The Age of Water

For tens of thousands of years, fire has defined our civilization. It is fire that has allowed us to smelt metals, to purify chemicals, to power cars, trains and airplanes, to pave over the earth and travel to the moon. Without fire there would be no silicon chips, no pharmaceutical drugs, no plastic toys, no guns or bombs, no televisions or computers. Ours is an Age of Fire, an age which is rapidly drawing to a close.


The Age of Fire is an age of separation, during which humans have sought to dominate and control nature. From the very beginning, the circle of the campfire divided the world into two parts: the safe, domestic part, and the wild. Here was the hearth, the center of the circle of domesticity. Here was warmth, keeping the cold world at a distance. Here was safety, keeping predators at bay. Here was light, defining a human realm but making the night beyond all the deeper, all the more alien. Outside the circle of firelight was the other, the wild, the unknown.

The Age of Fire is also an age of domination. The original technologies of fire mostly employed wood, thereby removing it from the normal biological cycle and preempting the natural flow of matter and energy. No longer did it nourish generations of insects, fungi, and soil. Today we burn oil, not wood, but the mentality of burning is the same: the arrogation of stored energy to human purposes of control, accompanied by the degradation of other phases of the cycle in an unsustainable pretense of eternal linear growth.

The unsustainability of our present system derives from its linearity, its assumption of an infinite reservoir of inputs and limitless capacity for waste. Fire is a fitting metaphor for such a system, for it involves a one-way conversion of matter from one form to another, liberating energy-heat and light-in the process. Just as our economy is burning through all forms of stored cultural and natural wealth to liberate energy in the form of money, so also does our industry burn up stored fossil fuels to liberate the energy that powers our technology. Both generate heat for a while, but also increasing amounts of cold, dead, toxic ash and pollution, whether the ash-heap of wasted human lives or the strip-mine pits and toxic waste dumps of industry.

The end of the Age of Fire promises a reversal of the course of separation and domination that fire has fueled. Immersed as we are in the ideology of separation, it is hard to conceive of a mode of technology that does not involve the objectification, domination, and control of nature. Yet such technologies exist, even if we hardly recognize them as such. They are based not on fire but on earth, water, light, sound, and the human body. Rooted in an ancient past, they nonetheless carry the promise of a "new age." Who knows what unconscious wisdom has named it the "Age of Aquarius"?

Water carries metaphorical connotations very different from those of fire. Water denies linearity: cycling endlessly, it is also the agent of nature's cycles, nourishing both growth and decay. Similarly it resists separation: named the "universal solvent," it tends away from purity to partake of its environment. Water is also the nemesis of control. Seeking out the tiniest crack, nothing can hold it in. As waves in the ocean, it destroys any bulwark. Whereas fire burns clean and purifies what it touches, water makes a mess. Hence the key to preserving anything - houses, books, food, clothes, metal - is to keep it dry.

Water, with its cycles and flows, its unruliness and its ubiquity on earth, could be called the essence of nature. Our dependence on water, the fact that we are made mostly of water, denies the primary conceit of civilization; that we are separate from nature or even nature's master. No more nature's master are we, than we are the master of water!

Yet for centuries we have tried to persuade ourselves otherwise. In science our pretense of mastery manifests most fundamentally in the supposition that water is a structureless jumble of identical molecules, a generic medium, any two drops the same. That any two samples of H2O, or graphite, or ethanol, or any other pure chemical are identical is a dogma with enormous ramifications. It implies that the complexity and uniqueness of objects of our senses is an illusion, that they are mere permutations of the same standard building blocks. Such a view naturally corresponds to the objectification of the world, which makes of it a collection of things, masses.

The opposite view sees every piece of the universe as unique. No two drops of water, no two rocks, no two electrons are identical, but each has a unique individuality. This is essentially the view of animism, which assigned to each animate and inanimate object a spirit. To a Stone Age person, the idea that water from any source had a unique character or spirit would have seemed obvious. Modern chemistry denies it and says any apparent differences are merely due to impurities -- the underlying water is the same. Animism say no-to have a spirit is to be unique, irreducibly and intrinsically unique. To have a spirit is to be special.

One consequence is that we cannot escape the effects of our thoughts, words, and actions. Released into the universe, they leave their imprint there, in effect reconfiguring the reality in which we live. In an Age of Water we will understand this principle. In contrast, today's ideology of the technological fix assumes that we can forever avoid the effects of our depredations, like an addict making the pain go away with another drink. But eventually, when the fixes stop working and the costs become unbearable, we will understand that, like water, all things eventually cycle back to their source.

