(This is the short version. See below for an extended version that includes a full analysis of how our human development has got us to this point.)
I read the other day that 56% of global youth believe we are doomed (ref). It made me sad. Not at all because I believe we are doomed, but because of how it must make them feel and the fact that they are not getting to see what is actually emerging. Hence this post. Please share with anyone you know who thinks we are doomed – I’d love their feedback.
We are indeed in an intense moment of change, but nothing that we haven’t experienced before. According to systems thinker Prof Ervin Laszlo, this is the fifth major non-linear change moment in our human history.
In these moments, the old system breaks down and something new emerges – something that feels radically different to the old norm. If we can only see the old reality, then it looks like the whole world is falling apart and there is no future – which can feel pretty depressing and disempowering. Yet for many years, if not decades, the next version of human civilisation has been growing, deep in the soil to start with, then starting to sprout into the daylight in small but increasing volume.
So the first thing to recognise is that the kind of change we are going through at the moment is normal. Things are breaking down and, often under the radar still, things are breaking through. Accepting that this is a natural process of life is the first step to reducing any stress and anxiety we may feel about what is happening.
That does not mean things are going to get better in the short-term. The breakdown is likely to continue and the suffering increase. Even though we see that as part of a natural process, it is important to keep our hearts open to the pain of the suffering or else we become cold and disconnected. Feeling the pain is the fuel for the passion to work on the new.
What is doomed?
What is doomed is the old civilisation. A civilisation born in the “West”, or “Global North”, or pioneers of the industrialised world. It is a civilisation rooted in a materialist worldview that sees and values only what we can measure in the world around us. It glorifies the rational mind above all else – logical, linear thinking that splits life into parts and analyses each part forgetting that is part of a bigger whole. It ignores or rubbishes ancient wisdom that tells of our innate interconnectedness, of how our experience of that is accessed through the heart, not the mind, through our inner knowing (unless it can be packaged as entertainment to sell).
It refuses to engage in an open-minded way in new science that points to that interconnectedness, as it feels too fundamentally challenging to the worldview that people have built their lives and careers around. It is driven by an economic model that emphasises ever increasing growth on a planet of finite resources. To feed that economic growth it treats people as consumers, who need to be made greedy and fearful of missing out so they spend more money on ever more stuff. It is never enough. It always needs to be more. Our education system is designed to prepare “human resources” to feed that machine. Our healthcare system is a “cost” to be reduced as much as possible whilst the system itself creates ever more health problems due to the inhuman nature of its design. It is fundamentally dehumanising, disrespectful of all life on planet Earth and responsible for the ecological, social and mental disintegration we are experiencing in and around us.
The good news is that this world is indeed doomed. However if this is the only world you know, which would not be surprising for a global youth educated to fit into this world and bombarded with social media reinforcing this worldview, then it is understandable that you would be worried, as all you see is the breakdown – no alternative. Then what?
Before I go on to describe what I believe is breaking through, it is important to note that the old system has brought many good things to our human endeavour. Science breaking free from faith-based religion enabled incredible discoveries that have improved people’s lives across the planet. We need to keep the best of our journey so far, jettison the extremes and the destructive, and start to integrate the new to bring everything into a better balance.
What is this new that is breaking through?
The surrender to something greater than ourselves. The experience of energies at work way beyond our comprehension. Magic and synchronicity entering our lives. The realisation that we can’t control things – big relief – and in fact that when we stop trying, a natural flow emerges of high efficiency and effectiveness. All we have to do is be clear on our intention, then pay attention to how life responds and act when nudged.
I have been exploring and tracking this emerging world for about 15 years now. For the first time I have the sense that its emergence is rapidly accelerating. Signs for me include the viral popularity of the Telepathy Tapes podcast, that knocked Joe Rogan off the number one spot in Spotify. The breakthroughs we have had at Wyrd Technologies with the devices that seem to respond to the field of consciousness. The US government’s acknowledgement of UAPs / ETs and the resulting spread of information illustrating how these beings from other planets communicate and travel using consciousness – very similar to how the autistic non-speakers in the Telepathy Tapes describe their communication.
This is why we are not doomed. This could be with us in the mainstream way sooner that we may expect. It enables us to access all the solutions we might need to the challenges we face – instantly from the field. It enables us to implement those solutions with the least effort, greatest speed and highest chance of success through the guidance and synchronicities of the natural intelligence. It permeates our being with love, compassion and unbelievable clarity.
