A Future Society Must Integrate Current Contradictions
by Jay Earley

Our future is being shaped by the extreme contradictions of the present. We are making unprecedented technological advances in computers, biotechnology, and others areas, yet at the same time we are undermining our biological support system at an alarming rate. We enjoy the benefits of these exciting technical achievements while at the same time we are cut off from an intimate, life-enhancing connection with the natural world. We have a burgeoning global economy, producing unparalleled material affluence and at the same time an appalling exploitation of the disenfranchised, reminiscent of the worst early days of capitalism. We enjoy a proliferation of wondrous, easily affordable consumer products, while many people are isolated from the joys of community and family, living empty lives of striving and alienation. We continue to see great intellectual and scientific advances while at the same time our private lives are bereft of meaning, creativity, spirituality and other qualities that make life worth living.

This article attempts to make sense of this situation by looking at some long-term historical trends in order to understand what is happening in today’s world and where we are headed.

Social Evolution

The contradictions we see today constitute the latest version of a long-term social evolutionary trajectory that spans the course of human history. At the dawn of social evolution, when we were hunter-gatherers, human beings enjoyed certain qualities, which I call ground qualities:

1. connection with nature
2. sense of belonging and richness of experience
3. egalitarian community

As time went by, our population continually grew in a world of limited resources, and groups threatened each other with war. Therefore over the course of history we were forced to develop other qualities in order to survive. These emergent qualities gave us more conscious choice and power over our environment and ourselves:

1. technology
2. individuality and abstract thought
3. social structure

These qualities helped free us from the vagaries of weather and climate and threats from predators. They allowed us to grow more food and harness more energy, to coordinate increasing numbers of people. They gave us the military power to protect ourselves. They gave us a way of understanding ourselves and the world and the advantages of civilization and higher culture. In time we had the opportunity for education and personal development.

The ground qualities are characterized by vitality and organic wholeness; the emergent qualities are characterized by power and differentiated organization. Both sets of qualities are valuable and necessary for a healthy society in today’s world. So far in social evolution the ground and emergent qualities have been opposed to each other; as the emergent qualities have grown in influence, the ground qualities have diminished. For example, the growth of market economies has been accompanied by the loss of community.

The Current Situation

At the current time, this evolutionary trajectory has reached such extremes that the emergent qualities have come to dominate our culture and the ground qualities have been suppressed, propelling our world into crisis. We have lost our original vitality and wholeness. We are alienated from the natural world, from each other, and from ourselves. Our economic system emphasizes material growth at all costs, and the costs are becoming enormous. Our technical power and our population are so large that we are acting in ways that threaten our ecological well being and perhaps our very survival.

1. We have developed technology and destabilized our environment.

2. We have gained intellectual understanding and lost vitality, meaning, and empathy.

3. We have developed increasing global social structure and lost equality and community.

Now we are beginning to understand these problems. This gives us an opportunity to consciously regain the original ground qualities in a way that is integrated with the established emergent qualities. This integration has already been forming for a few hundred years in the realm of power; it is called "democracy." It is just now beginning to transpire in other areas.

Those futurists who ignore the problem of the suppression of the ground qualities and predict a rosy future are making one mistake. However, those who value only the ground qualities are making a different mistake. It is not enough to focus on regaining the ground qualities—for example, intuition, community, and living lightly on the earth. The emergent qualities are also necessary for a healthy society, especially in today’s enormously complex world. Our difficulties at this time are not because humanity has too much of the emergent qualities, but rather because we have dissociated and suppressed the ground qualities. It’s not that we have too much technology but that our technology is ecologically unsound. It’s not that we have a global economy, but that our economy tends to destroy community and increase poverty.

At this time in human history we need integration—integration of conscious power and organic vitality. We must have both sides of our nature now. We are called on to practice this in our personal lives and to embody it in our institutions and our culture. Then we will have:

1. ecological technology and industry

2. integrated mind and heart, masculine and feminine

3. social structure (government and economy) that promotes individuality, community and equality

Creating Integrating Structures

However, such integrations are not easy. Much more is needed that simply the right ideas and values. In each area, we need an integrating structure to bring the ground and emerging qualities together in society. In the arena of political power, representative democracy has been such a structure. And actualizing this structure has required much hard work over the last couple hundred years—ideological thinking, political struggle, social development, etc. Even now, more work needs to be done, both to spread representative democracy around the world and to improve it so that people have more power to determine their lives.

However, the arena of political power is further along than most other areas. In economics, technology, organizational power, and other areas, we are lacking integrating structures and so our society is dominated by the emergent qualities. In order to resolve the crisis our world faces, we need new structures that promote integration. We need technological and industrial processes that work with the flows of the natural world and an economy that supports and rewards this. We need an economic system that promotes the even distribution of wealth and the health of communities without giving up the vitality of the market and the advantages of global trade. We need organizations that encourage creativity and community among their employees while remaining efficient and competitive. We need personal values that integrate rational analysis and emotion, skepticism and intuition, pragmatism and spirituality, individuality and interconnectedness.

It’s no longer the old question of capitalism or communism. We need a new form of capitalism that is democratic and ecological. It’s not a question of free trade vs. community health. We need an economy that is global and local at the same time. It’s not a question of multiculturalism vs. preserving our cultural heritage; we need both. Gender equality doesn’t mean erasing the difference between the sexes; it means valuing both the masculine and the feminine. Embracing intuition and spirit shouldn’t mean discarding rational, linear thinking. We need systemic, dialectical thinking that is also grounded in the heart and the spirit.

In each of these areas, we need more than just the general notion of integration. We need to develop specific integrating structures to make this integration real—technologies, organizational structures, governance and economic structures, family and community structures, values, and psychological structures. We must create these structures and then experiment with them, change and refine them until they are successful. We have a great deal of exciting and creative work ahead of us. Clinging to the status quo will allow the crisis to overwhelm us, but abandoning the emergent qualities to return to the past won’t work either. We must move ahead toward integration.

Conclusion

Our social evolution has been driven by the need for societies to survive in war and feed their increasing populations, and so it is not surprising that our achievements have been mixed. We have accomplished much that is admirable amidst much that is destructive. However, now is our opportunity. We have enough understanding and power that we can consciously take charge of our evolution, and create a new global society based on integrating the ground and emergent qualities that truly promotes the well-being of humanity and the earth. We must now consciously choose to regain our wholeness and vitality in conjunction with our power and organization, as individuals and communities, as organizations, as nations and cultures, and as a world society.