A profound cultural shift is underway
The era and culture of modernity is being swept away and a new civilization is being formed. A transformed worldview is taking shape and the ability to make sense of it is the key to navigating what comes next.
The next ten years and well into the 2030s are now primed for a continuing transformation in every aspect of life. This is not the Great Reset (which was planned as an engineered change) but a Great Shift – a ‘turning of the ages’ arising organically from evolutionary developments at multiple levels of reality. Following the global system shock of 2020-2021, the entire power structure and worldview of modernity, which was already in terminal decline, is now collapsing. The infrastructure for a replacement system is already coming into being, well below the radar of traditional news reporting. The challenge facing us all now is to be aware of, be open to, and actively engage with the radical potential for human freedom that is becoming possible.
The aim of this website is simply to assemble in one place the diversity of ideas and insights that together weave a sense of the emerging future. Hopefully this will assist in making sense of the potentially disorientating transformation that is underway, for preparing psychologically and practically, and for seeing how to participate creatively in the changes that are now unfolding.
Introduction
This website is in effect a scenario that depicts a transition to an optimistic future during the decades of the 2020s, 2030s and beyond. The ideas it contains come from futures research into a wide variety of early warning ‘weak signals’ — signals that are now far stronger than when they were first identified.
The overall scenario that emerges is not focused on future events, but on a future change in worldview, that is, in cultural outlook and intellectual perspective. This places it at the greatest causal depth beneath the surface of events. It considers deep underlying changes, their evolution, and their consequences in terms of cultural change. This contrasts with most scenarios and other exercises in future thinking which tend to stay at the level of possible events in business and politics.
Like any scenario, it is intended to play a preparatory role by helping to illuminate and clarify probable changes, and by offering a contextual framework for initiatives aimed at co-creating a future fit for humans.
This work is deliberately positive and avoids negative scenarios of the years ahead, not because they could not exist, but to emphasize that there are reasons for hope. Being deliberately optimistic is a better recipe for future outcomes, because optimism inspires enthusiasm and encourages actions that can make a positive difference. In contrast, pessimism is psychologically unhelpful as it leads to a passive or fearful stance towards the future, which tends to become an unwelcome self-fulfilling prophesy.
So this website presents a consciously optimistic scenario with wide scope, from the conceptual underpinnings of a new worldview through to the resulting implications for cultural change in multiple fields, which are precursors for the emergence of a new civilization in the decades ahead.
It is offered as an inspirational future image to act as a focus and catalyst for your own creative thinking about our human future.
New material will be added to this website as insights arise and events unfold. To the extent that writing is learning, these additions may also entail modifications of the sections that have already been written. Rather than aiming at a completed final version, the intention is to track developments and the emergence of new information, and to provide a continuously evolving overview. Fortunately, scenarios lend themselves to this type of development, as long as the overall shape is accurate enough at the outset to remain valid as time passes and more details are added.
As the work develops, the intention is to offer inquiry sessions and seminars related to the content for those who would like to learn more and explore these ideas in an interactive, experiential setting. If you are interested in this kind of opportunity please sign up below to be kept informed.
A new conception of the world
Worldview
Every culture or civilization has its own distinctive conception of the relationship between the source or origin, the universe, and human beings – which the Ancient Greeks called Theos, Cosmos and Anthropos. These are the three great domains that encompass the whole scope of human life. This is true even of a culture which denies the existence of God, such as modernity, since there is still some idea of an ‘ultimate’ which displaces God. Any shift in culture involves a new conception of, and belief in, the relationship among these three.
Just as the relationship between Theos, Cosmos and Anthropos changed fundamentally in the transition from the medieval world to the modern world, so the relationship is changing again as we move beyond modernity. The character of this shift is the key to understanding the new worldview.
Theos
The concept of God refers to the enduring notion that there must be a first cause for reality, some source that gives the universe its intelligibility, and its apparent evidence of intelligence and other felt qualities that we experience as human beings.
In modernity, reality was understood as a collection of purely physical entities and God therefore had to be conceptualized as a powerful creator being within this reality. As empirical science became established, it provided no evidence for this concept of God, which became discredited and the authority of science gradually eclipsed the authority of religion. God was regarded as either outside and absent from the universe and uninvolved, or was ‘dead’ as Nietzsche famously put it. The resulting existential malaise at the heart of modernity came to be expressed by modern philosophers in terms of anomie and alienation.
