of Misery, Decline and Despair - Building Bridges
to a Harmonious World .... ..... by living according to the
principle of "Sumac Kausay", or the Splendid Being
after having learned to find the "just midway", the happy medium
within the dualities that compose existence, by
walking the Qhapaq Ñan or "The Path of
the Just" which is the equilibrium of union in
diversity - by living well and fully and by
enjoying existence just by letting go the bad habit
to take seeming advantage from impairing,
separating, destroying of balance and parity thus
creating violence against equality, plurality and
diversity. (Javier Lajo, Perú)
Ways out of Misery, Decline and Despair - Building Bridges to a Harmonious World ....
..... by living according to the principle of "Sumac Kausay", or the Splendid Being after having learned to find the "just midway", the happy medium within the dualities that compose existence, by walking the Qhapaq Ñan or "The Path of the Just" which is the equilibrium of union in diversity - by living well and fully and by enjoying existence just by letting go the bad habit to take seeming advantage from impairing, separating, destroying of balance and parity thus creating violence against equality, plurality and diversity. (Javier Lajo, Perú)
and Perspectives on Necessary Conditions for
The current Paradigm-shift from Civilising towards Humanisation*
By Wolfgang Fischer
edited by Penélope Herrera Arango, Translations For Progress
Preface: Effect and deep meaning of words
In support of the emergence of a peaceful humanity it is ever so helpful to be precise. Accuracy in using concepts or words like patriarchy, matriarchy, anarchy or acracy helps to avoid confusion as well as it offers non-ambiguous perspectives. I find no better example than the one offered by the word anarchy. Its significance, strongly embedded in the collective subconscious, brings us images of an uncontrolled chaos where the only hope is to restore the order with a ruler that represents a central power. From this premise derive many of the forms of power known to human kind: patriarchy, hierarchy, monarchy, etc. This fact is widely accepted and has become a well-trodden path, made legitimate with its inclusion in dictionaries and encyclopaedias. But a deeper etymological and historical analysis of the origin of this word sheds a completely different light regarding its truthful meaning. The word anarchy does not come from the root "archos" (ἀρχός), meaning chief/ruler, but from the root "arché" (ἀρχή), which means origin, in the beginning, the womb, the principle.
Learning to understand the roots of the current crisis of humanity
A deep understanding of the current crisis of humanity and its roots is an inevitable step forward in order to surmount it with our best coping strategies. A profound analysis of the capitalist and communist doctrines shows us that, despite their efforts to refute each other through an endless and costly ideological clash, in reality they are the instruments of a common patriarchal denomination that has extended and perpetuated its unnatural reach until today. Since this fact hasn't been addressed properly by the mainstream sciences, a broader and interdisciplinary discussion is vital and necessary in order to find exits to the threat of self-extinction of humanity.(1)
This time we have to get the whole picture, as the effects of mainstream civilisation's way of life are threatening the basic conditions of life. This purpose can't be completed without an utter transcendence and dissolution of all the ideological and religious narratives and dogmas that have limited our minds throughout human history. The liberation of our mental focus from exclusively self-serving conceptions enables a wider stock of authentic world views that can, in an effective way, shift our ability, motivation and action towards a creative conviviality on which humanity is dreaming since ages.
out again and again
What ideas and which behaviour patterns until today do render the realisation of Global Peace impossible?
As long as egoism, nationalism and other separative self-conceptions prevail, the slavery of the inhabitants of these adopted mental frames will keep on being the direct consequence. A corollary to this is the disturbance of natural and creative balances through an exploitation scheme, typical of the patriarchal and nowadays capitalistic and socialistic systems. The so-called "democratic project of freedom" of these belief systems contradicts itself blatantly, inasmuch as their main organs - the clerical and political elites - behave in a parasitic way taking an endless advantage by means of a top-down doctrine. In this foul play, people surrender to the enslavement of their own minds. It does not need slave-drivers any more - as Kurt Tucholsky already said - to keep global societies on their corporate, destructive course.
These doctrines have anchored themselves - by way of a millennial tradition - deeply in the human mind in the form of basic assumptions, as for example nature is cruel and people are bad; "good and evil" are insurmountably natural; wars have ever been and therefore will persist for ever; one has to fight for one's luck; men are superior to women, etc.(2)(7) Such notions - still anywhere on the globe - are common today and they reveal an obsolete fundamentalism as expression of a yet deficient human maturity and its harmful impact on humanity's chances to survive.
