Long term, I dream I can join with some other members of my spiritual community to form a “Compound I,” which can offer some coherent, spiritually-based directions about going forward into a post-industrial world.
I cannot do this by myself—the gaps in my understanding are too large. Nor do I trust myself to offer such advice alone (even with the guidance of my Elders). Still, it needs to be done, and I can hope to be part of a community that is trying to do it. Some Quakers have already started in this direction (Quaker Institute for the Future) and I dream we might eventually have a network of groups, collectively doing our best to live into a better world.
I think the challenge to myself and to everyone in Industrial Civilization is of Gandhian proportions. You likely know he challenged the British empire to cease their colonial rule of India, and that he organized his fellow Indians to nonviolently break British power. You may also know he assigned an even higher priority to India’s internal self-reform, everything from ending the caste system to sustainable economic self-development. Likewise I think the program which we might offer is as profound as Gandhi’s challenge: We need to challenge the “empire” of our society. The current empire is based on human-centered, material, values, and we need to organize resistance to this narrow focus on humans. But of even higher priority, we need to change our own hearts and habits, becoming devoted to the human-friendly development of Gaia, team players in a planet-wide system of which we are an important, but small, part.
Gaia Voices 