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John Renesch
For many years, I have been polling audiences around the world
about where they think human beings are in our evolution. Are we
still in childhood? Adolescence? How about young adult? Or maybe
mature adult or elder? Usually I do this before my speech, and the result
is always the same. Eighty to ninety percent of the people think
we are in adolescence. Rarely do I see any hands raised for adult, young
or mature.
My colleague Duane Elgin—author of The Living Universe and
other books—has been doing similar polling for many years, and he
reports very similar responses from his audiences.1 Based on our polls,
we believe that most people think we are yet to fully mature as a species,
and this opinion transcends national boundaries. The fact that
we humans haven't yet fully matured isn't much of a secret.
We don't have much conscious choice when it comes to physical
maturing. It happens without our will, a natural phenomenon of
growing older from childhood through pubescence. Emotional and
intellectual maturity is another matter. While some people mature
emotionally and intellectually, many don't. For instance, we know addicts
of all kinds often cease maturing emotionally around the age they start their addiction. After they get sober, they have to deal with
this arrested emotional development.
A distinction I like to make is that, while physical maturing happens
automatically, we have to choose to grow up intellectually and
emotionally, nudged forward by life and the situations that life delivers
to us. This takes conscious effort. It takes intentionality. Some of
us mature in these areas more than others.
If we look at the world's most pressing problems as the consequence
of adolescent behavior, we might better understand why we
have them. Like teenagers, we tend to think short term and avoid longer-
term solutions. We seek immediate gratification; what we want,
we want now, as soon as possible. We like hanging out with people
like us—our peers—where we "fit in." People who are different are
shunned, bullied, or vilified. We tend to think in absolutes, with little
tolerance for nuance and subtlety. We love to play games and enjoy
gadgets—even if we prefer to think of them as "grown-up toys." These
are all familiar behaviors to the parent of a teenager in today's world.
The major global concerns—unsustainable lifestyles, social injustice,
unfettered population growth, ideology wars, air and water
pollution, etc.—and the many failed attempts to mitigate or provide
long-term solutions to these challenges, suggest that adolescent attitudes
and behavior are dominant in today's world. Mature approaches
to our problems seem rare or nonexistent.
Recently, there were calls for "adult conversations" in Washington
among U.S. politicians, implying that mature dialogue was generally
unavailable. By observing the legislative gridlock and partisan
bickering so prevalent in the U.S. Capitol, the comparison to childishness
or adolescent "acting out" is easy to make.
Of course, calling for our species to grow up is empty rhetoric
unless there is some commitment to do so from a large segment of
the population. This could be a huge opportunity for new leadership
to assert itself, not in the personhood of one heroic personality but in
a collaborative movement launched by people in many sectors—corporate, academia, government, NGOs—acting in unison to delegitimize
the prevailing behaviors and attitudes that keep us stuck in our
adolescent dysfunction.
This leap in our evolution means a major paradigm shift in how
we think and act, a shift in human consciousness—a leap to a more
sustainable, socially just, and fulfilling human presence on this planet.
This will require full-blown adult thinking and feeling. Not only must
we choose it, but we must also rally our fellow global citizens to choose
it as well. Once chosen, the first step is to end the legitimization of
the many habits and practices that contribute to our present dysfunctions.
This will mean changing much of the infrastructure we have
come to depend upon.
To start, each of us needs to do some soul searching, telling the
truth about our own adolescent indulgences and consolations—the
payoffs that feed our immature egos, pandering to our insatiable desires
for pleasure.
The Cargo Effect
Changing attitudes and behaviors on the scale we are talking
about here will require leadership of unprecedented scope in all dimensions—
depth of consciousness as well as breadth of population.
In other words, we need to rise to the occasion in huge numbers and
with unprecedented levels of responsibility. We saw a recent model of
such an uprising in the 19 days during which the Egyptians took a
stand for their country and won an opportunity to achieve freedom.
Courage of conviction, commitment to peaceful revolution, and responsibility
for their own community in Cairo's Tahrir Square were
just a few of the characteristics demonstrated by hundreds of thousands
of people intent on bringing about positive change for themselves.
Taking this intent and commitment to a global scale could lead
all of humankind into global adulthood. This will require ordinary
people making adult choices over adolescent ones, and taking unprecedented responsibility for clearing up the messes we have made in
years past. This is not a job we delegate to our political leaders, or
hope someone else will take on. This is a time when each one of us
gets into action like the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. They stopped
watching the events on TV or listening to the radio and got out of
their houses. They joined the crowd and helped write history. They
were willing to take a risk for something they believed in, like the
founders of the United States, the followers of Gandhi and Martin
Luther King Jr. who were committed to nonviolence, and the citizens
of West Berlin who tore down the Berlin Wall.
