April 27, 2008
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Relative to considerations with Al Gore, in particular, I mentioned this lecture he gave in March, which I saw a couple of days ago, in which he was speaking very strongly, and it seemed, in a kind of frustration, that there needs to be a change of consciousness.
That’s what has to happen. It requires not only everybody working together, but it has to be done quickly, too. He is reduced to, basically, throwing this out in a lecturer or educator manner, and there is nothing he can do about it. He doesn’t really have a handle at this point on just exactly what to do about it. He is calling for a certain kind of activism, but what that particularly is and how it would be managed and become effective is not really there altogether. The instrument for it is not clear to him. But what he is calling for relative to global warming is something that requires a discipline of humankind that covers virtually everything. It is not just about carbon emissions and such.
To speak to him in a personal manner, you can just see in his body that he is a consumer. He’s a person who is habituated to more or less the western good life attitude about how to live. And yet, he’s calling for people to practice discipline relative to one little compartmentalized dimension of life, which has to do with something about carbon emissions and so forth. Must transcend the consumer society to solve its problems.
Really, if you look at the whole span of problems that humankind faces, it is about transcending this consumer society madness, in which every ego is looking to be fulfilled and expects to have the goods delivered by state and commerce combined, and so forth, and all kinds of consolations to be delivered by religion and whatever, entertainment, and so on. This self-indulgent consumerism that demands absolute individual self-fulfillment is really the cause of the culture of carbon emissions. It’s just part of a total culture of self-indulgence. If he looks at his own person, then, looks at himself as a whole, for one thing he’s overweight. He is not gross or anything, but you can just see in him the habits of a consumer. He is talking to a global society, and a particular American society, which is a society of addicts, a global society of self-indulgent people who are demanding more and more. And they are not going to deal with carbon emissions, unless they deal with the whole thing.
Humankind must accept discipline of its global self-indulgence That means humankind as a whole must accept a discipline. Reality itself will catch up sooner or later, or the realities of the world will eventually become so damaging, so difficult, that it will discipline everybody. It is already happening. But if people could be disciplined more intelligently, if the sphere of humankind were managed such that the grossest indulgence, the global self-indulgence of humankind were disciplined, then, and only then, will the solutions be generated that deal with all aspects, not only global warming, but everything altogether in this colossal picture of the collective suffering of human beings.
Global Cooperative Forum is a means for disciplining humankind The Global Cooperative Forum, then, is a means for formalizing the necessary discipline for humankind, and seeing to it. And that means before disaster requires it, or before absolute disaster requires it. Humankind must accept discipline now. It is a disciplining of the ego-bound consumer culture.
That is where exploitation and fossil fuels and so forth is coming from anyway. The culture of automobiles is the culture of consumerism. It’s a way of life that westerners have been developing and living for a long time now. And the reason they were able to do it is because the rest of the world wasn’t doing it.
Now, the whole world wants to be involved in middleclass consumerism. If that is done, global warming is going to shut down the earth. It is already happening. The Chinese are becoming global consumers Just a few years ago, the Chinese were a peasant society. Now they are becoming global consumers, and competing with the U.S., Europe and so forth for access to resources, including fossil fuels and so forth.
So the entire globe is threatened by consumerism. That is the problem. There must be self-discipline on the part of individuals, but also self-discipline on the part of humankind as a whole. And that must be governed. The means must be global. It is the Global Cooperative Forum that would be the means for doing this. Individuals, otherwise, are not going to decide it.
To simply give lectures and hope that people will respond and discipline themselves a little bit, change their light bulbs, put solar panels on their roofs and so forth, that’s piecemeal and certainly not going to be done enough to make enough difference anyway. It is a discipline that is all embracing, that covers everybody, that is explained to everybody, but then governed on a global scale.
So everybody must equally embrace the discipline. And it covers everything down to the culture of individual existence. It is not negative, but it is a discipline that’s required. And there is currently no instrument for the governing of humankind on the basis of principles that transcend self-discipline, and that therefore transcend the disaster making habits of consumer society.
