Like many, I spent much time in the common "the world needs saving" program.
Exactly when, where, and how I first entered the program, I'm not sure. However, it was difficult to see it is merely a belief system when throughout the years, more and more information was being fed to validate the viewpoint.
On the plane to Europe, I began reading Sam Carpenter's, "The Systems Mindset." One of the main points he emphasizes repeatedly: the world works with 99.99% perfection.
"But..." the resistance is bound to come.
"The wars... the pollution... the violence... the injustice... big brother... corporate greed and corrupt bankers... etc, etc, etc."
Yes, the world operates perfectly.
The outcomes within it may not match our ideals of perfection. Nonetheless, there is an inherent order at play behind all the seeming chaos. And it executes flawlessly, every time.
Diving further, Carpenter's stance is that with the faith that the world functions perfectly, we can then proceed going beneath the surface to tweak the systems producing undesirable outcomes.
This isn't really theory. It's mechanics.
For every effect, there is a cause. For whatever we might see as "wrong" in the world, there is a complex web of interconnected factors at play driving universal & psychological mechanics to produce those situations. Perfectly.
Looking to the news - whether mainstream or social media - one might quickly jump to the conclusion that the world is fucked. (A technical term).
Yeah, we're on the verge of nuclear showdown between a questionably-sane dictator and laughing stock of a questionably-coherent US president. There's ISIS and mad chaos in the Middle East. We've been worked into a frenzy over GMOs, vaccines, flouride in the water, geoengineering, etc - just how valid all those concerns are is another question. Mother Earth ain't been happy with our polluting her waters and air, perhaps backlashing with unprecedented environmental disasters some say are signalling the "end of times."
All-in-all, it might seem like the world is in need of saving.
But it's not.
Paradoxically, us silly humans simultaneously overestimate and underestimate just how much power we have.
On the one hand, a committed, passionate individual can harness the potential to cause great revolutions in this world.
On the other, the vast majority of our actions are a mere drop in the bucket of human history and really won't make much of a difference in the bigger picture.
We've all seen the injustice of wars and the pitfalls of corrupted politics. Many of us in this community have rebelled and spoken out against them. Yet, let's be real: no amount of "spreading truth" on social media has changed what we've been condemning. Nope.
There are odd dynamics at play in the human psyche - individual and collective.
From a survival state, we have crafted all these stories of how there are elite conspiracies to keep us victimized - while denying the disempowerment of such a belief system with a falsified sense of self-righteousness and "smarter-than-thou" complex paired with a narcissistic cause of righting the world's wrongs by arrogantly "waking people up" to their stupidity and shortcomings.
But, none of us are smart as we think we are.
Few want to admit just how influenced our thinking has been - just how malleable our opinions and emotions are by others' perspectives strongly-presented to validate and propagate belief systems.
And from a survival state, we might never see the falsehoods of our misconceptions. Thus, we have proceeded with good intentions, yet failing to ever achieve the outcomes hoped for because we were operating from inaccurate maps of the territory.
Functioning from a space of ignorance, taking action from values systems that have been distorted with cognitive bias, we have been relatively powerless to drive change. It is impossible to change a system while disconnected from it and blinded to its mechanical structure by our own judgement.
And simultaneously, we still do hold great power - though it is a power that's too often ended up abused as we've unconsciously propagated false beliefs that have not constructively served others in developing the capacities of discernment to engage from a space of alignment with natural law & order.
It's all a process.
Somewhere along the way, mankind has misinterpreted our role in the processes.
Granted, alot of chaos has resulted.
And yet, the common reaction has been to further interfere where and in ways it is not our place.
The Taoists possessed great wisdom. Included in their philosophies was the idea that the world is all unfolding in Divine perfection - the chaos included. In the midst of our emotional reactivity to news stories about how horrendous the world is, we forget that. We've continually lost sight of the fact that this is all an evolutionary process unfolding perfectly according to natural law.
Yeah, war, poverty, and environmental madness might not seem "natural" on the surface. However, we quickly lose sight - or perhaps never truly had it - of the bigger picture.
Human consciousness and society are on a journey of development stretching thousands of years back and forwards.
And we often tend to underestimate the length of time nature takes to complete its developmental cycles.
