English Needs An Antonym For Schadenfreude

In the mid-1800s the English language adopted the German word schadenfreude. In German schadenfreude means damage-joy. Dictionaries define it as malicious joy in witnessing the misfortune of others.

During the first century after adoption the word hardly entered common parlance. It began to be used more often from the mid-20^th century onward and by the mid-1980s was being used once in every 100 million words used.

However, since then its use has skyrocketed to being used once in every ten million words by 2020. A massive tenfold upsurge in less than forty years!

Prior to schadenfreude English had the word gloat from the 16^th century. Originally it meant to look at furtively and has a common root with the familiar glower. Parallel with the use of schadenfreude, gloat has also become more frequently used since the 1980s, having quadrupled in use in the same forty years.

What does this say about our culture? Are we becoming further and further disconnected from one another to the extent that we talk more often about finding joy in someone else’s lack of joy?

The words we use have an influence upon our worldview and our cultural psyche, and vice versa. Hence, a word such as schadenfreude both describes our worldview and shapes it at the same time.

Certainly, when we look around, and listen to some of the conversations around us, we hear examples of this often. The game of “us” versus “them” is frequently played out. Racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice play this game. One of the prizes in this game is when the “us” team defeats the “them” team and “we” are able to gloat over the misfortune of “them.” That is schadenfreude.

An Antonym

Does English have an antonym to schadenfreude?

It appears not. English has words that come close to the meaning of being unhappy at someone else’s misfortune: e.g. sympathy, pity, compassion. But English does not have a specific word meaning to be happy at someone else’s happiness, joy, or good fortune.

Other languages do. The Pali language, for example, has the word muditā, meaning the joyfulness that comes from delighting in the joy of others. The word is used in Hindu texts that are at least two thousand years old, and was used by the Buddha even earlier.

Muditā has been in use in the Pali language, and others in India and surrounding areas, for well over two millennia. It has made a significant contribution to the worldview of cultures in that part of the world.

English, and German, it would seem have not been influenced by any similar words.

It’s time we found one.

An attempt was made by a commune in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco in the early 1980s. The Kerista Commune was an intentional grouping of people who believed in and practiced polyamory. In an effort to reject sentiments such as jealousy and envy the commune members fashioned the word compersion, from the French word compère (partner) and the English suffix sion. The meaning attributed to the word however was limited. It signified the happiness one felt for the happiness of a partner. Compersion was not extended to others outside the polyamorous community.

So, the English language is still looking for a word that means to take delight in the joy, happiness, or good fortune of others, whether of one’s immediate grouping or outside that grouping.

At a time when we English speakers are using words associated with finding joy in others discomfort more frequently, the search for an antonym for schadenfreude and gloat is vital.

The other approach we could use is to regularly appreciate, applaud, and find joy in the happiness of others. Out of such a milieu an antonym for schadenfreude might emerge.

It’s Urgent: We’d Better Slow Down

Slow down enough to see the
simple beauty in a small leaf.

Things are getting urgent, aren’t they? The average global temperature is getting dangerously close to the 1.5 deg C limit signed in the Paris Agreement. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz has shown just how unstable the world’s oil supply is. The divide in political polarisation is growing precariously wide. The Arms Race has not abated. Geopolitical tensions are on the up.

In our own personal spheres, levels of anxiety, depression, and isolation are rising. The mental health of people is deteriorating, sometimes at an alarming rate.

We’ve got to do something.

The train known as humanity is rushing headlong, and with great urgency, toward a precipice. For some members of the human race, the train they were on has already tipped into the chasm.

The urge to do something may be the very factor that impels us closer towards disaster.

The words urgent and urge contain within them the dubious assumptions leading towards the abyss. The Latin word from which the words originate – urgere – means to press hard, push forward, force, drive, compel…

Yet, it is this pushing forward, characterised imprudently as progress, which has been one of the major features driving us to this point.

Thus, urgent as it is, we must slow down.

That’s a contradiction, isn’t it? Surely, if it’s urgent, we have to hurry up and do something about it.

Contradiction – no. Paradox – yes.

Paradox is ubiquitous. Our own lives attest to it. We see paradox almost everywhere we look. At the macro level of the multi-level crises alluded to above it is no less prevalent.

Yet, we do not seem to be capable of recognising the paradox that we should be awake to.

Simply put: Everything is Urgent: We Must Slow Down.

When we examine the various crises, we can see that one of the drivers of most, if not all, these crises is speed. Getting somewhere quicker. Obtaining material objects at a faster and faster rate. Speeding here, speeding there. Rush to work, speed through the in-box, get things achieved quickly (there’s a deadline to be met – urgently!) Rush home, maybe pick up the kids from school on the way. Buy fast-food for dinner, or a pre-cooked meal that can be prepared quickly. Take the dog for a quick walk around the block. Switch through channels on the TV or surf the internet. Head to bed and turn on the alarm; no time to sleep-in. Do it all again. Faster, faster, faster.

At an industrial level the same patterns get repeated. Make more and more stuff, at a quicker, more efficient, speed so that more money can be accrued. Exploit the earth and extract so-called “resources” to get ahead of the opposition and position the company at the head of the pack. Pay no attention to “externalities” (such as the birdlife, water quality, air quality, or soil erosion), so long as the “fuel” for continuous growth of the economy is ever present.

