Rockefeller – Controlling the Game (26 page)

Co-Creating the New Human Species

Barbara Marx Hubbard’s
The Book of Co-Creation
, based on channeled messages from a spirit guide identifying himself as “Christ”, also described how mankind would develop a Christ consciousness and gain Christ powers through transcendent cybernetic technology and space colonisation.

To work with me to save the world, you must develop your own Christ consciousness (love) and your own Christ capacities (transcendent technologies—astronautics, genetics, robotics, cybernetics, microtechnology, psychic powers). Accelerate the co-creative revolution. Begin to build new worlds on earth and new worlds in space. Make your life a conscious act.
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Hubbard's voice of “Christ" gave specific instructions on how humanity would be united and collectively transformed from
Homo sapiens
to
Homo universalis
. A new species was to be created, using cybernetic technology (similar to the transhumanist ambitions of Humanity+, see Chapter 11). In this way, a violent Armageddon could be avoided.

Those electing not to join her and the other enlightened souls in stepping into the new era would, however, be eliminated:

This act is as horrible as killing a cancer cell. It must be done for the sake of the future of the whole. So be it: be prepared for the selection process which is now beginning. We, the elders, have been patiently waiting until the very last moment before the quantum transformation, to take action to cut out this corrupted and corrupting element in the body of humanity. It is like watching a cancer grow; something must be done before the whole body is destroyed... The destructive one-fourth must be eliminated from the social body. (Barbara Marx Hubbard)
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Laurance Rockefeller, who funded the publication of
The Book of Co-Creation
, loved it and saw it as a catalyst to a Christ experience for all of mankind.
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Mankind was now ready to resume control over the evolutionary process and the creation of a new, technologically enhanced, human. Barbara Marx Hubbard called this “co–creation” – a concept inspired by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and developed at the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, founded in the early 1990s through a donation from her “beloved patron" Laurance Rockefeller to realise the spiritual, social and scientific, and technological potential of man.
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Barbara Marx Hubbard’s concept the Wheel of Co-Creation (a wheel with 12 mutually dependent sections which together would build the new global Utopia) was founded on the ideas of fellow futurist Buckminster Fuller.

Fuller, with whom she had been working during his final two years, praised Barbara’s work for the futurist agenda.

There is no doubt in my mind that Barbara Marx Hubbard – who helped introduce the concept of futurism to society—is the best informed human now alive regarding futurism and the foresights it has produced.
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Before his collaboration with Marx Hubbard, Fuller had also worked closely with Laurance’s niece Neva Rockefeller Goodwin to establish and build the Design Science Institute (now Buckminster Fuller Institute).
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Hermeticism and New Age

The background of the transhumanist world view can be traced to ancient Hermetism, passed down from its rediscovery during the Renaissance through Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and Theosophy.

During the 20th century these ideas have been spread through the Neo-Theosophy of Alice A. Bailey (originator of the term “New Age”) and “the great Plan” allegedly dictated telepathically to her by her spiritual master, Djwal Khul, and described in a number of books, including
Externalization of the Hierarchy
(1958). The vision was one of a united humanity with a common religion and a World Government (through the United Nations). Bailey’s publishing company, Lucis Trust, is a United Nations affiliated NGO.

Similar visions were also expressed by Danish spiritual philosopher Martinus (1890–1981) who taught “intellectual Christianity" and prophesied that a world government and a common culture were part of humanity's future.

Neither of these teachings, however, included technological upgrades, only spiritual practices to develop a higher state of consciousness with enhanced intuition, compassion, clairvoyance and a spiritual state of oneness.

Cosmic Humanism

The Theosophy-Inspired but more materialistic “evolutionary humanism" of American physicist Oliver Reiser, outlined in his in
Cosmic Humanism and World Unity
(1973), also includes a world population merged into a single world organism, with a common religion, under a World Government. These visions in turn echo those described in
The Open Conspiracy
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and
World Brain
by Fabian Society member H. G. Wells (included in Adler’s Great Books).
^,
527

The plans, drawn up during the 1970s, now came to the surface. These ideas were connected to the visions from the World Future Society 1975 conference The Next 25 Years: Crisis & Opportunity, about using crises to implement a “friendly Utopia”, and the document
Changing Images of Man
(1982) from Stanford Research Institute, which looked into the possibilities of creating a new and better human – post-industrial man.
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Worldshift 2012

In 2009, Argüelles’ and Marx Hubbard’s partner,
Ervin László (founder of the Club of Budapest)
, together with futurist
David Woolfson
, created the network Worldshift 2012 to spread the notion of an impending shift to a global consciousness. Both the Club of Budapest and Worldshift 2012 were part of a partnership with the Noosphere Forum and the Foundation for the Law of Time.

The thoughts of a global consciousness had been a focus of László since he, in 1978, during a discussion with the Rome Club founder Aurelio Peccei, developed the idea of starting the sister think tank, the Club of Budapest. Both were convinced that a new "cultural and cosmopolitan consciousness" needed to be developed to deal with humanity's "enormous challenges.”
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László, who had been the editor of Reiser’s book
Cosmic Humanism
, described the plan in a more accessible way in his books
Macroshift:
Navigating the Transformation to A Sustainable World
and
Worldshift 2012: Making Green Business, New Politics, and Higher Consciousness Work Together
. In dramatic terms mankind was described as facing a critical “tipping point” if nothing was done. Despite being described as a predetermined evolutionary process, people still had to make a choice, or be doomed.
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The Worldshift 2012 initiative was part of a plan that had been discussed four years earlier at a conference in Tokyo, Creating a New World Civilization. The conference had gathered 4,000 delegates, including ambassadors and other diplomats, with Ervin László, Ashok Gangadean, and Mikhail Gorbachev from World Wisdom Council as speakers.
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Fourteen organisations (including Japanese Goi Peace Foundation, the Club of Rome, the Kabbalist Bnei Baruch, and the Club of Budapest) were represented. The goal was to combine the four S:s (Sustainability, Systems theory, Science, and Spirituality). There was also a close collaboration with the
UN
system and
UNESCO
.

