Draft Statement

The Only Way (Is Up!)

Helping forge the Visionary Paradigm that will enable us Earth Peoples to
navigate the Next Great Evolutionary Transition the Critical Passage beyond
Capitalism, Repressive State Power, Democratic Deficits, Religious Fanaticism
and Impending Global Catastrophe
Humanity at the cross roads. We Earth peoples are at a critical threshold in our coevolutionary relationship with the living planet. Of that there can be no reasonable
doubt. Figure 1 depicts this threshold in an emergent evolutionary frame, and doing
so provides a diagrammatic summary of this draft statements two-part argument).
FIGURE 1 Early 21st Century Critical Threshold
+

^Syntropy (a thermodynamic measure of the creative advance of the cosmos) +

Free energy flow density (i.e., energy throughput efficiency)

Level of complexity-consciousness
Level of organisational complexity
Level of information use and effectiveness
Degree of flexibility and creativity

+ Critical
+ transition /
+ breakthrough
+
< paths
+
+
+

^
21st Century
+
+
^
Critical Threshold / +
+
^
Kairos Moment +
+
-- -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - -+-+
Fragility zone /
* l* * ** * l
+
converging crises & catastrophes:
* * * I ** * *I
+
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -*- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - Financial turbulence
*
l
Natural resource scarcity
*
l
oil / gas
*
l
water
*
l
cultivatable land
*
l
food crops / fish / timber
*
l
Climate change
*
l
Continuing population growth
*
l
Asymmetric warfare / insecurity *
l
Nuclear proliferation / WMD
*
I
Breakdown of shared values
*
l
*
l
British naval & capitalist supremacy> *
l
*
l
Industrial revolution > *
l
*
l
Scientific revolution >
*
l
* *
* **
l
* * * * *
l Transition
* * * *
l Window /

+ +<Climate
l+ + tipping point
l+ +
l + +
l + +
l + +
l + +
l + +
l +
+
l +
+
I +
+
l + Collapse /
l + breakdown +
l + <paths>
l +
l +
l
+
l
+
l
l
l

+
+

+
+

Critical birth phase of

Growth phase /
Instability Bifurcation phase
modern world-system
Globalisation
phase
(breakthrough or breakdown?)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time
Note: This diagram provides a pictorial summary of key aspects of the critical evolutionary thresholds,
or kairos moments, marking the beginning and end of the modern age of Western hegemony. Many
of its details will be considered in more detail later in the text, including the notion of syntropy.
SOURCE: My diagram, inspired by Ervin Laszlo (2006& 2008), Sally Goerner (1999) and Eric Chaisson (2001)

Given converging catastrophes, the weight of evidence and analysis suggests our
collective window of opportunity and kairos moment may prove to be as short
as ten years, and is unlikely to remain open for more than a further fifty at the very
most. We are confronted existentially by choices that will determine not only our
planetary future but quite possibly our very survival as a species. Does our
generation of the Earth peoples allow the business as usual interests of the
dominant economic, political, religious and military mind-sets and power structures to
continue more or less as now, leading to increasingly horrendous social conflicts,
physical disasters and almost certain global collapse before the end of this century?
Or do we rise to the challenge and collectively navigate the critical transition to a
new world order based on principles of enhanced bio-diversity, a rapid switch from
fossil and nuclear to solar energy dependence, social inclusion, planetary mutualism,
and co-evolutionary advance? Is it breakdown or breakthrough?
The first part of this paper considers certain key aspects of this deepening threat to
our survival as a species, arguing that it can only be adequately understood when
viewed from within an emergent evolutionary framework as a trap associated with
the logic of modernity in particular, the logic of capitalism. A second part,
unfortunately not yet fully drafted, will go on to explore in more detail the new
consciousness the new evolutionary way of understanding reality, and of our place
within it, offered by this emergent evolutionary paradigm, or worldview that alone,
in my estimation, will enable us Earth peoples to navigate our way beyond our
entrapment in this self-destructive logic of modernity.

Part I

The Evolutionary Challenge

1.1 Impending catastrophe. Neither the scale nor the complex feedback
mechanisms linking the mutually reinforcing strands to the impending global
catastrophe should be under-estimated. The thoroughly interconnect dynamic of the
world political and neo-liberal capitalist economic system we Earth peoples have
constructed has locked us into an increasingly fractious scramble for resources that
probably overshot the life-carrying capacity of the planets biosphere back in the
1990s. One among the many indicators of the consequences of this overshoot is the
collapse of global fish stocks, as shown in figure 2 below. Other indicators of
overshoot include the desperate resort to such environmentally destructive forms of
oil extraction as the exploitation of coal tar sands and fracking, and the increasingly
fractious battles between nations and peoples for fresh water with use growing at
double the rate of population growth. Tensions between nations, peoples, religious
allegiances, and economic blocks are almost inevitably on the rise as a
consequence of this overshoot, and a number of potential tipping points in the Earth
system (which combines all human and non-human planetary systems) that have
the potential to cause the runaway collapse of this totally interconnected global
system could be triggered at any time. Indeed, resource availability is now so
stretched, and divisions between peoples and states so entrenched as seen in the
long running conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, for example, or the recent
emergence of Islamic Nation as a contender for territorial supremacy in parts of both
Iraq and Syria that increasingly almost any social conflagration or Earth system
tipping point has the potential to trigger the equivalent of global Armageddon.

FIGURE 2

Exploitation of the Worlds Marine Species

Fisheries % fully exploited

100
*
80

60

40

*
*

20
0

*
*
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1900
1925
1950
1975
2000
2025
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Note: Since 1900, the percentage of the worlds oceans either fully exploited (no fish left) or over exploited (fully
exploited without significant action) has risen from less than ten per cent, to 87 per cent. We are harvesting
ocean ecosystems at a rate which is completely unsustainable. (Adapted from Steffen et al. The Anthropocene:
From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship, AMBIO, October 2011 (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences);
FAO, The State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012 (FAO, 2012); B Worm et al. Rebuilding global
fisheries, Science, 325 (2009)) [Source: Stephen Emmott, Ten Billion (2013)]

