K. Banks

A question on a seventh grade history test asked students to “Explain how the great leaders of the ancient world gained power over such vast territories?” The answer, put simply, is war. The next question asked, “Why do empires fall?”¹

What a loaded question, certainly more than a seventh grader of today may have the wherewithal to answer, but it is an excellent question…maybe even the most excellent question.

However, in order to answer such a question, we must first take a quick temperature check of today’s society.

---

Current State of Being

Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society .²

Our society is sick.

The suffering of one human being is a reflection of the suffering of a society at large; while at the same time, the suffering of a society is a reflection of the suffering of the individuals who comprise it.

‪Currently, our country is struggling with separation and a lack of harmony, ergo we have hostility, depression and anxiety; ‬‪Our people are unhappy with antiquated gender roles and norms, ergo we have identity issues; ‬‪Our masses are tired of a lack of representation, while politicians play to special interest groups and big business, ergo we have social division and distress.

We are at war with each other, because we are at war in our perspectives. On one front, we have a society fighting to embrace diversity and encourage identity because there is a belief that this means we are honoring differences; and on the other front, we have a society fed up with policies that play to the needs of the one, rather than the needs of the many. 

While the first perspective appears to be open and accepting, a strange paradox occurs where anyone who opposes this stance is canceled, effectively becoming victimized in the same way the movement purports to be against. Thus, the support of the first perspective is only offered to those who are dubbed “marginalized”, and therefore, not really concerned with diversity or identity at all.
Likewise, where the second perspective appears to be concerned with the whole of society, it fails to recognize and accept that American society is composed of a variety of beliefs, views, and practices; which again, creates a paradox. There cannot be a true concern for the whole of society if the individual pieces that comprise the society are not considered.

Thus, we are all caught in a state of incongruity between thoughts and actions, creating stress in every individual, which is transmitted to the larger organism of society, thereby causing suffering and fracturing on a massive scale. In short, it is a sick society, because it is composed of sick people, who have formed sick organizations, of which have formed sick laws, upheld by sick governments, thereby flooding the world with sickness. And yet we cannot see the scale of this sickness because we never look at the problem as one entity. 

This scenario is essentially the same in every society throughout time that has suffered civil or revolutionary wars–opposing sides, warring over perspectives that are confused and contradictory, yet nevertheless, amount to the same basic tenet: people just want to be happy. However, the problem lies in the way each individual views happiness.

Unpacking the Problem

As a species, we have come to break everything down into pieces. We fragment, compartmentalize, work in units, and in doing so we have become fragmented ourselves. When we discover a new thing, we label it according to its likenesses and we place it in a box with other things that seem similar. By doing this, we feel we bring order to the world. But essentially what we have done is created disorder, because our predicate began with a faulty assumption. The assumption being that order would be derived from dismantling a thing. And so, what we are left with is math, and science, and language, and art, and politics, and architecture, and spirituality, and religion, and life, and death, and man, and woman, and environment, and animals, and space, and everything–as separate. Reducing and reducing to the most finite state of a thing. But by setting and defining the parameters of all things, we have essentially caused a fracturing of identity. And because these definitive boundaries only exist in the human mind and in the human perspective, the fracturing is that of the human identity. We see ourselves forever in a vacuum, apart from everything from which we exist. This division or fragmentation is apparent in the way we approach every aspect of life, and why we consistently find ourselves at war with something. 

As a result, our attempts at trying to fix anything in this world, from the personal to the global, is doomed to failure, because our approach will always be from a position of: Strip down and isolate the problem, then find the solution. Thus, the very paradigm we have habitually used from the beginning of civilization IS the problem, and trying to solve anything in a society founded on this paradigm will inevitably lead to another problem. 

In psychology this conundrum is called the paradox of progress, which simply means that as we invent new technologies, create better ways of doing things, and “solve the problems” of humanity, we essentially create more problems. Why does this paradox occur? 

The answer is equally paradoxical. When we attempt to solve a problem, we do so from the singular–a singular answer, we think, to a singular problem, we believe. However, as science and technology progresses, we find this one dimensional approach to multi-dimensional problems is limited–it’s fragmented. Interestingly enough, it has taken amazing scientific leaps to finally begin to understand what ancient wisdom had been trying to tell humanity for thousands of years; that in order to solve a singular problem, one must first understand the ten thousand³ things that created the environment for the problem to exist at all. 

Every singular problem humanity faces affects some other aspect of life because of the interconnectedness of systems. In a system, nothing is a singular problem. While a breakdown may occur in a singular location, it will always be tied back through the system to other factors. Practitioners of medicine know this to be true, specifically practitioners of Eastern medicines where it is common practice for Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine healers to inquire about a patient’s emotional health (stress levels, employment, family and living situation) when performing an intake on a new patient. In fact, while much of the Western world still dubs alternative approaches to medicine as quackery, some of the most successful healthcare is practiced throughout the European Union by the EFCAM (European Federation for Complementary and Alternative Medicine), whose proponents believe that “using a whole person approach to health” with multiple and varied modalities allows for best-practice care.⁴ And while these approaches are more in line with understanding the necessity for observing and treating the whole system, it too neglects to understand that human life is a system, within a system, within a system. Thus, any failure to understand and address the entire unified system of systems will always lead to the same result.