Among supporters of the Worldshift 2012 initiative besides José Argüelles and Barbara Marx Hubbard were Mikhail Gorbachev (Club of Rome, Club of Budapest, Earth Charter,
Green Cross International
), yoga philosopher Deepak Chopra, and primatologist Jane Goodall.

The dates 9/9 2009, 10/10 2010, 11/11 2011, and 21/12 2012, were chosen Worldshift days. The countdown to 2012 had begun.

2012

The ending of the Mayan Calendar on December 21, 2012, represented what Teilhard de Chardin called the Omega Point when humanity would reach “Christ Consciousness” (the Second Coming of Christ) and develop the Mystical Body of Christ (the World Brain). For this “end date” Argüelles the prophet had wanted to gather a critical mass of 144,000 New Age believers for a synchronised peace meditation event, Harmonic Convergence 2012, at sacred places such as the pyramids at Giza, the Dead Sea, Mount Olympus, and the San Fransisco Bay Area.
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Then in 2013, Valum Votan and his Timeship Earth, with a calendar that would liberate mankind, would be ready for take-off.

Alas, as with many manifestations of mass hysteria, this Grand Finale was not to be. José Argüelles, The Closer of the Cycle, had just finished his book,
Manifesto of the Noosphere: The Next Stage in the Evolution of Human Consciousness,
when, during a trip to the Australian outback in March 2011, he suddenly passed away from
peritonitis
and never got to partake in the Great Shift for which he had dedicated much of his life and ‘Valum Votan’ did not get to close the circle with his ceremonial staff.

However, his disciple, Stephanie ‘Red Queen’ South, director of the Foundation for the Law of Time, still continued working diligently to spread the visions of Votan.

CLIMATE POLITICS

Others also had great expectations for 2012. While the New Age movement meditated for oneness, and waited for the Age of Aquarius, the building of a New Earth, and the coming shift in consciousness, others were preparing for the upcoming UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro – the same city as 20 years earlier.

Before the first Rio Conference, Maurice Strong and David Rockefeller had discussed the possibilities of establishing an Earth Council for 2012. This had been proposed in those New Age circles that had supported the Noosphere Forum (via organisations such as Earth Council 2012) but concrete proposals were also developed within more “serious" political and academic circles. However, there were some common denominators.

The Future We (The Rockefellers) Want

The best way to predict the future is to design it. (Buckminster Fuller)

On April 13–15, 2009, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Michael Northrop and gathered 30 sustainability and communication experts and philanthropists to Rockefeller's estate and conference center Pocantico Hills outside New York City to find out why the public was not engaging in the struggle for a more sustainable world.

They concluded that the problems seemed overwhelming and thus made people see mitigating actions as pointless. Too much doom and gloom. The experts decided to create a more positive starting point for building a new world together. The approach was clearly influenced by Barbara Marx Hubbard and her futuristic approach. This resulted in the project The Future We Want, financed by RBF, Surna Foundation, and the Capstone Turbine Production company. It was headed by William S. Becker from the Presidential Climate Action Project, one of the attendees at the conference. Visionaries, artists, technologists, planners, and designers were invited from around the world to describe their vision of how society should look and act 20 years into the future if we took on the challenge and built a world based on people's hopes for the future.

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. (Buckminster Fuller)

In 2011 the project was presented to the United Nations, which was in the process of planning the new environmental summit in Rio 2012. They liked the idea and Secretary General Ban Ki Moon chose “The Future We Want" as the official motto for the conference.
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Becker was also part of the Climate Change Taskforce, together with its founder, Mikhail Gorbachev. The organisation had been formed just before the climate conference in Copenhagen and was supported by the Club of Rome, the Club of Madrid, and Gorbachev’s Green Cross International. The Climate Change Taskforce included Sir David King, climate advisor to the British Prime Minister. Sights were now set on 2012.
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Planet Under Pressure

In January 2009, the Earth System Governance Project was launched, under the direction of German political scientist Dr. Frank Biermann. It was based on a UN project running for over a decade, the International Human Dimensions Programme, and was sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), International Social Science Council (ISSC), and United Nations University. The science network gathered nearly 1,700 scientists from around the world.

The results of the project would be discussed March 26 – 29, 2012, at the conference Planet Under Pressure preceding the Rio +20 conference. As an echo of Teilhard de Chardin the conference declaration asserted that there was a growing consensus that the planet had now entered a new era caused by human activity – the Anthropocene. A number of scientists had worked to identify thresholds and limits that could generate unacceptable environmental and social changes.
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This project was led by Johan Rockström from Stockholm Resilience Center in collaboration with, among others, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Paul Crutzen, and James Hansen. The result had been presented at the Club of Rome Conference in Amsterdam on October 26, 2009.
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Rockström and the recently appointed chairman of the Club of Rome, Anders Wijkman, would later publish the 33:rd Club of Rome Report,
Bankrupting Nature: Denying Our Planetary Boundaries
(2012)
which became widely read.
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