How long has the “collapse” of the human race been going on? What causes the dysfunction among homo-sapiens? It has always been happening. It is part of our fundamental psychological nature. The unsustainable narrative of human history is like a slow motion implosion that we see when a building is packed with explosives and detonated. A seemingly substantial structure ends up in a cloud of dust and rubble. Once the explosives are ignited, the result is inevitable and irreversible. Not so with the collapse of P-B. We have the knowledge and the capability of stopping the collapse in mid-air and of reconstructing a sound, sustainable structure.
What is causing the implosion of the culture of the global village? Let’s look at the American version of the increasingly uniform global culture, institution by institution, as an example of what is happening world-wide.
First the American criminal justice system: unsustainable because, among other things, it is rife with unconscious racism, failed drug policies, unfair sentencing policies, arrogance and insensitivity, and the tragedy of out-of–control youth gangs.
In the presidential election (September 2008) following the national conventions of both parties, the economy was cited as the number one concern of most Americans. The American economy doesn’t work in part because of unconscious consumer spending, profligate borrowing, global trade imbalances, social welfare spending, greedy energy consumption, and corruption in the stock market and investment banks. Recently we have seen arrests and convictions on both K Street in Washington and Wall Street. The end of these behaviors is nowhere in sight.
It has been nearly four decades since the first Earth Day in 1970 which raised American awareness concerning the environment. To name only a fraction of the threats to our natural environment, we find unsustainable policies leading to global warming, widespread flooding, out-of-control wildfires and critical water shortages.
Americans seem to have trouble lately getting along with their neighbors. That is caused in part by a foreign policy that is hypocritical, one that creates anti-American terrorist organizations, mistrust among our allies and one which ignores Reality.
The presidential candidates in the 2008 presidential elections both vowed to reform or change the way government in Washington works. The promises are nothing new nor is it likely to happen. Changes are unlikely because the political system itself is dependent on special interest lobbying, pandering to the voters and self-deception or in other words it is controlled by the individual and collective false self.
Americans are not healthy either mentally or physically. The American health care system is failing as it attempts to deal with dementia, obesity, diabetes, drug addiction, inaccessibility for many citizens, pandemics, mental illness and suicide, drug company influences, illogical policies and toxic lifestyles.
The American military was overstressed with multiple challenges in 2008 but the dysfunction has always been there and the threats to American security loom large both externally and internally. Among the major causes of a dysfunctional military are worldwide weapons proliferation, mental health problems (including PTSD), paranoia, and an ignorance of reality among the leadership.
Private sector corruption could include exploitation of immigrants, environmental pollution, union busting, confiscation of employee retirement equity, and unsafe working environments.
The institution of religion when it becomes involved in politics does damage to both church and state. Religious beliefs can cause distortion in both public and foreign policy.
And finally, let’s list a few self-destructive behaviors in the American culture in general. America is plagued with too much stress, misogyny, self-destructive addictions and racism. All of these behaviors stem from Americans expressing their existential energy as fear and we are afraid because at some level of awareness we realize that something is very wrong with our story.
Even this partial list of challenges facing Americans, most of which are also present in the rest of the world, may seem overwhelming, but the good news is that all of the problems can be addressed by a single strategy and a single practice based on centuries of wisdom and proven by centuries of successfully demonstrated practices for altering human behavior. Our greatest threat is to be mesmerized by the implosion happening before our eyes. The laws of P-B physics do not apply in P-A. We can reverse the inertia of the collapsing global culture but first we have to replace the emotions, beliefs, attitudes and values of the old building (P-B context) with the structure of a new (P-A narrative) worldview, a new identity and the resulting transformed human behavior. We can do this if we choose to do so.
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Much more can be found in the book Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival.
