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by Kingsley L. Dennis from RealitySandwich Website
Inherent in this is a residual fear that if we open ourselves too much to others we may lose our 'competitive edge' and defined sense of individuality.
Much of mainstream media (aka propaganda) has exploited the mythological images, collective stereotypes, and subconscious signifiers that play on our collective vulnerabilities and social fears. Knowledge has more or less trickled down to the average person through heavily filtered channels, and most often has been doctored, amended, and/or edited.
The end result has been not knowledge but consensus information, or 'allowed' information.
It has served
the elite power structure well that
people in general have not awoken to the understanding that humanity
possesses incredible capacity and inherent resources for creative
expansion and evolutionary development.
It is a great paradox that modern science, itself a result of human consciousness, has produced a view of the cosmos which has no room for consciousness.
Yet human beings are in need of meaning and significance in their lives as much as they are in need of air to breathe and food to eat. This struggle over the conscious mind(s) of humanity, which has been going on in various forms for eons, is coming to a crux in our present generation.
We are in a transition period which sees the expanding awareness and connectivity between individuals worldwide clashing against the increasing authoritarian technocratic 'surveillance machine.'
The result is that we have now collectively arrived at a critical moment in our evolution of human civilization.
Yet any society or civilization which makes the material world its sole pursuit and object of concern cannot but devolve in the long run. It is now necessary to see our future potentials, not the daily news.
As Professor Needleman so aptly remarked:
It is therefore imperative that we begin to break-away from non-developmental social conditioning; this includes being conscious of the type of media impacts we are open to.
Furthermore, during moments of cultural and social disorder/disequilibrium the human mind often works with an energy and intensity not manifested when social patterns are stable and monotone.
At such dynamic periods there can be the realization that no individual is isolated; that each person is interwoven into a vibrant network and web of psychological, emotional, and spiritual interrelations.
Such realizations can be heightened during periods,
such as now, when it appears that human consciousness is moving
through a time of critical transition.
That is, energetic change will come through our social and cultural forms, and not by avoiding them.
Developmental change on a large scale can occur by creating conscious change from within our daily lives and within our social systems, and not outside of them. By just walking on this planet, holding the focus and intention, we create incredible energy - energy that is shared. We are creating change by just being alive.
That is why being without fear is so important.
We need not create a black and white film in our heads when in
reality we are creating color. We can make use of the tools that are
already available to us, and within us.
Recent de-stabilizing social events, such as in our financial and political spheres, have drawn people's focus to the dysfunction of many of the systems that we once gave our trust to. Even the focus on religious extremism in the media has drawn people's attention not only to the deficit of spiritual values in our major religions but also to how religion is being used as a tool for furthering social, political, and emotional control.
This trance-like grip on our collective consciousness is now being stripped away as people awaken to the knowing that there is so much more to our lives than that of a materialistic and consumer-based lifestyle.
Yet don't become frustrated if things don't happen tomorrow, but trust that changes and shifts are happening over time.
The necessity of,
...is now critical.
And let us remember that humans are biased for
compassion and empathy. The awakening of
our empathic mind
is our natural inheritance.
We are coming together as a global species like never before; despite what we have been shown and told by the mainstream media. We need to view this in both the immediate and the bigger picture. Due to our relatively short human life span we rarely reflect beyond a generation or two in front of us. We have evolved as a species that reacts to immediate concerns.
This served us well in the past when we had survival needs in a restricted world of limited horizons.
Yet now we need a perspective that is global at the very least - and even possibly beyond! If we now look at the bigger picture we will see that a different type of consciousness has been emerging over the past 150 years. That is, since the dawn of the Second Industrial Revolution.
The new technologies of the Second Industrial Revolution - the telephone, radar, cinema, automobile and airplane - called for a new reorientation of human perspective. A new perception of the dimensions of space and time began to birth a psychological consciousness - one that wanted to look beyond the borders and horizons of the physical frontier.
The 3rd Industrial Revolution, if we wish to call it that, will be a convergence of digital communications combined with a young generation that is more globally aware. This has the potential to catalyze upon this planet a rising empathic, integral consciousness.
