Spiritual Health Learning Community Center
Exploring Life's Horizons
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Accursed is the world and accursed is all that is the world, except the remembrance of
God and that which aideth therein. - Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him)
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Devolution
Controlled evolution is the next stage of human progress - or,
so some people seem to suppose. According to this sort of
perspective, exciting new developments are happening in
more and more fields. This is generating a synergistic
collusion of physics, genetics, biochemistry, medicine,
economics, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
All these fields are playing-off one another, as well as
converging, in complex, breathtakingly beautiful, new ways,
as they spin their golden threads at faster and faster rates.
The discoveries and inventions emerging from the dynamics
of this dialectic will be woven into the fabric out of which
human destiny will be cut. Furthermore, we will be free to
design whatever pattern we like - at least, this is what some
people are saying.
This vision which is being projected onto the relatively near
future is lent support by the unbelievable technical advances
being made, virtually every day, through dazzling cascades of
human ingenuity and creativity. Knowledge is said to be
expanding at a rate which is unparalleled by any other period
of history.
Some claim the elimination of all diseases and congenital
disabilities is near at hand. The genetic re-engineering of the
human being into the next phase of evolution seems to
becoming less a conjecture of science fiction and more a
function of technical feasibility.
The media lab of today supposedly is laying the foundations
for the multifaceted, interactive, integrated knowledge labs
of the future. According to the visionaries involved in these
developments, human beings will be able to take control of
their own education throughout their lives.
Moreover, the world will be wired electronically in ways
which lead - or, so the story goes -to greater and greater
empowerment. Such technological empowerment will
translate into enhanced freedom for all human beings.
The discordant counterpoint to the foregoing process of
rhapsodizing is the actual condition of the world. For the vast
majority of people, the world is not a very pleasant, safe,
healthy or empowering place in which to live.
Only an extremely small and exclusive proportion of the
world' s population controls and consumes most of the land
and resources of Earth. The gap between the rich and poor
has evolved into an, apparently, unbridgeable canyon.
Indeed, the distance separating the rich and the poor is
increasing at a rate rivaling, if not exceeding, the expansion
of technical knowledge.
There does not exist in the world today either enough money
or natural resources to allow the promises of a brave new
world to be extended to the majority of people today. This
trend only will be exacerbated as we move into tomorrow.
Arable land is disappearing along with the rain forests.
Species, both known and unknown, are being eliminated
every day, and the rate of extinction seems to be accelerating.
Non-renewable resources are being consumed, presently, at
rates which probably will exhaust those resources
somewhere around the middle of the next century. Global
economic competition is heating up in ways that merely
advance our date of encounter with this critical point of
resource exhaustion.
The technological expertise necessary to generate the
relatively clean energy of fusion reactions on a commercial
basis is not yet available. In fact, we do not seem to be even
close to the sorts of technical breakthrough in this area of
research which would make fusion reactors practically
realizable in the near future.
A number of other, relatively safe, potential alternative
sources of energy have been explored to some extent.
However, for a variety of economic, commercial, political,
social and technical reasons, none of these alternatives is
considered to be a desirable way of meeting the large scale
energy needs being projected for the next fifty to seventy-five
years.
We are left with the problematic energy production of fission
reactors and various forms of fossil fuel. Both of these have
serious problems associated with them.
For instance, among other things, the challenge of dealing in
a safe way with spent fuel rods has not, yet, been adequately
resolved. There are down sides to virtually every proposal
for the disposal and treatment of such rods.
Moreover, there is a very real risk of updated versions of the
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters on the horizon.
This is especially so in the former Soviet Union, but one
should not discount such a possibility in relation to nuclear
facilities in other parts of the world - including the United
States and Canada.
On the other hand, global warming has a whole set of
potentially problematic, if not disastrous, ramifications for,
among other things, weather patters, food production,
disease incidence, pest infestations, coastal ecologies, as well
as quite a few cities and people - most of which and whom,
respectively, live along the coastal regions of the world. And,
despite the attempts of, for instance, the automotive industry
and the producers of fossil fuels, to avoid being fingered for
having substantial culpability in the observed trend in global
warming, the evidence against them continues to accumulate.
