Global Change Depends on Personal Change
by Alternative Voice Staff
“Knee Deep in Shift”
~ Thorsten Hilldale
Do you remember changing your mind ever, to an extent that had far reaching implications for your life, or in the life of another? In my life, at age eighteen, I recall deciding to take the reigns of alcohol and became the master of my own fate in that relationship. Although it was a gradual period of growth and change, by the time I turned twenty-one, I had no desire to head to the bar with my fellow camp counselors to celebrate my legal drinking age, and instead spent a peaceful evening at my kids’ cabin, playing guitar under the stars, with the moths and porch-light glow. A shift in thought can happen in a moment, or it can be a more gradual change, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the results are immediate. It seems to usually take time for the change to penetrate through one’s life and actions.
Have you ever heard of "Change Your Mind Day"? A decade ago some Buddhist practitioners got together in Central Park, New York City, to inaugurate the first gathering. The original intention is summed in the title. Every year since, the attendance has grown, and change your mind gatherings have spread nationally, and now across borders. How about 2004 being Global Year of the Changing Mind? That’s what we need: a massive mind-shift spanning all the planet. It is in motion, but the extent of the reaches and lasting change for the better depend on each one of us. This year, what can you commit to doing for your neighbor, your neighborhood, your city; for our precious planet of souls?
In college I took a course, "The Philosophy of Science," in which we studied the concept of "paradigm shift," as brought into light by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolution. It was clearly shown by Kuhn that within the body of scientists world-wide there exist frameworks of thought which dictate general consensus, and thus what is accepted as objective, valid, known, truth, real. These accepted paradigms determine where their focus goes, what questions are pursued, the kinds of experiments, and what problems are addressed, and so forth. Instead of the present body of modern science and its "truth" guidelines being a process of gradual evolution/accumulation over time, he explains how change in the disciplines of empirical science have instead occurred in rapid and radical shifts. These "explosions" revolutionized the thought patterns of the entire planet over time. These shifts in thinking, simply in the initial introduction stage, were at first often denounced, and the original thinkers commonly ridiculed, threatened, and even persecuted. Galileo Gallilei was one revolutionary who supposedly threatened the foundation and authority of the powerful Catholic Church by scientifically proving the Copernican theory that the earth revolved around the sun, not visa versa. In 1632 he was forced to recant his views and put under house arrest for the rest of his life.
These types of challenging ideas, that were ahead of their time and persevered by the force of truth or fact contained within them, have happened across the world throughout history in all sorts of areas outside the scientific community. In many cases they abruptly challenged the powers of State and Church, causing them to attempt to control or suppress the changes proposed. In the seventh century A.D. Muhammad began a massive shift in thinking across the Middle East, founding a whole new approach to God that over time unified a massive number of people worldwide. Leaders in Mecca tried to have him assassinated because he confronted their control over the people’s spiritual beliefs. We cannot ever forget Socrates either, who was sentenced to death for questioning the state of people’s own mind conditioning.
We could refer to the year 1989 A.D. as a worldwide shift of paradigms. Just look at what happened in Czechoslo-vakia, USSR, Paraguay, Poland, China, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, Brazil, Panama, Chile, Namibia, Bulgaria, South Africa, and Afghanistan, to name a few hotspots that year (see facts box, page 8). What was the mental environment that fostered it all, and what were the shifts that occurred in these places? When there is a gathered momentum of energies, apparently there is a threshold point where the addition becomes multiplied exponentially, and there occurs an extremely rapid spread of that force. Ken Keyes, Jr. illustrates this phenomenon in his book, The 100th Monkey.
We can look at what happened in Paris, 1968, for another example. There, a small group of creative minds, called "Situationists," inspired the college students to openly defy the “status quo” and related constrictions of consumer capitalism that they felt were a threat to the soul of their society. Their actions of protest and marching spread to the blue-collar workers, then professors, nurses, doctors, bus drivers, artists, athletes, and many more, resulting in what has been referred to as the biggest general strike that ever halted the economy of a modern industrial country, and possibly the first wildcat general strike ever. The protests not only shook France deeply, but rapidly spread to Rome, Milan, Miami, Madrid, Berkeley, New York City, Vienna, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Osaka, Zurich, Rio, Bangkok, Dusseldorf, Mexico City, Saigon, La Paz, Chicago, Venice, Montreal, and Auckland, where students and others joined in the statement of solidarity against what the Situationists had dubbed the "Spectacular-Commodity Culture." Remember, this was before Internet, which now can spread free coverage in real time.
"World War III will be a guerrilla information war, with no division between military and civilian participation." ~Marshall McLuhan, Communications Theorist and Educator, 1968.
What information have I been fed and accepted as true, and what experiences have I had which have formed my own paradigms that I exist within and relate to others through? What of this is really true and has eternal worth; what is false, and what remains in that relative gray which could go different directions according to perception and consciousness? As I’ve become more aware of my own patterns, one thing is clear: I must change, and continue to, or become crusted-over into petrification. The statement by McLuhan, I believe, is important to consider.
In the Fifth Epochal Revelation we are posed the question: "How can the finite mind of man achieve a logical, true, and corresponding unity of thought?" (The URANTIA Book, p. 1477) It is a complex maze trying to find what is real and true these days. Is anything in this article valid? How does one know? According to Kalle Lasn in his book Culture Jam, we find ourselves surrounded by an estimated 12 billion display ads, 3 million radio commercials, and more than 200,000 TV commercials daily.
Some would consider it easier, in a straight-forward kind of way, to pick up a sword and fight the attacking armies, than battling in a "smoke and mirror" world of concepts, meanings, thoughts; whole ways of thinking that form entire foundations of people’s own character and lives. This is what we’re up against: thought (it carries action in its womb). Some would choose to fight to the death rather than give up their own opinions, their own world-paradigms that they wave as flags and demand allegiance to, even when the destructive ends are clear to many eyes. And others would choose to fight for global change, freedom, justice, unity, and peace.
"You are needed to help bring this great change. It is not a change by the force of armies or by the physical takeover of the governments of this world. It is a change of your heart and mind. It is a change of the views of your own reality and in the understanding of yourself as a cosmic citizen with a cosmic destiny, not as the citizen of a country, but as the citizen of a planet within the sister-/brotherhood of women and men on that planet, all of whom are destined to learn together the vastness and totality of the masterful creation of the Universal Father." (From the Foreward of The Cosmic Family, Volume I)