Cause Course & Consequence

"Cause"

"Course"

"Consequence"

These three words carry a huge punch when it comes to providing a corollary to the net result of all activity in our world. Look at those words a little deeper and you will discover that they can apply to the activity of the rest of the universe too.

Culturally, humanity has the tendency to deal with problems by focusing on the elements of cause, course and consequence separately and, very seldom, focusing on the value of their collective effect as part of the sequence of events that frame the actual history of the problem.

Clearly, the results obtained in the handling of problems ranging from poverty to global warming, from conflict resolution to the economic crisis, suggests that this approach to problem solving doesn't work too well.

Consequently, we are obliged to live with the effect of that cultural deficiency the best way that we can.

Planet Earth 1.0 is the way it is because thousands of years ago we established a cultural direction and a purpose for it based upon our ideals at the time. But, in doing so we established (unknowingly) the "cause" that set in motion the course of events that have led to the set of circumstances we have today. As it turned out, Planet Earth 1.0 is the overlapping consequence of that initial choice.

The mood of resignation to our intractable condition is so pervasive that we are becoming accustomed to the outcome that our world as we know it will be destroyed and we seem to be fine with that. We even flock to the theaters to watch the many different projections of end-of-the-world outcomes. We marvel at the special effects and at the "realism" of these presentations. In a peculiar way, by doing so, we may be perpetuating the "course" needed to achieve a similar outcome in the real world.

As an artist I also dramatize these concerns. In doing so, I endeavor to present them at their ultimate scale and drive them to their obvious conclusion, as with the works that illustrate this blog.

Unlike the movies, my motive is to establish the character of what is happening in the world today. But, I also want to establish another vital point of contrast between Planet Earth 1.0 and Planet Earth 2.0 that leads to something much better.

In my last blog entry I suggested that government, science, mysticism, media and Nature are our derivative interpretation for one whole recipe for survival. I described it as a recipe whose interactions are mediated by a principle that is new to us but that is old news to Nature in its application.

Similarly, "cause, course and consequence" are dynamic elements of a progression or a sequence of events that are tightly related to each other and whose ultimate expression is the outcome of their combined effect.

Take a moment to reflect on our landscape of social ills. Naming a few --poverty, disease, corruption, crime, abuse of power and environmental disregard --should be enough for you to know what I'm talking about.

The cultural deficiency that allowed these problems to grow is simply that we have never known better. In the absence of the knowledge of a different approach, we just became committed to dealing with the effects. All we knew to do was to try to curb their ever expanding reach (the thousands of laws in effect testify to that cultural deficiency) instead of tapping in at the roots or point of origin and moving upwards from there to address the whole problem.

That is a compelling reason to why we seem to be stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over. About the only things that change is that each time we make the same mistake we do it bigger, more creatively and more costlier than before. But, why is this so?

Well, the answer can be found in our response to the cause, course and consequence of our activity and the culture that drives it. In the absence of something different or better our response becomes a vicious cycle that perpetuates the problem.

Just dealing with the deficiency that way becomes a matter of survival for those involved. In this scenario, the preservation of the various agencies that have been created to address the dislocated problem becomes more important than the problems that they are created to address. Health care is a classic example of this phenomenon.

It follows then that since populations grow exponentially the situation gets worse. So, here we are going down the creek without a paddle. Or are we?

I think it doesn't have to be this way.

There is more than plenty of things for all of us to do to fix this situation under the proper conditions. We only need to begin to manage whole problems and to find a lot less necessity to preserve the systems that are dependent on the problems for their existence.

Planet Earth 2.0 has more to offer because of its partnership with Nature. We now know what are the global effects of our poor management. We know that "cause, course and consequence" carried out over thousands of years on our own, away from Nature and without the understanding of their interactions doesn't work. The key to the mediation of their separate and combined effect requires a new partnership with Nature plus the use of a (still undisclosed) mediating principle that points the way to the winning recipe.

The illustrations above give us a cold perspective of the cause of our present course and a view into the logical outcome. But Nature's cause, course and consequence, as I have mentioned before, is to sponsor (create) conditions conducive to life. That outcome, after 3.8 billion years, is what is left of this beautiful world. It is our opportunity to use Nature's recipe and do the only thing that makes sense. We can begin to co-create a new world with our genius, together with Nature's tried and tested recipes and our courage to begin the transition from here to there.

For my next posting in this blog, I will drop the "S" word. I will begin to tell you why it took me half of a century to find it, to become familiar with it and then to bring its notion to you from Nature. I will begin to share why I spent so much time operating as an outsider of human nature and how my exile led to my return with the "S" word. I will begin to explain how I accomplished this on behalf of our children's children, but equally on behalf of all other life on our planet whose future also depends on whether humanity learns to make use of the "S" word or decides to stay the course that I illustrated above.

For your own copy of "Cause Course & Consequence" click on any of the images above.

Tiité