Enlightened Period Lies Just Ahead
“Civilization is merely the long process of learning to be kind.” - Christopher Worley
Dear Jennifer: I read your column in the Sunday Spokesman-Review; thank you for making the effort that you do. I rarely find voices like yours in the public discourse.
In a recent column, you say, “… your generation is inheriting a world that is moving through a time of chaos to the next great period of enlightenment.”
I agree with you, but I would like to hear your premise for it and if you feel there are concrete means for people to contribute to this transition.
Thanks, Ross
Dear Ross: Civilization is a living thing and living things have stages of growth and stagnation. When a biological system stagnates, e.g, a pond, it breaks down into disorder. Scientists tell us that within this chaos is a “self-organizing system” that will eventually prevail. Sometimes it takes hundreds of years or stacks of data before the pattern emerges.
There have been many “bumps” in history like this one. They usually consist of technological changes that drive economic changes that drive a culture change.
The Civil War is America’s most dramatic example. An industrial North fought an agrarian South over the idea of a democratic union and a nation free from slavery. When machines could replace slaves the possibility of a higher level of civilization was apparent.
The enlightenment of the 17th century was a scientific revolution with incredible impact on music, art, religion and the very definition of civilization. The information age is another “bump” of technological and economic change that will generate the rise in consciousness we think of as an enlightenment.
Civilization consists of three threads: access to information, maintenance of contracts, and nonviolence. As more people access information, democracy (vs. dictatorships) expands, and lodges based on secrecy lose power.
As citizens in a democracy lose faith (the price of chaos is confusion and alienation), they begin to rewrite their contracts. When there is consensus on the new contracts for their civilization, stability returns. The new order, however, is always a significant step ahead of the old. The new contracts are more inclusive.
The most threatening element of chaos is the violence, the return to anarchy, as many citizens fight to maintain the old status quo and others cannot find a place in the new order. It is always a losing battle but it rages nevertheless. People threaten hell and damnation as they always have, but history offers a pattern of emergence into a more civilized world.
Add up the long-term trends yourself and evaluate whether our level of consciousness (awareness) is increasing or decreasing. Consider children (they were once battered without intervention), animals (unprotected), minorities (murdered and shunned), people with disabilities (limited), drug abuse (common), women, forests, health, lifespan. Don’t let the short-term losses of chaos deter you from a perspective of at least a hundred years. Read a novel like “Sarah Canary” by Karen Fowler to get a perspective on the Northwest a century ago. How has quality of life changed from 1900-1995 and for whom has it changed?
Philosophers define a perfect being as a human that is fully conscious. That is an assignment for the next century that will explode into an awareness of who we are and what we can be. To paraphrase a line from Bette Davis, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, but a wonderful one.
My new book, “Thinking In The Future Tense,” is about the future. You can get an (unbound) advance copy for $25 by writing to Jennifer James, P.O. 337, Seahurst, WA 98062. Simon and Schuster will be publishing it in January. I will be glad to send the epilogue (the last few pages that talk about the next century and the millennium), free, to anyone who sends a self-addressed, stamped (55-cent) 8-by-12 manila envelope.
-Jennifer