Furthermore, everyone who earns a living off such
enterprises or consumes the products of the aforementioned
industries deserves a proportionate share of responsibility for
the problems of global warming and pollution generated by,
and in relation to, these industries. Few, if any of us, have
clean hands on this issue - although, to be sure, some people
may be more culpable than others in these matters.
More and more pressure is being placed on the world' s
various eco-systems. Water, land, and air are under constant
siege by a devilishly complex array of salvoes from an
endless variety of toxic substances.
The holes in the ozone layer are either getting bigger, or
multiplying, or a bit of both. The food chain is being
compromised from bottom to top.
The manufacture and distribution of weapons around the
world is a growth industry. Its rate of growth is exceeded,
perhaps, only by the enterprise of death which has spun off
from the weapons industry.
People are being slaughtered in regional hostilities at
unprecedented rates. The amount of carnage is, in no small
measure, due to the contributions ensuing from technological
advances in weaponry.
Whether through the effects of fierce global economic
competition, or through the generation of pollution and toxic
substances which are undesirable outcomes of this
competition - on both the production and consumption sides
of things - or through the manufacture and distribution of
weaponry, more and more of us, both directly as well as
indirectly, are making a living off the death of others. We are
finding ever newer and better ways to kill one another
-technologically, economically, politically, and socially - by
means of the allegedly vaunted human capacities for
ingenuity , creativity and ambition.
Newly emergent viruses are making their presence felt in
increasing numbers and problematic ways, and the irony of
this is that the epidemiology of these diseases is almost
always traceable to the impact which human activity is
having on the environment. Although we seem to be adept at
inventing ways to help these problems to develop, we have
discovered few, or any, ways of treating these highly
infectious and frequently fatal diseases.
In addition, we are in serious danger of losing many of the
battles we thought we had won years ago with the
introduction of a host of miracle drugs. New, deadly strains
of antibiotic-resistant diseases are showing up all over the
world, and there now remain few, if any, antibiotics which
have not been seriously compromised in their capacity to
fight off the assault of a wide variety of bacterial agents -
both common and more exotic.
While some of the increasing problems surrounding
antibiotic effectiveness is due to the incredible ability of
bacteria to adapt to previously toxic conditions through the
transfer of genes which are capable of conferring abilities to
short-circuit, or get around, the way antibiotics work, once
again, human beings have played a significant role in lending
a huge helping hand to bacteria. Iatrogenic, or health-care
related, factors have played a very significant causal role in
the whole process - just one aspect of which is when doctors
prescribe antibiotics for, say, undiagnosed respiratory
ailments, many of which are viral in nature and, therefore,
unaffected by the use of antibiotics. Yet, each such
unnecessary use of antibiotics provides bacteria with further
opportunities to make adaptations which, in time, may render
them immune to the use of these same antibiotics.
Just as is true with respect to science and technology,
modern governments and corporations often "solve"
problems by creating other problems. Like sweeping dust
from one location to another, there is the appearance of
change, but the underlying situation, despite the changes, still
remains largely the same. The over all level of problems has
not been reduced, and, all too frequently, is even increased.
World debt - national, corporate and individual - is
increasing. Many cannot even look after the interest charges
accruing from their debt, to say nothing of the principle
involved.
Governments, currencies, communities, businesses and
individuals around the world are being buffeted about by the
vagaries of the debt issue. Almost everyone has a theory, but
there are no proven solutions.
In the mean time, government services are being cut.
Businesses are being down-sized. Individuals and companies
alike are declaring financial insolvency with startling and
growing frequency. Countries are threatening to default on
their national debts.
An increasing number of individuals believe the foregoing
kinds of event are not harbingers of the darkness just before
the break of a better economic day. Instead, many of these
people believe that these lean/mean times mark the beginning
of the economic/social/political version of nuclear winter for
millions, if not billions, of human beings.
Long-term, structural unemployment has become a fact of
life in many countries. Real salaries for most people are
decreasing.
Poverty is increasing. For many people, health-care is
becoming less affordable. Hunger and homelessness are on
the rise.
Many countries are falling apart. Numerous governments,
political systems and societies are in disarray.
Infrastructure is degenerating. A flood of communities are
decaying.
