We Can’t Get There From Here: Participating in a Shifting Worldview
There are at least as many reasons to give up as to carry on. This is so. But if we are going to carry on, if we have decided to draw breath yet another day, perhaps, also, we might consider how and why and with whom we share our breath. We are inextricably linked to everything. When carrying on seems arduous, lean on the strength of the web. Breathe. You have a place in all things. How you hold that place matters.
The maze of difficulties facing humanity are complex, ever altering, and escalating at an alarming rate. The sheer onslaught of challenges can be paralyzing. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by the terrifying inequities and violence interwoven with all that is homo sapien. Yet, I draw your gaze to the simple act of being in this world, each of us muddling along in our daily lives, a stream of small decisions flowing from our thought, our homes, our work, melding with the underlying entanglements to all others, organic and otherwise. We are kin to all that makes up the cosmos, intertwined with all that exists, be it rock or butterfly, black hole or lichen. What is perceived as our reality, is not something superimposed upon humans, but what emerges from the millions of day-to-day decisions being made. Each choice reflects the way in which a person interprets themselves in relation to others and the natural world.
Humanity has always questioned its own existence. In all fields of knowledge the themes of birth, death, divinity, and human purpose reflect our craving to attach meaning to our surroundings. There is a desire to amalgamate the large sweep of history with the mundane tasks of daily living, to integrate our knowledge of the stars with our theological pondering, and to marry our ideologies with the quiet questioning of the soul. The result of this desire is the formation of a set of beliefs or principles through which humans view the world and their place within it. This network of related presuppositions is known in Western intellectual thought as a ‘worldview’—an overarching collection of concepts which gives life meaning and direction and provides an integrated framework through which we navigate our daily life.
Though in the past an understanding of this concept of worldviews went largely unnoticed, and therefore unquestioned, in the twenty-first century there is an increasing awareness of their existence and the influence they exert on human problem solving and direction. In addition, there is a developing appreciation of the reciprocity between a particular worldview, and the individuals, contexts and cultures that create and support it. Thus, though a worldview defines an age and influences those within it, it is also true, that those living in a given worldview are not without impact themselves, and may, by their own intentionality, redefine its orientation to reflect changing values. Worldviews, then, may be said to emerge in response to our ultimate concerns —the deep existential questions of human purpose and place—and the spiritual acuity of each individual living out their daily lives.
The current worldview we live in is most often referred to as post-modernity, the name given to the zeitgeist that emerged in the later part of the twentieth century, separating itself from the previous worldview known as modernity. Modernity, in very brief sketch, describes the age beginning in the mid-sixteenth century defined by a concern with the individual rights of the human, the supremacy of reason, the inception of the nation state, the advance of industrialization, increased secularism, and the emergence of science and technology as guiding leaders in both philosophy and culture. Modernity was a phenomenon birthed in European philosophy and shaped by “Western assumptions of the inevitability of progress, the invincibility of science, the desirability of democracy, and the unquestioned rights of the individual. It was assumed that "West is best" and that all other cultures of the world would eventually adopt Western values which would, with the passage of time, become universal.”(1) Both modernity’s strident universalism and its ‘turn to the subject’, as initiated by 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, can now be seen to be both “emancipatory and entrapping.” (Tracy) This is true of all worldviews, for though they emerge as both a response to, and a reflection of, humanities collective and individual view of life, over time, they reach their natural limits, and must make way for an altered orientation reflecting a new consciousness.
Post-modernity, then, is the beginning of this new orientation. Theologian James Smith posits that “post-modernism can be understood as the erosion of confidence in the rational as sole guarantor and deliverer of truth, coupled with a deep suspicion of science—particularly modern science’s pretentious claims to an ultimate theory of everything.”(2) Situated as it is, on the tails of modernity and the cusp of a direction not yet known, post-modernity often contains intensified elements rooted in modernity that have wandered in unexpected directions. It is not so much a period on its own, as a time of upheaval and reorientation as the human race struggles to realign its vision of how life should be, with the reality of how life is. As worldviews are large unwieldy matters, the complexity involved in their shifting results in instability and uncertainty. Thus, post-modernity, is a time of struggle and anxiety, for the direction of the new period being birthed is unclear. As humanity is both affected by the existing worldview, and active in recreating a new one, there is a natural tension to the period as harmony is sought to alleviate the crisis.
And make no mistake, we are in the midst of a very real crisis.
But as complex as the problems we face are, still, the place to begin is quite straight forward, though I would not claim for a moment it is easy.
The core task before us lies in a new understanding of the self in relationship to others – human and otherwise. The transformation of systems and institutions must begin with a shift in individual consciousness. It is our considered thought that the best place to begin this intentional transformation is with a deliberate slowing down, a period of waiting in uncertainty, unknowing, and discovery. The way forward to a new understanding of the self in relationship to all other kin is, paradoxically, a time to cease all forward movement. The work at hand is to embrace a deliberate time of contemplative waiting and intentional compassion, allowing for a new flowering of creative thought.
Stop blundering about and stand still. Yup. That’s right. Stand still. Listen. Wait. Love.
Waiting is the new working.
Footnotes:
Quote One: Daniel J. Adams, “Toward a Theological Understand of Postmodernism,” Cross Currents 47, no. 4 (Winter 1997-1998): 521
Rowan Williams addressed universalism in a 2008 lecture in Liverpool. “The emergent culture of Europe (and I will add here North America) assumed that it had universal validity: but in practice this also meant that those who knew this culture as insiders, those who ‘owned’ it for themselves, had the right to decide how it should work, while those outside the European household had the be content with the structures imposed by insiders (occasionally with the promise held out that outsiders might on day become insiders.)” “Europe, Faith and Culture” (Archbishop of Canterbury’s Liverpool Lecture, Anglican Cathedral of Liverpool - Europe’s Capital of Culture 2008, January 26, 2008)
David Tracy, “Theology and the Many Faces of Postmodernity,” Theology Today 5, no. 1 (April 1994): 104.
Quote Two: James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Post Modernism?, 62.