Civilization in crisis

As humans, we have the unique opportunity to create, beautify, and build. As a species, we have built extraordinary societies across the planet for thousands of years.

Pyramids have abounded and still do, elaborate water and energy systems, agriculture, all the way to intelligently exploring the stars, constellations, myth, the nature of consciousness, and perception all the way to indigenous forms of quantum physics to learning how to use plant medicine to explore different dimensions.

Hallmarks of a higher-minded, bigger heart-based civilization

I originally went to college, Bard College to be specific, to prove the existence of God. If telepathy were real, if clairvoyance and clairaudience were real, if intuition could be proven, it would suggest the operation and existence of a higher order far beyond or the ordinary ken of our five senses. It suggests that there is, in some way, “one mind”, or a unified field in which our “local minds” had the ability to participate or with which to communicate. Macro-to-micro. Exciting!

It also suggests that this human species (at least) was endowed with this kind and level of intelligence that could create a high-minded, big-hearted, extraordinary civilization worthy of its name.

This level of creative intelligence, of psychic attunement, of knowing what might happen before it happened in linear time is both extraordinary on one hand, and I felt was completely a natural part and parcel of our human genetic and epigenetic inheritance.

I used to wonder—and still do—why people aren’t naturally more curious and engaged in cultivating and building these profound aspects of our intelligence?

Maximizing our human potential

Can you imagine having a limb or a muscle group that you completely ignore because it’s located out of direct sight? Like a magnificent garden we may walk by every day, but pay no mind to. It was there all along but ignored.

Why is this in light of a discussion on civilization in crisis? If we began to utilize our higher mind-and-brain functioning—which we know is our potential, and for some actualized—perhaps we would have what is worthy of the name “civilization”. I would suggest that what we have today doesn’t qualify but is a shadow of what it could and, I believe, should and can be.

Thriving or just surviving?

But for a series of reasons that I’ve looked at and explored for decades in my speaking, podcasts, interviews, teaching and articles, I see that the human species is largely preoccupied with humanity’s most basic, survival-related, reptilian brain-bound activities such as violence, war, food and water fights, war over women, ideology, money, power and turf, all pre-civilization activity.

But why?

Taking a look at human psychology from the womb

Psychologically, these behaviors prop up one’s wounded ego through might and brawn, posturing, money-mongering, and power-seeking. Those who indulge in these puerile activities threaten others who are not loyal to a particular person, ideology, or belief system.

These behaviors seem to be largely about compensating for prenatal/post-natal wounds and trauma, adolescent sibling competition for parental love, affection, and approval.

That’s where inflated ego and self-aggrandizement tend to originate. When as infants, we didn’t get to suck our mother’s breast for milk and comfort when we may have wanted it (immediately!), fear of not getting what we want, when we want it, can kick in as a feeling. Or that we weren’t worthy of getting what we want when we want it can become daunting.

A neural circuitry around these experiences starts building.

With these early, emotional, energetic imprints, impressions, a contraction at a moment when expansion is desired, it’s the beginning of what could become a life-long, subconscious “program”. We seek then to distance these undesired feelings through our aggressive actions and discounting the feelings of others.

If we could just see this self-preoccupation of ours, this microscopic level of our psycho-emotional development, step out of it, not be run by it, be conscious of it, let it inform our vision and creativity, what a world—and civilization--we would have.

This is transformation.

The value of psychological and spiritual development

There are many who have taken their development seriously and who have progressed greatly over the millennia. To these courageous souls we owe a debt of gratitude because of their creating and building extraordinary architectural wonders, inventions, technologies, amazing forms of self-expression through art, music, theater, spiritual development, true leadership and dance.

These members of our species have built whole, advanced civilizations long before this current one, in some ways possibly more advanced than ours today, and possibly with greater emotional maturity, intelligence, higher brain development, and wisdom.

The ancient Chinese, Indian-Vedic, Persian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Incan, Aztec cultures, to name just a few, were built not just for people to live, but to honor their relationship with their respective version of the Divine.

Their homes, buildings, and temples were designed with meaning and purpose, to pay homage to an intelligence which they felt was both beyond the temporal world and within it, bigger than they themselves yet within them.

Outer and inner development together lead to the formation of a civilized society.

Good-looking buildings and systems in themselves a civilization do not make.

These outer structures and inventions, while often stunning, beautiful, and compelling, are just part of the whole. The inner development of the virtues—the backbone of every wisdom tradition, east and west—is perhaps the finest metric of a civilization. Patience, kindness, compassion, understanding, empathy, discipline, emotional balance, dignity, and integrity are the real hallmarks of a civilization.

Purpose and meaning behind it all

This purpose behind the building of these societies, vast infrastructures, these full-on civilizations sustained them and their people. It wasn’t beauty for beauty’s sake, or practicality for its own sake, but built as a form of gratitude and homage for and to life itself. It was to honor nature and something bigger than themselves, the Divine, or as we might say today, a unified consciousness.

Having self-designed a major in comparative mythology at Bard College for my senior thesis, I wrote a book based on the Prometheus myth in which I interpreted the gift of fire to man by the Gods as the Divine’s gift of consciousness to man.

