Waking Up

November 20, 2007

This morning I received the attached blog from Charles Shaw on the work of the Great Turning. Here Charles describes an initiative he has helped to organize in Chicago by which a large group of Burning Man alumni are banding together to create their own cooperative community by which they share their skills to prepare for the coming collapse of the global food and energy systems as the consequences of peak oil and climate chaos play out. He notes that they have drawn inspiration from the video The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. 

Charles includes excerpts from a report from Burma describing the mythic confrontation between good and evil playing out in Burma. On the one side are the Buddhist monks in solmn non-violent protest manifesting the selfless, egoless, loving collective action that exemplifies the highest manifestation of Earth Community values. On the other side is a ruthless military regime that thinks nothing of slaughtering peaceful innocents to maintain its power—an extreme manifestation of Empire values.

Charles noted in passing that trying to open eyes, to wake people up to the reality of the crisis at hand, is often poorly received as a self-righteous and domineering effort to take away another's freedom to choose. Although he properly acknowledges the importance of such efforts, he makes the point that people are often more receptive to a positive demonstrating of an attractive alternative. It is a point well taken.

It highlighted in my mind the reality that the work of an Earth Community  Navigator involves advancing a number of related, yet quite different froms of awakening.

• Waking up to the depth and immediacy of the crisis we humans have created for ourselves. This creates the realization that change is inevitable and we must seek alternatives to business as usual. Waking up to the crisis is frightening and can lead to dispair because it reveals dangers to which we have no idea how to respond.
• Waking up to the existence of positive alternatives. Awareness of positive alternatives allows us to avoid dispair and recognize the crisis as an opportunity.
• Waking up to a recognition and understanding of the underlying causes of the crisis. Once we recognize and understand the underlying causes of the crisis, we can better distinguish between actions likely to exacerbate the crisis and those with the potential to resolve it.
• Waking up to a cultural consciousness, i.e., an awareness of culture as a filter that shapes our view of ourselves and our relationship to the world. The awakening of a cultural consciousness is a necessary precondition to assuming the role of an Earth Community Navigator, whose primary function is to be a leader in the work of changing the stories of the culture.

Each of these four awakenings advances the Turning. No one of them is adequate in itself. .