What if we’re too fucked up?
These are unprecedented times. They are going to require unprecedented actions by many people; people willing to leave behind the stories and assumptions, values and lifestyles of the culture of Empire; people willing to discern and claim their own unique part to play in this unfolding drama as the world spins ever faster, and ever closer to meltdown.
The more each of us takes the risk to step into our own unique brilliance, the farther we move from the lock-step of the mainstream. But most of us were reared and schooled for life in the mainstream. We were not supported as children and students to listen to our own different drummer. Any move away from the dominant family or societal system felt extremely risky because as children we were dependent, not able to take care of ourselves.
As Richard Heinberg points out in What A Way To Go, the people of Empire, as adults, are also highly dependent. We are dependent upon the structures of Empire. We are living in a culture that infantilizes us. Everything we need to live is dependent on huge structures that we have no personal control over.
The freest among us may be the handful of small, organic farmers who are not totally dependent on fossil fuels. They, at least, are able to grow a portion of their own food and could, if necessary, barter that food for other things they need. The rest of us are dependent on them, but even more dependent on the vast structures of civilization that keep us warm and fed, distracted and entertained.
We tell ourselves the story that we are living in an advanced civilization. We tell ourselves we are free. But as individuals we are highly dependent, highly vulnerable. This is not the mark of freedom or advancement, to be so utterly dependent upon a system that is not sustainable in the long run and is, in fact, actively, rampantly destructive of our basic environmental life support systems.
So we currently live a myth of freedom and independence. We are so highly dependent, just as children are on their families, that it takes some real guts, to challenge that myth, to swim against the mainstream currents, to define and create a life that is in truth freer, one that begins to reflect and express who we really are.
We are social beings. We need to belong. We need that like we need to breathe and to eat. But we do not need, in any real way, to belong to highly dysfunctional systems that stifle and distract, systems that exploit our energy and creativity.
I have experienced what happens when I am in a highly functioning group, one that both supports people to be their unique selves but also has learned to effectively tap the collective wisdom of the group. This is what indigenous councils experience when they make decisions. This is part of our ancestral and genetic heritage. The ability to be both a unique individual and also a member of a highly functional group was a trait that was selected for, evolutionarily, over eons. And we need this ability, right now, more than ever before. We need to be able to give and get strength, support, and counsel. We need a circle, a tribe, an extended family, a village.
Several weeks ago nine of us met in a circle for twenty-seven hours over a long weekend. As our time came to a close I said: “I don’t get any better than this.”
There is magic in a group that has tapped into collective wisdom, the wisdom that includes that of unseen forces, call them ancestors, or guardian angels, the Holy Spirit, or simply the collective unconscious. The magic of such a circle is that it provides something for the individual psyche, a safety, a strong container that allows full expression and freedom to be oneself.
In the context of such a circle or community, instead of feeling I’m at greater risk to say and be who I am, I feel safer. It becomes safe to say the unspeakable and feel the heretofore un-feel-able. It becomes safe to be quiet for long periods of time, to slow down, to listen profoundly to others. There is no worry I will be lost in the crowded dysfunction of old family or societal patterns.
Instead I feel both deeply centered in myself and connected to the strong selves of others.
It was in the strength of that strong container a few weeks ago that I was able to go to the mat with a fear that has been lurking in the shadows of my consciousness:
“What if we are too fucked up to make it?”
What if human beings are just too dissociated from their true brilliance as living, breathing, be