If Only You Knew

Envisioning the future

Yoga does help. Photo by new1lluminati

'It's a funny time', 'These are strange times'. Often delivered in a musing tone, these very British responses are a nod to the significance of the times before the conversation moves on to more trivial matters. They offer a glimpse into reality and then the fog of collective avoidance descends again.

Online, where negative emotions are expressed more freely, I see despair mixed with rage about the onward march of Control and the manifest failure of politicians and institutions to care about ordinary people. The accompanying phrases – 'They're so powerful', 'We're screwed' – express a sense of inevitability and helplessness.

Often, on hearing these, I think: if only you knew.

This month's Substack is concerned with this if only you knew. It's about where we are, where we've come from and where we're could be heading. It's about how human life could change and become infinitely better. But first there's a process, a time of transition to go through. And it's one that involves us seeing ourselves in a radically different way.

What follows offers a framework for understanding what we're going through, a kind of map for the times. Maps – by which I mean the paper ones you can spread out on a table – are great. They get you above the ground, help lift you out of the fogginess of 'it's a funny time …' The overview they afford opens up an ability to see what's possible beyond the limited perspective of a single point on the ground.

I have my own version of this map, and I wouldn't be without it. Like the maps of early explorers, it's sketchy and evolving, and draws information about the new territory we're on from a wide range of sources.

My map is particularly indebted to two thinkers who have influenced me significantly in the past few years. References to their thought have peppered essays on this Substack; now it's time for a full exposition of their work. Both writers have an impressive corpus of work that is available in book form and in videos – but for now, I will focus on one key book by each.

I

Charles Eisenstein's ‘The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible’ opens with an account of where we are as a civilization. Humanity, he says, is in 'the empty space between stories', one where the foundational ideas and values of human life in its current iteration are in the process of disintegrating and we have not yet developed new ones: 'We do not have a new story yet. Each of us is aware of some of its threads, for example in most of the things we call alternative, holistic, or ecological today. Here and there we see patterns, designs, emerging parts of the fabric. But the new mythos has not yet formed. We will abide for a time in the “space between stories.”'

Eisenstein is an American author and public speaker with a scientific background who writes on a variety of subjects including ecology. His work first came to my attention with his essay The Coronation which went viral (metaphorically) in 2020.

At the core of his thinking is a sense of the wrongness of things in modern Western civilisation. A mechanistic, materialistic, utilitarian worldview has birthed a society in which humans live as atomistic individuals, separate from each other and from the natural world of which they are a part. Our natural state of connectedness – 'interbeing' – has been forgotten, and much of the joy of life subsumed by isolation and opposition. But this is not a sustainable state for humans, and we have reached the point where 'the story of separation' is unravelling:

'Like an animal, when a story nears its end it goes through death throes, an exaggerated semblance of life. So today we see domination, conquest, violence, and separation take on absurd extremes that hold a mirror up to what was once hidden and diffuse.

Not all the symptoms of our dying epoch are dramatic and involve overt violence and oppression. The dysfunction is all around us, and make up the reactions and patterns of everyday life. We've become so used to separation that we've developed what psychologists call adaptive strategies on a society-wide scale: 'Because our deeper unmet needs were mostly invisible to us, and because they have been unmet for so long, our physical and mental systems have adapted around them so that the pain becomes subconscious, diffuse, latent.'

When we do notice the dysfunction in our politics and social fabric we tend - still operating from beliefs that belong to the old story – to attribute them to the acts of bad individuals or institutional incompetence. And so we remain stuck, repeating the same patterns, existing in a much more limited fashion than we need: 'What kind of human being is politically passive, votes from fear and hate, pursues endless material acquisition, and is afraid to contemplate change?' asks Eisenstein. 'We have all those behaviors written into our dominant worldview and, therefore, into the institutions arising from it.'

Eisenstein's visionary thinking rests on a story of origins. Unlike some theological stories of origin, his has a built-in sense of purpose and intentionality, depicting human life as a kind of experiment in what we, mammals with consciousness on planet earth, could potentially become: 'Once upon a time, the tribe of humanity embarked upon a long journey called Separation. It was not a blunder as some, seeing its ravages upon the planet, might think; nor was it a fall, nor an expression of some innate evil peculiar to the human species. It was a journey with a purpose: to experience the extremes of Separation, to develop the gifts that come in response to it, and to integrate all of that in a new Age of Reunion.' (Eisenstein has subsequently made a short film about this which you can find here.)

So: human life is an experiment in evolution and the chance to fulfil a special kind of potential. It's one that necessarily involves – although I'm not sure Eisenstein would use that cornerstone of traditional theology, freewill – choice. Without choice, there can be no authentic evolution. And so, necessarily, there is risk: 'We knew at the outset that there was danger in this journey: that we might become lost in Separation and never come back. We might become so alienated from nature that we would destroy the very basis of life; we might become so separated from each other that our poor egos, left naked and terrified, would become incapable of rejoining the community of all being. In other words, we foresaw the crisis we face today.'

