Introduction

This is a book about humanity's journey to healing, wholeness and wisdom. Though it will appeal to anyone interested in understanding the dramatic changes taking place in the world, it is intended most of all for business leaders. They have a vitally important role to play in the journey ahead. And if you are working to navigate your organization, your team or even your career through the rapids of change, you'll find significant value in the map that this book offers.

Looking into our often divisive past and then at the encouraging signposts lining the path ahead, the book points to a hopeful destination. As we step into this fourth major era of human history, there is compelling evidence that we are creating a fundamentally new iteration of what it means to be human, and alive, and at work in the world. This is the reason for the book's title, Humanity 4.0.

Most fascinating of all is that – though it is totally unprecedented - this new iteration could easily have been predicted. Together, each of the previous three eras and this one form the four-part developmental pattern found at all levels of life, from individual cells, to organisms, to communities (of people and creatures alike), to ecosystems, and on out to the biosphere as a whole. Like all living systems, it seems that humanity as a species is moving on a clear path toward ever greater levels of resilience, creativity and adaptability.

As the book will explain, that clear path looks like this: all living systems follow an unfolding pattern of (1) convergence, (2) relationship, (3) divergence and (4) integration. Like the secret formula for how life works, this pattern helps us understand the fertile conditions needed for life to thrive, at any level. And it helps us understand the dramatic changes we're seeing in the world today. Looking through the lenses of anthropology, sociology, neurology, economics and more, we find that each past era has seen humanity develop the first three characteristics of the pattern in turn. Now, it's abundantly evident that the emerging fourth era is characterized most of all by increasing integration (the fourth part of the pattern) through global media, travel, education and technology. Even more important is our growing recognition of the intrinsic, underlying integrality of all life, in contrast to the singular story of separateness and divergence that marked the outgoing era. And more important still is our increasing ability to integrate the wisdom of all the eras into a more comprehensive guiding story – a story that recognizes and honors the integrative and animating spark or spirit of life. For all of these reasons, I call this The Integral Era.

For individual readers – especially business leaders - the insights contained in this book will help you decide what to bring forward from the outgoing era, and they will give you clues about how to thrive in the era we're moving into. My hope is that they will also give you confidence to challenge assumptions, as well as courage to try new practices. The paradigm of the new era is gradually reshaping every strategy, decision and action each of us makes, in both our personal and professional lives. Those who are able to embrace this evolved worldview early will be more effective, more resilient…and, likely, just plain happier.

At a global level, the wisdom that The Integral Era promises is urgently needed to counteract an overwhelming number of distressing trends. In particular, the era's new story inspires deep compassion for all of life, including our own. And it invites us to make our best contribution to the whole of life. Both of these points stand in contrast to the outgoing mechanistic and reductionist paradigm, which encouraged us only to compete and consume.

Though there are signposts pointing the way to a hopeful future, it's far from clear that we'll actually get there. The Mayans and the ancient Greeks offer fair warning that collapse and regression is always possible. The more of us who recognize the pattern of living systems and work from the wiser, more compassionate story it suggests, the more likely we are to reach the destination that calls to us from the horizon.

To help us get to that destination, Part 1 of this book first describes the nature of the journey – a shift in our thinking. It then outlines our point of departure, reviewing the current socioeconomic belief system, with its growing inadequacies. Part 2 then reveals the emergent alternative, in which we acknowledge the animating and integrative spark of life, along with its full, creative modus operandi. Part 3 identifies that dynamic pattern in our organizations, our economies, and our own working lives, and it suggests ways that each of these may be crafted as fertile containers in which life may thrive. Finally, the book concludes with an appeal to shift the goal of our activities beyond individualistic competing and consuming, beyond even sustainability, to thrivability, in which the fertile conditions are created for life to thrive at all levels. This is the key to healing the the wounds of humanity, individually and collectively. And ultimately, it is the key to our survival as a species.

Thus, this book is at one level a travel guide for your journey into The Integral Era. At another level, it is a Users Manual for your most essential resource: the spark of life that flows through you, animating you and connecting you with the whole of life. And throughout, it is an urgent invitation to action. Our ecology, our social structures, and our economic systems together rely on our ability to evolve to a more life-enhancing way of seeing and acting within the world. As John F. Kennedy said in his 1961 inaugural speech: “The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.” The best – and most important -- part of the journey lies ahead. Bon voyage et bon courage!