Why the World is Breaking Down and How it is Renewing
Mighty, seemingly unbreakable civilizations rose and fell. Historians of all times and futurists try to trace the signs of decline and predict the end of an era. Can we predict the collapse of a civilization, just as Cassandra predicted the end of the Trojans and the Greek historian Polybius foresaw the demise of the Roman Empire some 600 years before it fell? Can we see the warning lights when as a society we are running at an ever-increasing speed towards a cliff? Can we choose to avert civilizational collapse by redirecting and engendering a deep renewal? This is the territory of this week's writing This Epochal Moment.
Just like a series of tremors prior to an earthquake, there can be many signs of an imminent collapse. What is happening in the world today seems startling. The operating system that enabled modern life as we know it appears to be crashing. The key questions now are: Is this an irreversible slide into continual degradation that will ultimately lead to civilization’s end? Or is there an evolutionary path to reboot and regeneration? If so, how would we spot the signs of such renewal?
This is Aviv writing on behalf of the Portals team with a deeper look into the underlying influences shaping the ecological, economic and cultural crises gripping much of humanity and the planet. It seems to a lot of people that this time of profound change is something more than short-term predictable corrections in various global systems we might expect.
In the conversation Homo Universalis Project #10: Why the World is Breaking Down, I am joined by Portals friends Karen Heney and Kyriaki Nikandrou as we seek to appreciate this epochal moment. The conversation centers on diagnosing why the modern Blue Operating System is now crumbling.
This conversation took place in September 2023, and coincided with various world events and turmoil, including the war in Ukraine, and the constitutional crisis in Israel concerning the separation of powers. Much of what we explore here appears even more pertinent now a year later.
- What is going on in the world?
- Why does it feel in many places as though the epoch is regressing?
- What could be the evolutionary reason and purpose in what is now unfolding?
Join us on Friday, September 13th at 11:30am EDT for a 2-hour free event based on the writing: This Epochal Moment. Send your link request below and, if you've read the episode, include any questions you'd like to see addressed.
These questions are central to the Portals project. To be able to approach these inquiries from a vantage point different from the frame of mind that created the problems humanity is facing now, we need to start by better appreciating the function of the Blue fractal in the epochal progression. As we describe in Universalis conversations 5, 6, and 7, in the Epochal evolutionary story, each of the sevenfold color spectrum represents a pattern, bringing emerging potencies and possibilities that influence human response and activate capacities latent in the human; every fractal corrects or balances the fractal before.
Red represents an originating point and thus carries a singular nature to it. Orange comes to expand the range. Yellow reorchestrates and realigns the expanded territory with a unifying principle. Green then offers a regenerative uplift and a sense of rejuvenation.
In this evolutionary trace, Blue holds a special function. Nothing in our civilization, in our modern life, in our cities, works without Blue. For example, if we think of a city, or of an airport terminal, we easily come to the conclusion that these cannot function without Blue.
Blue guarantees energy supply, food distribution, clean sewage, safe driving on the freeway, safety that your home was built to code. Everything about modern life was made possible and programmed by Blue coordination and engineering. We are describing here the Blue fractal as the supportive ways, means and infrastructure, enabling coordination and cooperation, including any unwritten code people support, like standing in line.
This way of decoding the evolutionary trace offers a lens different from narratives that describe definitive development stages, such as the transition through prehistoric, ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. The sevenfold epoch insight decodes the seven fractals as they emerge through each of these development stages.
One example is in seeing the expansionary Orange impulse as it plays out in the ancient world in the expansion of the Roman Empire, a pattern that reasserts itself again through the rise of the mercantilist expansion of the British Empire.
Blue is present early in tribal societies and then in the ancient civilizations as they each responded to coordination and regulation needs. Our focus here is on the modern Blue Operating System, which arose through the Enlightenment in the 17th-18th centuries, and how and why it is reaching now a reckoning moment of implosion or transition.
What did the Blue architecture enable?
The Blue Operating System became the foundation of the free-market economy and liberal democracies. The Enlightenment brought political modernization to the West, introduced democratic values and institutions, and the rise of the public sphere, where open and accessible forms of urban public space facilitated social innovation, and the circulation of ideas through the explosion of print culture.
With the achievements of the modern project, it also brought intricate problems that are now driving humanity and the planet to the brink of global systemic breakdown.
What did the modern Blue move come to solve?
Possibly, the Blue impulse came to do away with subjugation, unresolved conflicts, disorder, injustice, superstition, inequality, magical thinking, cruelty, despotic oppression, slavery, disregard for life, industrial poison, and much more modernity attempted to leave behind.
Why is the Blue Operating System breaking down?
This is the conundrum we are seeking to diagnose. When a plane crashes, investigators seek to identify the root causes by a thorough examination of a possible malfunction in the systems and processes designed to secure the safety of the flight. To do that, they need to have a deep knowledge of all the aircraft systems, the environmental conditions, and all other supportive operations involved. Similarly, in order to investigate where the bugs are in the Blue Operating System, we need to understand the component parts that constitute a healthy Blue system, functioning in an as was meant to be way.
To deepen our understanding and become diagnostic about why the Blue architecture is breaking down as we have been moving into the Indigo merging and transference of new capacities and capabilities, and into the Violet phase shift, we are developing a loom of the Blue operating system layers in its natural as was meant to be intent.
Then we can inquire about the Indigo-Violet intensification underway and openly search to find emergent signs of redemptive renewal.
Find out more by listening to the conversation or reading the full This Epochal Moment writing, which evolved from the transcript of the conversation and includes many additional insights. We also explore other steps we can take to develop deeper understanding and intelligence about facing these challenging times in Inner Conclave Consciousness with Portals friend Jeff Vander Clute.
Join us on Friday, September 13th at 11:30am EDT for a 2-hour free event based on the writing: This Epochal Moment. Send your link request below and, if you've read the episode, include any questions you'd like to see addressed.
