Eckhart Tolle distinguishes personal adversity from collective adversity affecting many beings at once, and frames the present moment as a 'limit situation' in which multiple challenges converge. He proposes that the only adequate response is a shift in human consciousness rather than another layer of action from the same level of mind.
Transcript
Humanity has reached this point now where uh it's when they look at the challenge it seems it's impossible to solve them all. What can we do about it? There's only one solution and that is adversity comes in two forms. Adversity come to you personally. It means a challenge that you face as a as an individual or in your family. Those are personal challenges and they're inevitable. They arise in everybody's life periodically. And then there other types of challenges that are collective. That means uh difficult situations that arise and affect large groups of people, sometimes millions of people or everybody on the planet at the same time. So there there's adversity of a personal kind, there's adversity of a collective kind affecting many human beings or other life forms at the same time. So when you talk about climate change then the possibility of uh destruction happening in nature. Um that is certainly a collective challenge for humanity and uh question arises what is there anything we can do about it? There's a possibility what what are the possibilities of taking action but more importantly what is the underlying state of consciousness that is necessary for whatever action you take to be intelligent action wise action not action that instead of solving anything makes it even worse. So your in any situation any kind of challenge the primary factor is your state of consciousness with which you approach it. So that that is the foundation for anything that you may do. And of course the foundation is presence to be aware so you don't lose yourself in egoic reactivity and then take actions motivated by egoic reactivity which often are actions that are well intentioned but uh good intentions are uh not necessarily uh wise. As the old proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Good intentions without wisdom are counterproductive. So there are people with very good intentions. They go to a museum and throw tomato soup over painting and believe that we help in the fight against um global warming or raise consciousness. And I I believe that would be an example of what the Buddhists would call unskillful action that actually does not help the situation, but it makes you or your ego feel better that you feel a bit virtuous or some people lie in the middle of the road to stop the traffic. Of course, that again that makes your ego feel virtuous and you're actually doing something. But does it actually help raise consciousness on the planet? I don't believe it does. There are other actions that perhaps have some utility. There are um passive resistance towards uh the um um cutting down old growth forests. that is there's something to be said for certain types of passive resistance. Uh the um the deforestation is linked to this challenge that we're talking about. But it's not just that. There's a whole uh range of things that humans are doing to the planet uh that are all destructive. Over fishing in the oceans uh upsetting the whole ecological balance in the oceans just mentioned deforestation in the Amazon and other parts of the world. uh the use of pesticides that uh causing many life forms to become extinct. Uh I've been reading it even the population of bees is in some many parts of the world is shrinking. of there are fewer bees pollinating the plants and all the the chain reactions all kinds of things. Uh but there are other challenges also that they might even be more immediate. We don't know. All those challenges such as nuclear war could still happen. there the definite possibility that's there's so much unconsciousness still in in all those people who are uh in politics taking decisions that are egoically motivated sometimes well-intentioned but misguided. Um so there are also challenges to do with the uh human consciousness that being affected by the digital addiction to digital devices especially in young people that's affecting their state of consciousness. That's a very very serious challenge. being under perhaps still underestimated. Uh that right now um there are many young people that have grown up with these devices have become addicted to these devices who are almost incapable of forming personal relationships because their entire reality or 90% of their reality is digital reality. They spend hours every day on this. it's affecting their ability to focus on anything for any length of time. When human beings lose the ability to focus, they can no longer uh uh solve problems because any problem solving requires a prolonged focusing of consciousness. It requires to be to be present with something and focus your attention on something. Many youngsters are losing that personal relationships can cannot enter into being called personal relationships anymore. Have no re completely cut off from nature because the entire reality becomes digital and that affects their state of consciousness. And with within two generations, it could mean the complete breakdown of civilization when it can no longer be upheld. Human consciousness is no longer a able to cope with with problems that arise and and is loses its creative power. So all these things are coming together. So there's a huge uh we don't know which which one is the most serious challenge now. uh but they're all coming together and that's very important realization that we are facing this uh um a kind of to use a term from existentialist philosophy. It's a a limit situation or singularity where many many challenges are coming together and humanity has reached this point now where uh it's when they look at the child it seems it's impossible to solve them all. What can we do about it? There's only one solution and that is a shift in human consciousness.