Nature doesn't have a homicidal will; human society, in its violent facet, is prone to succumb to a homicidal drive for the sake of secondary interests like wealth or power. Cynicism is a human invention too. The alleged cruelty of nature is nothing but an erroneous interpretation of a creative order that stands for the well-being of the global whole of the planet and beyond. From the very beginning, entire Life would have been condemned to extinction, if the single members of nature would not genetically or instinctively be bound to follow the inherent laws that support natural balances and have driven evolution to reach a preliminary peak with the rupture of these natural balances. We need to face the fact that this rupture is caused by a risky dichotomy that is a direct consequence of the emergence and subsequent predominance of violent and restless societies.(3)
In contrast, the non-violent indigenous communities of the world prove - in this day and age - a deep and self-confident understanding of Nature. Before they, with the exception of few survivors, got slaughtered by the patriarchally (mis)driven civilisation, independent of time and place their warning reads: The way of life of "white man" destroys his own existence. Rooted in the interconnectedness of being and because of a deeply felt empathy they were and still are able to discern between pain and real joy, between self-sustaining realities and all-consuming illusions, between destruction and creativity. That is why by nature they rather reject perilous technical progress, whatsoever impressive it might be in favour of natural ways of life. They prefer to learn from nature "by a flexible bottom-up flow of information" and aim to copy nature rather than to destroy it.(4) It can no longer be denied that the current crisis of modern civilisation is a mere consequence of its aberration, due to a cannibalistic and destructive conduct of life - from a personal level to the behaviour of social groups and nation states.
man ceases to be determined by his innate spirit
Why exactly did humanity get so close to the abyss of extinction?
With regard especially to Christianity another perverting mindset - the notion of "original sin" - deserves a closer look because of its (auto-)destructive consequences.
To illustrate my thesis I will describe two different options on how to deal with the gifts of life, the proverbial fruits of the tree of knowledge. Firstly, a way that irresponsibly separates itself from nature, breaking deliberately with the interconnectedness of all and ending up in the apocalyptical abyss of social, ecological and spiritual decline. Secondly, a way that - in constant and sensitive feedback between being and consciousness within the natural framework - is capable of taking an active part in a continuous and well-balanced development into future.
No matter how overwhelming a majority of those people ever might be
The perverted way
Any social orders that are based on domination and subordination aim against the natural, creative, chaotic and diversifying organisation of evolution. Such orders achieve progress by threatening with punishment and by real use of violence on the one hand and by promising illusionary unlimited freedom on the other. Such a progress originates from human defective concepts that basically have been shaped by patriarchy. Such a progress grows on obstruction and diversion of vitality, the sound flow of living energy, and on destruction of natural diversity and cosmic integrity & unity, altering its sustaining pillars, the universal balances of dynamic and complementary polarities.(5)
In the course of thousands of years, the violent support of the dominating hierarchic orders has solidified the ruling belief systems, rendering them intrinsic to human society in a way that, despite the historical efforts of emancipation and enlightenment, for too many people they still remain as the everlasting status quo: without alternative, normal and allegedly natural. Obstruction and destruction of the actually underlying natural order are completely ignored by many people, and even approvingly accepted by others. Learning processes, intended by nature to teach awareness of an authentic reality, are being falsified in the interest of the perpetuation of this ruling order, while the art of adulteration is presented to be progressive policy. The orientation towards the achievement of an overall well-being is disregarded, ridiculed and sacrificed for the sake of the "guiltless" juicing of any attainable natural and human resource, at the expense of all its disproportioned outcome and disadvantages. Time and again any other alternative is being suppressed.
I insist that a recognition of the urgency and overwhelming dimension of the global state of distress, caused by this noxious modus vivendi, gives to sentient people, at any time, reasons to break the laws and customs hostile to life. Again and again, scarred by the repetitiousness of History, people who oppose the perilous illusions of dominating orders and who do not want to betray life or nature are persecuted. However, if by the time this state of distress has reached its climax and their sound attitude hasn't succeeded, then it is certain that humanity will vanish.
Although the practice of consuming human blood or meat,
in whichever modalities might exist,
Resort: The natural way, evolution of being
The alternative way assumes that the individual earnings from the fruits of the tree of knowledge turns into collective property, just because of the pure intention to survive and the natural love for life - both of which maintain the well-being of the earthly environment: the Garden of Eden.
Pain and joy here are acknowledged as effective guiding forces which, along with the natural learning process, lead towards a clear orientation by means of authentic conceptual maps(6); in the absence of alien interests, the free flow of information into the receptive areas of the maturing brain is not liable to be obstructed or falsified. The sooner an unadulterated and unrestricted experience springs in the individual life, the more will be the potential to learn through a sensitive bottom-up orientation that teaches the lesson of life at very low levels of pain and destruction within the respective experiment.(7) Life remains oriented, always flexible, at the intactness of the whole. By continuously considering the subsistence of everything, it is secured a sequential natural development and diversification of life, its possibilities, abilities and fruits in the abundance of the Garden of Eden.
