Navigating the Storm of Global Change

Part 4: A Creative Way Forward (Installment 1)

I feel I owe my subscribers an explanation for the long delay in the publication of this essay. Immediately following the publication of the last essay — part 3b — I came down with a very intense flu that lasted two whole months. At the same time I had developed a painful repetitive strain injury in my right arm and neck from overuse of the keyboard (occupational hazard!), which became aggravated every time I would sit down to write. Then I had a sudden opportunity to travel to Australia for the first time since the pandemic began to see my family. I had a wonderful trip, but the day before my scheduled flight home, I was hit by Covid, again. So another several weeks in bed.

As you might imagine, all of this was beyond frustrating, especially since I had something important to say but couldn’t get to it. The good news is that since my return to the States, my health has surged back and my RSI has significantly settled down. After a long proverbial winter, my energy is definitely on the way back up.

The other factor is that these essays have turned out to be much longer than I expected. I find these pieces tend to have a life of their own. In this series they seem to have wanted to be on the longer side to allow me to say everything I wanted to say. This one is no exception.

Indeed when I went to publish this post, it was so long that I decided it would be overwhelming to send out all at once. So I’ve decided to publish it in five weekly installments. I’d prefer to be able to engage more frequently with readers through more digestible pieces, rather than one huge essay that few people will have time to get all the way through.

Below is the first installment. I’ll send out the next one next Friday, and then on subsequent Fridays for the following three weeks. I’ll create a compendium at the end where all the essays in this series will be available in one place.

David

P.S. Thanks in advance to anyone who feels inspired to share this public post — I appreciate your help!

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Part 4: A Creative Way Forward (Installment 1)

In this final essay (spread over five installments), I want to wrap up a number of loose threads from the previous essays in this series as well as to propose a creative way through the intense polarization that fuels our current culture wars.

In part 1 of this series, Birth of the Aquarian Age, I presented an astrological framework for understanding our global crisis in terms of our transition from the Age of Pisces (organized primarily by top-down, elite-driven hierarchies of centralized control) to the Age of Aquarius (organized primarily by peer-to-peer decentralized networks). I suggested that, notwithstanding the extreme difficulties and dangers of this transitional period, the coming era carries the possibility of a breakthrough for humanity into a radically new level of maturity and creative flourishing.

In part 2, I examined how this epochal shift is manifesting in creative developments at the leading edge of technology and spirituality. In parts 3a & b, I framed the intensely challenging dynamics of our times as an expression of the eternal dance of dark and light, and the way these forces secretly conspire to advance the cosmic drama. I argued that the threat of a growing AI–powered technocratic totalitarianism can be seen in this regard as both a final grasp for the ring of power by hierarchical forces associated with the dying Piscean Age and an initiatory catalyst for a creative awakening that will propel us into the Age of Aquarius. I also suggested that these dynamics need to be understood and addressed from a multi-dimensional perspective that takes into account transpersonal influences, both dark and light.

The above framework, however, might seem to set up a simplistic opposition: Pisces bad, Aquarius good; centralization bad, decentralization good. In reality, of course, it's more nuanced than that. Decentralization taken to its extreme is anarchy and lawlessness. The total absence of centralized authority implies a loss of order and ‘might makes right’. Obviously some form of centralization will always be needed — the question really is what kind of role will centralized authorities play in the coming Aquarian age.

We might view our current challenge, then, more in terms of how to navigate between the extremes of totalitarian control on the one hand and the complete breakdown of order on the other. Our cultural battles are like a tug-of-war between these extremes, pulling us leftward in the direction of a centralized neo-liberal world order or rightward in the direction of a chaotic and rebellious libertarianism, with both extremes implicating and reinforcing each other in what social psychologist Jonathan Haight has called a ‘polarity spiral’.