What if we slowed down enough to recognise and acknowledge the beauty in the world? Slowing down we would notice more beauty, like the beauty in a small dying leaf as shown in the illustration accompanying this blogpiece. What if we slowed down enough to feel love and empathy for our human and non-human co-inhabitants of this planet? What if we slowed down enough to listen to our children? What if we slowed down enough to sit quietly with an elderly relative? What if we slowed down enough to feel the beat of our own heart?

If we did these things, would we continue to exploit, destroy, and degrade the natural world?

I somehow don’t think so.

We would probably also enjoy our lives a lot more.

We would probably also allow many others around the world to enjoy their lives a lot more also.

Slowing down would also slow down, and in same cases halt, the crises that surround us.

If this all sounds too much, perhaps start with just one day a week. Make one day a Slow Day.

Sacred Revolt (a Review)

I began writing this weekly blog over fourteen years ago. In that time more than 60 book reviews have been posted. Never before have I reviewed a single academic paper, although many have been referred to. This review, however, is of an academic paper. I am reviewing it because I think it is one of the most important contributions to the discourse about the poly-crisis (aka, multi-crisis, ecological-social collapse) and/or sustainability issues.

The author, Sam Alexander, Ph.D., is the Director of the Simplicity Institute and lecturer in Environmental Programs at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

The full title of the paper is Sacred Revolt: Why Reverence Before Restraint Transforms the Limits-To-Growth Predicament. The paper was published just one week ago, on 8 July 2026. At the end of this review is a link to the paper where it can be downloaded. I strongly suggest reading the entire paper.

The Review

As the full title alludes, the current ecological crisis is often framed in terms of limits, how we keep within them (if at all) and thus become sustainable. Framed in this way, the questions that are asked are of the nature what do we do? These types of questions often comprise technological and mechanical answers on the one hand. Or, the answers suggest restraint, limitation, and self-control.

Neither answer satisfies Sam Alexander. We are failing with both approaches he claims. We need to ask an entirely different sort of question. We need to ask, he states, ‘How might humanity learn once again to love the world enough to not destroy it?’

A simple sounding question, isn’t it? Deepening the question poses more questions and a variety of answers.

Much of the literature in this field offer technological/mechanistic answers to the question, what do we do? A smaller section of the literature present critiques of these answers.

An even smaller segment of the library suggests kerbing consumption and the growth imperative.

Both these approaches are failing Alexander tells us.

The restraint approach fails because it does not adequately address the psychological and spiritual underpinnings of modernity. Modernity constructs and reinforces a strong worldview in its subjects (us humans) that coerces us into believing that our purpose can be found in continued progress, a success orientation, and an eternal future hope of betterment. Our self-identity, modernity tells us, is wrapped up in more; more possessions, more money, more power, and ultimately, more growth.

Against this, the restraint message comes across as limitation and having to give up something. Rather than restraint, our psyche receives the message as deprivation and scarcity.

Psychologically then, the message of restraint gets interpreted as a denial of our human destiny, whether we understand this consciously or not.

So, what does Sam Alexander prescribe?

Prior to submitting a prescription, Alexander notes that modernity has desacralized the world. Alexander is not advocating a religious revival here. He makes his position clear. ‘A desacralized world is not merely a world without gods. It is a world emptied of wonder, awe, and intrinsic significance.’

Sam Alexander reminds us of psychotherapist Erich Fromm’s classic 1976 book To Have or to Be? in which Fromm declares that modernity promises happiness and freedom via material possessions and a domination over nature. This is the have mode. The Be mode, on the other hand, he posits as more fulfilling.

To Be is to partake in the world in a reverential manner. Furthermore, as Alexander notes, ‘reverence deepens rather than expands.’

He elaborates on this by explaining that ‘The ecological question cannot ultimately be separated from the question of what human beings consider sacred.’

This leads Alexander to offer the phrase Sacred Revolt, which he describes as ‘a cultural and existential rebellion against the reduction of existence to commodity, utility, and exchange-value.’

A sacred revolution then results in sufficiency becoming not just necessary, but beautiful.

How many of us are willing to hear this calling and become Sacred Revolutionaries?

This paper is only 12 A4 pages long, so can be read easily in a short amount of time. Implementing its invitation may take a little longer. The paper can be found at this link:

https://samuelalexander.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Sacred-Revolt-Samuel-Alexander-1.pdf

Progress Is Lovely

Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne,
characters in "Brave New World."

‘Progress is lovely.’ So declares Lenina Crowne, one of the characters in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World.

Brave New World, published in 1932, imagines a world set well into the future where citizens are controlled, not by an authoritarian “Big Brother” (as in George Orwell’s 1984), but by being fed a constant supply of a happiness drug (soma) and having been programmed from the time of artificially engineered birth via sleep-learning and conditioning. Each engineered person is assigned to one of five classes (from Alphas to Epsilons) and remain in that class throughout life.