Also, our global communications will encourage new relations in our extended connectivity. That is, increased multiple relations are likely to stimulate a connected, collaborative consciousness; rather than stepping back into an older consciousness of conflict and control. A planetary citizenry is likely to emerge that will exhibit greater empathy, and which will create a different planetary society within perhaps two generations.
Humanity already contains the seeds of these
momentous potentials.
Externally we may seem like a vast, distant, and separate collection of individuals yet in truth the human family is an intimate, closely entwined species comprised of various cultures. Many of the younger generation now are waking up to this fact. Youngsters the world over are growing up accustomed to having networks of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of friends across the planet; sharing intimacy and empathizing easily with an international social group of like-minded souls.
This younger generation is manifesting, whether conscious of it or not, a non-local level of human relationships. This expanded connectivity is impacting and affecting a change in our psychology and consciousness.
We are now being impelled to live in ways that enable all other people to live as well. We are also being compelled to live in ways that respect the lives of others and that respect the right to the economic and cultural development of all people; and to pursue personal fulfillment in harmony with the integrity of nature.
These traits may constitute what I refer to as an integral-ecological consciousness:
Such multiple relations form a more varied, rich and complex life.
They also provide a more diverse range of impacts and
opportunities to develop the self. As well as providing challenges
for developing new skills and learning, our diverse networks can
form new friendships and add extra meaning to our lives.
More and more daily interactions are empathic as we react and share news, stories, and emotional impacts from sources around the world. Empathy is one of the core values by which we create and sustain social life. Exposure to impacts outside of our own local and restrictive environments helps us to learn tolerance, and to live with experiences that are richer and more complex, full of ambiguities, and multiple perspectives.
It is a mode of connecting that allows diverse people worldwide to construct a new form of planetary social capital.
We have the resources to co-create a planetary human society where once again the focus is on social benefit rather than profit. We can see many examples of this today, such as in online collaborative tools and in the proliferation of local and global projects.
The online global community is a model for the new paradigm that illustrates how sharing can work above the individual motive for profit.
The values and ethics of communal sharing might seem
odd or out-of-place to the old capitalist-consumerist mindset, yet
these are the very values that will be on the rise within the coming
generations.
This new model is a distributed one; in other words, it connects people through networks rather than through hierarchical structures.
It also represents a more feminine energy that seeks to nurture relationships, and to collaborate, rather than compete and conquer. It is this emerging feminine energy that underlies the rise in global empathy.
Furthermore, since people are connecting amongst themselves in multiple relations it impels them to have an active engagement. For those individuals brought-up within the older generation of communication technologies (radio, television, fixed phones), the interaction was either two-way or, for the most part, one way.
In this era people were passive receivers, targeted by information they could not engage with.
This has now shifted so that the receiver of the
communication can be both the user and the producer. Individuals
today are shifting from being consumers to prosumers.
The younger generation is waking up quickly and learning how to set-up inexpensive, or free, radio sites (podcasts), home websites, newsletters, and are managing their own forms of self-expression.
This new model is changing our thinking and behavior patterns. We are now getting used to dealing with multiple connections rather than single ones; and to becoming immersed in diverse relations and not just one-on-one dialogues. We are also being exposed to a myriad of viewpoints, beliefs, identities, and experiences.
Within these new arrangements we are being asked to
respond and engage with the outside world not in fear or with
anxiety but with
healthy, creative, and positive energies.
More and more young people are growing up experiencing social relations that transcend space and time, as well as cultures, national boundaries, and local ideologies. This may account for the increasing numbers of young people in developed nations becoming involved in community and social projects and NGOs; such as taking a year out to help in another culture abroad, to learn, experience, and to offer assistance.
Volunteering among the young, despite what appears to be the contrary, is on the increase. Young people are even putting themselves into dangerous situations - in conflict zones - to stand up for values of peace, justice, equality, and human rights.
Across the world young minds are demanding fair and
equal access for all peoples to engage in open communication and
free speech. And it appears that many more creative minds will be
joining the global conversation as our current generation(s)
increasingly 'wake up.'
In other words, nearly 3 billion new minds will be tapping into the information flows - and that's many millions of new creative problem solvers, innovators, and visionaries.
What is more, the majority of these new minds will be coming online from Asia, the Middle East, and what we refer to as the developing countries. These will be mostly young minds; and minds with necessities, with the urge for social betterment.
