future of adolescent man

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Economy

Human Potential

At times we must consider more than our immediate life and daily chores. One area which I find highly interesting is the way humanity is evolving from warring nations to a more and more co-operative model of society. We are still witnessing the growth of "warring-nation-hood", where a seemingly superior force of empire is using the means of war to shape the rest of the global community in its own image.

But we are also witnessing a growing interconnectedness at the grassroots level, despite public media lies and despite all economic difficulties. According to Duane Elgin, the needed quick responses to changing conditions on this planet will not come from governments but from the interconnected grass roots of the human population. In an interview, published in The Sun Magazine, Elgin discusses coming changes and possible solutions.

Many people do not realize that our technical designation is not just Homo sapiens, or "wise beings," but Homo sapiens sapiens, which means that we are "doubly wise beings" with the ability to "know that we know." When we use this precious capacity for reflective consciousness, we are enabling a living universe to look back and reflect upon itself.

PERIL AND PROMISE: DUANE ELGIN ON SIMPLICITY AND HUMANITY'S FUTURE
an interview with Duane Elgin by Arnie Cooper, The Sun Magazine

Cooper: What do you think about the self-help movement's version of simplifying: for example, a book like Elaine St. James's Simplify Your Life, which offers a collection of quick fixes, such as how to reduce clutter around your house?

Elgin: I'm all for it. [Laughter.] I try to do that on a regular basis. One aspect of simplicity is reducing clutter. It helps bring clarity and lets me focus on what matters most in my life. More power to any author who can inspire us to reduce needless complexity and thereby get down to what matters most.

Cooper: One advantage to material wealth is the ability to surround oneself with beautiful objects. How does aesthetics fit into the life of voluntary simplicity?

Elgin: There is a simplicity aesthetic, one aspect of which is an appreciation for older things. The Japanese have a wonderful phrase for this: wabi-sabi, a feeling of appreciation for things whose wear and aging reveal life's impermanence. For example, if you have had a cup, table, or chair in your family for several generations, each chip or scratch is not an imperfection, but a memory, inviting you to reflect on all the others before you who held that cup or touched that table. So, in my home, if I happen to scratch the dining-room table, I say I've just "wabi'd" the table meaning I gave it a little more patina and age, a little more value.

Cooper: How does the notion of voluntary simplicity connect with those who are poor by Western standards?

Elgin: If you live a life of involuntary simplicity, then the concept of voluntary simplicity doesn't mean much to you, because you have not yet achieved enough material well-being for there to be a meaningful degree of choice.

Cooper: But is it important for the world's poor to understand these concepts, or is it just we in the West who need to think about these things?

Elgin: Rich or poor, the whole world needs to be thinking about and exploring new ways of living. We need something akin to the Marshall Plan which restored Europe after World War II only global in scale. We need to create a future of mutually assured development, where progress leaves no one behind and doesn't destroy the ecosystems on which our lives depend.

Given intelligent designs for living lightly and simply, our manner of living would vary depending on local customs, ecology, resources, and climate. People who are poor need to ask not for access to the traditional American lifestyle, which is destroying cultures and the biosphere, but for a helping hand toward sustainability over the long haul. The problem is that we've not yet developed a literacy of sustainability that tells us what to ask for. Instead of a global plan that would do just that, we're being sold a consumerist culture by the mass media.

The average person in the U.S. watches about four hours of television each day. Over the course of a year, we see roughly twenty-five thousand commercials, many of them produced by the world's highest-paid cognitive psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to grab our attention and make us feel deficient if we don't own their clients' products. And these heavily produced advertisements are not merely for products, but for a lifestyle based on a consumer mind-set. What they're doing, day in and day out, twenty-five thousand times a year, is hypnotizing us into seeing ourselves as consumers who want to be entertained rather than as citizens who want to be informed and engaged. We need to take back the airwaves as a sphere of mature conversation and dialogue about our common future.

Cooper: So the media can be a positive influence?

Elgin: Yes. We've already seen evidence of this. The mass media have played a pivotal role in bringing the civil-rights movement, the environmental movement, and the women's movement into our collective consciousness. Broadcast television is not only the primary window onto the world for most Americans, but also the mirror in which we see ourselves as a society.

