The Prevailing Hierarchical Worldview
The prevailing hierarchical worldview pervades almost every aspect of human endeavour. It creates a false reasoning to uphold, a more or less, rigid social power structure, as a stabilized and continually reinforced vertical class system with most of the wealth being distributed to the wealthiest class, sometimes known as the oligarchic class or ‘the 1%’.
The hierarchical worldview that reaches around the globe has created and established a permanent, but growing, underclass, the homeless, as well as, a permanent class consisting of those living on, or below the poverty line. It also, underlies systemic racism, gender-inequality, and is, at the same time involved in tipping the scales of the oligarchic democracies to favour the few super rich oligarchs helping them to stabilize their increasingly obscene fortunes.
What is to be done, as far as, you and I are concerned? What we are continually examining here is how the ecological crises is sustained and stabilized by the prevailing hierarchical worldview making possible solutions impossible. On the other hand, it is possible to change the hierarchical world based on hierarchies within hierarchies to an ecological worldview based on ecosystem within ecosystems. Our present efforts to reduce the devastating effects of a largely unregulated fossil fuel industry have been proven to be unsuccessful. We have been unable to establish the necessary ecological balance that is necessary to sustain life on the planet. It seems that the hierarchical worldview has rendered both the oligarchic democracies and authoritarian regimes that exist in the world ineffective when they attempt to work through both social justice and ecological issues.
Is it not obvious that a fundamental and transformative breakthrough to an ecological consciousness operating within an ecological worldview is necessary? For an ecological consciousness, the main concern is to maintain a global, ecological balance resulting in the ongoing and sustainable diversity of life on the planet.
For over forty years, I have given workshops to small groups of people on Zen and Tai Chi in Canada, the United States and Mexico. For each talk or workshop, handouts would be given to the participants. I am now beginning my eighty-fifth year and have decided to put it all in this website, over a period of time. There is also a book, Breakthrough: A Paradigm shift to an Ecological Consciousness, as yet to be published.