The Path to A Future: Congruity

Congruity, [con-gru-ity]: simultaneous,mutual reinforcement in proximity and extremity.

Congruity is our word used to describe the process of building The Path. It symbolizes the unification, interdependence and broad reach that our actions must have, because although we can accurately describe The Path as linear, going from peace to security to sustainable prosperity, we will have to embark on all these processes concurrently.

The reasons for this are twofold: we are short on time, and each step reinforces the others.

We are really short on time! We’ve probably got a decade to get the ball rolling, a decade to get processes up to speed and a decade to spread the changes across the globe. Even once we are on The Path, we will be leaning on advances we will have made just to cope with the wrenching climate changes that will still come our way over the next half century or more. If we can’t get the ball rolling in the next ten years, then we run the very real risk that the changes being forced upon us by then will drive people to reaction, and the opportunity to promote our common good will narrow or even fade completely.

The second reason for congruity is the corollary of why attempts at peace have failed in the past. Peaceful people in the past, particularly prosperous and peaceful people, have been subjected to the crude interruption of the brutally violent. The reason for this was because the prosperous and peaceful were unable to spread the benefits of their prosperity to those others. If we are to succeed on our Path to A Future, we will have to bring rapid change to as broad an audience as possible, as fast as possible and to spread the benefits as widely as possible. Partly because we are all dependant on each other’s actions as we inhabit a single biosphere, and also because our path must travel through peaceful lands, it cannot be built with fences.

As we explore the practical applications of The Path you will see that the elements that make up The Path are interdependent. Peace is a critical element, without peace we cannot afford to secure our social fabric and our personal security is necessary to liberate our prosperity. All of these processes reinforce each other.

On The Path, not only must these congruous processes happen in one place at one time, they must spill over to impact the lives and societies of others at the same time.

That is “congruity”.

Part 15 in the serialization of the The Path to A Future.
A new section will be posted every 2 weeks during 2011. Enjoy!
To get a free PDF of the book go to www.standardsoflife.org/thepathtoafuture.