The Foundation for Global Community/Atlanta grew out of the California group, formerly known as Beyond War (www.globalcommunity.org ).The name change, to FGC, reflected a shift in emphasis, from building consensus that WAR IS OBSOLETE (because of nuclear warheads) & that WE ARE ONE, to educating on the more general threat to our species & life system represented by environmental degradation & overpopulation. This crisis results from our behavior which grows out of our values & beliefs. To change behavior we must create a shift in cultural values.
The power of culture over our lives is pervasive. It influences practically everything we do - from the trivialities of what we eat and how we dress, to the profundities of how we try to achieve meaning and purpose in our lives.
In our culture, the prevailing attitudes, values and beliefs that guide our collective behavior - from unbridled materialism to rampant individualism - are devastating the life systems and human communities of the planet. The American Dream has become a global nightmare.
But with this crisis comes profound opportunity.
A whole new population - more idealistic and globally oriented - has emerged in the United States in the last decade. These people share a number of attitudes and beliefs: an interest in self actualization and spirituality; a desire to live a simpler lifestyle; a need for society to rebuild communities; a sense of nature and the feminine as sacred; and a concern for the global environment. Attitudes and beliefs like these form the basis of what is called integral culture. A leading study suggests that there are about 44 million North Americans who think this way, presenting a real possibility of positive cultural change. Our mission is to make this possibility a reality.
All culture is ultimately rooted in our understanding of who we are, where we have come from and where we are going. We believe the root of our cultural crises is that our current answers to these age-old questions are obsolete. What information - from science, the wisdom traditions and contemporary thought - can help us discover more adequate answers?
Join us for a participative exploration of how we can evolve an integral culture.
Astronomers tell us that all the galaxies in our Universe are traveling away from each other, at high speed. Last week they were closer together than this week. Last year they were even closer. 1,000 years ago they were closer yet. The implication is that if we go back in time far enough all the matter making up the Universe would be very condensed. It appears that we are living in the midst of an incredible explosion. Astronomers estimate the beginning of our explosion to be 13 plus or minus billion years. In the course of this dizzying time span, everything we know came into being. Physical Evolution beigins with elementary particles, proceeds to hydrogen, to helium, which condense into short-lived stars, factories for the production of the remaining elements, which then explode, dispersing the elements widely, which again coalesce into our galaxies and planets.
Biological Evolution builds on the physical foundation, evolving a consciousness that attempts to understand its own origin and being. In the course of this attempt a paradigm is formed which includes a value system to guide behavior. In the case of homosapian, we tend to conceptualize ourselves as separate from the natural system, to overlook our own dependency & interconnectedness. This mistaken belif leads us to see nature, and each other, as something we can dominate, with disastrous consequences for the life system and our own well being.
Thus it gradually dawns on us that we live in crisis, that we are despoiling the very system that nourishes us by our voracious consumption habits, by our increasing numbers and by our willingness to use violence. The need for an alternative, sustainable economic/social set of relationships leads us to re-examine our basic values and to begin to envision new ones.
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