Introduction

The Emerging, Holistic Worldview

Awakening and Transformation of Consciousness

Reconnecting to Nature

Health and Healing

Socially Engaged Spirituality

Attempts at Manifestation

While the new worldview was formulated originally within physics, it has taken a long time for it to manifest in the social sciences, economics, politics, social structures, and lifestyles. In terms of actively trying to manifest the new worldview, most initiatives have come from the thousands of Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) around the world. Most such initiatives are single issue campaigns, but a few have a holistic approach, such as Permaculture, the Ecovillage movement and Integral theories /Spiral Dynamics, which we will look at more closely. Together, the NGO initiatives play a very significant role in manifesting the emerging worldview in this transition period.

The United Nations made a major effort at the threshold of entering the third millennium to raise global awareness by sponsoring a series of global conferences on important themes:  Environment and Development (Rio 1992); Human Rights (Vienna 1993); Population and Development (Cairo 1994); The Social Summit (Copenhagen 1995); Conference on Women (Beijing 1995); Human Settlements (Istanbul 1996); and Sustainable Development or “Rio+10” (Johannesburg 2002). 

Contributions from the business sector have been quite limited. For example, the Social Impact Leadership Coalition (SILC) is a “network of networks” comprised of fourteen national non-profit organizations that focus on socially responsible business and issues of economic justice. The ultra-short planning horizon of the business world does not encourage manifestation of long term shifts, and when it does it is mostly reactive and adaptive.

Governments and politicians in our day are very much allied with the business world and subject to the same tendencies to prioritize the short term and personal power and be generally reactive. They serve primarily market forces, which tend to be divisive and destructive rather than unifying. Today’s political leaders are currently followers rather than leaders of social and environmental movements, and hence in the shift in worldview.

Universities are traditionally ultra conservative and have for the most part hindered the new worldview from manifesting, much as they hindered change in the 16th century when they stubbornly taught only Aristotle. People like Rudolf Steiner, Bill Mollison, James Lovelock, Elisabet Sahtouris, David Korten, Erik Damman, Ken Wilber and many other new paradigm thinkers have had to or have chosen to work outside the universities. 

• List of a few NGO’s manifesting the new worldview
• Permaculture
• The Ecovillage Movement

May East, program director of Gaia Education, speaking with Ban Ki-Moon, The UN Secretary General, in May 2008.

The four elements were used initially by the GEN founders to describe the ecovillage concept and a new worldview. The spiritual was the most important for most, but also the most difficult to deal with.