Rugged Individualism: Where Did It Come From?

Lastweek’s blog noted that there was a strong correlation between using first-person singular pronouns (e.g. I, me, mine, myself) and depression. That blog also noted that the use of these pronouns had increased dramatically since the early 1980s.

We might ask: Where did this focus on me, myself, and I come from?

One of the strands that has contributed to this is the rugged individual archetype and the associated myth of the lone hero. They have been with us for a long time.

Stories and myths of this archetype stretch back at least as far as Greek and Roman mythology. Many of us will have heard of, or read of, the exploits of heroes such as Jason, Odysseus, Perseus, Hercules, Romulus, and Remus. Within Norse mythology we know of Odin, Thor, and Hodr. In English mythology we have the rugged individual myths of Beowulf, King Arthur, and Robin Hood. All men. There have been female heroines, although many of us would be hard pressed to name many of them.

The term rugged individual is only recently coined, by US President Herbert Hoover, has been portrayed in Hollywood style Westerns. Butch Cassidy, Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill, Davy Crockett, and others have all etched their rugged individual heroism onto the minds of young boys growing up in the first half of the 20^th century. Those growing up in the latter half of that century were habituated by male heroes such as James Bond, Indiana Jones, Magnum, Rambo, Jason Bourne, and Neo.

These rugged individuals do not need others to fulfill their destiny; they are highly resilient, can withstand a hail of bullets, leap from burning buildings, and of course, save the threatened damsel in distress. The hero rises above his pain, is always in control, and is never vulnerable. It is one of the most toxic archetypes young men can be exposed to. It is an absurd and unattainable self.

Rugged individualism (akin to toxic individualism) promotes an outlook that views other people as competitors rather than as our peers. Accordingly, such an outlook fosters self-promotion and, at its extremity, narcissism. Furthermore, rugged individualism cultivates a belief that one can, and should, solve one’s own problems, even if the solving involves addictive behaviours, such as alcohol and drug misuse, or gambling. A person entrenched in the mythology of the rugged individual is unlikely to be able to reach out for help, further aggravating the likelihood of resorting to unhealthy behaviours.

Francis Weller likens the rugged individual archetype to a prison and says, ‘We are imprisoned by this (hero) image, forced into a fiction of false independence that severs our kinship with the earth, with sensuous reality, and with the myriad wonders of the world. This is a source of grief for many of us.’¹

Sadly, when individuals come to this grief, and crash headfirst into recognising that individualism does not benefit them, the illusion is so firmly entrenched that it becomes extremely difficult to break away from the addictions, habits, and obsessions that have arisen to shore up the false sense of invulnerability.

Paradoxically, it is the very notion of the Self in westernised culture that promotes this sad state of affairs. Western culture, to a large extent, conceives of the Self as a self-sufficient, separate, and a discrete entity. The Self in this construction can be conceptualised as a homunculus residing within our body, responsible to no-one but itself.

Other cultures, especially indigenous ones and those of the Orient, perceive the Self in a different manner. So much so, that within a couple of these cultures the concept of no-Self is more frequently found. The concept of no-Self could be explored in depth and take up much space. A brief clarification will be presented here. No-Self does not mean literally that there is no self and no individual person. It simply means that all selves come into being, live, and pass on, as part of a highly entangled web of life.

Buddhism, for example, calls this concept dependent co-arising; a concept in which nothing arises by and of itself. Rather, phenomena arise by a dynamic interaction of mutually conditioned events. Although this concept is central to Buddhism, and hence to the cultures that embrace it, other cultures have similar concepts.

Within such a concept the idea of the rugged individual is unlikely to gain traction.

Rates of depression vary considerably around the world. It is telling that the highest rates are found in North America, Europe (although Poland bucks the trend), Scandinavia, Australia, and middle East nations. All of whom, to varying degrees, have a high regard for the individual.

On the other hand, the nations where rates of depression are lowest are found mainly in SE Asia, West Africa, and some South American countries. Significantly, these are nations that view the person as being part of a whole, not a separate individual. They are also amongst the least European colonised nations on Earth.

Surely that tells us something.

Notes:

1. Weller, Francis, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, 2015

Me and My Depression

Narcissus

How often do we hear that one of the ways to release oneself from the tentacles of depression is to use self-affirmation statements. Statements such as, I alone hold the truth of who I am.

A google search of self-affirmations recently showed me 99 such affirmations. Tellingly, 66 of the 99 began the affirmation with the first-person singular pronoun I. A further 8 affirmations began with the word My. Furthermore, only seven of the affirmations did not include the pronouns I, me, mine, or myself.¹ That is a staggering 93% of affirmations that include the first-person singular pronoun.

Do these affirmations work? I guess the answer to that question depends on the question: work towards what purpose?

If the purpose is to overcome feelings of anxiety or depression, then the answer may surprise you. Research suggests that those who use first-person singular pronouns (such as I, me, myself, mine) often are more likely to have feelings of anxiety and depression than those who use these pronouns less often.

Researchers from a variety of German Universities in 2015 found that there their ‘present study unravelled some important insights into the link between first-person singular pronoun use and symptoms of depression and anxiety.’² Furthermore, such pronoun use ‘is positively related to brooding.’ The researchers defined brooding as referring to the ‘passive comparison of one’s current state with desired but unreached states.’ They were quick to point out that brooding is qualitatively different from reflection which they characterised as a ‘purposeful turning inward to engage in cognitive problem solving to alleviate one’s depressive symptoms.’

The researchers also clearly mentioned that first-person singular pronoun use is positively related to brooding, but not to reflection. The two states are qualitatively different, with reflection being beneficial, whereas brooding is harmful.

