The Unexpected Journey of Caring
The Unexpected Journey of Caring
The Moment You Realize Something Has Changed
Despite what you call yourself, or whether you acknowledge you are a caregiver, there is a moment. The moment when you can’t escape the realization that life as it once was will never be the same. The moment the permanence of a loved one’s diagnosis becomes real. The moment a loved one can no longer remember your name. The moment you realize that no matter what you do, a cure won’t be possible.
The moment you are reminded that it is you, and you alone, who are responsible for complete and ongoing care. Even before others notice, you may begin mourning for what can never be, as others around you keep going and moving while your world no longer makes sense. Even though you may look and sound the same to others, you are not. You can’t be.
The safety net of habit and routine is replaced by a heightened sense that life is fragile and unpredictable. It’s as if you find yourself walking on a tightrope without a net. And the scariest part is that you may have been living all this time without a net but had never noticed until now.
But now that you do notice, you can’t unlearn what you know and return to life as it once was. Every caregiving experience is different, but behind every caregiver story is a moment—a moment when you realize that the care and love you are called to provide can’t help but change you in every way possible.
A New Way of Seeing and Being
Personal transformation is usually an experience we actively seek out—not one that hunts us down. In the twenty-first century, becoming a caregiver is a transformation that comes at us, requiring us to rethink everything we once knew. When a loved one becomes a caregiver, everything changes—responsibilities, beliefs, hopes, expectations, and relationships. “Being” a caregiver is not something most people think about or dream about, let alone prepare for, because this role and relationship seemingly defies understanding. Rarely, if ever, will you hear caregivers speak of themselves as a class or group.
Caregivers don’t allow themselves the privilege and comfort of the “we” because there is no union of caregivers, simply a legion of “I’s” doing and being and serving. Not seeing ourselves as part of something larger than our own individual experiences comes at a cost.
Disorientation: From Loved One to Caregiver
Everyone seeks transformation. To be changed and catapulted into something other than who you are—the better, stronger, fiercer version of yourself. Transformations are always impressive and awe inspiring. But before anyone is transformed, something else has to happen. This isn’t the part of the transformational process that most people pay attention to because it’s all about what happens before others begin noticing how you are different. This is about what happens to you in private—precisely when you are alone in your thoughts while the rest of the world moves on and forward as if nothing is changing.
What is it that happens before anyone can experience transformation? Disorientation. Look up the word “disorient,” [1] and you’ll find that it’s the opposite of “enlighten.” Who would want to spend time trying to figure out the very aspects of their experiences that are so confusing and messy? Somewhere along our care journey, we will experience disorientation. Like an unexpected attack of vertigo—the world around us is turned upside down, transforming everything we once saw, believed, and expected into something that throws us off balance. Caregiver disorientation is not like a one-time vertigo attack but one that we experience at different times with differing degrees of intensity. Bouts of disorientation can knock us off our feet. They can make us question ourselves and everything we’ve taken for granted. They can keep us from wanting to get out of bed. And they can make us nauseous—not the kind of nausea most other people think about, though. This kind of nausea can bring us to our knees and can make us feel out of sorts when we close our eyes. It can find us while we are doing what used to bring us great joy and pleasure. And it can even hunt us down when we are with people who used to bring us so much comfort.
If we ignore our inevitable feelings of being overwhelmed, confused, angry, defiant, helpless, and deeply alone, then we are denying vital parts of our experiences that are transforming us. Since caregiving is always different from what we imagined it to be (not that any of us imagined our caregiver role in advance), our disorientation can be deep, intense, and lonely. This book is written to help you begin making sense of the very experiences that transform you throughout your caregiver role. There is no logical progression to these experiences of disorientation because each of our care roles is distinct, based on the type of care we are providing; the circumstances; the quality of our relationship with our loved one; the kind of condition, illness, or life interruption our loved one is enduring; our own care expectations; and the support we feel (or don’t feel) from others in our care roles.
Despite these differences, it’s important to remember that the reasons for our disorientation aren’t just about us. No, disorientation is an inevitable by-product of what happens when care meets love, especially when we can’t be prepared for what this role asks us to do and become.
