You are in a Dream
Garin Samuelsen
Take time and peruse. Contemplate on one section at a time or read through the entirety. If you have any thoughts around this, please leave a comment below. You may spark an amazing dialogue. :)
"You are captives of a civilization system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live." - Daniel Quinn
“When man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard.” - Native American (Lakota) Proverb
(our culture) Our culture is the mirror of ourselves collectively dreaming. Anything spoken about society, is really reflecting back what lies within you and I. Pointing out the aspects of what makes our society so dysfunctional hopefully leads each and every one of us to look within and take responsibility for our own actions. If we truly want change, then first we must look within oneself.
(living within society) Identifying oneself as a part of society, caught within our self conditioned minds, makes living in wholeness seem impossible. So how can one live in wholeness?
(On society, drama, division) For now, we can see that as a society, we do not live in love. We live in a childish drama, where division, domestication, conflict and ignorance are embedded in our minds, creating sorrow. We have imagined the world into global catastrophe.
(Culture, lack of care) We are collectively tearing apart the wild and ourselves for we divide the world and compartmentalize it. We do not care or have concern about things not in our periphery. Such as: The poor. The welfare of wild animals. The imprisonment of domesticated cattle, pigs, turkey, chicken and fish. The imprisonment of human beings. Nor great and intricate ecosystems. We only care for the things we have been taught to identify with.
(Drama is the self acting out the conditioning of culture) The societal drama that we see is nothing more than the collective self acting out all the innumerable conditioned roles we play within Maya’s guise. Violence and sorrow that we see in society is the mirror of our psyches and the underpinnings of what we have been taught.
(we can’t change society externally) Many people throughout our culture’s history have tried to change society. Yet, our culture is as dysfunctional as ever. Nobody can change us into a healthier, more peaceful, and sustainable society without first understanding the nature of the self. If we try to change society without understanding the nature of the self, then inevitably, we will foster more problems for the nature of the self is a microcosm of society. The self is constructed and conditioned by society.
(society is dreamed up, nothing within it can change it) The issues of what we think to be an external society is an actuality, a dreamed up dramatization that mirrors the multifaceted, conditioned and fearful self. What we think we see outwardly is simply the reflection enacted by our own fanciful beliefs and ideologies. Thinking we can fix society without knowing the self is simply insanity. And of course what we mean by insanity here is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result as Einstein postulated. No matter how we have tried to change it, our society’s dysfunction, growth and destructiveness simply has continued. Nothing within its confines can change it.
(Society is a dream) Society is nothing but a dream. It can be a dream of heaven or hell. Either way, it is just a collective dream, created and conditioned into us by thought. Most of us believe this dream to be reality, and the roles we play as essentially who we are. Yet, these roles have been conditioned into us since we were children, continuously forging the road that creates a collective ignorance and momentum towards global destruction. These roles are illusions and of course greatly limit our capacity and potential. This cultural dream is full of noise, noise of thought that, like clouds, covers our ability to see.
(Collective dysfunction is taught into us) Collectively speaking, there is dysfunction in our homes, in our communities, in our countries, in our world. Of course, for that to be, there must be dysfunction within ourselves. Because this dysfunction has been taught into us since we were children, we believe it to be real and continue to imagine and dream into existence our cultural drama.
(We are taught our culture is the only way when that is not true) We are taught that our cultural framework is our human nature forgetting that thousands upon thousands of other cultures throughout history dreamed up very different ways of being on the planet. This makes one question what exactly is human nature, what is reality, and who is oneself. The collective self is culture, and the self dreams up heavens and hells which we call society.
(society is a mental construct) Through my own wandering journey, I came to see that society is a mental construct that depending on which cultural ideology one is talking about, has many different meanings and envisioning.
(society that is full of drama) Why is it that we don’t see our children with trust and open love? It is because we as parents, teachers, and community members are caught in our culture’s dreamstate, and are conditioning our children just as we were conditioned without knowing we are doing so. Instead of bringing out love and wholeness, our societal apparatus coerces us to formulate walls of fear and insecurity around who we truly are. Our maladjusted society orchestrates a hierarchical systematic drama of epic proportions.
(believe in the role we play) We have come to deeply believe in the role in which we play because we have been so conditioned since an early age. We think we are awake, but in actuality, we are asleep to what is truly oneself. We dream our culture into existence by thought, which develops our conditioning and beliefs.