The primordial and archetypal nature of fire in human life, I suggested, symbolized this kind of awakening from which civilizations were conceived and born.

Yet, so much of human life is consumed with much pettier enterprises like who owns what, who wears what, who dominates whom, and what. Based most likely on early childhood or pre-natal trauma, these types of concerns, if preoccupying someone in a power or leadership position, degrade the grandeur of a society or civilization.

Egoic, narcissistic, and self-important individuals in positions of power are a large part of the problem

Such egoic leaders are prone to violence, war, deceit, power-mongering and have little to do with virtue. Yet it’s a virtue that we all aspire to. They operate not out of their pre-frontal cortex’s connection with the heart-brain but rather the amygdala and reptilian brain¹ at the base of the skull.

As a result, civilizations crumble. There is no longer a spiritual backbone driving it through purposeful action and a meaningful life for its members. If petty squabbles among the ruling elite dominate, a focused purpose of paying homage and respect to Mother Nature, Gaia, Pachamama, the Divine disintegrates. We are left with the remnants of a material mindset and preoccupation while the soul of a civilization decays.

The spiritual backbone of civilization consists largely of its relationship to Nature, the elements, the larger Cosmos, the food and water of the environment, these material expressions of the Divine.

Based on what has become a wholly materialistic interpretation of reality, where, as Nietzsche stated, “God is dead”, only squabbling over “things”, or as George Carlin put it “stuff”, remains.

Power positions among humans have obliterated our precious ecosystem

The ecosystem has been fully disrupted, the elegant system of Nature battered by incessant extraction and the murder of countless small creatures that populate the soil and keep it alive for all creatures, including us. All of this for the love of money and having “nary a care” about other or even our own species. This is largely due to the pathological power-mongering and greed of governments and corporations who see Mother Earth, not as our Mother, but as a repository of resources for their own material gain. There is nothing generous or civil in this kind of enterprise, though enterprises can be both. And ironically, nothing could be of greater value to sustain life itself than the respectful preservation of our precious ecosystem.

Is this really civilization?

The word “civilization” is, of course, based on the Latin civilis or relating to a citizen. It’s related to civitas or city, later, through the French, connoting “a stage of development” from which we come to think of “being civil”, an evolved, matured version of being a citizen.

It further implies that those who inhabited cities as “civil citizens” (pardon the seeming redundancy!), a distinction from those who lived outside the cities, in rural areas, who may not have been “as civilized”.

What matters is that we have the connotative understanding that to be civilized means to treat others with dignity and respect. We fancy ourselves, across the planet really, to be just this—respectful of others and treating each other humanely, courteously, and well. The ancient wisdom phrase that shows up across the world: “Treat others as you would like to be treated,” is an axis of civilization.

The so-called greatest democracy in the world isn’t even a democracy

Yet look at what is happening in what is falsely called the greatest Democracy² in the world, the U.S. The President is ordering people³ to be treated like animals and deported from the country unconstitutionally⁴, without due process. They are chained, pushed, and dragged out, living like rats in a cage. He and his sycophants called them “animals”.

Little children⁵, two and four years of age, one with Stage 4 cancer, have been deported.

There is nothing civil about it, all happening in the materially richest country in the world. And sadly, there is little that a “civilized” human won’t do to another so-called “civilized” human⁵.

The tendency of the billions of people inhabiting our planet is generally peaceful, and committed to harmony, service to each other, and community in their respective village, town, rural area, or city. Yet, the tendency…or city. This shows again that it is the very few in power positions who create most of the problems. People, left to themselves, uninterrupted by the self-interest of governments and mega-corporations, generally live life well.

A study conducted at Princeton University proved that in the U.S., we do not qualify as a Democracy, but rather, an oligarchy.

People want peace, but governments still wage war

According to the Global Peace Index⁷, this tendency bears out. Over the past sixteen years, world peace has deteriorated for twelve of them. In 2024, overall global peace has deteriorated by some 0.56%, and over the past 16 years, overall deterioration on average per country is 4.5%.

Rarely does this have to do with the people on the ground, but much more to do with two major factors: governments rivaling one another and causing conflict and war, seeking to establish their usefulness and value; and second, the overwhelming, inhumane disparity in wealth between the materially rich and the materially poor.

This disparity sparks flames and leads to rebel movements, which in turn, not infrequently lead to what are called terrorist organizations that seek to rectify the profound disparity and injustice that is expressed through oppression and enslavement of the poor. Horrific working conditions, slave labor, inhumane, unsustainable wages, and the like are what keep the rich getting richer and the poor, poorer.

Nature abhors both vacuums and extremes. She seeks homeostasis or balance, through peaceful, cooperative means or through violence. Nature’s balance will eventually be achieved.

Nature’s intelligence performs her balancing act among human societies as well as all species, animal and plant kingdoms, everything in our ecosystem. If humans extract and damage the natural climate, habitat, or cycle, this will create a rebounding effect, as we see now in ocean currents and weather patterns. It simply is not sustainable and is nothing short of a sadomasochistic suicide mission.

