Humans are both simple and complex. We experience this unfolding world through our five senses – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling – together they interact to protect us by producing an almost infinite combination of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviours. Safety is the primary motivation fuelled by our fearful survival instinct. Over time, through increases in population density, diversity, migration, and communication – our evolving world seems to have become more complex and uncertain. For our survival instinct uncertainty can feel threatening. In response to this challenging future our fear-avoidance motivation seems to have prioritised protective self-interest and self-focused attention as the means to survive and be happy. This protective self-focused pathway seems to have trapped the world in a negative cycle of vanity, greed, loneliness, and fear – that when left unrestrained leads to loss or extinction. Some examples include Enron, GFC, suicide trends, Anthropocene extinction, Rohingya crisis, indigenous identity loss, and the Cold War.
Of course there are also benefits to protective self-interest – namely, motivation for technologies and behaviours to possibly improve safety and allay our future fears. Although many debate their safety success record – this list of ‘technologies’ includes the creation of agriculture, political democracy, law, capitalism, home / land ownership, science, and the internet. As more people express their dissatisfaction with ‘technology’, one may begin to ask – what are we missing? Technology evolves – but we don’t. Indeed, the more we immerse ourselves in protectionism the more we are fearfully reminded of what we have to lose. How can we evolve beyond this protectionist rut that both allays and reinforces fear?
Right now we exist on the edge of chaos. Political, social, economic, and environmental instabilities – fuelled by protective self-interests – are threatening life itself. The pathway forward must be something more than self-interest and technology. We need to evolve our very human nature – beyond fearful protective self-interest into a higher moral good. We must mindfully adapt and find ways to integrate our survival ‘selfishness’ into a bigger ‘selfless’ purpose that can cultivate greater compassion for ALL life’s beauty. This urgent need requires new courageous leadership. Courageous leadership that can evolve humankind’s curiosity to selflessly look beyond fear – towards more compassionate pathways to real wisdom.
Over the coming weeks I will publish knowledge (based on the evidence and insight of many) about these urgent leadership needs. I will communicate how curiosity, compassion, and courage, may lead us away from our fearful self-interest experiment – towards a more loving, sustainable, and fearless future for our most precious gift – LIFE.