Thank you for articulating so clearly and wisely what I've suspected in an inchoate fashion for quite some time now. Poverty, climate destruction, endless wars, these are not glitches in the system, they are the outcome of systems that intentionally exploit and crush human beings. The only hope I see is for some of us, wherever we are, to begin building alternative communities, flying under the radar so that we can survive the coming apocalypse.
Exactly, the story that it is a problem we cannot fix does not hold. We spend billions creating problems and we don’t have enough for universal care? That’s not credible, that is intentional. Propaganda aside.
Now I would go one step further.
Why don’t we try to create community not so that we thrive but so that non human species thrive? And trust life enough that this is what would serve us best ( without trying to prove it)?
That would be true surrender. That would trusting life fully .
I believe that is the message of Christ on the cross. The complete surrender. The trust that there is something bigger that is worth dying for.
Even King said: until man has not found something worth dying for, he is not fit to live.
The context and meaning was different. I think it contains a truth that can be reused today.
Ah, now that would be a challenge indeed! I suppose I would hope that survival of the created order would include human survival as part of the whole, but it may well turn out that we must decrease so that the non-human world can flourish (to paraphrase John the Baptist).
I do believe that too. We have reduced other species and their habitat to the point of endangering the very balance of the planet because these are values that do not make it in the balance sheet we used to calculate GDP. What a blindness.
Humanity is in a dire place. Why? Because we don’t trust life itself. We protect and control and fear is at the core motivator of it all.
“Forgive them, they know not what they are doing”.
I'm a new reader who found you through an algorithmic suggestion. I'm grateful to have found your essay. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and observations.
As an American, I concur. What you see and say sounds like what I have come to know about our country. In 2007, my husband's company sent him to Italy on a work trip. He was there for 2 weeks. I've always dreamed of seeing Italy, and since work was paying for his share of the trip... we knew this would probably be my only chance to make it happen. My flight, my share of the accommodations, and my meals were all we'd have to cover (which was still quite a sum for us at the time). I flew out to join him for the second week. We stayed in a non-touristy area of Northern Italy, and it wasn't a holiday. It was a work trip. So my husband essentially "lived and worked" in Italy for 2 weeks. That trip changed our lives for the better. We saw something we didn't quite understand at the time. We sensed that life was different. People lived smaller lives, but were immensely happier. We came home and have worked quietly over the last 19 years to create some semblance of what we experienced there. We even tried to hop the pond and make Europe our home once in 2023 (unsuccessfully - the plan was a non-starter from the beginning, but we sure had hope).
I'm not sure why the dreams of living differently have been planted in the garden of my heart. I can only tend this garden and hold onto hope that while I may not live to see the seeds I've planted bear any fruit... that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren someday will. If I'm meant to be part of the compost that was America, the prayer of my heart is that my contributions may at least be useful in growing something new for our future collective good.
P.S. returned to add -- we experienced the confusion and pain of living within a family system that was dominated by a toxic narrative. We see the conditioning. We've had to learn how to untangle ourselves from it, heal cognitive dissonance, and work diligently on nervous system recalibration. It has been a long slog, and it's hard work. Your observations resonate and track with our experiences. I wonder how many will be willing or are even capable of facing the truth. Will they have a choice?
Nineteen years of quiet work in the direction of something you glimpsed in a week in northern Italy, that is not a small thing. That is a life oriented by a true experience rather than an inherited story.
The image you end with, being part of the compost, is one of the most honest and generous framings I have heard. The cherry tree doesn't see the fruit it will never taste. It makes cherries anyway. (to use one of my favorite allegory)
Your postscript carries the whole argument of the piece in personal form. Nervous system recalibration is exactly the right language, and you already know what most people haven't begun to suspect: that the cognitive work and the somatic work are the same work, just entered from different doors.
Your last question, will they have a choice, is the one I sit with too. My honest answer is: some will, when the pain of staying inside the story exceeds the fear of leaving it. Not everyone reaches that threshold. But you did. And that matters.
"A life oriented by a true experience rather than an inherited story." That feels true. It has felt a lot like swimming upstream most of the time, but the glimmers and rewards have made this entire journey feel worth it. We did reach that threshold, and it matters. I'm glad to be here most days, even when I question everything.
Thank you for the gift of this exchange. May peace be with you and love light the way.
Crazy is this may sound. I disagree that the whole system was designed exactly as we are existing in it now. I believe that as what always happens in a civilization, is that greed and power become so addicting that men will do anything to have it. And therefore they will destroy any system to get it. I think there was a time even in as much as we exist under the patriarchy, where we had the potential to create something really amazing. The foundation was there. And we chose capitalism.
I understand your point. I don’t think we disagree…
There is no conspiracy I wrote. The design is the result of our collective shadow of fear. Not a conscious design.
Fear is the deepest directive. Greed and power are expression of this shadow. When we don’t know who we are, we follow unconscious drives. These drives led to capitalism. Not just unhealthy men, a system driven by subconscious force given space for lack of self awareness.
Not even patriarchy.
Patriarchy is the stick. When someone hit you with the stick, do you blame the stick. Fear is the force behind it. And who raised those men to be so fearful I ask?
In fact it is a classic coaching case. Someone’s habit brings them to replicate a pattern with bad outcomes. You don’t resolve the pattern. You look at what fuels it. Without resolving the deeper layer. The pattern reproduces. Every civilization that falls for greed and power is the pattern we observe.
Thank you for articulating so clearly and wisely what I've suspected in an inchoate fashion for quite some time now. Poverty, climate destruction, endless wars, these are not glitches in the system, they are the outcome of systems that intentionally exploit and crush human beings. The only hope I see is for some of us, wherever we are, to begin building alternative communities, flying under the radar so that we can survive the coming apocalypse.
