A little good news
10/24/2008

A little good news

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the disaster scenarios being described on the nightly news, reinforcing the knowledge that we face some very real national and global challenges.

So it is particularly refreshing to consider the prognosis of the folks at the Berkana Institute (www.berkana.org).  Berkana calls the above illustration a depiction of their “emergence theory.”  It shows a vertical arrow, leaning to the right, and to the right, at 90-degrees, a horizontal arrow, gradually arching upward. 

The vertical arrow represents the old paradigm, which is beginning to topple under its own weight.  When I first wrote this post several months ago, peak oil and global warming were first on my list of evidential trends.  Today the global economic crisis has taken first place in pointing to the challenges we face.  Add to the list the Iraq War, African genocide, soaring world food prices, the AIDS crisis, never-ending conflict in the Middle East, the declining dollar, spiraling debt, the growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots…

The old order is besieged on so many fronts that it can no longer maintain its upward trajectory.

But that’s the good news.  We don’t have to bring it down.  We don’t have to fix OR fight the powers that be.  We just have to focus on building the alternatives, represented by the horizontal arrow arching upward.  As soon as enough of these alternatives become viable and begin their own upward trajectory, the proponents of the old order will jump to join us of their own volition.  Like so many passengers abandoning the Titanic, they will throw themselves overboard, either as soon as they see it is safe, or as soon as it becomes apparent that the ship is going down.  The old order will pass away, like the crumbling of the Berlin Wall.  Like the disintegration of the Soviet Empire.  Like the imperialistic impulses of the United States.

I found this little diagram profoundly hopeful and inspiring.  In my personal life I have been dismayed by friends and family members who are victims of the current old order, yet who nonetheless are apologists for and defenders of it.  I have been baffled by them.  Yet this little diagram tell me that I don’t have to convince anyone; I don’t have to win a war of words.  I just have to focus on creating the alternatives. 

What are the alternatives?  A new green infrastructure.  Grassroots communities and global communities of interest.  Human-scaled organizations based on cooperation rather than competition.  Decentralized, renewable energy sources.  Information sharing; resource sharing; publicly financed education, health care, and economic development instead of publicly financed and State Department-backed corporate interests abroad, an oppressive military industrial complex, border fences, etc., etc.

When the new possibilities are realities, we’ll all be riding the new upward arcing wave.

Have faith in and work toward a bright future!