We present here 9 important insights to inspire you and provide the basis for a change in thinking. Please feel free to add your responses and reflections (use the comment link at the bottom of each page - you need to login first).
If you take a wooden square box frame and pour millions of little balls into the middle, you will inevitably end up with a pyramid, the hierarchical structure of our economic and political systems, which concentrate money and power into an elite at the top. This appears to be more a product of natural evolution than some grand conspiratorial design.
However, in the same way that nature and natural processes are being used to inspire design (BedZED, Cradle to Cradle), eco-technologies (solar, wind), farming methods (biomimicry, permaculture) and industrial systems (ZERI, industrial ecology), so they are giving rise to new models in our political and economic systems.
In keeping with the reciprocal exchanges within the biological systems they seek to emulate, these complex systems tend to resemble networks rather than hierarchies, with an emphasis on decentralisation rather than increasing centralisation. Like an ecosystem, or the planet itself, their ability to adapt, self-organise and self-regulate, increases with diversity and complexity.
Leading examples in the world of business are VISA International, inspired by Dee Hock’s ‘chaordic design process’, and the Semco Corporation in Brazil. The Participatory Budget Process (PB) in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre is a prime example of how this thinking can be successfully applied to our political systems, giving birth to what have been called Gaian Democracies (see Gaian Democracies – Redefining Globalisation and People-Power by Roy Madron and John Jopling).
"In Gaian democracies, citizens and liberating political leaders will work together to learn how to live harmoniously with Gaia so as to be able to live harmoniously with each other. With the insights and tools of Gaian Democracy, the many millions opposing today's global forces can take an active part in co-creating a better world." - Schumacher Briefing no 9
There’s a story about a pioneering psychiatrist, who used to put his patients in a room, with a row of mops and buckets on one side, and a row of taps on the other. Then he would turn on the taps, and wait to see what happened. Those he considered mad, ran for the mops and buckets. Those he considered sane, walked over and turned off the taps.
The extent to which humanity is currently rushing for the mops and buckets is an indication of the degree to which we are on autopilot. Rather than looking at the root causes of the problem, and turning off the taps, we seem incapable of looking beyond the symptoms – we just keep grabbing those mops. In addition to being a failure of our linear systems, the mops and buckets approach is indicative of an economic system built on competition rather than co-operation.
The Industrial Age has been dominated and supported by the Darwinian notion of ‘survival of the fittest’, and now neo-Darwinian concepts like the ‘selfish gene’. However, according to many evolutionary biologists, what Darwin proposed was an evolution built as much on partnership and co-operation as conflict and competition.
Examples of co-operation taking precedence over competition occur throughout the natural world, from bacteria to sea anemones, from fungi to primates. In fact, we are now told that ancient bacteria nearly drove themselves to extinction a few billion years ago through hostile competition. Then they began to negotiate with each other, forming complex cooperative communities and thus steered the course of evolution.
Maybe the time has come for humanity to do the same?
One of the defining aspects of the globalising economy is the homogenising effect it has on the diversity of our planet - not just biological diversity, or biodiversity, but cultural diversity as well.
Strip malls, fast food restaurants and corporate brands now extend to the four corners of the globe, replacing traditional industries, small businesses and local culture with an homogenising ‘one-size-fits-all’ corporate culture of consumers. The destabilising impacts of this have also become apparent, causing conflicts between communities that have lived peacefully for hundreds of years.
In a similar fashion, modern farming systems strip genetic diversity in the name of ‘efficiency’, but in reality yield only 6 units of energy for every 15 expended, whereas traditional diversified systems can yield up to 15 units for every one unit employed. Diversity in an ecosystem is what builds resilience and resistance to disease. The Irish potato famine of 1848, or the American corn blight in the 1970s, are just two examples of what can happen when a monoculture is hit by disease.
The paddy field is a classic example of what diversified systems can achieve, containing about 80 species of insect parasites and predators. If not interfered with, the paddy field will yield for thousands of years, sustaining inherent fertilisation and insect control processes. The introduction of just one agro-chemical however, will unravel the entire system.
Diversity is like an immune system, providing inherent protection from destabilising external influences. As a general rule, homogenisation reduces immunity and diminishes self-reliance, while Unity is preserved in Diversity.
Nature has no concept of ‘waste’. By generating toxins and waste that cannot be absorbed through natural processes, humanity has changed the rules and stepped outside the system.
