Introduction
Handbook for a Phase Transition maps the pathway presented on the website Bridge to Change. Most handbooks explain how to use something — a new appliance or perhaps a computer application. After reading a handbook, you should know what to expect. This book is similar insofar as it abstracts and gathers together — with the aim of making more immediately useful — the worldview, theory and analysis embedded in the three novels: Merlin’s Parole, The Bridge and Eternity.
Different minds approach problems from diverse angles. Some might prefer encountering intellectual ideas in a biographical unfolding, told in a dreamlike narrative, as in the trilogy, Bridge to Eternity. Yet some who enjoy a literary approach might not have time to read three novels. For others, the presentation of ideas in an abstract logical sequence works better. In any case, abstraction may permit quicker access. And the hour is getting late.
Change involves risk. The greater the change, the greater the risk. We often tolerate undesirable conditions for a long time rather than jeopardize what we’ve got. As a species, we humans are known to wait until the last minute. But when imminent danger no longer permits doing nothing, hesitancy must give way to a search for solutions.
Few of us doubt that we’ve arrived at an edge. The use of violence to solve political problems has been rendered ineffective by ever-changing forms of international terrorism. Nuclear obliteration still looms in the background. Global warming, oceanic degradation, loss of the Earth’s forests, water and energy crises are not what any of us would wish to pass on to our children. The gap between those who have and those who have nothing threatens to rip the global human community apart.
Many who would wish to do something recoil at the magnitude of the challenges. Others trust that the problems will simply resolve themselves. Some are resigned to what they see as unavoidable — the extinction of humanity, perhaps even the death of our Living Planet. Some excuse us of responsibility by resorting to metaphysical interpretation, suggesting that these are the “Last Days” which they believe fulfill prophecies predicting inevitable destruction.
Hesitant voices question the problems themselves — and the solutions. Could global warming be a hoax? A blessing? Hasn’t a stronger military satisfied our need for security in the past? How can we hope to feed, shelter and care for everyone? Attempts at identifying the causes of our troubles provoke cascades of dissent. Is it the institutions or the individuals? Political or personal? The economic system or human nature? Dissonance stretches to the horizon. Without a common goal, we pull apart. Without a shared sense of purpose of what we’re doing here, contradiction and conflict abound. Confusion reigns supreme. The complexity of our problems staggers the imagination.
At the same time, we have reason to hope. Searching through the array of our cultural legacies, we find visions of an Earthly paradise. A plethora of utopian dreams. A desire for world peace fills our sacred texts and the speech of our revered leaders past and present. A consistent guiding principle of how to get from here to there emerges — no matter how varied the literature, how different the forms of our religions, philosophies, histories, legends, myths and folk wisdom. Shining through the diversity of solutions, we recognize, “Love.”
So how can we turn our traditional narratives into something that brings us together, rather than dividing us? We can begin by recognizing that, to save our planet, we don’t need to agree on everything. We can agree on rather little — just enough to do what needs to be done. If tracing one path can truly illuminate the goal, it may be possible for each of us to see how our own way leads there.