We have now arrived at that fork in the road. One path will take us to a technocratic dystopia in which we are increasingly separated from nature and subjected, like never before, to control by an elite. The world's response to Covid, Eisenstein said at the 2023 Local Futures conference in Bristol, provided us with a foretaste of such a life. The measures introduced – the prolonged, enforced isolation of whole populations, the banning of human touch, the masking of the human face and the elevation of Science as the ultimate authority – are all expressions of a new form of domination. Covid signalled a choice-point.

The other path leads to what Eisenstein calls 'the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible', a way of being obscured by the scientific materialism that dominates Western society but still accessible to us through our dreams, desires and intuitions. It would bring into being a state of connection made up of sensuality and spontaneity, presence and beauty, one that creates 'a world with a lot more pleasure: a lot more touch, a lot more lovemaking, a lot more hugging, a lot more deep gazing into each other’s eyes, a lot more fresh-ground tortillas and just-harvested tomatoes still warm from the sun, a lot more singing, a lot more dancing, a lot more timelessness, a lot more beauty in the built environment, a lot more pristine views, a lot more water fresh from the spring … None of these pleasures is very far away. None requires any new inventions, nor the subservience of the many to the few. Yet our society is destitute of them all.'

How do we bring such meaningful pleasures back and put them at the heart of human life? Eisenstein advocates 'working on the level of story' in two ways. The first step is to recognise the falsity of the old story – perhaps something akin to the process of dis-illusion I think is needed about electoral politics. Some of us – and I'm likely one of them – tend to focus on this, the uncomfortable truth-seeing part of the process, as the pre-condition for creating an alternative.

Eisenstein, by contrast, keeps his sights set on the sunlit uplands that lie beyond our current crisis and has only a passing interest in the practical responses that accompany exposing and rejecting the technocratic path. He's very aware of the dangers of reinforcing responses that belong to the old story: 'Traditional populist strategies such as strikes, protests, direct action, civil disobedience, and so forth have an important role to play in disrupting the prevailing story. They are, however, both perilous and insufficient on their own to the task at hand … They are perilous because even if they come from a place of compassion and non-judgment, they very easily trigger old habits of hatred. Their nature is to create a perception that there are two sides, one of which will win and one of which will lose, one of which is the good guys and one the bad guys.'

Instead, he advocates developing positive examples of The More Beautiful World: '[one] form of disruption is simply to create a living example of a different way of life, of technology, of farming, of money, of medicine, of schooling … and by contrast reveal the narrowness and dysfunction of dominant institutions.'

None of this is possible without real engagement with the age-old, now more-important-than-ever question of what it is to be human. Who are we? What could we become? 'Behind the fog of helplessness of the question “Will we make it?” is a gateway to our power to choose and to create. Because written on its threshold is another question, the real question: “Who am I?”

A being of power, creativity, and choice – it's a long way from the defeated, dependent mindset that has come to prevail in many Western societies, with people beset by the struggle to earn to living and maintain their health in an increasingly toxic and complex environment.

Eisenstein addresses his reader as both subject and agent of the transition we are in, asking:

‘Are you a discrete and separate individual in a world of other? Or are you the totality of all relationships, converging at a particular locus of attention? Get over the fantasy that you can answer this question by finding proof. Reading one more book on psi phenomena or past-life regression won’t satisfy your inner skeptic. No amount of evidence will be enough. You are just going to have to choose, without proof. Who are you?'

II

The second thinker who has influenced me profoundly in these recent, challenging years is Penny Kelly. She's hard to characterise: a modern-day Renaissance woman with a down-to-earth manner, she's an American farmer with a background in engineering and natural health, as well as a writer and teacher. Her vocation, she says, is to teach 'about consciousness'. And to this the question 'who are you?' is central.

Summarised briefly, Kelly's prime concern is the human as a being of consciousness. Her work has an esoteric hinterland which I won't go into here, but the takeaway is the idea that humans are a very specific species, innately powerful and creative, and designed to evolve socially, spiritually and psychologically as well as physically and technologically. We are, she thinks, now on the brink of a major step in our development, engaged in a paradigm shift in which – unless things go very wrong – humans will start to fulfil their potential as creators of their own reality. And this mean letting go of the systems and values by which we've lived up to now and beginning the task of creating new ones.

Her 2022 book, The Revival: Path to a new earth/new human, explains: 'Taking care of the old world is something we already know how to do, but attending to the birth of the new world is a completely different undertaking. We must have some idea of what we want, how to go about creating it, where to start, the basic steps, and an ability to see and assess the patterns that are emerging in every sector and how these work together. Navigating a paradigm shift and rebuilding a civilization is big work.'

To accomplish this shift, we have to overcome a major obstacle: our own passivity and fearfulness. 'The problem is that evolution requires creativity, and we have not been encouraged to be as creative, adventurous, and capable as we truly are. We are uncomfortable with uncertainty and fearful of change.' Meanwhile, a second obstacle comes from forces and groups who would like to hijack the shift and make it serve their own interests: 'The danger during a paradigm change is that nefarious elements may try to seize the levers of power. They then impose selfish and short-sighted controls that make life miserable for a lot of people. Such situations always end in destruction and chaos.'