Of course, as any self-respecting statistician will tell you, correlation is not the same as causation. Yet, if we trace the incidence of usage of first-person singular pronouns over time, and the incidence of depression over similar periods of time, the correlation is strong.

The word I in the English language was used approximately 4,000 – 5,000 times in every one million words used between 1800 and 1870. After 1870 the usage of this first-person singular pronoun began to decline to less than 2,500 times per million in the early 1980s. Since then, it’s use has climbed rapidly to around 7,000 times in every one million words today. That is, the word I is used 280% more often today than it was less than 50 years ago. Quite some rise!

Similar increases can be noted in the use of me, myself, and my. All since the early 1980s. Me, for example, is now used four times as often today than it was 50 years ago.

If we track rates of depression over a similar time period, we note a steady increase in depressive symptoms, especially amongst young people.

Is a focus on me, myself, and I making us more depressed?

Many point to a rise in narcissism in recent decades. Indeed, the word narcissist is now used eight times more often nowadays than it was in 1980. Eight times!

Although this short piece is not the place to address the rise of narcissism, it is interesting to note that it’s rise came on the back of the self-development and human potential movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. Many at the time believed that if enough people raised their individual potential, then wider social change would follow. A worthy intention but ultimately flawed as it tended to view the world in a dualistic way – the individual as separate from the wider culture. Furthermore, the rabbit hole of intense self-absorption was opened up, and many followed the rabbit.

Why did the human potential movement not live up to its ideal of social change via individual self-development?

Perhaps because it failed to recognise a simple truth that many teachers and indigenous cultures had known for centuries. There is no separate, disconnected self. The Buddha taught this simple truth 2,500 years ago in his teaching on dependent co-arising. Tribespeople in southern Africa knew it years ago in their concept of ubuntu. The Zulu notion of ubuntu is described by Bishop Tutu as, ‘the philosophy and belief that a person is only a person through other people.’³ The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, more recently coined the term interbeing and described this as, ‘the many in the one and the one containing the many.’ In a nod to the famous Descartes dictum, Thich Nhat Hanh expressed interbeing as ‘I am, therefore you are. You are, therefore I am. We inter-are.’

These are profoundly different ways of conceptualizing the notion of personhood. They also offer a radically different pathway towards a healthy state of mind.

None of the above is meant to suggest that we do away with words such as I, me, myself, mine; rather it suggests that we should be mindful of recognizing that an intense focus on our individual selves leads to unhealthy outcomes.

Notes:

1. https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/positive-affirmations-morning-routine/  accessed 30 June 2025

2. Brockmeyer et al., Me, Myself, and I: self-referent word use as an indicator of self-focused attention in relation to depression and anxiety, Frontiers in Psychology, October 2015, Vol 6, article 1564

3. Desmond & Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving, William Collins, London, 2014

Joanna Macy – A Totara Has Fallen

 Tōtara

Kua hinga he tōtara i te wao nui a Tāne. Within Māori culture, this saying is said when a great person dies. Translated it tells us that a tōtara has fallen in the great forest of Tāne.¹ Joanna Macy has been one of the mightiest of all tōtara – a tree that grows up to 30m in height and can live for up to 1,000 years. Tōtara have been growing in Aotearoa (New Zealand) for some 100 million years.

Just as tōtara have been the source of material benefit and of inspiration, so too has Joanna Macy provided comfort, inspiration, and generosity of spirit for the last eight or nine decades. Joanna Macy died this week (on 19 July 2025) at the age of 96.

Joanna’s life and work could be described with many different metaphors, including that of a tōtara. The metaphor that she herself describes came to her during meditation in India at the age of thirty-seven. In her own words:²

‘To my inner eye appeared a bridge, slightly arching, made of stone. I could see the separate rocks of which it was built, and I wanted to be one of them. Just one, that was enough, if only I could be part of that bridge between the thought-worlds of East and West, connecting the insights of the Buddha Dharma with the modern Western mind. What my role might be – at the podium of a college classroom? at a desk in a library tower? – was less clear to me than the conviction possessing me now: I would be a stone in the building of that bridge.’

Seven years later she published her first book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age. Early on Joanna Macy recognised the links between activism, love for the planet, and grief and despair. She had begun to build that bridge. Throughout the rest of her life Joanna Macy found more and more stones to build that bridge. She brought together Buddhist thought, grief work, deep ecology, and systems thinking, along with a highly engaging personality.

Joanna designed and facilitated dozens of experiential practices to help others connect their own personal power with that of the spirit of the world. In 1998 (updated in 2014) she and Molly Brown compiled these exercises and practices into the widely read, and applied, book Coming Back To Life: Practices to reconnect our lives, our world. The exercises and practices that she developed have been repeated all over the world. Undoubtedly, they will continue to be repeated for decades to come.

When Bill Plotkin was writing his influential Nature and the Human Soul, he wanted to interview two people for his chapter on elderhood. He chose Joanna Macy as one of those people. Macy graciously spent time with him. In this remarkable discourse Macy and Plotkin speak of how Joanna Macy did not so much make things happen, but allowed things to be spoken through her. One of the stones in the whole bridge.

Joanna Macy is certainly one of the western world’s true Elders. She will be missed, but not in a lasting sorrowful manner. She will be missed with love and affection, and her work will continue.

One further metaphor for Joanna Macy’s life is that of a Shambhala warrior. Rather than attempt to repeat the prophecy of the Shambhala warriors here, let me allow Joanna Macy to tell it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc42aNYo8vw As you watch this and understand the contribution Joanna Macy has made to this world, it becomes evident that Joanna Macy is a Shambhala warrior – it is not a metaphor of her life. She held both “weapons” within her hands – compassion and insight.

