Popping Into a New Paradigm
It's getting crowded in the old one
Many years ago, I invited the leader of a group involved in evolutionary discovery to lunch to tell her about what I sensed was emerging in the general field of “emergence”*. I had been getting an image of the Sistine Chapel fingers reaching out toward each other but not quite touching. I could feel other people similarly pursuing the edges of human sensing but we were only somewhat aware of each other’s presence and not connecting: we could intuit but not quite find each other through the fog. While she dismissed my premonition mid-sandwich, I knew then that this would evolve, that we would begin to share our understanding and cross-fertilize our co-emergent groups as we explored what was unfolding.
In the years since, I have watched as more and more people have collected under what seems like a massive, dark cloud, attracted by a palpable electricity of new possibility. The cloud isn’t threatening rain and it largely goes unnoticed but it clearly represents a delimiting boundary to the upper levels of our common understanding.
Over time, more people began to collaborate under the cloud. Many have been attracted by the vibrations of potential alternatives to—or a release from—an enclosed modern life. Many have been drawn by a quest for greater meaning and connection with self and others. And many recognize the planetary limits to our current ways of living and are seeking ways to midwife a regenerative culture while hospicing the old.
Networks formed among groups and individuals and the “Liminal Web” with its multitude of subcultures grew into quite a gathering space with intensive interconnectivity both between and among tribes. The energy grew its own tornado-like magnetism, sweeping up people on the edge who might not have otherwise joined in and they served as onramps for others. Shadow elements also naturally appeared, drawn by the evident potential for money and notoriety.
I sat with this image of the cloud for years as it got more and more crowded under the seeming limitation of its upper boundary. I thought perhaps a sucker hole would appear, an opening of blue sky, and the collected space would disperse into new formations. Or maybe the cloud would dissipate altogether.
But over time it just got more crowded and it began to feel claustrophobic. I—and likely many others—felt the staleness of the recurring messages within the density, the well-known framing, the similar logos on similar web pages with familiar offerings. I don’t at all want to undermine the immense value in much of what we have proffered under the cloud, but it felt like there was more. Our collective ability to penetrate deeper into unknown territories was obscured.
And over time, the pace of additions has quickened at Mach speed. New forms of communities, meta-collectives, and communication are appearing daily (see Peter Limberg’s The Metalanguage of the Internet). This is both daunting and exciting with AI adding another layer of complexity that compounds the density under the cloud. And something else is possible...
And then one day not so long ago, literally out of the blue, my head figuratively simply popped through the cloud. Suddenly there I was above the density and looking at an entirely new landscape. It was not recognizable; it was completely different than the scene below. It wasn’t altogether without sound, but the cacophony of the activity below was absent.
I knew this was where we are headed. This was our new paradigm. And it is this felt but unspoken prospect for a collective awakening that motivates our current efforts. It is the largely unconscious causal draw that pulls us toward our next evolutionary leap.
This new landscape could be escapism under the prospect of so much suffering and chaos or it could be another space giving us a glimpse of what else is possible. Either way, it is clear: it will take our greatest capacities and wisdom to navigate towards our highest vision into a new paradigm.