Head toward Utopia or Dystopia?
The Big Picture (pages 9 - 10, A Compassionate Civilization Click here to order.)
What then is the big picture, the overarching narrative of our times? Is it inevitable that we are moving through a time of systems collapse, suffering, and death? Or could something else be emerging? What if the breaking down of our unsustainable, unjust, authoritarian, unequal, and divisive systems is forcing us to reinvent these systems based on healthy and hopeful principles of sustainability, justice, participation, equality, and inclusiveness? What if these crises are really opportunities to redesign our societies as part of a new, empathic civilization of sustainable human development that works for everyone?
Our current systems are not working for the human population or for other life-forms. Ours is a time of crisis that can wake us from this nightmare so that we can create a new way of being, a way of well-being for and on this Earth. Empathy has always been a deep part of the human psyche and is now being called by necessity, for survival’s sake, to emerge as the driving force for a new civilization of mutuality and care. Every day, it is proved again and again that people care about each other, including those who are far away and from different nations, cultures, religions, and races.
Human beings are fundamentally empathic because we are deeply interconnected with one another and recognize ourselves in each other. We each want happiness and health. We feel each other’s suffering and joy. We are a big family of brothers and sisters, which includes other life-forms as well. More than seven billion human beings are present on this Earth today with our unique intelligence, creativity, compassion, and understanding to take us through this dangerous transition. This is the moment of citizens to the rescue.
The new civilization will be based on a social contract of the interdependence of people with each other and with natural systems. The renewable energy of sun, wind, and water will sustain our social and economic life. The protection of natural systems of soil, water, plants, and animals will be embodied in both collective law and individual behavior. Governance systems will be based on the needs and voice of all the people, not just the economic, political, and cultural elites. Accountability, transparency, and responsiveness will be present at all levels of government.
Fiscal systems will be designed to provide equity to all people. Global and local economies will be concerned about the rights and well-being of workers and the environment. Health care and education will be universal rights in policy and practice. Cultural diversity will flourish, and people will delight in their differences and enjoy learning from each other’s knowledge and wisdom. Consumption and production will be replaced as the highest good of society by mutual learning, care, artistic expression, and other forms of creativity.
This new civilization will be the flowering of the planetary and human project. Is this a vision of utopia? I would submit that we have a radical choice to make—to move toward either a sustainable and humanizing world or a world of endless dystopia of chaos and suffering.