An Age of Water will imitate the water cycle in its economics as well. Fire is the epitome of consumption, as indeed we have experienced in our millennia-long incineration of social and natural capital. Today, though, we are already seeing the precursors to the cyclical economy of the Age of Water. Waste recycling is only a start, as is zero-waste manufacturing, full-cost accounting (eliminating externalities), and non-interest currency systems. Eventually, all will coalesce into what Paul Hawken calls an "industrial ecology", mimicking the ecology of nature in which "waste is food."

Perhaps the most profound transformation of the Age of Water will be in our spirituality; how we relate ourselves to the universe. Above, when speaking of animism, it was said that each water droplet or other object "has a unique spirit," but that is not quite correct. The conception of spirit as something to be "had," and therefore extrinsic to matter, is a metaphor of separation and of fire. What animism actually implies is that each thing is a unique spirit, that matter itself is spiritual, sacred, and special. Spirit can no more be abstracted out from matter than structure can be removed from the water that carries it. The Age of Water, then, is an age in which we treat the earth and everything in it as sacred.

At the same time, water teaches us that the unique spirit of any bit of matter is not discrete and separate from the rest of reality. Like all things including ourselves, water takes on the spiritual qualities of everything that surrounds it; thanks to its ubiquity and receptivity, it is also the medium of this communion of all with all. Unique we are, each one of us, yet no more separate than two drops of water in the ocean.

Ashes, Descent And Grief

"I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.

And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.

I am ill because of the wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self -

and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help

and patience, and a certain difficult repentance

long difficult repentance, realization of life's mistake, and the freeing oneself

from the endless repetition of the mistake

which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify." - D.H. Lawrence

Quotation Nation

"With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another." - Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins

Forward Into The Past

The signs are there, as they usually are. The further our species evolves, the closer we get to our origins. Let's take a look at a potted history of the anthropological progression. Man starts migrating out of southern Africa, up into the Rift Valley of present day Kenya and over the then shallow isthmus of the Red Sea into the Arabian peninsula. From that point millenia will pass, but eventually discrete cultures and civilizations will follow; each with a distinct set of skills to conquer their immediate environment. Not long after the landmasses are settled the need for domination will rise, which begets war and empire. This rapidly escalates the development of technology and the possibility of auto extinction, followed in quick succession by over exploitation of commerce and the mismanagement of natural resources.


Today our issues are rapidly moving away from our national differences and gaining pace towards our common evolutionary needs; not unlike the early homo sapiens. The 'tribe' has grown and diversified, but the challenge remains - how to evolve successfully. Tracing the trajectory of this evolution, it becomes abundantly clear that we are due for another major developmental shift. Combine this with the fact that our global system of governance is failing to deliver such progress, and it must follow that we can only turn to our individual selves for answers. The key lies in a global effort towards enabling personal power; power based on emotional intelligence, individual responsibility and unity conciousness. The affairs of man now requires greater ambition than mere systemic tinkering. We can no longer afford being trapped by the inefficiencies of heritage and legacy. Below is an excerpt from "The 2008 Shift Report: Changing the Story of Our Future" by Matthew Gilbert, Executive Editor and Project Director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences :

One of the most significant recent shifts in worldwide consciousness is a growing awareness and alarm about global warming and planetary instability, along with a decline in trusting governments and other mainstream institutions to tell the truth and take effective action. At the same time, trust in NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and other groups actively working to bring about positive change is strong and steadily growing. As just one “tipping point” in a series of crucial shifts necessary for global transformation, ecological issues may be the most important. In evolving from unusual to common, eco-consciousness is rapidly integrating itself into our social, political, and economic realities. We may be entering the opening stages of what industrial designer Bruce Mau calls the “massive change”—the emergence of a new culture with a new economy and new industries based in a new political system. With a growing understanding that humanity may not have a generation of time left for more trial and error, work that previously languished in the realm of theory has suddenly taken on new urgency and meaning, while new connections are being made among pressing issues that long appeared to be unrelated or fragmented.

Most significantly, we have come to recognize that our ecological crises are a by-product of a flawed economic system and that the system itself is becoming increasingly impacted by—and dependent upon—global conflict and natural disasters. Such a system, addicted to continuous economic growth as tracked by a narrow set of indicators, is proving catastrophic for large numbers of people and their land base. Those who offer a different way of measuring health and prosperity have brought strong challenges against this pervasive economic model. They are working to build a “green” or “caring” or “partnership” economy based on the values of social justice and sustainability, and they are attracting new levels of support while generating tangible, in-the-field results. This unprecedented and widespread response has translated into a renewed sense of purpose and action. The instant availability of vast amounts of new information has allowed greater numbers of people to educate themselves about a variety of issues and to plug into both on-the-ground and virtual networks of change. These efforts are emerging in a multitude of ways as a kind of “swarm intelligence” that is attacking the problems at innumerable inner and outer tension points, constituting what is being called the largest movement of change on Earth.