Lenina is a Beta and enjoys this situation; she cannot do otherwise due to her conditioning. Her partner at the time of her statement about progress being lovely is Bernard Marx, an Alpha Plus and a sleep-learning specialist. Bernard is somewhat of a misfit; he is short and does not enjoy many of the pursuits and experiences that other residents of this brave new world do. Crucially, he does not enjoy the drug soma, completely at odds with his contemporaries. Bernard missed out on something in his conditioning. This makes him a non-conformist yet is tolerated because of his Alpha status.

Bernard’s non-conformism though, does mean he is sceptical of Lenina’s assertion.

He replies to her, ‘Five hundred repetitions once a week from thirteen to seventeen.’ Huxley has Bernard saying this ‘…wearily, as though to himself.’

Lenina does not hear him clearly and asks him what he said. Bernard restates Lenina’s own declaration, ‘I said that progress was lovely.’

In this short exchange we hear the majority habituated view, expressed by Lenina, that progress is to be desired. Bernard, on the other hand, alludes to this idea being a conditioned one; a thought that one is indoctrinated into throughout the teenage years.

Reading Brave New World today we might ask ourselves if the notion that progress is lovely has indeed been a conditioned one since our own childhood.

The idea that we, individually and collectively, must progress is deeply ingrained. Individually we attempt to keep up with the Jones’ and collectively we keep searching for the next great technological breakthrough.

Progress is a seductive notion promising that if we keep increasing our income and wealth, obtain more material things, grow the GDP, invest in new technologies, then the future will be better. Progress vows to help us live longer, happier lives.

If there are unwanted harmful by-products of all this, then progress claims that more progress will fix them.

But, all that is a sham, and Bernard Marx knew it. Sadly, he can only voice his reservation ‘…as though to himself.’

What is the goal of progress? What is our destination? When will we get there? Crucially, what will be the signposts to indicate that we have reached our journey’s end?

The creed of progress does not answer these questions. Progress simply offers more progress as if there is no destination. Significantly, as we are finding out to our detriment, the progress myth does not recognise any limits to the journey. According to the progress mantra we never reach a stage in the journey where we can say, this is it, this is where we have enough.

No, progress promises that the future is always better. The corollary of this is that there can never be enough.

Yet, Bernard Marx (and his creator, Aldous Huxley) saw through the conditioning and indoctrination that we are constantly fed through the media, advertising, and political campaigns.

In the early 1930s when Aldous Huxley was writing Brave New World, he imagined that such a world, if it was to come at all, would arrive well into the future. However, a little less than thirty years after Brave New World was published, Huxley wrote the non-fiction book Brave New World Revisited. Therein Huxley noted that the world of Brave New World was arriving much quicker than he had imagined.

In the time since Brave New World Revisited was published (in 1959) we would have to conclude that Huxley’s imaginative world has truly become more firmly established.

Is there a better future than that portrayed in Brave New World? Is it possible that we might progress (excuse the pun) toward a healthier world? Is it possible that we might dispense altogether with the endless desire for progress?

Aldous Huxley published his final novel, Island in 1962, a year before his death. Island is the utopian counterpoint to Brave New World.

In the years to come, can we divert ourselves from the dangerous mantra of progress, progress, more, more and direct ourselves towards something more akin to Island?

 

Note:

1. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Longman, Harlow, Essex, England, Second impression 1983 (text originally published 1932)

Six Million Years of Power and Sex

We humans share 98.7% of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest relatives in the diversity of life on this planet. The common ancestor to all three of us existed around six million years ago. Chimpanzees and bonobos split into two species around two million years ago. This split appears to have coincided with a drastic reduction in the flow of the Congo River.

Today, chimpanzees are mainly found north of the Congo River in equatorial Africa. In the wild bonobos are found exclusively south of the river in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Why do the two species remain apart? Because of the Congo River.

Chimpanzees are reluctant, or unable, to swim. Bonobos are also reluctant swimmers, although they do sometimes forage waist deep in water.

The Congo River is the deepest river in the world, the ninth longest, and the third largest by discharge volume. It is also very wide, up to 19km across at its widest point. No wonder reluctant swimmers, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, have not crossed from one side to the other during the past couple of million years. But that drop in flow about two million years ago was just enough to enable a band of their common ancestor to cross the river.

Thus, for the past two million years, chimpanzees and bonobos have been evolving along separate trajectories. They may have had a common ancestor but nowadays they display dissimilar behaviours and identities.

Chimpanzees have been studied for much longer than bonobos and hence less is known about bonobos than chimpanzees even today, especially in the wild. As we have a common ancestor with chimpanzees from six million years ago it has been tempting to identify some of our human behaviours as similar to that of chimpanzees, and to trace these comparable behaviours back to that common ancestor.

These studies suggested that our levels of violence and male dominance have their beginnings in our common ancestral heritage. We have been seduced into thinking that such behaviours are innate in our DNA.

However, more recent studies of bonobos are calling this innateness into question.

Bonobos have sometimes been labelled as the hippie chimp. Bonobos do tend to display less aggression and a greater degree of egalitarianism than their chimpanzee cousins. This rigid distinction however, is simplistic. The reality is much more nuanced. Bonobos do become aggressive, although their aggression usually does not go as far as killing one another, as it can do with chimpanzees. Furthermore, bonobo aggression in the male of the species is normally restricted to male-on-male aggression. Chimpanzee males, on the other hand, more often direct their aggression towards females. Chimpanzee males are also likely to coerce females into sex, whereas male bonobos do not.

