Response To An Optimist’s Worldview

Lynn is a life coach for business executives. This email exchange took place this weekend after a stimulating phone conversation on Friday. It reflects the worldviews of two people living on different planets. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which one is Earth.

--------

Hi Martin,

Thank you for following up. I've been in client sessions and traveling these last two days.

I've reflected on our conversation since we spoke, and now on your email. My sense of your statements is that they emerge from a worldview that doesn't appear to leave room for other alternatives.

For example, you say (emphasis mine) "what I’m saying is that without a breakthrough in human consciousness (which has not occurred and is not happening)..." That has not been my experience after researching and working in the realm of conscious business since 2016. In this domain alone, huge breakthroughs have occurred and continue to occur. So, too, in a variety of areas of human consciousness.

Breakthrough isn't an instant change that resets the world. It begins with awareness and commitment to embark on an emergent process of personal and social evolution that ebbs and flows just as the tides of change ebb and flow within society.

Given our very different perspectives, I'm not sure our inquiry would get very far and would likely create a lot of frustration. I spend my energy working with people who are moving forward with the incredible wave of change occurring around us. I appreciate where you are in your own journey of consciousness and your dedication to finding answers!

If you are curious, there are countless resources that demonstrate the work being done from the ongoing breakthrough in human consciousness about business and social change. I have dozens of references in my Doctoral Proposal documenting the progress through academic research.

Regards,

Lynn

-------

Dear Lynn,

We seem to be living on different planets. Obviously the universal human tendency to see what we want to see rather than see things as they are increases when the profit motive is involved.

It’s ironic that you say my worldview “doesn’t leave room for other alternatives,” when man is destroying all outward and inward space. You clearly mean 'other perspectives’ when you say "other alternatives." Our intent is to bring together people who can truly question together, people who don't believe they already have the answers. It begins each time we gather by seeing the same thing at the same time at the same level. That is both impossible and undesirable to an individualistic mindset that maintains, "we all have different perspectives." What we're offering is a true alternative approach to the individualistic idea that pits 'my perspective' against 'your perspective.'

Also, it isn't a matter of different domains ("in this business domain alone"), but of human consciousness as whole. Content consciousness is one movement, even if it’s the sum of billions of separate selves. Likewise, "varieties of human consciousness" doesn't refer to an actuality, but reflects the same separative thinking that's fragmenting the earth and humanity to the breaking point.

"Breakthrough isn't an instant change that resets the world" is a reductio ad absurdum. Please reflect on this truth by a great 20th century religious philosopher: "No teacher, however illumined, has changed the basic course of humankind." The planet is now in much more peril, and human consciousness much darker than when that truth was spoken. It's wishful thinking of a most dangerous kind to assert otherwise, and such “optimism,” as you asserted on the phone, contributes to the widespread hopelessness and despair that so many people, especially young people feel. It's self-comforting, and doesn't reflect reality, much less the truth.

There is no such thing as "personal and social evolution." The idea of gradual, piecemeal change employing time is the greatest impediment to transformation.

Likewise the "tides of change ebbing and flowing in society." What society are you living in? Will it take the re-election of Trump to show what's actually happening in America? Will it take a nuclear war to show that human civilization isn't "evolving?"

You say you’re “moving forward with the incredible wave of change occurring around us.” However what may appear to be moving forward may actually be moving backward. Certainly there’s an “incredible wave of change happening around us,” but there is very little change happening within people.

Serious people are asking whether the basic, disastrous course of man can change at this juncture. Again, that has not happened and is not happening, no matter how much we may want to think and may profit from believing otherwise.

"I trust the work you do brings value in your field of perspective" is a business mode of thinking misapplied to the question of human consciousness and transformation. Philosophy is not a "field of perspective," but a life of inquiry dedicated to the truth, however uncomfortable and painful it is. I don't claim to have the truth, only to see what is false, what isn't true. The prevailing, conventional mode of separative, time-bound thinking (irrespective of business) is the source of the crisis of consciousness, and contributes to the fragmentation of the earth and humanity.

“I appreciate where you are in your own journey of consciousness” is cleverly superior, implying you’ve gone much further. I agree that you wouldn't, at present, be a good candidate for the core group that’s holding the question: Can the basic, disastrous course of man change at this juncture?

Regards,

Martin

PS I'm forwarding you an interview with a JPL scientist. I trust it will give you pause to deeply reflect on your worldview.

Link: Peter Kalmus: ‘As a species, we’re on autopilot, not making the right decisions’
The NASA data scientist explains why inaction on the climate crisis pushed him to chain himself to an LA bank – and why trusting in the ‘people in charge’ is so dangerous

Read in The Guardian: https://apple.news/Ao5LmljoKR5m1pObmI7rmOw

© Scoop Media