Barbara: I think that part of this urgency that we all feel, if it's at all legitimate, has to do with this sense that the connecting and coordinating functions on this planet are occurring very rapidly. It's perhaps comparable to a certain moment in the process of birth. We have to learn to handle our environmental crises; we have to learn to stop polluting our habitat; we have to learn to identify with all of humanity and not to have nuclear conflict. These are all new skills.
Jean: In terms of the known history of the human race, we are at the most critical nexus for survival or death of the species. And we are also at the threshold of a richer and more extended mode of being than the human race has ever known. We are living right now in that critical time phase. It's probably a fifty-year period ? maybe less.
Barbara: I sense that myself. What are the elements of that criticality, Jean, as you sense it?
Jean: Well, I think we've been talking about that criticality all day. We've been talking about the great disparity between the objectification of the world and the subjective factors that will allow us to orchestrate that objectification. And then there is the critical density of global interdependence ? this is frightening! I cannot cough without there being repercussions at great distances; this is a metaphor, of course, but the point is true. We've never before had a globally interdependent society. We have never had societies in which the ecology of things has become so thick that there is no innocence anywhere. And that is probably the most frightening thing of all. I mean, what General Motors may do does make a difference. What I think does make a difference. We needn't talk anymore about having to convince the higher-ups; the density is such that it has radically democratized the difference between higher-ups and lower-downs. What you do can make as much difference to the saving of a planet as anything anybody else can do ? be it President Carter or MacGeorge Bundy, the head of the Ford Foundation. My old friend John Platt, who has done some writing on hierarchical structuring ?
Hazel: Step function.
Jean: Step function, yes. As he points out, when you get to critical density, one little quantum change, and suddenly ? the entire structure falls! The French Revolution: the work of centuries was overthrown in months!
In six thousand years of known history we have never known a situation like this. It's probably more like seven thousand years. And it's probably safe to say one hundred thousand years before that. We can no longer say: "Oh, nothing new under the sun; I'm just gonna sit like a bump on a log." There is no way that we can do that! We are at the critical nexus of this historical time!
Hazel: I think we all sense that, and that's what gives us the sense of urgency, and our different ways of expressing the energy overdrive. I think that this sense of urgency really is a survival thing ? it has nothing to do with ego in the male sense.
Jean: Well, this is why the female principle is rising! It's a reality arising in time. The male ego as structured in this time is not sufficient to be able to deal with these kinds of things!
Barbara: It's a maternal urgency.
Jean: Yes! A maternal urgency and a great blowout in receptivity that you find in feminine function as it has been structured.