Merely being a lecturer in that is a career or a profession or a life activity that will become more and more frustrated. He’s already frustrated because he has come up against a wall. He has no means. He can’t do this. Giving more lectures is not going to change it. He gives thousands of lectures. Over and over again, he gives lectures and has been doing it for years. It changes little.
He’s gotten his payoff; he got his Nobel Prize, and that’s the end. He didn’t get a job, he got a prize. Whereas, what should have been done is he was given a job that’s part of a large body of people who must manage and serve the management of humankind as a whole. And that’s what the Global Cooperative Forum is for. It’s not some totalitarian regime; it’s the cooperative of humankind as a whole. But it necessarily has to have some mechanism for governance based on the agreed upon principles, which must first be announced, explained to everybody, justified. And that that’s that.
Humankind must accept discipline, or it will destroy itself That’s how it must be. Humankind must accept discipline for itself in the future, or it is going to destroy itself, and it’s going to destroy the environment in which human life, and in fact all life, depends.
So Al Gore, for example, would have to look at his entire life to see why the people he is lecturing don’t respond or respond only by making token gestures. Why is that? Why are they resistive? For the same reason he is resistive to reforming his own life as a whole, as a total reform. He is the overfed persona typical of consumer culture. He is a beneficiary of it–which is not to criticize him in some personal manner. It is just that he represents the disposition, and also the resistance then, that is the characteristic of humankind altogether.
Why don’t the people he lectures to respond? For the same reason he doesn’t respond. By simply disciplining his life as a whole and changing his life altogether, making his life altogether lawful in all terms, including, ultimately, Spiritual terms. It requires a response to Me. And humankind has to change its act, but in every respect, every dimension altogether.
The world cannot go on and become a self-indulgent consumer society anymore, and be one anymore, and solve global warming and other issues. It simply cannot be done. Global warming is a product of consumer, ego-bound society Global warming is a product of consumer society, which is ego-bound society, the pursuit through self-indulgence and self-glorification, the pursuit of a kind of utopia for the ego, fulfillment in this world, which is not possible for the world as a whole and for humankind as a whole.
Westerners have been living in a fantasy for centuries, in which they had the power, through self-indulgent, consumer means, to develop their own illusory social circumstances. Now the entire world wants to do the same. And it is clear, if the entire world lived as westerners have been living, the world will be destroyed. Already, the competition for resources is so great, people are starving everywhere. It’s not just fossil fuel. There is disaster happening with food costs and so forth.
The world is in chaos because it’s not being managed. All systems would be self-rightening, self-governing if they were permitted to be that. Must be a governing principle for the domain of humankind There has to be a governing principle, therefore. There has to be a governing principle in the individual. There likewise has to be a governing principle in the domain of humankind as a whole. There isn’t any.
The Global Cooperative Forum is to be the governing principle for humankind as a whole. In that sphere, every individual will be self-governing and responsive to principles of participation cooperatively with all other human beings. This is the great enterprise, then. And this is what this generation must do, because if it doesn’t do it, future generations are going to be defeated by the happenings in this current generation. It is the obligation of this generation to establish the Global Cooperative Forum as the means for the self-governing of humankind as a whole.
The Global Cooperative Forum I propose represents an approach that is entirely different from all past or present efforts to reduce conflict and to achieve real peace. The Global Cooperative Forum I propose represents the emergence of a truly “everybody-all-at-once” political, social, economic, and cultural force* – which will allow and enable humankind to exercise its inherent right and necessity to function as a self-organizing, self-correcting, and self-rightening global cooperative collective.
The Global Cooperative Forum I propose is not based on grandiose speeches about great principles. Nor is the Global Cooperative Forum based on each human being becoming associated with one or another well-intentioned special-interest group. Neither of those approaches is capable of accomplishing the great changes that are now required in the human world. In fact, both of those approaches effectively prevent the self-organizing, self-correcting, and self-rightening process of humankind from emerging. That self-organizing, self-correcting, and self-rightening process must be allowed to freely function in order to reverse the disaster that is now in process. Humankind-as-a-whole-everybody-all-at-once-must be enabled to re-acquire the intrinsic ability to self-organize, self-correct, and self-righten, and thereby prevent the potential termination of human life on Earth...>>>
