Worldviews and the WorldJoin now to read essay Worldviews and the WorldBefore proceeding with our exploration of the fifteen aspects of the world, particularly the human world, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of worldviews; how they inform our interior lives, and how they help to determine the manner in which we engage the exterior world.
We brought the caveman from the Stone AgeTo the subways of the modern worldHow they pack so many inQuick call the Guinness Book of RecordsWell you have to admitWere the smartest monkeysXTC, “The Smartest Monkeys”, NonsuchIn his book Quantum Jump, Canadian policy analyst W. R. Clement notes that the world, especially the Western world, is entering what he refers to as a second Renaissance. Clement explains that the first Renaissance was so strikingly different from the Middle Ages that preceded it because it manifested an entirely new epistemology. This new worldview then began to reinforce itself, spreading among a larger portion of the population until the feedback loop between internal and external change was unstoppable. Clement points to several things driving this shift in viewpoint, from the development of perspective painting and the rise of humanistic philosophy, to the spread of the use of clocks, which changed how we envisioned time. He also points out many of the developments he feels are driving the changes we see in the world around us today. These include Einsteins theory of relativity, Quantum mechanics, computer and Internet technology, and shifts in global political and economic structures. Clement believes that not only is our world changing due to global shifts in perspective, but that some places are lagging behind in these shifts, to the detriment of themselves and everyone else. Moreover, he feels that a new epistemology is necessary to cope with the changes being wrought by the current ones. However, as he points out, “New eras tend to be turbulent and messy. There is little that can be done to guide new eras because they have all the subtlety of a bull elephant surrounded by a herd of cow elephants in heat. But, it is argued, new eras can be understood in their own terms. Before we can understand a new era we have to acknowledge that one is happening… and that is usually difficult to do. The reason for the difficulty is that new eras require new ways of perceiving the world.”(i)
It is true that the shift between worldviews can be a frightening transition, especially when the world around us is going through enormous changes as well. Shifts in worldview, however, are only likely to occur when change is present, whether it is internal or external. In New World New Mind psychologist Robert Ornstein and biologist Paul Ehrlich point out that our human brains have evolved over several hundred thousand years to cope with a particular environment, namely the natural world. The world that we have created in the last five thousand years, the world of civilization, is quite different from what our brains are designed to comprehend. Moreover, the world we are creating in this new century widens the gap between our brains natural levels of perception and our manufactured environment to an extraordinary distance.
In addition, as humans become more advanced and know the world, we will become more interested in and conscious of new knowledge in everyday life. So if we live in world-saturated media, for instance, and look at the future instead of just what’s coming, the effects of these things will become obvious, making it impossible for us to think about them or really care about them. Moreover, if technology and commerce takes on a life of its own, it will become even more difficult to think about these things, or feel much in accord with them, if we really think about them at all. For instance, the world that the World Government of China is working on to make official in China has so many problems that it is impossible to say how many people will need to travel and how many will need to do work in the country in order to receive economic security and economic aid. And this system of “free trade” will not improve. We will also be more likely to see more and more of economic cooperation that can be achieved and more and more business opportunities. And in many ways, China could be an example of how to live up to our commitment to a kind of open society. It has to.
The World Peace Index, which is based on surveys, is a measure that compares peace and peacekeeping efforts (which could take years or even centuries) across the world to the UN’s Peace and Security Index (PSI), released in 2000 by the Conference on Peace and Security, held in Rome last year. We all know about Peace and Security. But what about our commitment to living peaceably? So why not create a new Peace Index? Why not give the world a new “Peace Index”? It’s a much better thing if all are equal. To this end, we have put together a new Index to create a new national Peace Index, which is just as much about diversity as it is about the human dimension. Our new Peace Index is our most accurate model of how peace and peacekeeping are done. It provides the most accurate way with which countries share their experience and how countries can change their peace plans for the better. It is only by showing a very specific picture, not by counting only the human and the world scale factors, that we should be able to make a meaningful understanding of what can happen in the world and whether there are any changes in the world that might allow for a real change in reality. It’s just one way to look at what is going on in the world, and why we have this particular view with regards to peace and peacekeeping too.
In the end, this new Peace Index is just a reflection of the best of the best; rather than simply a comprehensive, one-page guide to a new set of approaches, with detailed recommendations from experts, it is an overall collection of what might be a truly meaningful approach. It doesn’t have all the elements of an actual Peace Index, but rather a single look at how the world’s governments and society could work together to improve the outcomes and lives of nations in a way that gives the world a sense of trust. It looks at how the international community could better be used to solve problems, rather than simply using one individual approach for one situation, and how those approaches might be used across all regions. And it would be nice to have a global Peace Index in which all countries