(fear, separation and conquer) Lurking underneath our collective self are the roots of fear. Fear created by authority, authority taking away authentic voice. From lack of voice and authenticity, the idea of separation psychologically enters into consciousness. From the idea of separation comes psychological fear, ignorance, aggression, apathy and violence. This framework is systematically orchestrated in order for our society to continue its destructive progress in order to conquer all things. Why conquer? Simply because we are inherently in this culture afraid. By creating the idea of control, and by conquering the unknown, we feel temporarily safe. But of course, all is impermanent so we need to keep conquering in this rat race of insanity.
(hierarchical belief, greed and power) Our societal dream is built on a hierarchical belief system. We have bought into the idea that a class system is okay, where a few have power and dictate policy that benefits themselves to continue their own greed, while many of the global population withers away lost in poverty. This greed comes from a deep emptiness. They look for power and wealth outside of themselves for they have been conditioned to think that wealth and status will give them fulfillment and joy. They don’t see that this greed is impermanent, is violent in nature, lacks love and compassion and will never fulfill them and will isolate them from their humanity. They are just as caught in the societal prison as everyone else. Yet, because of this desire for individual power, they manipulate and corrupt in order to keep their positions.
(culture - not taking care) We have many people who live in poverty which means we are not taking care of our communities. We live in a culture in which most of us barely know our neighbors. We have a culture in which it is difficult to live in your truth and follow your passions to make a living. We have a culture in which hatred towards those that are different exists - yet, that hate only exists because it is taught. We have a culture that continues to be a war with diversity and the diverse ecological systems of the Earth which we are actually a part of.
(materialism and capitalism) Materialism and capitalism are inherently violent for these systems must consume and live off a hierarchical social structure in order to survive. The elite class; politicians, oligarchs, corporate leadership wants this power no matter what the costs to our communities and earth. They are either born into this belief system, or they manipulate their way up the ladder of societal success and don’t want to give up what they feel they have every right to own. Yet, they need power for their souls are unfulfilled. And they impose their ignorance through policies that impact all classes of people. Yet, all of us are conditioned into ignorance no matter what our role becomes in this society. Either we become part of the small group of people who dictate policy or we become the voiceless group who help keep them in power and their policies of greed and hate that progress senseless ideologies. And of course, this culture will never fill the soul of humanity and create happiness. This is not a culture that takes care of its people nor the environment and those in power perpetuate this and the rest of us are complicit in our apathy.
(Culture, tearing the world apart) Culture is taught. Our culture, one that has become global in scale, has been taught into us. It is a culture that has the same agricultural, economic, and ownership practices that we also see in China, Switzerland, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand, and Australia. We call them different names, but essentially, we are all tearing the world apart by our continual growth and belief that we can dictate what lives and what dies.
(Conquering) A common belief is that we can conquer and own anything, that the ends justify the means, that wars can be won. Yet, what have we really conquered? The more we pit ourselves against something else, the more it fights back. Violence begets violence. Never has any side won a war. Trauma lives within both the victor and defeated. Unless we have questioned our own thinking, much of what we think and do has been conditioned into us. And what I have come to see is that our particular cultural conditioning is not only harmful for the planet, but how we are taught is harmful to oneself.
(our culture is violent) Our culture and those that believe in its dogma are participating in violence.
(Capitalism) Capitalism is a system of unlimited growth, a cancer to the earth body. It is a collective group think ideology based in the mythology of the hungry ghost, an entity that can never fulfill itself. It has always been on a track of destruction for it needs to constantly consume. Because we are all riding on that train with no idea what else to do, we all conform to its evil intent without knowing we are doing so. Capitalism growth is built on the backs of slavery, poverty and environmental degradation. Yet, within one moment, we can all stop and decide not to go on like this.
(culture of poverty, violence) Historically and presently, our culture has manipulated people to fall into roles and beliefs that are inherently violent to freedom and truth. Our culture has a structure that invites poverty, environmental degradation, and endless wars to promote growth and power for the few. Within the framework of our dysfunctional hierarchal global culture, we are taught in all countries of the world; whether democratic, communistic, open or oppressive, that we are separate from all that is around us, that even the wilderness, water, and food can be bought, sold, and manipulated any way we want regardless of impact and that we need to continue to over-populate and destroy the world in order to succeed.
