Personal, Political, Planetary

“The personal is political,” became one of the catch-phrases of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s.  The slogan caught on after an article written by Carol Hanisch was published in 1969. 

Prior to the feminist movement of that time, issues such as childcare, household labour, and problems like depression and anxiety, where considered purely personal or private in nature.  They had nothing to do with politics.  Hanisch’s article and the feminist movement as a whole challenged this, and reframed the very notion of politics.

Before continuing, lets stop to consider the meaning of political.  Too often, “political” gets constrained within terms of political parties, parliaments, Prime Ministers, politicians, elections etc.  The word politics however, comes from the Greek polis meaning the community of citizens of a city or city-state.

Politics then involves all of us.  It is a collective term.  We could describe politics as being the process by which a community or society makes decisions for its collective well-being or sustainability.

As such, we are all political beings.¹

With this understanding it becomes clear that indeed, the personal IS political.  It is not a one-way effect though: the political is also personal.

In other words, everything is connected, as the later environmental movement went on to tell us.  As that environmental movement expanded and began to understand more and more (with the help of systems thinking) about the truth of inter-connection we began to understand that there is a planetary element as well.

Our personal behaviours and actions have an effect upon our environment.  Our collective decisions have effects also. 

The relatively new theories of chaos and complexity show that very small inputs to a system can have enormous results, and often these results are unpredictable and possibly even difficult to associate with the initial small input.

Such is the complexity, intricacy, and connectivity of all aspects of the world – the personal, the political, and the planetary.

We are now able to recognise that not only is the personal political, the personal is also planetary. 

Recognising and understanding these three ‘P’s is like knowing how a two edged sword works – it cuts both ways.

Our personal behaviours may have damaging planetary implications.  Our personal behaviours may also have healing implications. 

Our choices matter.  Our personal choices may be just as significant as our collective political choices.  What we choose to do in one arena has an influence upon what is done in another.

There are some who contend that individual (personal) actions are insignificant (almost of no value) and that only systematic (political) change will make a difference.  Others suggest that the only thing we can do is act as individuals.

Understanding the connection between the Personal, the Political, and the Planetary gives us another insight – one in which everything matters, everything influences everything else.

This last point may only just be coming to be realised in western thought.  Buddhism and other eastern philosophies have known this for centuries.  Buddhism calls it dependent arising.

Note:
1. Even to say that one is apolitical or non-political is still to make a political statement, and is an act that has collective impact.

The Lost Sound

Photo: Solveig Larsen

We now live in a world of noise, continuous sounds, and chatter and clatter.

Sometimes the sounds may come to us as a symphony - a word deriving from the Greek syn (together, with) and phone (sound, voice).  These sounds may be pleasant and healthy.

Too often though the sounds are a cacophony.  Also deriving from Greek: kakos (bad, evil) and phone (sound, voice).

Think about daily life.  Most of the sounds many of us hear are of the urban rumble of vehicle engines, blaring adverts, inane musik in shopping malls, the clamour of crowds, or the dissonant scream of aircraft or trains.  And, most of the time, we ignore the intrusion, we block it out and it becomes simply background noise.

Amidst all this clatter and chatter what happens to us? 

Constant noise has been linked to anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, and stroke.  Simply put: it’s not good for us.

Noise is a stressor that can trigger our fight/flight response.  When noise pollution is constant our stress levels can become chronic and we are left in a constant state of unhealthy stress.

When this is the state for most within a community or society, then the “fight” response manifests itself in aggression, violence and anti-social behaviour.

It is no wonder that many of our political debates descend into name-calling, bickering, and veiled animosity.

Cacophony in its root meaning describes it well, doesn’t it?  Bad, or evil, sound.

Ochiphony

There is a lost sound that may assist us in reducing the impact of constant cacophony.  In fact, it is perhaps so lost in the mists of (western cultural) time that I have had to come up with a new word for it -

Ochiphony.  Ochi (όχι) is Greek for no, and added to the phone (φωνο) we saw earlier gives us no sound.