One of the defining features of the progressive design concepts highlighted in this book - from ZERI and Cradle to Cradle to the industrial ecology developed at Kalundborg – is the recognition that waste = food. By treating all waste as a raw material for another industrial process, the concept of ‘zero waste’ becomes a reality.
The sewage system that developed during the industrial age is a classic example of the linear systems that have typified the era, in which waste was directed ‘out of sight and out of mind’, contaminating water sources and then carried out to sea rather than returning important nutrients to the soil.
In the 1840s, the German scientist Justus Liebig tried to persuade the London authorities to build a sewage recycling system for the city, having studied the impact of the linear system in ancient Rome, which had removed the nutrients from their agricultural base in north Africa, then flushed it all into the Mediterranean.
Unfortunately, the linear sewage system that was adopted, mixing waste with water and diverting it into the Thames, was replicated all over the world, thus insuring the gradual loss of soil fertility which a cyclical system would have preserved. Ironically, when London adopted a linear system, Liebig and others set to work on developing artificial fertilisers to replenish the soil, creating the foundations of the modern agro-chemical industry.
The atomising and homogenising effects of the prevailing monoculture have left us feeling isolated, alienated and separate. There is a pervasive feeling of disconnection. Despite being globally linked through computers, relationships are fragmenting as increasing numbers of us spend our days communicating with a screen. Rather than running around in the woods building camps, children are glued to consoles, their world absorbed by cyberspace.
The current form of economic globalisation both homogenises global culture and exacerbates social tensions, as MTV and Baywatch beam their way into rural Indian villages that have hardly changed over millennia. Communities that have lived peacefully for centuries are erupting with fundamentalism, due to the destabilising effects of this process. It seems that we need a new way of relating to each other if we are have any chance of shifting from the path that we are on.
In 1945, Aldous Huxley published a book called The Perennial Philosophy, tracing the single strand of ancient truth that lies at the heart of all the world’s religious and mystical traditions. In essence, this strand, or philosophia perennis, claims that we are not separate individual entities but are in fact all just expressions of one universal consciousness, which is ultimately all that there is. The great illusion is that of being a separate little self, not the manifestation of one universal and absolute Self.
This basic understanding is reflected within the original teachings at the core of all major religions. In the Christian Old Testament, we find ‘Before Abraham was, I am’, ‘I Am That I Am’ and Yahweh, the Hebrew term for God, which literally translates as ‘I Am’. In the Hindu Upanishads, ‘Tat tvam asi’, Thou art That. In Taoism, ‘The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.’ Unfortunately, this essential message, that consciousness is primary and not secondary - that you are within consciousness, it is not within you - has been obscured by institutionalised religion.
Now we find that it is not only resurfacing in a spiritual context, but also within a scientific one. For example, Nobel prize-winning scientist Ilya Prigogine claims that ‘Today the world we see outside and the world we see within are converging. This convergence is perhaps one of the most important cultural events of our age.’ His words seem to echo those of Jesus in the Gospel of St Thomas, replying that the kingdom of God arises ‘when the two shall be one, when that which is without is within, and the male and the female shall be one’. Peter Russell is a prominent physicist to have reached similar conclusions about consciousness being primary and not secondary, along with many others, from a whole variety of disciplines, ranging from biologists to transpersonal psychologists.
In other words, a new way of seeing ourselves in relation to others, to the natural world and even to the entire universe, is starting to germinate within the academic world. Since this supports the essence of ancient spiritual teachings, before they were corrupted into ‘religions’, the implications of this perspective gaining wider acceptance could be momentous.
"We are on the cusp of further perfection of extreme evil." - Bill Joy, founder of Sun Micro Systems, on biotechnology
Over thirty years ago, a book appeared by the economist EF Schumacher called Small is Beautiful, which would become the key inspiration for many within what is now a global movement.
Schumacher founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG), which helps communities integrate appropriate human-scale technologies across the developing world and is now called Practical Action, and the UK Soil Association, which runs one of the world’s premier organic certification schemes. His work was also the direct inspiration for Schumacher College, a leading ecological learning centre in the UK offering courses in ‘new paradigm’ thinking.
Schumacher believed there were two types of science – ‘the science of manipulation and the science of understanding’. At the moment, the science of manipulation – genetic modification (GM), nanotechnology, nuclear power - seems to attract all the large research budgets, creating centralised economic power over the food we eat, the products we buy and the energy we use. However, these technologies are also highly dangerous, needing strict regulations to try and contain them.
