 26 Apr 2004 @ 07:36, by ming
From Synergic Earth News: David C. Korten writes: This ability to recognize ourselves as observers of the behavior of ourselves and others was a critical step in the evolution of the human consciousness. We are now in the midst of taking what may prove to be another bold step in the evolution of consciousness of comparable significance: an awakening of cultural consciousness that allows us to see our cultural beliefs as social constructs that at best can never be more than mere approximations of a more complex reality. Elizabet Sahtouris explains: "When we look at human history to see what a people's worldview was in a different time and a different place, we see that worldviews have evolved along with the visible aspects of culture, and that there is a very powerful relationship between the worldviews that people hold and the kind of society they construct — an inseparable relationship, that is, between the way people believe their world is and the things they do to one another and that world. In practice, our worldview is our script for the play of life, assigning each of us our role within it. Until the last half century before the new millennium, it did not occur to people that they could have anything to do with creating their worldview. All through history, people thought the way they saw the world was the way the world really was — in other words, they saw their worldview as the true worldview and all others as mistaken and therefore false." ... Every culture captures some elements of a deeper truth, but each represents only one of many possible ways of interpreting the data generated by the human senses. Although most cultures adapt over time in response to changing circumstances, the process of adaptation is generally gradual and largely unconscious. Since cultures are by their nature self-limiting, any established cultural worldview can lead to serious misinterpretations of sensory data when rapidly changing circumstances render it obsolete — as now demonstrated so dramatically by the case of the dominant global culture fostered by the suicide economy. The circumstances of humanity are now changing far too rapidly for the conventional, largely unconscious processes of cultural regeneration and adaptation to suffice. Consequently, these must now become conscious, self-aware process open to the possibilities suggested by the stories of many cultures and subject to continuous testing for their relevance to rapidly changing human circumstances. This is key to taking the step to a new level of human function that an awakening of cultural consciousness makes possible. (01/30/04)
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