Women's Crossroads

There is an ode in Sophocles “Oedipus” cycle that keeps coming back to me lately. It goes on for many lines about all the wondrous things that human beings can accomplish with our intellect and our dexterity. And then the last couple of lines are brief but terrible: the chorus reminds us that we are also capable of destroying it all with our willfulness, anger and greed.

This ode comes to me when I read, juxtaposed in the newspaper, about how scientists have managed to implant an electrode in the human brain that enables a paralyzed man to move a cursor on a computer simply by thought—and about how the Israelis and Palestinians continue to pound each other, leaving as-yet untold civilian tragedies in their wake.

How can human beings be at once so magnificently intelligent, and so destructively cruel?

I do feel like a member of the Greek chorus lately, chanting by the sidelines, recounting what’s happening and offering some suggestions—but all the while the actors continue obliviously going through their motions, hellbent on tragedy.

I begin to understand the impetus behind the suicide bombers, the terrorists, and all the other frustrated human beings on this planet who feel strongly that we are collectively moving in the wrong direction, and need to DO SOMETHING to get the world to pay attention and change course.

Of course, that is not to say that I sympathize with Islamic fundamentalists, or believe that violence is ever going to be the right answer.

But I do understand why these individuals get to the point where they can see no other way.

Is there another way?

Ervin Lazlo is one visionary thinker who says yes, there is another way. Lazlo, a professor of philosophy, systems theory and future sciences, writes in Kosmos Journal that a planetary civilization based on interconnection and holism is already emerging, propelled by the work of “cultural creatives,” who, according to one recent study by the Fund for Global Awakening, make up a surprising 28% of Americans.

Not surprising is the finding that the majority of this 28% are women, a fact that is expanded upon by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson in their book The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. Lazlo writes:

“The common denominator of values and lifestyles among the cultural creatives is holism. This comes to the fore in their preference for natural whole foods, holistic health care, holistic inner experience, whole system information, and holistic balance between work and play and consumption and inner growth. They view themselves as synthesizers and healers, not just on the personal level but also on the community and the national levels, even on the planetary level.”

Lazlo is clear-eyed about the difficulties of channeling the energy and wisdom of the cultural creatives into true planetary change.

“Although the new culture at the margins of society is growing, its members are not well organized and the culture as a whole lacks cohesion,” he says. “The cultural creatives do not yet possess the political, social, and economic weight to make them into a significant agent of societal transformation. If transformation of the required kind is to get under way, mainstream society would have to enter the scene, with more adapted values and priorities.

“But for the present, most people in the mainstream are disoriented and disheartened. They find themselves in a rat-race for economic survival in a world where jobs become ever scarcer and finding employment beyond middle age is nearly impossible. Those who pose deeper questions find that they are surrounded by a spiritual , moral, and intellectual vacuum. There are no meaningful answers to questions such as “Who am I? And “What am I living for?” The consequences include a continuing rise in the popularity of mystical teachings, and an explosion of religious fundamentalism.”

Lazlo finds hope in the growing integration of the insights of science and spirituality. Nearly every branch of science is now discovering, at an ever-accelerating rate, the extent to which our planet, and ever bit of matter that composes it, “proves to be a harmonious structure where all things interact with all other things and together create a coherent whole. This is not a mechanical aggregate, for it is not readily decomposable to its parts. It is an integral whole, where to some extent and in some way all things interact with all other things. And the scope of this interaction appears to transcend the hitherto known limits of time and space.

“The findings that ground the new world picture of science,” Lazlo observes, “come from almost all of the empirical disciplines, from physics, cosmology, the life sciences, and even consciousness research. Although the specifics of the phenomena on which they focus differ in detail, they have a common thrust. They speak of interaction that creates interconnection and produces instant and multifaceted coherence. The hallmark of a system of such coherence is that its parts are correlated in such a way that what happens to one part also happens to the other parts — hence it happens to the system as a whole….

“The pertinent insight in this regard is that people wherever they live on the globe are just as connected to us as the birds in the sky, the trees in the forest and the fish in the sea. When moral people realize this they do not regard any person or culture as a stranger whose fate is a matter of indifference to them. They realize that they are part of a larger whole, and that either they co-evolve with all others within that whole or risk degradation and demise….We have sound reasons to seek wholeness both in us, and around us. Wholeness in us signifies the integral functioning of our organism: it means health. And wholeness around us means a healthy social community and an integral ecological milieu.”

I know a lot of people who would fit into the category of “cultural creatives,” those who, with varying degrees of conscious intention, practice holism in their own lives, and understand its importance in culture and ecology. It’s helpful to begin to understand this group as potential movers and shakers of the planet. What holds us back?

Lazlo observes that “the factor that identifies the cultural creatives is less what they preach than what they practice, for they seldom attempt to convert others, preferring to be concerned with their own personal growth.”

This seems to be the Achilles heel of the holistic movement, given the dimensions of the global tragedy we face today. We’ve got to stop focusing so much on our own personal growth, and understand the depth of our connections with the rest of the planet. If the planet goes down, how much will our mastery of yoga or our carefully cultivated organic lifestyles be worth?

Cultural creatives have a lot of energy, intelligence, curiosity and a willingness to buck the mainstream. All these resources must be put to the crucial matter at hand: getting our planet out of the hands of the warmongers, the chemical producers, and the destroyers of the environment. If that can happen, everything else will fall into place.

If you haven’t read Starhawk’s futuristic novel The Fifth Sacred Thing yet, go out and get a copy. It’s the best blueprint I’ve seen for what our world could be, if it were guided by the principles of peace, cooperation and a focus on physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing for all.

Change starts with vision. We’ve got to keep a hopeful, positive vision alive, even in the tempest of current world events. And we’ve got to try, however we can, to make that vision come alive for others, too.