Summary
Our planet has entered a stage of unprecedented crisis, which must be faced by each and every one of us, in such a way that sustainable development can be established.
It is therefore essential to rethink our old schemes of doing things and replace them with new ways that come from a new vision that is no longer mechanistic and isolated, but holistic and integrative.
The Darwinian point of view of the survival of the fittest is no longer valid, but rather that a balance is found between all the component parts of it, since each one has its role to fulfill and its functions to perform.
Within this new vision, the ecological aspect is obviously of great importance, since what previously constituted development, especially in the industrial era, the only thing that has left us is environmental damage of great proportions.
Introduction
There is an unprecedented crisis in the history of humanity in the moral, intellectual and spiritual dimensions.
Like the crisis of physics in the 1920s, it derives from the fact that we are trying to apply obsolete concepts, such as Cartesian and Newtonian science, we now live in a globally interconnected world, in which biological, psychological, social and environmental phenomena they are interdependent. To properly describe this world, we need an ecological perspective, which the Cartesian point of view does not offer.
What we need is a new paradigm, a new vision of reality, a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions and values. The beginnings of this change lie in going from the mechanistic concept of reality to the holistic one (Capra, 1975).
For the first time in history, we face the real threat of extinction of the human race and of life on this planet. Much is being invested in nuclear weapons, air, water and soil pollution is increasing, which makes the chances of a global extinction of the planet greater. Overcrowding and technology, which is disruptive, have also contributed to this, with which mental illnesses have increased.
Added to this are economic problems such as rampant inflation, massive unemployment and poor distribution of income and well-being and the energy crisis.
Experts in various fields cannot deal with these urgent problems that have arisen in these areas. In the United States, prominent thinkers have admitted to being unable to solve the nation's most pressing political problems.
All of these problems are systemic, which means that they are closely interconnected and interdependent. They cannot be understood within the characteristic fragmented methodology of our academic disciplines and government agencies. If we examine the origins of our cultural crisis, it becomes apparent that our thought leaders use outdated conceptual models and irrelevant variables.
Transformation
To understand our multifaceted cultural crisis, we need to take a very broad point of view and see our situation in the context of human cultural evolution. We have to shift from the notion of static social structures to the perception of dynamic patterns of change. The Chinese have always used the term "crisis", the double concept of "danger" and "opportunity".
These transformations are usually preceded by a variety of social indicators, many of them identical to the symptoms of our current crisis, include a sense of alienation and an increase in mental illness and social disorder, as well as a growing interest in religious cults, all of which have been observed in the past decade. In times past, these indicators have tended to appear one to three decades before the central transformation, rising in frequency and intensity as the transformation approaches and falling again after it has occurred.
The forces underlying these changes are complex and appear to undergo similar cyclical processes of generation, growth, breakdown, and disintegration.
According to Toynbee (Toynbee, 1972), the generation of a civilization consists of a transition from a static condition to dynamic activity. A challenge from the natural or social environment provokes a creative response from society, or from a social group, which induces society to enter a process of civilization.
In this way the initial challenge-response pattern is repeated in successive phases of growth, where each successful response produces an imbalance that requires new creative adjustments.
When structures and patterns of behavior have become so rigid that society cannot adapt to situations of change, it will be unable to carry out the creative process of cultural evolution, which will lead to its disintegration, which comes accompanied by a general loss of harmony among its elements, leading to social breakdown and discord.
The dominant social institutions are those that normally refuse to change, but this itself leads to their decline and disintegration and creative minorities can take on the new leadership.
The first of these changes is the decline of patriarchy, which until recently had been a universally accepted system. The feminist movement is one of the strongest cultural currents of our time and will have a profound effect on our subsequent evolution.
The second transition that will have a profound impact on our lives has been forced by the decline of the age of fossil fuels. These will be exhausted by the year 2300, but their economic and political effects are already being felt. This decade will be marked by the transition from fossil fuels to the solar age, powered by renewable energy from the sun, something that will involve radical changes in our economic and political systems.
The third transition is again connected with cultural values. It involves what is now called a paradigm shift, a profound change in thoughts, perceptions and values that form a particular vision of reality, they include the belief that the scientific method is the only valid option for knowledge, vision of the universe as a mechanical system composed of elemental building materials, the view that life in society is a competitive struggle for existence, and the belief that unlimited material progress is achieved through economic and technological growth.