Reinforcing this deeply disturbing prognosis is the knowledge that what stability
remains in this increasingly fragile Earth system is heavily dependent on an
expectation of continued growth and prosperity among the majority of its peoples
which not only becomes harder and harder to sustain, but is in the meantime rapidly
undermining what resilience remains within the planets biosphere in spite of UNled attempts to instigate intergovernmental restraint.
1.2 Runaway climate change as the most likely trigger. Although there are a
considerable number of potential triggers of global implosion, include the threat of
pandemics and rogue states initiating either nuclear or biological war, global
warming is the strand amongst the converging crises thats probably most likely to
trigger the collapse of the entire Earth system initiating a catastrophe of such
proportions human civilisation will struggle to survive. The scientific consensus
makes it clear that climate change is of course already happening, is starting to
wreak serious damage, and is set to cross as series of critical thresholds positive
feedback tipping points that in all probability will trigger runaway climate change
within a matter of decades if we continue to pump more and more carbon into the
atmosphere. Yet after more than two decades of talks under the auspices of the UNs
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a coordinated international
response on a scale that comes anywhere close to meeting the challenge is still
lacking. Far from cutting back, carbon emissions have continued to rise year on year,
with the sole exception of 2009 this fact being one of the few positive
consequences of the world financial crisis! As Naomi Klein reports in her recent book
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate (2014), however, this solitary
success was followed in 2010 by a whopping 5.9 percent surge....the largest
absolute increase since the Industrial Revolution. Thus by 2013, as she also
3

highlights, global carbon dioxide emissions were 61 percent higher than they were
in 1990, when negotiations toward a climate treaty began in earnest. (See fig. 3
below).
FIGURE 3

CO2 in the Atmosphere

CO2 parts per million

400

*
350
*
300

*
*
*
*

*
*
*
*
*
250 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------8000BCE
6000
4000
2000
0
2013CE
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Note: CO2 concentration is increasing rapidly. CO2 concentrations have increased from 280 parts per million
(ppm) at the start of the industrial revolution to 400ppm in 2013 (measured for the first time on 4 May). To keep a
global average temperature rise to 2 degrees C, we would need to limit CO2 concentrations to 426-450ppm. We
will not meet this target. A more realistic target, if we were committed to actually tackling climate change which
were not would be 550ppm. Even this assumes that the planets vegetation and oceans continue to do us the
massive favour of acting as enormous carbon sinks. And then we are into the territory of a 4-degree rise in
average temperature. (Adapted from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (UC San Diego) CO2 program,
Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Working Group 1 contribution to IPCC, Fourth Assessment
Report, CUP 2007; C M MacFarling Meure et al. Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O ice core records extended to
2000 years BP, Geophysical Research Letters 33, 14 (2006)) [Source: Stephen Emmott, Ten Billion (2013)]

Notoriously, although the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit settled for a target of
keeping global warming below a 2 degrees C rise, it failed to secure legally binding
commitment. Furthermore, many participants particularly low lying island states
considered with good reason that a 2C rise would drown their entire land surface.
Temperatures have already risen by nearly 1C since the industrial revolution, and in
2011, as Klein reports, the usually staid International Energy Agency (IEA)
[projected] that we are actually on track for 6 degrees Celsius 10.8 degrees
Fahrenheit of warming which could well set in motion several major tipping points
not only slower ones such as the...breakdown of the West Antarctic ice sheet [which
NASA reported in May 2014 as showing glacier melt that now appears
unstoppable], but possibly more abrupt ones, like massive releases of methane
from Arctic permafrost. Based on these predictions, the IEA warns that if we do not
get our emissions under control by a rather terrifying 2017, our fossil fuel economy
will lock-in extremely dangerous warming: the window to keep the global average
temperature rise below 2C, that is to say,will be closed forever. Even the World
Bank has predicted a rise of 4C by 2100 if radical action is not taken promptly to
control emissions, bringing extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss
of ecosystems and biodiversity and life-threatening sea-level rise. Thus climate
models predict, for example, that such a hike in temperature would result in a sealevel rise of between 1 and 2 meters that would drown some island nations such as
the Maldives and Tuvalu, inundate many coastal areas [including] huge swathes of

South and Southeast Asia, and place in jeopardy major cities such as Boston, New
York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
Such dramatic warnings follow the 1990s discovery, based on reading the annual
rings of the ice cores drilled into Greenlands two-mile deep ice sheet, that the last
Ice Age came to an abrupt end over a matter of a few years, rather than from a slow,
linear process taking millennia. The implications are profoundly alarming, as NASA
climate scientist James Hanson explains in his Storms of my Grandchildren (2009):
Once ice sheets begin to collapse, sea level can rise rapidly. For example, about
14,000 years ago, as Earth emerged from the last ice age and became warmer, sea
level rose on an average rate of 1 metre every 20 to 25 years, a rate that continued
for several centuries. The danger today is that we may allow ocean warming and
softening up of ice sheets to reach a point such that the dynamical process of
collapse takes over. And then it would be too late we cannot tie a rope or build a
wall around a mile-thick ice sheet. (SOMG 73)

1.3 Capitalist, state and religious dinosaurs. In This Changes Everything, Naomi
Klein argues that only the immediate implementation of tough, fair, world-level
regulation will give us Earth peoples any real chance of avoiding such an alarming
tipping point. But instead we have entered a world political vacuum into which pours
all manner of noxious propaganda from the corporate-sponsored climate deniers.
Klein dismisses most of the usual explanations for our failure to take decisive action:
for sure its hard for well over a hundred countries to agree on a course of action, yet
the UN has enabled intergovernmental forums to tackle a number of other tough
global challenges, from ozone depletion to nuclear proliferation; nor is the assertion
that we have been held back by a lack of technological solutions any more
compelling; while the common excuse that its just human nature wont do either
we have shown ourselves willing to collectively sacrifice in the face of threats many
times, as she states, most famously in the embrace of rationing, victory gardens,
and victory bonds during World Wars I and II. So what then? Kleins answer is both
simple and startling:
we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those
things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for
the entire period we have been struggling to find our way out of this crisis. We are
stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe
and would benefit the vast majority are extremely threatening to an elite minority
that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our
major media outlets. (TCE 18 my italics)

