UN News Center:
19 November 2013 - The world need look no further than the catastrophe in the Philippines to comprehend the profound and dangerous consequences of a warming planet, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today . . .
"Climate change threatens current and future generations," Mr. Ban said in his address to the high-level segment of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, taking place in Poland.
. . . he said that all around the world, people now face and fear the wrath of a warming planet. "The science is clear. Human activities are the dominant cause of climate change. We cannot blame nature."
How did it come to this? How did the smartest, most highly evolved creatures on earth singlehandedly bring the host environment that provides the basis for all life to the brink of total collapse?
People today seem to be moving toward increasing polarization, rather than unity. There appear to be several subdivisions operating with profoundly different levels of awareness, behavioral characteristics and metamorphic development.
The largest group consists of a vast herd -- like conglomeration that comprises the majority of people. There is a smaller but rapidly growing division, comprised of individuals in varying stages of awakening.
The primary group or majority is and maintains the status quo . . . the system or social order. This system is the cumulative set of agreements, beliefs, common perceptions and behavioral patterns that define human activity. Distinctions between reality, fiction and outright delusion are nonexistent. The beliefs of the system are implanted as truths which are fundamentally right and good. They are aligned with religion, salvation, justice and are consistently programmed into us from the moment of birth to the moment of death.
Doublethink: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doublethink is the act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct . . .George Orwell coined the word doublethink in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949); doublethink is part of newspeak . . . the novel explicitly shows people learning Doublethink and newspeak due to peer pressure and a desire to "fit in", or gain status within the Party . . . In the novel, while to even recognize, much less mention any contradiction within the context of the Party line was akin to blasphemy and subject to possible disciplinary action. More certain was the instant social disapproval of fellow Party Members.
Sound familiar?
The rapidly accelerating, global environmental deterioration is the direct result of the historical, collective acts of the human herd majority. A key aspect of herd mindset is a delusional self-assurance that nature can be commodified and brought under man's control. The members are driven, individually and collectively, by the egoic mind or me, that has been meticulously and continuously fashioned and fitted by the system . . . the social order. This vast collection of me units compete and strive for self-fulfillment based on the accumulation of things and the achievement of transient goals and objectives which serve only to temporarily inflate and bolster the ego centered me persona.
Satisfaction is only temporary and leaves the individual or group with a renewed and intensified thirst for more. A successful individual is one who gets his (her) piece of the pie. Well, here we are and . . . the pie is almost gone!
There is, however, the other human subdivision, comprised of individuals in varying stages of awakening to a deeper awareness and understanding of the nature of things . . . of the reality that people are included in and part of the living tissue of nature. Whereas, the herd operates on its own fixed, reasonable program, the awakening individual navigates more on feelings and intuition whose source is the living, unbounded universe.
One might speculate that in the evolutionary unfolding of humanity, the herd phase is larval, whereas, the awakening segment represents a mature stage of development.
The big question is: Will a critical mass awaken before an absolute tipping point of environmental collapse is reached?
These perspectives are developed more fully in Joseph Carlisi's book, Playing God on the Eve of Extinction, which is available from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=playing+god+on+the+eve+of+extinction )
His paintings can be viewed at: http://www.josephcarlisi.com