Barry Carter warns of the dangers of breakpoint. This a followup to his article: American Bankruptcy: Breakpoint to a New Civilization.
Barry Carter
We attempt to solve our social problems by focusing on the symptoms of our win/lose paradigm. We continuously debate crime, poverty and welfare. We advocate more policemen, more prisons, tougher laws, tougher penalties. We constantly judge others, promote more “eye for an eye” strategies. We call for more affirmative action, gun control, lower taxes, sex and drug education and condoms in school. We deplore teen pregnancy, gang warfare. We call for censorship in music, TV and in movies. We want more and better jobs.
The list above are all real, valid and important symptoms. They, however, are mere symptoms and a thousand years of focus on them will not yield the results we desire. We simply cannot afford to be distracted by patching symptoms. More importantly, however, by focusing on these win/lose symptoms, we reinforce our win/lose paradigm, which in turn keeps us and our thinking trapped in the win/lose paradigm.
Patching symptoms and ignoring root causes is a recipe for disaster and may destroy our civilization. These symptoms are moot issues, which will clear up when we acknowledge the shift to knowledge power and begin to see the win-win society that is being created.
The Possible Fall Backwards
If we make the leap forward, we will create a new win-win paradigm and a new reality. Though I personally believe we shall make the leap, by no means is it guaranteed. In a very real sense we, and all of humanity, could soon be in heaven or hell. We have just entered the Knowledge Era and have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. As shown in the book Infinite Wealthour win/lose world is rapidly evolving to either a win-win system or a lose/lose system. Also as shown losing individuals are being empowered with virtually unlimited power to destroy. A short but intense period of lose/lose, sparked by a few losing individual, could mean a giant step backwards to hell, possibly to a complete loss of everything. Maintaining the win/lose status quo of the past is no longer possible due to the wide decentralization of knowledge and power, to the individual, in a knowledge era.
This is not the first time that humanity has been on the verge of a move forward or a fall backwards. We have a precedence for a fall backwards. The last time humanity took a step backwards we, however, hadn’t the power to destroy ourselves. We only had the power to regress and stagnate for a thousand years.
Carl Sagan, in the book Cosmos, shows that the thousand year Dark Ages from roughly 415 AD to 1492 AD was caused by the inability to see past the paradigm of the times and move forward. Humanity had advanced enormously technically, as he demonstrates with the Library of Alexandria and the achievements it documented. It, however, failed to grasp the potential of its advancements to liberate people. This failure was due to a paradigm which was not enlightened enough to see past the reality of the time. Sagan writes:
The Greek Kings of Egypt who succeeded Alexander were serious about learning. For centuries, they supported research and maintained in the library a working environment for the best minds of the age. It contained ten large research halls, each devoted to a separate subject; foundations and colonnades; botanical gardens; a zoo; dissecting rooms; an observatory; and a great dining hall where, at leisure, was conducted the critical discussion of ideas.
The heart of the library was a collection of books. The organizers combed all cultures and languages of the world. They sent their agents abroad to buy up libraries. Commercial ships docking in Alexandria were searched by the police– not for contraband, but for books. The scrolls were borrowed, copied and returned to their owners. Accurate numbers are difficult to estimate but it seems probable that the library contained half a million volumes, each a handwritten papyrus scroll.
Alexandria was the greatest city that the Western world had ever seen. People of all nations came there to live, to trade, to learn. On any given day, its harbors were thronged with merchants, scholars and tourists. This was a city where Greeks, Egyptians, Arabs, Syrians, Hebrews, Persians, Nubians, Phoenicians, Italians, Gauls and Iberians exchanged merchandise and ideas. Here clearly were the seeds of the modern world. What prevented them from taking root and flourishing? Why instead did the West slumber through a thousand years of darkness until Columbus and Copernicus rediscovered the work done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a single answer. But I do know this: there is no record, in the entire history of the library, that any of its illustrious scientists and scholars ever seriously challenged the political, economic and religious assumptions of their society. The permanence of the stars was questioned; the justice of slavery was not. Science and learning in general were preserved for a privileged few. The vast population of the city had not the vaguest notion of the great discoveries taking place within the library. New findings were not explained or popularized. The research benefited them little. Discoveries in mechanics and steam technology were applied mainly to the perfection of weapons, the encouragement of superstitions and the amusement of kings. The scientists never grasped the potential of machines to free people. The great intellectual achievements of antiquity had few immediate practical applications. Science never captured the imagination of the multitude. There was no counter balance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject surrender to mysticism. When, at last, the mob came to burn the library down, there was nobody to stop them.
Sagan explains that Hypatia, the Librarian during the time of its destruction, was the foremost advocate for learning and growth.
The Alexandria of Hypatia’s time–by then long under Roman rule–was a city under grave strain. Slavery had sapped classical civilization of its vitality. The growing Christian Church was consolidating its power and attempting to eradicate pagan influence and culture. Hypatia stood at the epicenter of these mighty social forces. Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, despised her because of her close friendship with the Roman governor, and because she was a symbol of learning and science, which were largely identified by the early Church with paganism. In great personal danger, she continued to teach and publish, until, in the year 415, on her way to work she was set upon by a fanatic mob of Cyril’s parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed with abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint. The glory of the Alexandria library is a dim memory. Its last remnants were destroyed soon after Hypatia’s death.
Sagan goes on to show the incalculable and staggering loss of knowledge from thousands of years of human experience, much of which can never be recovered. We then stood at a crossroad as we do today. We then chose fear over knowledge and extinguished the flicker of light which could have put us a thousand years ahead of where we stand today.
It can be argued that it was not practical for them to move forward, since there were too many pieces missing. This same argument can be made today with our void of emotional intelligence, spiritual awareness and some technical pieces. If we fail, perhaps historians will argue this in a thousand years. We, however, have no choice. We must go for it. We must see win-win. We know what awaits us if we continue to chose win/lose. As Sagan points out, we see further because we stand on 40,000 generations of other human’s shoulders.
Copyright 2000 by Barry Carter
About Barry Carter.
Infinite Wealth is available at the author’s website, and can be purchased in bookstores everywhere including Amazon and Barnes & Nobel.
There is also an abbreviated free online version, which has been reposed at Future Positive: 1)The Rise of a Win Win Civilization2) A Personal Journey of Discovery 3) Why Corporations Don’t Work4)The Emancipation of Capitalism5)Mass Privatization: Organizing in the Information Age6)Decentralized Wealth Creation7)The Infinite Wealth Potential of Liberated Humans8)The Mandate for Win-Win Wealth Creation9)Breakpoint: Why You Must Act Now10)SYNOCRACY: True Democracy Through Synergy11)THE SHIFT: Awaking to a Win-Win World 12)The Synthesis of a Win-Win World and 13)Vision for a Synergic Transition.