In the emerging worldview, the Source of reality is conceptualized as an infinite intelligent unity within which phenomena such as free will, energy, being, consciousness, and ultimately physicality have, so to speak, coalesced or condensed. They existed within the primary unity as potentials which were given expression through creative empowerment. Rather than being absent or dead, God is thus reinterpreted as the infinite totality of the universe and of all aspects of reality, which is naturally imbued with intelligence and creativity. Human beings are an intrinsic and intimate part of ‘all that is’, which consequently gives us qualities and an identity which go beyond a purely physical conception of reality.
Cosmos
In the modern conception of the world, the universe we live in was a purely physical place, a self-enclosed realm of ‘things,’ that had arisen from nowhere without any meaningful purpose. Reality was seen as no more than a collection of purely physical objects. These objects were all separate from each other, and the smallest of them were atoms and their constituent particles, which bounced around and formed all the ‘emergent’ features of reality through random agglomerations and interactions.
In this modern conception and belief, the Cosmos is a place that lacks intrinsic order, meaning or direction, in which individual human beings are alone and without any purpose other than their own self-interest.
In the new conception of the world, the universe is a living intelligent unity, an infinitely large living organism, with an overall significance that gives meaning to each part. All the diversity within the universe, both its visible physical structure and its invisible but sensed metaphysical or spiritual structure, forms one seamless harmony of purpose. It is not a place of things, but more like a vast image, a holographic realm formed by the shaping action of creative thought on a primal vibration. Its ultimate purpose is best understood as an all encompassing self-knowing, in which, through the endless creative play of free will, all the potential for existence within the infinite Source becomes manifest. Thus Source comes to know itself by reflection.
Anthropos
In modernity human beings were alienated from both God and nature. God could no longer be found, and the universe had no purpose which could give meaning to human aspiration. The human being was adrift and alone in an empty universe. This gave rise to what might be termed negative individualism, in which the human condition was seen in terms of uncertainty and fear of death, and society was seen as a struggle for survival, in which everyone was driven to gain an advantage over everyone else.
In the new culture, human beings seek and rediscover a personal connection to Source and to nature, and once more take their place in an intrinsic cosmic order that gives purpose to their lives. Negative individualism is replaced by positive individuality, in which individuals find meaning by contributing the most complete expression of their own nature to the harmonious self-discovery of the whole. Each being supports and provides for each other being through the full expression of its own nature – which is the essence of the ecosystem principle. Conscious dedication to this principle – that by service to others through the medium of community the needs of every self are met – the individual is connected with the underlying unity and purpose of the Cosmos itself.
Key elements of the shift
Inspiring hope
The future cannot be fully known by prediction, because it can always be expanded by creativity. We are not at the mercy of some inexorable future. We can catalyze our personal future by actively shaping an inspirational future image, which gives us focus and guides action.
The shape, the architecture, of our future world must be invented by all of us. We must collectively imagineer our future path, our new culture, to create our new place in the universe.
This website aims to identify and map the conceptual outline of the new worldview to inspire the process of detailed design and construction. It is an image of a future culture built around the highest aspirations of the human spirit.
All the ideas presented here can be detected in the shifts of perspective occurring today. Research into the world shift involves gathering and assembling insights from every aspect of our existing culture – ranging through science, art, philosophy, religion, politics, sociology, futurism, and the esoteric.
Showing how these changes all connect can offer a general direction for progress, a conceptual framework for an optimistic future. The hope is that it can inspire new thinking and align potential action. It is a provocation, a casting of seeds for the future.
The Shift
The ‘world shift’ idea expresses a conviction that the world is undergoing a sea change on multiple levels. The most obvious level is the unsustainability of the present system, and the need for a transition to an ecologically balanced and socially just economy.
At the level of system dynamics, the entire global system is approaching a critical threshold. If it simply keeps growing, it is likely to reach a ‘bifurcation point’ (to use an analogy from chaos theory) at which it will spontaneously jump to a new higher order of organisation, or regress. This would happen because previously unrecognised adaptive features of the whole system are triggered.
