Tag: reconciliation

Reconciliation

Reconciliation carries an implication of justice, a balancing of accounts. In this case it’s an honest discovery of others’ suffering while realizing our own mortality, complicity and limitations.

Reconciliation carries an implication of justice, a balancing of accounts. In this case it’s an honest discovery of others’ suffering while realizing our own mortality, complicity and limitations. Reconciliation is a great humbling because intimacy with suffering is also a coming to terms with one’s own death. Most of the time we operate as if we cannot permit the intrusion of death into our view or conduct in life. Denying, misunderstanding or misrepresenting life or death to oneself at some point becomes another miscarriage of justice. This is happening at a cultural level and is an integral part of why we have gone so wrong on our environment.

I seek balance by looking at my assumptions and beliefs, whatever unconsciously corrals, misdirects and exhausts me of wildness, causes me to lose contact with the inexplicable essence of life, the spontaneity and unity of everything and especially my capacity for stillness. Narrow assumptions establish imbalance. They arise from a resistance to breakdown, an illusion of stability and a compulsion to preserve that illusion. In modern culture, instability is regarded as failure; yet ironically, that very stability is itself a distortion of reality. I have set limits on the degree, pace and character of change, all of which may interfere with or rob me of the benefit of failure, vision, connection or satisfaction. It is by failure that I discover balance. No imbalance, no homeostasis; only a brittle, narrow comprehension of complexity.

For more than 18 months I’ve been engaged in a close encounter with a physiological disorder, a rare condition, which coincidentally, like climate change, is 100% fatal if left untreated. It arises in the deepest realms of my physiology, where life itself is produced in its most elemental form. This non-malignant dysfunction is instability personified, inexplicable to the layman, buried in background assumptions about how life is supported. And though it can be understood and explained in modern medical terminology, it cannot be adequately addressed according to these limited terms. They are just concepts, equally applicable to your car or your computer. It has emerged as my personal monster. It cannot be smothered by knowledge, technicalities or reason. There is no certainty or way of turning it into a monument sitting on a shelf. It’s an outlier at the frontier of medicine. It’s marvelous in that respect, transformative, daunting, life threatening and mysterious. Reductionist framing can’t possibly tell the full story.

Likewise, the marvel of climate change can be explained in the same reductionist terms, which don’t—and can’t—plumb the depths of the behavioral dysfunctions, the flawed outlook, the mechanisms of denial at the heart of such a condition, except perhaps by applying the analogy of autoimmunity: we are attacking ourselves, making a seemingly inexorable series of self-destructive decisions. Or worse, life is threatening itself with extinction, promising to change, failing to change, repeating the cycle, carrying immense guilt and then sloughing it off by dissociating. These are the behaviors of an addict. Not all of humanity is addicted, but the addicted are leading the rest of us into the abyss.

The term ‘climate’ should be applied to the context of all life including the social, not solely to atmospheric/oceanic conditions or the many thousands of biological effects. The climate of earth is deteriorating, but this is so in every sense of the term, not merely the weather. If we traced the acceleration of the global warming effect, the loss of ice, the acidifying oceans, the pending collapse of the food chain, the Sixth Great Extinction, all are paralleled by the massive concentration of wealth at the top, the degradation of civil discourse, the corruption of democratic norms, the influence of money in politics, pollution on an unprecedented scale, feudalization of the economy and the degradation of all forms of capital. None of us can breathe. Indeed, deep in the center of the earth economy, the engine of true vitality is being silenced. If we addressed the social and economic context of earth adequately, emissions would likely fall greatly, whereas focusing on driving down emissions alone is clearly not working fast enough.

I’m not an addict, though I surely am complicit. I could (by some sideways logic) relate to COVID-19 as a random invader, an alien agent, a force to be reflexively resisted as if it has no intelligence. We can track its adaptive capacities, disassemble it and understand its transport and replication systems. It has no mind, yet it has intelligence. 