The global emergence, assurance and celebration of an actual religion - constituted in its purest form by the humane and natural culture - can only be feasible as long as a general consideration of its essence is reached, full of meaning and purpose. If humanity is interested in survival, it must adopt a planetary culture able to continue the indigenous traditions through the promotion of an ecological and social behaviour that could avoid the damage to the environment. However, since the human race - in contrast to the vegetal and animal reigns - hasn't been endowed by the genetics or the instinct with a life-supporting behaviour, human beings have to learn an appropriate behaviour if they want to survive. That is why a conductual reeducation is an imperative need in order to reach this milestone. It would be indeed a second renaissance the achievement of a global culture that continues the tradition of genetic creativity while conserving the demiurgic principles that nourish it. This culture represents the very antithesis of today's consuming and destructive liberalistic way of life, fatally celebrated with the name of globalisation.
What are the mental prerequisites for the restoration of life's viability?
Social, ecological and spiritual constitution of the natural being
Starting from the assumption of a heavenly togetherness of all partners of life, such a situation cannot be improved. Nature is perfectly organized and develops according to its inherent creative totality. Everything in the cosmos is related for the benefit of its own well-being. The creative quality of this vital condition on the one hand materialises the increasing diversification of the physical structures and organisms within the outer world and, on the other hand, realises responsibly developing possibilities and abilities that constantly are reflected within the inner spiritual world and thus, by genuine experience, either confirm or disprove their viability within existence, the interplay and union of both realms. This way of life succeeds to stay in a happy medium. Only the free intention of humans brings imponderability into this context and can humiliate life up to its threatening destruction.(8) In the context of the socio-political reality, shaped overwhelmingly by the history of patriarchy, it is love for life the only tool that can lead to a transformation of this cynical kind of reality into a different reality, sensitively shaped by current needs. The direction of this transformation is heading towards true humanity; it is emancipatory and leads to humanisation from the local bottom to the global plane.
Beyond the approach of the outdated political theories - not questioning domination as such and interested only in their own profit - and the religious postulates - that in their denial of individual divinity jeopardize life - , I propose a method that starts with a deep examination of the human psyche. Under this perspective, we must start with a deeply involved question: what are the enigmatic conditions and relations that instead of building awareness and responsibility for the given paradise on earth prefer to involve the popular readiness to create dreadful realities?
It became obvious to me that these conditions are all the cultural and spiritual orientations that, on the one hand, are experienced under influence of natural factors (climate, geology, cosmos)(3) and, on the other, are created also as human factors (intention, freedom of making choices) that represent the basic parameters for individual development and, on a greater scale, the society's own. If in the lucky case this development happens along the lines of genuine orientation towards nature and its laws - whose aim is a life long learning process and experience of the individual with the full willingness of getting involved in cosmic reality - then these basic conditions remain to be of benefit for nature. They are matriarchal, indigenous, divine, creative, cooperative, complete and healthy, dedicated and limited to life. Life as such is liturgy (λειτουργία leiturgia ‚public service‘) - "minka" within the Andean culture -, full of glory and abundance.
Alternatively, if the lucky case was subject of a substitution in which coerced, trained orientations predominate towards imagined goals and assumptions on whose name nature, her diversity and integrity are sacrificed; towards metaphysical guidelines that are supposed to lead beyond physical possibility, like walking on the water or virgin birth, all of which try to deny a cosmic order with the belief and construction of arbitrary orders. Such orders, in which violent civilisations take root, are mostly aligned in favour of advantages for a few at expense of disadvantages for all the others - unnatural in themselves, contemptuous of life, parasitic, splitting and martially dedicated to destruction. Obviously, these conditions lead towards a degeneration of Life: because of mere delusions thus begotten, glory and abundance of life "alchemically" are transformed drastically into perversity and scarcity.(9)
All people who are aware of the underlying creative order arise and contribute to the creation of cultural conditions dedicated to survival. We need to dissolve the mists and shadows of wrong and insufficient philosophies of life, understanding of religion, politics, ideology, idea of man all of which ignore the culture that has maintained the society since times immemorial and which will serve future generations too.
