Here we are: the new Trump administration appears likely to scale back the U.S. effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even as the science makes it clear that global warming is happening faster than predicted.
It takes a fairly low level of consciousness overall in the United States to elect representatives that ignore scientific findings. Clearly, we need better educational programs that teach us more about ourselves and our levels of consciousness, as elucidated for example, by the syntropic systems paradigm.
You don’t have to give up your favorite religion or conservative orientation in order to become familiar with the scientific method as a strategy for seeking truth about the material world. Extrapolations from scientific discoveries are also worth discussing with your friends.
Here’s one we think ought to be high on your list: it appears that we writers and everyone who reads this is going to die someday. That’s not certain, but unless the research on aging comes up with a solution to the problem of death within two or three decades, most everyone born in the 21st century will die either a natural death or a premature death from various causes.
Notice further that since the origins of the human race some 200,000 years ago all previous individuals, except those who are current living, are dead. As a species, however, we are still growing and spreading ever more widely across the planet.
That’s the message, folks! It’s not all about us as individuals. It’s not all about now. It’s not about the greatest country on Earth. It’s not even all about our own species, because our species cannot exist without an ecosystem of other living species that sustain us. And the ecosystem of Life has been around for well over three billion years—on our planet alone. It would be pretty bad for our galactic reputation if we were the species that put an end to intelligent Life on the planet Earth!
It may be too late already to even bring this up, but without “applied hope” our species doesn’t have a chance of surviving the current trends toward nuclear war, the Sixth Extinction, and global overheating.
The saddest story ever told? We have lost track of consciousness as an organ of species survival. We are so distracted by our focus on immediate issues that we, as a majority, are not even aware that our boat is drifting toward the falls.
The stresses of individual and family health are too great. Mass migrations and mixtures with people who don’t look like us or who don’t speak our language fluently are irritating. We are partially hard-wired and partially acculturated to want to be with people more like ourselves, but that’s no longer possible in this world! Changes in conditions require changes in consciousness! From now on, every step we take ought to be in the right direction if we want to survive. That means being more conscious of the full meaning of every step we take as a species.
Politicians that place themselves or their parties above larger interests foster division. The Internet has brought new distractions, false stories, and echo chambers that further divide us. We thought the Internet would undermine closed, authoritarian systems, but it is the open, democratic systems that are most affected. Perhaps that is due to a poor understanding of the meaning of “freedom” in the context of guns, nuclear weapons, speech, social cohesion, and climate change. That is another topic on the agenda of a revolution in consciousness, and we will address that in a later article.
In all pre-revolutionary periods the question arises, “What is to be done?”
We believe that the current major distractions from the ultimate goals of species survival and the immediate goals of individual and family well-being are (1) economic inequality along with lack of jobs, and (2) interracial or inter-ethnic incivility. We also believe that certain action could be taken right now to minimize those distractions and simultaneously improve our chances for a better life for all of us.
Human survival is primary, but implicit and explicit bias that divides humanity against itself is directly related to the issue of human survival. We therefore need a strategy for moving to a level of consciousness that minimizes such biases as racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, biases against the poor, and the various quests for religious supremacy. Of course, unique individual and ethnic identities, excluding those biases, must continue to be valued. Accordingly we again emphasize and bring to our reader’s attention to the following:
A Reparative Solution
Without an active period of education and reparations for past crimes against humanity and redress for current racist-based discrimination, there will likely be no relief from ongoing preoccupations with current insults and injustices in the relations among different Identity groups. An Identity Group may be based on race, skin color, religion, gender, ideology, class interests, sexual preference, language, cultural history, hobbies, intellectual interests, concern for the environment, etc.
An Identity Group is defined here as any human grouping with a distinguishing characteristic and with which an individual can freely choose to identify.
The first reparative strategy may have been Solon’s forgiveness of debts to reduce conflict between Athenian aristocrats and the poor. The “reparative solution” in the modern era, we could argue, was initiated with such historical precedents as Germany’s apology for the Nazi-based holocaust and payment of reparations to Israel, the U.S. Government’s apology and payment of reparations to Japanese-Americans, and the Truth and Reconciliations processes in South Africa and Rwanda. For the consciousness revolution to progress, we must—as quickly as possible—do much more in the 21st century.
Alone, apologies and reparations will never be adequate, but when combined with forgiveness and improved understanding between Identity Groups as well as constant institutional training in cultural and racial sensitivity for avoiding future injustices between Identity Groups, they offer the best way out of the cycles of revenge based on “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” that would, as Gandhi pointed out, eventually leave the whole world blind and toothless.
Here we will outline briefly a suggested program for reparations in the United States. The program can be generalized and applied elsewhere if needed. Our recommendations are based on our assessment of universal human needs and probabilities of wide-spread acceptance.
1 No cash will directly pass involuntarily from the pockets of one Identity Group to those of another Identity Group.
2 Incentives for voluntary participation will be established.
3 A Reparations Council (RC) will be established consisting of one-third First Peoples (Native-Americans), one-third descendants of slaves (African-Americans) , and one-third other disadvantaged minorities, including the unemployed, with gender representation being fifty-fifty male and female in each group. The RC can be initiated by the executive order of the President if legislative support is lacking.
4 If support from neither is available, leadership from organizations representing the aggrieved populations will be encouraged to come together to form the necessary organization and to build political pressure through mass demonstrations and nonviolent resistance until the federal and/or state governments are forced by both moral and political persuasion to act. The RC will have responsibility for the organizational process of reparations, for allocating funds provided by the Reparations Bank for the length of the reparations period, roughly estimated to require between 8 and 16 years.
5 An Employment and Reparations Bank (ERB) will be established for funding programs initiated by the RC. The Federal Reserve will monitor and regulate the ERB in a manner consistent with achieving the goals of the ERB. Contributions to the Employment and Reparations Bank will be tax-deductible. Disbursements, loans, and micro-loans to support education, housing and food allowances, access to healthcare; training programs in law enforcement agencies and in all corporate and government bureaucracies; small-business start-ups, special economic zones, and environmentally friendly clean-ups as part of a balanced reparations strategy will be made available. The amounts to be dispersed will be determined by a Disbursement Council consisting of two members of the Federal Reserve, two members of Congress, and three members of the RC.
6 Job training and placement, infrastructure-upgrading contracts, Special Economic Zones, etc., regular Advanced Integrative Living Seminars, and Truth and Reconciliation Conferences will be held in every state throughout the period of reparations. Social media and mass media will also require significant modification in order to facilitate large-scale participation.
7 Although initiated by the need to compensate for past and current crimes against humanity, all Reparations Programs shall also be made available to all unemployed persons displaced by technological innovation, business failures, trade policies, globalization of production and services, gender considerations, and physical or mental disabilities. Universal healthcare must also be made available. Unemployment and lack of available healthcare are thereby defined as injustices for which compensation is due.
More details will be found in our forthcoming book, The Consciousness Revolution.
In the next installment of our series on the Consciousness Revolution we will address concerns about the human spirit, unify faith-based and secular forms of spirituality, and lay out a map that may be useful to individuals and families interested in joining this journey to the center of the human mind.
Send us your suggestions for how to bring about a better world. We will publish them if they seem to fit coherently into this inherently democratic movement for peace, prosperity, and progress in human affairs.
Meanwhile, the Consciousness Revolution is made possible only by each of us pitching in, spreading the message, and providing material support.
We and all other nonprofit organizations that support the consciousness revolution are in need of funding. Contributions can be made by contacting us at info@syntropix.net.