Both obstacles have to do with the locus of power and authority: 'So far in human history powerful elites and institutions, from monarchs to the Catholic church, have shaped human life, the values and norms by which people have lived: 'very little has been defined by the people,' says Kelly. 'Almost all of the visions and definitions have been handed to us by one authority or another.'

'I ask people all the time, “What do you want?” and they don’t know because they have never believed they could get what they want so they stopped thinking about it.'

The remedy is the development of a sense of 'inner authority' by which humans lose their dependence on external sources of authority, turning instead to inner wisdom (practical as well as spiritual) to guide them. They then become less easy to manipulate and, more than that, develop the capacity to envision new, positive ways of living.

But modern people are now being propelled out of their reluctance to seek change by the growing realisation that the system is not working for them: 'People in every quarter are going even deeper and questioning the wisdom of national government, its ability to make war, and its control of our money. We are already seeing a deep longing for peace, goodness, truth, and good health across the entire population as we are forced, step-by-step, into a lower standard of living. The bottom line is that we are left with the task of having to rethink, redesign, and rebuild a new future for ourselves.'

There follows an exercise in envisioning in which Kelly presents the kind of world she would like by way of example. She's fond of lists and her own answer extends to 83 items:

'The Revival' is primarily a workbook, and I love it for its practicality. It covers twelve sectors of life, from money to medicine, posing in each a range of questions from the foundational to the functional. The section on governance, for example, asks:

• 'Is our current form of government sustainable? Why or why not?

• What kind of governance system does not need spies and surveillance?

• What kinds of people do we trust to provide insight, leadership, and guidance when needed? Make a list of the qualities, characteristics, and ethics of the people you would like to see in leadership positions.

• How can we think differently about taxes? Are they really necessary? Create at least three alternate ways of getting big cooperative projects paid for.'

The section on education also invites thinking from first principles and opens up the possibility of a whole new way of doing things:

• 'List the top five abilities you would like the education of the future to include in their curricula. Why is each important?

• 'If schools did not exist, how would the lifestyles of people change? If schools did not exist, how would the intelligence of children change?'

In the 'spirit of possibility' and 'can-do attitude' that Kelly evokes in her introduction, I would invite anyone with five or ten minutes to sit down and jot down their first thoughts about one of these sectors. Doing so is not, of course, going to lead directly to change on a mass level – this is about ordinary people starting to exercise faculties that have atrophied, disempowering them in the process. It's worth adding that there are many examples of groups and projects, notably in food production, which are already creating new ways of doing things. I've mentioned some of these in previous Substacks and will return to them in future.

But this one is about the big picture. As Kelly says in this recent video:

'If we can learn to trust one another again, learn to cooperate without losing autonomy and individuality, start talking about the kinds of housing we wish we had, get behind the honest scientists, discuss the kinds of technology we're going to keep and develop further, feed one another when we're hungry, remind ourselves of the ethics that we want to hold and the kinds of relationships we want to have, then perhaps we will look back one day and say, “hey, we are doing it, we are evolving ourselves, even falling in love, a little bit, again”.

'Most of all, we are becoming real.'

III

A French film by Coline Serreau called 'La Belle Verte' depicts a tribe of extra-terrestrials who live peaceably on their green planet. They wear simple clothes and seem to spend most of their time sitting on the hillside eating fruit. At first sight, their way of life looks primitive – what Westerners would consider under-developed – but the reason the people of this planet need so little infrastructure is that they have developed technologies way more advanced than those we have on earth. It's all down to their evolution: their transport system is a form of teleporting – so no engines, roads or rails – and their communication is telepathic – so no devices, wires or towers.

The people of the green planet are also highly evolved in emotional terms, and their compassion leads them to send individuals on missions to help less developed planets. Planet Earth is one such, but such is its reputation for cruelty and filth that most inhabitants are reluctant to volunteer. They have heard that on earth, if a person doesn't have money, they are denied food. But one venturesome woman is keen to go and is soon transported by bubble to Paris. Comedy meets critique as the heroine is appalled by the way modern humans live (as someone who's spent quite a bit of time in France, I can attest the film is very accurate) and periodically she activates her ability to 'de-programme' them. Suddenly her targets realise that whatever they're doing – being brutally rude to customers or imposing bureaucratic restrictions on others – isn't necessary. They instantly drop the old behaviours and treat their fellow human beings with love, cooperation and openness.

The de-programming in 'La Belle Verte' is another version of what both Eisenstein and Kelly are referring to as the need to see the wrongness of things and recognise reality as what it is. You can't get to the ideal unless you first confront the reality of where you are, see the unreal for what it is. Only then are you in a position to make real choices about what you want.

It's no coincidence that both my chosen thinkers come from another country, one which has led the way in personal development and individual psychology. I struggle to think of any comparable visionary thinkers in my native Britain. If you are aware of anyone, please let me know in the comments below!

When I hear the despair currently playing out in Britain – a secular, pragmatic culture with an inordinate faith in what can be seen and measured on the surface, I think: If only we knew …

If only we knew there was a bigger picture, if only we knew that we are masters and mistresses of our own destiny, not slaves to the agendas of others.

We do know. We just need to begin accessing that knowing.

From ‘La Belle Verte’. The heroine leaves for her mission on eart