a better world

We already have, and always have had, potential abundance at our fingertips. The scarcity that so many experience today is not the result of any fundamental lack, but rather of the maldistribution of political power and resources. What kind of abundance would we have if we didn't spend trillions of dollars on wars, guns, non-recyclable packaging, sprawling suburbs, automobile culture, consumer junk, transcontinental food, unnecessary pharmaceuticals, and every other form of waste that contributes nothing to human happiness? In one way or another, all of these things are the end products of a civilization built on separation.

The ground has already begun to shift, and that shift will accelerate as the "old normal" falls apart. It has fallen apart in many ways already, yet its afterimage lingers. The supermarkets are still full of food, the malls full of shoppers, the highways full of cars, and the ATM's full of cash. The last-ditch strategy of the financial elite, "extend and pretend", applies to our entire society. It is still possible to pretend that the world of our parents will be the world of our children, and to extend its lifestyle a few more years. But that pretense is wearing thin.

A world of justice and abundance depends on a different kind of consciousness. The shift of consciousness is from separation to oneness; from being to "interbeing"; from a discrete and separate self in an external objective universe, to an integral part that contains the whole. The new self seeks less to dominate than to co-create, less to control than to share. It knows that the whole universe is as alive and as conscious as oneself... The universe wants to freely provide what we need, rather than requiring us to wrest it from an indifferent or hostile environment.

The world isn't supposed to be this way... A more beautiful world is possible, right in front of our faces, waiting only for us to accept it.

Charles Eisenstein (adapted)