Beyond all that, I regard my personal disorder as an expression of consciousness. Which is to say it did not come from nowhere. I cannot extract myself from my environment or, as a Buddhist might say, extract myself from my karma, my spiritual continuum. There are known environmental (karmic?) factors linked to this disorder and perhaps unknown factors as well. I can’t be positive it’s unrelated to one of these. But regardless, it now functions as a self-generating disorder, an error in genetic logic. And since our entanglement with the environment is total, how can I ignore the possibility that not only was an environmental factor involved in my contract with this condition, but that I was complicit by contributing to the creation of that factor?

The dysfunction at the heart of this matter may be considered a corruption of purpose, an aberration, a crossing of elementary signals at an intra-cellular or genetic level. My immune system has turned against me, becoming a termite of my own construction, undermining the foundation of my life. Termites seek life or sustenance without consideration for any other life form or for the integrity of the host. They live as if there’s an endless supply of their prime resource. Does that sound a little too much like the human presence on this planet? 

There is no such thing as a termite regulating its appetites to ensure the sustainability of its host. Such an invader would be called a parasite. Given a choice, I would rather be a parasite than a termite. Unlike the virus, the guest in my body is not some alien presence. And my encounter with it is not accidental. It is Being delivering a message to this being. I did not ‘catch’ it at the grocery store. Although, considering the massive overuse of fertilizers, food additives, preservatives, considering nearly everything in most grocery stores is either genetically modified or sprayed by carcinogens, is full of either simple sugar or modified protein, maybe the grocery store has finally caught up with me. 

If I were to fully regard this disturbance as an emanation of self rather than as Other, I could regard it as a disturbance in my energy body, a gradual and unconscious—or worse–a careless failure to attend to my personal integrity. Current scientific knowledge may explain some of the mechanisms, but it cannot explain how it came to be and the prevailing treatments are not guaranteed to reverse it. 

I have undergone the standard protocols. But again, this doesn’t come close to addressing its true nature. It is buried and then covered over, like ripping out offending weeds in a garden, but not quite extracting the roots, followed by planting new seeds and expecting proper germination. And later, if and when the condition again crawls out of its confinement, we have other measures at the ready to suppress it again. I submitted to a second round of the treatment protocol because blood markers clearly indicated a regression. I gamed out the consequences of failure, the probabilities for dancing again toward the edge of viability, a subtraction from previous estimates of my life expectancy, the extent of interventions necessary to sustain life and the possibility of my body rejecting those interventions, all the way to the ultimate conditions of my demise.

As I delve deeply into the energetic realm, the interactive and potential counter-intentions reflected in successive or persistent manifestations, I am mindful of the different realms of knowledge expressed as its tenacity and my responses to it, continuing to be a drag on my wellbeing. I am reminded of the declarations I made at the time of my original diagnosis, the doorways of consciousness it opened, the fresh awareness, even agency relative to the quiet and not-so-quiet suffering around me every day, the purity of intention necessary to meet this disorder, to re-focus and get on with my life: the continuous inquiry required to unearth what Being is attempting to deliver to me or elicit from me.

I even sensed one of those imperatives was, at least partially, a consuming attention to personal happiness altering processes at the heart of this condition, deep in my bones. Indeed, an imperfect affair of the heart. I’m not fully clear whether the inner messaging is in opposition to this condition or the result of a direct encounter with it. Am I fighting it or becoming friends with myself? Am I reflexively opposing it or becoming more acquainted with its nature? Is this merely the only way I can digest the discord all around me in the world? Have I unwittingly invited this? Most likely, all of the above are true to a degree, as merely approaching the object of inquiry, whether as self or as Other, inevitably changes our view of it. In other words, there’s no such thing as objectivity.

