Excitement Of Life

Today, where I live, marks an easing of restrictions on the wearing of masks in public. At my local café I asked the person who served me how they were. “How are you?” I asked. The reply came back.

“I am very well this morning. We don’t have to wear a mask.”

The barista who served me made a similar comment, then added. “Isn’t it strange that we are excited about something like this, about returning to normal?”

That got me thinking. Yes, it is exciting. Pursuing that thinking, I arrived at the next question:

What gets us excited about life? What makes a normal life exciting? What stirs us, what rouses us to participate in (normal) life?

Literally, excite means to set something in motion in an outward direction. What feelings do we wish to express? What internal emotions are stirred within us that we wish to show to the world?

Excitement in our contemporary world tends to suggest something we are looking forward to eagerly, or that something we have witnessed or experienced brings up feelings of joy, delight, and wonder.

In its literal sense excitement could also be an expression of sadness or even something stronger – revulsion maybe.

Whatever it may be, to be excited is to be able to express our full gamut of emotions. When we do this, we enter our world fully present to what it has to offer, and how we decide to experience it.

So, what excites you? What feelings spread through your body when you first wake from sleep? What emotions do you feel when you interact with another person – perhaps the barista at your local café? What emotions does the aroma of the coffee, or its taste, allow you to experience?

Such excitement is available to us every day, not just those days when we head back to normalcy.

Perhaps I will shift my greeting from one of “How are you?” to one of “What excites you today?”

Politicians Have Won - Again!

Last weekend in the State of Australia in which I live elections were held for local government. As expected, the predictable candidates won again. All of them, every last one of them are – politicians.

When the results come in, there will be some who cheer and others weep. Some voters will be glad, others sad. Many electors may even be mad.

From the complaints, moans, and groans I heard leading up to this election, it appears that this campaign has been little different to others. There have been complaints of cronyism and collusion, all the way up to allegations of corruption.

Could any less have been expected?

When would-be politicians are campaigning for election, money is key. Money buys exposure, and exposure translates into votes.

And it is the poor voter who is left bemoaning the outcome.

During the campaign, and following the casting of votes, I heard such statements as: “I’ll be glad when the election is over,” or “Thank god that’s over for another three years.”

All this is a sad state of affairs for at least three reasons:

1.     The to-and-fro name-calling and allegation and counter-allegation by politicians and their supporters should not be how we conduct our collective decision-making processes.

2.     In response to this, electors feel disappointed, unheard, and sometimes angry. It is as if elections elicit a feeling of angst amongst the electorate.

3.     The desire on the part of many electors that the elections be over-and-done-with as soon as possible sadly belies what should be an engaging part of civic life.

Can this be any different?

Yes, it can – if we think differently. And – if we think systematically.

Donella Meadows was one of the foremost systems thinkers in the world. Her book Thinking In Systems,¹ published posthumously, set out twelve leverage points at which to intervene in a system. She ranked these leverage points according to the effectiveness with which change may happen.

According to Meadows, the least effective leverage point was to change the numbers in the system. In terms of our political system, this translates to changing the politicians, changing the individual men and women who sit in parliaments, senates, and Council chambers.

Far more effective leverage points are to intervene at the level of goals, and paradigms. Doing so, requires us to think more deeply about what the purpose of our political system is and what assumptions is it based upon.

At present, we are simply changing the constituent parts. We are doing nothing to change the system. Yet, the system is not serving us. If it were, would there be so much angst around election time?

Our present mechanism for selecting those who are charged with making our collective and social decisions rests upon elections. What if we no longer used elections for that purpose?

What if we used random selection instead? What if those making our public decisions were selected like a jury?

“But, but, but…” The objections are many. When distilled, most objections can be encapsulated as: “But, that’s not democracy!”

It isn’t? Well, actually, it is.

Ancient Athens (the “birthplace” of democracy) used a process of sortition to select their decision-makers. Sortition is a system of random selection, and the Athenians used it in preference to elections.

I have written about sortition many times on this blog site, so I will not traverse the topic much further here.²

However, consider this: Would the three negative aspects of elections outline above be reduced under a sortition system?