It is our great collective misfortune, as she states, that just as world leaders started
waking up to the emissions problem in the early 1990s, the financial, corporate and
governing elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual
power than at any point since the 1920s, constructing a new era of hyperactive
global deregulation, tax-cutting and privatisation of public space. Indeed, both
scientists and governments began talking seriously about radical cuts to greenhouse
gas emissions in the exact year 1988 that marked the dawning of what came to
be called globalisation, with the signing of the agreement representing what was at
the time the worlds largest bilateral trade relationship between Canada and the
United States, later to be expanded into the North American Free Trade Agreement
5

(NAFTA) with the inclusion of Mexico. The two processes have developed in
parallel, but in alarmingly divergent ways: the climate negotiations struggling,
sputtering, failing utterly to achieve its goals, while the combined corporate and
private finance-driven globalisation process has accelerated from victory to victory
from that first free trade deal to the creation of the World Trade Organisation to the
mass privatization of the former Soviet economies to the transformation of large
parts of Asia into sprawling free-trade zones to the structural adjusting of Africa. In
spite of occasional setbacks resulting from mass popular pressure, notably at the
Seattle round of free trade talks, Klein asserts that the three policy pillars
underpinning the entire project privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of
the corporate sector, and lower corporate and private capital taxation have swept
all before them, locking-in a global ideological and policy framework that provided
maximum freedom to multinational corporations to produce their goods as cheaply
as possible and sell them with as few regulations as possible while paying as little
in taxes as possible (TCE 19); a neoliberal world order where everything
advantages big capital at the expense of the well-being of either the human masses
or the living planet.
Should we doubt Kleins analysis, Larry Elliott reports in a recent Guardian article (30
October 2014) that according to Oxfam the number of billionaires has doubled during
the austerity years following the 2008 financial crisis, seeing their wealth increase
by half a million dollars every minute whilst the majority of the worlds population
languish in increasingly abject poverty. Indeed, the worlds 85 billionaires now own
as much as the poorest half of the total global population put together. As the Oxfam
report states: poverty and inequality are not inevitable or accidental but the result of
deliberate policy choices.
While much has been said about the social costs of these policies, including the
instability of financial markets, the excesses of the super-rich, and the desperation of
the increasingly disposable poor, as well as the failing state of public infrastructure
and services, very little has been written, Klein continues, about how market
fundamentalism has, from the very first moments, systematically sabotaged our
collective response to climate change, a threat that came knocking just as this
ideology was reaching its zenith (TCE 19). A not insignificant amount has been done
to introduce more carbon-neutral forms of energy, for sure, notably within the
European Union, but not enough as yet to counter the continuing growth in carbon
emissions. And this, Klein argues, is primarily due to the fundamental logic of
capitalism as an economic system which is driven to find resources and exploit
them, thereby separating humans from the world around them and, one might
add, increasingly separating the worlds super-rich from the rest of us poor mortals!
Capitalism is fundamentally a habit of mind, Klein insists, a culturally created form
of behaviour. As such it can be changed Inequality can be reversed, as the
Oxfam report asserts, echoing her sentiments. But most of us, most of the time,
cannot see this because we are locked in, politically, physically and culturally to the
world that capital has made. Indeed, as Klein implies and others (like Chomsky)
spell out, there is a deeper problem, as in a manner that is hard to comprehend,
especially when compounded by multiple layers of misinformation and ideological
smokescreening, the global wealth, business and political power elite not only form
alliances among themselves, in spite of their many internal divisions (as between the
6

elites of China and the West) and inherent competitive conflicts, but also indulge
many radically anti-democratic wealth-and-power structures associated with varieties
of extreme religious fundamentalism, whether these be the Wahabism of the Saudi
elite or the apocalyptic Christian fundamentalism of many leading US
Republicans(inclusive of Presidents Regan and George W Bush) and their
supporters. Cocooned by a frighteningly delusional belief that they can avoid such
catastrophe either by military and technological means, the intervention of a
supernatural God, or a mixture of the two these elites appear to be blind to the
inevitability of global catastrophe if we continue along our current trajectory and the
likely consequences for all us Earth peoples, inclusive of these elites. I feel
compelled by the evidence to conclude that the dominant global wealth, power and
religious elites are the dinosaurs of the current phase in Earth (and cosmic)
evolution.
But this is to reach conclusions that go beyond the argument of Klein, drawing on a
more evolutionarily comprehensive analysis of the modernity trap, as I call it, that I
explore further in section 1.5. As a precursor to that section, however, I first need to
pick up on the Earth-evolutionary grounds for referring to todays global elites as
dinosaurs.
1.4 The sixth mass extinction. Every school kid now knows that the actual
dinosaurs were destroyed by the impact of a huge meteorite 65 million years ago
or, as is now thought more likely, by the combination of an asteroid impact and vast
volcanic eruptions on the Indian subcontinent. Indeed, they might even have been
told that at least 50 percent of all species were eliminated in that event (see fig. 4
below). May it be that what happened to the dinosaurs will all too soon happen to us
homo sapiens, the new dominators of the planet? Although not as a result of
external forces but due to the environmental consequences of our own activities?
Perhaps, yet the very fact that this impending catastrophe is human-induced gives
us grounds for hope, as uniquely we are the one species on planet Earth that has
the potential to change our ways as a result of the combination of critical reflection
and conscious action i.e., by a change of the dominant culture rather than a
change of the dominant species and, furthermore, to do so in a relatively short
period of time.
Each of the five past major mass extinctions have shown a dramatic shift in the
pattern of the species that prevailed before and after the event, with a pulse of
expanding diversity within the post-catastrophe pattern of dominant genera. In the
case of the most recent of the big five, that at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T)
threshold, the life pulse that took some 10 million years to recover fully from the
deep cut that destroyed the dinosaurs has continued to follow a power law of
increasing species diversification right up to very recent times. Only with the
decimation of a number of large mammal species by the Palaeolithic mammoth
hunters of the last Ice Age, followed by the growing impact on bio-diversity of
agricultural societies since the end of that most recent Ice Age and, most
dramatically of all, with the onset of industrialisation over the past two centuries or
so, has this mammalian curve of rising diversity began to dramatically plummet. See
further figure 4 below).

