We need to deal with a spiritual crisis
What’s even more fundamental than concern with societies collapsing is humanity finally growing into adulthood
Here’s how I see us in the big picture.
Humans with our minds showed up some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in the 13.8-billion-year evolution of the universe. From the emergence of elementary particles to what we have now, the universe has been expanding.
The image I give is of a rising loaf of raisin bread. If you’re on any one raisin, you think you’re not moving and you look around and all the other raisins are moving away from you. That’s what we’ve discovered, all the galaxies are moving away from us, all of them. And the same thing would be true in any galaxy. – Brian Thomas Swimme
It’s one process, with one development after another that will go on as long as the universe goes on. There weren’t aways planets, like there wasn’t always life. These were developments.
The development going on now is human consciousness. Our psyches aren’t fully in. Look to mystics and gods for how the arrival would be. I see that the purpose of being alive is to contribute to Earth becoming the thinking planet. We call that next layer, beyond the biosphere where other life forms run on instinct, the noosphere. It’s where we know our oneness. Be aware that there’s danger now from a multitude that just knows about the material world, and their life purpose is to get the most and not to be the most.
What came to mind from the Georgia shooting was what I passed along before when Marianne Williamson said, “Our society calls it a mental health crisis, but in fact it’s a spiritual one.” School shootings are spiritual crises. You can’t rely on laws to fix what soullessness leads to, and calling the crisis spiritual tells us what to work on.
I also like Marianne describing the shift we need to make, “from an economic bottom line to a humanitarian bottom line." Societies that are free are on a higher rung of the evolutionary ladder than totalitarian ones, but there’s even further for free people to go for what to do with their freedom:
People with intelligence must use their intelligence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used and cease in their clamor only when they are used sufficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs. - Abraham Maslow
We are here to expand our capacity for unconditional love. What’s even more fundamental than concern with societies collapsing is humanity finally grow into adulthood.
"We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos - the right moment - for a 'metamorphosis of the gods,' of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing." – C.G. Jung
Feelings are in our design, and it takes more than having stuff to get a feel-good prize. What that would take is decisions -- to be helpers and not hurters, to be cooperative instead of going solo, to be loving instead of being nasty. This is doable. As gun laws would save lives, caring about each could be the difference between life and death for us all. There are no powerhouses who’ve launched anything to bring about a caring society, but if you have a first-rate brain I‘m Looking for a committee to think with for a Conversation to Save the World.
If doomsday-or-change sunk in, it would be all hands on deck. Like Biden stepping down for the good of the country, I could see billionaires giving up dynastic wealth to prevent apocalypse. Come on. Why not? It would feel good to them. They would be the saviors of humanity. Any society has people at all levels of affluence and they still would be the richest, but with the weight of their money strangling the rest of humanity it would be pivotal for them to only be very very rich. From what the NYT called “A jaw-dropping report by ProPublica detailing how America’s richest people avoided paying taxes,” everyone can get wised up as to how billionaires in America can live completely tax-free. And I could see this awesomely informative expose throwing some chagrin into the equation that the mega rich live by, which could help melt their human hearts.
Even without divesting themselves of their dynastic fortunes, the mega rich paying taxes commensurate with what wage-earners pay would be meaningful. For an example, Warren Buffett has some $149.9 billion in wealth. His pre-tax income last year was from his shares in Berkshire Hathaway going up about $7.5 billion in worth. But did he get taxed on that? No. By selling a few shares to finance his personal lifestyle, he moved $14 million over to his personal bank account and only paid tax on the small amount of capital gains he realized from that. That’s an effective income tax rate of less than 1 percent. His heirs, who would inherit the stock at its market value, wouldn’t pay any taxes on the gains if his shares never were cashed out, as just one of several ways the rich can play by the existing rules and avoid taxation.
With some, like Buffett, advocating for fair taxation, why doesn’t one of the super-rich call a meeting? As the producer of TEDxWestHollywood, this is what I showed to start that meeting. This is a special treat so be sure to click on it. There are 406 comments and this is typical: “KATIE GOODMAN IS A GENIUS!!” The first comment, that’s mine, will tell you more.
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It was interesting to read Senator Chris Murphy write: "The challenges America faces aren't really logistical. They are metaphysical." See N.Y.T.'s August 19th article The Senator Warning Democrats of a Crisis Unfolding Under their Noses.
Yes, society is a reflection of the state of our individuals. As above, so below.....Humanity has yet to come into its own. Our poly-opportunity, our meta-opportunity is to use this catalyst to wake us up into what more we can be. Not everyone is ready to come along, we are as you say, building capacity.