The Dream of the Modern World
None of the issues facing us today are caused by external forces or the inevitable unfolding of evolution. We are doing all of this to ourselves! Its the result of human choices, human decisions. So the good news when we recognize that we're the authors of our own problems is that we can do something about it!
But how did we do this? We’re in a trance that our Achuar allies would call the “dream of the modern world.” The dream affects everything: our relationship with ourselves, each other and the natural world. It is deeply rooted in the stories that define our culture and it provides the unconscious assumptions and beliefs about the world that lie at the heart of all our thinking. They are unexamined assumptions about ourselves and the world that we’ve been utterly unconscious of and which influence the decisions we make and the behaviors we choose.
If we want to change our actions we really need to be able to become aware of these assumptions that are generating them in the first place. That’s where the leverage is. So what are some of these assumptions? Here are a few:
More is better
– deeply engrained in our psyche and affecting our view of everything from possessions to people. Ditto "Bigger is better" and "Convenient is king".
Choice is a good thing
– one of the most shocking expressions of our consumer society is the bewildering array of options available and a new categories of need created in order to make and sell more stuff.
There is not enough to go around
– this insidious little belief keeps us always working for more and unconsciously competing with each other for jobs, status, love, recognition and more.
There will always be poor people
– thinking that inequality is inevitable helps to prevent us from addressing it and instead learn to live with it unchallenged.
A healthy economy is a growing economy
– is it? This is the political mantra of the west but some would say, a ruinous philosophy.
Given some of these assumptions it makes perfect sense to own more than we can use, to rent storage space for our extra stuff, to need a three-car garage, to want to wear clothes with the labels on the outside; taken all together these are the behaviors which drive the destruction of our natural world and prevent social harmony.
As we awaken into working for a fair, just and sustainable world our challenge is to see where twe are caught in this old dream. Then step-by-step we can disengage from it and start to live the new dream.
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