On Global Dilemmas
Part 2 – Cultural Reform
What is a Culture?
A culture is an evolving system of beliefs, values, rules and customs, which reinforce each other to promote a successful way of life. All cultures operate through institutions. Those who control its institutions form its ruling elite. The internal and external challenges a culture faces change with time. So, to remain virile, a culture must continue to evolve in response to those challenges.
During their years of virility, all human cultures promote noble virtues such as self-reliance, humility, love, compassion, courage, justice, fairness, patience, generosity, forgiveness and honesty. These unique qualities of the human intellect evolved to civilize Man’s animal instincts. They inspire him to view his self-interest as best served by acts, which earn him the respect of his community and, with it, yearned for inner fulfilment. Virtue causes Man to realise that the wellbeing and security of self and family are inseparable from that of his broader cultural group. Thus, the evolution of noble virtue in the human intellect forms the foundation of civilisation. During a culture’s period of ascendancy, its religious and secular institutions honour and teach the noble virtues as the foundation of civilized living.
However, as a culture ages, its ruling elite increasingly see themselves as deserving of special status and, accordingly, modify the institutions they control to further their own purposes rather than the wellbeing of the community they evolved to serve. As this change takes place, virtue is assigned a lower value and its place as the foundation of civilized behaviour is replaced by edict and dogma. Animal instincts cease to be the servants of a virtuous state of mind and begin to dominate human behaviour. Power begins to rule, unfettered. Greed and fear are nurtured into becoming the dominant human emotions and are exploited. Divisions arise to sap the community of purpose, unity and strength.
Individuals lose control of their lives and, with it, their self-respect and preparedness to defend the rights granted them by civilisation. With increasing boldness and obfuscation, members of their ruling elite abuse their institutional powers in the promotion of personal ends. Dangerous dilemmas emerge for which, in the absence of virtue, there are no solutions. The community is weakened from within and finally falls on its own – or somebody else’s – petard.
Ageing Western Culture
Western Culture is ageing and advancing along this path. And, because it attracts a global following, many of the troubling dilemmas associated with its decline carry global impact.
In the past, when a culture became corrupted, the dilemmas thus created tended to be limited in their damaging impact. The offending leadership could be removed from office by constitutional means or by force of arms or argument. However today’s elite command powers so great that they can over-ride all moves to replace them.
Of late, efforts to spread Western Culture and lifestyles have become blatant, provoking fear amongst supporters of other cultures. As those efforts become more and more forceful, some radical members of the threatened cultures abandon the more virtuous aspects of their faith and join networks, such as Al Qaeda, which are committed to using guerilla warfare against the attacker.
The Most Powerful Dilemma
Terrorism thus may be seen as a response to programs designed to impose Western Culture on the rest of Mankind. As those programs succeed, many serious dilemmas, including this terrorist reaction, are being created. Initiatives aimed at combating these dilemmas are opposed successfully by the powerful elites who promote them. But these dilemmas have the potential to threaten all Earthly Existence. This constitutes the central dilemma of our day.
A Network Approach
How might this dilemma be tackled in the face of such powerful opposition? Perhaps by taking a leaf out of Nature’s book and trying an evolutionary approach. An Entity could be created that brings into being and/or nurtures Networks that attract individuals to involvement in the evolution of initiatives to a point at which they can become viable ventures with potential to exert a positive impact (no matter how small) on specific, globally threatening dilemmas. The World-Wide-Web makes such an approach possible by providing affordable and universally accessible means of furthering, through cross fertilisation and other means, the evolution of ideas to the point at which they may act as the basis for creating or improving viable ventures.
The primary objective of each Network would be to develop initiatives to the stage at which they form the foundation or otherwise contribute to viable ventures that lessen the vulnerability of segments of Humanity to the catastrophic effects of modern dilemmas. An important contribution of the Networks would be to garner essential support for its ventures from amongst the financial and political elites. Initially, such support would be attracted by inducements that conform to traditional institutional constraints. However, as the Networks gained in vitality, arguments in support of expansion and reform of those constraints, needed to fit them to the modern world, would broaden the definition of activities that qualify for reward.
The overriding objective would be to support the evolution of practical steps (no matter how small) that move segments of humanity closer to achieving a peaceful, naturally sustainable and humanly fulfilling lifestyle, which is supportive of the right of others to seek similar ends in their own way.
It would be hoped that the work of such an entity might encourage the evolution of existing cultures to a point at which they stimulate modern Human Beings to wisely handle the astonishing powers that their Modern World vouchsafes to them.
To be appropriate, modern cultures must motivate and reward wise, practical, peaceful, humane and environmentally sustainable use of those powers at all levels. They must promote a common dream that sees this Earth as transformed over time into a spectrum of complementing Heavens rather than one big Hell.
Always, the present must be the starting point; always the move to the future must be structured so that it entails minimal sacrifice to oneself and to the rest of Humanity; always those asked to bear what sacrifice is called for must be peacefully persuaded to bear it.
If the Networks flourish, their size and relevance will grow. They will encourage people to recognise and nurture the self-reliant, creative and emotional aspects of their Beings from which human fulfilment sprouts. They will assist individuals to recognise the crippling impact of propaganda and coercion, when combined to deny them creative and emotional involvement in Life. They will help people to rediscover the importance of values and lifestyles, which demand personal commitment to initiatives that enliven and enlighten Humanity and Nature, rather than threaten their destruction.
Anticipated Opposition
As the Networks make such waves, opposition is certain to grow amongst those who see their power and prosperity as tied to maintenance of the status quo. Such people will continue to insist that everything is under control; that the dilemmas foreshadowed exist only in the imagination.
But a growing avalanche of evidence suggests that they are wrong. If Nature is to continue to support Humanity, the environmental stresses and the deadening estrangement that spread with Western Lifestyles must be eased. For that to happen, many members of the World’s ruling elites must be brought to recognise that unless they commit significant intellectual, financial and political capital to solving the dilemmas that are being created, their society – and with it, their favoured position within it – will end.
The cultural transition will not be easy. Western lifestyles are extremely addictive and, like heroine and nicotine, they permanently damage the creative, intimate and spiritual life of these addicts. With those qualities impaired, the prospects for attaining the deep human joy and fulfilment for which we all yearn become dim. Empty and stress-creating diversions constitute depressing and non-viable substitutes.
Recapitulation
There is an urgent need to discover means of turning the creative energies of Humankind towards:
• Down-sizing Nation States and effecting such other changes as are necessary to rendering major wars in the future, inconceivable.
• Achieving levels of cultural reform that cause the striving to place health, happiness and fulfilment within the reach of every Human Being – without overtaxing the Natural Environment – to be valued and respected above all else.
• Ensuring that the Earth’s limited resources are utilised in a manner that enables the needs of the whole Human Race to be serviced, in perpetuity.
• Globally minimizing the causes of destitution, ill health, injustice and unwanted pregnancies.
• Reforming cultural institutions and values such that all enterprises needed to conquer presently emerging, world-threatening dilemmas are rendered viable.
• Creating means of attracting people in required numbers to callings essential to enabling sustainable human victory over these dilemmas to be snatched from the jaws of defeat.
Is it possible for Mankind to achieve these goals without first witnessing the enfeeblement of the culture, which is their dominant cause? Or, as in the past, must that culture cease to dominate before renaissance can begin?
