Executive Summary
We have a problem — a really BIG problem!
We live in an unwise and unsustainable world. The proof of this is on display all around us in a long string of failures. Our world is the product of many generations of leadership who have eschewed the higher universal wisdom and purpose of sustainability. The reasons for this neglect are widely covered in many other parts of this website, and therefore will not be covered in this summary.
Sustainability
In the broadest sense, sustainability refers to the ability to maintain or support a process continuously over time. This website uses the term Light & Life as a signature phrase for a planet wide approach to the kind of universal wisdom, stability and planet wide sustainability needed to overcome the grave mistakes of the past and present, and to propel us safely forward into a brave new world grounded in love, peace, equality and unity.
Light & Life = Planetary Sustainability
A divided civilization that lives under the constant threat of war and destruction does not logically make any plans for the distant future while it operates in a defacto survival mode, using narrow self-centred intelligence that promotes narrow, short-term and unsustainable goals. This is not healthy for a civilization’s longevity. Our civilization, as we currently cultivate it, lives for the present and the past, and does not worry about the future generations. It can be summed up in one word: unsustainable.
A wise civilization will cultivate the continual improvement of its collective mental capacity and direct its thoughts more and more into the future while it operates in a cooperative and mutually agreed upon sustainable mode, using broad intelligence that promotes all-inclusive, long-term and sustainable goals. This kind of unity can ensure a civilization’s longevity and indefinite survival. It aims to create a stable civilization on a clean planet, where the balance of man and nature can be maintained for unlimited time; where people live for the future, and expect great things from it; where people are constantly occupied with making the world a better place in which to live. This can be summed up in one word: sustainable.
Our Light & Life Timeline offers a broad, logical, and historical overview of the lateness, as well as the overall imbalance of our current civilization, and contrasts this with what we could be as a wise and balanced civilization. It provides the essentials for designing a long term plan that can bring about the kind of balance, which can lead to unity, which can achieve sustainability.
The root of the problem
In the brief coverage above, we have used words like unwise and unsustainable, narrow, short-term, self-centred, war, lateness and imbalance. These all describe certain aspects of the problem, like the branches of a great tree, but the problem goes deeper, all the way down into the soil. The root of the problem has to do with free will, which can also be stated as — unforced choice. In this case we are referring to the contravention of free will on a grand scale! Or, forced choice.
- Free will is one of the greatest laws of creation, so important it is that not even the Creator will contravene it.
- Free will does not mean license to do anything one wants even to the detriment of others.
- Free will exists within certain boundaries, but within these boundaries free will has free expression to the extent that it causes no harm.
The great failure of our world's leadership, both physical and spiritual leadership, has been the contravention of personal free will within its clear and simple boundaries.
Free will and personality are like two sides of a coin. You can't have one without the other, and that makes it sovereign in its own right. The two cannot be separated. Free will cannot stripped away or it's potency reduced in any way. That is why free will can only be personal. There is no such thing as group free will. The popular term "group think" is not the same as free will. True consensus is a by-product of free will, but it is not free will. Groups are never sovereign and are never imbued with free will. Groups can only inherit delegated authority from the sovereign free will individuals that compose it.
Continuing with the tree analogy, leaves can fall off, branches can break off, and the tree can live on and grow more leaves and branches. But, if the roots are cut or pulled out of the soil, the entire tree will surely die. Therein lies the source of our civilizational problems. Countless leaders who have uprooted the sovereignty and free will of individuals, and there is a long list of selfish, misguided, and stupid reasons why they did and continue to do so. The end result is always the same. Some kind of failure, only failure, always failure.
Free will is the one great law that can never be broken or trampled on to produce successful results. The opposite of free will is always failure!
It's time for a Planetary Transformation
We need a Planetary Transformation that will propel us out of this:
UNSUSTAINABLE mode guided by: Deception > Greed > Division > War
and into this:
SUSTAINABLE mode guided by: Sustainability > Wisdom > Intelligence > Modelling
A framework grounded in wisdom
The framework for a successful Light & Life transformation strategy begins with 10 broad categories that serve as the foundation for a healthy and flourishing civilization on the path to indefinite survival. These categories are:
- Race & Biology
- Family
- Culture
- Language & Education
- Religion
- Ethics
- Governance
- Science & Technology
- Economy & Finance
- Personal Spiritual Growth
- Possible solutions and their justifications
- Clearly defined conclusions
Consensus process that seeks to take into account all concerns, needs and potential consequences involved in a decision naturally takes a lot of time. But it usually addresses factors that would come back to haunt the group later, if they weren't dealt with, so its defenders consider it wiser or more effective, from a long-term perspective.
EFFICIENCY
The idea of efficiency has a narrow boundary and wide boundary lens from which it can be viewed.
Efficiency usually entails getting rid of “unnecessary things” - steps in a process, redundant functions, non-essential expenses and people, and so on. But the holistic concept of RESILIENCE often requires the presence of exactly those things to be there. If you have at hand several sources of or resources for a vital function (like energy or food or communication), then if one of them goes down, you can call on another one.
If efficient just-in-time production makes it unnecessary to keep a warehouse full of parts for your assembly line, it saves your company a lot of money and manpower. But if the supply line for a part breaks, your whole assembly line stops.
If a new technology makes a process much more convenient but opens up new avenues for hack attacks, then we can and should ask if that is really more efficient in the long run.
True efficiency entails “the optimum engagement of all aspects of a whole for the long term well being of the whole”.
So we’re talking about trying to rally and invest all relevant entities, relationships, resources, elements, capacities, qualities, and dynamics of wholeness (like synergy and vitality) - and even disturbances, waste, and excess - in the ongoing healthy co-creativity of the whole. It’s pretty obvious that doesn’t come near to describing how we usually try to get more with less. But it points us in the right direction.
We tend to think about narrowly defined problems that affect specific people or situations, using specific metrics to demonstrate certain direct effects. It’s easier to “make progress” on narrowly defined “virtuous goals” than it is to take into account the long term well being of the whole.
CRIMINALITY