Far too many families are becoming dysfunctional. More and
more individuals are becoming increasingly angry,
frustrated, bewildered, confused, impatient and intolerant.
There is precious little in any of the foregoing which suggests
empowerment for the overwhelming majority of people in the
world. Various degrees of enslavement would seem to be
more in keeping with the reality of the world' s condition.
Indeed, most of the people of the world spend their lives
empowering others to empower the few.
These days we hear a great deal about information
technologies and sciences. In addition, this information is
being upgraded as we switch over to knowledge-based, or
smart machine, technologies.
Unfortunately, nowhere on the drawing boards does one find
blueprints or specifications for a wisdom-based system. We
are burying ourselves beneath our own technologically and
scientifically produced information and knowledge, but we
have not come up with the sort of wisdom circuit boards
which would permit us to upgrade our systems so we can dig
ourselves our from beneath our cleverness.
One does not have to be an expert in black holes to grasp the
fact that we all are relentlessly and irrevocably being drawn
toward the event horizon of a man-made black hole of
crushing proportions. The closer we come to this event
horizon, the greater will be the distortions to which we will
be subjected and the fewer will be the degrees of freedom
within which to maneuver.
Synergy is usually thought of in terms of a positive and
constructive confluence of events. However, we should not
overlook the negative and destructive possibilities which may
result from a confluence of forces and events.
Contrary to the pronouncements of the champions of
technologized modernity, we are not on the verge of a
utopian millennium. Rather, we are on the precipice of an
abyss of self-destruction. The evidence for this is pervasive
and undeniable as the foregoing overview of the world' s
condition has intimated.
To talk of controlling our future evolution, seems ludicrous
when we cannot even control our present selves. In fact, we
are so far out of control, there is considerable question
whether or not the downward spiral of devolution which is
transpiring on all, but a few, levels - from individual to
ecological - has gathered too much momentum for it to be
reversed. If we have not yet passed beyond the point of no
return, there are a growing number of individuals who feel
we have precious little time left in which to turn things
around.
From the perspective of Sufi masters, the outward condition
of the world is but a reflection of our inner, spiritual
condition. There are problems in the life of the external
world because there are problems in our spiritual lives. The
two are functionally related in a very intimate manner.
According to the practitioners of the Sufi way, the difficulties
of the outer world cannot be addressed properly until we
have addressed our inner spiritual problems - both
individually and collectively. We can spend all the money and
expend all the energy we like, and we can pass all the
legislation which seems appropriate, and we can utilize every
quantum' s worth of the science and technology which is
available to us, and we can consult all the business, financial
and economic models on which we can lay our hands, and
none of this, in whatever combination, will bring about the
removal of either the spiritual or related worldly difficulties
being considered.
When our worldly problems continue to resist treatment, we
often believe all we have to do is: either tinker about and
attempt to improve existing methods of treatment; or,
discover some new theoretical approach of the right sort.
The masters of the Sufi path suggest that if we look at things
in either of the foregoing two manners, our efforts will bear
few, if any, fruitful results.
Sufi masters point out the answers to our questions and
problems always have been within each of us from the very
beginning. The understanding of these answers depends on
our activating and realizing the potential of our spiritual
identities and capacities.
This process of spiritual understanding is a matter of
unfolding or unveiling, not of evolution - biological, cultural
or spiritual. The very first human beings to walk the Earth
were as capable in this respect - and, perhaps, even more so -
as are their modern counterparts.
Collectively and individually, we are in the mess we are in,
because, in general, we have permitted our intentional
consciousness and understanding to undergo a process of
devolution or degeneration. This has led us further and
further away from our spiritual essence which is, God
willing, alone capable of reclaiming and redeeming the world
in a sacred way.
Our essential spiritual capacity and identity are, according to
the Sufi masters, the only means through which we may, God
willing, extricate ourselves from our current situation, both
individually and collectively. Consequently, our hope lies not
with learning how to control our evolution. Our hope and
salvation rest with, God willing, eliminating the forces which
sustain and nurture the processes of devolution currently
undermining our spirituality, and, as a result, destroying
ourselves, the Earth and all of the creation contained therein.
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Copyright © 2004 Interrogative Imperative Institute. All Rights Reserved.
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