We will look back on the previous era as the Age of Stupid. We will grieve for the suffering we caused. We will heal ourselves and help each other to heal. We will beg forgiveness of the Earth. And we will re-build from the foundations up, a new civilisation based on love, respect and honesty, grounded in an understanding and experience of the deep interconnectedness of all life. We will draw on the wisdom of those who already inhabit that space, such as some of our Indigenous leaders, the autistic non-speakers of the Telepathy Tapes podcast, and those who have done their inner work over the last years and decades. We will collaborate with the most open-minded scientists, the brightest innovators and committed organisations to do what needs to be done. They will appear and we will know them. And it’ll happen faster that we ever could have imagined.
We are not doomed. Our outdated industrial civilisation is. We are on the edge of a consciousness civilisation that will enable us to be whole, live with integrity and take our humble yet critical place in the co-creative toroidal web of life. Trust, be attentive and enjoy the ride!
Extended Version (extra section italicised)
I read the other day that 56% of global youth believe we are doomed (ref). It made me sad. Not at all because I believe we are doomed, but because of how it must make them feel and the fact that they are not getting to see what is actually emerging. Hence this post. Please share with anyone you know who thinks we are doomed – I’d love their feedback.
We are indeed in an intense moment of change, but nothing that we haven’t experienced before. According to systems thinker Prof Ervin Laszlo, this is the fifth major non-linear change moment in our human history.
In these moments, the old system breaks down and something new emerges – something that feels radically different to the old norm. If we can only see the old reality, then it looks like the whole world is falling apart – which can feel pretty depressing and disempowering. Yet for many years, if not decades, the next version of human civilisation has been growing, deep in the soil to start with, then starting to sprout into the daylight in small but increasing volume.
So the first thing to recognise is that the kind of change we are going through at the moment is normal. Things are breaking down and, often under the radar still, things are breaking through. Accepting that this is a natural process of life is the first step to reducing any stress and anxiety we may feel about what is happening.
That does not mean things are going to get better in the short-term. The breakdown is likely to continue and the suffering increase. Even though we see that as part of a natural process, it is important to keep our hearts open to the pain of the suffering or else we become cold and disconnected. Feeling the pain is the fuel for the passion to work on the new.
What is doomed?
What is doomed is the old civilisation. A civilisation born in the “West”, or “Global North”, or pioneers of the industrialised world. It is a civilisation rooted in a materialist worldview that sees and values only what we can measure in the world around us. It glorifies the rational mind above all else – logical, linear thinking that splits life into parts and analyses each part forgetting that is part of a bigger whole. It ignores or rubbishes ancient wisdom that tells of our innate interconnectedness, of how our experience of that is accessed through the heart, not the mind, through our inner knowing (unless it can be packaged as entertainment to sell).
It refuses to engage in an open-minded way in new science that points to that interconnectedness as it is too fundamentally challenging to the worldview that people have built their lives and careers around. It is driven by an economic model that emphasises ever increasing growth on a planet of finite resources. To feed that economic growth it treats people as consumers, who need to be made greedy and fearful of missing out so they spend more money on ever more stuff. It is never enough. It always needs to be more. Our education system is designed to prepare “human resources” to feed that machine. Our healthcare system is a “cost” to be reduced as much as possible whilst the system itself creates ever more health problems due to the inhuman nature of its design. It is fundamentally dehumanising, disrespectful of all life on planet Earth and responsible for the ecological, social and mental disintegration we are experiencing in and around us.
The good news is that this world is indeed doomed. However if this is the only world you know, which would not be surprising for a global youth educated to fit into this world and bombarded with social media reinforcing this worldview, then it is understandable that you would be worried, as all you see is the breakdown – no alternative. Then what?
Before I go on to describe what I believe is breaking through, it is important to note that the old system has brought many good things to our human endeavour. Science breaking free from faith-based religion enabled incredible discoveries that have improved people’s lives across the planet. We need to keep the best of our journey so far, jettison the extremes and the destructive, and start to integrate the new to bring everything into a better balance.
What is this new that is breaking through?
It is worth taking a step back to look at our human journey as a whole, and in particular one map of that journey that already points to what our next step might be. The colourful map you can see below describes the value systems that unfold in us individually and collectively over time. Based on initial research by Clare W. Graves, it was popularised by Dr Don Beck and Chris Cowan who wrote a book on it called Spiral Dynamics.
The value system that currently dominates our global economy and industrial worldview is the Orange “Strive-Drive” worldview. It evolved out of the hierarchical religious and state systems of the Blue “One Truth” worldview and focuses on individualisation, progress and achievement. The combination of that Orange core values system code and the content of industrialisation and capitalism is what has got us into our current condition.