FIGURE 4 Flowering plant, dinosaur + bird family, and mammal

diversification curves across the three most recent of the big five mass
extinctions
No. of Families
180
Mammals
160
140
Flowering plants (angiosperms)
120
100
80
Dinosaurs + Birds
60
40
20
0

3
250

5
200

150

100

50

Time (millions of years before the present)

Note: This diagram shows the combined diversification curve for all dinosaur and bird
families whose time ranges are listed in Fossil Record 2, together with the curves for all
families of mammals and flowering plants also listed. The dotted lines are the exponential or
power law model for the three curves. The last three of the Big Five mass extinction events
are numbered on the horizontal axis. Extinction 5 at the K-T boundary saw the elimination of
the dinosaur families and rise of the bird families back to the levels of the power law model,
reinforcing the theory that birds are the direct evolutionary descendants of the dinosaurs. It
also pro mpted a rapid exponential rise in the mammal families, but had a lesser effect on
the continuing exponential rise of the flowering plant families.

___________________________________________________________________
SOURCE: Based on Boulter 2002, pp 92, 152 & 153

Evidence of an exponential collapse in bio-diversity is now irrefutable, and the

potential for converging catastrophes to inflict a deep cut on a scale comparable to
the previous big five is increasingly recognised. But unlike past mass extinction
events, the most promising next step in the staggered advance of life is the potential
emergence of a new culture among us Earth peoples, which, in contrast with the
several million year period required by the biologically-driven life pulses that
followed all past extinction events, could occur, as stated above, extremely rapidly in
evolutionary terms. This is the challenge of the present hour in Earths emergent
evolutionary history can we Homo sapiens use our uniquely reflective
consciousness, in combination with our social and technological skills, to construct a
new form of global society that is in tune with the long-term logic of cosmic
evolutionary advance before catastrophe strikes? Can we become the creative
instruments of conscious evolution, as the next great stage in the co-evolutionary
advance of novelty in the cosmos? A first in terms of Earth evolution, were it to
happen, and possibly (but who knows?) in the creative advance of the cosmos as a
8

whole. But given what we Earth peoples are currently doing to our planetary home,
are we up to it?
1.5 The modernity trap. In his review of This Changes Everything, John Gray,
former Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics,
disagrees with Kleins description of the climate crisis as a confrontation between
capitalism and the planet, arguing that by placing all the blame on the corporate
elite she shrinks from facing the true scale of the problem: namely, that in its
fundamentals the crisis is a clash between the expanding demands of humankind
and a finite world.
Gray highlights three primary reasons for believing that neo-liberal capitalism and its
corporate elite should not take all the blame. In the first place he was unconvinced
when he read her earlier book The Shock Doctrine that corporate and political elites
understood what they were doing in promoting the wildly leveraged capitalism of that
time, which was already beginning to implode, and finds the idea that corporate
elites are in charge of the world order even less convincing today. Neo-liberalism
may have recovered, and in some countries even achieved what he calls a spurious
kind of stability, but only, as he adds, at the cost of worsening global conflicts:
The fantasy of a global free market has given way to the murky struggles of
geopolitics, with great powers jostling for control of natural resources. This is a
dangerous world, but not because an all-powerful elite is in charge. None of the
states contending for power in the Middle East, Ukraine or the South China Sea can
control or predict the consequences of their actions. No one is in charge of the
worlds conflicts.

Another problem Gray finds with pinning all the blame for climate crisis on corporate
elites is that humanly caused environmental destruction long predates the rise of
capitalism:
As Klein herself observes in an interesting chapter on what she calls extractivism
the economic model that treats the Earth as a bundle of resources waiting to be
exploited human activity was already changing the climate centuries ago. We
started treating the atmosphere as a waste dump when we began using coal on a
commercial scale in the late 1700s and engaged in similarly reckless ecological
practices well before that. Moreover, though Klein doesnt explore the fact, its worth
bearing in mind that the extractive model was applied on a vast scale in the centrally
planned economies of the former Soviet Union and Maos China, where some of the
largest and worst 20th-century environmental catastrophes occurred.

Finally, Gray highlights the issue of population pressure as a powerful driver of

environmental crisis:
The extractive economy began with the invention of agriculture, which may itself
have been a response to rising human numbers. Even before the spread of farming,
migrating hunter-gatherers were implicated in a number of great extinctions.
Population growth is slowing in many countries at the present time, but there will still
be 8 or 9 billion human beings on the planet within the lifetime of many now living
and pressures on resources can only increase.

This final point correlates with the analysis of the onset of the current mass extinction
event outlined in section 1.4 above. Indeed, all three of Grays criticisms of Kleins
argument have considerable validity, and given his impressive track record in
anticipating todays deepening global crises geopolitical, financial and
environmental in such works as False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism,
first published in 1998, we should consider his analysis of todays converging world
crises very carefully before reaching any final conclusions. Essentially, he argues
that the Western-initiated globalisation of capital is but one factor in a pattern of
deepening global instability and conflict shaped by a geopolitical extractivist struggle
for shrinking energy supplies and other natural resources, continuing population
growth, and irreversible climate change over which no one group, inclusive of the
corporate elite, investment bankers and political leaders of the Western
democracies, have real control. Underlying Grays critique can be detected an
interpretation of modernity with considerable persuasive power one that includes,
nevertheless, a number of assumptions with which I profoundly disagree.
That said, Gray offers one of the most insightful analyses of modernity known to me,
and we need to provide a summary of his analysis before going on to consider those
assumptions that lead him to what I believe to be a mistaken view of how we Earth
peoples might yet extricate ourselves from its lethal trap. Nowhere has he made his
critique of the modern world more tellingly than in his short work Al Qaeda and What
It Means to be Modern, published in 2003. It begins with the following startling
statement:
The suicide warriors who attacked Washington and New York on September 11th,
2001, did more than kill thousands of civilians and demolish the World Trade Centre.
They destroyed the Wests ruling myth. (AQM 1)