To start with children is just fine
Peace on Earth is only a reachable destination if societies stop breaking their children and attend consciously to their gravest inadequacy: the systematic atrophy of their infancy. It is indeed a violent and outdated habit the way on which the extremely sentient children are just trained not to feel joy or to blind out the pain, hampering so what is meant to be the lesson of a genuine learning process. Thus they do not learn the two sides of experience: how satisfying safe options are and what error actually costs. It is a known fact that in the earliest stage of development (0 to 3 years old) parents, society, culture by means of educational bottom-up models are responsible to ensure that the children do not develop into the unaware defenceless adult victims of the deceitful reificational top-down maps of authoritarian traditions.(6)
As long as children are shaped to sacrifice life to secondary interests, they hardly ever will reach the trustworthiness and safe accountability of humane maturity. Humanisation of society, empathetic ways of living, solidarity and peace are rendered impossible exactly at this point. That is why creative cultures acknowledge, as the uttermost requirement, the unlimited offer of a given space and opportunity for their children to experience life in an atmosphere free from fear and suspiciousness. Innocent curiosity keeps each child's mind open and sensitive so that, by respective unrestricted experience, he or she is allowed to remain centred on autonomous maturation within the matrix of life. The respective neuronal verifying processes are associated with the relaxing and regenerating processes of dream and dormancy. This is why regular sleep is not at all extravagant. On the contrary, it is fundamental for any wholesome development, which quite naturally depends on alignment with the creative experience of evolution. Individual adjustment to an overall meaning and creativity is the vital signification that highlights the importance of meditation and other trance inducing methods and traditions. The eventual conjunction of the abilities of heart and brain in the growing child - in a coherent, gradual and playful fashion - is bound to evolve into an authentic, empathetic and well balanced mindfulness along with the power to love oneself and others. By learning, understanding and transcending reality - as it is with its multiple inner and outer facets - resonance between reason and feeling emerges and gives way to emotional intelligence(10) and full spectrum responsibility, face to face with the divine light of the creative forces of the universe.(11)
Diversity becomes Harmony through Resonance
We, the human race, have come at last to reap the consequences of actions that, as having shown in this analysis, derive from the radical elementary disorientation disclosed by the mainstream social conceptions and projects: exponential growth of wealth and its delusional and fetishist nature; captivity within the web of tensions between good and evil - what was known as the battlefield of Kuruksetra in the Vedic Literature - and, finally, self-engulfment in the vicious circle of the nightmarish global treadmill. This could be the most daunting panorama that human race has faced, unless we generate solutions through the optimization of our behaviour towards dignity and respect for Life, in order to spare ourselves loss and destruction whilst preparing a new beginning for future generations. By striving for the best possible authenticity and coherence within the underlying universal reality of Being, we create chances for resonance and alignment with the creative forces of universe. Once re-connected to creative spirits, we will be back on the safe track to a better future altogether with the rest of nature who, due to genetic bindings, has always been on that train. The gift especially given to humanity, our freedom of choice, eventually will be counter-balanced and safely hedged by a creative culture in continuation and tradition of genetic creativity. Once realised on the global plane, such cultures offer wholesomeness altogether with sanity and reason by perpetuating safety and planetary security in the ways of nature.(14)
mentally re-connected to the common Spirit of Life,
More and more people from the entire spectrum of social planes focus on this objective, which represents the emancipatory process of humanisation. In every day life this also means a confrontation with the harmful and destructive mountain of guilt - which, as pictured above, has been accumulated in history predominantly by "white-men" and no longer can be ignored without causing ever more destructive consequences for the social and ecological environment. This mountain of guilt - the all-pervasive symbol of innumerable man-made facts and conditions - needs to be acknowledged, transcended and actually dissolved in order to fulfil a concrete vision on what good life, peaceful society, global conviviality really look like and what needs to be done to make it all come real. This vision goes beyond nihilist modernity and unmasks its ignorant, criminal, obscene and, in a deep sense, suicidal fundament.
What needs to be done?
Stemming from an integral understanding and acknowledging of this exact picture of past and present, we clear the perspective on the earthly space of the Global Commons, the biblically mentioned paradise. By means of this clear perspective we clear the way for the rise of shame and the wish to compensate and not only to regret even on the side of the wrongdoers. From an actual compensation then evolves the desire for reconciliation and forgiving on the side of the victims and disadvantaged, which is another precondition to overcome the revenge of the desperate by the newly created situation, where confidence is being developed and hope is spread. From exactly this vision and understanding easily flows the Force of General Transformation and Healing.