(Ignorance) We are taught to ignore wonder, voice and our inherent connection to the wild, thereby creating a blindness to how our conditioning directly influences our actions. We try to show that we are successful and happy, yet deep down inside, there is a vacuous emptiness fraught with despair. Hiding from this fact, we buy into entertaining ourselves, or blindly follow politicians and religious authoritative manipulative rhetoric, filling our emptiness with hollow beliefs. This ignorance blinds us and pushes us towards buying into the propaganda that fulfills our hierarchical violence.
(belief of separateness) From the belief that we are not only separate from the world but also that the mind, body, and spirit are separated from each other, psychological fear and ignorance is born. Fear conceals us from truth, love and freedom. The irony of all this of course is our belief, drilled into our psyche since we were young, that we are separate from all that is and happiness will come through outside sources such as gaining more knowledge, experiences, wealth and acquisitions. Of course, having all the things in the world does not create happiness at all but rather is a violence to ourselves and those that we feel stand in our way. “Nothing profits the world more as much as the abandoning of profits. A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is the truly non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.” Illuminated Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Our whole economic system is based on competition, growth, winners and losers and creates a hierarchical class system full of sorrow.
(enslaved) Yet, no matter if you are impoverished or you are wealthy, one is enslaved to the system, constantly striving for material benefits and comfort. This is juxtaposed to a way of living that is based on helping every individual discover themselves and find value in their potential as a human being. Our culture is based on finding material gain for as a culture we see ourselves as separate from what is around us. We are going in a complete wrong direction for in fact we are not separated from anything.
(materialism capitalism) Money and power do not create happiness. In fact, materialism and our capitalistic belief system destroys happiness. In order for capitalism to work, we must create profit and growth, and continue the game between the have and have nots while destroying the land in order to thrive. Believing in this, or in any hierarchical system, we develop within our collective consciousness the externalized outcomes of poverty, racism, nationalism, patriotism, sexism, and environmental degradation. These major issues that affect all of us is the backwash of our hierarchical underpinnings shedding light on the dysfunction that is our cultural state of living.
(wealth and power) Ambitiously pushing for more wealth and power illustrates the inner fear and despair deep within. An addiction, those who find great security in their wealth and power, the ones who dictate so much of policy and manipulate others with their false words are also enslaved for they are desperately afraid of losing their fear based authority and disillusioned power. Depending on what class we are born into, we could all fall into the roles we see others playing out. Society is a drama, acted out by all of us buying into certain roles. This drama though is playing out great sorrow upon each one of us and the earth.
(people who pushed against cultural conditioning) There have been heroic people within our cultural past who have seen the dysfunction and violence of our cultural mythology and have voiced with courage and wisdom that there is a better, healthier, more enlightened way to live. Lao Tzu, The Buddha, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Maya Angelou, Margaret Mead, Rachel Carson, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King Jr., Thoreau, Tolstoy, Hesse, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Robin Kimmerer, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh just to name just a few have pointed to how inept our cultural beliefs are. In unique ways, they have shared the story of love and our connection to what is, and fought against the deep rooted sickness within our cultural conditioning.
(difficulty of waking up) Yet, with all these voices crying out to us that there is something wrong and that there is a better way, I wonder, why is it that so few of us pause nor question the construct of our thinking and the way in which our society continues to cause such harm? Maybe it is because of the heavy influence of our own cultural conditioning. Perhaps it is because our society teaches, encourages, and rewards conformity. Perhaps it is because people find themselves on the treadmill of life with or without realizing it and don’t slow down to ponder and attend to what is really happening around oneself. For the wealthy, who hold such externalized power and wealth, who control much of the ideology of our cultural underpinnings, there is a great fear of losing what they have, for what are they without their heavy costumes?
(our culture) Questions lead me into ponderings as I wonder about our culture and what is happening upon our planet. As our planet heads into the sixth great extinction (caused by our culture) and climate change is moving beyond the tipping point of no return, I heard the other day on the news about a politician speaking about progress and economic growth. I have been thinking about that word and wondering if he really understood what he was saying. And so my contemplations begin…...In my musings, I thought that many people in our culture would say that we as a culture have progressed as a civilization and that we need to keep progressing and growing.
