Have No Fear
Revolution is Here
The last time the North Node of the Moon was in its current location was 9/11.
The last time Neptune was in its current location, the Great Depression was ending.
The last time Uranus was in its current location was the height of the Abolition Movement.
The last time Pluto was in its current place was the American Revolution.
We are not going back to how things were.
Like it or not, we are now, officially, in the midst of revolution — perhaps the largest the world has ever known, and perhaps the one that will determine one way or the other whether humanity gets to stay on this planet or whether it just becomes another species to add to the list of species lost in the sixth and largest mega-extinction that the planet is facing currently.
As I have already written, the body constantly seeks health. It’s an amazing system that rids itself of what’s ailing it naurally. If we are what’s ailing the Earth, we will be removed by her natural defense mechanisms.
But there is NO REASON TO FEAR!
A revolution is not a war. It can be incited by a conflict, but it’s not the conflict itself. Conflict is a critical component of any personal, social, or relational evolution — but that’s a different topic for another day.
A revolution is not a war — it’s an uprising. A true revolution is always born from the hearts of those rising up. It is always an act of love — for oneself, for the planet, and for one’s fellow planet-dwellers. Uprisings can be violent, but they don’t have to be and they’re often most successful when they’re not. The best metaphor that I’ve ever encountered to teach social movement theory is the metaphor of a mushroom. Social movements are rhizomes. There’s a slogan in some radical political communities:
“Rhize-UP!”
Social movements don’t happen overnight. They form underground over periods of years, decades, and sometimes centuries. They begin as individual spores — stirrings in the hearts of individuals. When those stirrings become strong enough, the individuals start discuss their feelings with other people. They connect. They grow.
Mushrooms grow from and feed off of decomposing organic matter. Social movements, similarly, grow from and feed off of decomposing social norms and, sometimes, decomposing societies. Usually, by the time a social movement begins, the thing that needs to be released officially by a government or body of governance has already started to die in the culture. But as the collective stirring continues underground, eventually, something pops up here and pops up there … and it can appear that protests — in whatever form they take — are isolated incidents, in the way that it appears that one mushroom popped up. But where there is one, there’s always another. They seem separate, but they’re always connected underground.
Today, the word “movement” tends to be thrown around flippantly (like so many other terms). Unfortunately, this isn’t a topic that’s taught in many schools — after all, if you teach people about social movements, you’re likely to inspire one — which is why in the 1960s, there were “teach-ins” where people with knowledge about what was going on in societies around the globe, about social movement theory, about injustice, about peace, and about non-violent action came together and locked themselves in rooms to learn what was happening IRL because it was clear that neither the government nor the media were going to offer them the information they needed.
They’re called Social MOVEMENTS because they’re collective ideals (that are sometimes very diverse, encompass diverse communities, or derive from diverse experiences/stirrings) that MOVE people to act and be different than they’ve ever been before, that MOVE society forward.
An organism is a macrocosm of a cell, but a microcosm of an ecological community or the biome. The same processes happen at every scale. Evolution is not only physical, it’s also societal, psychological, and spiritual. It happens on the individual level as well as the collective level. Everything is connected. What is happening today economically, socially, politically, psychologically — it didn’t start 3 weeks ago, 3 months ago, 3 years ago, or even 3 decades ago.
It’s been stirring up slowly and steadily. And now, we’re ready to MOVE …
Stay tuned for more daily reflections in this series: Birthing a New World Order