Can we imagine the collective potential of these
creative new minds, many of them thinking outside of the box, and
outside of the old patterns?
Human consciousness becomes a significant stimulus and catalyst for change during these times of social instability (see the history of social revolutions).
That is why it is imperative humanity be collectively
focused upon positive development and betterment rather than to be
coerced, or conditioned, into a fear-based security that resists
change. We should not underestimate the capacity for the human mind
to adapt and evolve according to social and environmental impacts
and influences.
Humanity, it can be said, has been biologically hard-wired to tap into extended social connections and human communication networks. We are also hard-wired to adapt physically in response to experience - new neural processes in our brains can come into being with intentional effort, awareness, and different patterns of concentration.
This capacity to create new neural connections, and thus new mental skill sets through experience, has been termed neuroplasticity.
The human brain of today has to respond to the incredible amount of energy and information that is flowing through our environments and embedded in our cultural experiences. Thus, how we focus our attention and awareness greatly shapes the structure of our brains. Further, the ability to grow new neural connections is available throughout our lives and not only in our young formative years.
This knowledge encourages us to nurture our mindfulness, our self-awareness, and our empathic relations with others. Neuroplasticity also encourages us to be more reflective over our human networks, and to develop those social skills that underlie empathy and compassion.
These new 'wired connections' are exactly what are
becoming activated as individuals
increasingly 'wake up' to what is happening
within our communities, our societies, and upon the planet. Such
distributed connections breach cultural and national borders and
force us to self-reflect on our identity, values and ethics.
This means that the responsibility is also here; and these two factors may never be present again at exactly the right moment when they are so badly needed. What the human species may now be witnessing during these years is the rise of intuition, empathy, greater connectivity to the world and to people, and a sense of 'knowing' what changes need to be made.
Furthermore, within each person is a growing sense of the greater cosmic whole: the realization that humanity exists and evolves within a universe of great intelligence and meaning. This serves to impart within humanity a more profound spiritual impulse.
As a new global empathic mind emerges, people
worldwide will grow up with new expressions of mindfulness that are
more caring, relational, and compassionate. The 21st
century is likely to be the era that births and nurtures such an
evolving consciousness.
In conflict zones especially, where young minds are conditioned into unconditional hatred of fixed enemies, there is a backlash against this old programming. Younger people are reaching out across artificial borders to engage with the so-called 'enemy' and to start a new dialogue of peace and reconciliation. Such minds realize that the conflict mentality has no future, and will be left behind if it cannot accept change.
Whereas many of those from the older mindset thought that a future meant putting up borders, and viewing the 'others' with suspicious eyes; many of today's young minds see differently.
We can see this in youth movements worldwide as there is change emerging in the mindset of young people everywhere.
This is especially so in Middle Eastern territories where restrictive regimes are now encountering rising youthful demographics who are not accepting the old mentalities and old ways.
A lot of the young people today want the same thing - peace, justice, equality, freedom, etc. There is a new spring in the step of young, tech-savvy, energetic minds that are by-passing the old models. In these years ahead - at least for the next two decades - we will increasingly see the signs of the changing of the old guard (the dinosaurs!).
And this time they will not be replaced by those with
the same consciousness. With generational change we will see the
gradual transition to an era of individuals who think differently,
feel differently, connect differently, and who will want to work
toward a different world.
The reaction of the status quo has always been to strengthen its ruling apparatus.
In the case of today, this means,
And the first wave response from people is generally to fight back - head on.
I contest, however, that this form of response also constitutes the old mind. The newer consciousness does not seek conflict. Rather, it seeks to create ways around the current blockages.
Or, in the words of Buckminster Fuller,
Over time, the old models will fight their way into obsolescence.
Those who express the 'newer mind' must,
In summary, a new narrative is emerging, one where each person is integral to the larger picture; the journey of each one of us being a part of the journey as a whole.
This new story informs us that the possibilities are open for humanity to engage in consciously creating its way forward - with harmony, balance and respect to all. This new narrative is part of humanity's evolving empathic mind and which compels us to seek greater connectivity and meaning in our lives.
This most recent human story is one where we create the story of the future.
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