In 1968, Abraham Maslow, one of the twentieth century’s most respected and admired psychologists, voiced his pioneering vision of a “comprehensive human psychology.” The father of such concepts as “peak experience”, “self–actualization”, and “synergy”, terms now deeply embedded in the wisdom of our culture, Maslow’s vision was the unification of people of different racial and ethnic origins, brought about by a “psychology for the peace table.” In a time of global unrest, Maslow saw the best qualities of humanity—love and compassion, creativity and aesthetics, ethics and spirituality—as the building blocks for world peace. What our society was in need of, in Maslow’s words, was “a system of thought—you might even call it a religion—that can bind humans together” and give our “idealistic young people with something to believe in, . . . something they can pour all that emotion into.”
But more than 50 years later, a system that binds humans together has not emerged. In spite of the fall of communism in central Europe, the dissolution of the structure of the U.S.S.R., and the unification of Germany, world conflict has not only spread but has been escalated by the interjection of religious ideology, that has brought us to the brink of a global war between Christian and Islamic nations and governments.
By all credible accounts, the earth is failing as a viable habitat for our species, a failure brought about by the predatory and devouring conduct of corporate and government leaders and the failure of the populous to take meaningful steps to curb such conduct.
In the United States, religious fundamentalism has exploded; civil rights are under attack in legislative bodies; politics have polarized; the populace has plunged into exorbitant debt; and the Pied Pipers of the media and movie industries have lead the people off the cliffs of violence, negativity, and materialism into an ocean of self–absorption.
Giant corporations are exploiting capitalism to the gradual extinction of the middle class while at the same time investing millions of dollars in consultant services to create so-called “inclusive” management strategies, establish innovative motivation techniques, and develop better working conditions for their employees—that is, those who remain on the payroll after downsizing, outsourcing, or contracting for services or manufacturing with foreign workers. Because all the money spent on “corporate improvement” is really about bottom line profits, it is not surprising that Margaret Wheatley, a leading expert in the future of business organizations, has observed that almost seventy percent of the workforce in the United States experiences varying degrees of dissatisfaction with their employment, including almost a third of them who don’t even want to go to work in the morning!
In his insightful book, The Sibling Society, Robert Bly observes that adults in our culture are regressing toward adolescence, while adolescents, having no desire to become adults, have developed a sibling culture by creating their own rituals and sharing them horizontally with their own age group, while disregarding any use for religion, precedents, or tradition, without which Bly notes, “there is little to prevent a slide into primitivism, and into those regressions that fascism is so fond of.” The population of the Sibling Society has lost its connection with that which grounds us in the historical context of where we came from and how we got here and is severed from the transcendent aspect of life, through which we come to know who we are meant to be.
Yet voices are being raised within our religious, business, and environmental communities calling for a shift in consciousness that will provide the dynamics for the creation of new realities. Increasing numbers of activist organizations are directing their efforts toward increasing individual awareness and organizing people to protect the environment, counter the rapacious conduct of big business, challenge governmental elitism that favors an ever-increasing wealthy class, and protect the middle class from extinction. For the most part, however, these activist and grassroots groups are each doing their own thing, failing to find or perhaps even seek out a common ground by which they could connect with one another and integrate their talents and personnel to leverage their strength and energies to bring about results none of them could do on their own. Failing to see how they each fit into a finely calibrated energetic web, these groups and those who lead them continue to voice their own agendas as they drown out and remain oblivious to the voices of their neighbor. Unable to join together in strength and unity, their good ideas and noble intentions do not make a difference.
As a culture, we are more than ever before in need of a system of thought that can bind humans together. In a recent essay, “Awakening Faith in an Alternative Future,” Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers speak hopefully of an awakening taking place that they see as leading us “to realize that our future as a species cannot be taken for granted, that there is a real urgency to our present situation, and that the time to start living together differently is now.” The authors cite a 2,100 year–old Mahayana Buddhist writing, The Awakening of Faith, that, they say, speaks of faith and “deep conviction that enlightenment is possible, that we each carry within ourselves immense possibilities for connecting to the universe and participating in its generative process.” Such a connection is possible because we are inseparable from God, with whom “we have the potential to co-create our realities.” The caveat, according to the authors, is that “we must first transcend the myth of separation that modern culture has taught us—separation from one another, from our highest selves, and from the generative processes of nature. Awakening our faith that the future can be different from the past will take nothing less than rediscovering our place and our modern societies and institutions in life’s continual unfolding.”
An awakening, a transition, a transformation, a paradigm shift—whatever it is to be called—that will transcend the “myth of separation,” that will provide us with the system of thought that will bind us together as earthlings, humans, citizens, brothers, and sisters—if it comes at all—will not come from an executive government office, nor a legislature, nor a boardroom, nor a human resource department, nor from a pulpit. It will come about when individuals begin to think about certain things in a certain way and when the combined thinking of a sufficient number of such individuals reaches a critical mass that causes a shift in the collective consciousness of people everywhere and people everywhere begin thinking about certain things in a certain way.