The Horizon

THE WORLD’S CURRENT PREDICAMENT

“The dawn of the Third Millennium presented humankind with a dilemma. Will the skill that has characterized our species and propelled its development continue to sustain us, or will competition for power and resources lead to escalating conflict and our eventual extinction?

The seriousness of the situation facing us is symbolized by the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, carried out by a well-organized group trumpeting an extreme religious ideology. The event triggered a wave of conflict in which millions of adherents of one religious and cultural identity have been pitted against another. The calamitous events of 9/11 deepened a long history of intercultural and interreligious distrust, misunderstanding, and even outright hatred.

By the start of the second decade of the millennium, the global financial industry—absent any sense of accountability to the collective—capped an unsustainable cycle of greed and corruption, leaving the world’s economies close to financial collapse. Only the governments these commercial establishments appear to control prevented a disaster. The earnings of ordinary citizens were subsequently hijacked to bail out the perpetrators, none of whom were held accountable, thus buying time instead of enacting substantial change, not to mention increasing the disparity of the world’s haves and have-nots.

With the arrival of this Third Millennium, something else also began to crest….”

[Read on in TCIA about the historical circumstances pushing world change — the Arab Spring, Occupy, and countless other challenges arising from the inevitable process of globalization and multiculturalism]

THE GOOD NEWS

“Today we are witnessing a fresh eruption of self-evident truths, this time centered on what sharing implies within a community, with implications for access to resources.”

[Read more in TCIA about emerging new self-evident truths and senses of new inalienable rights in this time of globalization]

An Uptick in Consciousness

GLOBAL UPTICK IN CONSCIOUSNESS

“The uptick in consciousness on our planet at this moment is happening irrespective of station or calling. The masses are feeling things they can barely articulate. Two years ago, in the streets of first Tunisia, then Egypt, people were willing to die for a dream they had only begun to glimpse. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Christians and Moslems prayed together, using expressions such as “oneness” and “interconnectedness.”

While these uprisings didn’t miraculously remove the realities of the political and economic regimes under which people lived, the resonance was identical to that generated by expressions such as “freedom” and “human dignity” during the Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries—and again when much of the world turned from centuries of monarchy to experiments in democracy a few centuries later.

By 2011, beginning in New York and spreading globally, a new banner had been planted in the streets proclaiming “Occupy.” Other street signs were emblazoned with terms such as “we,” “us,” “ours,” and “collective.” ….. the Occupy movement racked up over half a billion entries on Google within a month of its inception is a reflection of this powerful current.

…Let’s not forget that we mammals, which today dominate the world, once were small, barely noticeable creatures scurrying around at the feet of the ruling dinosaurs. When realizations permeate the street, change is afoot, even it if may still be long coming. A new unity consciousness, a sense of the collective, of “we”, is arising on the planet. What its structures and cultures will be is as yet anyone’s guess.”

Read further in TCIA about how this up-tick in consciousness is unfolding

The Arising Globalization and Multiculturalism

GLOBALIZATION AND MULTICULTURALISM ARE INEVITABLE

“The big question is whether the global era that’s dawning will be kind to the world’s masses, or take the form of an economic tyranny, extending the unsustainable runaway consumerism that propels the wealth of just a few. Will it foster a climate of caring for the world’s resources, or of profiteering under the rubric of “grow, grow, grow”? Unless there is a sense that we are a single people, we will undoubtedly end with a catastrophe in which not even the elite will be safe.

The issue is how to create a sense of identity larger than “my interests,” “my nation,” “my religion,” “my ethnic group.” A holistic world-centric view would be a tall order for much of the world. Yet terms such as “transnational,” “transcultural,” and “trans-traditional” are becoming the clarion calls of our generation.”

[Read on in TCIA about the dynamic of this challenge]

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