WIE: You have also applied this perspective to the AIDS pandemic in Africa, another major global crisis. Could you speak about this?

BECK: The AIDS pandemic is among the greatest humanitarian disasters we're facing. In Zimbabwe alone, life expectancy has fallen to thirty-three because of an HIV rate that is among the highest in the world, with one out of three non-elderly adults infected with the virus. While the campaign to reduce HIV in Africa has tended to focus more on the medical aspects of the pandemic, it has all but ignored the cultural dynamics that have in large measure created it. The HIV pandemic in Africa is largely the result of sexual practices that are best understood in terms of the dynamics of underlying worldviews or what we call value systems—in this case, the female tribal system and the male egocentric system. These ways of thinking are not specifically African and they're not specifically black; they're not about genetics or geography. They're value structures.

In the tribal system, women want to give birth to numerous children as their form of social security, and therefore they continue to become pregnant and often contract AIDS from their husbands in the process. They know that many of their children will die, and yet they need their children to look after them in old age as their guarantee of survival. And on the other hand you have men in the egocentric system, who are driven by a deep need to prove their masculinity, and therefore having AIDS is seen as a sign of their prowess, reflecting the fact that they have probably slept with numerous women and are not using condoms. To further exacerbate these trends, superstition is highly prevalent in both of these value systems. There's a common belief, for example, that HIV can be cured if you have sex with a virgin—hence the ongoing prevalence of child, toddler, and baby rape in southern Africa.

Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki and so many of the Europeans who have gone to Africa won't talk about these issues for fear of being called racist. But these are prime examples of what has to be talked about. It's not enough to send medical cocktails, which in fact may only increase HIV if these cultural dynamics are not taken into consideration. Why? Because in the context of these value systems, the drugs are seen as an instant magical cure. And people think, “If I can get that magical cure, I can continue my behavior.” So without the knowledge of culture, the understanding of these value systems or worldviews, the millions or billions of dollars we spend on this crisis won't address the real dynamics that are creating the pandemic in the first place.

WIE: Do you see evidence, in politics, business, or elsewhere, of the recognition that we must begin looking for new kinds of solutions?

BECK: A conversation I had with the Right Honorable Baroness Amos at the International Development Office in Tony Blair's government indicated that they are looking for a whole new approach to Third World development and have concluded that it has to happen within governments at the local level rather than through external helping agencies. And this is not just in terms of a solution to the HIV crisis, but far beyond that. Both the U.S. State Department and the Blair government are redoing their African commissions, asking why they haven't worked. Other major funding sources are asking this as well. The U.S. State Department is putting forward a new African initiative where countries now have to compete to receive aid; they have to demonstrate a threshold of responsibility in order to qualify for assistance. In the past, we'd simply write a check out of guilt, or charity, or other motives, such as anticommunism. But now there is a shift to the expectation or demand that these countries achieve a certain level of accountability in their economic, political, and social structures before they can qualify for money. They have to get their houses in order. The highest expression of humanity is not to label others as victims but to create the insight and the means and the resources to allow them to bootstrap, to rise through the levels of cultural development themselves. And through understanding the cultural dynamics of these countries, we need to demonstrate to them the ways in which they can and must evolve and develop so they can qualify for aid.

WIE: In the examples you're giving, you're transmitting the very real sense that unless we embrace a new perspective and implement new kinds of solutions, we may—despite our good intentions—unwittingly exacerbate global problems that could ultimately overwhelm us.

BECK: The entire planet has become a crucible as the fires of conflict, threats from wild cards (unforeseen and potentially catastrophic events), and the rapid speed of change combine to forge levels of turbulence even more dangerous than global warming. But when things get bad enough, solutions will arise out of the milieu. Entirely new solutions will come out of this crisis. We have to, in a sense, almost regenerate brain tissue to reach new levels of thinking. It's happened seven different times in human history, and we have no reason to believe that it won't happen now, but no one knows how it's going to look. There's optimism in that, but there's no guarantee. It takes crisis, and it takes the failure of our present solutions, to set the stage for the emergence of the new.

The fact is that there are six billion of us passing through different levels of consciousness and cultural development, with each step requiring different economic and political models, diverse expressions of religion and spirituality, and tailored approaches to education, health care, and community development. Whole cultures are passing into new developmental zones, and we can help them emerge, we can help them create self-sustainability. But we need three-dimensional thinking and actual on-the-ground solutions for meshing the third and first worlds, for cutting across racial boundaries, for creating win-win-win situations. That's why the two key words for my work, and for my new Center, are human and emergence. Because ultimately, what we're trying to do is create better ways for six billion earthlings to survive. That is the ultimate bottom line—the health of the whole, based upon an understanding of human complexity and emergence. In this way, we're developing the next step beyond the League of Nations and the United Nations. I realize this endeavor has a grand scope, but such is the nature of major paradigm shifts in our culture.