With pandemic restrictions starting to lift in the small town where I live, and with vital Black Lives Matter protests filling streets around the world, last week I wrote a post over on 95EH about how I really don’t think “returning to normal” is something we should be aiming for ( ie. for way too long we’ve been normalizing way too many things that shouldn’t be considered normal). This week I wanted to try and get down on paper the much harder part to communicate-the how we might go about setting a new normal-which is a lot easier said than done, given just how big the official list of ‘Societal Messes In Need Of Clean Up’ is.
I think the challenge is that we tend to think of each problem and its supposed solution on an individual basis, but because everybody cares about and/or is affected by certain issues more than others, and because you often can’t solve one problem without unilaterally solving another & another, sometimes creating new issues in the process, we end up becoming so overwhelmed by this never-ending game of whack-a-mole that we give up on trying to fix anything and instead just learn to live with everything being on fire all the time. Which is exactly what they want us to do.
And, so, here we are still/again/forever.
But if you stick with any societal issue long enough, and if you avoid the urge to try slapping on a quick temporary fix rather than digging to the root, you will eventually find that almost all of our problems can be traced back to the fact that we’ve all bought into the idea that caring more about ourselves than others is the only way to survive. And we’ve let our entire world be built around this selfish idea. To the point where we knowingly let millions of people live in poverty, all while slowly destroying the only habitable planet we have to live on-which is a pretty rubbish ‘2 birds with one stone’ scenario to be so willingly going along with ( and that’s only listing 2 of the MANY birds being stoned on the daily).
It’s not something that most of us easily admit, but if you examine our daily actions and inactions, the reality is that we’ve all allowed an isolating limit to be placed on how far outside ourselves we let our natural compassion & empathy reach. And once they’ve got each of us only giving a damn about ourselves and our small circle of families and friends and people who look/think exactly like us, that makes it an open market for society to collectively not give a damn about ANYONE at anytime, because now we’re all just a ‘not my problem’ to someone else somewhere else.
Divided meet conquered.
I mean, we’ve gotten to the stage where most of us don’t even think twice about the starving and homeless in our own communities & countries, good luck trying to get westerners to scale out even further and acknowledge all the humans around the world that have been forced to live in abject poverty so that we can continue to feel the temporary glow of empty consumerism at throwaway prices. And just because most of us reading this paragraph are probably doing so from a place of pretty decent comfort, don’t think you won’t be just as expendable when the sh*t starts to really hit the fan over the next decade or so ( y’know, that whole ‘climate change tipping point’ stuff a CONSENSUS of SCIENTISTS keep warning us about — which is also another major issue that nobody can agree about how to act upon or whether to even act at all, so we pretty much continue to just do nothing).
So, what’s the solution?
What I propose as the starting point for creating a new “normal” is something that’ll probably sound too simple and naive at first, but I promise there’s nothing simple about putting it into practice in your daily life and it’s rooted in ancient wisdom so that kinda cancels out the naive part — also, it doesn’t seem like throwing out complicated and contentious solutions has been getting us anywhere, so maybe just hear me out: Before we can start coming up with plans of action that we can collectively agree on, what we all need to do first is strip ourselves down to the very core and decide whether or not we individually believe that someone else should be left to suffer unnecessarily when we collectively have the means to make sure everyone has the basics of survival. And this needs to be a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ belief -there can be no “Yes, but/except…” waffling allowed anymore.
Because, if you believe somewhere in your heart that all humans are created equally and should be treated as such, you need to grab that universal truth and hammer it down as your main anchor value, something you can continue to return to & remind yourself of OFTEN as we begin walking the more complicated & contentious minefield of how to go about deconstructing/rebuilding our broken systems and politics and economies and communities and etc — because as long as we don’t continue to accept excuses like we have in the past, as long as we’re not willing to make compromises like “maybe it’s ok that a few kids over there don’t have any food, or a few families over there don’t have a roof over their heads”, we can start reconstructing our society in ways that will naturally start solving so many of the other problems that we’ve been told are unsolvable from the people who benefit from all those problems continuing to exist ( income inequality, systemic racism, poverty, pollution, waste, etc). Because so much of the hold we’re all under comes from the manufactured scenario that there isn’t enough for everyone to have their basic needs met ( in the pyramid scheme that is our current life, they’re trying to hold as many of us as they can in the basement of Maslow’s Hierarchy).