I suggest, if the question is seriously pondered, and sortition fully appraised, then the answer has to be – “Yes.”

Sortition may not rid us completely of the three sad features, but it could seriously reduce them.

 Notes:

1. Donnella H Meadows (ed. Diana Wright), Thinking in Systems, Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont, 2008

2. In the “Search this site” box type in the word sortition to be taken to blogs where I explore sortition much more fully.

Now, Where Did We Put That Monkey Wrench?

A lot of ground-breaking environmentally themed books were published in the early – mid 1970s. Many of them pointed towards a future that was unsustainable if the current “business as usual” model was pursued.

One fictional book narrated the story of reaction against the environmental destruction going on in the Southwestern United States. Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang (published in 1975)¹ told the story of an unlikely gang of four that included a river guide, a surgeon, a Jewish feminist, and a Vietnam vet. Their mission was to sabotage and destroy the machinery (bulldozers, trains etc) that were being used to lay waste to the environment.

Significantly, Edward Abbey dedicated the book to Ned Ludd, the semi-mythical weaver in England who smashed a couple of weaving frames in 1779. His name is now synonymous with the term Luddite.

To be called a Luddite today is often taken as a pejorative and derisive term.

Yet, we could ask today, for the sake of the environment; where are you Ned Ludd when we need you? Or, we could give a call out to the Monkey Wrench Gang and plea for their assistance.

More so than in 1779, and even more than in 1975, the world today is beset by techno-addiction: a term coined by eco-psychologist Chellis Glendinning in 1994.²

Much technological invention and innovation has brought us to the life-threatening predicaments we currently face. Sadly, the solutions being offered are more of the same - more technology. And woefully, “green technology” only keeps us trapped within the same techno-addiction.

Healing and Wholing

Technology is implicated in getting us into this mess. Technology is not going to get us out.

We could be like the Monkey Wrench Gang or Ned Ludd and smash technology. However, that would be analogous to an alcoholic who smashes a bottle of beer so that the beer is unavailable, yet walks into a bottle store the next day to buy another dozen bottles.

Like the alcoholic, we need to address our addiction. And that requires a lot of work.

Notes:

1. Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang, J.B. Lippincott & Co., New York, 1975

2. Chellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization, Shambhala Publications, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994.

Don't Resist - Desist

Carl Jung

Those seeking change have, for centuries, resisted the incumbent and prevailing order. All too often this has resulted in little, if any, real change. Sometimes, all that changes are the players, leaving the system itself largely intact.

The reasons for this are many. This blogpiece does not have the space to enter into a full analysis, nor even offer a complete alternative.  What it does do, however, is to pose a question that social change activists may like to consider.

One of the greatest psychologists of the 20^th century, Carl Jung, offered this insight:

“What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”

Although Jung’s primary work was at an individual level, he was also a shrewd observer of cultural behaviour. He recognised that patterns within individuals are repeated within the wider society – each helping to create the other.

Jung wasn’t the only one to recognise the mutually enlarging relationship between resistance and persistence. We can see a similar concept in Isaac Newton’s famous third law of motion. Often cited simply as action-reaction, this law tells us that when two objects exert a force on each other, then the forces are equal in magnitude, and opposite in direction. Simply put, this suggests that when one object exerts a greater force, then the other object will react by increasing its own force. What one resists, the other persists.

The same is true in our social and cultural settings. An action stimulates a reaction, which then becomes the stimulus for a further reaction.

Certainly, there are things that we must have the courage to say ‘No’ to – racism and sexism are two of the most obvious and blatant.

However, attempting to build an entire alternative system around saying ‘No’ is bound to end in tears, mistrust, and failure.

We may be better to move from a resisting modality to one of desisting. Similarly sounding words, yet a peek into their etymology gives us insight into their quite different qualities. Both receive their verb from Latin – sistere, meaning to stand, or stand firm.

Often the prefix re suggests a going back, or again. It also, as it does here in the word resist, means against (as in opposition to). Hence, resist literally means ‘to stand in opposition to, stand against.’ The word has an obvious oppositional, almost antagonistic, flavour.