I suppose I could have used the word silence, but that word derives from Latin, and I wanted a word that kept to the Greek derivations as for cacophony and symphony.

However, whether we use silence or ochiphony, the absence of noise is not a sound we usually hear.

That last sentence may appear oxymoronic – hearing no sound.  Almost like the famous Japanese koan – what is the sound of one hand clapping?

But, when you stop, even in a very very quiet space away from human artifice, you will still hear something.  It may be a bird chirping in the distance, the tinkling of a nearby stream, or perhaps the rustling of leaves in a gentle breeze.

Quieter still.  In the absence of sounds from outside yourself, if you stop and listen intently you will hear the sound of your breath on your nostrils, or the beating of your heart.

This is the no sound we have lost.  This is the no sound our culture has stolen from us. 

It is, however, within our capacity to re-discover it, to re-claim it, to re-invent it.

And now, during this time of lock-downs and self-isolation, may be an excellent time to re-awaken our ability to hear the sound of no sound.¹

One of the best descriptions of this no sound and our ability to listen to it comes from Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr, a Ngangikurungkurr woman from northern Australia.  In her language it is known as dadirri and she describes it as,

“…inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness.  Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us.  We call on it and it calls to us.”²

Silence, ochiphony, no sound, then, is a deep listening to what is inside us.  It is also reciprocal – we call on it, it calls to us. 

No sound allows us to escape the cacophony of the world and reconnect with that part of us that is pure and beautiful.  It allows us to reconnect with Nature and our Natural Selves.

Learn to hear the ochiphony within and without.

Notes:
1. I am writing this at the time of the world-wide epidemic of COVID-19 when most countries had some form of isolation or lock-down policies.
2. The word, concept, and spiritual practice that is dadirri is from the Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri languages of the Aboriginal peoples of the Daly River region (Northern Territory, Australia)

P.S. Did you notice the face in the pond in the photo associated with this post?  The face reminds us of the "deep spring inside us."

Where Do We Fit?

Where do we fit?  It is a question that has not often been asked within western-styled cultures.

It is a question that would probably be considered strange, or even absurd, within indigenous and/or nature-based cultures.  In such cultures the question may not even need to be asked, as everyday life is the answer to the question.

However, for those of us from western-styled cultures it is a useful question to ask.  Where do we fit?

Fit?  In what?  Strange that we don’t ask it, given that it was a western mind that first formulated a theory that allows the question to be asked.

Who was that?  Charles Darwin.

But didn’t he say that it was all about survival of the fittest?  Well, yes and no.

Yes, he did use the phrase, but he did not coin it.  On The Origin Of Species was first published in 1859, but it was not until a decade later, in 1869, with the fifth edition that the phrase “survival of the fittest” was used.  Herbert Spencer had used the term in his own book two years earlier, and a friend of Darwin’s suggested that the phrase better suited Darwin’s theory, than the phrase “natural selection.”

What did he mean by “fittest”?  Instead of jumping to misleading ideas of “quickest, biggest, strongest etc” let’s see what Darwin himself wrote.

“Let it also be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life; and consequently what infinitely varied diversities of structure might be of use to each being under changing conditions of life.”¹

We see here a clear reference to “fitness,” in Darwin’s mind, referring to the mutual relationships, and not about competition.

Writing half a century later, the Russian writer, activist, scientist, philosopher, Peter Kropotkin took this idea of mutuality further and in his book Mutual Aid, wrote that Darwin had

“… intimated that … the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community.”²

Clearly, Darwin and those who understood his works at the time, thought of fitness in much the same way as we might think of a jigsaw piece fitting into the jigsaw picture.

Do We Fit The Jigsaw?

For the past ten millennia we westerners have become accustomed to breaking the jigsaw apart rather than working out where we fit. 