Still, there is something to be said for the fact that the Piscean Age is the one that is dying, and the Aquarian is the one being born. The systems of centralized, hierarchical control that worked so efficiently for so long in the Piscean era now seem increasingly out of sync with the rising zeitgeist of the Aquarian era of equality and decentralization.

It's as though the (archetypal) energy chord powering those hierarchical systems has been pulled out of its socket, leading them to become increasingly exhausted and dysfunctional. In contrast, the fledgling projects organized on the principle of decentralization – such as Web 3.0 – carry the fresh, creative energies of new life, even though they are still immature and going through growing pains. Although it may take time, I think that centralized authorities will eventually have to adapt to the rising power of decentralization or risk fighting an escalating war they will not win.

Those centralized authorities that make concessions to, or proactively support, the rising principles and systems of decentralization will, I think, come to be seen as wiser, more forward–thinking, and more deserving of popular support than those that attempt to cling to power through methods of coercive centralized control. Accordingly, a guiding principle for the role of centralized authorities in the Aquarian Age is likely to be along the following lines:

“To create the conditions that best ensure the sovereignty of individuals, communities, and nations while facilitating the emergence of collective intelligence.”

It’s possible we will soon enter an extremely fertile phase of social experimentation as we try to figure out exactly how best to create those conditions. There will no doubt be endless arguments about the right way forward, particularly regarding the vexed issue of what kinds of intervention are warranted to address inequities from the past or how to deal with bad actors. But despite our current concerns about a rising digital totalitarianism, ultimately I think that the template for centralized authorities in the Aquarian Age will be to play more of a background role, focused on providing the infrastructure to support the optimal functioning of decentralized, peer-to-peer networks of sovereign individuals and communities.

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Yet it’s hard to see how we get anywhere in our current state of political gridlock and social fragmentation. What are the deeper dynamics driving polarization and is there any way out?

The role that social media has played over the last decade in driving us into polarized camps has become widely known. As Jonathan Haidt summarized in a widely read article in The Atlantic earlier this year (Why the Past 10 years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid), the viral dynamics of social media, whereby posts that trigger anger at out–groups are the ones most likely to be shared, have divided us into factions based on mutual animosity. The enhanced virality of social media (through ‘like’ and ‘share’ features) has encouraged mob dynamics that make it dangerous (especially for public figures) to be seen sympathizing with the enemy or even failing to attack the enemy with sufficient vigor. A single triggering word or comment by a professor, journalist, celebrity, or politician, even when made with the best intentions, can result in a social media firestorm, leading to dismissal or cancellation.

Polarization has also been driven by the metamorphosis that has occurred in traditional print and broadcast media during the same period. As journalists Matt Taibbi (Hate, Inc: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise Each Other) and Batya Ungar-Sargon (Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy) have ably pointed out, since the election of Donald Trump, mainstream journalism in the U.S. has largely abandoned its traditional ethic of objectivity and even–handedness in favor of unabashedly aligning with one side or another of the partisan divide. The reasons for this are complex but include:

1. a reaction to the election of Donald Trump, whereby the liberal media establishment concluded that its tendency to "both–sidedness" had hampered its ability to directly call out Trump's outrageous breaches of protocol, and that a new, less equivocal, approach was necessary to save the Republic;

2. the polarizing dynamics of social media that placed pressure on journalists on both sides to adhere to extreme partisan positions in order to boost the virality of their work and/or to avoid provoking an attack by a Twitter mob that might lead to adverse professional consequences; and

3. the emergence of a new generation of journalists who, informed by postmodernism and critical theories, regard the overthrow of oppression, rather than objectivity and fact–finding, as their primary ethical commitment.

There are many commentaries on these dynamics from various socio-political perspectives. My aim is to offer an interpretation of the deeper energetic and archetypal dimensions playing out through the surface phenomena. Why has our culture become so sharply polarized at this particular point of time, right at the very end of the Piscean Age and the beginning of the Aquarian? What does this tell us about what is trying to be born?

We’ll explore these questions in depth next time.