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Worldviews and the World Before proceeding with our exploration of the fifteen aspects of the world, particularly the human world, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of worldviews; how they inform our interior lives, and how they help to determine the manner in which we engage the exterior world.
In his book Quantum Jump, Canadian policy analyst W. R. Clement notes that the world, especially the Western world, is entering what he refers to as a second Renaissance. Clement explains that the first Renaissance was so strikingly different from the Middle Ages that preceded it because it manifested an entirely new epistemology. This new worldview then began to reinforce itself, spreading among a larger portion of the population until the feedback loop between internal and external change was unstoppable. Clement points to several things driving this shift in viewpoint, from the development of perspective painting and the rise of humanistic philosophy, to the spread of the use of clocks, which changed how we envisioned time. He also points out many of the developments he feels are driving the changes we see in the world around us today. These include Einstein's theory of relativity, Quantum mechanics, computer and Internet technology, and shifts in global political and economic structures. Clement believes that not only is our world changing due to global shifts in perspective, but that some places are lagging behind in these shifts, to the detriment of themselves and everyone else. Moreover, he feels that a new epistemology is necessary to cope with the changes being wrought by the current ones. However, as he points out, "New eras tend to be turbulent and messy. There is little that can be done to guide new eras because they have all the subtlety of a bull elephant surrounded by a herd of cow elephants in heat. But, it is argued, new eras can be understood in their own terms. Before we can understand a new era we have to acknowledge that one is happening… and that is usually difficult to do. The reason for the difficulty is that new eras require new ways of perceiving the world."(i) It is true that the shift between worldviews can be a frightening transition, especially when the world around us is going through enormous changes as well. Shifts in worldview, however, are only likely to occur when change is present, whether it is internal or external. In New World New Mind psychologist Robert Ornstein and biologist Paul Ehrlich point out that our human brains have evolved over several hundred thousand years to cope with a particular environment, namely the natural world. The world that we have created in the last five thousand years, the world of civilization, is quite different from what our brains are designed to comprehend. Moreover, the world we are creating in this new century widens the gap between our brain's natural levels of perception and our manufactured environment to an extraordinary distance. Additionally it makes it difficult for us to properly determine threats within that environment. Contrasting the difference in perceived levels of threat between auto accidents and terrorist attacks, Ornstein and Ehrlich write, "Every month, hundreds of Americans are severely injured or killed because of underinflated tires or other results of poor maintenance of their cars. This is far more important for us to recognize than is a single terrorist murder. It does not register much in the caricatured mind, since tire inflation is scarcely as exciting as the exploits of the Symbionese Liberation Army…."(ii) This statement is still true even in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. While more than three thousand people post their lives in that horrible act of violence, we are not similarly horrified by the fact that some 50,000 people will die this year in automobile accidents. Our brains are naturally inclined toward large threats and have difficulty recognizing those that appear slowly or in abstract ways. This is exactly the problem not only with the world we are creating, but also with much of the technology we have invented and are in the process of producing. Ornstein
later collaborated with science historian James Burke on the book The
Axemakers's Gift exploring how technology has helped to define and
alter our conscious perception of the world. Discussing the difficulties
in rectifying the schism between our frames of consciousness and technology,
they make it clear that, "we are mentally so separated from the
natural world around us by the axemaker gifts [technology] which have,
over millennia, shaped every aspect of our lives, that both the gifts
themselves as well as a change of consciousness need to be parts of
the resolution."(iii) It is only by shifting the way our minds
perceive the world that we can resolve the conflicts that science and
technology give birth to. Footnotes i) W.
R. Clement, Quantum Jump, p.103. |