Along the way we decided that the jigsaw of nature and the world had to be contended with, it had to be tamed and exploited.  So, we ripped up some of the jigsaw pieces around us, and threw them away.  We tried replacing them with other pieces, pieces that we manufactured, because we thought they would be better than nature, an improvement.

But, they are not an improvement.  The jigsaw pieces we create do not “fit” with their neighbours, and so the whole jigsaw gets disrupted.

Fitness

Discovering where we fit has to begin with dispelling the myth that “fitness” means biggest, strongest, fastest, greatest.

It also means having to discard the notion that we are the smartest, the most complex of creatures.  It means banishing the thought that we can improve things and make things better than they already are.

When we ask ourselves “where do we fit?” with the understanding that Darwin or Kropotkin had, then we start asking questions of: connection, relationship, and belonging.

These questions then lead us to ask questions of:

• what is our responsibility toward the jigsaw pieces around us?
• at what point do we say “thus far and no more?”
• how do we ensure that we are aware of the effect our actions have on the rest of the jigsaw?
• what responsibility do we have to healing the wounds of the pieces we have disrupted?
• how do we go about this healing?

We do have a place in the jigsaw where we fit.

It is not in every space.  Our task is to find that fit place.

Notes:
1. Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species, 6th edition, 1872, pp 82-83
2. Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, McLure Phillips & Co., New York, 1902, p 12

Green Psychology (A Book Review)

If you want to understand how we have come to the present day environmental malaise, then Ralph Metzner’s Green Psychology¹ is a worthwhile read.

Metzner (who died one year ago) was a psychologist who pioneered psychedelic research in the 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.  He was interested in consciousness, spirituality, and the burgeoning environmental awareness.

His particular expertise was to bring these interests together in the relatively new field of ecopsychology – a term coined in 1992, just seven years before this book was published.

Green Psychology traces our (western) religious, scientific, mythological, and psychological histories in a way that helps to explain how we have got into a disrespectful relationship with the Earth and nature.

From each of these fields has arisen an anthropocentric view that breeds a sense of human superiority.

Psychologically Metzner considers a number of diagnoses.  He explores Paul Shepard’s “arrested development” idea, addiction,² narcissism, dissociation, and amnesia.  Indeed, the last of these – amnesia – Metzner suggests is a double amnesia: we have forgotten that we have forgotten how to live in harmony with nature.

The Scientific and then the Industrial Revolutions gave us a worldview that was linear, deterministic, and mechanistic.  The advent of scientific thinking also separated the divine and morality from matter and forces.  Our worldview became dualistic.  Furthermore, science became free of value, and the techno-destruction of today is simply the inevitable consequence of that split.

In the religious realm our eyes became pointed upwards towards heaven and away from the Earth, plants, animals, food, and water.  In the pre-Christian era spirituality and nature were not separate, they were the same.  Spirituality IS nature, nature IS spirituality.

Historically, around 6,000 years ago, Old Europe was invaded by the Kurgs who imposed a patrilineal, patriarchal system on the Earth goddess cultures of the time.  Sky and Warrior gods deposed the Earth/nature divinities.

The current age of information and electronics is no better Metzner contends. rather, it is just a continuation of the same mechanistic, technological mind-set. 

Recovery from our psychological illness is possible though, according to Metzner.  The present day re-discovery (or re-emergence) of sacred and inner experience bodes well.  So too, the cultural critiques of feminism, environmentalism, civil rights, anti-war movement and some creative elements of the arts, all help to transform our worldview.

Shifts are happening, and Metzner mentions a couple, primarily bioregionalism and ecopsychology (a discipline he helped establish).

Our task, according to Metzner is to reinhabit the world and re-identify our place, time, and story.

May you rest easily in this Earth you so loved, Ralph Metzner.

Epilogue

I was given this book by a friend late last year when I asked to borrow it.  I promised to send her a synopsis of it.  That synopsis is seven A4 pages long.  If anyone would like a copy of my synopsis, then please send me a request and I’ll gladly pass it on.

