What time is it?

Geological, Historical, Anthropological

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

The mood out there is decidedly pessimistic.

Two anecdotal conversations illustrate a larger cultural mood that is global in scope.

I meet monthly with a peer group of very experienced spiritual directors, several of whom are in their 80s and 90s. Recently, these wise elders expressed in various ways a profound sense of grief over the loss of the world they had known. They came of age and matured in the relatively stable era of peace and prosperity in post-WWII North America. Fully aware of the dark side of American life, and without in any way whitewashing history, they internalized a fundamentally optimistic sense of the possibilities for social progress and human flourishing.

Now they are witnessing the unraveling of the social compact in the United States, deepening political polarization, the dissolution of the international security and economic arrangements that structured global relations, and the growing threat of climate change. It is the end of the Pax Americana. What they are grieving is not some imaginary “good old days,” but rather the sense of hope for their children and grandchildren’s future (and threat to their children and grandchildren’s capacity for hope). They will not live to see the light at the end of this particular tunnel.

Coffee with a friend the other day turned to a discussion about our adult children and the prospects for their futures. My friend is a very smart, successful investor and advisor, with expertise in the intersection of AI technology and marketing automation. He observed that AI will revolutionize the economy on a scale equivalent to the industrial revolution, creating enormous wealth for a favored few and tremendous economic dislocation for many workers; from bus drivers to financial analysts, factory workers to knowledge industry professionals. Another friend reports that his son, who is a skilled music producer and Japanese language interpreter, threatens to be edged out of both fields by AI. The upshot is a very competitive job market even for well-educated and talented individuals.

If our political system is unable to respond to this economic revolution, reducing wealth inequality and mitigating social dislocation, we are on our way to a degree of political unrest akin to the French revolution: with the heads of the elites on spikes and blood running in the streets. We already are feeling the tremors of this global economic revolution, leading to rising authoritarianism as people seek a “strong man” to protect them from the threatening dislocation.

Writing from the perspectives of history, economics, and cultural criticism, commentators have described the present moment variously as “the Unwinding,” the “Great Unraveling,” or an “Age of Decadence.”^[1] The late bishop of Rome, His Holiness Pope Francis, observed that “we are not living an era of change, but a change of era.”^[2] This change of era may be decades, even centuries in the making. In the vast scope of history, it is but the blink of an eye. It will pass. But in the moment, it feels like the end of the world.

I find it helpful, even consoling, to take a big step back from current events to gain a larger perspective on time. We are living at the intersection of several converging developments moving along interrelated timelines. In terms of geological time, we are undergoing the transition from the Holocene epoch to the Anthropocene epoch. The Holocene, which began nearly 11,700 years ago, is the current geological epoch following the last glacial period. While the Holocene has seen periods of significant climate change, it has largely been extraordinarily conducive to human flourishing. In fact, it encompasses all of human written history, the development of agriculture, and the birth of urban civilizations. It is the world as we have known it.

The earth is about 4.5 billions years old, and the human species has been around for about 200,000 years. The earth prior to the Holocene was not nearly as conducive to human flourishing, and it almost certainly will not be as we move into the next era, the Anthropocene. This era is notable for the impact of the human species on the planet, including mass extinctions, habitat destruction, ocean acidification, and global climate change due to industrialization and increased carbon emissions.

The planet is warming rapidly (in terms of geological time), approximately 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the last 200 years. By 2050, it will be 2.7 degrees warmer. The relative climate stability that nurtured the development of urban civilizations can no longer be taken for granted. At the same time, human population growth is exhausting the planet’s carrying capacity. Drought, wild fires, and extreme weather events will make large portions of the planet uninhabitable, driving mass migration of human beings. It already has begun. Humans are going to have to learn how to live differently on the planet.

The shift from Holocene to Anthropocene on the geological timeline coincides with the end of the Pax Americana on the historical timeline. My wise elder friends are not wrong. The world they knew is coming to an end, as the United States suffers the decline that eventually affects all empires (250 – 300 years is a typical cycle). The rise and fall of civilizations is part of the warp and woof of history. The decline phase is never pretty – usually marked by a chaotic and violent transition.