A further distinction between the two related species is in the manner in which they go about reconciliation after such violence. Bonobos use sex. In bonobo society sex is used to build close relationships, to calm one another down, and to resolve conflict. Sex is also used by bonobos as a way of greeting strangers.

Bonobos can be thought of as xenophiles, whereas chimpanzees act more from a xenophobic stance. Bonobo clans enjoy meeting another, sometimes unknown, clan of bonobos. It is often the females of each clan that initiate this contact, usually with sex.

The ways in which chimpanzees and bonobos deal with power and sex are noticeably divergent. So much so that the noted primatologist, Frans de Waal, quipped that ‘…(chimpanzees) resolve sexual issues with power, while (bonobos) resolve power issues with sex.’¹

All of this, of course, raises questions about the level of violence, and male aggression towards females within our own human societies.

Can we, as was once time thought, blame our genetic coding for male violence within the Homo sapiens species? Has our evolutionary history predetermined that men should be dominant over women?

When we consider the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos, the answer is clearly not.

We (chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans) have a common evolutionary path, yet we find that the two species that split most recently (two million years ago) have developed quite distinct behavioural traits. This suggests that male violence and male dominance is not innate. It is instilled in large part culturally.

If culturally imparted, then it can be culturally immobilised.

Let us hope that it does not take another six million years for that to happen.

 

Notes:

1. Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape, Granta Books, London, 2005

Arriving at Compassion

In 1971 the British symphonic rock group, The Moody Blues, released their seventh album – Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. The band’s guitarist, Justin Hayward, described it as a ‘a kind of searching, seeking record.’ There are songs on the album that ask questions of themselves as band members, and also of the world around them.

One of those songs that asks questions of the world around them is the John Lodge penned One More Time To Live.¹ The lyrics of the song begin with the lines, ‘Look out of my window/See the world passing by.’ The impression given is that this is a song in which the writer observes the world outside them and tries to make sense of the desolation, annihilation, and pollution they see. The solution this observer finds is to go on an inner journey and find the riches within.

Another way of hearing the lyrics may be as a commentary on the history of the world from the beginning of time through to the present moment. When this song was written the knowledge of environmental damage was only just beginning to be recognised. The world’s first environmental political party was not formed until the following year. The song was highly prescient then and remains relevant today.

In the song Justin Hayward (the vocalist) recites a total of 21 words, all with a ‘…tion’ or ‘…sion’ suffix.

The words begin with Desolation, the state in which the Universe emerged from, followed by Creation and Evolution.

This new world then descends towards environmental destruction, presumably with the appearance of Homo sapiens, and Hayward sorrowfully sings of Pollution, Saturation, Population (growth), and Annihilation.

Next, we hear of how humanity attempts to fix this mess. Humanity tries Revolution (which fails to fix it) resulting in Confusion and Illusion. The Conclusion to this is Starvation, Degradation, and Humiliation.

But this Conclusion is not the future that the songwriter John Lodge wishes to see. So we hear Justin Hayward inspiring us towards Contemplation and Inspiration. If we take this inner journey, then there may be a chance that we realise an inner Elation which can be our Salvation.

Via the process of Communication, the Moody Blues finally arrive at…

Compassion…

which is the Solution.

John Lodge, Justin Hayward, and the other band members were correct more than half a century ago, and they are no less so today.

Compassion is the Solution. Compassion towards ourselves, compassion towards other humans, compassions to other life forms, and compassion towards Mother Earth.

Note:

1. A beautiful Youtube clip of this song can be heard here.

Fierce Vulnerability – Book Review

What would it happen if our meditation cushions were taken out of the meditation hall and placed in the middle of a sit-in demonstration? What would happen if the blare of megaphones were replaced by Tibetan chimes? What if we listened instead of shouting?

Kazu Haga has asked himself these sorts of questions (and dozens more) of those who wish to change the world for the better. In his book, Fierce Vulnerability,¹ he offers these sorts of questions for the reader to ponder.

Kazu Haga is a trainer in nonviolence and restorative justice, and practices what he preaches. His work in these areas, along with his spiritual path, means that he is able to ask one of the most important questions that those seeking a better, healthier, and more socially just world need to be asking.

Simply put, that question is this: What would a movement that combines individual salvation with social direct action look like? Very few seem to be asking this sort of question, and Kazu Haga is one of only a handful who have attempted to pose it and offer some possible answers.

Yes, Haga does suggest some answers, but they may not be what the reader expects. Haga’s answers are closer to suggesting what to let go, rather than proposing new forms of organising.

Haga’s observations and proposals arise out of understandings and knowledge that was not generally known, let alone available, to previous generations of activists. Nor were these known to those seeking personal salvation. Furthermore, traditional styles of social activism are no longer sufficient in today’s world, because the crises facing us today are ones we have never had to face in our human journey before. Crises are no longer discreet; they are intimately entwined and entangled. So interconnected are the multitude of issues that solving one on its own may worsen another.

All this, says Haga, requires a much broader understanding of the personal, political, and planetary. We must, asserts Haga, let go of our sense of individuality and oppositional dualities.