 Notes:
1. Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming Our Relationship to the Earth, Park Street Press, Vermont, 1999.
2. Addiction as a diagnosis for environmental collapse is well covered in Chellis Glendinning’s My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization.

A Warning Shot?

"The Triumph of Death" - Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The topic of the day, week, month, seems to be COVID-19.  This post doesn’t intend delving too far into this particular pandemic.  Rather I intend taking a longer timeframe and a Earth/Nature centred perspective.

Let’s begin this story some 2 million years ago when Homo Habilis began roaming the Earth, followed by Homo Erectus around 1/2 million years later. 

Our direct ancestors (Homo Sapiens) appeared around 200,000 years ago. 

For most of that 2 million year history we lived in cooperation with nature.  We were nomadic or semi-nomadic, living as part of nature – not separate from nature. 

Then, around 10,000 years ago we began domesticating plants and animals.  This led to settlements, rising population, inter-tribal rivalry, and, most significantly, the beginnings of our (western) disconnect from nature.

As time went on that disconnect widened and the rift between us, as humans, and nature was made deeper with the scientific and industrial revolutions, both of which shifted our understanding of the Earth to one of linear, mechanistic causality.

We can see the result of this disconnect all over the earth: deforestation, soil loss, habitat loss, species extinction, water pollution.

Mother Earth Warns Us

Since we began that disconnect Mother Earth has been warning us that our path was in error.

We have seen the effects of our disconnect from nature in the way we treat each other - wars, racism, sexism, colonialism, violence.

We have seen the effects in our own lives – anxiety, depression, addictions, suicide, consumerism.

The warning shots have been there from soon after we began our disconnect 10,000 years ago. 

Evidence from Sweden suggests an early plague was responsible for a decline in Neolithic populations in western Eurasia.¹

The first recorded instance of a pandemic was during the Peloponnesian Wars in the 5th century BC.  Thought to have been typhoid fever, the virus passed over the Athenian Wall whilst Spartans lay siege and ended up killing 2/3rds of the Athenian population.

Since then there have been the Antonine Plague, the Cyprian Plague, and the Justinian Plague in the first millenium of the Current Era.

We listened to none of these.  Instead, we continued to build more and more, and attempted to “rule the world” through various empires.

Black Death (a bubonic plague) in 1350 killed approximately 1/3rd of Europe’s population.  We know too of pandemics such as Smallpox, the Great Plague of London, Cholera, the Russian, Spanish, and Asian Flus.

Did we listen to any of these?  No, we went blithely ahead with the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and other disconnecting ventures.

More recently we have witnessed HIV/AIDS, H1N1, and Ebola.

Still no heed did we pay.  We continued along a path that was now highly fixated upon technology.  If there was a problem (such as a pandemic) then our techno-fix abilities would solve it.  And in the solving of perceived problems, all we did was create more (and often bigger) problems.

All of these, apart from Ebola, are thought to have started in Eurasia – the crucible of western civilisation and the place where we began our disconnect from nature.

Is Gaia sending us warnings?  Yes, she is, and she has been for thousands of years.

There is mounting evidence to show that environmental degradation (deforestation, wetland loss, biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse …)and exploitation are major contributing factors in the outbreak of these pandemics.^{2, 3}

Perhaps COVID-19 is the latest warning shot across our human bows.

Will we listen and take heed this time?

Notes:1. Rascovan et al, Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline, in Cell, December, 2018.
2. World Health Organisation, https://www.who.int/globalchange/environment/en/  accessed 17 March 2020
3. Nava et al. The Impact of Global Environmental Changes on Infectious Disease Emergence with a Focus on Risks for Brazil, ILAR Journal, Vol 58 Issue 3, 2017.

