a new civilization

I have just been inspired by another Dan W post, which notes Konrad Lorenz's claims that:

animals, particularly males, are biologically programmed to fight over resources

and Gordon Fellman's idea that:

an alternative paradigm sees cooperation, caring, nurturing, and loving as equally viable ways of organizing relationships of humans to each other and to nature. Fellman sees this shifting emphasis from adversarialism to mutuality as essential to the survival of our species and nature itself.

This is the new paradigm I refer to: we are now reaching the point where the human race can only survive by embracing "cooperation, caring, nurturing, and loving". This is the only way forward for us.

Dan W goes on to note that the bigger our human communities get, the more chance there is that we will regress to our "instinctual" state and so form bonds and relationships based upon aggression and domination.

Viewed in this light, the forces of globalization can be seen to be very destructive. Even in our smallest groupings - the family - we are influenced by global media, and programmed to be violent and compete for scarce resources. The larger the community the more powerless we feel individually, and the more alienated from each other: this is witnessed in the typically cold and aloof human interaction in a large crowded city compared to the warmer friendliness typical of small rural communities.

As Dan W says:

the world has gotten way too big ... Sadly I do not, as such, believe that we can aggregate on a global, even national or regional, scale without reverting to the least common denominators of violence, aggression and hoarding. I believe that our salvation (sic) will be found in our smallest communities, and with practice, and maybe over decades, and maybe with the disappearance of such forces as profit and wealth as modalities of discourse, maybe then we will have a shot at Fellman's dream of MUTUALITY.

We need to start again, building communities of only a few hundred people, who recognize their common interest and work together to nourish and sustain the whole community - in such a community, violence and competition will not be recognized as having any value. This cannot work effectively in the context of our current global media and society. But we will not have to wait long now before this global society fractures completely. The world of the old paradigm is crumbling to dust, and the world of the new paradigm will rise out of the ashes of the old. This is how nature operates, in cycles: as the old one decays and dies, the new one is born and emerges strong and vital to take its place. In our case this means a new civilisation.