Exactly, the story that it is a problem we cannot fix does not hold. We spend billions creating problems and we don’t have enough for universal care? That’s not credible, that is intentional. Propaganda aside.
Now I would go one step further.
Why don’t we try to create community not so that we thrive but so that non human species thrive? And trust life enough that this is what would serve us best ( without trying to prove it)?
That would be true surrender. That would trusting life fully .
I believe that is the message of Christ on the cross. The complete surrender. The trust that there is something bigger that is worth dying for.
Even King said: until man has not found something worth dying for, he is not fit to live.
The context and meaning was different. I think it contains a truth that can be reused today.
Ah, now that would be a challenge indeed! I suppose I would hope that survival of the created order would include human survival as part of the whole, but it may well turn out that we must decrease so that the non-human world can flourish (to paraphrase John the Baptist).
I do believe that too. We have reduced other species and their habitat to the point of endangering the very balance of the planet because these are values that do not make it in the balance sheet we used to calculate GDP. What a blindness.
Humanity is in a dire place. Why? Because we don’t trust life itself. We protect and control and fear is at the core motivator of it all.
“Forgive them, they know not what they are doing”.
🙏
Yes. Trust Life. I think I shall sit with that as a meditation for a good long while.
Don’t we all … 🤷🏼♂️
I'm a new reader who found you through an algorithmic suggestion. I'm grateful to have found your essay. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and observations.
As an American, I concur. What you see and say sounds like what I have come to know about our country. In 2007, my husband's company sent him to Italy on a work trip. He was there for 2 weeks. I've always dreamed of seeing Italy, and since work was paying for his share of the trip... we knew this would probably be my only chance to make it happen. My flight, my share of the accommodations, and my meals were all we'd have to cover (which was still quite a sum for us at the time). I flew out to join him for the second week. We stayed in a non-touristy area of Northern Italy, and it wasn't a holiday. It was a work trip. So my husband essentially "lived and worked" in Italy for 2 weeks. That trip changed our lives for the better. We saw something we didn't quite understand at the time. We sensed that life was different. People lived smaller lives, but were immensely happier. We came home and have worked quietly over the last 19 years to create some semblance of what we experienced there. We even tried to hop the pond and make Europe our home once in 2023 (unsuccessfully - the plan was a non-starter from the beginning, but we sure had hope).
I'm not sure why the dreams of living differently have been planted in the garden of my heart. I can only tend this garden and hold onto hope that while I may not live to see the seeds I've planted bear any fruit... that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren someday will. If I'm meant to be part of the compost that was America, the prayer of my heart is that my contributions may at least be useful in growing something new for our future collective good.
P.S. returned to add -- we experienced the confusion and pain of living within a family system that was dominated by a toxic narrative. We see the conditioning. We've had to learn how to untangle ourselves from it, heal cognitive dissonance, and work diligently on nervous system recalibration. It has been a long slog, and it's hard work. Your observations resonate and track with our experiences. I wonder how many will be willing or are even capable of facing the truth. Will they have a choice?
Thank you for the thoughtful comment.
Nineteen years of quiet work in the direction of something you glimpsed in a week in northern Italy, that is not a small thing. That is a life oriented by a true experience rather than an inherited story.
The image you end with, being part of the compost, is one of the most honest and generous framings I have heard. The cherry tree doesn't see the fruit it will never taste. It makes cherries anyway. (to use one of my favorite allegory)
Your postscript carries the whole argument of the piece in personal form. Nervous system recalibration is exactly the right language, and you already know what most people haven't begun to suspect: that the cognitive work and the somatic work are the same work, just entered from different doors.
Your last question, will they have a choice, is the one I sit with too. My honest answer is: some will, when the pain of staying inside the story exceeds the fear of leaving it. Not everyone reaches that threshold. But you did. And that matters.
Love
"A life oriented by a true experience rather than an inherited story." That feels true. It has felt a lot like swimming upstream most of the time, but the glimmers and rewards have made this entire journey feel worth it. We did reach that threshold, and it matters. I'm glad to be here most days, even when I question everything.
Thank you for the gift of this exchange. May peace be with you and love light the way.
Crazy is this may sound. I disagree that the whole system was designed exactly as we are existing in it now. I believe that as what always happens in a civilization, is that greed and power become so addicting that men will do anything to have it. And therefore they will destroy any system to get it. I think there was a time even in as much as we exist under the patriarchy, where we had the potential to create something really amazing. The foundation was there. And we chose capitalism.
I understand your point. I don’t think we disagree…
There is no conspiracy I wrote. The design is the result of our collective shadow of fear. Not a conscious design.
Fear is the deepest directive. Greed and power are expression of this shadow. When we don’t know who we are, we follow unconscious drives. These drives led to capitalism. Not just unhealthy men, a system driven by subconscious force given space for lack of self awareness.
Not even patriarchy.
Patriarchy is the stick. When someone hit you with the stick, do you blame the stick. Fear is the force behind it. And who raised those men to be so fearful I ask?
In fact it is a classic coaching case. Someone’s habit brings them to replicate a pattern with bad outcomes. You don’t resolve the pattern. You look at what fuels it. Without resolving the deeper layer. The pattern reproduces. Every civilization that falls for greed and power is the pattern we observe.
Even as we were little amoeba’s climbing out of the sea, we were frightened of what was next
I can’t recall. Maybe you know someone who can take through a regression process that can take me back there? In LA it’s probably out there. 😂
Joke aside, yes… fear seems to be a constant trait
Have you ever noticed that when people talk about their past live regressions they are always like kings and queens or rich people lol
Of course, they don’t want to remember themselves the major part of their DNA comes from ameba or viruses!