In contrast, the science of understanding, which observes and learns from natural processes, is producing many of the designs and technologies which could shift our current path – renewable energy like solar and wind, new design approaches like Biomimicry and Cradle to Cradle.
As Web of Hope founder Dr Colin Hudson used to say, ‘Genetically modified seeds, ‘stealth viruses’ and self-replicating ‘nanobots’ may be very clever, but are they really intelligent?’
As the Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki points out, environmental destruction, like the collapse of ecosystems, often follows an exponential curve. As an example, he asks us to imagine the spread of lilies over a lake during a 60-day period, at the end of which the water is completely covered. If the lilies spread at an exponential rate, doubling their surface area every day, then on day 59 the lake is only half covered. All appears to be fine.
The next day however, there is no sign of the water. The lilies have deprived the lake of oxygen and the ecosystem dies. In terms of climate change, biodiversity loss and the global water crisis, there is much to suggest that we may well be living through Day 59.
At the same time, this analogy could be applied to the critical mass required for an evolutionary shift in our business practices, in our economic and political systems, in our scientific views and use of technologies, even our basic relationship to the planet. It may not appear that there is much sign of that happening but, like those first few lilies on the pond, the seeds of a new way of doing things are germinating across the globe and revealing that it can be done. We have the blueprints, the role models, which could be replicated at an exponential rate.
Like the lilies, a Day 60 could appear, when these new models have replaced the old and a period of transition will have come to a close. Like the "flip-over" that climatologists refer to - the possibility of a quite sudden shift in the global climate from one steady state to another - an equally sudden shift is necessary now if we are to have any chance of adjusting the sails and avoiding catastrophe.
Ultimately, the space in which that shift occurs is within each and every one of us. It all starts here, with that one simple step, when we get off one boat and on to another. In that instant, we cease to be part of that which is destroying the planet and become part of that which is seeking restoration, joining a growing global movement for positive change.
The decision rests with each of us.
In the run up to the millennium, an intriguing experiment was conducted by the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Global Consciousness Institute in California.
This involved forty devices from around the world called Random Number Generators (RNGs), feeding back to a central computer at Princeton University. The intention behind this was to use random number sequences to detect synergies in mass consciousness.
What they found was that, as the time-line moved across the globe on the eve of January 1st 2000, the numbers became more ordered. More intriguing still, the experiment continued, revealing that in the days running up to 9/11, similar blips occurred. The numbers were less random, leading to the conclusion that, in some strange way at least, global consciousness knew that something shattering was about to happen. It is now thought that this programme could be used to predict significant global events.
More intriguing still, there is earlier data to suggest that it takes a relatively small portion of a population to shift consciousness, concluding that it takes only the square root of one percent of a population to align their thinking for mass consciousness to change.
In other words, only one hundred people out of every million need to come together over an issue for a result to be observed. That critical mass tipping point is not way out of reach. It's right there.
If just one hundred people out of every million decided to get on board, we could swing the tide.
Rather than feeling totally disempowered, we should see the opportunity.
An ecologist studying flamingos on Kenya’s Lake Naivasha has noticed an interesting phenomenon. Every year, when the time comes for migration, a few flamingos start the process by taking off from the lake. Since none of the others take any notice, they soon turn round and come back.
The next day they try again. This time a few others straggle along with them but, again, the vast majority just carry on with business as usual, so the pioneers return to the lake. This trend continues for a few days. Each time a few more birds join in but, since the thousands of others still take no notice, the migration is aborted.
Finally, one day, the same few birds take off again. This time however, the tiny increment to their number is enough to tip the balance. The whole flock takes flight. The migration begins.
Various terms have been developed to describe this process – ‘critical mass’, ‘the tipping point’, ‘the hundredth monkey’. Modern biologists talk about the ‘butterfly effect’, suggesting that a butterfly flapping its wings in Sumatra can start a tornado in Idaho. This insight, from Chaos and Complexity Theory, is that tiny incremental changes within the dynamics of a complex system can lead to very dramatic effects further down the line.
If we apply this concept to our current predicament, it gives rise to an immediate sense of empowerment. Rather than dismissing a small action – ‘what difference will it make?’ - or the role of the individual – ‘what can I do about it?’ – we see that change is actually always propelled by the individual, or that a small action can be an instrumental part of the significant changes that arise through complex processes.
Seen from that perspective, we are the ones with the power – the power to cast ripples into the pond and become active nodes within a global network; the power to turn positive change into a ‘contagious impulse’; the power to help build the sort of world we want for our children.