Holding on to an us/them worldview is at odds with this entanglement and is at the heart of all that is destroying the planet, whether that be the “us” of one nation vs another nation, one person vs another, or humans vs non-humans.

Separation and isolation are at the core of trauma, a crucial element in Haga’s thesis. When most of us think of trauma we often think of acute trauma – i.e. an incident in one’s life that causes deep distress, but that is usually limited in time. We might, beyond this form of trauma, recognise chronic trauma – trauma that remains with the traumatised person indefinitely. However, Haga identifies at least six other manifestations of trauma: insidious, complex, indirect, vicarious, inter-generational, and collective.

In today’s world all of us can be exposed to any of these forms of trauma, whether we recognise it or not. This is why Haga tells us that those searching for personal salvation or enlightenment or those seeking social justice must recognise that what is needed is healing. Not opposition, and not self-absorption – but healing.

In turn, healing requires an ability to grieve. Many of us are traumatised because of loss of connection and belonging, whether we know it intellectually or not. Our bodies, however, do know, and that trauma gets displayed in mental and emotional ways, as well as collectively in warfare, xenophobia, misogyny, destruction of forests, or the extinction of species.

Haga introduces a useful model of how we show up in the world. Developed by a pioneer of adventure education, Karl Rohnke, the model outlines three zones; comfort, stretch, and panic zones. Most of our time is spent in our comfort zone, and this is where we breathe easily, are unstressed, can solve problems, and are deeply connected with others. Our stretch zone is where we get challenged and can grow. We get stretched, yet remain open to new information and perspectives. Every so often, however, we get pushed or pulled into a panic zone. In this zone, our evolutionary survival instincts kick in. We go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. In this zone, Haga (and Rohnke) tell us, we are unable to take in new information, and we are unwilling to listen to differing perspectives.

Traditional forms of activism often push or pull both activists and those opposed into this zone. In previous times these forms of activism have brought benefits and gains. However, today we are ‘trying to call forth a level of transformation we have never experienced,’ claims Haga. We need new forms of activism and new models, and the comfort-stretch-panic model is one of those. It is foundational to Kazu Haga’s notion of fierce vulnerability. It also helps to explain why traditional oppositional activist organising is insufficient for today’s world.

Haga does not fall into the trap of claiming that change happens through personal transformation on the one hand, or systemic change on the other. Both are necessary. In a chapter entitled Healing Is Not Enough he clearly articulates his thoughts.

‘The pain of collective violence isn’t felt in fancy retreat centers and workshop spaces. Those are places where we can build up our capacity to go into the places of hurt, but they’re not ultimately where the pain is felt.’

Yet, as he makes clear through the rest of the book, if we do not ‘build up our capacity’ then it is likely that we will be adding to the pain of the world rather than reducing it.

Throughout the book, Haga offers simple exercises that one can do (either alone or collectively) to train in the ideas he presents.

Fierce Vulnerability is a vital book that those seeking a better world should read. It may not provide you with all of the answers, but it will get you thinking about the crucial questions to be asking.

Notes:

1. Haga, Kazu, Fierce Vulnerability, Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, 2025

Stand Still Day

Today is solstice. In the southern hemisphere it is the Summer Solstice, in the northern it is the Winter Solstice. Many cultures over many millennia have marked solstice with various rituals and celebrations.

In an era in which many people are constantly on the go, continuously busy, and ever on the look-out, perhaps it would be fitting to inaugurate a new ritual for the day of solstice.

It could be Stand Still Day, and it would occur twice a year; once on the December Solstice and again on the June Solstice.

It would be easy to remember the dates because solstice literally means sun stands still.

Our busy westernised lives expose us to anxiety, frustration, hyper-vigilance, angst, worry, fear, and a plethora of other stresses. Timetables, deadlines, expectations, schedules, wars, and physical violence all constrain us and force us into a chronic state of stress.

Studies and research carried out over the past few years consistently show that negative feelings amongst people from all over the globe are on the increase. More than one-third of people say that they felt sad or had been worried on the day before being interviewed. Similar numbers reported that they felt angry. Moreover, the proportion of people reporting these feelings had increased compared to a decade earlier, often up by 10% or more.

During the same decade, the proportion of people reporting positive feelings (such as enjoyment, being able to laugh or smile, and being well-rested) remained steady, with no appreciable decrease or increase in the proportions.

A number of explanations for this increase in negative feelings have been put forward: lack of peace, the pace of life, and the threat of environmental collapse amongst them.

How can we deal with this?

What if, on the two days of the year on which the sun stands still, we also stood still?

If we all simply stopped and stood still for an hour (say) on two days a year – December solstice and June solstice, what might happen? Some possibilities include:

• Firstly, noticing that our breathing slows down and our heart rate drops.
• Realising that our bodies do have the capacity to relax.
• Understanding that our frenetic day-to-day activities are undermining our health.
• Finding that we have time to talk with our children, our parents, and our neighbours.
• Appreciating our surroundings. Perhaps we look up at the sky for the first time in a long time and watch birds flying past.
• Comprehending the vastness of the cosmos.
• Becoming conscious of our inner psyche (our soul).

At first it could be just one hour, twice a year. Two hours out of the 8,766 hours each year provides us with. Surely, that is possible. After a few years we might be able to simply stand still for a few hours twice a year.