(progress) Progress is our motto. There has been perpetuated this ideology of a want to improve, a belief that we are separate and flawed since the dawn of this culture’s inception. Once our ancestors somewhere in the Middle East settled into a specific agrarian way of life, living bound by their newly settled agricultural practice, slowly over generations and generations, hierarchy and ownership began to develop and their population began to rise. At some point, growth and progress began to become envisioned collectively and they began to take over more and more land as their population expanded, destroying any other cultures that got in our way. This we call the agricultural revolution.
(agriculture) This revolution did not happen everywhere to all the thousands of indigenous cultures that were spread across the planet, just specifically to one culture in particular. Over ten thousand years, our culture has swelled and advanced until we see now in our present day and age that there are no indiginous cultures left while millions of species have gone extinct and our ecosystems are now mere islands in a great sea of our cultural domestication. For ten thousand years, our collective beliefs yet all built around how to control nature, that we are separate from nature, that we need to perpetually grow and it is our manifest destiny to conquer the land has created great harm on our own individual psyche and on the planet as a whole. We now live in a great oppressive monoculture.
(separate and lacking) Can we hear what our collective cultural consciousness is whispering to us? Always lurking in the background, through advertising, in our schools, from our family, a whispering, a subtle nudge that we are not okay, that our lives are lacking, that we are separated, that life is scary and there enemies around us, and that things are to be bought and sold, and if we work hard enough, in the future we will arrive. There is a blind assumption that what we do to other creatures, to our ecosystems will not impact us.
(cultural mythology) Our cultural mythology simply keeps us from meeting our fullest potential. Our beliefs and assumptions push love down and embrace cowardice, lies, and destruction. Our culture whispers.. hide your pain, hide your love, hide yourself and keep working, keep moving, keep being ambitious, keep your head down, work and you will someday arrive and become the person you want to be. Yet that person is simply an illusion built upon our cultural construct. That to improve, to compete, it is okay to destroy what lies in our path. Just keep consuming, keep your mind occupied, keep moving forward at any cost and blind yourself to what is happening.
(progress) Have we ever asked what exactly is progress and why is there this innate belief that there is something wrong in us? What is there to improve or prove and what is motivating us? Have we ever questioned these beliefs and seen underneath their illusionary veils? What I will hopefully illustrate is that there is no need for progress and that our cultural ideology is dysfunctional including the idea of progress. The only thing that holds up these cultural ideas is what we have been conditioned to think. The way we think creates the world around us. Many of us will cry out and say we have progressed as a civilization. They will argue/debate, ‘but we have cars and airplanes, computers, i-phones, air conditioning, vaccinations, great towering cities of high rises, and hot water for showers…
(culture as a poison) Yet, at what cost do these things have and can most people on our planet really afford them? We also have over-population, weapons of mass destruction, pollution, monoculture agriculture, poverty, toxins in our air, wars, soil and water, depression, greed and a great ecological extinction because of our cultural actions. In many ways, it seems like we as a culture are a pariah, a poison to anything, such as other cultures, animals, forests, ecosystems that get in the way of our relentless growth. We have been conditioned to act like gods, controlling, dominating and conquering all we come across, and in the process fouling up everything and losing ourselves in the fall of our own damnation.
(culture still progressing) It is like Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” And I would say, in many ways things haven’t changed since he wrote A Tale of Two Cities. In fact, I would say that as a culture, we haven’t really changed since the beginning of our cultural inception. This is it though - it is not our species that is the pariah, but rather our culture.
You are in a Dream 2
Take time to peruse. Read just a section or the whole blog post.
(culture methodology consume) For our certain cultural methodology to exist, we need to progressively consume resources, take up more and more space for more agriculture and for more people, and thereby destroy our planet on day at a time in the process. We consume and consume in our ongoing conquest believing that our cultural way is the only purpose for humans in which to live. We may have many things, but within oneself, we feel empty and dead. We may have “conquered” the world, but we have created a mass extinction as thousands of species that had survived until this point in history and are now gone to antiquity. We think we have so much knowledge, yet we do not truly know ourselves nor on how to truly live.
(culture and education) Do you ever wonder why, as adults, we are not living in wonder, why we are living lives that aren’t full of joy, but rather, full of conflict and division? I have come to understand that our culture is maladaptive and is dysfunctional at its core. Because of this, it actually destroys our wonder through the way our culture educates. Rather than being a guide to illustrate the wholeness, love, and freedom that emanates from the world and ourselves, our culture teaches division and ownership, domestication and security. We see this in the individual as well as the collective societal angst that permeates each and every day of our lives.
