resource | Harvesting Stones

Why Does It Matter?

by Jenny Rose | Aug 16, 2018 | Power

Photo by Anna Dziubinska on Unsplash

It’s easy these days to feel overwhelmed and despairing. Life is increasingly unpredictable and the future uncertain socially, economically and in terms of climate. We’ve never before been able to discuss so many issues with so many others, or been exposed to so many different sources of information and opinions. As our public education system flounders, fewer and fewer people think critically, which is daily becoming a more important tool in navigating our information overload.

I heard about a comment the other day on social media directed toward someone discussing women’s rights. The man commenting asked why we’re talking about something like feminism when climate change is so pressing. Why are we wasting energy on women’s rights while the planet is getting more and more difficult to inhabit, not in some hazy future but right now, today?

Photo by Nicole Mason on Unsplash

That question points to the reason we find ourselves in our present situation in the first place. Our social struggles reflect our approach to living on and with our planet. The thinking shaping our social behavior is the same thinking shaping our behavior as citizens on Planet Earth. If we feel we’re entitled to rape, rob or otherwise seize power and control over another human being or group of human beings, we feel equally entitled to use the planet however we want, with no thought of anyone else or the consequences of our behavior. This fertile, life-giving planet is our mother. We live on her body. The degree to which we respect and appreciate her is the degree to which we afford the same treatment to women. It’s the same discussion. It’s not a coincidence that the increasing pressure on our physical survival is happening in the middle of the current social maelstrom.

I’m not a scientist, though I endeavor to be a critical thinker. However, I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the subject of complex systems and earth systems science, including Darwin’s Unfinished Business by Simon Powell, Animate Earth by Stephan Harding, Overshoot by William Catton and Gaia’s Revenge by James Lovelock. Everything I read confirms what I intuitively recognize.

Everything matters. Everyone matters. It’s all connected.

The days are gone when we can tell ourselves what happens on the other side of the world doesn’t affect us and we need not pay attention or worry about it. We have so far exceeded the earth’s carrying capacity for our species that the actions of each individual have an effect on the whole. As human population oozes and bulges into every biome all over the globe, we also directly affect every other form of life: Animal, plant, insect, fungi and microorganism. We displace other species, poison their habitat and compete fiercely for resources. We have no sense of our own needs or the needs of others, but focus on what we want, and we want it all — right now. We deserve it. We have a right to it.

Certain groups of men have no intention of sharing power, dignity and economic resources with women, let alone sharing the planet with fungi and Monarch butterflies. Some groups would eradicate cattle from the globe before learning how to integrate them back into the healthy complex system they were part of until we threw things out of balance with our numbers and ignorance. Others work to bar immigrants, saying they’ll take our jobs, they’ll soak up social resources and they’ll poison our communities with their foreign tongues and culture, too ignorant and short-sighted to grasp we are only enriched and strengthened by the presence of other cultures.

It’s all the same discussion. It’s all connected.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

We are only now beginning to glimpse the miraculous web of life on Earth, only now getting a sense of Earth as a sentient complex system, self-regulating and self-sufficient, and the knowledge may have come too late. Complexity is life. Complexity is resilient and creates the ability to learn and adapt. Any behavior or ideology seeking to minimize, disrupt, or eradicate complexity is destructive. Those who work for purity, for homogenized patriotism, for the complete power of one religion, sex, diet, complexion, body type or expression of sexuality are actively tearing apart our world and our future.

Our inability to live peacefully and cooperatively with one another is our inability to respect and care for the land under our feet. Our willingness to tolerate slavery, sex trafficking and bureaucracy that destroys families, indigenous groups, human rights, reproductive choice and other natural resources is the same willingness to worship the false idol of money, buy whatever we want when we want it and discard it later with impunity. If we can’t buy what we want, we take it, or steal it. This is the definition of rape culture.

