End of the World or End of Our Worldview?

Hi Beautiful Humans,

This week offers the fourth and final part of my series on worldviews. Below this brief exploration of existence, you'll find our artifact of the week, which offers a hopeful possibility for where we might be headed.

Let's jump right in.

The Secular Materialist  Worldview

The European Enlightenment in 16/17th century asserted reason over religion, drove empiricism as the only legit way to know, and pierced superstition. This Enlightenment became the dominate perspective in the western world. While ushering for a lot of benefit, this orientation contributed to our current meaning crisis, or lack of "guiding stories" of the world, by killing god.

Have you read Nietzche's famous elegy? I find his piercing insight piercing rather haunting.  

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?" - Nietzche, The Gay Science

The collective guiding story we're living into became one devoid of god, purely mechanical (informed by Isaac Newton), where we see ourselves, in some fundamental way, as separate from nature and each other. From here the logic of dominating nature flourished, and excessive extraction generated the conditions of today’s ecological crisis.

The Very Big Picture

Climate change is currently on track to cause mass migration and biodiversity loss. With Putin still at the wheel, nuclear war feels like it's back on the table. Political and economic unrest dominates headlines. The rise of social media has diminished our ability to make sense of what's happening, and we're hard pressed to pay attention to anything that doesn't give us a quick sugar high. With everything that's going on, it can seem like the end of the world.

Best I can tell, all that is real. And I believe if we zoom out and see the very big picture, if the worst does come to bear and a mass extinction event occurs where more than 95% of life on earth dies, I believe eventually life will find a way. Big picture, it’s not the end of the world. Earth will still be here, and life will almost certainly come back (at least until our sun expands in about 1 billion years).

End of Our Worldview

I find solace in the bigger perspective that life will continue in it’s own way. Yet back in the here & now, we’re facing extraordinary challenges. Many are saying things will get worse before they get better.

However, all our current challenges are created by humans and I believe they can be remedied by humans. Underneath any one of our crises there's a more fundamental issue are how to coordinate for effective solutions, and beneath this challenge is our worldview that guides our behavior.

“The so called first world is going to collapse.. we are so stuck in this materialist worldview that we really need something that can get us out of it. I would not be surprised if psychedelics play a larger role in that.”- Franz Vollenweider, psychiatric researcher as seen in Descending the Mountain

It's been said we're living in a world between stories and I've come believe that vague sense of accelerating towards horizons unknown is what it feels like for a new worldview to be born. What our new worldview is... is up for grabs. It could become an intense era of transhumanism ushering in godlike abilities, a regressive authoritarian chapter, perhaps a left field AI superintelligence will emerge (less likely in my opinion) – or more hopefully, we find our way towards, as Charles Eisenstein offers, the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

To that end, check out our artifact of the week where Charles Eisenstein shares his perspective on the old story that's ending and the new story that's emerging.

What is the Next Story? by Charles Eisenstein

Here's a brief excerpt on worldviews I found compelling:

"Underneath our cultural and personal stories lies a deeper kind of story we might call a mythology. It comprises the tacit assumptions we hold in common about the nature of human beings and the world, assumptions so deep as to seem identical to reality itself... the new story [that's emerging], I call the Story of Interbeing, using the term popularized by Thich Nhat Hanh." - Charles Eisenstein

To conclude of this series, by recognizing the importance of worldviews, clarifying your worldview, and seeing how your worldview evolves, we are able to understand the world, and ourselves in it, more deeply.

What worldview is possible from this more empowered place?

Have a great week, beautiful humans.

David Zangwill, human @ Museum of Self