One final thought. Many years ago, Joanna Macy was being introduced at a public event. The MC introduced her by saying, ‘Joanna Macy has thousands of friends, many of whom have not been born yet.’ Her death is likely to see her gain many thousands more friends.

Notes:

1. Tāne is the Māori god of trees and the forest. He is responsible for separating Mother Earth from Father Sky, thus enabling people to dwell in the space between their parents.

2. From her memoir Widening Circles, and cited in Bill Plotkin’s Nature and the Human Soul.

A Different Kind Of Power - Book Review

Disclaimer: This book is the memoir of the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and leader of that country’s Labour Party. I have never been a member of the NZ Labour Party. I also only voted once for Labour, almost eight years before Jacinda Ardern was born. My vote then may just as much have been influenced by the fact that the Labour candidate – Ethel McMillan – shared the same surname as that of my mother’s maiden name.

 

A Different Kind of Power¹ is a refreshing read coming from a politician. Instead of focussing on the political intrigues, power plays, and other external trappings of a leader of a country, Jacinda Ardern allows us, the reader, a candid glimpse into her childhood and family life. These glimpses enable us to make sense of the different kind of power she espoused and later brought to her role as Prime Minister of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Ardern grew up in two regional towns (Murupara and Morrinsville) and her family often shopped in Rotorua (my own birthplace.) Her family were Mormon and the lessons she learnt in door-knocking then were well utilised in her later life as a politician.

Yet, door-knocking was the least of the lessons she learnt in her younger years. By the time she had entered her mid-teens her mother had had a breakdown, her uncle was severely paralysed following a car accident in which two others were killed, and the brother of her best friend had committed suicide. These events provided the young Ardern with lessons in grief, empathy, and coping with tragedy. All valuable lessons for when, as Prime Minister, she was thrust onto centre stage in three tragic events to shock New Zealanders – a terrorist shooting at mosques in Christchurch where 51 people were killed, an eruption on the island of Whakaari/White Island killing 22 people, and the coronavirus pandemic.

A school experience that Ardern carried with her into her public life as leader of one of New Zealand’s major political parties was debating. She represented her school many times in debating competitions. One of the topics from her school debating years was, That the difference between what we are and what we could be is the greatest waste. She was to think about this topic often in her coming years. That topic and the thinking that went with it undoubtedly influenced her desire for a different kind of power – one based on kindness and empathy. Her answer to a reporter questioning her on her first day as Prime Minister was informed by this debating topic. ‘I want this government to feel different… that it’s going to bring kindness back.’

Becoming Prime Minister though was not comfortable for Ardern. As a youngster she had suffered from imposter syndrome and that stayed with her as she stepped into the most prominent position in New Zealand. A meeting with Queen Elizabeth II however, helped her overcome that hurdle. Not long before Ardern learned that she was going to be New Zealand’s youngest Prime Minister in 150 years, and also only its third female PM, she had been told she was pregnant. Meeting with Queen Elizabeth in private, Prime Minister Ardern asked the queen how, as a woman who had raised children at the same time as holding a prominent public office, if she had any advice for her. Queen Elizabeth’s reply was simple, ‘You just get on with it.’

Jacinda Ardern did so. She got on with it. I do not intend delving into the various policies she and the Labour party implemented during the term of her office. Rather, I wish to concentrate on those moments that displayed her intent to be kind and how others responded to this.

One such moment came five days after the 2019 terrorist shooting at Christchurch mosques.  She visited a school where two of the student’s schoolmates had been killed in the shooting. After a short speech in which Ardern told the students that it was okay to feel sad and that they should not be afraid of asking for help, she asked if there were any questions. After a pause a young girl at the front raised her hand. In Jacinda Ardern’s words, ‘Slowly, with thoughtful deliberation, she asked something I didn’t expect: “How are you?”’ The moment is touching, poignant, and full of hope. It also shows how many community members responded to and reflected back Ardern’s seeking for a different kind of power; kind and empathetic.

Sadly, not all New Zealander’s responded to her with such empathy and grace as this young woman. Ardern relates a couple of personal moments when she was the butt of hatred and bitterness. What she does not write about in the book, though, is that police figures show an increase in threats to her rose from 18 in 2019 to more than 60 in 2022 – a whopping 60% of threats made to all New Zealand MPs combined at the time. A large percentage of these threats were motivated by various conspiracy theories that arose during the covid pandemic. New Zealand was one of the countries that opted for measures that included lock-downs. Sadly, for her, the response by leaders all over the world was a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” She was, similar to all other world leaders, ‘faced with impossible choices.’

But, just as the Queen had advised here a few years earlier, Jacinda Ardern just got on with it – until it was time to go.

Many have suggested that Jacinda Ardern’s decision to step down as the Labour Party leader, and hence the Prime Ministership, was because she could not face the degree of hate and vitriol she was subjected to. In this memoir she makes it clear that there were other factors involved in her decision. The initial prompt was the discovery of a lump on her breast. She asked herself, ‘what if this is cancer?’ How could she continue if that was the case? In her office bathroom a thought arrived – Perhaps I could leave. This experience and the thought it brought to mind was the first in a number of thoughts that brought her to the final decision to step down as Prime Minister.

Whilst she had been Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had continued visiting schools. Often she would ask students the same question – What does a politician look like? More often than not the answers she got back contained a similar theme – selfish, old, untrustworthy, liar, bald. They were answers that disturbed her.

A week before she announced her official resignation she visited another school, this time on a marae (the focal point of a Māori community.) She asked the same question. This time she got a different answer, from a young woman: “’Kind’ she said. ‘I think politicians can be kind.’ I smiled at her. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think they can be kind, too.’”