Some might question why "no progress has seemingly been made" since our parents were protesting the Vietnam war in the 60's and now - as though the insight alone that war ain't cool should be enough to justify a complete restructuring of all world affairs at the drop of a dime. Or why we're still burning fossil fuels when we have solar (or other free energy technologies, as some claim). Or why..... banking...
And from a survival state, out of the need to make sense out of the unknown in order to be able to cope for basic survival, many have devised storylines putting the blame on the government, the "elite," and scapegoats which allow for the projection of one's frustrations to reduce the pressure of inner conflict these global situations provide reflections for.
However, what is overlooked: the global infrastructural systems that have been established to produce undesirable results is overwhelmingly complex. And, men are still relatively stupid.
The capacity of "leaders" to initiate major transformation of highly-detailed interoperable operational networks has perhaps been far overestimated. The reality: such massive global changes as those in the "save the world" program would ideally like to see would would require organizational reform to a degree next-to-impossible to fathom. Having a simple idea for how to change the world is one thing. The execution of that idea is something entirely else.
And even if everyone on this planet were to grasp the same ideas of what needs to be changed and committed themselves to the work of building the new systems required to bring about such change, there is still one vitally-critical element without which none of it could ever be actualized: TIME.
We are in times of great change.
It's no secret that there is work to be done in designing new structures for directing human activity in ways that are conducive to sustainable harmony with nature, others, and ourselves. Yet, the distinction between an outlook that we must be the ones to "save" others and the planet, and the awareness of the broader processes unfolding, of which our evolving consciousness and organizational projections are a part of, is key.
And without a key, the doors stay shut.
We've been banging away, trying to knock them down so we can get through and have our voices heard. All to no avail.
The pathways forward begin with realignment of focus. With the maturation of perspectives - a process in which we may learn from the failures of our belief systems, so as to advance wide-eyed to the dynamics of reality, unhindered with distracting misconceptions and inhibiting judgement.
'Tis not always an easy or straightforward path. But there are costs to not stepping foot on it.
Of course, you may not believe any of the above.
Many may be likely to argue the perspectives herein, attempting to refute what challenges their belief systems. Thus is the psychological dynamic of these programs.
If you want to fight for your beliefs that the world is fucked and needs to be saved - or whatever variation of the theme might be - you are free to do so. But that doesn't make you right.
The world shall carry on with its evolving unfoldment, with or without us. Many, time shall swipe away without notice, who failed to abandon their preconceptions for the promise of Truth with which they could act powerfully in alignment with natural order. Far fewer, their stories shall be written in history books, as consequence of adapting to serving evolution.
And regardless of our choices, evolve we shall. Fast or slow, though one life time or many.
Should it take many, the world will still be here waiting - and perhaps in response to our mistaken thinking we were here to save it, laughing, as it were here to save us from underdeveloped perceptions in the way of seeing the true beauty, order, and magnifence in this grand universal design.
Or some shit.
Very interesting indeed! I'd like to make the following three points:
Nature goes on - so we are not trying to save the planet (the planet will survive), we are trying to save ourselves!
My view is that we have reached the environmental AND economic limits to capitalism - the chaos we see is a result of the owners of capital trying to squeeze the last remnants out of a dying system. What will come next? Nobody knows - but ... it might be good, despite what most of us think.
The laws of physics tell us that there is a self-correcting process in most things. History has shown us that this also happens in social affairs. But ... no doubt, this new era of social media outrage at EVERY single thing that happens does not help. Perhaps, it is this that we need to fix first!
Thanks for your great post!
Amen.
And your welcome. :-)
Nice post
Great post thank's for share it with us , I have followed you !
Beautifully written review of an obviously thought-provoking book. I will be reading this book soon. A few thoughts that may (or may not) be applicable to some of the concepts you describe from the book... The Daoist philosophers base their entire philosophy on the "system" called The Dao. Embodied symbolically in well-recognized the Yin/Yang symbol. That symbol is meant to demonstrate that the universe (the system of all things), when looked at holistically, is in perfect balance.
Not a book review at all, actually - I just referenced that one concept from it into the topic.
And cool observation - The Tao itself being a system. I hadn't exactly thought about it like that, but sure enough...