It is important to remember that none of these value systems are inherently good or bad. They are worldviews that emerge naturally in response to the life conditions around us – they are our ways of coping with, making sense of, the reality we experience. In healthy development, each new value system transcends and includes the previous one, integrating the best of the old. In unhealthy development, a new stage transcends but represses an earlier stage – leading to pathology and trauma
I go into the details elsewhere, but fundamentally, in the West, when the Red feudal empire value system emerged (looking to establish the egoic sense of independent self – in itself a critical positive development), we transcended but repressed the earlier relationship-driven Purple value system. This was accompanied by fear of the wild, attempted domination of nature, suppression of the sensitive, the feminine and the body.
Each future step in our journey has been built on this separation and trauma. It has corrupted the naturally positive impulse of the Blue system to create useful order out of the Red chaos (the way good parenting provides enough structure for the ego-driven impulses of the young child), leading to repressive hierarchies expressed through many religions and nation-states.
That separation of the individual (Red) from our nature-based and community context (Purple) is what has allowed the expansive Orange system to plunder the Earth and exploit people to feed its growth whatever the human or ecological cost – the separation and trauma means it can’t feel the pain of the suffering it causes. And the more it has to face the suffering, the closer the pain gets to the surface, the greater the pressure to limit growth (its core impulse), the more distractions outside of itself it has to create to avoid facing it all – until the system as a whole reaches breaking point. That is where we are now.
In the meantime, the Green value system has been establishing itself, desperate for some kind of way out of the Orange rat-race. Spiritual lifestyles (although often commercialised by Orange), therapy to help with the stress, younger generations wanting to work less and prioritise personal wellbeing and development.
That sensitive-self Green stream has influenced the Orange express-self system to trigger the emergence of the Yellow Integrative system, focused on how on Earth to deal with all the complexity coming at us in a way that will enable humanity as a whole to survive and all life to thrive. Under influence of the Green sensitivity, we face up to that core trauma of separation, realising that for us to be able to be effective in solving the world’s problems, we have to do our inner work. The way we show up in the world determines the quality of impact that we make.
And integral Yellow creates the conditions for holistic Turquoise. The act of Yellow diving into the complexities of the reality we are facing, combined with the deep inner work, leads us to the limits of our rational cognitive mind. We realise that it is way to complex for any of us to solve.
Out of that realisation, comes the surrender. The surrender to something greater than ourselves. The experience of energies at work way beyond our comprehension. Magic and synchronicity enters our lives. We realise that we can’t control things – big relief – and in fact that when we stop trying, a natural flow emerges of high efficiency and effectiveness. All we have to do is be clear on our intention, then pay attention to how life responds and act when nudged. That is how Graves, Beck and Cowan, all those decades ago, described the Turquoise value system.
I have been exploring and tracking Turquoise for about 15 years now. For the first time I have the sense that its emergence is rapidly accelerating. Signs for me include the viral popularity of the Telepathy Tapes podcast, that knocked Joe Rogan off the number one spot in Spotify. The breakthroughs we have had at Wyrd Technologies with the devices that seem to respond to the field of consciousness. The US government’s acknowledgement of UAPs / ETs and the resulting spread of information illustrating how these beings from other planets communicate and travel using consciousness – very similar to how the autistic non-speakers in the Telepathy Tapes describe their communication.
This is why we are not doomed. Each of these value systems has emerged much faster that the previous ones. Turquoise could be with us in the mainstream way sooner that we may expect. It enables us to access all the solutions we might need to the challenges we face – instantly from the field. It enables us to implement those solutions with the least effort, greatest speed and highest chance of success through the guidance and synchronicities of the natural intelligence. It permeates our being with love, compassion and unbelievable clarity.
We will look back on the previous era as the Age of Stupid. We will grieve for the suffering we caused. We will heal ourselves and help each other to heal. We will beg forgiveness of the Earth. And we will re-build, from the foundations up, a new civilisation based on love, respect and honesty, and grounded in an understanding and experience of the deep interconnectedness of all life. We will draw on the wisdom of those who already inhabit that space, such as some of our Indigenous leaders, the autistic non-speakers of the Telepathy Tapes podcast, and those who have done the work over the last years and decades. They will appear and we will know them. We will collaborate with the most open-minded scientists, the brightest innovators and committed organisations to do what needs to be done. And it’ll happen faster that we ever could have imagined.
We are not doomed. Our outdated industrial civilisation is. We are on the edge of a consciousness civilisation that will enable us to be whole, live with integrity and take our humble yet critical place in the co-creative toroidal web of life. Trust, be attentive and enjoy the ride!