Take poverty, for instance. How does government deal with the issue of poverty? There have been a few different approaches over the decades: social service programs, employment programs, minimum wage increases, tax breaks; and these last few years we’ve even seen tiny house programs and direct payments to individual accounts. Yet, our poverty problem has never truly improved. In fact, in five decades the poverty rate has fluctuated up and down periodically but has always hovered around 27% to 25%.⁵

Take education standards, or unemployment, or incarceration rates, or our dependence on fossil fuels–all problems that for several decades have seen little to no improvement despite each being a hot button issue in every political campaign for the last 30+ years.

The lack of improvement in any field named above is so much greater than a problem of poor policy making or bad practice, it is the faulty paradigm of approaching human issues in a space totally devoid of human accountability, compounded by the faulty human perception that we are somehow separate from each other and the environment from which our existence depends. 

Notwithstanding this, the past is a necessary part of our evolution, as we cannot move forward in any meaningful way without examining the missteps and the failures we’ve encountered. Just as the quantum world could not have been discovered without first finding fault with Newtonian physics and its failure when it comes to explaining the microcosmic world. 

Social and Mental Health Through the Lens of Quantum Theory  

The discussion of quantum theory in relation to Sociology, Psychology, Spirituality is not new. In fact, its very discovery was linked to the metaphysical as soon as Einstein declared that some unexplainable “spooky action” was taking place at the subatomic level. And as studies went on, the quantum world only became more bizarre with the idea of cats in boxes being both alive and dead at the same time. Those were the early days, of course, when science was trying to wrap its mind around the very strange behavior that occurred at the most elementary level of life. It was as though time and space did not matter to the tiny little particles that make up all things–to be sure, not even matter mattered, as these infinitesimal units could choose to be both wave-like (non-material), or particle-like (material)! Thus, the study went on, and it came to be known that at the base of all reality, all life, is a completely different set of principles that looks and functions nothing like what we see taking place in the macroscopic world of human endeavors. 

What a firestorm this was for science. Now every crackpot theorist, with a rudimentary understanding of this young science, could assign quantum’s spooky action to the mysteries of the world, heretofore thought to be unexplainable, and thus, written off. 

Yet this merging of worlds, of beliefs, of concepts was an absolutely necessary conversation that needed to take place for the good of human progress. Not for the things we could invent, per se, but for a better understanding of our connection to each other and to the environment of which we inhabit.

All elements, at a subatomic level, contain potentiality. They may possess no material form, they may disappear and then reappear at will, they may even function in ways that our knowledge of time and space tells us they should not, and yet, each and every thing we see, feel, hear, taste, smell, intuit, comes from this realm of subatomic potentiality that interacts and connects everything within the physical plane.

Therefore, while there is much debate and study regarding a provable “how” quantum theory relates to Sociology or Psychology, or Spirituality, the certainty is that it does because it is the wellspring of all that is. Events that once seemed mystical or random are no longer consigned to “crackpots”, but can now be rationalized through an understanding of the interconnectedness that is taking place at the fundamental level of existence. This is important because it tells us that human life does not occur in a vacuum. Human problems are not unrelated. Human suffering is not random or unexplainable. And nothing happens in the human world that we are not in direct association or participation with. Rather, the perception of any fragmentation of, or dissociation to, society and its problems are the conditioned response of a being that has only ever viewed itself as separate or individual. Thus, the real problem is our misconception of reality.

Theoretical physicist and one of the most significant names in discussions of quantum theory, David Bohm, spoke about this matter extensively. He said, “Some might say: ‘Fragmentation of cities, religions, political systems, conflict in the form of wars, general violence, fratricide, etc., are the reality. Wholeness is only an ideal, toward which we should perhaps strive.’ But this is not what is being said here. Rather, what should be said is that wholeness is what is real, and that fragmentation is the response of this whole to man’s action, guided by illusory perception, which is shaped by fragmentary thought.”⁶

It was Bohm’s belief, as seen through the new lens of quantum understanding, that until  discussions of economics, politics, and all human systems of society focus on the world as “one household” we would only find problems.⁷ These so-called “problems” that we encounter in all human life are in our thinking, in our fragmenting and looking outside of ourselves for what is wrong rather than beginning with the self and our personal responsibility in that problem. The “one household” model applies to everything. In order for a household to be in harmony, the members of said household are responsible for whatever turmoil the household finds itself in, and therefore, must take an active role in putting it right. 

This is from where our sickness stems–the sickness of society that Krishnmurti spoke of, that he and David Bohm dialogued about, that symposiums⁸ were centered around, but have somehow been forgotten and cataloged away.  