Complexity is about integration. One way to interpret the old stories is to consider each character as a separate part of the same psyche. In other words, we all have an innocent Red Riding Hood maiden inside us, and we all have an old bedridden grandparent, a parent who warns us of the dangers of leaving the path, a wily predator and a heroic figure who saves the day. A healthy adult learns to know and accept his or her shadow side, as well as more admirable characteristics. Spiritual wholeness consists of a well-balanced masculine and feminine, no matter our biological sex. If we are unable to integrate all these voices and archetypes, all these facets of personality, feelings and thoughts, and operate as a whole complex psyche, we’re crippled, and we’re certainly going to be unable to take our place as an effective, joyous and elegant part of the wider complex system of Planet Earth.

So yes, it matters. It matters if you use a plastic straw and throw it away. It matters if you toss your plastic cup out the car window. It matters if you support the tobacco industry because they’ve successfully addicted you. If you throw one less item away today, it matters. If you recycle and compost, it matters. If you stop rototilling your garden, which damages the soil, it matters. The way you treat the people and animals around you matters. We don’t have the power to stop or change the enormous transition we’re caught up in by ourselves. We may never see validation, recognition or negative consequences for the choices we make, but those choices do matter, because we’re all inextricably connected, like it or not, deny it or not.

Megastorms matter. Lead in drinking water and cancer clusters matter. Water conservation efforts in Cape Town matter. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria matter. Fires, earthquakes and volcanic activity matter.

People matter, too. Our experience, feelings and thoughts matter. I don’t matter more than you or anyone else, but, as a living creature on the planet, I matter. The way I treat myself matters. My health matters, and my creativity, and my ability to learn.

Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash

If we can’t wrap our heads around the essential value and importance of each life, including our own, and support each individual in their personal power, we will absolutely destroy all non-human life on the planet and ourselves with it. If we’re really serious about equal rights, we need to learn to share our rapidly diminishing resources, and I don’t mean cars, technology and food delicacies grown half a world away. I don’t mean diamonds, designer clothing, private airplanes and yachts, and mansions housing a family of four. I mean basic food, clean water and habitable land. We each need to take responsibility for our addiction to instant gratification, convenience and all the latest tech, toys and trends. We need to let go of our entitlement and work together to create a sustainable standard of living for everyone.

So yes, food and water politics, sexual identity politics, human rights, healthcare, education, families and children and immigration all matter. They’re all road signs and mile markers. The question is whether we’ll travel in the direction of destruction or use these issues as opportunities to build bridges, enlarge our empathy and heal our disconnection from ourselves, from other humans, and from all other life, paving the way to managing climate change as elegantly as possible.

I know what direction I’m going in, not with hope of reaching some kind of utopia, but because it’s the only direction that makes any sense to me. Many, many people disagree with me, I know, and I’m going to have to fight the mob going in the direction of destruction. That’s okay. I never seem to be traveling in the direction of the majority, so I’m used to it, and there will be others going my way.

In the meantime, I walk the tightrope suspended over the paradox at the heart of modern life. I fight to maintain power and authority in my own life and use it for the greater good as well as my own benefit. At the same time, I acknowledge I am but one life among uncounted living beings on the planet, spinning through space with everyone else towards an uncertain future. My power is present, but limited. If I make even the smallest difference for good in my lifetime, I’ll probably never know, and no one else will ever see, and that’s okay with me.

It still matters.

Photo by Ivan Jevtic on Unsplash

All content on this site ©2018
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted

Tribal Shaming

by Jenny Rose | Dec 1, 2016 | Connection & Community, Emotional Intelligence, Shadows

Tribal shaming is one of the most powerful ideas I’ve been introduced to in the last years. A friend sent me a Facebook post by the author Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love). Here’s a link to that post. You don’t need to be on Facebook to read it, just press “Not Now” when it asks you to sign in.

It’s a long post, but it’s also life changing. Get ready for insight and clarity you’ve never had before about your tribe on every level, from family to country.

In (very) short, the concept comes from Dr. Mario Martinez, who wrote a book called The Mind-Body Code. Gilbert provides a link to a podcast by Dr. Martinez in her post. Gilbert was so stunned by Dr. Martinez’s work that she posted about it, and now her post is all over the net. Clearly, others find it as significant as I do. As the political situation unfolds day by day here in America and all kinds of people react in all kinds of ways, I keep thinking about the power of tribal shaming.