Jacinda Ardern may not have convinced all in the New Zealand community (not even of her colleagues in parliament) of the need and possibility of a different kind of power based on kindness. But, for that young woman at the school that day it was distinct possibility.

It remains to be seen whether kindness does permeate political thinking and debate. A Different Kind Of Power helps to keep the possibility alive.

Note:

1. Jacinda Ardern, A Different Kind Of Power, Penguin Random House, Australia & New Zealand, 2025

When Do We Give Up?

In a recent interview (2 July 2025) the noted environmentalist David Suzuki answered one of the questions put to him with this disconcerting reply, ‘I’ve never said this before to the media, but it’s too late.’¹

Suzuki spoke in that interview of the nine Planetary Boundaries that the Stockholm Resilience Centre has been tracking since 2009. Speaking of these boundaries, Suzuki was forthright, ‘If we pass one boundary we should be shitting our pants. We’ve passed seven!’

Yes, seven out of nine. When the average global warming reached 1.55 degrees C above pre-industrial levels (thereby exceeding 1.5 degrees) the seventh planetary boundary was surpassed.

When I read Suzuki’s interview I asked myself: When do we give up?

When, like David Suzuki, do we realise it is all too late?

In 1992 the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the first international treaty dealing with climate change did not settle on a level of warming to be heeded. Further conferences and meetings converged on 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels as a limit for a warming we should not go past. In the 2015 Paris Agreement experts concluded that even 2 degrees posed severe risks. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) lobbied for a more stringent level of 1.5 degrees of warming.

Notwithstanding the concerns and fears of those most at risk of climate change (the AOSIS and the LDCs) last year we shattered that boundary and those countries hopes.

The only two boundaries that are still within safe limits are those associated with ozone depletion (because we took serious steps to alleviate this risk in the 1980s) and aerosol pollution.

To expand on David Suzuki’s reference about ‘shitting out pants’ we could say that we are now in a pile of that shit.

And, it is too late to change.

The UN has been holding climate change conferences for decades. In 1995 the first COP (Conference of the Parties) meeting was held in Berlin. Since then we have had twenty-eight more, COP29 was held last November 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The location brought howls of dismay, protest, and alarm, given that Azerbaijan is a major oil and gas producer.

COP30 is due to take place this year in an Amazonian state, in the city of Belém, Brazil. Also a site of controversy, given its location in the northern parts of the Amazon rainforest.

Thirty years of COPs. Thirty years of greater energy use. Thirty years of amplifying carbon emissions. Thirty years of increasing carbon in the atmosphere (global average carbon dioxide reached 422.7 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere in 2024 – 50% higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution.) Thirty years of inaction.

So, when do we give up?

When do our leaders give up flying all around the world to various COP and other climate change conferences? With little or no meaningful outcomes.

When do we stop driving our cars to protests outside parliaments, senates, and other government offices? With little or no impact upon our elected politicians.

When do we stop trying to fix things with more and more (including so-called green and sustainable) technology? In the process continuing to mine and exploit the earth.

In doing things such as these examples  we increase the energy use, we add to emissions, we get warmer.

Yes, they may be small actions, but then so too is 3.75 ppm – the difference in global average carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 2023 and 2024.

Let me spell that out a bit more. 3.75 ppm is just 3.75 parts per 1,000,000. Or, put it another way, it is just 0.000357%. Small isn’t it? But, boy, does it make a difference.

Let’s give up doing all that shit. Let’s stop shitting out pants (thanks David Suzuki.)

But, let us not stop:

·       Loving the earth

·       Reducing consumption

·       Being kind to one another

·       Thinking of future generations

·       Caring for the other creatures upon this planet

·       Enjoying the small things.

 

Notes:

1. ‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost - iPolitics accessed 8 July 2025

Degrowth of Hateful, Abusive, and Insulting Language

One of the few movements that is providing both a critique of the current unsustainable system, and a framework for a system remaining within planetary boundaries is the degrowth movement.

The first International Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity took place in Paris in 2008. However, degrowth’s ancestry can be traced further back in time to at least the mid-20^th century with the rise of political parties with an environmental focus. Those parties often spoke of Zero Growth; today, of course, zero growth is not enough as the world has seriously overshot many planetary boundaries. We now must degrow, with the caveat that even this may be too late.

Much of the focus of the degrowth movement is upon economics, ecology, social equity, resource depletion, techno-optimism, and decolonization.

There is one aspect of modern life that gets little attention within the movement, although (to my mind at least) it is an area of vital importance. This is the sphere of the ways in which we relate to one another and our communication styles.

If there is one truism about the predicament we are in it is that we are all in it together, albeit a few are making themselves offensively comfortable, some are surviving acceptably well, and lots are suffering enormously. Given that we are all in this, then it is obvious that we must be able to talk, listen, and act in cooperative and mutually supportive manners.

Sadly, the signs are that this is not happening, or at least, is happening far too slowly. Some examples may be of use.

A 2023 UN survey of 14,000 American children (aged 10 – 18 years old) found that 80% of them reported encountering hate speech in the previous month. In Australia and New Zealand around 15% of adults were estimated to have been the target of online hate speech in 2019.

Following Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022 and rebranding the social media platform as X hate speech rose by almost 50%.

The number of times that particular words get used within the English language is revealing. In 1900 the word hate occurred as a verb approximately seven times in every one million words used. By 1980 its use had decreased slightly to around five times in every million. However, since then the use of the word hate has skyrocketed to being used almost twenty-five times in every one million words used. That is an increase of 500% in less than 50 years.