By the Wests ruling myth, Gray refers to a fourfold set of Positivist ideas. Primary
among these is the conviction that Being modern means realising our values the
eighteenth century Enlightenment belief in a form of materialist progress, that is to
say, in which the growth of scientific knowledge and the emancipation of mankind
[march] hand in hand. Science, according to this quintessentially modern viewpoint,
engendered a universal morality in which the aim of society was as much production
as possible, so that through the use of technology humanity would both extend its
power over the Earths resources, overcome the worst forms of natural scarcity,
and abolish poverty and war. Added to this belief in technologically-driven progress,
Gray identifies three supplementary beliefs that form part of what he calls the ruling
myth of modernity: (i) modernity is a single condition, everywhere the same and
always benign; (ii) as societies become more modern, so they become more alike;
and (iii) at the same time they become better.
Contrary to this ruling myth, however, Gray finds that in practice there are many
other ways of being modern, many ways to use the power of science and technology
to create a new world which is his definition both of Positivism and of what it really
means to be modern. Many of which ways, as he expresses it, are monstrous:
Marx and Lenin, for example, dreamed that this new world would be a classless
egalitarian anarchy; while the American ideologue Fukuyama and the neo-liberals
propound a universal free market. Thus through their deep influence on Marx,
Positivist ideas inspired the disastrous Soviet experiment in central economic
10

planning. And when that system collapsed, Positivist beliefs re-emerged, as Gray
puts it, in the cult of the free market:
It came to be believed that only American democratic capitalism is truly modern, and
that it is destined to spread everywhere. As it does, a universal civilisation will come
into being, and history will come to an end. (AQM, 3)

A fantastical creed, famously articulated by Francis Fukuyama in The End of

History, published in 1992, which is not only still widely believed after 9/11, but
falsely, as Gray adds, describes Al Qaeda as a throwback to medieval times when
it is in reality a thoroughly modern by-product of globalisation. He draws out the
links between neo-liberal capitalism and radical Islam in the following extended
quote:
[Neo-liberalism] shapes the programmes of mainstream political parties throughout
the world. It guides the policies of agencies such as the International Monetary Fund.
It animates the war on terror, in which Al Qaeda [and one could add ISIS] is viewed
as a relic of the past.
This view is simply wrong. Like communism and Nazism, radical Islam is modern.
Though it claims to be anti-western, it is shaped as much by western ideology s by
Islamic traditions. Like Marxists and neo-liberals, radical Islamists see history as a
prelude to a new world. All are convinced they can remake the human condition. If
there is a uniquely modern myth, this is it.
In the new world as envisaged by Al Qaeda power and conflict have disappeared.
This is a figment of the revolutionary imagination, not a prescription for a viable
modern society; but in this the new world envisioned by Al Qaeda is no different from
the fantasies projected by Marx and Bakunin, by Lenin and Mao, and by the neoliberal evangelists who so recently announced the end of history. Like these modern
western movements, Al Qaeda will run aground on abiding human needs.
The modern myth is that science enables humanity to take charge of its destiny; but
humanity is itself a myth, a dusty remnant of religious faith. In truth there are only
humans, using the growing knowledge given them by science to pursue their
conflicting ends. (AQM 3-4)

This quote captures the fundamentals of Grays critique of the modernity myth: (1)
there is no such things as humanity, just humans; (2) the reality behind this myth is
that scientific knowledge and technology allow ideologically driven human groups to
pursue their conflicting ends; (3) it is an illusion to think that this belief in progress is
at odds with all religion; and (4) the origins of the myth of humanitys ability to create
a unitary (and essentially peaceful) world order that ends history (i.e., ends conflict
over which social order is the right one) are in fact to be found in the rival
monotheistic faiths of Christianity and Islam. Gray gives substance to the third and
fourth of these points in the first pages of his recent The Silence of Animals (2013):
For those who live inside a myth, it seems a self-evident fact. Human progress is a
fact of this kind. If you accept it you have a place in the grand march of humanity.
[Moderns] rely on a belief in the future for their mental composure. History may be a
succession of absurdities, tragedies and crimes; but everyone insists the future
can still be better than anything in the past. To give up this hope would induce a state
of despair.
11

In the story that the modern world repeats to itself, the belief in progress is [claimed
to be] at odds with religion. In the dark ages of faith there was no hope of any
fundamental change in human life. With the arrival of modern science, a vista of
improvement opened up. Increasing knowledge allowed humans to take control of
their destiny. From being lost in the shadows, they could step out into the light.
In fact the idea of progress is not at odds with religion in the way this modern fairy
tale suggests. Faith in progress is a late survival of early Christianity, originating in
the message of Jesus, a dissident Jewish prophet who announced the end of time.
For ancient Egyptians as for the ancient Greeks, there was nothing new under the
sun. Human history belongs in the cycles of the natural world. The same is true in
Hinduism and Buddhism, Daoism and Shinto. By creating the expectation of a
radical alteration in human affairs, Christianity the religion that St Paul invented
from Jesus life and sayings founded the modern world. (TSA 4, 6-9 my italics)

The same two points are also elaborated in the following extended quote from the
last chapter of Al Qaeda and what it means to be Modern, where Gray highlights the
significance of the belief in a unitary new world order in both Christianity and Islam:
Human life could scarcely go on without myths. Certainly politics cannot. The flaw in
the modern myth is that it tethers us to a hope of unity, when we should be learning
to live with conflict
The prevailing idea of what it means to be modern is a post-Christian myth.
Christians have always held that there is only one path to salvation, that it is
disclosed in history and that it is open to all. In these respects, Christianity differs
radically from the religions and philosophies of the ancient world and from nonwestern faith [with the sole exception of Islam, which in this respect is defined by
Gray as a western faith, as he informs us below].
In the polytheistic cults of the Greek and Romans, it was accepted that humans will
always live different ways. Where there are many gods no way of life is binding on
all. Worshipping one god, Christians have always believed that only one way of life
can be right.
In the ancient European mystery religions and in non-western faiths, history is known
to be without meaning; salvation is understood as liberation from time. In interpreting
history in terms of the salvation of the species, Christianitys only rival is Islam, which
by virtue of the militant universalism it has displayed throughout much of its history,
belongs in the West
Before Christianity, the idea that salvation is open to all was unknown in the ancient
world. The classical philosophers Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans
took for granted that no more than a few would ever live the good life. In mystery
religions such as Mithraism, only an elite of initiates could hope for salvation.
Enlightenment thinkers like to see themselves as modern pagans, but they are really
latter-day Christians: they too aim to save mankind. The ancient pagans did not
believe that the mass of mankind could be saved. Or, for that matter, that it was worth
saving.
Believing that one way of life is best for all mankind and viewing history as the
struggle to achieve it, Marxism and neo-liberalism are post-Christian cults. Beyond
12

