Possibly the most insightful and on-the-money essay most of us will ever read, Mutiny of the Soul, by Charles Eisenstein at Reality Sandwich. Here’s an excerpt:
Nonetheless, it would be ignorant and fruitless to pass judgment upon those who do not see anything wrong, who, oblivious to the facts of destruction, think everything is basically fine. There is a natural awakening process, in which first we proceed full speed ahead participating in the world, believing in it, seeking to contribute to the Ascent of Humanity. Eventually, we encounter something that is undeniably wrong, perhaps a flagrant injustice or a serious health problem or a tragedy near at hand. Our first response is to think this is an isolated problem, remediable with some effort, within a system that is basically sound. But when we try to fix it, we discover deeper and deeper levels of wrongness. The rot spreads; we see that no injustice, no horror can stand in isolation. We see that the disappeared dissidents in South America, the child laborers in Pakistan, the clearcut forests of the Amazon, are all intimately linked together in a grotesque tapestry that includes every aspect of modern life. We realize that the problems are too big to fix. We are called to live in an entirely different way, starting with our most fundamental values and priorities.
We don’t “fix” our situation, we step outside of it into something completely new, and I mean new inside your head to start with. Here’s another taste, but please read the whole thing. I agree with every single word:
When you find the right life, when you find the right expression of your gifts, you will receive an unmistakable signal. You will feel excited and alive. Many people have preceded you on this journey, and many more will follow in times to come. Because the old world is falling apart, and the crises that initiate the journey are converging upon us.
Comment by K.J. Webb
1 May 21, 2008, 4:34 pm o'clock |
This is all way above my pay-grade. Some of us can think these deep thoughts, some of us have to make a living and support the ones we love. Thinking is at its best when it concerns itself with the life we actually lead, not the one we want to lead. Leisure is a fine thing, work is a finer one.
–These are maxims from hell, but hell is where most of us peons have aways lived throughout time and forever.
Comment by K.J. Webb
2 May 22, 2008, 10:10 am o'clock |
Have now read the piece in full and will try to give a little more thoughtful response. I think it sets up a false choice betweeen being aware of the world’s ills and participating in the human world. The writer believes that only the insensitive and unaware are able to participate and that the only way of participating is in some caricaturish way such as being obsessed by possessions, power, comfort, etc. Is the only choice we have? And is choosing the way of withdrawal really the morally defensible one?
Here’s where I stand on this. First, every sentient human being knows the world is full of evils. Some people may deny it, but not many and not anyone worth listening to. Life is tragic and full of horrible events and conditions. My shopping list of horribles is quite likely different from yours and the next guy’s, but it’s not about denying the facts. I like reality sandwiches too. So how do we deal with that knowledge? Yes, we could retreat into an alternative universe based on rejection of the world as we find it. If that works for someone and really keeps him from getting depressed, I’m not against it. For most of us, though, it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t seem particularly moral. Nietzsche’s analysis of the problem of modern man has always been closest to my own heart: The gods have departed, and thus we must live bravely as humans, must make or do something in our own human terms. We must not complain or lament our sad lot or call upon assistance from other beings, whether supernatural ones like God or human ones like governments.
Maybe Eisenstein would say that the thing we have to do or make is something inside us. Agreed. It is that - but here again there’s that false choice between the inside and the outside, between engagement with the bad old corrupt world and withdrawal into some place of inner purity.
–I have these things on my mind lately because I have recently set for myself the project of reading the collected works of William Wordsworth. After reading about 400 pages of his verse I can say that his plight at the end of the 19th century was not unlike that of Mr. Eisenstein’s. Wordsworth was disaffected with English materialism, bellicosity, smugness, ugliness, industrialism, etc, and his hopes for the French Revolution had failed with the advent of the Terror and Napoleon. He didn’t know how he was going to make a living, and he had an illegimate child in France. For him the sovereign remedy for all this was a cultivation of his own sensibility in the midst of the unspoiled beauties of nature. He titled one of his major poems “The Recluse”. He was probably near to a breakdown in his early 20’s (something that his friend Coleridge wasn’t able to avoid, along with opium addiction). Beauty led him back to the human heart, as he would put it - to the lives of ordinary human beings. A poet, he said, is a man speaking to men.
Sounds good to me. We shouldn’t think our present problems are especially unique or awful. Old Wordsworth knew the score.