by Daniel PinchbeckAll of the question marks around the subject “2012” can be useful as a focusing lens or “a litmus test for consciousness,” as author Mark Heley proposes. Instead of fixating on any future event, we need to realize that any positive transformation, whether in 2012 or after, will only be the result of deliberate actions and conscious choices made by human beings in the present.
We find ourselves in a window of opportunity where we either radically change our direction as a species or face devastating consequences. We are at that threshold where, as the social ecologist Murray Bookchin put it, our world “will either undergo revolutionary changes, so far-reaching in character that humanity will totally transform its social relations and its very conception of life, or it will suffer an apocalypse that may well end humanity’s tenure on the planet.” Examining trends in climate change and species extinction, the esteemed scientist James Lovelock, who developed the Gaia Hypothesis, now thinks there could be only 150 million people (not six billion) left alive at the end of this century. Other scientists share his ominous outlook.
If the outlook from a purely empirical perspective looks bleak, the good news is that science has ignored some crucial factors. One is the possibility that human beings, through an evolution of consciousness, could develop a regenerative culture that contributes to the health of the biosphere. In the 1960s, the design scientist Buckminster Fuller proposed that society could be redesigned to be “comprehensively successful” for everyone on earth... Read More