One of the distasteful words of the English language is the word f***wit, which came into the English language around 1970. It is a derogatory, offensive, slang word mostly directed at another person and indicates that the recipient of the verbal abuse is considered to be a fool, an idiot, and very stupid. Although not used anywhere near as often as the word hate its use has grown exponentially since 1980 and is now used thirty times more often than it was in the late 20^th century.

Even the racially derogatory term n***er has begun to be used more intensely than it had been. It had been oscillating in usage of between 0.7 and 1.2 times in every one million words from the 1860s through to the 1980s. Since 1980 its use began to climb and is now at a historical high of around 1.6 times in every one million words uttered. Higher, that is, than the sickening years of slavery in the USA.

What of words that speak more kindly or harmoniously? Well, some of them have seen rising usage over recent years, although usually at a much gentler gradient than those referred to above. The word love for instance has seen a threefold increase in usage since the 1980s – still, much less than the twenty-fivefold increase in that of hate.

Although there is more use of words such as compassion, empathy, and kindness in today’s world, the rise of hateful, abusive, and insulting language is outstripping these by several factors of magnitude.

Disrespectful, vicious, offensive, and rude ways of speaking to each other have been on an exponential growth curve over the past 40 – 50 years.

The growth in hateful, abusive, and insulting language spills over into our political, social, and infrastructural realms. Political polarization is on the rise, fueled by narcissistic leaders intent on using such polarization for their own power plays. Coexistent with polarization has come a decrease in trust.

Increased polarization and decreased trust only exacerbates the use of hateful, abusive, and insulting language as antagonistic groups of people attempt to shout down those they view as their enemies. In turn, hateful, abusive, and insulting language helps to create and intensify polarization. The covid pandemic did nothing to ease these tensions, indeed, it only intensified the hatred and distrust between people, no matter what position was taken by proponents of different ways of viewing the cause and alleviation of the pandemic.

At an international level such polarization and hate becomes violent and war is the inevitable result. The present war between Russia and Ukraine is the first on European soil since the end of World War 2 in 1945.

Somehow this growth in hateful, abusive, and insulting language, polarization, and decreased trust must be curbed. It all needs to degrow.

I admit that I do not know how that can be done. My work in community development exposed me to mediation practices and ways of working that were cooperative and nonviolent. I know it can be done at a community level.

Can it be done at a national and international level?

More exploration is required, and I would advocate that the Degrowth Movement consider how to degrow this alarming trend.

Sad and Depressed

We are living in a time when much of the world (human and other-than-human) is in pain. The phrase tears of the world has been applied to this time. The first use of this phrase seems to be by Samuel Beckett, in his renowned play Waiting For Godot. In that play Beckett has a character stating that ‘The tears of the world are a constant quantity.’

In his 1976 song Tears of the World, George Harrison applies this phrase to seeing warfare and pollution yet ‘All warnings fall on deaf ears.’

If we notice this constant pain and observe the unheeded warnings then we may respond in a couple of ways: prolonged periods of depression and despair or brief, albeit intense, bouts of sadness.

Each of these possible reactions offer quite different psychological and responsive pathways. Etymology helps to illuminate the difference.

Depression has Latin roots and literally means to press down. The image of someone pressed down, their face in the mud, possibly a knee on their back illustrates depression. In such a situation the person finds it difficult to move. It is utterly disempowering. Despair has a different lineage yet ends with the same outcome. Old French gives us de (meaning without) and the second part of the word arrives from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word spes meaning prosperity. Hence despair applies to someone without prosperity which has come to mean without hope in our modern-day language. Again the image of a person pressed down in a hopeless situation comes to mind. Neither depression nor despair leave any room for an active response.

The word sad however has a far more intricate and interesting lineage. The PIE word seto (meaning to satisfy) became the word sæd in Old English and originally meant to be sated, to have ones full. It sounds like an unlikely ancestry for our modern word sad doesn’t it? Following the chain of changes in meaning is revealing. The Old English meaning morphed into firmly established, set, and hard in Middle English. These meanings in turn gave way to ponderous, heavy, and full (both physically and mentally) all of which implied a sense of weariness. By the 1300s seto, sæd, and sad had come to be identified with unhappy, sorrowful, melancholy, and mournful.

But, critically, even though it contains a heaviness the word sad never suggested being pressed down and without hope.

With this exploration of the lineage and meanings of depression and sad we can begin to piece together the different responses we have to the tears of the world that each provides us with.

Pressing us down and making us immobile, depression closes in on us and collapses our circle of concern inward. All our energy and attention becomes focussed upon ourselves and may cause us to implode and become self-destructive.

Periodic sadness, on the other hand, widens our circle of compassion and empathy, and we recognise that our pain and sadness connect us to our common humanity and intimacy with the totality of life on this planet.

In 2015 two of the most notable spiritual leaders on the planet, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, met in Dharamsala (the Dalai Lama’s Indian residence) to explore the meaning and expression of joy. The meeting was recorded and published as The Book of Joy.¹ During that meeting much attention was paid to the emotion of sadness. Archbishop Tutu argued that rather than viewing sadness as being a challenge to joy, ‘it often leads us most directly to empathy and compassion and to recognizing our need for one another.’ The Dalai Lama referred to psychological research which showed that those ‘in a sad mood had better judgment and memory, and were more motivated, more sensitive to social norms, and more generous than the happier control group.’

It was also noted that sadness often lingers longer than fear and anger and hence may provide a more lasting basis for acting with compassion.

So, the next time you feel tears begin to slide down your cheek for no apparent reason it may be that you are shedding the tears of the world and mirroring the pain of many upon this planet.

Use this time of sadness to listen to the messages those tears hold. They may contain and fortify your compassionate response.

