There is a sense in which I have welcomed all of the upheaval in the world today. I am a philosopher, and one of the sets of symbols and imagery that has always appealed to me most strongly is the Alchemical Process of Change. The process of Change is absolutely fundamental to any idea of philosophy or metaphysics. The Greeks were barking up the wrong tree, looking for some ultimate particle (which they called “the atom”). No, what is really fundamental, in this cosmos, is the process of Change. That’s where it all happens. The present moment, Now, is the Philosophers’ Stone, the agency of change.
The alchemy lesson is very short and simple: Solve et Coagula, “to break apart, and to join together.” It is the alternation of these two directions of energy that is responsible for the unfolding of the infinite cosmos. In practical terms, what that means is that in order for something new to come into being, the old has to be broken down. For a long time (all my life) I have had the idea that this world was in need of a major makeover. I imagined myself, two millennia later (not millenniums, please) looking back at these primitive times – from a larger perspective, these are still the Dark Ages. From the vantage point of some time in the year 4089, there is not all that much difference between the tenth century and the twentieth, or twenty-first.
Now is the time for people of the earth to work out a new political and economic arrangement, which encompasses the whole world, and is emphatically NOT any kind of pax americana, nor even a pax sinensis, for that matter. A lot of people seem to get really terrified at any such notion. “Surely you don’t mean a New World Order?” Am I with the Illuminati, trying to promote some sinister plot? Well, yes, I am. Now it is out. (Sinister just means “to the left.”)
All I can say is that it is not surprising that anyone should be terrified of any such notion as a major makeover of the world! Conservatism is a very natural concept: “if it is working, and life is going on, don’t fix it!” The problem is that it isn’t working, and life is no longer going on. Not only are people dying like flies from cancer, AIDS, and other diseases, due to the direct cause of the insufficiency of oxygen in our atmosphere (itself directly caused by the loss of the trees), but the business as usual for the human race includes wholesale genocide in so many parts of the globe that it is no longer news. So it is time for a whole new Contract, one which includes the entire field of life on the planet, to make the effort to keep life alive, at least for one more generation; and perhaps the next generation can figure out a way to pass on some remnant of life to the following generation.
What am I talking about here? How about a world-wide Constitutional Convention, to work out terms for a new world? As I see it, all of the problems of the world stem from one fundamental problem: the fracturing of the field of Life energy into a multitude of diverse energy streams, like Don Quixote “jumping on his horse, and riding off rapidly in all directions.” Yes, the problems of global warming, cancer, and the loss of the trees are serious threats to life, but until the entire planet is somehow united politically, the threats to its survival, while overwhelming, just cannot adequately be dealt with.
So what is the practical continuation of this idea? How about the formation of an international World Union Company to set up an entity that will address itself to the problem? It will not be easy, but, until the political union of life on earth is realized, there can be little hope for much substantial progress against the enormous problems facing the survival of life on earth.
