Heading into a Different World

e are now heading into a world far different from the one we have always known and there is no doubt that the challenges faced by humanity at this point in time are daunting. In fact, they are so great that it is almost impossible to calculate the interconnected web of catastrophes that these challenges portend (Caroline Myss 2009).
Pamela Bradley’s Heading into Different World looks at what we can learn from the past about our present situation and the future challenges we face, as well as urging us to question some of the things that we in the modern western world believe to be true, but which are no longer serving us individually and collectively.

This book is divided into two parts: Past Messages and Present Warnings.

In Part 1 the author suggests that if we are to prepare for the future, we must look to the past, for as Albert Einstein said, ‘the Ancients knew something which we seem to have forgotten’. Although we consider ourselves the most sophisticated civilisation in history, there is evidence of an advanced global culture in the distant past whose scientific knowledge is only now being confirmed by modern physics, astronomy and systems science. Our ancestors faced and survived many devastating catastrophes, which they knew occurred in fairly regular cycles. Part 1 covers an analysis of ancient methods of tracking time; hidden codes and messages; the possibility of past galactic centre explosions, meteor bombardments and the last great global catastrophe at the end of the Ice Age, as well as examples of past climate change that caused the collapse of civilisations, and societies that destroyed themselves partly because their leaders were too self-absorbed in their own pursuit of power and wealth to attend to their society’s underlying problems.

In Part 2, the author looks at the modern world’s hubristic behaviour that has led to life-threatening ecological and environmental crises, possibly the greatest threat to humanity. As well as disregard for the biosphere, humanity has created unstable, stressful and potentially catastrophic conditions in the sociosphere by means of its outdated and dysfunctional beliefs. Our world is in crisis and yet we go on as if it’s ‘business as usual’. The greatest challenge to all of us is to question our beliefs and core values, including our religious beliefs, and be prepared to change them. ‘We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’ (Albert Einstein).

We are now at what the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell called a ‘mythogenetic’ moment in time, when it is possible for certain conditions and beliefs to dissolve and new patterns of experience to emerge, revealing the outlines of the ‘next world’. Humanity must write a new story for itself.