Christendom, no one has ever imagined that world communism or global capitalism
could be the end of history. The Positivists believed that with the advance of
knowledge humanity would come to share the same values; but this is because they
had inherited from Christianity the belief that history is working to a finale in which all
are saved. Take away this residue faith, and you will see that while science makes
progress, humanity does not.
If we strip away from Positivism the eschatological hopes it inherited from
Christianity, what remains is not far from the truth. St-Simon and Comte believed that
technology is the driving force of history. In this they were right. History is a series of
accidents; but if it has any discernible trend it is the growing power of human
invention. What we commonly call the modern period is only a quickening of this
process.
Despite their protestations, the Positivists view of history owed little to science. Like
Christianity [and Islam], it was an historical teleology a narrative of the advance of
humanity to a pre-ordained goalPositivism is a doctrine of redemption in the guise
of a theory of history. The Positivists inherited the Christian view of history, but
suppressing Christianitys saving insight that human nature is ineradicably flawed
they announced that by the use of technology humanity could make a new world.
When they suggested that in the third and final stage of history [that of scientific
materialism (positivism), following on from the stages of religious supernaturalism
(theology) and then rationalist mind-matter dualism (metaphysics)] there would be no
politics, only rational administration, they imagined they were being scientific; but the
belief that science can enable humanity to transcend its historic conflicts and create a
universal civilisation is not a product of empirical inquiry. It is a remnant of
monotheism.(AQM 103-105 my italics)

Yet even if we accept Grays analysis linking radical Islam with neo-liberalism as rival
versions of modernity, surely, as is commonly stated, the revolutionary terror
associated with both Al Qaeda and ISIS embodies a throwback to the medieval
period? Not so, says Gray, insisting that the use of terror as an instrument for
actually creating the true society is an entirely modern invention:
Like the worldwide drug cartels and virtual business corporations that developed in
the Nineties, [Al Qaeda] evolved at a time when financial deregulation had created
vast pools of offshore wealth and organised crime had gone global. Its most
distinctive feature projecting a privatised form of organised violence worldwide
was impossible in the past. Equally, the belief that new world can be hastened by
spectacular acts of destruction is nowhere found in medieval times. Al Qaedas
closest precursors are the revolutionary anarchists of the late nineteenth-century
Europe.
Anyone who doubts that revolutionary terror is a modern invention has contrived to
forget recent history. The Soviet Union was an attempt to embody the Enlightenment
ideal of a world without power or conflict. In pursuit of this ideal it killed and enslaved
tens of millions of human beings. Nazi Germany committed the worst act of genocide
in history. It did so with the aim of breeding a new type of human being. No previous
age harboured such projects. The gas chambers and the gulags are modern. (AQM
1-2)

Gray returns to this theme at the very end of Al Qaeda and what it means to be
Modern, reinforcing the argument that revolutionary terror the belief that a new and
more perfect world can be built on mass killings is a uniquely modern attitude:
13

The conflict between Al Qaeda [and radical Islam more broadly] and the West is a
war of religion. The Enlightenment idea of a universal civilisation, which the West
upholds against radical Islam, is an offspring of Christianity. Al Qaedas peculiar
hybrid of theocracy and anarchy is a by-product of western radical thought. Each of
the protagonists in the current conflict is driven by beliefs that are opaque to it.
The chiliastic violence of radical Islam is not the product of any clash of civilisations.
The twentieth centurys grand experiments in revolutionary terror were not assaults
on the West. They expressed ambitions that have been harboured only in the West.
The death camps of Nazi Germany and the gulags of Soviet Russia and Maoist
China killed many millions of people, far more than in any earlier century. Yet it is not
the number of the dead that is peculiar modern. It is the belief that as a result of
these deaths a new world would be born. In former times, the Inquisition tortured and
killed on a large scale, but it did not imagine it would remake the world through terror.
It promised salvation in the world hereafter, not paradise in the world below. In
contrast, in the twentieth century, industrial-scale killing by states of their own
citizens has been practised in the belief that the survivors will live in a world better
than any that has ever existed. (AQM 116-17 my italics)

John Gray provides a startling analysis of modernity. In sum, he warns us that

modernity has trapped us Earth peoples in a way of thinking, a core worldview or
meta-paradigm underlying both radical Islam and neo-liberalism, that can only lead
to our destruction as a species if we fail to extricate ourselves from its grip on our
minds, our economy, and our social structures. Three key characteristics of this
analysis of the modernity trap can be highlighted:
i)

Technologically-driven extractivism.

ii)

The religious expectation (whether secular or supernatural in its form) of,

and striving for, a unitary global civilisation and world order.

iii)

The belief that this new world order will bring an end to conflict (i.e., a
common social value system and universal peace), the alleviation of
poverty, and either freedom or equality - for here there is a fundamental
conflict of views between those moderns (the West) who emphasise
individual freedom and the just war, inclusive of interventions in pariah
and broken states, as international peace keepers; and those (notably
radical Islam) who emphasise the equality of Gods universal elect who
will help achieve Gods peace with the aid of revolutionary terror.

As is to be expected, Grays own solution to the deepening world crisis his

alternative to the core paradigm of modernity includes counter-views to each of the
above three key characteristics of the modernity trap. Briefly, these can be outlined
as follows:
i)

The rejection of extractivism, and the development of a global economy

structured in accordance with the recognition that we Earth peoples have
to live within the limits required by the natural interconnections, feedback
mechanisms, and balances of the Earths biosphere, combined with the
14

development of appropriate technologies and the stabilization of the global

population at levels that will allow this natural balance to be restored.
ii)

The rejection of the modern myth that tethers us to a hope of global unity,
and the development of a world paradigm, a learning framework that
accepts the healthy inevitability of social, political and ideological
pluralism, and socio-political structures that allow us to live with conflict at
local, regional and global levels.

iii)

The rejection of the belief in the possibility of a perfect society as beyond

the capabilities of the human animal, and with it the heinous notion of
revolutionary terror. Homo sapiens, like all animals, are a flawed species,
and we have to build the recognition of this into both our social
organisation and our global (and local) expectations. There can be no
utopia; no heaven either on earth or after death.

In keeping with Grays daunting perspective on what it means to be modern, on the

one hand, and the inherent limitations of both ourselves as the human animal and
the life-carrying capacity of the Earth, on the other, he concludes his Observer
review of Kleins This Changes Everything with the following words:
however the conflict [between humankind and planet Earth] is framed there can be
no doubt who the winner will be. The Earth is vastly older and stronger than the
human animal. Even spraying sulphuric acid into the stratosphere will not trouble the
planet for long. The change that is under way is no more than the Earth returning to
equilibrium a process that will go on for centuries or millennia whatever anyone
does. Rather than denying this irreversible shift, wed be better off trying to find ways
of living with it.