In this context, the word “tribe” means any group with which we identify. Tribe is family, church, community, culture, nationality, team, workplace, etc. Tribal shaming examines the power of the tribe. It’s not a new idea, of course. We’ve studied cults, gangs, religious sects — all kinds of groups — in order to understand the choices we make and how they’re influenced by those around us. What I hadn’t thought about before was the invisible destructive power our tribe(s) have over our ability to live well.

Photo by Liane Metzler on Unsplash

One of the greatest motivators for us as humans is the desire for connection to others. Our earliest experience of connection takes place in our family of origin, or in the context of whoever raised us, even if just people in an institution. From infancy on, we’re each surrounded by tribal cultures and norms, tribal rules, and the differentiation of our tribe from others. This shows up in an overwhelming number of ways: Economically, geographically, religiously, educationally, etc.

Tribes provide us with connection, identity, meaning, and, hopefully, security and safety. They help us define ourselves and shelter us from an unkind world. Connection is a deep need for human beings, and without it we don’t survive. We know there are all kinds of consequences for people who have no early sense of tribe, from attachment disorder to failure to thrive to severe mental illness — and those only if the child survives in the first place.

Tribal connection works very well for people who feel they belong in the tribe(s) in which they find themselves.

But what happens when we don’t fit into our tribe? What happens when we ask questions and break rules? What happens when we don’t accept the tribe’s authority? What happens when the tribe abuses us?

Tribal shaming, that’s what.

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

Now, you might say, so what? So you break away from your family, group, church, whatever. Big deal. People do it all the time. It doesn’t matter.

That’s true. It’s also true that at a casual glance we’re all just fine. We move, we change jobs, our beliefs and views change, we get divorced, people come and go out of our lives. We spend time on social media, catch a movie, watch TV, have a drink, take a pill, buy a pint of ice cream, light up another cigarette. Maybe those closest to us see a shadow of addiction, workaholism, people pleasing, depression, insomnia and anxiety, but that’s nothing, right?

I don’t believe that for a single second.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

It does matter. Tribal estrangement is a deep wound that never stops bleeding, and it doesn’t much matter why the estrangement exists. If we feel cast out from our tribe, it hurts. We may grieve, we may rage, we may become ill, but there will be consequences for this kind of amputation. One hundred friends on Facebook can’t make up for it.

It hurts so much, in fact, that many of us self-sabotage so we can go back, because the thing about tribe is they’ll always take you back if you fail. Now think about this for a minute. You can always go back if you fail.

The power of tribal shaming touches us all. I’ve seen it play out very powerfully in my family, and I bet you have, too. Right now, huge populations of people are on the move in the world, compelled by war, politics and the basic necessities of food and water. Millions more will be displaced by climate change. Social, geographic and economic boundaries are threatened. Our sense of self and tribe is undergoing intense pressure as we fight for space and resource.

Through this blog, I’ve made a friend in Nigeria. Her experience as a woman in a large city in a foreign (to me) country is eye opening. It’s easy to forget how life is for many other people in many other places. Today we might be able to eat, have a job, or have a roof over our head. Today we might have a tribe, no matter how small, or maybe several tribes give us a sense of belonging and comfort, but tomorrow is another day, and much of the world is closer than we are to the precipice of famine and chaos.

The concept of tribe, like the concept of resource, is fluid. We define it ourselves. Right now in America, we’ve made money the most important resource. What will happen when a cup of clean water or a mouthful of food becomes the only resource that counts? What will happen if tribal shaming becomes tribal sharing and we decide to create a tribe of all life on earth, including the planet itself?

In the meantime, though, we clearly feel it’s effective to create small, rigidly defended tribes with small, rigidly defended rule sets and spend time making bombs of all kinds to throw over our palisades. Whatever happens, we must not allow the threats of education, science, literacy, critical thinking, equality or any kind of difference to exist. People must toe the line or get out — one way or the other.

Us against them and the outcasts in between. It works so well, doesn’t it?

Next Entries »