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Looking at the future from the threshold of the global
age, leading thinkers around the world agree that Humankind still has
the resources, technology, and know-how to make the transition to a
form of civilisation that can be economically healthy, ecologically
sustainable, and fun to live in. (54)
Paradoxically, widespread ignorance of this fact is causing us to move
in the opposite direction – toward irreversible destruction of our
ecological life-support system, the risk of catastrophic international
credit collapse, and terminal resource wars. This situation is like a
black hole: the farther we get into it, the harder it will be to get
out, since the "window of opportunity" to make the transition to a
sustainable civilisation will not last far into the 21st. century.
There is still time – if we find a way to heal the illness at the
source.
A practical approach to healing this dis-ease comes into view if we describe it cybernetically as a blockage of information
in the metabolism of the global body-politic. Such an
information-blockage can be seen to operate simultaneously both
externally and internally. At the external level, there is a blockage
in the way information gets processed through the fragmented
specialised institutional metastructure of our social body politic –
i.e. the governments, corporations, banks, international agencies, Non
Governmental Organisations, educational systems, religious groups,
communications media and other institutions – through which we manage
our collective affairs. This blockage prevents individuals and
organisations from getting access to the sort of well-informed,
integrated world view which is the prerequisite for citizens to
exercise their franchise in a global democracy.
At the internal level, one can observe a widespread psychological
blockage which prevents individual men and women from understanding the
pattern that connects global issues to each other and to their own way
of seeing them. The people are educated to expect their leaders to do
their thinking for them, and therefore abdicate their personal
responsibility for the common good. And the leaders have been educated
to be specialists, with a marked predisposition to systematically
ignore the relationship between their area of expertise and the rest of
reality. The end result is that individual common sense has become the
largest untapped resource on the planet.
On both of these levels, the underlying source of the global crisis is
our inability to convert the available data to the kind of information
that can empower us to make a difference. But as every good doctor
knows, attacking the symptoms – no matter how valiant the effort – will
not heal the disease. I am talking about strategy.
If we really want to solve our global crisis before it becomes too
late, we are going to have to adopt a better approach than attacking
the symptoms. As long we imagine that technology will solve our problem
for us, or – conversely – project a negative, Apocalyptic image of the
future, all our efforts to save the world will consist of little more
than token gestures or well-meant attempts to modify the behaviour of
others. Saving a few acres of rain forest here, or outlawing the
emission of CFC's there is wonderful, but this is putting the cart
before the horse. What is the point in prohibiting some item of
antisocial behaviour, if the alienated mentality which produces the
behaviour in the first place is not improved?
In order to heal the disease we need to dissolve the
information-blockage. This requires an artistic approach to the use of
information.
I call this information-art,
in the sense that the medium in question is not paint or stone or
bronze, but information itself. Assuming that art-as-unique-artefact
has lost its meaning in this age of instantaneous digital
mass-reproduction, and that art-as-financial-commodity is irrelevant to
this discussion, then the challenge for the engagé artist is to create
information-environments which can inspire people to see for themselves
what they can do to participate in the historical task at hand. Guy
Debord, the principal founder of the Situationist International
group, wrote about "the construction of situations, that is to say, the
concrete construction of momentary ambience of life and their
transformation into a superior personal quality." (55) The information-art approach I have in mind is a kind of cybernetic shamanism.
If we fail to dissolve the information blockage, we must run the risk
that the sustainable global civilisation of the future may perish in
the hour of its birth. As Buckminster Fuller said, "the moment of birth
is the most dangerous time of all." But as Lao Tsu remarked, "a
disaster can easily be prevented before it happens." (56)
We should remember Confucius' observation "When people share a common
goal, their natural tendency is to cooperate in realising it." Without
a shared vision of where we want to go, there is little point in
setting out on the journey.
How then can we possibly hope to catalyse the massive co-operation that
is now so urgently required to bring about the development of a
sustainable civilisation, without first obtaining widespread prior agreement on the goal?