(culture progress) This cultural phenomenon reaches to every part of our globe and forces its violence upon the earth, its myriad of species, and pits human against human. Almost every corner of the globe is now filled with a growing population of people. People, billions and billions of people. Do we question this? Do we question what impact this has upon our earth? No, we actually celebrate our great cities and simply continue to populate without thought though violence rages, poverty is inculturated, and people live lives of shallow emptiness. We don’t question nor listen for to do so would force us to question ourselves and wake up from the madness that we are a part of and have grown comfortable with, and this can feel terrifying.
(culture is taught) Our culture is taught into us and then spreads its tentacles upon every aspect of our lives to keep us contained in its worldview. Our culture’s thought control? Entertainment, fear, and conditioned ignorance. A mixture of Brave New World and 1984. Dull the senses and dull the mind into complete and utter complacency. Power, religion, medications, alcohol, sports, television, the media, politics, war, entertainment, and violence suck away wonder and authenticity and perpetuate propaganda and numbness that continue to work against waking up and living in truth. This cultural malady, that most don’t even recognize, lies malignantly rooted in sickness. If we could go back in history, we would see that this culture has been built on growth, hierarchy, and violence in perpetuity.
(cultural malignancy) This malignancy has spread itself across the globe. If we paused and listened clearly, we would see that these cities are no different than cancer for they are constantly consuming the earth’s habitats through their materialistic cravings and need for food while continuously growing. Like cancer cells, cities spread larger and larger, consuming more and more land and resources each year. And no matter which city you visit, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, London, Delhi, Moscow, Addis Ababa, or Lang Som, you would find the same culture, different variations, some richer, some poorer, but much of the same thing. English is now spoken everywhere. War is mainstream and embraced. Populations continue to grow unsustainably, again without question. Agriculture and human development spread, destroying ecosystem after ecosystem. Ownership is not questioned. These are the great consequence of colonialism and this culture’s insatiable desire for more.
(culture overpopulation, growth) People keep spawning more people, and more people keep consuming more food, more land, and in the process poison everything they touch. This they think is the way things are. It is as if there had never been anything else, and for most people, that is how they think. It was as if a great forgetting had washed away the memory of the diversity that once existed on this earth. This is because this is what we teach and are taught. The consequences are that most of the Earth's ecosystems are now mere islands surrounded by oceans of cities and agriculture, and the rich diversity that flowed abundantly, that illustrated health and awe, is now gone.
(extinction) A great extinction is now reaching its zenith, as countless species were and continue to be destroyed to appease the greed and ignorance built by the ideologies of this global society. We label flora and fauna that we feel negatively impact us as weeds, vermin, pests, and predators, creatures to get rid of without a care. For this culture, so separated from the land, there was and is no understanding of what nature really is, an abundant wealth of interdependent complex relationships, in which humans were and are simply a part of.
(conditioned) We are taught and conditioned to believe that we are separated from the wild. Yet, because we are not separate, our actions disintegrate our relationships with all life, and in so doing, begin the destruction of ourselves. For if you take out anything, you impact the whole.
(life to manipulate) We see all other life as something to manipulate or use for our own purposes instead of the wonder and divinity in which all life is animated by. We are taught not to see that almost everything we do is not sustainable, that the world in which we live is a world of hierarchy, over-population, poverty, crime and a power structure where only a few have power. And because we don’t see how our own minds, our own thoughts give rise to this dysfunctional culture.
(propaganda) Very few of us realize that the propaganda of this ideology begins in how we are educated, and that we are programmed from a very young age so that when we become adults, we will become unaware and help perpetuate this dream of malfunction - and yet believe that it is the way things should be. Education was the starting place of the imprisonment of the mind and yet most of us held it to be the opposite. We thought it gave freedom, because its propaganda worked so well.
(education and progress) Education fits each child into a certain mold so that they will fulfil their function for the Culture's progress. In fact, the motto that our Culture lived upon was PROGRESS for PROGRESS' SAKE. If you asked any citizen what this meant, they would probably reply that they are progressing so that they may always get better. Better for what you may ask? To this, they had no reply.