A Case for Social-Psychotherapy: The Wholeness Approach  

The echo for a wholeness approach resounds through space and time. It exists as a thought that permeates the ether of the ages. While it is apparent how David Bohm viewed it, it must be understood that he was far from alone. Scientists, philosophers, historians, economists, writers, theologians, and mystics have been driven throughout the age of humankind towards this same idea of unification. 

Carl Jung, renowned psychologist and psychiatrist, spoke of “unus mundus” (one world),  a concept referring to a unified reality. The same idea that was carried forward thousands of years prior from the ancient East Indian region as, Akasa, the Sanskrit word given to the before space, the “essence of emptiness” from which all forms spring forward into existence. Later, this concept became the root of what is known as the Akashic Records, or the compendium of all universal events, thoughts, feelings, recorded throughout all time, held within the fluid ether beyond human senses; a concept made realized by Theosophic roots. Echoed further still, by writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said:

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same…What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all this is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.⁹

And again by Stephen Hawking:

Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.¹⁰

These are but small examples of the great minds who felt the pull of unity, and in their own fields sought to understand the implicit order beneath the current of humankind. Unfortunately however, while many can feel this way, few have been willing to come together to change the course of human events, and so we find ourselves at every moment in history locked in misconceived battles–race wars, religious war, gender wars, confused identity, confused acceptance, confused affiliations, political polarization, international conflict–where not only progress suffers, but where humanity is firmly set on a trajectory of assured annihilation–engineered diseases, medical malpractice, renegade scientific experimentation, political malfeasance, corporate domination, extinction of species, destruction of habitats, rampant pollution, dying oceans, planetary distress–so long as we keep approaching these issues as unrelated. 

It should be realized that the battles we are caught up in everyday and in every part of the world are simply distractions. They are a symptom of fragmentation. Though these battles appear very clearly as issues that must be dealt with, this is where the paradox occurs. The struggles we face are merely a symptom, not the disease. The disease being a complete lack of responsibility or ownership of community and social cohesion. It is the thinking behind the behaviors that have replayed throughout history, again and again, with every civilization that exalts leaders, beliefs, fidelities, gods, and cultures, above humanness and harmony with the planet.

If we were to take any one of the above named issues and meet it with a wholeness approach–unus mundus–we would find that there is very little issue at all. Take race. Is the color of a person’s skin or where their ancestors come from really the issue? No. There is no problem with skin color or ancestral heritage, objectively. Then where do the problems that we experience when it comes to race, arise? The problems arise from a multitude of circumstances, memories, beliefs, stories, which all equate to a whole lot of feelings, but nothing is actually related to the amount of melanin that presents in the features of a person, or in their region of ancestry. Thus, racial issues are a symptom of fragmentation in thinking and understanding, rather than the actual origin, ethnicity, and/or physical characteristics of a human being.

Insert any issue that divides humanity and we will be left with the same conclusion. It is imperative to recognize and absorb this simple fact. And yet, even through eyes of logic, we cannot see past the multitude of circumstances, memories, beliefs, stories, and all of the feelings that have brought us to our current predicament. 

So how does thinking change? How does a species, ruled by boundaries, conditioning, culture, beliefs, trapped by the trivial pursuits of modern civilized life–change such a fundamental part of its neurology?

Most assuredly, thinking will not be changed by enacting the same tired platitudes and placations, i.e. laws, taxes, procedures, institutes, organizations, some new holiday meant to legitimize people… In fact, each of these implementations will work against the desired effect, rather than for it–another paradox.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, born prior to 100 BC, was another who spoke emphatically on this very issue. He said, “the more laws, the less justice.” The idea that problems are solved by layering on fix after fix after fix will actually rob people of the justice they seek, not free them. Over 2600 years ago this paradox was already understood, and yet, it amounted to no more than another caution lost to the ages. 

Cicero believed that logic and reason allows us the ability to determine not how we can act, but how we ought to act, which intimates that there is a certain responsibility to the decisions we, as a conscious and dexterous species, make. A responsibility that is born from deliberation and thoughtfulness, not because it is noble or right, but because the power of our intellect and the ability it can wield is dangerous–to ourselves, to each other, and to this planet and all its inhabitants. Thus, we have an innate responsibility for extreme self-observation and self-regulation.

This is the argument for the implementation of a social-psychotherapy. A wholeness approach that emphasizes mental, physical, emotional, and social health of communities. In which, nature and the environment are not excluded from the equation. We cannot know what this looks like because it has never been done before. Though religions have tried to unite people, their exclusivity and dogma have been their downfall. There needs to be a real understanding and emphasis on unity and mutual respect, not because it is right or noble, but because we are part of a system within a multitude of systems.

It is long past time for these discussions to take place. It is time for real change makers–physicists, ecologists, psychologists, sociologists, engineers, educators, innovators…to step forward and lead humankind into a conscious and collective new era–one that does not need to answer the question: Why do empires fall?–Because it will not recognize fragmented concepts of violence, such as Empires, to begin with.