It is becoming obvious that the world is in a crisis and that many question the direction we have taken, and whether we need a new paradigm, a new culture, a new worldview, new societies.

The ancient models seem to no longer serve us and to be dying from within.

To create a new society within the existing social framework has been attempted. Today many intentional communities, with many different structures, exist, yet they exist under the mainstream culture, and shadowed to some extent by it, not as free as they would like to be.

In my opinion we must first lay the foundation, which is a spiritual question, before we can create a new way to be, for a society is a way of being human together.

I think the foundation must be about what it means to be human. Currently I would say that we are not really human, for the simple reason that we fight our own nature. We have done it for centuries.

As a matter of fact we fight all of nature, the outer and the inner, and rather intensely and mercilessly.

To make it simple: we are related to everything, we are connected to all life at every known, imaginable and yet unknown level. We must internalize this fact deeply and see how it affects and transforms our being and opens up our hearts and souls.

From there, from this understanding of the unity and kinship of all life, we should be able to create a new culture that expresses harmony and cooperation rather than fear, subjugation and exploitation.

It goes without saying that balance means the end of the dominant and destructive power of the patriarchy, and a return towards the union and harmony of female/male energies within the human psyche as well as within all social structures and human endeavors.

Indeed, if we want to save the world, meaning save ourselves, we must urgently let women be the leaders who will restore balance, and will guide us to sanity and do away with patriarchal, unintelligent pursuits of dominant power and supremacy, which serve nothing but the perpetuation of injustice, abuse and fear and defeat love and life in all of their expressions, to the point of making our very survival as a species questionable.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport, Calif.