These fluctuating changes in values and their effects on all aspects of society have been foreseen by the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin (Sorokin, 1941), who calls these three value systems the sensible, the ideational and the idealistic. The sensible one maintains that matter alone is the ultimate reality and that spiritual phenomena are but a manifestation of matter, professes that ethical values are relative and that sensory perception is the only source of knowledge and truth. The ideational system maintains that true reality resides beyond the material world, in the spiritual realm and that knowledge can be obtained through inner experience, it subscribes to absolute ethical values and standards of justice, truth and beauty.Western representations of this system are Plato's ideas and Jewish-Christian images.
Sorokin says that between the sensible and ideational expressions there is an intermediate, the idealistic system that represents the harmonious mixture of the other two, producing balance, integration and aesthetic fulfillment in art, philosophy, science and technology. Examples of this system are the flourishing of the Greeks and the European Renaissance.
In Sorokin's model the current paradigm shift and the decline of the industrial age are other periods of maturation and decline of sensible culture. Sorokin predicted the decline of this culture and the paradigm shift and social cataclysm that we are experiencing today.
Among the great transformations that humanity has undergone, which are no more than half a dozen in all its history, among which are the invention of agriculture at the beginning of the Neolithic period, the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire and the transition from the Middle Ages to the scientific era.
The transformation we are experiencing now may be more dramatic than any of the above, because the changes are more extensive. The current crisis is not a crisis of individuals, governments or social institutions, it is a transition of planetary dimensions.
The Chinese book I Ching or book of changes says: “movement is natural, it arises spontaneously, for this reason the transformation of the old becomes easy. The old is discarded and the new is introduced, both according to time, therefore there is no harm ”.
According to Marx, the roots of social evolution do not lie in a change of ideas or values, but in economic and technological developments. The class struggle was the driving force of history for Marx, who argued that all important historical progress was born in conflict, struggle, and violent revolution, where suffering and human sacrifice was a necessary price to be paid. for social change. Capra thinks that this point of view of social evolution overestimates the role of struggle and conflict.
As I Ching points out, it is based on the idea of continuous cyclical fluctuation. The Chinese philosophers saw reality, the essence of which they called Tao, a process of continuous flux and change. The main characteristic of the Tao is the cyclical nature of incessant movement, all developments in essence - those of the physical world, as in the psychological and social realm - show cyclical patterns. "Yang reaches its climax and recedes in favor of Yin, once Yin has reached its climax it recedes in favor of Yang."
It is important and very difficult for those in the West to understand that these opposites do not belong to different categories, but are opposite extremes of a single whole. Nothing is just yin or just yang. All natural phenomena are manifestations of a continuous oscillation between the two poles. The natural order is one of dynamic balance between yin and yang.
According to Porkert (Porkert, 1974), yin corresponds to everything that is contraction, responsive and conservative, while yang implies everything that is expansive, aggressive and demanding.
Yin Yang
Earth Sky
Moon Sun
Night Day
Winter Summer
Humidity Drought
Cold Heat
Indoor Surface
In Chinese culture yin and yang have never been associated with moral values. What is good is not yin or yang, but the dynamic balance between the two, what is bad or harmful is the imbalance. Since the earliest times in Chinese culture, yin has been associated with the feminine and yang with the masculine.
The state of absolute immobility is such an abstraction that the Chinese do not conceive of it. The term wu wei is literally translated as "no action." What the Chinese understand by wu wei is not to abstain from activity, but from a certain kind of activity, such as that which is not in harmony with the cosmic process, for which wu wei means no action contrary to nature. No action does not mean doing nothing and keeping silent. Allow everything that nature does, so that its essence is satisfied. By non-action, everything can be done.
In the Chinese view, therefore, there seem to be two kinds of activity, activity in harmony with nature and activity contrary to the natural flow of things. The yin action is environmentally conscious and the yang action is self-aware, or in modern terminology one might call them "eco-action" and "ego-action." These two kinds of activities are usually called intuitive and rational and have traditionally been associated with religion or mysticism and with science.
Rational thought is linear, focused and analytical, it belongs to the realm of the intellect, whose function is to discriminate, measure and categorize. Thus rational knowledge tends to be fragmented. Intuitive knowledge, for its part, is based on the direct and non-intellectual experience of reality that arises in an expanded state of consciousness, tends to be synthetic, holistic and non-linear. From this it is apparent that rational knowledge is likely to be self-centered, or yang, while intuitive wisdom is the basis of ecological, or yin.
Our society has consistently favored yang over yin, rational knowledge over intuitive wisdom, science over religion, competition over cooperation, the exploitation of natural resources over their conservation, and so on.
