Tag: pathologies

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Disconnection, Collapse, Complex Systems, and Working Now in the Liminal Spaces

Over the span of my life so far, I’ve been noticing some disturbing trends, which may very well be contributing to our current situation on the brink of disaster, if not extinction. Some of these trends probably have been in existence for hundreds, if not, thousands of years, while others are more recent. And, some seem to be more characteristic of one country (or a few countries) or region.

  • An increase in aggression becoming our default response to uncertain situations or more intense situations..
  • An increase in our emotions driving our decision-making in almost all contexts…. From fear to desire, from joy to repulsion….
  • Tending towards a complete loss of empathy (not to mention compassion) towards fellow human being
  • Tending towards a complete loss of empathy and disconnect from other living beings, from pets to wildlife and our critically important invertebrate cousins.
  • The development of a total disregard for the environments and ecosystems in which we live and upon which we depend
  • An increase in mind-less buy-in to the myths of capitalism
  • An increase in the mind-less buy-in to religious dogma and a loss of the connection to the core meanings of different religions
  • An increase in intolerance, if not hate, of those who are “different”
  • An increase in racism
  • An increase in addiction to our devices (phones, TV’s, cars, etc.), to our foods, to careers, to substances of all kinds, and to our own neuroses and habitual patterns of thinking and behaving
  • An increase in the loss of integrity – decreases in trustworthiness, dependability, reliability, responsibility, honesty, forthrightness, and so forth.

These tendencies are just a few of the more “ig-notable” ones. I’m sure we can add many more to the list. At the same time, all of these tendencies intertwine with one another. There really are no distinct borders between one and another.

I am sure there are multiple factors that have contributed to the increases in these tendencies. Technology has certainly played a big role in disconnecting people in various ways. The concerted effort of the “institution of education” to dumb down the population has had major effects on these tendencies. Political and corporate brainwashing has been a major factor. “Religious leaders” – who do not have deep and extensive training in their spiritual disciplines and in their religious teachings and who edit what teachings they know to conform to their own egotism and biases – have contributed to many of these tendencies.

The corporate world and its greed and disregard for social and environmental responsibility has had huge effects.

And, again, there are many other contexts that have had and continue to have effects on how we relate to the world.

Our complete buy-in to Objectivist, Positivist, Reductionist, Mechanistic thinking (from Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, and others) has been a core contributor to our disconnects to one another, to other life forms, to society, and to the ecosystems and environment upon which we depend.

At the same time, human beings have so much potential. We can love. We can care for others. We can create amazing powerful, thought-provoking, and/or beautiful music, dance, works of art, novels, stories, film, and poetry. We can develop incredible technologies and structures. We can explore and develop incredible scientific understandings of our world.

Yet, we have brought ourselves to the brink of destruction. Ecosystems are collapsing, Rates of extinction are skyrocketing. Resources are being depleted. And, climate patterns are changing so radically and so quickly that the weather-related disasters that were once rare and becoming common events, which in turn is creating havoc in some parts of the world. And, what is happening in a few areas now will become commonplace everywhere else in the world over the next decade or so.

Our global situation is absolutely beyond grim. However, governments and other institutions will not be “the answer” to the “wicked” problems we’re facing. But, they can make a difference in providing a more workable context for change. And, that change has to come from between the institutions (in the liminal spaces)…. In other words, change needs to arise from as many people as possible working together to address the very complex, transcontextual, and very slippery interacting systems and the pathologies that are plaguing these systems.

And, we need to start NOW!

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Losing Our Nation

I’m sad. Actually, I’m incredibly sad. I’m sitting here having realized that my country in gone. Poof! Just like that… gone. If you haven’t realized this, you have probably felt an uneasy sense that something-is-missing. This experience must be like dying in your sleep…. You lie down in a world of solid objects and all of your feelings and thoughts, then all of a sudden there’s no solid, physical world. Everything is kind of fuzzy and slippery. We can’t quite grasp anything. Even our thoughts seem fuzzy and slippery. We feel like we just cannot get a handle on what is real and what isn’t. And I think, as a society, we’ve been asleep for quite some time. And, now many of us have awakened into some sort of limbo state or purgatory as the Catholics say.

The coup has taken place, and yet people, especially our legislators, seem to think that everything might be a bit bizarre, but it is still business as usual. In reality, it is a whole new situation. It is kind of like a baseball team taking the 7th inning break, but when they come back out of the dugout it’s cricket and not baseball. We are no longer living in a democracy where the rules of the game have been followed for the past 240 years. The rules have just changed, but not everyone knows it yet. They keep thinking that this executive order, this nomination, and this action are the issues, but they are just the window dressings – the distractions for a much bigger plan that is going to change everything.

The way we’ve done business up to this point will no longer be effective. In fact, such ways will be counterproductive and feed into the take-over of the U.S. And, it’s not just the U.S. where the action is happening. The same transformation is happening in countries around the world. But, in this big shift, the U.S. will no longer be the leader of the “free” world. The free world is disappearing.

This movement of the “far-right” is not only occurring across national contexts, but also is occurring in multiple contexts, such as the media and communication contexts, the deep state (all of the government agencies and structures) contexts, the global economic contexts, the national economic contexts, the education context, religious contexts, cultural contexts, et al. (some of these are discussed in Jordan Greenhall’s article, “Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition,” https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-trump-edition-d189d24fc046#.gqr4pj8my

I don’t care for the word, “far-right,” to describe what is happening. Maybe it’s the rise of bigotry in a culture of fear and loathing. A rise in corporatism, as the central authoritarian god, not unlike many science fiction films: Fifth Element, Blade Runner, Brave New World, and Total Recall, among many others. Whatever you’d like to call it, the coup is happening right now. And, this coup is not just the president, it involves all of his advisors, and the entire Repugnant Party (aka, Republican Party). It also involves Democratic congress people who seem to think it is just business as usual. In addition, all of us are responsible for not voting, for being conned, and/or for thinking that everything will work out. It is also Putin and Russian, most Europe, South American, Africa, and throughout the Middle East and Asia. It’s in the technology, the media, the economy and big corporations. It’s in law enforcement and any number of government agencies. It’s also in the education system and in religions that confuse money and power with being a religious leader.

It is all overwhelming, but also workable. At least, I hope it is workable. Everyone of us has to keep pressure on our Congress people. We need to resist and stop making our current governments seem legitimate. We need to take immediate actions, as well as long-term actions, like educating ourselves and our children. Schools have failed and are in part responsible for our current situation. But, it isn’t the fault of teachers, but rather is the fault of the politicians and corporations that have systematically created policies and curriculum that dumb down our children, through fragmented and irrelevant curriculum and high stakes tests that show nothing of any depth about children’s learning and thinking.

There are no easy answers or solutions to this situation. But, if we want to find ways of working with this situation, we must examine multiple contexts and find ways in working with these contexts, which include, but certainly not limited to:

• political contexts
• all aspects of the economic contexts
• all educational contexts
• religious contexts
• socio-cultural contexts

These and other contexts all intertwine.

From within these intertwining contexts and the systems within these contexts, pathologies have arisen that have led to our current situation. To address these pathologies we must work transcontextually and avoid looking for linear causes.