(knew something wasn’t right) For many years, like many teachers, though I was in many ways blind, I felt within myself that something wasn’t right in the world. This dysfunction was evident, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t understand how our culture could perpetually be in war, how we would continue over and over again to tear apart ecosystem after ecosystem with no sense of the devastating losses upon the earth and the interdependent web of life for like so many of us. I could not understand ownership, as if anything can be owned. I could not understand how animals could be treated with such disdain from the cruelty and enslavement of animal husbandry to the brutality of scientific testing, as if animals were mere commodities for us to do whatever we wanted and had no right to their own life and freedom.
(my story, culture) I could not comprehend how we could continue to rape the land and habitats of other creatures as if they had no right to their place of existence? I could not understand why our culture would poison rivers, lakes and oceans, pollute the atmosphere, create literal mountains of trash, and develop a prison system that does nothing too rehabilitate nor understand the causes of crime. Why was there a class system where a few had so much and all the power and so many were mired in poverty.
(my story, culture) I could not understand why our culture focused so much energy on external gain rather then the understanding of oneself. I couldn’t understand why children had so little voice in their own learning. I couldn’t understand how so many people could have so little connection to the myriad of wondrous species that inhabit this beautiful planet with us.
(my story, culture) As I observed the devastation happening on this earth, I literally would feel pain inside my entire being. There became a feeling of sadness deep within me that I didn’t understand or know what to do with. Until one day, things changed. I finally understood the power that education had on how we see and relate to the world, the power of conditioning, and that I had been conditioned into our cultural worldview and my very actions contributed to the devastation our culture was having on this planet. I was blind for a long time, until I opened my eyes and began to wake up.
(my story, culture and ego prism) The sadness I had discovered in myself, I now see within most people. In waking up, I have come to understand that our main cultural beliefs and values, conditioned into us through how we were educated, creates metaphorically speaking, an internalized self-formulated prism into how we see the world. This prism is the artificial self that fractures the way we see reality. It blinds us from wholeness as it divides and distorts what we see based on how we were taught in our schooling, family and day to day activities within the playground of our cultural matrix. As teachers, we grew up in this way. And unless we questioned any of this, we easily became stuck in our societal grooves, not seeing that these grooves are not in fact who we are, and divide us from the wholeness that lies everywhere. And in this division, in our conditioning is where dysfunction comes into play, evil is born, and loneliness is spawned.
(culture) The culture I am referring to is defined by a system of continual growth that lives on the back of hierarchy, ownership, division, and a belief that we can control and dominate the world around us. This culture now spreads into every continent. Our culture is now a global culture and is a culture that is dysfunctional, violent, and destructive. This is not to say that kindness and goodness are not there. But, the beliefs our culture perpetuate fight against the innate goodness, health and wholeness of who we are.
(cultural path) For when we don’t question nor pause, we continue along a certain cultural path. We see this in the way in which we farm, log, develop and take “resources'' from the earth, stripping away the vital diversity and health of our natural environment. The wilderness that once completely covered the earth is now but a sliver because of our culture’s beliefs and values. Our economic policies are built on hierarchical power structures and are not sustainable to life.
(cultural and poverty) We see this in the way in which poverty is accepted and in the way we view the wild as a wasteland that is meant too be cultivated and used for only human wants and ambitions without care or understanding of the rich ecosystems that connect together upon this planet. We see this in the reflection of every city and every house that has the same lawn east, south, north and west that does not mirror the local ecosystems in any way. We see this in how much value we put into the military and war. We see it in how our world is still caught in the field of hate. We see this in our continual population growth that is not only unsustainable but already has grave consequences to the health of society and the earth. Voice is lost the more voices there are.
(culture and the planet) We are all contributing to what is happening to each other and to the planet. This isn’t to say that we are victims. It is really to say that we are all caught up in a drama that produces ignorance and keeps us perpeting sorrow. If we want to live in a world of peace and love, that is sustainable, then as teachers we need to stop being ignorant of what we are doing and what we are doing to our children. We need to wake up.
(culture is us) I know that the impact of culture has on us isn’t obvious, but it is there, lurking within most of our psyches, coming through the eyes, coming through in conversations, coming through in the rush to be somewhere else. This feeling of being locked inside, unable to escape. A sadness, an aching emptiness, feeling separated from life itself seems to fill our quiet moments. Not only does not need to be the case, it truly isn’t at all who we truly are. Yet, most, if not all people, are stuck in a cultural dream they do not know they are having, and don’t know that all they need to do is let go.
