolve. Being conscious of the choice makes evolution self-transcendent. We can either evolve on purpose or by accident. But it is our choice.