TOWARDS SOCIETAL WHOLENESS

Friends, 
 

Together we stand before a threshold. Together we stand before two possibilities for the earth and for humanity. 

On one hand the world around us is crumbling. It has become like an old, grey man – like a misguided and ghostly train stuck in the downhill tracks of its own traditional thinking; and stuck in the ruts of the structures such thinking creates. There is no room for the human being. The world has become the dusty colour of the moon, and it is dying. 

The many crises we face are obvious – environmental, ecological, social, economic, educational, political – and they are global in scope. They are clear signs that the systems we have created are failing us. 

On the other hand, a new day is breaking out all over the world. Above the greyness and crumbling and shadows, morning rays are piercing through like golden swords. Human beings are waking to this morning as if it were a call. And they are standing up. They are joining together to re-imagine the world. 

All over the earth, people are finding their true names, and they are working together with others to create a world worthy of the human being.  

In America alone it is estimated there are over 50 million Cultural Creatives – individuals who are concerned with creative alternatives to the current global situation.¹ 

But how can we help this new dawning shed its light further into the shadows – further into the darkness that the earth has become? What is our very real next step in the creation of a world which comes closer to its highest potential? – to a world that is waiting to be made? 

What kind of pictures do we need in order to realise such a world?  

To offer an alternative to an earth in which there is no longer any room for human beings, we can – we must – take our start from the picture of the human being. 

It may seem simple to say – and perhaps the most obvious things are the ones we tend to ignore – but the key to re-creating the earth is us. 

Even physically, if we are unbiased, we can see that the human being is made up of three main systems. The nerve-sense system, the circulatory-rhythmic system, and the metabolic-limb system. If we continue to be unbiased, we can see that the nerve-sense system caters for our thinking; the circulatory-rhythmic system for our feeling; and the metabolic-limb system for all the things we actually do – for our willing. 

All sorts of physical and psychological illnesses can occur when these systems become confused; when their roles become blurred beyond their normal, healthy interaction; when they are unclear about their own identities and tasks.  

We all know what can happen when our capacity to think clearly becomes clouded by the unconscious drives and passions that reside in our will, or by the emotions that live in our feelings. We also know how crippling it can be when we think too long about a feeling we ‘know’ to be true, or when we, doubt-filled through prolonged unnecessary thought, fail to act. 

Some things are simply clear: we do not breathe with our brain, do not physically create things in the world with our heart, do not think with our legs. 

On the other hand, there is a kind of thinking that can occur in our feelings, a certain will that can be brought to thinking, and a kind of thinking that can shed light in our will. Natural and healthy interactions of our physical systems occur, such as metabolic processes in our brain, nerve-sense processes in our heart, as well as blood-flow in our limbs.  

However, this kind of healthy interaction of systems occurs only when each system first functions according to its own identity and role, and does not try to take over the task of any other. A healthy interaction of our systems can only be built upon a foundation of independence of each system from the others, as well as an appreciation of the place from where each system draws its power. 

It is the same with the structuring of the world – of the ‘systems’ of the social organism. And it is an organism – it is dynamic and ever changing. It is up to us, however, whether it lives or dies. 

Social science identifies three main spheres of social life: Economic, political, and cultural. If we are also unbiased in this case, we can see that the economic sphere gives life and power to business, the political sphere to government, and the cultural sphere to civil society.  

The roles of business and government, and from where they draw their power, are relatively obvious, but perhaps civil society requires elaboration.  

Civil society is made up of groups working in the cultural sphere, including Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), People’s Organisations (POs), Community Organisations, Not-for-profit Organisations, academia, media, church groups, charities, schools and more. Globally, it is estimated there are over one million different civil society organisations, and the number is growing fast.²It is what journalist Paul Hawken has described in his book Blessed Unrest as “the largest movement in the world.”  

The individuals and groups of civil society stand up for all that lives in and emerges from the cultural sphere – all that is concerned with the full unfolding of the human being and the world: art, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, meaning, identity, values, the sacred. The individuals and organisations of civil society are tending the light of the morning that has come. 

They do so in a world that has become physically and psychologically sick because its systems – its spheres – are not clear about their individual roles, from where they draw their power, or how to interact in healthy ways. 

We find in much of the world an economic sphere that has taken over not just political space, but cultural space as well. It influences how politicians behave, how laws are created, how culture should behave. It shapes government policies around education in order to manufacture human beings who will fit like cogs into an economic wheel rather than unfold in freedom their latent and inherent capacities – their gifts to the world.  