(culture and the wild) Innately, humans are essentially intertwined with the wild. Yet, for thousands of years, instead of flowing with the wild, our now global culture has fought against it, and thereby created violence not only to the earth and all creatures, even to the individual self. The more we continue down this direction, the more we create and foster sorrow and darkness.
(culture hierarchical) Our specific culture is fear based and hierarchical. This is evident in how we see the world around us, as well as the divisions within our society. Our culture has created decisiveness through lines of demarcations, lines of belief, and ecological lines of separation that pits us against each other from the poor to the wealthy, to economic and antagonistic educational and job competition, to the wild and our true nature.
(culture and fear) Totalitarian agricultural practices, countless highways, burgeoning cities, states and countries, an insatiable desire for consuming, and greed dictating a stripping and gorging of the earth for resources, have greatly harmed the wilderness as well as our authentic humanity. As fear needs control, our culture feeds off of unmitigated growth, domestication, and authoritative security, a violence which inherently is against what is wild.
(culture and the wild)As all the wild animal and plant species will inevitably and innocently end up crossing into our artificially owned and controlled human habitat. We will intentionally, through the use of herbicides, pesticides, and other solicitous ways, forcibly and combatively try and keep them at bay. Through overdevelopment, and anti-ecological agricultural practices, we have created an all out war on the great diversity of interlacing life flowing ecosystems. Much of our global civilization has very little awareness of the natural habitats and life cycles nor the variety and diverse interdependency of life that spans across the planet Earth. We have been taught as a culture to fear the wild and thereby destroy or tame it.
(culture and the wild) We have so domesticated ourselves that we try to control, conquer and get rid of anything wild or simply shelter it into places that we may visit for a very brief time such as a national park or a zoo. We have been taught to destroy anything that appears to get in the way of our human contained habitats. We live in a way that consistently goes against the flow of the wilderness and the flow of our own authenticity and wildness.
(culture and the wild) How many of us would spend time alone in the wild? And I am not referring to doing an activity such as hiking or mountain biking, but in actually listening and spending quality time alone in the wilderness. Generally speaking, we don’t gravitate towards this because we believe that the wild is separate from ourselves and this generates fear. Our culture is unique in that respect. Our culture has created the idea that the wild is a scary place made for us to control and conquer, a myth that our culture has unfortunately bought into. Most of homo sapiens history has been living within the wild, embracing it. It is not inherent in us to fear the wild. This ecological antagonism is taught
(culture and the wild) If we pay attention just a little, we will recognize that the way we are living is not sustainable, is rooted in a cultural ignorance that spreads violence upon the planet and all creatures, and is bringing us very close to global catastrophe. We would see that greed is blinding and that many people who are led by wealth and power will rationalize and abuse their positions in order to keep practices that allow for a continual violent onslaught against the wilderness and our public health. In awareness, we would see that all things are always interacting and impacting each other subtlety or not. We would see that we are stuck in our inculturated egoic minds creating the illusion that we are separate, that the world and all things in it can be bought and sold, and that there are no real consequences to our general actions.
(culture and conditioning)In awareness, we would see that all things are always interacting and impacting each other subtlety or not. How we think, how we see other, what we eat, what we wear, what we purchase, what and if we drive, how we talk, where we invest money, how we look at and treat the wilderness, and how we treat our children were all conditioned into most of us without question, and have consequences and many seriously. We move through life so quickly, so divided, that we rarely pause to think about our actions, where they actually derive from, and how much they were influenced by our past. All our education, from growing up in our family systems, to our own personality, to our schooling, to the place in which we live, the politics and beliefs that we were influenced by, our experiences (or lack of) with nature, how we see others in regards to sex, nationality, culture, and color, all influence and give texture to our thinking and experiences. We see through our cultural lense which begins and ends with a wrong vision, the idea of separateness and division which give rise to fear of other.
(culture and the wild)The underlying roots of our culture are diseased. We are in the midst of the 6th great extinction though this one is caused by humans. We are daily covering our land and water systems with immeasurable tons of pesticides and herbicide, cutting down forests at a disturbing rate, and gutting the land for insatiable human development, domination and growth without thought of the impact that has on living creatures and systems. Simply said, we need to do something that changes this trajectory, not just for ourselves but for all of life.