But every decision we make going forward needs to first meet that foundational anchor value of NOBODY should be left to suffer unnecessarily, otherwise we’re just going to continue shuffling around who is suffering while falling for the same selfish solutions that promise we’ll get to be on the side that pulls the ladders up behind us one day — so take a moment and check-in with yourself to figure out whether you want to fight on the side that uncompromisingly cares about others or the side that does not.
And I’m sure this is the part where a lot of folk’s trained “ok, but how are we going to pay for this fantasy world?” reflexes start to kick in, so it is here that I would just like to assure people that the money is out there, and we don’t even need to get into the fact that money and its value is a made up construct, for this first part of the transition to a better world we just need to stop fighting over the crumbs that fell from the table and start looking up.
We need to start getting more upset about the millions and billions of taxpayer dollars that get handed out as subsidies and bailouts and tax loopholes to corporations/rich people every year. We need to stop being complacent with stats about how 26 individuals can own more wealth than 50% of the world’s poorest ( that’s 26 people > 3.8 billion people) or how CEOs can make 287 times more than their employees or how Jeff Bezos is on pace to become a one-person trillionaire ( and how that single bald-headed narcissist already has enough wealth to end world hunger right now and still be a billionaire). We need to stop letting people be called ‘unskilled labour’ so that we can justify paying them unliveable wages, especially after a global pandemic has shown us just how many of those ‘unskilled workers’ are actually more essential to society than most non-essential higher paying white collar jobs ( and we need to have a conversation about how so much of the work we’ve been dedicating 40+ hours a week to is actually not super necessary, especially if everybody’s basic needs were already being met).
We need to stop wasting billions of tonnes of food every year. We need to stop filling landfills and wasting resources on products intentionally made to not last long just so we all have to keep buying more of the same stuff. We need to stop letting our brains be filled with the lie that we can just consume our way to feeling content.
We need to stop treating our corrupted political parties like sports teams that we back no matter what and realize that both sides have been working for the same interests & lying to all of us for decade after decade ( although, it’s important to note that one political side exists to keep pushing things further and further in a fascist direction — but we also need to be honest about how the other side has mostly existed to pretend that they’re trying really hard to stop them). We need to demand better, we need to stop being complacent with broken promises and we need to quit waiting for someone else to do something about it ( and, yes, protests/disobedience is a very necessary part of this process — because if you think just waiting for the next election cycle was going to get those cops charged or police budgets cut or any other meaningful systemic change going forward, you haven’t been paying attention to how we got here).
Honestly, for the most part, we all just need to stop being such easy marks for this blatant grift. It’s embarrassing. Especially in this Trump era of late stage capitalism, it doesn’t even feel like they’re trying to be sneaky anymore. They know we’ve all bought into the idea of ‘just keep your head down and keep worrying about yourself’, and that we’re all a paycheque or 2 away from being completely desperate, so they just leave us to argue against our own collective interests amongst ourselves on social media with whatever empty lines & distractions they pass down to us — anything for the chance of possibly getting a few extra scraps tossed down from the table for being a good licker of boots.
Which brings us back to the importance of nailing down and returning regularly to that anchor value of “everyone deserves the basics of life”. None of the atrocities of the last few rambling paragraphs-paragraphs that could have rambled on forever with even more examples-none of those things would make it pass the sniff test if we actually put our collective feet down and re-focused our work and energy on re-building our systems and infrastructure around meeting the goal of EVERYONE having access to food and shelter and health care and education, and accepting no excuses/compromises until we get there.