Some of us are in the midst of experiencing these transformational moments of disorientation. Others may be trying to make sense of what happened when they provided care for a loved one days, months, and years ago. And some may be anticipating a care role they see coming at them.
Practicing Value Articulation
Caregivers may find it difficult to communicate the value of their presence against a cultural backdrop that associates time, attention, and effort with discernible outcomes. Since doing and curing receives attention and accolades, articulating the value of your role may be met with others’ prejudices. As with other care roles, [28] shifting the focus away from what is done to what you are learning from being a caregiver not only may expand others’ understandings of your role, but it may also highlight what you are gaining from your experiences. This shift in emphasis may allow you to more fully communicate your distinctive and innovative relational insights because they help tell a compelling story about what it means to connect with another human being. [29]
A willingness to venture forth with another without the comforting predictability of what will come next is a relational innovation that is becomingly increasingly scarce. This kind of innovation takes courage and risk, and caregivers are an embodiment of those willing to risk closeness without knowing what will happen tomorrow. While others fret over the possibility of losing control, care innovators like you continue caring even when controlling what will happen next is impossible. By featuring what can be understood only as a result of care interactions, caregivers can situate themselves as pioneers venturing into deeply authentic interactions at a time when most others are finding it increasingly difficult to know what it means to be with another.
When thinking of your experiences as a type of invention, rather than simply a requirement or set of tasks, caregiving can be re-positioned as a desirable source of insight. What does it mean to be needed? Doesn’t your care relationship make you imminently qualified to be able to help others begin to understand what a relationship based on love, need, and care looks like and how it shapes a relationship? What does it mean to live a life where procrastination is not possible? Aren’t you an expert here because what you experience with your loved one can’t be delayed because care needs can’t be put off? What does it mean to make a difference in the world? Don’t you have so much to say here because you’ve been thinking and living and reflecting on this question so much more intensely than others who have to be asked this question? You are living it. Throughout, not only have your experiences been shaping you, they also became a means by which you can begin teaching others in ways that only you can teach—what it means to make a difference by being with another.
Excerpts from the book The Unexpected Journey of Caring: The Transformation from Loved One to Caregiver by Donna Thomson and Zachary White. Used by permission of the publisher Rowman & Littlefield. All rights reserved.
Notes
- Mongeau and Henningsen, “Stage Theories,” 367.
- Sandra Petronio, Boundaries of Privacy: Dialectics of Disclosure (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 50–54.
- Amy Zhang and Laura Siminoff, “Silence and Cancer: Why Do Families and Patients Fail to Communicate?” Health Communication 15, no. 4 (February 2003): 422–23.
Three Poems
Three Poems
Editor’s note | I met Lee in the waning summer of 2013 on Martha’s Vineyard. Over dinner, we discussed life things, including our love of dogs and Lee’s experience as a cancer survivor. I was moved then, and now, by Lee’s softness and grace. At this time, he is facing a terminal diagnosis with the same deep quality of equanimity.
He says, “cancer is a spiritual disease, because it forces one to shed much of the garbage we bury our spirits under in our day-to-day lives, and return to what is really important — friends, family, love, forgiveness, compassion, and acceptance. I must admit, I am not in a hurry to get there, but I am looking forward to the transition and journey into another dimension. And I have been fortunate to have had a life lived in one of the best of times.”
Drawing on his love of art and poetry, spiritual teachings of the East, and Christian mystics, including Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross, Lee has shared the hope that his acceptance of the cancer and final diagnosis without anxiety or fear might benefit others who face a similar trial. I’d like him to know that it does. And will continue to do so.
His prolific outpouring of words, as Martha’s Vineyard’s Poet Laureate Emeritus can be found here.
Statement by the poet
As a spirit traveling through matter on a journey towards an unknown event horizon, poetry has been a record and exploration of the inner experience, thoughts, and feelings of this human voyage in a world that is beautiful, mysterious, radiant, and at times terrifying. I learned early that language is a living animal that must be ridden naked and bareback, allowed to go where it wants without forcing it in another direction. Then writing becomes a state of meditation, prayer, revelation, channelling, and exploration of the unsayable that lies behind our daily lives. Over time I learned enough craft to get myself out of the way, and let the poem carry me and inform me. Most of the poems come as gifts, for which I am grateful, and I often find myself surprised I am allowed to be the vessel through which they pass into this world like wayward children.