The resignation voiced by John Gray in these remarks might well be considered an
eminently realistic response to the deepening global crisis in the light of his powerful
analysis on which they are based. Yet I believe them to be fundamentally mistaken in
their depiction of the implications of viewing the human condition within a coevolutionary understanding of the history of and prospect for our relationship with the
living Earth. The planets biosphere may indeed constantly seek a form of stability,
but the evidence shows it is always a dynamic one, and that the trend of our planets
evolution has been to ride the inevitable catastrophes that hit it, and that itself
creates, and to find ways to develop ever greater levels of complexity, cooperation,
consciousness, and compassion yes, inclusive of compassion through such
critical thresholds and mass extinction events. The cosmic drive is syntropic, is
geared to make as efficient and effective use as it can on available energy, and
precisely because it is so, I argue, we Earth peoples are ourselves inwardly driven
by a cosmic imperative to take advantage of todays critical threshold in the evolution
of our planet (and of the universe) to act on this planetary Kairos moment to cocreatively assist the cosmic advance to the next great level of existence: the only
way is up!
1.6 Going with the evolutionary flow. But I am jumping ahead of myself! The last
paragraph outlines the argument we will explore in Part II. Before proceeding,
however, I need to point the way by providing what might be described as a
dialectical response to each of the three above, twice listed, points, summarising,
15

firstly, Grays understanding of modernity, and, secondly, his own response to that
modernity trap a dialectical response which is grounded in the re-cognition that
we Earth peoples will only get the best out of our existential situation if we learn how
to go with the evolutionary flow.
i)

Im totally with both Klein and Gray in their shared rejection of

extractivism, but dont fully agree with either of their treatments of the link
between this global economic and technological phenomenon and the
history and logic of capitalism. Klein is right to closely associate
exctractivism with capitalism, but wrong (a) to focus her attention almost
exclusively on the dominant contemporary form of capitalism known as
neo-liberalism, and (b) to imply that capitalism only emerged with the birth
of the steam age i.e., with the industrial revolution. Gray, on the other
hand, is disingenuous in restricting capitalism to its Western free market
form. If capitalism is broadly defined as the economic system that defines
capital, crudely speaking, by (i) a variable that combines the cost of its
human labour input (Adam Smith and Karl Marxs labour value) and its
market value (rather than its natural, or, better, evolutionary syntropic
value (as defined in Part II)), and (ii) the drive to use capital to accumulate
additional capital (i.e. the drive to constantly accumulate capital via the
production and consumption of goods), then not only are all modern
economies capitalist including Soviet and Chinese versions of
Communism but capitalism can be traced back via a series of phases
(American, British, Dutch, Spanish & Portuguese, Italian City States to at
least the 12th century, and, I would claim, has its origins in Venice several
centuries earlier than that).
This disagreement with both Klein and Grays definitions of capitalism is
much more than an academic one. It is about understanding the inherent
logic of capitalism, which I argue is fundamentally a life-destroying logic
that is a central part of what is meant by modernity. As such, to extricate
ourselves from the impending global catastrophe we have to
fundamentally change the principles upon which all modern economies are
built, inclusive not only of contemporary Russia and China, but also of
such state-type organisations as ISIS. This is not a question of abolishing
markets. Markets have their place. It is, fundamentally, a question of reconstructing the global economy around an evolutionarily ground notion of
capital that is in accord with the logic of the creative advance of life i.e.,
the logic of cosmic evolution as a total reality and, more specifically, as
part of that total reality, the evolutionary logic that has driven the advance
over the past two or more billions years of the Earths biosphere. This is
the logic of syntropy, of which more in Part II.

ii)

We Earth peoples are currently awakening to the probability that we are at

a critical threshold in both cultural, biological and cosmic evolution when a
particular species ourselves are at the unique point in the universe (as
currently known to us) where the situation requires us to become
conscious co-creators of the next great evolutionary advance: that is, we
are compelled by the impending global catastrophe we are causing to both
learn and collectively apply the long-term logic of emergent evolution
16

(cosmic, biological and cultural) to how we conduct ourselves in the

contemporary situation. This means working co-creatively both among
ourselves as Earth peoples and with the rest of the Earths biosphere in
order to navigate the critical passage to this next level of cosmic advance
the level where evolution becomes conscious of itself. This necessarily
requires us to rise above our current competitive ideologies and
extractivist economics to a new level of co-creativity birthing (1) a global
economy that constructively builds on the emergent structures of the
evolution of life to date (as embodied in the biosphere) so as to go with
the flow of co-creatively driving evolution forward to its next level of
increased efficient and effective use of available energy (which requires
us, primarily, to both protect and enhance the ability of the Earths
biosphere to capture energy from the sun (i.e., by nurturing natures
existing photosynthesis technologies as supplemented by our own, such
as solar panel in the Sahara), with (2) the Earth people as a cooperative
world-wide society of all existing Earth peoples (see further fig. 1).
Gray is as mistaken to suggest there is no such thing as humanity, only
humans, as Margaret Thatcher was to say there is no such thing as
society, only individuals. The notion of humanity is real enough, but not
yet embodied in a global civilisation that genuinely respects and seeks to
gain the best from every single human person. Marx was absolute right to
call for a global society in which everyone gives according to their abilities
and receives according to their needs, but this can only be realised within
a society that is genuinely global in its reach. Such is a key aspect of the
critical passage beyond modernity in which we all must take part. Right
now this might seem an impossibility, but it is not only the logical next step
from hunter-gatherer groups, to tribes, to tribal federations, to nations, to
regional economic blocks, to (next) the Earth people as a global
civilisation.
Gray is also mistaken in his claim that technology is the driving force of
history. Not so! It is a factor, undoubtedly, but no more than a factor. The
driving force is syntropy, and at the human level syntropy is advanced
through a number of factors including individual creativity, cooperative
endeavour, and both social and environmental constraints and potentials
of which technology is but one key ingredient.
iii)