What about the word desist? The same verb, i.e., to stand. The prefix de however, gives the word a much different flavour. De is also of Latin derivation and means away from, down from, or off. The word desist then, has the sense of standing away from, or standing apart from.

Quite a different flavour. There is no sense of opposition, yet it retains the sense of firmness, steadiness, and taking a stand. The difference is that one stands in opposition to something, the other stands apart from, standing firm elsewhere. It stands on its own merit, and stands in its own authorship and integrity.

This leads to the question that was foreshadowed at the beginning of this blog.

What would happen if social change movements shifted from resisting to desisting? What if, instead of trying to resist and fight against the system, the system was ignored and by-passed with effort going instead into creating a new system?

What if, instead of buying into systems, we simply stopped purchasing from them? What if we desisted from our consumer role, and became engaged, interactive, and communal citizens?

This is exactly what Buckminster Fuller was advocating, when he advised that:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Not only is Bucky’s advice likely to be more effectual, just think of the effort and time not wasted on resisting and trying to change a system that is reluctant to change.

Think too, of the amount of angst, anger, disappointment, and torment that could be averted.

If the efforts that go into resisting were instead channelled into desisting, then just imagine the creative opportunities that could emerge.

Is it too late to stop resisting? Is it too late to stand aside from the life-destroying systems that surround us?

Bewilderment (Book Review)

Bewilderment¹ picks up a theme explored exceptionally well in Richard Powers critically acclaimed 2018 novel, Overstory. Where Overstory told the story of human-nature disconnection mostly from the point of view of nature, Bewilderment explores that disconnection through the eyes of two living, and one dead, human.

Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist wondering about how life may have evolved on other planets. His nine-year old son, Robin, is simply wondering. Yet, his wonderings are profound, and because of this, is ostracised by his classmates.  Alyssa, Theo’s wife and Robin’s mother, who died in an accident, was a lawyer/advocate working with animal-rights NGOs.

The novel is full of irony. Theo is busy looking for life on exo-planets. Meanwhile, Robin is attempting to draw and paint every endangered species in America.

Theo is told by a psychologist that Robin is ‘on the spectrum,’ prompting Theo to respond that we are all on the spectrum – that’s what life is: a spectrum. Theo also wonders why it is that the zealous desire to diagnose psychiatric disorder is not itself a psychiatric disorder.

Powers narrative asks us to view the natural world through the eyes of a nine-year old, and to ask questions that only nine-year-olds seem capable of asking. Bewildering questions.

Together, Theo and Robin, grapple with, and meditate upon Fermi’s Paradox. Named after the nuclear physicist, Enrico Fermi, the paradox asks, ‘where is everybody?’ If the cosmos is full of trillions upon trillions of galaxies, stars, and planets, then life elsewhere must be in abundance, yet there is no evidence. Many explanations for the paradox have been put forward, and Powers skilfully weaves these into the conversations between astrobiologist father and quizzical son.

‘Where is everybody?’ is but one of the bewildering questions explored in Powers’ novel. Thankfully, Powers does not try to answer them, allowing (almost forcing) us, as reader, to ponder the questions for ourselves. Indeed, further, the questions compel those of us who are older to ask, as Theo does; ‘…ten thousand children with Robin’s new eyes might teach us how to live on Earth.’

Indeed, currently on Earth, it is the young people who are asking the pertinent questions, and who are seeing the world through new eyes. Instead of ignoring them or criticising them, we (the older generation) might rather co-explore (as Theo and Robin do) with younger people what these questions mean.

Look up bewilderment in a modern dictionary, and you will get a definition something like this: the feeling associated with being perplexed, confused, baffled. Yes, there are instances of this feeling in Powers’ novel.

However, I suspect that Powers would like us to question where the word bewilderment comes from, and whether it might have something for us to consider in todays world. The preposition be in Old English had the sense of intensifying the verb following. Be can be thought of as making thorough, or complete.  The verb, wilder, has strong connections to the noun wild, and means lead astray, to lure into the wilds. Thus, a thorough understanding of bewilderment takes us to a thorough immersion into the wilds of nature.

Perhaps this is the sense in which Powers has used Bewilderment for his novel’s title? If so, then pondering its full meaning, we might glimpse some answers.