The Power of Legitimacy
Social scientist and futurist Willis Harman addressed the issue
of legitimacy and further explained the enormous power we wield as
members of the society that bestows this legitimacy. He pointed to
several profound transformations in history—the transition from the
Roman Empire to Medieval Europe, from the Middle Ages to modern
times, the creation of modern democracies, and the termination
of slavery as an accepted institution. No matter how powerful the economic,
political, or even military institution, he argued, it persisted
because it had legitimacy, and that legitimacy came from the people.
Harman's main point was that people give legitimacy and they
can take it away. Any challenge to the established legitimacy is likely
to be the most powerful force for change to be found in history.
William James reminded us that we have to live today by what
truth we can get today and be ready to call it falsehood tomorrow. History
is filled with examples of yesterday's truths turning into tomorrow's
falsehoods, and there's no reason to doubt that today's truths—
those ideas that we currently grant legitimacy—will become
unacceptable tomorrow. All we need to do is remove the legitimacy
we give to our ideas of how things have to be.
Many people insist on having tools, methodologies, or techniques
for action before they will allow themselves to entertain big ideas. They want to see how it will work out before they choose to play.
This is looking for a guarantee—another adolescent quality. There's
no courage in playing it safe, and it certainly doesn't open the way for
real transformation.
The founders of the United States weren't playing it safe when
they committed themselves to establishing a nation predicated on
self-evident truths and inalienable rights. They made monarchy illegitimate
and invented a new form of governance. This had not been
done before, and it certainly wasn't safe. There were no guarantees
assuring them they'd succeed in their stand, their commitment, and
their risk. But they knew they were on to something important, a
unique opportunity to create something exciting, something wanted
by all people who yearned for inner and outer freedom.
Conscious Evolution: The New Great Dream
It is time to stop thinking about what might happen in the future
and start thinking about what we want to happen, about what needs
to occur now to bring about that desired future.
This is "conscious evolution." Many find this term to be an oxymoron,
because evolution is thought of as survival of the fittest, something
left to chance and random circumstances. But as we evolve as
human beings, we are also growing in consciousness, and we have
more choice in how we evolve. Being conscious of the choice makes
evolution self-transcendent. We can choose to take a stand and grow
toward a desired future, or we can passively accept whatever future
unfolds. We can evolve either on purpose or by accident. It is our
choice.
Not making a choice is still making a choice. Choosing not to
do something is nonetheless a choice—a choice that often legitimizes
and empowers the very dysfunction that one opposes intellectually.
Mystics, poets, songwriters, and philosophers address matters
of meaning, longing, and other intangible yearnings behind the passions
that help us wake up every day, motivate us to get out of bed, and move us to stand for something. These are the meaningful things
that motivate us to be good parents, great performers, reliable workers,
faithful partners, and, in general, a unique species that wants to
explore and expand into something beyond our awareness, even if it
is unexplainable or ineffable. There is always a "new" frontier for us.
I propose it is the "great dream."
This new Great Dream can be an expansion of the original
American Dream—everyone created equal having inalienable rights,
etc. It is certainly a challenge, but we in the United States love challenges:
We've proven that over our short history. We are still learning
and growing, finding our way along this difficult path to our original
vision. We keep getting lost, then find our way back, and then we
wander off that path again. Life without challenges can be pretty boring,
so let's expand the vision and embrace the challenges, even if this
means we have to change, grow, and evolve to have the kind of future
we claim to want.
If we want a world that works better, a world of responsible human
beings living harmoniously with each other and the planet, we
have to take a chance—and act! We need to shed the patina of cynicism
and revive that idealism that once inspired us and fueled our
passions in our youth. We need to stop playing it safe, avoiding making
waves, and restricting our wishes for a better world to sentimental
greeting cards. We need to stop numbing ourselves to the pains of
living in the world today. We can do this by cutting back on habits
that help us avoid feeling empathy for our fellow human beings, taking
a risk like the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, and standing for what
we want instead of merely opposing this or that. As the colloquialism
goes, we need "to put some skin in the game."
Then, without wearing any of our emotional armor, we can take
responsibility for creating what we claim to want—a world that works
for all, a world where liberty and justice for all prevails, a world in
which we relate to one another and our planet with dignity and respect.
None of us can do this alone. It will require that we act together to pull it off. The important thing to remember is that it can be done.
John Renesch is a businessman-turned-futurist. He is the author of Getting to the
Better Future: A Matter of Conscious Choosing (New Business Communications,
2000) and The Great Growing Up (forthcoming). E-mail at john@renesch.com.
Note
1. View Duane Elgin's video on his audience polling, "Is Humanity
Growing Up?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDfm3_5i0Uk.