In short, the economic sphere brings its principles of supply and demand out of the sphere in which this principle rightly belongs, and has transposed it upon all realms of social life (leading to corrupt, one-sided and ineffective governments, as well as a starved cultural sphere – generally, to elite globalisation), gradually choking the whole social organism – choking the world – like a toxic cloud.³ 

The political realm is not based upon the principle of supply and demand. Rather, its highest potential (as the economy’s highest potential is one of meeting genuine needs through economic association) lives in the principle of equality – the equality of all human beings. It is based upon agreements, upon true democracy.  

Likewise, the cultural realm aspires to its own highest ideals, and not those of the economy, nor of politics. The cultural sphere aspires to the principle of freedom – freedom in all that it contains, and all that it carries out. 

We live in a time where a new movement – a new mood is walking the earth. It stepped fully onto the world stage with the defeat of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Seattle in 1999. These talks were set to gain even more territory for business and government in the cultural sphere – to expand the cloud of elite, one-sided globalisation which is suffocating the world at the expense of all that is meaningful and all that is truly human. Civil society stood up to defend its land – to say “no more.” It was a battle – the Battle of Seattle – and civil society won. 

Civil society has awoken to the call of a new day – a new dawn – precisely because of the unhealthy and crumbling world we have created for ourselves. It has awoken to find itself the third major player on the world stage. And currently it is facing its next great challenge: What now?  

Unsure as yet of its own identity and source of power, civil society has pushed back the unrelenting waves coming from business and government – business and government which draw their strength respectively from the economic and political spheres.  

The next step for civil society must be in understanding its own identity and its own source of power. It must move beyond saying “no more” to saying “this is who I am, this is what I stand for and this is what I offer.” It has awoken like thinking awakens in a growing human being. Now it must be clear what it represents, and how it will interact with the other spheres of society. 

Civil society has defended and must continue to defend the cultural territory from where it originates. But it must also bring all of the gifts of this cultural realm into the rest of society – into the rest of the world.  

Culture is the wellspring for all the meaning and identity of the world. Civil society is charged with the great task and responsibility of bringing to the earth the vital and life-giving water that flows from this spring. It must wake up in this task – it must rise to this task – to the new day’s dawning, and begin to interact with business and government in the same way as the three systems of the human body interact in healthy ways with one another.  

If so done, civil society need no longer feel inadequate in the great, shadowy and crumbling hallways of business and government, for it will recognise its own role as a light-bearer in this world. It will recognise its cultural identity and power, and sit down at the decision making tables – at the new sacred sites of the world – with individuals and organisations working in business and government in order to systematically bring into the mainstream (the whole social organism), through appropriately sculpted decision making processes and systems, all of the knowledge, wisdom, values, meaning, identity and visionary ideas – all thealternatives – of the cultural sphere. 

Where its territory is invaded, civil society will push back. Where there are likeminded individuals and organisations in government and business, it will work with them. Where there are no likeminded individuals it will still carry out all the work it is called to do.  

Civil society does not draw its strength from political power, but it can confer legitimacy upon politicians who stand up for the equality of all human beings and the potential of the world. It does not draw its strength from economic power, though it can legitimise businesses that work in associative ways to meet the genuine needs of all human beings. At the same time, where there are abuses of political, economic and even cultural power, or where these spheres overstep their healthy boundaries, civil society can withdraw such legitimacy and instead shed its light upon injustices and corruption.  

Because it knows who it is and what its task involves, civil society will not be co-opted, sell itself out to, or be bought by government (GRINGOs) or business (BINGOs). It will stand up for all that is highest – for all that is poetic in the human being and the world – because what is highest and poetic will ultimately prevail.  

Civil society will help the world move from government by government alone, to new governance, whereby government will sit together with business and civil society at decision making tables across the globe. And in doing so it will stand up for genuine, integral sustainable development processes and outcomes. 

Through this, every organisation engaged in civil society will become a sun unto  itself, rising as the new day rises with the sun of the world light, shedding luminous rays into the darkest corners of the earth, enlivening the old grey man the world has become, and creating ever-new tracks to travel upwards on. It will work with truly practical and future-based ideas to help, alongside business and government, rebuild the world from its foundations.  

Civil society will consciously take up its place next to business and government in a healthy social organism based upon and worthy of the true human being. By doing so, civil society will help create a new earth where there is the space for all human beings to rise to their own highest potential – where each human being has the possibility to add their own sunrise to this new picture; this newly painted world of colour and light.  

The time has come. The earth is desperately calling for a true cultural revolution. Human beings of the world, stand up!  
 

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In the same way that the human being is made up of three main systems, so the social organism is made up of three main spheres. And as a rightly functioning interaction of the systems of the human being according to its highest potential could be called ahealthy individual, so the healthy interaction of the spheres of the social organism can be called Societal Threefolding.