This is the prerequisite for a path of least resistance into the
future. We need a global vision: a realistic, positive image of
Humankind-and-the-Biosphere that can evoke meaning from all the peoples
of the world, empower us to implement the opportunities that surround
us, help us to discover what we can do to make a difference, and create
a future to which our children can look forward. (57)
By this I do not mean to suggest that we should foster a global
monoculture. On the contrary, cultural diversity – like biodiversity –
is a precious asset of tremendous long-term adaptive value, which must
be protected as much as possible. But since the reality to which we
must now adapt is global, each of our local cultures would greatly
benefit by expanding its local vision to planetary proportions. Within
the rich diversity of all the world's nations, we need a component of a
global world view in the consensual sense of a belief system that is
shared by the citizens of the planet as a whole.
Obviously, such an integrated world view – or metamyth – does not yet
exist. Nor can it be superficially manufactured through the
questionable means of propaganda or advertising. The personal values,
political premises, economic assumptions, and religious beliefs which
underpin the contemporary world views of Humankind's various cultural
groups appear, on the surface of things, too fragmented to reveal a
common understanding. But now that our human race includes one billion
Muslims, over a billion Chinese, a wealthy alliance of maladapted
industrialised nations and multinational corporations, and a rapidly
growing but desperately impoverished group of developing countries, how
are we all going to cooperate unless we can identify the humanity that
we have in common? Our present world views are like a broken mirror in
whose reflection we cannot even recognise our own face, much less trust
the person we see through the looking glass on the other side. In the
inner world of the psyche, it is the identity of humanity that is in
question. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?
Myth, as Joseph Campbell said, is a gift from the depths of the psyche.
Carl Jung saw its source in the deepest levels of the collective
unconscious. How then might we obtain an appropriate mythology for the
Global Age?
Like pearl divers in the sea, it has been the lot of certain artists to
plunge into these depths, to enter the other world of the collective
unconscious, to receive inspiration, and to return to the surface of
consensus reality bearing numinous symbols that can reflect the
insights of the collective Self in metaphorical forms appropriate to
their communities in place and time.
At Glenstal Abbey School in Ireland, I remember my art teacher Patrick
Doyle saying that the function of art is to make the unconscious
conscious. Not long afterwards, when I was twenty years old, I began to
carry out the basic research and development for an international,
participatory work of information-art called the Global Vision Project. It is conceived as a context of information or situation
for Humankind to see itself and the Biosphere as a whole system. Its
purpose is to promote the goal of a sustainable civilisation based on
renewable resources and common sense. I have described the project in
detail elsewhere, (58) so suffice it to say that it includes a film and television series, and a feature film.
It is learning-oriented rather than instructive. It entails the use of
communications technology – including personal computers, the Internet,
remote sensing satellites, television, cinema, music, theatre, and
dance. It is participatory, since it would obviously be preposterous
today for any single individual or group to propose a new mythology for
the world. It thus involves the participatory planning and creative
input of people and organisations from different disciplines and
different parts of the world. The ultimate goal of the Global Vision
Project is to produce a completely new kind of decentralised World Expo scheduled for early in the 21st. Century.
Whether the Global Vision Project will have its desired effect is
impossible for me to say. But I believe its conceptual premises are
sound, and as an artist I am committed to giving it my best shot.
Because the global scale of the undertaking has mythological
proportions in and of itself, I find that when I describe it to people,
they sometimes look at me with a strange look in their eyes, as if I
were either some kind of saviour, or harboured messianic delusions of
my own. The former transference makes me very uncomfortable; as regards
the latter, I certainly do not think this or any other project is going
to save the world!
What I do believe is simply this: since the interests of the person and
the planet are now the same, it must be possible for artists to create
symbols of this new condition that can transcend the obsolete divisions
between us and evoke sustainability as a common goal. The real work –
the work of personal and social transformation – is up to the people
themselves.
People often ask me to explain how this Project began. Well, the idea
came about through a visionary experience which it was my pleasure to
enjoy in Ireland some twenty years ago. I will attempt to describe this
for you in the pages that follow. Although the experience was very
personal, I want to share it as a testimony of how a non-ordinary state
of consciousness is nothing to be afraid of. Actually, it was very
enjoyable indeed.
It is often said that in order to imagine the future, one needs to look
into the past. As it happens, the inspiration for this Project came to
me during a visit to work of environmental art created a very long time
ago, in the stone age.
ON TO CHAPTER 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
GLOBAL VISION HOMEPAGE
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