We have the technology and capabilities and resources and know how to restructure society this way, but the will to do better needs to start on an individual level first — because it’s only after enough of us have adopted an unshakeable shared foundational value of ‘EVERYONE deserves the basics of life, no exceptions’ that we’re ever going to get any real progress done. If you don’t believe me, just look around at the state of the world and tell me how well accepting exceptions/compromises on other people’s suffering has been working out for us all so far.
The reality is that none of us can change the world individually, we all only have the power to change ourselves-which, on the surface, can sound a bit like ‘what’s the point then?’-but, the thing is, if enough of us start making the same core changes to what we value unconditionally, the world can’t help but change along with us.
And something tells me we’ve got the numbers on our side, we just need that one common thread to connect all the different solutions we’re gonna need for all the different problems they’ve laid out for us to get overwhelmed by. And I think the major connecting thread that anyone who isn’t a self-serving asshole can get behind is: ‘EVERYONE deserves the basics of life’. But we gotta start holding our ground and stop allowing all of this pain & suffering to be normalized.
So imagine there’s a line drawn in the sand-one side believes that everyone deserves the basics of life and the other side does not- and then decide which side you want to stand on.
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If you choose the side that thinks we need to care about EVERYONE equally, you need to make that value your North Star going forward. Stand up. Speak up. Get involved. Don’t accept excuses. Vote based on your values — at the polling station and, more importantly, every day with your wallet, time and energy. Work on yourself every day. Educate your ignorance. Trade in your apathy for empathy. Turn off the news. Diversify your social feeds. Step outside your bubble. Check in on that ‘EVERYONE deserves the basics of life’ anchor value on the regular and call out your own contradictions/hypocrisies. Be honest and transparent. Practice compassion with yourself as much as you practice it with others. Slow down. Breathe. Stop craving stuff you don’t need. Be thankful for getting to be alive right now. Remember that if the universe is infinitely expanding that means you’re literally the centre of the universe, just like everyone else. Be humble. Be helpful. Be kind. Be brave. Don’t waiver. Stay open. Hold your ground.
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If you choose to be on the side that puts a limit on caring about others, you need to own that choice. So figure out at what point you’re ok with other people suffering/dying unnecessarily and let the rest of us know where that is. And if you find that’s a hard thing to have to admit out loud, maybe you’re choosing the wrong side. So maybe choose again. It’s 2020, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic and the cracks of a corrupt & cruel capitalistic system are showing everywhere — you’re allowed to do a personal reset. If it helps, don’t think of it as changing teams, all the ‘teams’ of the past were flawed anyways, just think of it as starting over fresh. It’s time.
Because we have an important opportunity right now for doing a complete rethink on how our current and future society is run. It won’t be quick and it won’t be easy, but for far too long we’ve been normalizing way too many things that shouldn’t be considered normal and we have the power to stop all that BS and start doing things better. And instead of being asked to sacrifice our lives in some multinational bloody war in order to become known as one of those ‘greatest generations’ that the history books like to celebrate, all we need to sacrifice is our own selfishness ( and, for the most part, we’re really just acting out other people’s selfishness for their benefit anyways, and that’s pretty lame).
Or, we could also just continue being the idiots that ignored all the warnings and cries for help and let a bunch of heartless jerks drive the this whole bus straight off the cliff.
But, whichever way your heart is leaning, it’s time to pick which side of the story you want to help write.
PS - In case it wasn't totally clear: I have chosen the 'we need to care about EVERYONE, no excuses' side, which is actually the side that pretty much all spiritual practices claim we should be on if you cut out all the divisive 'organized religion' parts that have been added in throughout the years to keep people under control + allow for things like people saying that Jesus is their guy while also not giving a damn about the poor (but that's a whole other conversation for another time :)For now, let's figure out who is on the 'we need to care about EVERYONE, no excuses' side and then let's get to work — because there's A LOT of work to do (and if you think this is too simplistic of a place to start, methinks you might be looking for an excuse as to why it's ok that we continue to not care about some people).
Originally published at https://hi54.blog on June 12, 2020.