Notes:

1. Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, with Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy, Avery, New York, 2016

Get Over It or Let It Go

A friend of mine sometimes tells the story of his father returning from naval service after WW2. His father and a friend of his father were affected emotionally, mentally, and psychically by their experiences during the war. Upon their return after the end of the war, they were often told to “Have a beer and get over it.”

How many people suffering from PTSD or some other painful situation are told the same thing: “Get over it”?

Being told this does not help, in fact it tends to make the condition worse. The statement implies that the person in pain is to blame for the experience leading to their pain.

An example may help clarify this. Suppose a soldier on a battlefield is continually bombarded with the sounds of crashing bombs, the whizzing of bullets all around, and witnessing the death (sometimes horrendous) of their comrades. They are likely to experience PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). During WW1 this was known as shell-shock, and at that time was only just starting to be recognised as a wound as debilitating as a physical wound. These men and women did not create those events, but they certainly felt the pain.

The psychology surrounding PTSD and other painful experiences has been widely studied since WW1. The research does not support a practice of “getting over it.”

Buddhism – often referred to as “less a religion and more a psychology of mind” – has some useful insights into how to deal with psychological pain. The first of these insights is to distinguish between pain and suffering. Pain is inevitable, it is a feature of being alive. Pain can be physical, mental, biological, and/or social. Suffering is different. Suffering is our reaction to these pains. So, there are two parts to the experience of, say PTSD. The first part is the incident or event that gave rise to the pain. The second part, following the first, is the various emotions that arise in response. These may be anxiety, anger, confusion, fear, grief, frustration.

The second insight is to recognise that continuous suffering results from attempting to push away the pain and trying to con ourselves into believing the pain does not exist. Buddhists call this aversion. This is what others mean when they say, “Just get over it.”

The opposite of aversion is craving. The opposite of “just get over it” is “just be happy, have a beer.” Both states, at best, are fleeting.

If aversion and craving do not work, then what does?

Buddhism suggests to simply “let it go.” I say “simply” but it is much harder than that, as it involves reconfiguring our mental, emotional, and psychological states. The concept is simple. It is rather like watching a cloud (your suffering) slowly pass by overhead, drifting on the wind, with no active involvement by you at all, aside from simply watching the cloud pass away. Getting into this frame of mind takes time, practice, and (yes) some effort. Even once this frame of mind is achieved, it is possible that the cloud could take a long time to pass by. Simply letting go is not simple.

Notice too, that the exhortation to “get over it” is often uttered by another person, not yourself. “Letting go” however, is something you do, not the instruction of another person. “Letting go” permits you to hold onto your power, rather than allowing someone else to take it from you.

So, how do we get to a state of mind that allows us to “let it go”?

The classic Buddhist response is meditation and mindfulness. This blog will not go into detail on these practices. There are numerous articles, videos, and books around teaching these.

There are many other ways to get to this state. Here are a few possibilities.

·       Spending time in nature. Take a slow, deliberative, walk in a forest. Notice what you hear, see, smell.

·       Physical exercise, especially aerobic exercise: jogging, swimming, cycling, or similar.

·       Enjoy time with a dog, or a horse, or other animal.

There are also some things to refrain from that otherwise would hinder getting to this state, for example:

·       Refraining from harmful pursuits: alcoholism, smoking, gambling, and other forms of addiction.

·       Reducing time in stressful situations. Much of our time in modern society keeps us hyper-vigilant, constantly alert, and on time deadlines. All of these keep us well removed from a “let it go” state of mind.

·       Beware of the trap of consumerism. Consumerism is one of the forms of “getting over it.” A beer is just one of the multitudes of consumer options. The phrase could just as easily be “Go buy a new car and get over it,” or “Add an extension to your house and get over it.”

Thus, next time you hear someone tell you to “Go have a beer and get over it,” let them and their message drift away as would a cloud.

Shattering The Clock

In 1609 Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer, mathematician, and natural philosopher published Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy) in which he outlined the first two laws of planetary motion. It was a significant advance on how we understood the movement of the planets.

Four years earlier, in a letter to a friend, Kepler wrote, ‘My aim is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism, but to a clockwork.’ The metaphor of the cosmos as a clock was promoted at the time by many of his contemporaries.

In his Astronomia Nova he, no doubt, considered that he had achieved that aim.

Sadly he, and many other pioneers of the Scientific Revolution, by introducing this mechanistic metaphor into the world helped to entrench our perceived disconnect from nature. Nature was no longer an organism, but was now a mechanical, automated, and lifeless machine.

And, being mechanical and lifeless, nature could be exploited and open to another of the disturbing metaphors to come out of the Scientific Revolution – misogyny and rape. Francis Bacon, for instance, avowed that the scientific method allowed him to uncover ‘the secrets still locked in (nature’s) bosom… (so that) she can be forced out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded.’ Descartes too, was emboldened by this metaphor, asserting that science could ‘render ourselves the masters and possessors of nature.’

With such metaphors and the attendant worldviews, it is little wonder that today we are exploiting nature and extracting every little resource we can.

But, is the clock beginning to shatter?

The sciences of the 20^th and 21^st centuries are overturning the outlook of the Scientific Revolution of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Perhaps we could say that these sciences represent a Second Scientific Revolution. The sciences of ecology, quantum physics, biology, systems theory, and theories of Emergence, Chaos, and Complexity are all reasserting the cosmos as an organic wholeness.

Throughout the world there are groups of people, small communities, and especially indigenous societies challenging the mechanistic view of the world. Workshops, seminars, retreats, and vision quests are all being utilised to return to an organic outlook.

Although small, these enterprises and experiences are important. Our belief systems and worldviews are built upon the stories we tell ourselves and the metaphors we use. When we contest these, we open up to new, refreshing, possibilities, including the potential to return to an acknowledgement that we live in, and are part of, a divine organism.