(culture and the wild)Can you imagine a day when you can’t see a monarch butterfly floating from one flower to the next, or a river otter playing in gurgling brooke, or hear a wood thrush or loon calling out as the sun dives underneath the horizon? What would happen if our diverse rich rainforests no longer filled the atmosphere with their songs and oxygenated breaths? Can you imagine what our lives would be if nature becomes, as Rachel Carson put it, silenced because of our ignorance? We need the diversity of life to truly thrive and feel and experience the wonder that life exhibits.
(rush) Yet, when we rush about, fragmenting our days, our lives, our world, it makes it difficult to see the wholeness. As a result, it made it easy to blame the external world for our problems, our suffering. And until we stop and look at our own thinking, we will most likely miss the root of the problem, and the connection between our own conflict and the conflict we see in the world.
(society) Observe right now at our world at large, at our society, at our local communities, at ourselves. Ask yourself, is there a connection between our egos and the wars that are continuously waged, corruption, our ecosystems being stripped, our rivers and lakes being polluted, our oceans being depleted of life? What about the constant distractions we have, the constant craving for more things, more entertainment, more experiences? We have grown to have an inability to slow down, and just be. How often do we stop to see? How often do we really see?
(noticed our society) If we slowed down, observed our thoughts, and investigated our society, its hierarchy, its history of conquering, it’s want for power, growth, resources, and ownership, we would see something quite profound. One that people feel like they are separate individuals. Fear is the consequence of this and is the undercurrent of many of our interactions. Three, because our whole world framework stems from fear, a feeling that one is separated from the world, a dualistic framework comes into existence; good and evil, right and wrong, hierarchy, war and peace, black and white, possession, etc. We are our culture, and the culture is us.
(dysfunction of society) Simply take time to look at what is going on and what is accepted. Possession, addiction, anxiety, sorrow, ignorance, fighting and conquering is the way of life as an accepted world view. Our education system begins this training. It is about competition, competing for grades, competing against each other, and against the rest of the world. There is competition for jobs, for rising higher in position, for power, for making something of oneself, etc.
(war is accepted) We have created a world view that war is acceptable. That bombing and killing in the name of something will create a positive result. Have we really looked at the reasons countries go into war? Have we thought about the unsustainable population growth and its relevance? Have we ever really looked at the consequences of war; On the soldiers, on the men, women and children? What about the consequences on the environment and on the future? Have we ever asked how war can create peace? Isn't this what Orwell wrote about when he wrote about Oceana's ideology that war is peace? Have we thought about where the actual orders come from? And why are these our leaders? There is a saying those that lead shouldn't, and those that should, don't want to. What is their real agenda? Where is the voice in this? And why is there this fragmentary way of dealing with problems? Is this truth or a drama that we just perpetuate by our fear based thinking?
(ecological destruction) What about the environment? Is this related? Do we see the environment holistically in that we see our part in its ecological web? Or do we see the environment as nothing more than resources and places we can go to have experiences? What about the way we get our resources. We think that by putting toxins and manure on plants to kill insects and give them nutrients is a way to protect and create a plentiful food source. Do the toxins just kill the insects? Does it not get in the soil, in the rivers, in our lakes, in our bodies? Is there not a consequence to this? Or to get coal, we can blow off mountain tops? Or to get precious metals, we have to mine, and not think about the toxic residue and impact on other organisms will be?
(food and population growth) What about the relationship between food and population growth when we tear down forests for resources, do we think about the habitats and the plants and animals and the impact on them? We are fighting against everything that gets in the way of our want, our greed. And we don't see it. This is ignorance.
(constant conflict) This creates constant conflict as people fill their perceived isolation and attach themselves to beliefs, opinions, and ideologies in order to gain a sense of power. This fear builds over time a strong sense of ego, always right here in front of us, illustrating its power to deceive and escape, but the ego is also good at keeping its true nature hidden. Because of this, underneath most people's external veneer, lies a deep, yet very subtle, suffering. What is this malaise? What drives us to continue to struggle, and why are people ignorant of their suffering? Yet, once you begin talking with someone, bits and pieces of their suffering begins to leak out.
(fall into the dream) We can forever just hit the snooze button and say tomorrow. This is what most of us do. For in the moment, it appears like the easy way. In ignorance, we numb ourselves and simply perpetuate the dream. The dream is what we know and it is comfortable. We shut out the light of awareness, and don't have to feel the depths of this pain of confronting the depths of ourselves. And so, in the darkness of ignorance, we continue to play the game and don't notice what is right in front of us. But, we don't have to do that anymore.
