Civilisation is a trap we walked into several thousand years ago, and it clanged shut behind us. None of us is actually free in the way that humans are meant to be free, sustained by kith (land) and kin (humans and nonhumans). (Take note: freedom ≠ doing whatever you want.)
I agree with Iain McGilchrist when he says that the world is not a problem with a solution; it’s a predicament that cannot be solved. (This is not the same as saying that there is nothing we can do, but it does mean that many, if not most, things are out of our control.)
I think often of what Derrick Jensen has said: “Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of any culture.”
And what Susan Griffin has said: “A rebellion ultimately imitates that which it rebels against, until the rebel comes to understand himself.”
Many of the “answers” that we are finding have emerged from the wrong questions, which have come from the wrong foundational beliefs. Many of the ways we have chosen to “rebel” against the system have in fact taken us full circle back to the same unfreedom and harm.
I have biases and blindspots just like everyone else. I don’t have the answers, and I’m hardly a rebel. I do know, however, that sitting patiently with not-knowing, whilst also pursuing greater provisional understanding—especially self-understanding—is crucial.
After the collapse, and in a thousand years or so, when the wild has returned (fingers crossed) and we’ve earthed ourselves back into reality, perhaps we’ll know and not-know better. Until then, we humans really need to remember that we’re still in the trap, our thinking is shaped by that, and we can’t truly understand who we are until we escape it.
yes, i love the phrase you use: "perhaps we'll know and not-know better." we're not always great at our knowing (though we think we are, and that is worrying), and we are often quite terrible at not-knowing, rushing to fill that space with all sorts of folly and delusion and Very Bad Ideas. civilisation is indeed a trap, and it's incredibly difficult to envision a way to change it significantly. but maybe we don't need to know where we're going; maybe it's enough to know that we are going somewhere, and to be both intentional and flexible about what that might be? bayo akomolafe says this: "When the times get hard and brittle, cracks are often the first responders." he talks a lot about resting in not-knowing, and knowing the self before trying to know anything else, really. maybe that's as good a place to start as any, whether we can manage to do it now, or after collapse.
ReplyDelete<3
Delete