Meaning Making Together

By Robert Theobald.

"Making Meaning  is the theme of a satellite videoconversation to take place on May 27, 1999.  For information see http://www.resilientcommunities.org.

The twentieth century has seen many revolutions. One of the most powerful is also one of the least discussed. We have come to recognize that the way each of us sees the world depends on the culture and conditions in which we live and that the conclusions we reach depend on what we assume about the world. Marshall McLuhan, writing in the sixties, made us aware of the need to move beyond the blinders imposed by our conditioning. One of the ways he tried to get this point across was to remind us that the last way to learn about water would be to ask a fish. Fishes live in water: they are not aware of the possibilities and limitations that it imposes. Edward Hall carried this understanding further by showing us how the norms and customs of different cultures created different meanings for the same actions and that failure to understand the "silent language" could lead to misunderstandings and even violence.

Over the last fifty years, we have slowly recognized the initial implications of these realities. There is no "single" truth which is valid for all individuals and groups. We now know that we need to understand the differences between people and groups if we are to co-exist, let alone work together. We are therefore less intolerant of different views than we were in the past. Many people therefore believe that all ways of seeing the world are equally valid and there is no way to determine which approach to an issue is correct. It is often argued that if a particular culture has a custom, and this seems satisfactory to it, outsiders have no right to challenge the behavior.

But this conclusion cannot work in the real world. There is a need for shared global understandings if we are to be able to make intelligent decisions now that we have developed effectively unlimited productive and destructive power. There is also a profound, and immediate need, to learn how to find common ground across apparent differences. It seemed, at the end of the cold war, that the United States was the remaining superpower and that it would be able to do what it wanted. The years since the fall of the Berlin Wall have shown all too clearly the limits of coercive power and the inability to impose directions even on nations with very limited military strength. In addition, the instability of the capitalist system has also become all too obvious and the United States is increasingly isolated in its attempt to continue the drives of the late twentieth century.

We are currently confronted with three major challenges which require profound changes in our cultural systems. We need to reverse the ever-growing gaps between the rich and the poor both within and between countries. We need to prevent massive ecological breakdown which threatens because of overpopulation, nuclear and chemical wastes and global warming. We need to find ways to make effective decisions at all levels from the community to the global. In the past, changes of this magnitude were achieved when a new dominant culture emerged and took over from one that was failing.. But human survival now requires that we live together in peace. We have to develop a profoundly new way of seeing the world.

The basic question then is how will this happen. Willis Harman, a great thinker of the twentieth century, gave us the essential clue when he said that large changes happen when large numbers of people do things slightly differently. The changes we need to make will not be directed by a few great doers and thinkers: they will occur as many of us alter our perceptions of our own self-interest.

What we each do makes a difference, it often has far more significance than we ever know.

Indeed desirable changes are already taking place. People are making new meaning for themselves. The video conversation we are planning provides an opportunity for people to recognize the importance of their personal and group actions. It will also give them an opportunity to join with others who are also changing their life-styles. They will feel part of a wider whole and thus come to believe that we do not have to be trapped in dying industrial era norms.

Each of us sees a unique world: we look through our own set of perceptual lenses. There are many ways in which we can gain new glasses that will enable us to make more joyous and fulfilling meanings for ourselves. This is the extraordinary opportunity of the twenty-first century. It is one that we urgently need to seize. We need new goals for the 21^st century: a high quality of life, social cohesion, ecological integrity and effective decision-making. These will only be possible within a radically new way of seeing the world from an organic, system-theory, spiritual viewpoint.

More of Theobald's work is available on the Robert Theobald Home Page

You can contact Robert Theobald at: theobald@iea.com