Dying to get away from it all

We are the Cleverest Stupidest Species

In Westernised countries the lives we live are relatively comfortable and easy. (Relative, that is, to the billions of people who live on a few pence a day. To them it’s survival. To us it’s coffee.) We go to the nearest shopping centre (temple) to pick up our groceries, maybe buy a package holiday and ogle at some gadgets. We have ample time to worship the gods of consumerism but no time to recreate our souls. Social progress or standing is linked to the attainment of material possessions. The supply chain is finely tuned to deliver our dreams. High fat foods and glitter allow us to escape for a while. Yet, high percentages of patients visiting GPs are ‘depressed’. They find it hard to cope with life. Many people feel lonely and are not part of any meaningful community. We have high rates of suicide and an increasingly obese population. A lot of us are dying to get away from it all.

It’s left brain (masculine) thinking, with no thought to mortality, which has delivered this Nirvana. Systemisation, problem solving, dealing in facts and applying logic (all good things in their place) have given us supply chain economics. We are all going to live forever so there is no need to worry about the massive fossil fuel subsidy which allows this system to exist. Nor need we worry about the mono cultures which are created by industrialised farming to feed us. (These are effectively ecological deserts, maintained by chemical fertilizers, and devoid of diverse insect and wildlife populations.) If you buy cheap clothing someone probably got exploited. The price is always paid somewhere down the line.

Any proponent of the Transition movement (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/) will tell you about the problem of Peak Oil. There are still lots of hydrocarbons down there but they are becoming exponentially more expensive to extract (and they will out run out). To me nothing sums up how stupid mankind is more than the rush to exploit the oil reserves in the Arctic. More of the same for profit. Really? We are the cleverest stupidest species on the planet.

You May Travel Faster Alone but Ask Yourself: “Where am I going?”

The Enlightenment gave us permission to prioritise our rational mind over soul and spirit. Well, we are where we are. I am not proposing that to bring balance we need to prioritize right brain thinking – creative, intuitive, reflective ,subjective (all good things in their place) for the next 300 years. We need both. For me personally I have difficulty in resolving the dichotomy of left brain/right brain. It is a duality within. Part of life’s work is to balance our creative and systematic self which gives us access to a deeper purpose and meaning. It is contemplating and acting. It is creativity and production for a higher purpose than mere personal gain, ego enhancement or profit. Currently we are using up resources, through market economics, without proper reflection. We create and maintain systems which are not healthy for the Earths inhabitants or its’ future generations.

Can we find common purpose with other people where each brings and offers the unique gift we have uncovered on life’s journey? Dare we think that as maturing individuals we might actually affect and change things for the better? There is a challenge here to the individual but it also makes sense that we can only find a real balance and fulfilment in finding, interacting with and serving our community. You may travel faster alone but ask yourself: “Where am I going?” Its clichéd, but I think it’s true. We will only really arrive anywhere meaningful if we are part of and contributing to something bigger than ourselves.

Ewan Mealyou

Are You Useful?

Ewan Mealyou continues the series Dislocation of soul and modern life...

It should be the baldest truism to say that people are not merely units of resource on balance sheets, but alas that is exactly how they are being treated in the planning and financing of higher education in too many parts of the developed world.”

A.C. Grayling in www.universityworldnews.com

“Education (instead) has become an institution whose purpose in the modern world is not to make culture, not to serve the living cosmos, but to harness humankind to the dead forces of materialism.  Education as we know it, from preschool through graduate school, damages the soul.”

From “Facing the World with Soul” Robert Sardello

Education + Economics = Social Control?

We often hear it said that children and young people should grow up to be useful members of society. No one actually stops to define what ‘useful’ means in this context, but we know it’s something to do with being a net contributor to the economy, and not breaking the law. I have heard a teacher echo these sentiments recently, about helping ‘problem’ children in the secondary education system.

It’s part of the process whereby our society turns its citizens into units of economic production (workers) and economic consumption (consumers). These constraints are built into our lives almost from the beginning. We need to be useful and we need to spend. It’s death to the soul, but it’s how the system works. That’s why any politician, of almost any hue, is talking about economic growth. I find this profoundly depressing.

Does a person need to be useful?

Money is always found for science and engineering, new drugs to sell, new products to create and new bridges to keep the traffic moving. These are the engines of progress and clever people are needed to turn the levers. What about the arts, literature, philosophy, history, theology? Subjects that should allow space for consideration of the human condition and the soul. I think graduates from these disciplines find themselves serving the economy soon enough.

Progress is not wrong in itself. I confess myself in awe of steam engines and men walking on the moon. However, if the master progress serves is materialism, we are consumed from the day we are born. But what if progress served mans soul? Our lives would be different. I leave you to wonder how and why.

Does a person need to be useful? I don’t believe that. We need to ‘be’. Not at a superficial level. We need to ‘be’ at the level of our calling. I think people like that change everything around them for the better. Now that would be useful.

The True Cost is Not Reflected in the Retail Price

Pittsburgh 1874, Otto Krebs

Ewan Mealyou writes...

The Cost of Prosperity

We are a very successful species. In the last 10,000 years we have developed highly effective technologies, social and religious structures to exploit the opportunities, and deal with the challenges, that are an inherent part of living on Planet Earth. Shelter, food and energy, bring security, while culture & spirituality bring meaning to our lives.

However, as we proceed into the 21st century it is apparent that the opportunities afforded by these advances are not available to all. Despite man’s astonishing progress the largest portion of the planets population live in poverty and subsist on meagre incomes which deny them security and curtail cultural and spiritual development. Our industrial systems, which bring short term benefits to (largely) Westernised economies, are highly destructive to the environments and natural systems that humans, and all other species, depend on to survive and thrive. Current economic systems, dependent on growth and expansion, are unsustainable in a world of finite resource. Animal, vegetable and mineral resources are exploited, depleted – lost, and poor people in poor nations look at this ‘prosperity’ and rightly ask why they can’t have it too.

Many look at the Industrial Revolution and see it as the source of this trouble. It was the time when the division of mass labour to produce goods efficiently became possible, drawing families from the countryside to work in the industrial centres. There was a massive exploitation of other peoples’ labour to accumulate capital into the hands of a few. (It’s still happening today.) The price paid for this was a loss of agrarian communities and a fundamental dislocation from the seasons, the weather, the Earth. Then, as now, the true cost is not reflected in the retail price of the product. However, much of the life we now know would not be possible without the advancement it brought. Like it or not, as children of the industrial age, we have to live with a paradox.

Downsize, Move Out, Drop Out?

It is this paradox that is at the centre of the environmental debate today. We are living beyond our means but unable to change because our political and industrial structures won’t allow it. By and large, because we humans tend to be short term thinkers, we ignore these bigger problems, and do our recycling. It can seem a hopeless and dispiriting task to think of changing much else. I admire the activists who have the energy and vision to keep going. Most of us don’t get started.

So how do you and I grapple with it? Downsize, move out and drop out? Possibly, but this is probably self serving, and it won’t necessarily change us deeply or have an impact on our society. Maybe we start to ask. What happened (is happening) to our souls? What are the voices of our grandfathers and ancestors saying, or warning us about?

I want my activism to grow out of finding my soul again, and this is a journey inward. If we travel this way we might come back with a gift to our community, which impacts other souls, and helps us all to connect to deeper truths. The fruit of this? Fulfilled lives, simply lived I hope - which may be the antidote to conspicuous consumption. I think going on this journey is to take part in what Jesus called the Kingdom.