The Day the World Ends
The day the world ends insects will sing psalms and hymns,
extinct animals will forgive the sins that killed them,
and broken dreams instead of shovels will fill the palms
of gravediggers whose secret philosophies stay unspoken
until theatrical sacrificial scenes are reenacted on boot hill.
Mountains will move imperceptibly towards the sea,
convicts escaping barren plains into horizons
free of constraint or restriction, and boulders tumbled to shore
will become petrified saints crucified by cormorants
drying their wings in whispering prayers of a dying sun.
On the day the world ends we will lie together beneath
the orchards of senses and stare and tremble and breathe
pale dusk air as petals and leaves of moonlight’s white orchids
fall on our lips and eyes, and all we wished but never said,
those things we knew but couldn’t name, will rise
from the Earth around us, a swarming beatitude of bees
sweeping us towards what life remains after the day the world ends.
Attestation
Despite unwanted endings and disasters
we have created, today I will attend
the ceremony of my life with compassion
in a ritual of love for a dying world.
In devotion I will not cry for any except
the innocent — the poor, the children, the animals —
who no longer have gods or myths to save them.
I will bend willingly before the altar light
that emanates from those to come, who will know
the catastrophe of our apathy, greed, and technology;
and I will praise the ones who suffer pain and hunger,
yet still resist; who bind their hardships brightly
with tears and songs and laughter, despite
the wounds and scars mapping all life that exists.
I will bleed internally with the joy of living,
with the memory of those who helped me
make it through the wilderness, a journey of
radiance, terror, and love, as the road bleeds
distances and vistas in a thousand footsteps home.
I will bleed the language of lilacs and orchids,
nettles and burrs, for everyone who shares a dark unknown,
and I will graze like a gazelle on each heartbeat
and breath my body takes, on the vibrating green veldt
of shimmering summer light left in imagination,
and the deep blue-gray sea light in the chill of autumn,
and the amorphous winter animals of prowling snow,
and this energy that flows with compassionate grace
through everything we experience, are, touch, and see.
Song
There is a song animals sing when they are threatened,
frightened, hurt, or wounded; and another
when they are left alone,
a song of gratitude for simple things
that brings forth all the songs their young will sing
in midnight haunts to the other side
of the Mountains of the Moon,
as they roam over earth filled with twilight
until dawn’s silver ladders of light
bleed through the
veined, blue mist of distant foothills.
And without grievance, a song of grace
for form, the skin and bones they bear
through life without complaint;
and for shelter, food and water, and every
hidden haven safe from slaughter;
and for the very air they breathe in singing
that emanates without restraint
through all the world’s hardships and sorrow,
as they disappear from our lives leaving
only these echoing Kyries their bodies sang
in sadness, radiant, even in the dying.
The Next Civilization, with Jeremy Lent
The Next Civilization, with Jeremy Lent
Rhonda Fabian, for Kosmos | Welcome, Jeremy, I’ve really been looking forward to our conversation.
Jeremy Lent | Thank you, Rhonda, it is great to be together.
Kosmos | I’ve enjoyed reading your book, The Patterning Instinct. You have a beautiful style of writing that’s very captivating and accessible. It’s clear you love the topic.
Jeremy | Thank you so much for that, Rhonda. Yes, this really has been a labor of love. The subtitle is, “A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning,” and, really, this book was the result of my own search for meaning. Just some backstory: the first half of my life, I actually spent in a very different sphere. I was an entrepreneur, starting a company and taking it public, and then I went through a major crisis in my life. My wife at the time, who passed away some years back, became very sick.
I left the company to look after her, and then the company collapsed. So I went through this period when I felt like the things that I’d created my whole life around, I was losing. My first wife suffered cognitive decline, so even as I was looking after her for years, I felt I had already lost her. Yet, while I experienced all this terrible sense of loss, I also had this feeling: I’ve got this opportunity now to really redirect where my life is going. The question was: what’s truly meaningful for me? Wherever I directed my life next, I wanted to make sure that it was truly authentically meaningful.
