Spirituality/General: Radical Common Sense

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical constitution with a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.

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To get out of the bottle we need radical common sense. Radical common sense is common sense deliberately encouraged and applied. Radical common sense reflects the growing realization that individual good sense is not enough, that society itself must make sense or decline. Radical common sense is a spirit. It respects the past, it pays attention to the present, and therefore it can imagine a more workable future.

On the one hand, it looks as if modern civilization hasnt the time, resources, or determination to make it through the neck of the bottle. We cant get there from here. We cant solve our deepest problems through such traditional strategies as competition, wishful thinking, struggle, or war. We can't frighten people (including ourselves) into being good or smart or healthy. We find we can't educate by rote or by bribery, we can't win by cheating, we cant buy peace at the expense of others, and, above all, we cant fool Mother Nature.

On the other hand, maybe the answers lie in the problem of our thinking, especially our ideas that nature is to be mastered rather than understood. We have tried to run roughshod over certain powerful realities.

Radical common sense says let's ally ourselves with nature. We have nothing to lose and a great deal to gain. As the old saying has it, if you cant beat em, join em. We can apprentice at natures side, working with her secrets respectfully rather than trying to steal them. For example, scientists who observe natural systems report that nature is more cooperative (live and let live) than competitive (kill or be killed). Competing species, it turns out, often co-exist by food-and time-sharing; they feed at different hours on different parts of the same plant. Among moose and some other herd animals, the old or injured members offer themselves to predators, allowing younger and healthier members to escape.

Altruism appears to serve an evolutionary function in living creatures. In its inventiveness, nature, including human nature, may be on our side.

By documenting the health benefits of such traditional virtues as persistence, hard work, forgiveness, and generosity, scientific research is validating both common sense and idealism. People who have discovered a purpose feel better, like themselves more, age more subtly, and live longer.

Radical common sense derives its conviction from science and from the inspired examples of individuals.

©Copyright 2005 by Marilyn Ferguson. Used by permission.

©Copyright 2005 by AlternativeApproaches.com

About the author: Marilyn Ferguson's landmark bestseller, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time (1980), described a leaderless movement with the potential to trigger a global paradigm shift. This social, spiritual, and political phenomenon thrived on grassroots encounters and proliferating networks. Ferguson's Aquarius Now, to be released this month by Red Wheel/Weiser, looks at the state of planetary and personal transformation today, nearly five years into a new millennium.

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