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Healing Our World: Weekly Comment By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. The Myth of the Individual "We have quickened the pace of life only to become less patient. We have become more organized but less joyful. We are better prepared to act on the future but less able to enjoy the present and reflect on the past. As the tempo of modern life has continued to accelerate, we have come to feel increasingly out of touch with the biological rhythms of the planet, unable to experience a close connections with the natural environment.
The human time world is no longer joined to the incoming and outgoing tides, the rising and setting sun, and the changing seasons. Instead, humanity has created an artificial time environment punctuated by mechanical contrivances and electronic impulses." The litany of environmental and social disasters that surround us is suffocating. Toxic pollution taints our earth, water, soil, and food all over the globe. You don’t need a scientific study to know of air pollution, since it takes the paint off cars, disintegrates windshield wipers, and destroys works of art. Complex, toxic chemicals are found in the bloodstream of native peoples who are far from any urban center. Blame for this situation is often placed on our political and industrial leaders, but isn’t it you and I who are buying and using all the stuff made from toxic chemicals?
Computer and cell phone manufacture require toxic chemicals. (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)There is a recklessness in the way so many people, whether they be politicians, industry leaders, or just everyday citizens, ignore the connections between our individual actions and the destruction of Earth’s life support systems. I myself am surrounded by high-tech, electronic devices, all of which required life threatening toxic chemicals to create, many of which wound up in the air and water and, eventually, in my body.But we can’t be totally blamed for this disastrous situation, since we are only products of a system that has brainwashed so many people into believing that the quest to achieve wealth and independence are the reasons for life. The quest for independence and self-reliance may be the more damaging of the two. Our Western belief system, which is aggressively promoted as the goal for developing countries around the world, places high priority on the rights of the individual. The individual is considered the basic social unit of our society, and it can be argued that all aspects of society have been affected by this mindset. At the same time, our political leaders try aggressively to convince us that we have no voice and that we should just let them run the show, even if it means going to war. Casualty estimates for the pending war on Iraq are approaching 500,000. Few people in the United States support such a blood bath, yet we constantly hear on the television about the support the President has. The largest anti-war demonstrations since the Vietnam War have occurred in Washington, DC, but their effect is downplayed by the Bush administration and covered little by the mainstream media. But although we are taught to believe that we must stand alone as individuals and that our voices are muffled and lost, evidence abounds that our voices do count. This week, the White House, at the direction of First Lady Laura Bush, cancelled the “Poetry and the American Voice” symposium that had been scheduled for February 12 for fear that anti-war messages would be spoken by the poets!
First Lady Laura Bush (Photo by Susan Sterner courtesy The White House)The spokeswoman for the First Lady said that Mrs. Bush “believes it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum.” It is actually good to see that she appreciates the power of words to stir the heart. But this should be a clear reminder that all is not as it seems in Washington, and the anti-war movement does make a difference.We must find a way to re-empower the citizens. Our lack of community based living, especially in the West, probably impacts our ability to learn and to see the connections that exist in our world. In the United States, for example, an individual’s rights are considered to be more important than anything else. We pride ourselves on being independent, on not needing anyone. The narrow concept of self most people have, and strive for, has increased our separation from the natural world and may be responsible for many of our ills. Our sense of self is so very small, separate, and fragile that it must be constantly defended. Jeremy Rifkin said that it is so “small and needy that we must endlessly acquire and endlessly consume.” We create a powerful sense of aloofness that has made it acceptable to market drugs that will only kill one percent of the people who use them or allow unsafe aircraft to fly because it will be cheaper to pay the wrongful death lawsuits than to fix the airplanes. Children begin life with a natural urge to explore. They naturally behave as if there were no boundaries between them and their surroundings. Their connection to the natural world appears quite direct. But the system of education and indoctrination into our culture surely changes the natural urges of each of the children from a larger identity that includes the natural world to the identity of an individual. The individual is separate from everything else.
People walk across an intersection in New York City. (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)Chellis Glendinning describes our modern definition of our personal boundaries as a “fence, a national boarder, a property line, a suit of armor or a Giorgio Armani suit, a well fed ego, a psychological defense mechanism.” Our concept of healthy psychological boundaries mirrors our political and economic systems. The Earth is viewed as a thing to be acquired, divided, used, and defended just as our psychological boundary acts to enclose, protect, armor, and, ultimately, alienate.Fritjof Capra speculates that between the years 1500 and 1700, there was a dramatic shift in the way people perceived their place in the world. Prior to that time, the purpose and nature of science was very different. There was very little desire to predict and control, the hallmark motivations of modern science. Rather, medieval science was based on both reason and faith, and scientists were looking more for the purpose underlying the phenomena they observed. They were focused on questions of God, the soul, and ethics. The view of the world as a machine replaced the more organic world view, and the era of the Scientific Revolution began. The shift that took place was dramatic. The human senses that had been the prime investigative tools of the medieval scientist were replaced with objective observation. Astronomer Galileo contributed to this in the early 1600s by suggesting that scientists should restrict themselves to studying the shapes, numbers, and movements of the material world that could be measured. Color, taste, sound, and smell should be ignored – they were merely mental projections. Out go sight, sound, taste, touch and smell, and along with them has gone aesthetics and ethical sensibility, values, quality, form, all feelings, motives, intentions, soul, consciousness, spirit. Experience as such is cast out of the realm of scientific discourse.
An English country garden brings the natural world into harmony with the home. (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)We place a high value in our culture on the development of a strong ego, but it is this perception of self that may be one of the root causes of our separation from the natural world.We are isolated not only from the natural world, but from the richness of what we can offer each other as well. How many of us know the names of our neighbors? How many of us feel that we are trying to live in community? I am feeling more and more that not living intentionally in a community setting, not being responsible for more lives than just our own, intensifies our fears and keeps us on a toxic treadmill. Resist the propaganda and brainwashing that suggests American individuality is our strength. Resist the idea that you have no voice. Remind yourself every hour of every day that you are a dynamic participant in a remarkable drama in the universe that unfolds with your every breath and every step. And rest assured that every breath and every step you take effects every other occupant of this planet. It is a grave - and miraculous - responsibility. RESOURCES 1. Visit the Center for a New American Dream at: http://www.newdream.org/ 2. Get help simplifying from The Simple Living Network at: http://www.simpleliving.net/news/default.asp 3. Visit Vegan Essentials at: http://www.veganessentials.com/ when you need to buy goods. None of their products contain any animal products, so you can begin your journey by wearing and using goods that have not harmed another. 4. The Take Back Your Time website can help you stop overworking and overscheduling. See them at: http://www.timeday.org/default.asp 5. The Environmental Health Strategy Center will help you at: http://www.preventharm.org/home.shtml 6. Read the "Culture Change" newsletter at: http://www.culturechange.org 7. Read about the cancelled poetry symposium by clicking here: 8. Become part of the peace movement. Visit: http://www.nonviolence.org/iraq/ 9. Find out who your elected representatives are and contact them. Tell them we must begin waging peace now. You can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html {Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of "Healing Our World", A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light," available at: http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html or your local bookstore. His new book of photographs and thoughts on interconnectedness, “Of This Earth, Reflections on Connections,” is now available. Learn about it at: http://ofthisearth.org. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com} |