Another excellent post. There's a lot here, more than I have time to respond to with two Tasmanian Devils running circles in the house.
I do wanna say a couple things, though, because I love the post and the topic.
First I agree that things are both perfect and chaos all at once. I was really into I Ching for a while too, and that certainly affected my thinking. I think things are unfolding perfectly to help us see what we need to see to move forward and create more peace and joy.
I also think that this contrast is crucial to our evolution. We can look at something and see that it is fucked (absolutely a technical term, finally someone understands) and then decide, well, this would be so much nicer, funnier, more loving, more feel goody.
Which leads me to the last point I can remember amidst the chaos that is his house. It's so much easier, I believe, to facilitate and witness the change from a positive perspective. Like, solar panels are so much fresher, sexier, and yummier for my lungs than coal! Is much more productive than: coal sucks, and all those dirty oil barons and corrupt politicians and lobbyists are fucking us (also technical), and we're all gonna die in fires and hurricanes.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Blaming everyone else, including imaginary entities and governments also keeps people from taking personal action. It's the government's responsibility, so I can sit here scratching my ass bitching on social media.
🙌
I agree with a lot of what you are saying here and it's certainly all things worth thinking about.
But here I can't help but disagree a lot. Neither the world itself, nor evolution in any of it's forms guarantee or even promise perfection. Quite the contrary, both human society and evolution are messy, come with a lot of dead ends and die-offs and none of the things produced so far are perfect - they are just things that work on some level and don't on others. Like our bodies - they are magnificent and they are awesome to have, but are they perfectly adapted to everything? Of course not. That's why we are susceptible to both illness and misconceptions in the first place - we are far from perfect. And so is the world we live in. It's chaotic and viewing chaos as some form of perfection is just a way to help us feel better about everything that seems wrong and scary. But it is a misconception and a delusion too. It's finding purpose and reason where there is none.
If one wants to be fully pragmatic, I think one should accept the reality of chaos being chaotic. Improvement is not guaranteed and that's why I think powerless as we are, it's still worth nudging the system towards it as gently as it might be. As the collection of those nudges is what has gotten is that far.
the distinction here at root of the disagreement comes down to a matter of the definition of "perfection."
i.e. nature operating perfectly according to its laws of physics, mathematics, biology, etc - versus man's idealization of scenarios as "perfect" based on his value systems.
nature DOES operate perfectly... a virus invades the body, the outcome executes perfectly - healing if the body's systems are strong enough to fight it, disease and death if not. economies thrive if certain fundamental principles of universal law are adhered to, falls apart when man tries to override nature with his ideals. etc.
"perfection" herein doesn't mean outcomes fit our ideals. it means that the operating dynamics of this universe execute perfectly. thus, if outcomes and situations seem like shit, it's not random fate, but the product of dynamics in motion executing perfectly, and altering the outcome relies not on focusing on the outcome, but understanding the underlying dynamics and tweaking what's churning beneath the surface such that the perfect execution of the natural law and order will produce different outcomes...
Oh, then I have no objection except that perfect in that sense becomes a meaningless word. Everything that happens, happens in a universe governed by the laws of nature and it is indeed absurd to expect that anything would have a way to not follow the laws of nature. So things happening perfectly becomes synonymous with things happening. I see neither the utility, nor the wisdom of such hollow usage, but I have to agree that under this very specific and unpopular usage of the word, the statement rings true.
Oh there are other possibilities like the virus fusing with the cells and becoming part of their genome. Nature and life are extremely messy when you look into them at that level. But that's just the example really...
I would call that an unsubstantiated assertion for now. The fact that there are laws of nature has very little to do with the principles that guide human behavior and thus economy as an emergent system based on a vast amount of humans interacting.
As you pointed out, to affect a system desirably, we need to understand the laws or underlying mechanics that govern it. That's what scientific inquiry into reality tries to do day in and day out. But I would say that there are still a lot of question marks around both economy and psychology and we have a lot to figure out before we can claim things like your assertion above. If you don't know the laws, you can't say with certainty when something will thrive. On top of this, thrive and my definition of perfection are based on human ideals so if what you are saying is true, one should also expect chaos instead of desirable outcomes like with everything else.