Like Gray insists, there can never be a perfect society, nor even a perfect
individual. We are all flawed, and every society is flawed. But if we recognise (1) that reality is open-ended, so that the trans-modern emergent
evolutionary worldview (or meta-paradigm) must necessarily be both
experimental and critically open-ended in its perspective, and (2) that as
there is a curious twist in human purposive consciousness, as
anthropologist Gregory Bateson noted (whereby our consciousness
inevitably interprets and simplifies the reality within which we act as agents
and co-creators), we consequently have to be constantly countering and
on our guard individually and collectively against both dogmatic certainty
and the often negative consequences of contradictory tendencies in our
endeavours as individuals and societies to both reduce matters to over17

simplified parts and to hold blindly to cosmic assumptions (worldviews)

that are counter to detailed observation and coherent logic. (Oops, how
about that for a long sentence!) That acknowledged, we are duty bound to
hope against hope that we can indeed rise as the Earth peoples to the
challenge of this cosmic hour, and create a truly global society that has
built-in to it the necessary safeguards and counter-measures to ensure
that cooperation and mutual aid wins out over competition and the
exploitation of one another and of the natural Earth. To awaken to this
realization is our collective Kairos moment; to act on this basis is our
cosmic imperative (see both fig.1 again, and fig.7 below).
All this implies that I consider Gray to also be mistaken in the one-sided
nature of his critique of the apocalyptic thinking of both Christianity and
Islam that he sees (correctly) as lying behind the modern myth of the
emergence of a new unitary world order; an order of global peace and
plenty. Jesus, more than any other historical figure known to me,
embodied in his actions and teachings a belief (a) in the coming of such a
new order, with (b) the necessity that we act in the Now in accordance with
the expectation of this revolutionary Not Yet. That belief is certainly
dangerous, and not just because it constantly challenges all forms of
oppression, injustice, and exploitation, but also because it is also
constantly exposed to misuse by those conveniently blind to the entirety of
its message. The Kairos message, now as then, is not a Woolworths pick
and mix affair, as both jihadists and the US Christian fundamentalist right
would have it. It is all or nothing. And that has never been more true than
now. Either we Earth peoples seize the time, or our future is in doubt.
The choice between breakdown or breakthrough is a no-brainer of course, but the
depth of the problem, the powerful lobbies propagating denial, and the sheer scale of
the challenge, makes the task appear almost insurmountable. Yet there are sound
reasons to believe that it is not beyond our capabilities as the Earth peoples to
successfully navigate the transition. Indeed, I am convinced, as stated boldly above,
that it is our collective destiny as the planets uniquely reflective, socially adaptive
and technologically adept species to rise to the occasion and navigate a way through
the current impasse. Yet I am equally certain that there is only one basic way for us
to successfully thread our way through the eye of this needle this evolutionary
threshold.
Surprisingly as it may first sound to you the reader, I contend that It is only by
learning to go with the flow of cosmic evolution that we Earth peoples can be
empowered to act in the Now as conscious co-creators with the rest of planet Earth
in such a way as to have an real chance of ensuring a progressive rather than
catastrophic Not Yet birthing a co-operative, inclusive, socially just and lifeenhancing planetary civilisation as the next great step in this emergent process
before our outmoded ways destroy us. Going with the evolutionary flow, in other
words, is the only recipe for survival success for two interconnected reasons. Firstly,
because, contrary to the reductionist ideology of neo-Darwinism, it is now becoming
recognised by growing numbers within the scientific community that evolution is
indeed purposeful, if most-definitely open-ended, embodying a life-enhancing logic of
staggered advance over time in complexity, consciousness, and compassion as a
18

self-organising process (its syntropic logic). And secondly, because cosmic evolution
follows an emergent logic, and by the very nature of the phenomenon of emergence
this logic reaches key thresholds (if looked at externally), or kairos moments (if
looked at inwardly), as experienced by us both individually and collectively key
chaos points at which the only progressive solution to impending catastrophe
involves the creation of a more complex ordering of things at a new, more intensive,
mindful, agent driven, inward, and consciously compassionate level of reality.
1.7 A prelude to Part II See over page!

19

1.7. A prelude to Part II. Thats it for now! I anticipate that Part II will, to adapt an
old Heineken advert, refresh parts that no existing frame of thinking can ever reach!
As such, reading it will be far more invigorating than the above. But Im afraid you will
have to wait a couple of months or so to have a copy, though quite a bit is already in
rough draft form! A number of key concepts barely touched on above become central
to the argument in this second part. Some, such as emergent evolution, syntropy,
the kairos moment, the gospel of Jesus, humankind as co-creators, conscious
cosmos and the cosmic imperative have at least been touched on above. Other
gems, such as the intersubjective present, integral consciousness and the divine
becoming have not. Hopefully, you will now look forward to their arrival in due
course! In the meantime, as a kind of taster, I leave you with a final diagram that
complements figure 1 above, grounding todays collective (and individual) kairos
moment in the Natural (World 1-External), Personal (World 2-Internal), and
Cultural (World 3-External) developmental-and-evolutionary backgrounds to this
contemporary crisis point this evolutionary hour when both our futures and that of
the cosmos itself is at stake. Make sense of it if you can, criticise it if you dare!!!!
FIGURE 7

Tripod Model of Cosmic, Cultural and Personal Evolution

Personal World
(World 2)
Instinctual/Survivalist (Beige)
Magical/Superstitious (Purple)
Impulsive/Power-driven (Red)
Mythical/Traditional (Blue)
Rational/Modern (Orange)
Pluralistic/Post-modern (Green)

Internal Dimension

*****************
*Integral/Flex-Flow (Yellow)? *
___________________________*
21st Century
*____________________________
*
Kairos Moment
*
*
Earth
Global
*
External Dimension
* People? (Transmodern)? *
***********
Humans
Instrumental (Modern)
Plants & Animals
Multi-cellular Life

Medieval (Post-Classical)
Axial (Classical)

Biosphere
Planets
Galaxies & Stars

Bicameral (Ancient Empires)

Natural
World
(World 1)

Cultural
World
(World 3)

Agricultural (Neolithic)
Primal (Palaeolithic)

__________________________________________________________________
SOURCE: My diagram, inspired by Marjorie Grene, Karl Popper, Ken Wilber, Clare Graves, Ernst Laszlo, A N
Whitehead, and Martin Buber etc.

20