Bewilderment is an easy-to-read book, deceptively simple in its storyline, yet full of bewilderment.

Note:

1. Richard Powers, Bewilderment, Hutchinson Heinemann, London, 2021.

The Accusing Finger

I recently broke my collarbone, and so writing is a little painful. Thus, I have kept this week’s blog short. It is a simple quatrain.

I have noticed an increase in blaming, finger pointing, toxic individuality, and lack of responsibility over the past few years. This quatrain refers to that. With apologies to Omar Khayyám.¹

The accusing finger points; and having pointed

Stays put: nor all thy vain glory, nor thy hubris

Shall straighten it for thee to see

Nor all thy scorn shall understand e’en a grain of this.

Note

1. Omar Khayyám (1048 – 1131) was a mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, and poet. He is best known for his quatrains translated into English as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyáam, by Edward Fitzgerald in the mid-1800s.

What Is Adolescence For?

Adolescence. What is it? Why does it exist? And, why is it so long? Furthermore, how is it that most adults still seem to be stuck in some sort of adolescent time-warp?

This blog will not pretend to have the answers to these questions. However, the questions must be raised, because we do not seem to have adequate answers to them currently. Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions.

The term adolescence is quite recent within our vocabulary. It was coined by the American psychologist, G Stanley Hall, in his 1904 book Adolescence. Hall recognised that the period of adolescence in the human species was far longer than for any other primate. He theorised that there must be a reason for this, and that if we properly understood the purpose and nature of adolescence then the human race could develop its evolutionary potential.

Where Hall, however, was steeped in his (European) culture of the time, later psychologists have come to explore further the basis of adolescence. In particular, eco-psychologists have recognised that adolescence is largely wasted on the human race. We are not utilising the great gift that this period of life is pregnant with.

Instead, adolescent boys and girls are trussed up in a school environment most of each day, for five days a week. The learning offered there is primarily geared towards producing “good” adults – adults that will consume and obey. Adults who have suppressed their imaginative qualities, and are not longer able to co-create a world in which will live harmoniously as part of nature.

In such a rigidly controlled adolescence it is little wonder that the only two, major, possibilities are: conform or rebel.

Sadly, adults (raised in similar systems) will listen (if any listening is done at all) to those adolescents who conform. Those who rebel are labelled as non-conformists (at best) or “angry young people who need to grow up.”

Eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin, however, paints an entirely different picture of adolescence. Far from adolescence being a training ground for adulthood, Plotkin says that:

“With the onset of adolescence, the individual becomes the social explorer who must learn the art of making his or her way in the world without the shield of their immediate family… It is time to push the limits, try out new social powers, see where and how one fits.” ¹

Plotkin calls this the time of the Thespian. Today, we think of a thespian as being a Shakespearian actor. Whilst partially true, the first Thespian, Thespis, was a Greek dramatist from the 6^th century BC who performed all the parts within his dramas by himself. To do so, he had to become adept at changing roles, swapping masks, and donning different costumes.

Plotkin has chosen an excellent archetype for the adolescent in that of the Thespian. It is a time for acting out different roles, trying on different masks, and donning different costumes (perhaps the only one of these three aspects that is reluctantly accepted by adults.)

What sort of adults would emerge from this form of adolescence were such a Thespian drama be allowed to flow, and furthermore, actively encouraged by adults and elders alike?

In today’s world we still hear young people venting their anger at the world of those of so-called adulthood. (Witness the current expressions of anger and frustration by young people at COP26 in Glasgow.)

Telling young people to stop, to go back to school, to grow up, is not going to help. Adults and elders need to listen to the fire of youth.

Socially, we also need to ask deep questions about what is adolescence, what is it for?

Perhaps, before adults and elders are able to stop and listen, before we (I place myself in that older age group) can even ask the questions, we need to go back and experience a true adolescence for ourselves.

As I indicated at the beginning of this blogpiece, there are no answers here. Just questions. They are questions that we must ask. I suspect the answers will not come easily, and they will not be without pain and surprise.

Let’s all become Thespians for once in our lives – no matter what age we are.

Notes:

1. Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, New World Library, Novato, California, 2008, p174