For the past thirty years, I've been exploring the process of "awakening" at a civilizational scale, and I have concluded that the mass media are the primary carriers of our collective "thought stream," which can foster either ignorance and fear, or awakening. For the individual, awakening involves developing a capacity for reflective consciousness or simply paying attention to our thoughts. In a similar way, our collective awakening will involve paying attention to our thoughts at a civilizational scale: not just consuming media, but purposefully directing our attention as a society to cultivate mindfulness, equanimity, and so on.

So the media can have a positive influence, if we will reflect on how we use this immensely powerful technology. The basic problem is that the mass media are not being held accountable for their programming. Although, by law, television broadcasters have a strict obligation to serve the public interest, they are serving their pocketbooks instead. It is time for us as citizens to come together and hold them accountable for their legal responsibilities.

The media have long given lip service to serving the public interest, but there has never been a means for measuring their failure to do so, because there's no mechanism in place to register the public's views. Polls show a majority of Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the media but feel powerless to bring about changes. Our Media Voice is a nonpartisan national campaign I cofounded in the Bay Area. We have devised a practical strategy for holding broadcasters accountable for serving the public interest. We want to develop prime-time "citizen feedback forums" in cities across the nation. The forums will be like electronic town meetings, at which citizens can raise concerns about pervasive violence, stereotyping, lack of diverse perspectives, and limited coverage of critical issues. The idea is to give citizens a new "civic voice" and feedback system for media accountability.

Cooper: What about the government? Doesn't it exert any control over the media?

Elgin: Government deregulation of the media has led to a rapid coalescing of ownership. As a result, a half dozen enormous media conglomerates now own a majority of media outlets in the U.S. It is these corporations which value profits above all else that are controlling the media, not the government. On the contrary, the media set an agenda that, in many ways, controls the scope of governmental concerns.

Cooper: In your latest book, Promise Ahead, you liken the human species, though 135,000 years old, to a teenager on the brink of adulthood.

Elgin: Over the past decade, I've given talks around the world, and I have asked people to consider the human family as one individual and then, looking at the behavior of that individual, to determine our stage in life. Specifically, do they think the human family is behaving like a toddler, a teenager, an adult, or an elder? I've asked this question in India, Europe, Japan, Brazil, and the United States, and without hesitation three-quarters of the people say that we're in our teenage years. Another 20 percent say we're in our toddler phase. On my personal website, more than two thousand people have voted on this question, with the same results.

So I've looked into adolescent psychology and found interesting parallels. Teenagers are rebellious, and we are rebelling against nature. Teenagers don't tend to think about the long-term future; nor do we as nations. Teenagers are often concerned with how they look; we're a materialistic society consumed with appearances.

But there's also an upside to this life stage. Teenagers have a huge amount of untapped energy and idealism, a sense of hidden greatness that is about to burst forth. As a species, I think we also have untapped idealism and a sense of our hidden greatness. We just need a chance to develop these potentials as a human family.

We are already beginning to move from our adolescent, reactive mode into our early adulthood, in which we start learning to live together. For example, the nations of the world are cooperating in ways that are seldom recognized. Every day we cooperate in running the world's weather-forecasting systems and air-traffic control. Cooperation among world health organizations has eradicated polio and smallpox. We are beginning to cooperate in the realm of international justice for example, arresting dictators for abuse of power and genocide. And around the world, reconciliation movements are emerging and trying to take root. Some are making dramatic progress, like the peaceful transition to democratic rule in South Africa and the growing peace process in Northern Ireland.

Cooper: In the final pages of Promise Ahead, you say that, within twenty years, humanity will undergo an "initiation."

Elgin: Most teenagers do not become adults without moving through a time of testing and challenge a rite of passage. I believe the human family is about to go through a time of profound initiation and challenge as we move from our adolescence to our adulthood. This initiation will take the form of a worldwide systems crisis as we hit an "ecological wall" the physical limits to growth. For example, right now, co2 levels are higher than they have been in 20 million years. We've a