All that is exciting. It reconnects us with a sense of wonder at the mysteriousness of life, the universe, and all it contains.

(The) Hidden Life of Trees - Book Review

(Note that this review is late in coming - this book was published nine years ago)

Go for a walk in a forest. When you get back home read The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.¹ The chances are high that the next time you go walking in that same forest the experience will be wholly different. You will see things you hadn’t noticed before. You will hear things you hadn’t heard before.

Chances are, too, that you will stop and want to linger. You may want to get closer to the trees and examine the bark. You might want to dig your fingers into the earth, or peer high into the canopy.

Not only will you see and hear things differently, after reading Wohllenben’s book you may also be able to visualise the vast network of roots, fungi, and mycelium that exists underground, out of sight.

Wohllenben’s book has certainly gained wide attention – it has sold more than three million copies worldwide and been translated into more than twenty languages.

Whilst it has gained an appreciative lay readership, it has not been without its critics in the scientific community. Some have criticised the book for its use of anthropomorphic language. For example, some of the book’s chapters are titled, Tree School, Community Housing Projects, Hibernation, Street Kids, Immigrants etc, all as epithets for aspects of forests and/or trees.

Although it is possible to understand this criticism, it is, in this reviewer’s mind, unfair, or at least misplaced. This book is undoubtedly written for the layperson, a person who may know little or nothing about the workings of forests. It is clearly not written as a scientific treatise. Had it been written in scientific, unemotional language it would not have been bought by three million readers.

Wohllenben outlines in the first few pages his intention in writing the book. He states, ‘This book is a lens to help you take a closer look at what you might have taken for granted. Slow down, breathe deep, and look around. What can you hear? What do you see? How do you feel?’ He’s upfront. This is written for those unused to analysing what is going on in a forest. It is written to evoke an emotional response. And – it works.

By writing in the way he does, using what we understand to be human feelings, behaviours, and functions, Wohllenben helps the reader associate with forests and trees. In one sense the criticism of anthropomorphism becomes a two-edged sword. Can we really say that trees do not have feelings, do not behave in ways that humans might, or that trees do not communicate with and look after one another? To say that they do not and try to write of trees and forests in neutral terms is itself an anthropocentric rendition. Many indigenous languages and cultures worldwide do not name trees, streams, mountains, and other living creatures in the third person – i.e. as it. For many, these entities are imbued with the same energies and sacred attributes as are humans.

In the final few pages Wohllenben addresses the divide between humans and non-humans. He states, ‘I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change as well.’   

Perhaps the sooner we come to appreciate trees and other entities in the same ways we value ourselves, the sooner we might desist in destroying nature and the planet in which we live.

So, my suggestion as reviewer, is to ignore any criticism you may have heard, go with the flow and recognise you in the trees and the trees in you.

For myself, as someone who had previously come across some of the concepts Wohllenben writes of, I found this book illuminating and enjoyable. I learnt a lot more about trees and forests than I knew before I read page 1. I learnt something of myself also.

The final words I will leave to Peter Wohllenben himself, they are also the final words he writes in the Acknowledgments section.

‘Only people who understand trees are capable of protecting them.’

Note:

1. Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, Black Inc., Collingwood VIC, Australia, 2016

Returning to an Island

Recently I re-read Island by Aldous Huxley.¹ It had been around five decades since I first read it.

Those five decades have now allowed me to gain a greater insight into what Huxley was writing about and alluding to.

Island was Huxley’s final novel and served as the counterpoint to his dystopian novel, Brave New World, published thirty years earlier. Could Huxley have written this when he was younger? Perhaps, like me as his reader, he had to be older to dream and appreciate possibilities?

Island is indeed a dream, but not an impossible one. Possibilities exist. The following quotation is at the heart of this novel, both figuratively and literally (on p 170-171 of 329 pages). The possibility described here will find a resonance with many readers, especially those attracted to the ideas of degrowth. The practical philosophy of the island of Pala is explained by one of the island’s elders – Dr Robert as;  

‘… we never allowed ourselves to produce more children than we could feed, clothe, house, and educate into something like full humanity. Not being over-populated, we have plenty. But although we have plenty, we’ve managed to resist the temptation that the West has now succumbed to – the temptation to over-consume. We don’t give ourselves coronaries by guzzling six times as much saturated fat as we need. We don’t hypnotise ourselves into believing that two television sets will make us twice as happy as one television set. And finally we don’t spend a quarter of the gross national product preparing for World War III or even World War’s baby brother, Local War MMMCCXXXIII. Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are over-consuming, the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster. Ignorance, militarism, and breeding, these three – and the greatest of these is breeding. No hope, not the slightest possibility, of solving the economic problem until that’s under control. As population rushes up, prosperity goes down… And as prosperity goes down, discontent and rebellion, political ruthlessness and one-party rule, nationalism and bellicosity begin to rise.’

Within a little over 200 words Huxley has depicted the possibility of a dream; at the same time rebuking the model that the West has been, and still is, implementing.

The key to Huxley’s dream seems to be restraint, the ability to resist temptation. Failure to do so results in huge problems. Is this not exactly what we see in the world today? Political ruthlessness, discontent, nationalism, bellicosity – at the level of individuals, societies, and states.

Island is worth reading, as a young person and then again at an older age. The novel answers some questions as well as throwing up some serious questions for consideration.

One of those questions was posed by Huxley himself upon reflecting upon his two novels – Brave New World and Island. It is a question that calls out for a response from each of us.

‘How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest number of other individuals, of (humanity’s) Final End?’

