Progress and stalemate of the new paradigm

An essay by my friend and colleague Richard Hames (of the Asian Foresight Institute) is making the rounds of the internet, and getting some rave reviews from world changers.

It’s a diagnosis of our ills, of the spiritual disease underlying it, and points to the possible way forward. Impossible to summarize, so just an excerpt to give you a taste of it.

Richard writes that “the (original) title of this essay was borrowed from Hazel Henderson’s book Paradigms in Progress: Life beyond Economics, published in 1995 by Berrett-Koehler of San Fransisco. This pioneering book is still in print and is undoubtedly one of the most seminal works of our time.”

Richard David Hames:

“Global heating is but one canary in the coal mine of modernism – a disturbing symptom among many indicating a civilisational and environmental pathology in an acute state of distress and, quite possibly, collapse. Life-threatening certainly, and constantly deteriorating, it nevertheless distracts us from the main game.

Additional signs of breakdown range from unparalleled demands being made on Earth’s physical resources by an escalating population and continuing disparities between less privileged and more affluent individuals and communities, to a scarcity of potable water, conflicts driven by religious and ethnic differences, the rising costs of food production, ingrained social and economic inequities, demands for energy that cannot be met, as well as rules and conventions that exacerbate division, competition and conflict within society.

What these intertwined symptoms actually denote is a messy unraveling of the industrial paradigm and mindset; the end-game of a complex dynamic between three life-critical systems: energy, economy and environment. Adding further to our quandary is the fact that various amplifying feedback mechanisms are now accelerating this end-game out of our control. This has been largely brought about by the comprehensive failure of a set of organizing principles originally intended to maintain some semblance of order in the juxtaposition of (industrial) development and (social) compliance.

This unraveling is only peripherally connected to the issue of climate change, in that global heating is merely an emergent quality of the way the system has been designed to operate. Change the design (or, more importantly, the intentions informing that design) and we solve the problem of global heating – in addition to resolving many other related concerns. While we are preoccupied with discrete issues, however, especially when our tendency is to converge around explicit targets, an attachment to the goal itself assumes greater import, dragging us even further away from any deeper intentions.

At present every visible symptom seems to point to fundamental design flaws in the beliefs and frameworks used by the developed world to create wealth and maintain a quality of life the rest of humanity once envied – but now expects as a God-given right.

Together, these symptoms jeopardize both the highly sophisticated nature of our society as well as its more pragmatic capacity to produce and distribute life’s necessities. This threat can also be perceived as a collision between fate and desire. In that context, risks appear to have emerged as a direct result of the way we think – about our needs, our rights, our aspirations and our interactions, particularly relative to each other and to the planet. We must think again. Differently this time. Not only through a different lens but also from a higher altitude. And collectively. Indeed to avert the imminent chaos that would be brought about by extensive societal collapse we will need to review current assumptions and practices by addressing four imperatives:

1. Re-imagining our collective purpose – particularly ensuring that prosperity, well-being, equity and justice are rights to be inherited by all human beings and not just a few wealthy individuals and corporations

2. Separating private ownership from shared assets (like the sky, scientific knowledge, silence, the Internet, forests, oceans, ecosystems and our cultural heritage and traditions, for example) thus ensuring protection and management of our common wealth

3. Reinventing current patterns of production and consumption by focusing on shared sufficiency rather than upon selfish excess

4. Restoring functionality and beauty to our lives within limits determined by natural laws over which we have no control.

Essentially these four imperatives equate to society’s new bottom line. They are non-negotiable. The real difficulty is that they require us to find ways of integrating and transcending current praxis in order to address more fundamental issues than just climate change.

That is easier said than done of course – as is proving to be the case every day. Global heating has become a melodramatic distraction we can ill afford. While most scientists generally concur it is vital to lower concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (quite possibly below 350 parts per million if we are to avoid potentially disastrous consequences) and that the technologies to achieve this are readily available, the overall know-how, motivation and enthusiasm for change remains predictably naïve and parochial.

Political processes continue to stall because of corruption, greed, self-interest and the traditionally competitive nature of international negotiations. The mass media vacillate and polarise. Industry leaders sit on the fence, denying culpability, defending current investment decisions, threatening governments with mass job cuts and lobbying for as little change as possible. Investment banks shrewdly manipulate conditions to their advantage – new carbon markets potentially offering billions of dollars in profits. Meanwhile, on the edge of public awareness, numerous activists, each with a slightly different agenda, repeat their doom-laden mantras, confusing the general public who are already fearful and fatigued by the overwhelming uncertainties before us.

For the time being all pretence of leadership has been replaced by an oligarchy hell bent on milking every last drop of life from the industrial system even as it crashes. The lack of a compelling and appropriate vision and of a unified global purpose, together with the necessary collaborative will and mechanisms needed to escape the gravitational pull of the past, is deeply indicative of a society lacking the resilience, imagination and consciousness required to adequately transform its state of being.

Over the past few centuries our civilisation has advanced incredibly and in so many different ways. Today, those of us fortunate enough to be living in the developed world enjoy levels of material well-being and life-styles that were simply unimaginable even a few years ago.

At the same time much of what was once fresh and beautiful about humankind has ossified into a rigid shell; homogenous, pitiless, seemingly devoid of any compassion, wonder or love. Bloated from excessive consumption, exhausted by pointless conflict, we await a crisis that enables the blueprint of a new society to emerge from the imaginal cells of our deepest communion, like the metamorphosis of a chrysalis into a butterfly.

It is quite feasible that global heating is that emergency – or will swiftly become so if government inaction persists. As we well know from catastrophe theory, all crises offer us a plethora of possible ways forward. In the context of climate change there are a few critical paths that lead to a better future for humanity as a whole. Others, and I fear these are the pathways we are intent on pursuing, chart a course that lock-in current divisions and convictions – especially the paradigmatic impulse linking progress to continuous economic growth and development.

So what do we imagine when we speak of a “better” future? What inspires us about this future? And how does it stack up with what we already have and what we believe we may be about to lose?”

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