Give Nothing To Hate

A year ago (on 15 March 2019) a gunman walked into two mosques in Christchurch and shot and killed a total of 51 people.  In a speech to Parliament a few days later, Jacinda Ardern (Prime Minister of Aotearoa - New Zealand) said of the shooter, “we will give him nothing, not even his name.” 

A campaign, #givenothingtohate, was launched by two Christchurch residents following the shootings.  The campaign, and Jacinda Ardern’s words, draws on the idea that the simplest way to overcome hate speech is to not acknowledge (and not name) such “speakers” and to not promote their manifestos or creeds.  The heart is coloured green in solidarity with Muslim people.

A few days after the shooting, I wrote of my struggle with the grief I felt.  I now offer that more publicly and dedicate it to the 51 people killed (murdered) on 15 March 2019.  I titled it:

How To Grieve?

Is it possible to grieve for the loss of a person one has never known? I don’t know; I have never experienced such grief. If I do not know how to grieve for the death of ONE person I do not know, then how can it be possible to grieve for the death of 51 people I do not know?

I began to find the answer to that heart-rending question on the afternoon of Friday 15 March 2019.

I have never met any of those 51 people killed at the two Christchurch mosques, or any of their families. I had run past Al-Noor mosque two or three times a week for nearly thirty years, after it was built in 1985. Its gleaming white exterior was a landmark on the 8km lap around Hagley Park. The mosque sat there, peaceful, serene, it belonged. It belonged in Christchurch just as easily as it would have in Jakarta or Islamabad.

But, it didn’t. Not in the minds of some. Pigs heads and other atrocities were dumped upon its doorway, and I made no complaint. “It’s nothing to do with me,” I justified and excused. So, how could it be that the killing of 51 people, who I did not know, in that mosque that day brought me to tears? How could my heart be filled with compassion? How could I be numbed? How?

Perhaps it was the location. Christchurch, my home for 30 years of my life, my second hometown.

Perhaps it was the scale of the terror. On a per capita basis, if the same proportion were killed in Australia then more than 260 people would have been killed that day. If in the US, then over 3,000 would have died – more than the number killed in 9/11. Maybe the sheer size elicited my tears?

Yes, it was those two factors. But more. A fundamental factor was empathy. My first facebook post that afternoon referred to those killed, and their families and friends, as being “our brothers and sisters.” Did I really feel that? Or, was my response expected of me, not really felt. And that sentence more accurately reflected my feelings: doubt, confusion, fear, a feeling of unreality. What is real? 
And in that feeling I noticed one of the classic elements of grief: denial.

Seven years before that afternoon I left Christchurch following the devastating earthquake that killed 185 people – three of them friends of mine. Then, I was able to mourn the three people I knew. One of them, Brian, I had run many times around Hagley Park with, and past that mosque. I was able to meet with others who knew those three people; we were able to share stories, we were able to weep and to laugh together. Eventually, we were able to let go.

Since 15 March I have been unable to do any of those things – I did not know them, and do not know anyone who did. Yet the grieving, the sadness, is just as profound.

Yet, not all my tears are spurred by grief and sadness.

Tears flowed when I heard the husband of one of those killed speak from his wheelchair and say, “I forgive him.”

Tears flowed when I watched Jacinda Ardern hug a Muslim woman whilst wearing a hijab.

Tears flowed when I watched dozens of Maori, and others, performing haka, including one group of very capable Muslim kids.

Tears flowed when I heard a girl at a Christchurch high school ask Jacinda Ardern, “How are you?”

Tears flowed when I heard Jacinda reply, “Thank you, I am very sad.”

Tears flowed when I saw the Sydney Opera House lit up with a silver fern.

Tears flowed when I saw the front page of the Christchurch Press, with the simple words “Salam, peace” written in Arabic. Beneath that the names of those killed.

Tears flowed as I read dozens and dozens of posts on facebook from friends and family.

These and many more tears were not of grief. These were tears of joy, connection, love, pride, recognition, empathy, togetherness – tatou, tatou.