It is a historical fact that individuals and communities, through the span of their lifetimes, in their learning and maturing processes, have attained the power to love within their respective creative cultures. It is the high time now to let this power develop within all cultures of humanity. If humanity wishes to present a harmonious ambience to the children, the adult world needs to prepare to waive violence from its options and to completely compensate social injustice and ecological imbalances in order to prepare the path towards genuine reconciliation within the global family and nature. Resonant relations here are characterised by active listening and empathetic dialogue between people and by putting into practice acts whose mindful nature becomes the rule rather than the exception. Contrary to the deceitful slogan of the global ruling elites: There Is No Alternative!, entirely different ways of social organisation will arise out of these conditions and will allow for the social dimension to align with natural ambience, its diversity, joy and abundance, thus making human life everywhere at any time worthwhile, safe and harmonious.
Beyond patriarchy, capitalism and modernity there is and always has been the option of a splendid being!
We have the choice for Sumac Kausay within the Global Commons!(15) What are we waiting for?
Epilogue: Bonds and ties that unslave
We all know well enough how “empires” keep their unity with the use of violence. Also well enough by now we know about the devastating long-term consequences brought on by those ways of social organisation based upon violence. However, only few people are just able to even imagine the possibility of a larger social cohesion, without the use of violence, without state, without all the patronizing and subordinating means of power, be them organised either in democratic or in tyrannic systems. The ultimately alienating effect is the same. People forget about their natural roots and self-supporting ways of life and become dependent on the system’s requirements.
Another important symptom of alienation shows up when people get lost in the pitfalls of "individualism". Modern individualism is being celebrated to such an excessive extend that most people simply do not realise that loneliness is the fatal consequence. Modern individualism, with its emphasis on "egoism", clearly stands against the high value of an autonomous individuality that recognises its interdependency within the cosmic context and has a share in its diversity. Too many people still hardly realize the obvious conflict between a falsely prioritised individualism and the dull conformity and monotony of the mainstream way of life as it is presented, via the system's media channels. Boredom and frustration then turn into sources for greed, crime and all the other well known human weaknesses. Hence individualism is merely being used as a medium of the destructive policy divide et impera! In the former pages, it has been amply discussed that especially the human species depends entirely on a creative social context that still is missing. Only mutually satisfying social interrelations more likely will make possible the survival of a creative union of individuals, the "global human tribe". So why not dare to study courageously alternative ways of life that we know from history and that still exist beyond the mental frame of patriarchy's ultimate child called "modernity"?
Due to open communication, the free and all sided exchange of information supports and maintains this unifying and empowering spirit (of love); if and when, by mental affirmation, this spirit is allowed to emerge and to be effective by corresponding behaviour and acting. The chaskis, the running messengers of the Tawantinsuyu were what the internet is today, though without the fatal ecological consequences of the latter. Economy at that time on the one hand focussed on the natural conditions and on the other on the necessities of the people. Technology took advantage of Nature as well as of human intelligence, cautiously respecting the balances of the reciprocal forces that complement each other always. What at those times had been possible, has become necessary today. It’s precisely this compelling awakening what remains in darkness for the mainstream systems, namely the understanding of interrelations, the tradition of knowledge channelled through culture and adequate reactions to the indispensable changes that ensure success for the benefit of all. Laws or instruments of power are not needed within societies that organise themselves in egalitarian confederative ways. “Commons” become self-evident. “Minka” (companionship, communion) becomes the expression of life par excellence. Life remains autonomous, safe and secure within a creative space.
Final affirmation for the road ahead:
as Negation of Matriarchy - The Perspective of a Delusion
-, by Claudia
12) - Qhapaq
Ñan: The Inka Path of Wisdom,
by Javier Lajo, Amaro Runa Ediciones Lima, 2003
A positive understanding of these
relations within their circular context and feed-back
effects will entail something like a Democratic
then will implement the basic virtues of non-violence and
empathy by means of a Commonwealth of Grass-root
Democracies into Global Acratic Conviviality.
Approaches towards this
objective are: Sociocracy
is heading for organisational ways which guarantee bottom-up
ways of social orders. Simpol
is trying to bridge the status quo to a socio-political
situation which would represent more just and responsible
behaviour patterns of societies, behaviour patterns which
would not jeopardise our chances to establish peace and
common wellbeing. Acorn
is a growing US community which grass-root wise is heading
to make a difference. The Harmonic Social Rotation is a different approach to the organization of social administration, dynamic but also stabilizing, that equilibrates the traditional tendency of the human societies to crystalize themselves in forms that, for their forced inertia, do not succeed to successfully satisfy the always different requirements of the reality, and therefore periodically destabilize themselves tragically, finally ending for ever. Just Stop! recommends Gandhi's recipe: Nonviolent Noncooperation with whatever is nonsustainable.
Building a better world through wisdom and understanding