If the Sun can do it, and it has been alive for billions of years, then so can we.

Where Are The Men?

A few weeks ago I attended a question-and-answer session with a woman with elderhood status within the local indigenous community. She spoke eloquently and with an authority based in cultural values and history. I left the session feeling privileged to have had the opportunity to listen to, and be transported into, a realm of the heart.

I also left with an unsettling question: Where are the men?

In the room there had been approximately 80 people. I didn’t count them, as there were too many. I did count the number of men present though. Only six!!

Six men in a group of 80, only 7.5% of the total. Women outnumbered men by a factor of 13:1.

I have been involved in community development, social justice, and environmental movements for more than fifty years. In those fields I have noticed similar ratios in gatherings of what might be called politics of the heart.

Politics of the heart could be a phrase for utilising emotional responses, personal experience, and deep internal reflection to inform one’s philosophy and practice. Politics of the heart asks questions of my own self, it asks me to consider how my choices and actions impact upon social, community, and international situations.

Politics of the heart requires me to stand aside from my ego and to honestly look into the feelings of my heart. It is not easy. It is not straightforward. It may not even be conclusive.

Where then, I wonder, are the men when it comes to this politics of the heart? Why do women, time and time again, vastly outnumber men in workshops, seminars, retreats, and presentations that deal with the politics of the heart?

Yet, when it comes time to march on parliament, or to organise protest actions, or to stand for governmental positions, why is it that men tend to outnumber women? Although this latter situation is changing, it is a tendency I have noticed over 50 years as much as the tendency for women to outnumber men in politics of the heart.

I have not found any serious research attempting to answer these questions, so all I can do is offer some thoughts based on my personal experience.

Historically, and still mostly the case, men have been the privileged gender. It may be that this privilege means that men consider the issues raised within the politics of the heart unworthy of consideration because men are not impacted by such issues. Men have the privilege of not having to think about these issues.

Men have been socially conditioned to believe that politics of the heart involves soft issues, whereas the role of men is to deal with the hard issues. Becoming involved in soft issues for men opens us up to vulnerability – a notoriously soft issue. Male conditioning is for men to be strong, logical (not emotional), and to take up positions of leadership.

Male politics, in general, tends to be outwardly focussed. Questions dealing with law and order, foreign trade, defence systems, financial markets, machinery, and building and construction are more often seen as the male realm. These are all outwardly directed activities.

The politics of the heart, in contrast, is inner directed and deals in emotions, intuition, feelings, compassion, empathy, true connection, and self-reflection. Men (at least westernised men) have been told for many decades that these are not matters that men need to consider. Indeed, men have been led to believe that such matters are beneath them.

The sad thing about all this is that what men have been conditioned into is untrue. Sad too, is that what men have been told, what men have been led to believe, is also untrue.

So, men, let us overturn that ratio of women to men, and start involving ourselves in the politics of the heart.

Time Is Running Out, We’d Better Slow Down

There are lots of articles, books, presentations, podcasts, and videos that point to a rapidly shortening of time before a cataclysmic future overwhelms us. We hear that by 2050, and perhaps by 2030, we need to have reduced our dependence upon fossil fuels significantly. We read that, if we don’t do something urgently, then one-third of species on the Earth will be extinct by 2100. We look at the increasing polarisation around the world and fear for the possibility of another world war, and note with terror the likelihood that such a war could include nuclear weapons.

Or, perhaps we think of ourselves. Each birthday reminds us that we are one year older, one year closer to the end of our time on Earth. Yet, there are many things we still want to do, much we wish to accomplish and achieve.

Time is running out.

We must act with urgency.

We gotta do something, and fast.

We must complete our bucket list.

We have to save the planet.

We have to reduce carbon emissions. We have to transition to green technology soon.

Each of these sentiments are understandable. Yet, more than likely, they are unhealthy and unwise. Speeding up might get us there faster, but when we get there we will find that it is not where we wanted to be or what we expected.

Just look at the current situation we are in with carbon emissions. It can be argued that we have got to this position because we wanted to hurry up. We built, purchased, and drove private motorcars because we wanted to get from one place to another quicker. We tapped into the stored sunlight of fossil fuels so that we could more rapidly heat our homes and cook our meals. Those same fossil fuel power stations enabled the elites of the world to more quickly build their fortunes.

The mobile phone, too, is a go faster piece of technology. We can more quickly contact anyone, anywhere on the planet. We can send text, photographs, and documents at the speed of light. That’s fast! Yet, those same phones have presented us with numerous problems; e-waste, cyber-bullying, cognitive decline, and the modern disease of nomophobia – the fear of not having access to a mobile phone.

The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh names all this as Habit Energy which he describes as,

"We are always running and rushing. It has become a habit, the norm of everyday living. We run all the time, during our sleep, the time we are supposed to be resting and regenerating our bodies. We can be worst enemies, in conflict with ourselves, and therefore, you can easily start conflict with others..."

It is exhausting us. It is exhausting the planet as well.

‘But surely we have to do something quickly in the face of imminent and mounting crises. We are in the midst of a predicament of massive proportions. We can’t sit back. We have to get on with it. We have to save the planet, and ourselves.’