Some of this reflective process is itself a symptom of the human disease, our belief in intellectual primacy, human centrality, the inviolability of science, an infatuation with our reflective capacities, all exercises assuming there isobjectivity. In the ancient world and now as we reactivate and interpret that wisdom, it is said that every culture, to accompany the thinkers and doers, must have its mentors and guides, the ones we call dreamers and mystics, the keepers of gnosis, retainers of the collective raison d’etre, the guardians of tribal history. I envision myself as a product of both, perhaps a flawed hybrid, perhaps entirely presumptuous. But nonetheless, pressing on to my own version of reconciliation.

Reconciliation II: Justice

Each of the 4Rs of Deep Adaptation, Resilience, Restoration, Relinquishing and Reconciliation is a searching journey from the world we have to the world we want. The more we explore, the more we find to explore. Just looking at all the associations we have with the word Reconciliation opens many doors. Whether we talk about intra-personal, inter-personal or our relations with the living metabolism of the earth, it means a return to friendly relations. It can mean establishing compatibility of beliefs and practices. In accounting, it refers to a balancing of accounts, rendering what comes in with what goes out, reestablishing harmony at every possible scale.

Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted, counts. — Albert Einstein

We have only to look at our accounts with Earth itself to grasp how out of balance we are. Even the terms we use for accounting are evidence of cognitive colonization. They only reflect the mindset of separation. For humanity to meet and survive what is taking shape, even at this moment, reconciliation implies redefining those terms, an enormous commitment on every level, the expenditure of massive personal and collective resources, a profound re-ordering at the soul level, in the human energy body.

Defining a different path forward, one reflecting the true nature of our entanglements, we imagine how fraught with obstacles such an effort might be as we scan the spiritual, social, political, environmental and financial landscape in this time of increasing risk, uncertainty and unfolding collapse. Even a limited unpacking of what we mean by justice leads to considerations of decolonization as it is tied to the preservation of  nation states, the preservation of capital, risk and financial systems driven by commodification, shareholder interests and debt-driven speculation.

In this consideration, we must  include 1) racial justice: establishing racial equity by confronting the history of racial injustice and addressing systemic issues perpetuating racial stereotyping, racial privileges and locking racial groups out of educational, economic, housing and employment opportunities; 2)cognitive justice: the breaking of exclusionary ideologies to include recognition and establishment of the right of different knowledge systems to co-exist; the return of meaning to being. There are no outdated, irrelevant or second-class ways of knowing the world; 3) relational justice, also called restorative justice: the repairing of relations damaged by criminal violence and the reformation of responsibility based on generosity, compassion and humility, 4) intergenerational justice: the considerations of generational equity in  tax and spending policy, allocating funding for the future security of generations yet unborn, the way we live now and how we address climate change, 5) ecological or environmental justice: establishing equity in consideration of environmental impacts on community infrastructure, habits, livelihoods and public health, 6) economic justice: establishing fairness in policies effecting economic stability, opportunity, mobility, security and benefits to all members of the economic system. The players in this conversation include all beings, all life, all sentience from the macro to the micro-biome.

Where do ‘we’ stand in all this and what is the prerequisite for any of this investigation? It’s one thing to find a separate peace, yet our internal state has never been separate from the larger matrix. For us to find congruence in all our relations, we have to renounce the exhausted story of ‘progress’ and find relief from the inadequate ideology of ‘reform,’ which now only serves the entrenched, never really challenging or even touching the comfortable. Reform is a euphemism for cooptation and defeat. At this very moment in America, the comfortable receive rapid, virtually unlimited and unconditional transfusions of taxpayer money created out of thin air while the proletariat will ultimately bear the burden of these expenditures while hacking away at impenetrable forests of shifting bureaucratic obstacles to receive a few crumbs.

Coming to any semblance of reconciliation of all these accounts strikes to the core of who we imagine we are, the limits of language, the pandemics of depression, addiction, hopelessness, auto-immune disorders, meaninglessness, the loss of economic mobility, the obscene concentration of wealth, the loss of personal agency, the destruction of the biosphere and biodiversity,  the decline of life expectancy and the cloistering of the future in a shrinking box of falsehoods.

