Excerpts from Chapter 28 - WHEN OLD AGES DIE
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WHEN OLD AGES DIE
An analysis of the difficulties of letting go of the old and
adjusting to the new.
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www.globalstewardship.org
For the past fifty years we have lived a button-push away from species extinction. In a larger cultural sense this
cataclysmic realization has served to globalize our thinking and project our collective consciousness beyond
narrow nationalism. More profoundly, having finally attained the capacity to destroy all life on Earth, we have
achieved our spiritual majority. God has let go of His ancient Trust, and we are left with the full responsibility to
manage the home planet ourselves and do with it as we will. The enormity of that understanding has not yet sunk
home.
The constant threat of a global thermo-nuclear war, followed by the current tensions brought about by an
increase in nuclear proliferation, has taken its toll. Even the most powerful among us feel vulnerable. Just a few
years ago nineteen young men, armed with a few dollars worth of box-cutters, penetrated a chink in the multi-
trillion dollar American armor plate and brought a super-power to its knees. If we add the dire warnings about the
hole in the ozone, global warming and environmental pollution to our concerns about future security and our
apparent inability to deal with it - not to talk about the woes of mass starvation, genocide, an AIDS pandemic and
concerns about population over-load - it is little wonder that so many pessimists sense that Armageddon looms.
We are tired of bloody revolutions. Most of the developed world is fatalistically resigned to the status quo – even
if it leads eventually to a terminal case of mass suicide with weapons of mad destruction. International terrorists
scheme their mad plots. The United Nations Organization squirms under the heel of the American super giant.
The Middle East seethes. Religious fundamentalists flock into the Church to proclaim their belief in Jesus and
secure a spot in a Christian Heaven. Hedonists are making hay any which way they can while the sun shines. And
all the while, the masses of workers slog doggedly on, without the encouragement of an encompassing global
strategy that might change the way things are going. The only answers the old guard has for dealing with the
major threats to our existence is to denigrate ecological warnings, keep exploiting natural resources, beef up
homeland security, spend more on military preparedness, hunt down terrorists, advocate a global policy of zero
population growth, and keep God out of government.
Hope always springs eternal; a minority of optimist’s sense that this massive unrest presages the beginning of a
New Age. Thousands of concerned organizations have been formed in an attempt to stem the downward spiral
and take hold of our global responsibilities. They are actively committed to responsible environmental
management and the encouragement of a greater degree of egalitarian global relationships. What the New Agers
lack to broaden their hopeful appeal, is a grand global plan of action – one that clearly reveals and challenges the
limitations of our present ideologies. They need a clear vision of what kind of long-term, large-scale, investment
goals can be accomplished in the New Age, and a methodology to initiate a globally acceptable social contract
that will allow us to realize it. In the meantime the best they can do to keep hope alive, is for them to keep on
rushing to and fro around the planet, applying band-aids to the bleeding sores of a terminal patient.
Which ever way one chooses to look at it – hopelessly, hopefully or indifferently - at this pivotal instance in time,
whether we are prepared for it or not, every culture on Earth is being coerced, via an accumulation of
evolutionary forces that are beyond any existing forms of organizational control, to undergo a shift of our
collective consciousness.
The hard reality that even the most obdurate among us has to face, is that a dying Old Age has reached the point
of bankruptcy. New computerized technology and the new industries it is generating, cannot by itself, enrich the
whole world. A critical evolutionary moment of ideological redundancy has been reached. Mass change, will and
is, taking place. Whether it brings on sudden death or a 5th new surge in human development remains to be seen.
Ultimately the choice is ours. If we choose not to pull the nuclear trigger, then each nation, rich and poor alike,
has to face a traumatic uprooting of existing social customs and occupational contracts in order to pull ourselves
out of debt and meet the exigencies of the Nuclear Age.
Even the wealthiest nation on the planet is hopelessly mired in red ink. We cannot keep loading the accumulated
debt, plus interest, onto the next generation. Financial fears regarding future social security are already being
argued over. Wherever we look problems accumulate. The ancient foundations of our largest cities are built on
redundant water supply and sewage systems, while millions more flock into them every year. With the collapse
of the communist ideal, both Russian and China have entered the capitalist waters and are competing fiercely for
the same fish in a finite pool. India is gobbling up all the scraps that fall from the table. And Africa is left to
starve. The law of the jungle prevails and those with full bellies and who wield all the clout just shrug their
shoulders and say that is the way of the world.
This is the way it has always been and this is why the mistakes of human history, the spiritual angst and the
social disgust leading to revolutionary wars, always repeat.
The net result of an uncoordinated, visionless, global policy, is that none of the three Great Houses of Man can
feed, house and educate all their people adequately. Nor can they pay their bills, or fix up their own crumbling
infrastructures. And yet, the real hard global work and massive expense of cleaning up an Age of industrially
polluted air, land and seas and initiating the large-scale planet management projects of the future hasn’t even
begun.
The great irony behind all of this is that all our troubles of the present moment and our fears for the future are
entirely unnecessary. Money and the need to sustain its value, have placed a vast artificial barrier in front of
everything. If the full genius of our still-evolving collective intellect was unleashed right now, every single one of
us would be capable of creatively reinventing, replacing, recycling and replanting the energy each of us
consumes in a life-time, by a thousand fold. Properly managed this planet is quite capable of supporting a
thousand billion people; yet we are struggling with six.
When we add up the Old Age negatives and juxtapose them against the New Age possibilities that lie ahead of us,
it is a strange thing to realize that even our most advanced societies are experiencing great difficulty in accepting
the fact that we are caught in the cusp of this profound evolutionary event. Those with the most power and most
accumulation of possessions, despite their massive debt, are finding it the hardest to let go and see that the
change is really happening - on both the social and spiritual planes of existence.