An adaptive jump to a new state of organization is equivalent to an evolutionary shift. At a psychological level this implies an evolution in human consciousness, catalysed in part by the experience of global-scale unsustainability. This will lead to a radical change of worldview, new beliefs and values, and a new pattern for the global system.
Ultimately, the world shift plays out deep in the human unconscious, altering our entire experience of reality, going far beyond socio-economic and technological conditions. This is echoed in the idea, long foreshadowed by visionary thinkers, of an approaching epochal transition, a turning of the ages. At its most profound, the shift can be seen as a planetary, social and personal transformation arising from ‘upshifting’ to a new stage of spiritual development, an inner step change that promises the dawn of a genuinely new age.
New philosophy
At the centre of the emerging worldview is a new ‘cosmosophical’ perspective which brings together cosmology, philosophy, theology, ecology, and anthropology. It is the stabilising and orienting keel of the new culture.
In modernity, God was declared to be dead, religion was officially discredited, and science was promoted to take its place. Human beings themselves were seen as nothing but biological machines, and they inhabited an empty universe devoid of intrinsic meaning.
In the new era, religion makes a partial comeback, but is soon superseded by direct spiritual contact. Humans are seen as spiritual beings inhabiting a body that is a biological holographic image of the self. And the universe is discovered to be full of life, with countless inhabited planets at varying levels of spiritual development.
In modernity the world, the cosmos, was regarded as a flat horizontal landscape of pure materiality with no ‘higher’ or ‘lower’. In the new era the metaphor of a vertical dimension is reopened, reconnecting human beings through levels of spiritual advancement back to Source.
New technology
In the 1950s, science fiction writers imagined a futuristic world of high technology which seemingly failed to happen. This was not a failure of futuristic vision, but a deliberate withholding of technologies that already existed, on the grounds of national security.
Technologies that could have been released for the betterment of human life were instead diverted into secret resources for warfare. Now, in the 2020s, formerly classified technologies may finally see the light of day. Levitating cars and spacecraft, unlimited fuel-free energy, and electro-technologies for healing could transform everyday life.
The real significance of this sci-fi world is not how advanced it is, but the shift in the theory, philosophy and ethics of science that goes with it. Physics will undergo yet another revolution in theoretical understanding. Quantum physics is already pushing open the door to a new metaphysics of science and reality. And the gross misuse of science in the closing years of modernity will demand fundamental ethical reform. These new norms for the understanding and use of science will be an integral part of the emerging worldview, and this new-found responsibility will help open the door to an era of truly advanced science.
Ecosystemics
The natural world, the world of living beings, is organised ecosystemically. Each living being has a specialised function within the ecosystem, determined by its identity. The whole system builds positive synergy as each living being contributes its unique activity to the eco-community and is simultaneously supported by the activity of every other member of the ecosystem.
The same principle can also work in a human social and economic context. If freedom from exploitative hierarchical power structures can be achieved – through the largely concealed ‘war of human liberation’ that has been underway for some years – then ecosystemic principles can be applied to the economy and governance structure of society.
Ecosystems can be seen as biological, social and spiritual – and in the new era the world can be organized by the qualities and powers of these levels of the vertical dimension. The energetic and purposive signature of each ‘quality of power’ of the vertical dimension becomes the basis of organizing human society in harmony with nature and the cosmos.
This inner and outer integration marks the beginning of an applied spiritual-scientific understanding.
Galactic connection
After decades of denial and speculation, the reality of civilizations on other planets and star systems is about to become undeniable. The long-awaited disclosure will come not from governments, who have failed their populations in this regard, but by the interstellar visitors themselves, once the ‘war of liberation’ creates safe conditions for them to openly reveal their presence.
Far from being the hostile invaders of science fiction, it will turn out that the majority of these other star-worlds are high civilizations able and willing to assist human development once we get beyond incredulity and fear.
Just as human societies around the planet were shaped and reshaped by contact with each other during the historic past, in the future, planetary human society will be shaped by contact with societies from planets in other solar systems.
During the course of this century, our new civilization will open up to interstellar society, and will find its place and define itself in relation to this contact.
Inquiry sessions are planned to explore and develop these ideas in interactive, experiential ways. If this interests you, please sign up to be kept informed.
This website reflects an ongoing research project. As new material becomes available it will be added to expand on various aspects of the shift in more detail.
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