These are a potent and poignant couple of pieces. Outlining some of the dynamics of and reframing the tipping point of the meta crises we are in. To an ongoing process of being on a cusp… an invitation to embrace cusping and the emergent creativity of uncertainty.
They spurred this ramble in response to some of its intersecting threads . There is a presupposition to knowledge of some psyhcological processes and theories. That being said it is digestible and accesible even without knowledge of these theories… if even to confuse or stir curiosity, there might well be some meaning there for you.
Our loss of cultural perception and orientation to the meta crises, whilst simultaneously creating it through the lack of care to the living earth and its species. Strikes me in part as a reflection of loss of rites of passage in our western culture that signify the psychic death and growth of an individual within a community whilst weaving responsibility and meaning within the wider landscape and species.
Theses rites and rituals that were an integral part many other eco-centric cultures (in contrast to our ego-anthropocentric culture) over millennia. Their language often much more verb heavy, things are ings” doings happenings becomings. Thus able to speak as to honour the relationalty of life and its inter connectedness. Our own ability to animate relationships of reciprocity stripped through the dominator hierarchies of colonialism. Intentionally, through deep time, generation by generation, our language shaped to limit us to objectifying the living earth, species and often each other to “it”.
My thoughts of Dr.Robin Wall Krenmers proposal of a pronoun Ki or plural Kin to living species. How could this change or language to re shape our thinking and relating with the living planet and it’s species
What is this cusp calling for? Are we in a collective transition? We’ve forgotten, that we’ve forgotten in this cultural narrative that we are not separate from our environment. There are few threads of living memory and current experience of how such sensuous connection can be cultivated and animated.. this might well be needed.
Our culture which favours anaesthesia, amnesia, that programmes “needs” of the individual, in part to fuel the manic production and consumption, numbing the pain, grief and being with the trouble of learning how to reanimate reciprocity in our relationships to the more than human world as sentient and intelligent. Sacred! So much so, even saying so sounds wyrd or other.
I believe we can all feel the Earths grief and loss of species, at different viscosities in our subconscious. Neurobiology now confirms what many other eco-centric cultures and traditions have honoured, that we attune to and sense our environment. This honouring was often part of the texture of culture and its relational practices and described through myths-poetic ways. What happens when we leave grief unattended, individually and collectively. How does it surface?
I wonder, is the systemic crises we are facing into now a rough and uncontained initiation into the necessity of relationships of care, curiosity and reciprocity to the sensuous earth and it species. In contrast to the patho-adolescent (psychological stage as a collective not chronological age) relational dynamics of domination, manipulation and extraction that hold sway in this culture. Linear certainty, concrete, to collapse and compost. How do we culturally ferment live enhancing behaviours?
Ubuntu – “I am because, we are”
Here, we are, to trust what is? We creatively adjusted within and often blind (in places, less so for bodies of culture & colour) to the oppression of heart, mind and body within this dominator culture. Whilst living amongst our cultures beauty, creativity, miraculous technology, novelty and levels freedom.
A thriving hyper connected, information ecology, at the cost of our destruction of and disconnection from direct sensuous contact from the living ecology. Our perception adrift and often unable to comprehend the perplexing paradoxes of epic proportions.
Yet what of the informational nutrients available for the human imagination? And our ability to communicate and implement ideas into physical reality at a speed and across distances never before seen?
How do we both be with, the difficult truths, grief and trouble… learning to trust the fertile void and non action. Whilst balancing the call to find courage, fierce compassion and right enough action?
What does cultural fermentation and growth mean in this time?
How is your inner work rippling within and through our culture?
How do we cultivate new (perhaps ancient re-emerging) ways of thinking, feeling, imagining and relating?… Both for the internal reality of the individual, our collective inter-relational spheres and what of the collective internal space?
What resources are we not seeing from the ultra rational world view?