These emotions of mine, and similar emotions I saw and heard expressed by others, all speak to me of a common humanity, a shared experience of living upon a planet of wonder and mystery, of diversity and commonality, of discord and harmony. Those tears I shed, those tears I saw in the eyes of thousands, told me we all experience the paradoxes of being human.

So, I come back to my question. How can I grieve for the deaths of 51 people I have never met? By tapping into those paradoxes, by recognising our common humanity, by feeling empathy. I could term it grempathy – the grief one feels when empathising with the loss experienced by someone else.

No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa.
As-salamu Alaykum.

Climate: A New Story (Book Review)

“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through the fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being.”

So said distinguished author, Ursula K Le Guin, at the (US) National Book Awards in 2014.  She could have pointed to Charles Eisenstein as an example.  His latest book, Climate: A New Story, clearly sees through the fear and obsessive technologies of today.  Although the sub-title is A New Story, the story he presents is really a re-newal of an old old story – one of beauty, love, and connection.

Saying the word “climate” today is bound to get attention.  It is a rallying call for those fighting for policies to avert climate change.  It is an anger-inducing word to those who claim that humans have little or no impact upon the climate.

Perhaps this is why Charles Eisenstein used the word in his title – it grabs attention.

And therein is the catch.  Climate change, and especially the call for renewable energy, is lent too much attention he suggests.  Not that he denies the impact that humans have upon the climate, but that focussing on climate has four unhelpful corollaries.

First, it gives priority to cutting emissions and replacing fossil-fuels with renewable energy, at the expense of other (sometimes more fundamental) environmental concerns.

Second, it shifts the debate to one of numbers and measurement, thus leaving out quality and what is worthwhile, yet unmeasurable.

Third, it shifts attention away from things of beauty, love, and connection.  These are what he claims will empower and encourage us to work with and for nature.

Fourth, it puts us all on a war-footing.  The “enemies” of climate change activists are deniers, big business, procrastinating governments, fossil-fuel investors, and even apathetic public.  Of course, these “enemies” fight back with think-tanks, radio commentators, media moguls, and conservative politicians.

In many ways Eisenstein contends that it is the fourth of these that is the most alarming – because it feeds upon (and is fed by) the Story of Separation.

Eisenstein makes a compelling case for separation as the core to understanding our current malaise.  Not only are we separated from one another, we are also separated from nature, and even our own selves.

Unfortunately, those fighting against climate change do so from within the very paradigm that has brought us to the brink of climate disruption.

Re-focussed Attention

Eisenstein would have us turn our attention elsewhere.  We must get out of the “us versus them,” right/wrong, “good versus evil” paradigm we have found ourselves in.

We must re-prioritise love, beauty, and caring.

But, Eisenstein warns, “people cannot be frightened into caring.”

That is a key observation.  Frightened people either withdraw (flee), or put up defences and fight back.  Others will simply freeze – unable to do anything and end up in a hopeless morass of despair, futility, or perhaps trauma.

A Bigger Threat

Throughout the book, Charles Eisenstein notes that the biggest threat to life on earth is not CO₂ emissions – it is the loss of forests, soils, wetlands, marine ecosystems, grasslands, rivers, mountains.  It is the loss of beauty.  In many ways, ironically, these are the losses that result in more and more emissions.

We must heal he says.  And that includes healing ourselves.  “Individual healing is the same as ecological healing,” he writes.  Both are important, both need to happen.  One cannot happen without the other.

So, the Story of Separation needs to be put on the shelf and a new story brought out and told.

A New (Old) Story

The title of this new story Eisenstein suggests, could be The Story of the World That Helps Us Know She Can Feel.

It is a simple story, one easily told.  It doesn’t rely upon numbers or data; it simply relies on what our hearts know – things like beauty and love.

Eisenstein’s final chapter is titled A Bridge to a Living World.  This book is one of the building blocks of that bridge.

Get a hold of it, read it, and fall in love again.