These conditions are signals of exiled human capacities, the disappearing knowledge systems defining the diversity of relationships we have with ourselves, our surroundings and the planetary matrix. Our institutions have become intense battlegrounds where values are shredded, where we diverge from community and settle for ever narrowing definitions of opportunity, social mobility, abundance and our sacred responsibilities.

It’s only even possible to consider reconciling the most inclusive list of stakeholders and relational issues, balancing accounts, as it were, if the primary premise is accepted: the archetypes of separation, human superiority and mastery over nature, rooted in the Enlightenment and capitalism, are spelling our doom. The entire system has come to represent only domination, extraction, exploitation and violence.

That violence is expressed as colonial expansion, the creation of empire, increasingly extreme exploitation of life, natural and personal resources, the institution of extractive economies including he corrosion of personal well-being, the surveillance state, the growth of mechanisms of control, the corruption of thought, truth and the persistent reinforcement of a paradigm of exclusion.

Every one of these features, every level and domain of operation of the Vehicle of Extinction can be represented as the management and offloading of risk. All risk is deflected by the few to the many.  Living with risk infuses the majority of lives with increasing uncertainty, instability and vulnerability.   The pandemic is highlighting these inequities because service workers in many fields (manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, law enforcement) and even many health care workers now deemed essential during COVID shut-downs are the very ones with no choice but to expose themselves to the increasing risk of infection. While we celebrate the genius, the heroic commitment and the compassion of these frontline workers, their most admirable virtues are also being exploited along the way.

True justice  as the equitable redistribution of risk, the restoration of a tangible level of social and systemic financial support to more broadly manage uncertainty.  Sharing risk equitably is a benefit to all, not only the privileged few. If risk levels were the central motivating factor in repairing our relationships,  in only one of many possible ways, we would be addressing climate change on a massive scale. We would be opening economic opportunity, social mobility, repairing mental and spiritual health, increasing public safety and unleashing untold reservoirs of creativity and generous contribution to the well-being of the whole. None of this is about eliminating risk. That would be impossible. But imagine a future driven by an abiding clarity on the meaning of justice in all its forms. In that world, counting all that counts including all that cannot be counted, our accounts would be moving toward reconciliation.

Where Did Deep Adaptation Come From

Jem Bendell is a professor of sustainability and leadership at the University of Cumbria. In July, 2018, he published a paper, Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. Based on his assessment of all available climate data, he reached a conclusion that Social Collapse is “inevitable” within 10 years, that climate Catastrophe is “probable” in the mid-term and human extinction is “likely.”

His paper received a dramatic response, all the way from highly critical reviews from scientists, social psychologists and others, to viral circulation and positive responses from the general public. Since that moment 18 months ago, over 100,000 people have downloaded the paper and many around the world have quickly become involved or connected in some way to this approach.

A Deep Adaptation Forum emerged in March, 2019, providing 10 different categories of engagement including an active community forum. The principles that drive Bendell’s approach are the 4Rs: Resilience, Relinquishing, Restoration and Reconciliation. In order, he’s talking about saving what we need, restoring what has been lost, letting go of what we don’t need and what needs to be done to reduce conflict as we enter more extreme climate conditions.

The issue of Deep Adaptation has significant personal and collective implications. What needs to be done individually; what needs to be done to build trust and confidence among people who wish to become involved at this level and what needs to be done collectively to address the world that is coming? These are not simple issues to untangle. But there is a vein of rational assessment, emotional clarity, creative potential and spiritual hunger that is being galvanized by this approach. I feel it and I’m in.

What I intend to be doing on this issue is to explore many questions arising around this approach to the climate emergency, finding clarity for myself and offering the same to anyone else who cares. I will also be exploring what needs to be learned, how to craft an accessible and fulfilling approach to Deep Adaptation for those wishing to become more involved and active in their communities.