It is in this context that we need to understand the Trump phenomenon, and the rise of right-wing authoritarianism generally around the world. Trump is a symbol of societal decadence; greed, immorality, and hubris collapsing under its own weight. Trump is what the end of a civilization looks like. As the chaos of collapse unfolds, the temptation is to double-down on the status quo using any means necessary. This is a fool’s errand, but it may be a necessary precursor to the birth of the new. We are living in the liminal space between the end of one civilizational order and the birth of a new one. We don’t yet know what the new will look like, but it will likely give form to an emerging moral and metaphysical order of meaning; a spiritual rebirth, if you will.

Living through the end of both the Holocene and the Pax Americana is disorienting, to say the least. But that is not all. We also are at a major inflection point in the evolution of the human species. We are undergoing a profound shift in human consciousness, in our capacity to perceive reality holistically. This may be a “just in time” development as we confront ecological and civilization collapse at the very same time we are moving into a new, integral level of consciousness. It probably only requires about 20% of the human population to make this evolutionary leap to shift the culture in the direction of creative adaptation to the ecological and cultural crises we face.

What does integral consciousness look like? We don’t yet know fully. It is still emerging. Some contemporary mystics and sages are giving us tantalizing clues. Drawing on the work of Jean Gebser, Cynthia Bourgeault describes it as an ego-free, diaphanous, synthesizing perception of reality; rooted in the present; capable of generating the counter-entropic spiritual energies of wisdom, compassion, courage, humility, and moral discernment necessary to heal the wounds of our planet and our society.^[3]

In more poetic terms, Andrew Harvey describes it as the second coming of Christ as conveyed to him by the Venerable Bede Griffiths,

the second coming of Christ is not going to be the return of a Star Wars avatar, but rather the rising of the golden yeast of divine love consciousness in millions of beings who have been stripped of their illusions by the dark night [the current global ecological and cultural crisis] and connected through its anguish to the power of all transforming love.^[4]

Meg Wheatley sees it in terms of the emergence of “warriors of the human spirit,” awake human beings who have chosen not to flee from the collapsing world, but choose to build islands of sanity built on the highest moral principles from which a new world can emerge. Such “warriors” have the following qualities:

· We have unshakable confidence that people can be kinder, gentler and wiser than our current society tells us we are. We rely on human goodness and offer this faith as a gift to others.

· We offer ourselves not as activists to change the world, but as compassionate presences and trustworthy companions to those suffering in this world. We embody compassion without ambition.

· Our confidence, dignity and wakefulness radiate out to others as a beacon of who all humans are.

· Our confidence is not conditioned by success or failure, by praise or blame. It arises naturally as we see clearly into the nature of things.

· We create an atmosphere of compassion, confidence and cheerfulness with our very presence.

· We create a good human society wherever we are, whenever we can, with the people and resources that are available to us now.

· We rely on joy arising anywhere, knowing it is never dependent on external circumstances but comes from working together as good human beings.

· We encounter life’s challenges with a sense of humor, knowing that lightness and play increase our capacity to deal with suffering.^[5]

What all of these visionaries agree upon is the need for communities of spiritual practice fostering conscious evolution in the service of earth healing. Spiritual practice. Gratitude. Empathy. Service. These are the hallmarks of the new (old) integral consciousness that is being birthed; that must be birthed if we wish to see a new creation arise from the ecological and civilizational collapse we are experiencing. We must treat with the utmost seriousness our responsibility to be at the highest possible level of conscious surrender to divine wisdom and compassion, so that we can be of maximum service to the emergence of the new world that is struggling to be born.

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^[1] See George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013), Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (2003), and Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success (2020).

^[2] His Holiness Pope Francis, speech before a decennial conference of the Italian Catholic Church (Florence, Italy, November 10, 2015).

^[3] See her series of blog posts exploring Gebser’s structures of consciousness.

^[4] Andrew Harvey, lecture on “The Global Dark Night of the Species,” Spiritual Directors International, October 24, 2023.

^[5] Meg Wheatley, “A Path for Warriors of the Human Spirit” at https://margaretwheatley.com/library/articles/a-path-for-warriors-for-the-human-spirit/.