The Terror of Tomorrow
ByThis title is taken from a highly recommended book by Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything.
In his book, Wilber writes: “One of the greatest problems and constant dangers faced by humanity is simply this: […] once a [external] material entity has been produced, it can be used by individuals who are at virtually any level of interior development. […] One of humanity’s constant nightmares has been that technological growth has always run ahead of growth in wisdom, care and compassionate use of that technology.”
The idea is that developments in EXTERIOR world technology have outpaced the development in INTERIOR world mastery (wisdom). Simply put, we all have access to and can use freely “stuff” that we could not have invented, and do not necessarily have the maturity to use wisely. It is a bit like entertaining a two year-old by giving him a lighter and some oil.
“Until the modern era, this problem was limited in its means because technologies themselves were quite limited. You can only inflict so much damage on the biosphere, or on other human beings, with a bow and arrow. But with the emergence of modernity and its sweeping scientific capacities […] exterior developments, now incredibly powerful, was not met with an equal amount of interior development. Technology ran ahead of wisdom. […] From atomic holocaust to ecological suicide, humanity began facing on a massive scale its most fundamental problem: lack of integral development”.
Some of the examples are: nuclear technology in the 20th century, and quantum level energy production, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology nowadays.
Humanity has developed the capacity to annihilate itself. There is an urgency to develop a balance between the immense power of outside technologies and inner mastery in what Wilber calls Integral Growth, i.e. a balanced development of the interior and exterior conditions.
We will present pointers as to how to achieve this in subsequent articles and present the latest developments in these areas with examples taken from models that have been tested and proven “on site”, with individuals, in corporations, human groups, and even at government levels. In the meantime, one avenue of reflection is to ponder Einstein’s quote: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”, and ask ourselves “How does this applies to me?”
