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.