Drunk on power

Only those profiting handsomely from the destruction of human civilization ignore or deny what everyone else sees as obvious. When the economic disparities are so extreme as they are in most parts of the world today, and greed replaces commonsense, organic kindness and generosity, the words “civil” and “civilization” are no longer applicable. We no longer deserve such dignified titles.

It is primarily our so-called leaders in government and business that are the cause and reason for wars and mass destruction—the people would happily live without these and prefer a world at peace, happiness, and prosperity for all, not just a few.

The problem is then an embarrassingly limited, narrowed perspective and belief system of our so-called leaders. I say “so-called” because they are not really leaders, leading us to a better world for one and all. They are leaders only insofar as they have the title of “President” or “Prime Minister”. But they are leading us down a primrose path of deceit, power for themselves, and destruction.

Profiting on the destructive and the constructive sides of the coin

As Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine⁸ speaks of “Disaster Capitalism”, after governments and corporations destroy another nation, they bid out the job to rebuild it. Mega-corporations profit on both sides of destruction, then construction. You can see how the powerful have the whole cycle wrapped up to their benefit, the entire creation-destruction cycle. They’re brilliant! But it is at the world’s expense.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods—folks, it ain’t what it appears to be

Too much of our society has become a version of 3-card Monte—watch the cards!

Of course, what the captains of the corporation and government do is never called what it actually is.

These companies and their operations are cloaked in such phrases as “national security”, “defense and protection of the Homeland” and “the health and safety⁹ of our people”, which gives rise to any number of medical interventions¹⁰ that are woefully untested, unproven and have been shown to cause irreparable harm over and over.

Grown men go to work every day, knowing that the products of their companies are poisoning our food supply, that children are eating, poisoning our rivers and air with pollutants, and destroying healthy soil with Roundup and other toxic insecticides. This is standard, normal business practice.

This has become “the new normal”! Yet it is plainly pathological, not less, and those involved (and there are many) are actually in immediate need of long-term psychotherapy, and/or a guided ayahuasca retreat to help them see themselves, deal with such destructive tendencies and to develop a conscience which obviously isn’t present as it needs to be for civilized society to sustain and to merit the use of the word “civilization”.

Currently, it’s too barbaric to deserve such a title, even though there is an outer veneer of maturity and adulthood.

Avarice destroys the common good

It is unbelievable how avaricious and rapacious these inhumane, anything-for-profit-and-power some governments and corporations are. It is truly boggling to people with a good upbringing, surrounded by friendship, love, good will and cheer, who are taught that the world is a wonderful place, which, in so many ways, it really is.

But there is a shadow. The reality is that the underbelly of humanity operates while wearing suits and ties, looking like “everyday people,” but are actually involved in the wholesale destruction of our species and planet, yet they live “next door” in our urban and suburban environments.

Getting to the bottom of our survival drives

Getting to the bottom of what generates greed, violence, aggression, territoriality and the drive to dominate is probably the seminal search we can engage, as it is these drives, when bridled brilliantly lead to extraordinary creations including that of civilization itself.

When unbridled, as they so often are, leads to wars, oppression and the destruction of civilization as we have altogether too much today.

One can readily see that these behaviors are born of our animal nature’s drive to survival. They are a means of warding off starvation and predators. These were useful tools to have once upon a time and good that they are part of our DNA.

However, we have progressed as a species with our tool-making and agricultural techniques to the extent that all people everywhere can be fed. All people can have a nest, a shelter, a home.

The need for greed and violence is over!. They are now largely a function of an infant’s experience of an absence of love and affection, whether these were present or not—it is largely a non-verbal, feeling-based interpretation of the experience.

I have suggested that conscious parents, pregnancy, birthing, and child-raising with love, kindness, and compassion in the family leads to a much healthier, happier one, then forming this for our community and society-at-large.

It is a recipe for health, happiness, well-being, creativity, and prosperity of a society and civilization.

For civilization to exist, there needs to be partnership and conscience

I recently interviewed¹¹ world-renowned scholar, social scientist, and futurist, Dr. Riane Eisler¹² for a second time on a subject she has brought forward for decades now, which is the “Partnership Model” in contradistinction to “The Dominator Model”. I don’t have to say which one ‘dominates’ in our society and those around the world.

Dr. Eisler makes clear that the partnership model is the most sustainable and humane one, the one that brings together the best of humanity, tapping into the rich pools of both masculine and feminine intelligence. It’s brilliant, impactful work that has had ripple effects across society. Her most recent endeavor touches upon some of the themes discussed here of peace at local levels, or what she calls “peace at home”.

Fulfilling the obligation of being human

Once we take this step and embrace the virtues we find discussed from time immemorial, that are written, yes on bamboo in ancient China, on papyrus in ancient Egypt and parchment in the Middle East, Europe and America, that is written in our soul in indelible ink, can we re-embrace the evolutionary ideal, beyond war and barbarism, and of living as civilized beings in something worthy of the name “civilization”.