And we get to choose how it comes - intentionally, willfully, freely or chaotically, reluctantly and forcefully.

Climate changes, terrorism and war, epidemic diseases, world poverty and hunger cumulatively demonstrate the unsustainability of the present world order. It has become obvious that our planet and the social structures on it can no longer support our careless abandon - like adolescents who steal a car and go "joyriding", not caring what happens to the car since "Hey, it's not my car. I don't have to pay for the damages". But, there has been damage and the "police" are chasing us. We are beyond the point of returning the car to the neighbor's driveway unnoticed. How will this joyride end? Will we surrender and responsibly repair our damages or will we continue until we crash? One of the two will happen.

at a very powerful point in time. Change is coming.

Out of greed and a sense of false proprietorship, foolish and so-called civilized peoples spend their days exploiting the resources of material nature or empowering those who do so on their behalf. The usual suspects - politicians, big business, lobbyists, corporate media, the military-industrial complex, and those who, for personal profit, seek to clear-cut our forests, overfish our oceans or pollute our atmosphere are not alone in their culpability, for they are simply the mechanisms for exploitation. They have been created as a response to the original cause of our current state of dis-order - the very consciousness of exploitation which skews our vision into seeing the world where unthinkable acts appear reasonable, sensible, and even intelligent; the same sort of twist in vision that accompanied every holocaustic event in our earth's history. It is our greed which undermines our humanity.

If we want to live in a harmonious world where economics balances ecology, where democracy balances social justice, where spirituality balances material well being, where wisdom balances science, where corporate responsibility balances business success, then we must put on the brakes and end the era of reckless abandon, of madness due to our intoxication from temporary pleasures, from the illusions born of misidentification of the self. This will require a new vision.