Economic and financial systems are in crisis, and the sticking plaster remedies that are being applied are beginning to unravel themselves, as the scale of the wounding emerges. The Eurozone is stumbling on with vast bail-outs to a country such as Greece whose inhabitants have clearly had enough. This is, as most of us know, the thin end of the wedge, and Spain, Italy and Portugal may soon be in the same boat. With Germany and France in uneasy collusion, and the UK standing imperiously apart, it feels like some bizarre replay of the Second World War. In the meantime, revolutions, civil wars are being acted out in the ancient countries of Iran, Iraq, Syria. Thirty years ago, the events of , for example, Syria, would become the dominant story for a long period of time, At present, however, everywhere we look, we can see destruction, violence and uncertainty.
In the UK, however, it is still business as usual. We can still look at the ‘Antiques Roadshow’ on a Sunday, and Agatha Christie still graces our screens. As does the new ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ in which the depiction of events coming up to the Second World War become alarmingly vivid, as the collective atmosphere of events unfolding in the present, in these different countries, impacts us through television and internet. Whilst we may continue to entertain ourselves with these comforting programmes which help distance us from the current crises, it is becoming more and more impossible to avoid the fact that we are globally interconnected. ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ may still be playing, but in the UK we are educating thousands of students who are coming from these war-torn countries. Unemployment has never been so high, and there are greater and greater numbers of people presenting with mental health issues. We cannot continue to ignore the great sickness of our planet by denying the interconnectedness of the human species.
At the heart of many of these problems is the world-wide imbalance between the rich and the poor, and the damage that is being inflicted in maintaining this imbalance. This is a very sick patient, where a minor part of the body politic and social receives attention, and the house in which the patient lives is tumbling down. This is truly pathological, and can only be resolved by waking up to the reality, and collectively working to the building up of something new.
What might this take? This will take place at many different levels: a new worldview fuelled by the findings of new science and evolutionary biology and supported by spiritual and therapeutic practice; a complete re-adjustment of the role of money in our interconnected systems such that the energy that is locked up in the imbalance revitalises the other parts of the body; opening to a world-wide healing process that works at individuals and at the collective levels.
The first steps however, are baby ones: the acknowledgement and understanding of how it is that we have come to this impasse, in order to learn how not to do the same things. For this, we will need collective compassion, forgiveness and love. From this place, all is possible.