Note:

1. Aldous Huxley, Island, Granada Publishing, London, Toronto, Sydney, New York, 1962

No Will

Lithium mine

Last week’s blogpiece bemoaned our cultural focus on the future. During the intervening week I found myself guilty of that same error, although not a future of optimism.

In a response to an online post I stated, ‘Unplanned collapse is what will happen…’ Another commentator rightly pulled me up on that comment.

Unplanned collapse is not a future event or possibility. Collapse is already here, although some of us, like me, are not experiencing its full fury. A quote from science-fiction writer, William Gibson, is that, ‘The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.’ The word collapse can easily be substituted in that quote for the word future.

Collapse (environmental and social) is underway in many parts of the world. Inhabitants of Pacific islands are experiencing the effects of climate change. The island nation of Tuvalu, for example, is a tragic example. It is being subjected to rising sea levels and more frequent and more severe cyclones and storms. Cyclones further erode the shoreline of the nation’s islands, exacerbating sea level rise.

Elsewhere in the world we see social breakdown, with war being the most glaring example. The five most devastating warfare sites in the world in 2024 were the Ukrainian-Russian war, the Palestine-Israel war, and the civil wars in Myanmar, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Then there are the other instances. The ones that are out of sight, out of mind. Mostly they are out of sight because they are in countries the mainstream media are not interested in. They are out of mind because if we in the rich, industrialised, nations considered them they would disrupt our cosy, comfortable lifestyles. Mostly, too, these cases are ones that exist so that we can continue to live in a way that believes that collapse will occur in the future.

Let me explain and offer examples of such instances.

In the rich, industrialised, nations we have become aware of climate change and the forces generating it. As a result, we are keen to reduce carbon emissions. However, we only want to do so if it means we do not have to change our consumerist, exploitative, and extractive behaviours.

Yet, if we look closely, these behaviours continue at the expense of local communities (e.g., copper mining in Congo, and lithium mining in the Atacama Desert) and also local ecosystems (again, for example, lithium mining in the Atacama Desert).

The American ethnobotanist, Terence McKenna addressed this inclination towards an out of sight, out of mind outlook when he announced that;

‘The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.’

So, I guiltily acknowledge that when I write that “the collapse will happen,” then I am writing from a privileged view and from a position of insulation.

If I, and millions of others in the rich, industrialised nations, continue to live in a bubble (as McKenna refers to it) then we do so by consigning millions of others to suffer collapse right now, not in some anticipated future.

If We Can't Go Back...

Critics of modernity, and the current messy system we are in, often get taunted with the reproach that, “you can’t go back.” Maybe we can, maybe we can’t. Even if we had the means to do so, we may not have the will.

Not going back though, does not imply that we must go forward. Indeed, our westernised penchant for going forward (aka progress) may be one of the major concepts that have got us into this mess.

The idea that we must continually progress is rooted in the manner in which we think of time. Time, in the westernised worldview, is linear and moves from the past, conceptualised as behind us, to the future, conceptualised as in front of us, ahead of us.

Progress as a physical and metaphysical goal was deemed by many Enlightenment thinkers as desirable and almost inevitable. The view of many Enlightenment thinkers (such as Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Kant) was that human history tended towards freedom, equality, and greater well-being. Human progress is not only possible, it is inevitable according to this view.

It was a compelling idea and, in an age when the Dark Ages were still at the forefront of people’s memory, it was also a welcome and refreshing idea. Progress became one of the idée du jour of Enlightenment thinkers and permeated the minds of the general populace. So much did it pervade our minds that today it is considered the natural course of things. To question the idea of progress is tantamount to sacrilege.

Progress came to be synonymous with better, greater, improved, advanced, and superior. The current generation were better-off than the previous one. But then came the unsettling thought that the future was a better place to be than the present. With this realisation came the figure of speech that whipped post-war generations into a consumerist society – keeping up with the Jones’es.

Progress became coupled with improvement; progress meant improvement; improvement meant progress. Things must improve. Things must get better. The future is to be striven for at all costs. And one of the costs of all this striving was inadequate consideration of the consequences of new technology and infrastructure. In the post-war consumerism boom the word NEW! was one of the most oft used words of advertisers.

No consideration was given to the social, individual, and environmental consequences.

If we are paying attention to the state of the world then the environmental consequences of progress are all too apparent. We can see the consequences. They are not good.

What may not be so easy to see are the consequences of progress on our mental and psychological health. When we believe that the future is better than now then we can easily become dissatisfied with, and disappointed in, the present moment.

The ability to place our faith in improvement and betterment in a future time was explored in depth by Alvin Toffler and Adelaide Farrell (often unacknowledged) in 1970 in their book Future Shock.¹ In that book they outlined how the pace of change and our expectation of a better future was having an impact upon our psychological health. Toffler and Farrell described this as an ‘abrupt collision with the future.’ Since then, the pace of change has increased exponentially. Also, our expectations of the future solving the problems of today and resulting in a better world have also gained traction.

But it doesn’t happen.

Thinking that we are better off than were our ancestors leads us to want to avoid going back to the past. Thinking that the future will bring about improvement leads us to want to progress to that time as quickly as possible.

In this state of aversion for the past and attachment to the future, our present moment becomes homeless. We don’t reside there; yet it is in the present moment that our hearts and souls wish to dwell. The present is where we are most settled, it is where we become free of anxiety, depression, tension, and stress.

We may not be able to go back, but, for the sake of our health, we can stop striving to get ahead.

If we could do that, we might just find that the past was not so onerous as we think. We might even find that there are some things that we could go back to. We might even enjoy them. We might even improve our mental and psychological health.

Note:

1. Toffler, Alvin (and Farrell, Adelaide), Future Shock, Bantam, New York, 1970