Where do we start?
Douglas Rushkoff, the founder of Team Human, wrote this great piece, How to Avoid Pitting Nature Against Progress which I could not resist commenting on. Douglas very much got it right about needing to push through. There is no going back. We can’t stop the progress we have made.
However, Douglas focused on the changes to our society that need to be made:
We shouldn’t get rid of smartphones, but program them to save our time instead of stealing it. We shouldn’t close the stock markets, but retool them to distribute capital to businesses that need it instead of enslaving companies to the short-term whims of investors. We shouldn’t destroy our cities, but work to make them more economically and environmentally sustainable. This will require more human ingenuity, not less.
I don’t believe we can start there. “Pushing through” does not start with changing smartphones, stock markets, or cities for people. Those changes will only come from people that have not given up their innate power, people who have taken hold of their radical purpose.
We need to realize we aren’t born to be consumers, voters, capitalists, or employees, but participants in the evolutionary process that is life. Most of us feel the pain of the picture of nature being destroyed, whether that nature is trees in the picture of Douglas’s article or the people we see suffering every day.
But, what are we to do? We are consumers, and what’s available is what we can buy. We are voters, and we vote for those on the ballot. We are employees, and we work for those that will hire us.
Often people will say that we can participate in making changes to the system. Before we can make systemic changes, we need to realize that “we, the people,” have lost the power to change those things within the current context. The systems that we created have abstracted that power away from us individually. It is long gone. We come to see ourselves as our limited roles.
We need to come to terms with our complicity and realize we were not born to only play roles in society. We were born to help evolve life. That is our responsibility. Every fiber in our being intends to do just that, and when we don’t or can’t, we become plagued by stress, anxiety, and depression. Causing people to use every form of distraction and substance to try to cope.
That is where we are today. And telling ourselves that we must change things within the current context will only add to our dire human conditions. Grabbing hold of our radical purpose, of course, is only the beginning, but we must circle round to the beginning if we are to continue to evolve life on this beautiful planet.