I hear such sentiments every week.

And, we are responding to this predicament in exactly the way described. We are quickly digging up not only fossil fuels, but also minerals to power the green energy transition. The speed with which we are doing this has not reduced electricity consumption at all – it has simply added to it. We are using twice as much electricity today as we were at the turn of the century. Wind and solar electricity production is 1/3^rd of that increase. Wind and solar have added to the consumption, they have not displaced it. They are not proving to be alternatives at all.

What if we slowed down?

What if, as a friendly psychologist told me about four decades ago, we stopped awhile and smelt the roses?

At an individual level slowing down has been shown, in numerous studies, to lower our levels of anxiety and stress, improve our cognitive responses, enhance our connection and relationships with other people, and elevate our body’s ability to heal and recuperate. In short, slowing down is good for our well-being.

For the planet too, our slowing down would have tremendous benefit. We have vastly overshot the carrying capacity of Earth. Overshoot occurs when the Earth can no longer recover from the effects of human waste and pollution quicker than the waste and pollution is created. Overshoot is also when the Earth can no longer replenish the stores of forest, minerals, water, and other components of an eco-system faster than humans are extracting and exploiting those components.

We have been in this state of overshoot for many decades, and the rate of overshoot is increasing. Globally, we now require 1.6 Earths to satisfy our rate of extraction and levels of pollution. This figure (1.6 planets) is unevenly distributed around the world. If everyone lived as those in rich nations lived, we would need between three and six Earths to satisfy our consumption levels.

Slowing down would assist the Earth in restoring its balance immensely.

The Earth is always seeking to restore balance and homeostasis. But it needs time to do that. We could greatly assist that process by simply slowing down.

Three Psycho-Emotional Impediments to Degrowth

We live today in a world where socio-environmental collapse for some has already begun, and for others is imminent. One of the few social movements that understands this and attempts to respond is the Degrowth movement. It is one of the few movements that understands that collapse is because of overshoot, described in detail in William R. Catton’s groundbreaking book Overshoot in 1982 – more than 40 years ago!¹

On the cover of his book Catton defined overshoot as ‘growth beyond an area’s carrying capacity.’ The area now is the whole world.

Arguably, we have so vastly outgrown global carrying capacity that we can no longer prevent collapse. However, that is no reason for despair or surrender.

The Degrowth movement is one of the few movements that has not given up, nor lapsed into despair. But it faces three psycho-emotional impediments towards getting its message widely accepted and acted on. All three are inter-related, however, I will outline them separately.

I have no panacea for overcoming these impediments. I do know that there will be no one-size-fits-all solution. The three impediments are: Going Back, Progress, and Positivity.

Going Back

This is perhaps the greatest barrier because it is fuelled by one of our strongest emotions - fear. Degrowth is often thought to mean we must go back; back to a previous age, an age in which our modern comforts and conveniences no longer exist. For decades we have been told that previous ages were worse (sometimes a lot worse) than those of today. We get shown pictures of darkened streets, cold houses without electricity, inferior medical interventions, and poor working conditions. Going back to such times is a scary thought. We would rather shun such a move.

Yet, were we able to travel back in time to those earlier periods and talk with our great-grandparents we might be surprised to find that we are no happier now than they were. We might also find that rates of depression, anxiety, and addiction were less prevalent.

Yet, the idea that going back entails a worsening of the current situation persists. Degrowth is not synonymous with ‘going back’ but the two notions have become entwined within the minds of many leaders and other people. It will be an emotional obstacle that the Degrowth movement will have to overcome.

Progress

If fear drives the impediment of Going Back, then desire drives the impediment of the myth of Progress. The idea of progress energises our desire for a better life, a life of greater comfort and more convenience (as well as conveniences). The idea that we must progress has been with us for a long time, and gained momentum following WW1, WW2 and the Great Depression with what Catton terms the Age of Exuberance. This Age resulted in consumption on a grand scale, with the American Dream being beamed into the living rooms of not only Americans but also the residents of westernised nations throughout the world.

Progress became associated with betterment, improvement, comfort, and convenience. It told us to look forward, to see tomorrow (or at least next year) as being better than today. Yet again, paradoxically, although we have greater “comforts” in our lives than our grandparents did, and even more than we did in our youth (for those of us of advanced years) our lives are no better. Mental health issues are worse, depression, self-harm, and suicide (especially amongst young men) are at similar, if not worse, levels than they were half a century ago.

Progress also comes at a huge planetary cost. The air we breathe is smog-bound in many cities. The water we drink is polluted and, in some places, highly toxic. The ground in which our crops are grown is being leached away and contaminated with pesticides, fungicides, and insecticides.

Advocates of progress cannot abide the Degrowth movement, because for them progress is growth. And growth, for those advocates, is the means by which all those future improvements are supposed to come about. Advocates of growth will fill our screens, radios, and billboards with adverts promising a better life in the future if you buy this product. Millions of dollars each year are spent on these advertising campaigns, and millions of people buy into the advert, and buy the product.  

Progress as a myth is a means that has become an end, yet without an end in sight.

The Degrowth movement will have to address the myth of progress.

Positivity

How many exhortations every day to be positive do we get bombarded with?