The overvaluation of the scientific method and rational and analytical thinking has led to attitudes that are profoundly anti-ecological. Rational thinking is linear, while ecological awareness arises from intuition and non-linear systems. If you do something that is good, more of the same will not necessarily be better, this is the essence of ecological thinking for Capra (Capra, 1982), ecosystems sustain themselves in a dynamic balance based on cycles and fluctuations, which they are non-linear processes.
Ecological awareness will then emerge when we combine our rational knowledge with intuition for the non-linear essence of our environment, such intuitive wisdom is characteristic of the traditional and non-literary cultures of the American Indians, whose life was organized around a high environmental awareness. The spirituality and moral standards of Lao Tzu or Buddha, who lived in the 6th century BC, were not inferior to those of today.
We can control good spacecraft landings on distant planets, but we are unable to control the polluting fumes emanating from our cars and factories.
Arthur Koestler has coined the word "holons" for these subsystems that are the whole and the parts at the same time and has emphasized that each holon has two opposing tendencies: an integrative to function as a part of a larger whole and a self - assertive to preserve their individual autonomy (Koestler, 1978).
The relationship between modern systems theory and ancient Chinese thought is apparent: self-assertiveness is achieved by showing yang behavior and integration with yin behavior.
The promotion of competitive behavior over the cooperative is one of the main manifestations of the self-assertive tendency. Social Darwinists who believed that all life in society has to be a struggle for existence regulated by "the survival of the fittest."
There is a growing concern with ecology, these new values are being promoted by the human potential movement, holistic health and various spiritual movements, the first two suffer from a social perspective and the last from ecological awareness, however, recently Some movements have begun to form coalitions, we can anticipate that once they have recognized their common purposes, all these movements will flow together and form a powerful force for social transformation. Capra calls this force the "rising culture." Following Toynbee's persuasive model of cultural dynamics, new challenges are perpetually evoking new creative responses. The drama of challenge and response continues to unfold, but in new circumstances and with new actors.
The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of multiple separate objects, but appears as a harmonious and indivisible whole, a network of dynamic relationships that includes the human observer and his consciousness in essential form, very beautifully showing unity and unity. complementary nature of the rational and intuitive modes of consciousness, yang and yin.
Modern physicists can show the other sciences that scientific thinking does not necessarily have to be reductionist and mechanistic, that holistic and ecological views also have scientific bases.
One of the main lessons that physicists have had to learn in this century has been the fact that all the concepts and theories they use to describe nature are limited. Like Heisenberg's phrases: "every word or concept, of course it may appear, has only a limited range of application." Scientific theories can never provide a complete and definitive description of reality. They will only be approximations to the true nature of things, or put another way, scientists do not deal with the truth, they deal with limited and approximate descriptions of reality.
The experience of questioning the very foundations of their conceptual framework and being forced to accept profound modifications of their brilliant ideas was dramatic and sometimes painful for these scientists, especially during the first three decades of the last century, but it has been rewarded by profound inspirations. to the nature of matter and the human mind, from biology and medical sciences to psychology, psychotherapy, sociology, economics and political science. In all these fields the limitations of the classic Cartesian vision are apparent, now scientists will have to go beyond the mechanistic and reductionist points of view, as has been done in physics and develop the holistic and ecological points of view.
Conclusions
For the aforementioned, it is necessary that we return to a position based on moral values to influence our planet with actions that lead to sustainable development, simply and simply we can no longer continue doing business at the expense of polluting our planet.
As Capra (Capra, 1982) points out, we must assume a new position of balance between the different factors that affect any project or action that we are going to undertake.
There are also new concepts and ideas that emerge in the field of companies and the market, as is the case of Competition, which brings together collaboration and competition, not as contrary ideas, but complementary (Nalebuff and Brandenburger, nineteen ninety six).
For this reason, the administration must be attentive to this and seek to influence changes, to be relevant in this age of knowledge and technology, so that man is not reified and done as a robot, but a living being with full awareness of the role that you have to play within the planet.
Bibliography
Capra Fritjof, The Tao of Physics, Berkeley, Shambhala, 1975.
Capra Fritjof, The Turning Point, Simon and Schuster Editions, 1982.
Koestler A., Janus, Hutchinson Editors, London, 1978.
Nalebuff Barry and Brandenburger Adam, Coopetencia, Editorial Norma, Bogotá, 1996.
Porkert M., The Teorethical Foundations of Chinese Medicine, MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, 1974.
Sorokin PA, Social and Cultural Dynamics, American Book Company, New York, USA, 1941.
Toynbee A., A Study of History, Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 1972.
