We must be consciously aware and emotionally grounded enough to begin important conversations at the front-end of the discussion — at the leading edge of understanding, utilizing the most current data and relevant discoveries — rather than allowing critically essential and intelligent discourse to be mired in age-old rhetoric, polarizing arguments or dogma, unflinching adherence to ideology, personal attacks, violent defensiveness and strong opinions.
We often talk about a “better world,” but very few if any of us really know what that means. We just know that something feels wrong, and that it shouldn’t have to be this way.
To begin with, very few of us can really grasp and qualify what the idea of “world” is. We tend to reduce, minimize and negate the vast majority of the ingredients of our collective recipe, instead projecting onto an entire planet what our very personal, individual needs represent. These are valid and important concerns, obviously, but we need to be willing to expand our perspective, to allow greater inclusivity in our conversations — to be flexible enough to develop mature communications that allows for both that which matters to us, and to appreciate and understand that which matters to others. We may then expand concentric levels of understanding and mutual beneficence accordingly, upward and outward to encompass and adequately consider and address systemic and worldwide concerns.
While there is rarely a singular solution to any problem, a collective effort to create and increase momentum in an integrative, systemic, all-beneficent manner will continue to be impossible if we strive for universal consensus. That’s a tough one, to be sure. Our world is ecologically diverse and unfailingly adaptive and dynamic. It’s absolutely remarkable and deserves our utmost respect. Not surprisingly, as a species, humans are incredibly varied and multicultural, employing thousands of spoken, written, signed and symbolic languages. We’ve survived cataclysms and extinction-level events, yet currently suffer from millennia of psychological, psychic, spiritual and philosophical violence; we are about as emotionally fragmented as it is possible to be, and we are right now in the process of remaking our individual, societal and collective identities.
It is a time of great shifts in consciousness, personal and societal values and beliefs, and of the unsettling, shaking-up, shattering, and redefinition of paradigms — and that which underpins our perceptions and sensemaking faculties. At the same time, we’re observing the cumulative effects of impractical, unsustainable, toxic and runaway commercial and industrial practices. We are several generations behind in evolving and upgrading our educational systems, our politics, governance, policymaking, and our economic practices. We’re dragging our heels regarding free, clean, unlimited, alternate, ambient and decentralized energy production. We’re still at the whim of special interests and multinational conglomerates. It has to stop, insofar as those who aim to profit take precedence over those who aim to employ regenerative and sustainable practices.
It should feel embarrassing, as it’s completely unnecessary, and vast, unchecked destruction is beyond shameful. But, we know that guilt and punitive practices do nothing to fundamentally change an individual, nor a culture, or society, or nation in any long-term, positive ways. Suppression and oppression of the natural human leads to more of what we see everywhere today. With a long and patient look around, it’s plainly evident that there are layers and layers of emotional and psychic traumas, and energetic scarring throughout all of humanity. This is the universal and circular, condition-making issue that keeps us operating at base-level, adolescent, arbitrary, and go-nowhere institutional malevolence.
How do we raise our game? We’re doing it actively in tiny pockets and focused communities, on social media threads and behind anonymity and nonsense and gibberish usernames… But how can those fertile and well-loved, well-directed village gardens ever transcend and migrate and reverberate and cross-pollinate into the greater collective discussion — amid those structures and entities who have long suffered the effects of forced homogenization and mono-crop spiritual erosion?
Is it even possible to accommodate all nature of identification, all the cultural diversity, and all societal levels, while pursuing a unified, universal and potentially species-saving philosophy, practice and purpose? I don’t know. Profit-seeking entities couldn’t care less, as they have perpetually perfected and adapted their myopic and malevolent practices throughout the ages. The benefits and advantages to their apparent values and needs are clear, and take nothing of the Earth, nor the wellbeing of the dominant species into consideration.
How do we get past that kind of stagnation and this limited framework of reality?
There are a lot of brilliant hearts and minds working on this, as there always has been, and there are many geniuses that have passed on having left a legacy of transcontextual, or universal and multidimensional solutions. What will it take to elevate ourselves, and to adopt next-level practices in the most powerful of decision-making places?
In the simplest terms, we all know that it starts with us, individually — but we can hardly afford to wait for everyone to deal with their issues, to find their bliss, and to experience beyond-the-body awareness of how the universe really works. We can hardly agree with any certainty with how any of it works, simply because it largely IS an issue of individual experience and perspective.
But what if we start there, in that cognitive and energetic space of the question; one of wonder and an entry-level openness? What if we simply start with “I don’t know,” and, “I don’t understand,” and build from there? Nobody knows everything, but virtually everyone has access to know and learn about anything and everything they want to. In this way, our cumulative collective understanding should continue to emerge and evolve.
Is it enough to begin to foster curiosity, a wonder about the world and its many peoples, and what is possible beyond what we think we already know and accept? I think it has to start in these simpler, cleaner and safer ways — before the defense mechanisms can even kick in. It has to begin within the innocence of discovery and in the messiness of the unknowing, unformed, unbridled potentiality of all that is now and could very soon be possible.
What if?
Solvitur ambulando