However, organized responses to social inequities and injustices have struggled in recent years to evolve alongside rapid changes in world dynamics and the new challenges those shifts present. Many organizations and causes within a fragmented network clamor for support, and true progress is often difficult to discern. The perceived failure of the peace and environmental movements, for example, to bring about lasting change has burned cynicism into many activists, at a time when nearly all assessments point to an intensification of the problems facing humanity. As a result, many social change movements have become stuck. But this period of frustration is also catalyzing a much-sought-after evolution in philosophy and strategy. The acceleration of change and the greater imperative brought about by the growing awareness of what are being called the “convergent crises”—resource depletion, peak oil, climate change, systems collapse, and economic instability—are forcing adaptation on both the individual and institutional fronts. Once-moribund activist practices and daunting social change work are being creatively reinvigorated. Effective alternatives to such traditional social change strategies as marches, rallies, and regulated not-for-profits reflect a wealth of new thinking on organizing models that take advantage of the emerging dynamics of collaboration, decentralization, autonomy, flexibility, and technological nimbleness.

With many postmodern theorists advocating a unification of ancient tribal wisdom with conventional science and reason as the next phase of human evolution, it is no surprise that neotribalism, particularly as it applies to organizing people into ad hoc tribal councils or councils of elders, has experienced a revival. One interesting and effective example of this is the growing popularity of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers and its work with the largely science-and-action driven Bioneers organization, which has been sponsoring annual gatherings of scientists and social innovators since 1990. Another hopeful sign is the formation of The Elders, a group of thirteen global leaders—including Gro Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, and Arch-bishop Desmond Tutu—who are applying their collective experience and leadership to such troubled areas as Darfur, the Middle East, and Zimbabwe.

In Chicago, San Francisco, and other cities, “urban tribes” of artists, activists, healers, and eco-practitioners are preparing for an uncertain future by forming councils to identify key issues and plans of preparation and action. Many of these tribes were born out of the Burning Man subculture and other communities of cultural creatives. These intentional groupings tend to self-organize in an egalitarian, nonhierarchical manner. Many are united by a common spiritual practice and share an understanding that personal transformation is the first step toward global transformation. This subculture also produced Burners Without Borders (BWB), which started when a group of participants left the 2005 Burning Man Festival to help clear debris in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Autonomous and decentralized BWB groups are now active in community service in more than a dozen U.S. cities, the United Kingdom, and Peru.

In cities across the world, the urban garden movement has exploded as communities harness the potential of vacant, unused property, while urban farms are developing in response to concerns about obesity, food quality, and sustainable economics. Many U.S. churches have gone green, eschewing their traditional conservative partisan affiliations, while renewing their commitment to biblical stewardship of the Earth. Community-based solutions for the disenfranchised homeless and ex-offender population inspired the state of Vermont to create a program that reintegrates ex-offenders into their communities through “surrogate families.” The program helps to ease the difficulties of transition and to dispel negative stereotypes of the so-called ex-convict. Underscoring much of these positive shifts in action is a sense that a spiritual approach to the convergent crises will, in the end, be most effective. The concept of spiritually-based activism, or the pairing of inner work and outer work, is a theme found in the teachings of most major religions. What is different about such activism in the emergent paradigm is that it acknowledges the limitations of both the detached, self-serving nature of the bliss-seeking personality and the angry self-righteousness of the activist personality.

Mystical scholar Andrew Harvey describes this “sacred activism” as “the fusion of the deepest mystical knowledge, peace, strength, and stamina with calm, focused, and radical action.” The spiritual grounding of the mystical allows the activist to turn fear into compassion; the clear agenda-driven work of the activist half gives applied expression to innate wisdom. There has been perhaps no greater symbolic expression of this idea in current times than what the world recently witnessed in Burma/Myanmar, as lines of solemn, saffron-clad monks marched in peaceful protest against an oppressive military regime. As Jungian influenced writer Paul Levy described it: “The situation in Burma/Myanmar is an out-picturing on the world stage of a deeper, archetypal process that exists enfolded within the collective unconscious of our species. What is being played out in Burma is a living ‘symbol’ of a deeper, mythic process which is currently enacting itself in a variety of scenarios around the world.” In sum, the evidence suggests that a legion of autonomous individuals and groups connecting through a shared system of values into one global network of change, along with concurrent trends toward focused inner work, foretell an upswelling of profound social change throughout the world. These activists are perhaps the greatest symbols of our collective potential.