There are many examples, millions perhaps if one considers every granular aspect of it, how and why the “good old days” never existed and demonstrate the blessings of modernity are, almost in every case, better for the mass of humanity. The sheer number of options opened to the individual because of global communications and travel combined with the extended life span and availability of information in print and electronically, make us realize that by volume alone we have access to freeing ourselves from isolation and ignorance.
Technology has been the facilitating factor in this awareness. Yet, by itself, it cannot stand as the reason underlying this phenomenon. It has been ever driving demands of those not in power to share in the blessings of power that has fueled movements toward freedom. Whether they be revolutions toppling dictatorships, or an evolution in awareness and compassion that seeks to free women, over half of our race, from their prescribed historic subordination to men. Together, these have cooperated to multiple by vast numbers a diversity of opportunity and venues for personal expression like never before.
No longer is culture informed, dominated by or enjoyed by an upper class only. Once, the presumption of the “Divine Right of Kings” facilitated the formation of an aristocracy, granted itself all the blessings of wealth and power. Now, the elite of humanity has eschewed the rule of monarchs and replaced it with what is being called the Profitocracy. Where the assumption that money, property, and assets grant power and privilege this current hierarchy is based in a mindset we might well call the Divine Right of Things.
Serving as the only constraints to further advancement and expansion of individual potential is the dependence upon acquisition used as a quid pro quo measure for human rights. Remarkably it riles people and chafes at their sense of justice; revealing ever more clearly the fact that these changes still remain ensconced within the historic paradigm of the superiority-inferiority model. Most specifically those who practice relegation of the meek, the average, and the unprotected to the status of serfdom and the planet itself to a piggy bank of resource to be exploited.
Impressively, independently formed groups of protestors of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the better organized Tea Party, are engaged in struggle to challenge this paradigm: the former against the Profitocracy and the latter of what it perceives as a new aristocracy in government. But so far, it appears that both groups are focused on the on specific aspects, which they deem abuses and as yet, have not address the fundamental underpinnings of the paradigm which is by its tenants effectively create and then protect the inequities that both sides decry. Corporate Capitalism is the new mechanism of Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” But instead of the fittest of body, genes or other traits that expand our humanity; they foster the use and propagation of deception, callousness, and the willingness to see others of the species destroyed. So instead of the fittest, it should be named hegemony of the most ruthless. Until either group and America itself names this tune to which it has dance for long before the formation of this nation instead of the restrictiveness or difficulty of the steps; their attempts may disrupt the promenade, but not bring it to an end. A new paradigm must be thought through and have stated principles, ethics, and structures which format meaningful and doable plans of action before most citizens will relinquish the safety of the known for the unknown, no matter how uncomfortable they are with the status quo. This is fear working through human nature.
It is an exciting time to be alive and actually be able to participate in the formation of a new paradigm. Once we embrace the responsibility of personal power and the realization that anyone, anywhere, can and might be the 100th Monkey which triggers the changes needed for continued evolution. But evolution of what? The answer is consciousness. Once the realization emerges that all human systems are kept in place by willpower, rather then the dictates of biology, then and only then, can new inputs, ideas, policies, and behaviors take hold in social interactions and become the footing for a new system built upon a new paradigm.
What makes Charles Dicken’s epic phrase so “it was the best of time, it was the worst of times, so enduring, poignant and ever relevant, is the implication that while we expand our options, we also tend to hone the paradigm under which they grew: the Dominance Model. But the confluence has come to a breaking point: breakdown, breakthrough and breakout. The question is what will emerge? A completely new form or a refinement and reinforcement of the old?
Having the availability of this Blog, visa-a-vie electronic communication through the Internet, ideas are flourishing and cross pollinating like never before in the history of humanity. It is this endowment of personal means of expression that offers hope for the next paradigm to emerge from the masses rather than be limited to the moneyed elite. Make no mistake, a confrontation is happening. One that is pitting the stability and enforcement of a Dominance paradigm against the formation of a Consciousness Paradigm. The former offers a sophisticated and elaborate form of enslavement to debt, security, pharmaceutical repression and entertainment hypnosis. The other opens the doors to the brave new world of thought but contingent upon every person alive becoming their own informed leader. Seizing this endowment of information and the ability to connect to each other with it, is for me, the crucible from which will spring forth “the best is yet to come.”
Carpe Honorem,
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