Positivity when it becomes toxic is an unhealthy state. Toxic positivity ignores and negates emotions such as sadness, sorrow, anger, disappointment, and such. Positivity tells us to ignore the perils, dangers, and cruelty of the world.

For the Degrowth movement, positivity is an impediment, because it so easily leads to the belief that there is no need to change. Positivity maintains and promotes the Business-As-Usual economic model.

Positivity is also a strong feedback loop stimulating the Going Back myth. Going Back is suggestive of negativity and so becomes a powerful disincentive to considering Degrowth as an option, let alone an imperative.

It is important to recognise that positivity is not the same thing as contentment. Contentment is able to hold both positive and negative states of mind. A contented person could be happy one day and sad the next, and be fully accepting of both states. Similarly, a contented person is able to appreciate the beautiful aspects of life at the same time as recognising the ugly aspects. A contented person is able to understand that we have overshot our carrying capacity and is able to know that we must change course.

How is the Degrowth movement to address these three impediments? I have only answers for myself. What I do know, however, is that these three psychological-emotional impediments must be addressed.

I would appreciate any thoughts, ideas, or possibilities.

Notes:

1. William R.Catton, Jr., Overshoot, University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, 1982

Man’s (In)Humanity To Man

(Preliminary note: I have kept to the original noun (viz man) in this blogpiece, recognising that today this is regarded as a sexist description.)

In 1784 the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, composed his poem Man Was Made To Mourn.¹ One of the eleven stanzas of the poem includes the lines,

‘Man’s inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!’

During the 250 years since the penning of this poem the phrase ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ has been quoted many thousands of times, mostly as ratification of the inevitability of human atrocities. The phrase, quoted this way, suggests that malevolence is innate to the human condition.

Such implication, however, may not have been Robert Burns’ intention. Burns wrote the poem soon after meeting the father of a woman, Kate Kemp, whom he wished to court. Kate though, was out looking for a lost cow at the time of Burns’ visit. Burns thus had to spend time with her father, a man of ill-temper. Burns’ ill-fated visit with Kate’s father may have been the inspiration for the inhumanity wording. Most of the poem he composed on his walk home.

It may also have been that Burns was recording his antagonism towards the class inequalities that were prevalent at the time in Scotland and throughout Great Britain. The Industrial Revolution was well underway, concomitant with poor working conditions, rising inequality, and unhealthy living conditions. The young Robert Burns (25 years old at the time of writing the poem) would have been appalled at what was happening and passionate about protesting it through his poetry.

Hence, the words ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ must be read in the context of the time, Burns’ age, and his meeting with a cantankerous father of his love interest.

I would guess that many who quote the phrase today do not know where it came from, nor perhaps, who wrote it, and why it was written.

Today, it is a line thrown out as verification that humans are basically ill-willed and immoral at heart. When we see clips of warfare and violence happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, or Somalia Burns’ phrase is sometimes quoted as if to say ‘well, that’s just the inhumanity of human nature.’

But, is this the case?

One of the reasons we see clips like those mentioned above is because they are newsworthy. In other words, they are out of the ordinary, they are literally – news, something new and not something usual. They are un-usual.

And, being unusual, they cannot logically be cited as proof that human nature is basically ill-willed, violent, or in-human.

Furthermore, when a comparative analysis of how different cultures understand the basic nature of humans, we have to concede that the notion that humans are innately inhuman is not a global understanding.

Certainly, it seems, violence and ill-will occur in all cultures. Sadly however, it seems that western culture is unique in its rendering of human nature as being inhuman at core.

The American First Nations author, activist, and historian, Jack Forbes for example, writes of the First Nation notion of wetiko, which he describes as a disease that has no respect for the cycle of life and death and is without any sense of sacredness. But, as he notes ‘Non-wetikos may, at times, be cruel, but their cruelty is individual and sporadic, not part of a system of cruelty.’ It was this system of cruelty that he saw within the western culture, particularly that part of western culture that colonised the Americas.²

The cultures of SE Asia share a similar conceptualisation, with Buddhism especially speaking of Buddha nature, which has been expressed as the innate capacity for awakening, compassion, and understanding that resides in everyone.

Amidst the struggle against the apartheid system in South Africa Bishop Desmond Tutu was able to proclaim that, ‘You know human beings are basically good. You know that’s where we have to start. That everything else is an aberration.’³

Sadly however, western culture has so infused the whole world (via colonisation and/or economic hegemony) that western ideas, understandings, and concepts now dominate globally. From within this western worldview it is difficult to look from outside to see that this worldview is not a universal one.

Tragically, when this view of the of man’s inhumanity to man is normalised, assumed to be true, and legitimised it becomes very difficult to confront and change those situations in which violence, ill-will, and inhumanity do take place. After all, if this is the way things are, then they cannot be changed, only shifted slightly until the next outbreak of inhumanity.

Man’s inhumanity to man must be questioned and shifted towards the more central tenet of: Each person’s humanity to each other person.

Notes:

1. Robert Burns, Man was Made to Mourn, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, first published by John Wilson of Kilmarnock in 1786

2. Forbes, Jack D., Columbus and other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism, Seven Stories Press, New York, Revised Edition, 1992. Original version 1979

3. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy, Avery, New York, 2016

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.