And then that catalyzed this question: where does meaning really come from? These received ideas that we have about meaning, how do they actually arise? Whose word are these ideas from?
It was a little bit like peeling an onion. Every time I looked at some idea—say, the Western notion of transcendence—I would ask where did that come from? And then discovering the underlying dualism of Western thought, and discovering how East Asian thought developed in ways that were very different. It took me to cognitive science to gain an understanding of the core elements from which humans make sense of things, which actually led me to the title of the book, The Patterning Instinct.
Along the way, I was actually looking for a book like The Patterning Instinct—one that could really help me to put all these different parts of the human experience together. At some point, I realized it might be valuable for other people engaged in that kind of inquiry to actually write a book like that, to put it together.
Kosmos | Thank you for sharing that, Jeremy. The book certainly has that quality of being the work of a seeker and it draws from many different disciplines and paths. You examine this instinct in us from the very earliest of times, and trace the whole history of human cognition.
Jeremy | Yes. Or at least the history of human meaning-making through the lens of cognitive science, and how that’s affected tangible, material history. I found that cognitive science has transformed our understanding in just the last couple of decades of what really makes us human and how humans think. But because of the way Western academia works, there’s a lot of silos.
It’s very difficult for specialists in one area to move over to another area. So you might have brilliant specialists in cognitive linguistics and other specialists in, say, cognitive anthropology, along with other specialists in history and philosophy, but they’d risk their whole career by trying to do something so interdisciplinary. I think it was really only because I don’t come from a professionally academic background that I was able to weave these things together in a way that a professional academic never could.
But what emerges from cognitive science is that we seem to have this particularly strong instinct to pattern meaning into the universe around us. The reason we can call it an instinct is because even a newborn infant has it. An infant hears all the sounds around her and starts to associate that with touch and feelings. Nobody tells her, “you’re meant to learn language”—she just picks it up because she’s driven by this instinct to pattern meaning into everything.
I realized that humans in the earliest times had that same instinct. They would look at this complex universe and try to make sense of the stars and the animals and life around them. They used this instinct they were evolving to live together in complex communities and to make sense of the world. That’s really where the human-derived sense of meaning, I think, first arose.
Kosmos | Reaching back to these earliest days of human experience feels timely, because we’re at a point of so many converging crises. Many people are having a ‘dark night of the soul,’ similar to the one that propelled you into your research. They too ask: who are we at our core, who are we as humans? And so I found that part of the book really fascinating. Our ancestral teachers—hunter-gatherers—just figuring out how to get along. How different were our lives in terms of how we make meaning?
Jeremy | So, let’s settle on that time, which really lasts for about 95 percent or so of our history as Homo sapiens. We already had developed some form of language, but we were still nomadic hunter-gatherers, and that’s where we evolved the key elements that I think are human universals. I think that if you look back at the way those early hunter-gatherers made sense of the world, it seems rooted in this core metaphor of seeing nature as a ‘giving parent.’
Let me just unpack this concept of root metaphor a little bit, because one of the things that I came to realize is that all the different concepts, all the different ways in which we make meaning, whatever culture we live in, actually come from core metaphors.
I think what early hunter-gatherers had was this sense of everything being part of a big extended family. There were no boundaries in those days. There was a sense of nature as a kind and giving mother and father, always providing you what you really needed. So, for nomadic hunter-gatherers, when a source of food dried up, it wouldn’t lead to disaster or famine, they’d just move over to some other place where they knew another kind of food would be provided.
They saw everything in the world as being interconnected. The animals they hunted or the trees that gave them sustenance all had spirits, and everything then was alive. And so, even if they were to kill an animal, they would do it with a sense of honor, and a sense that the spirit of the animal would continue to live through them.
That was where their meaning came from—that sense of connectivity without boundaries, based very much in the sense of family and kin.
Kosmos | And yet, I think we have to be mindful of the tendency to romanticize that kind of life, yes? When we lived so close to nature, in some ideal state? When I really look deeply, I’m not sure that, especially as a woman, there is any period in human history I would prefer to live in. I guess that as civilizations became more complex, our worldviews, and metaphors, became more complex. And there’s really no going back anyway, is there, even if we wanted to?
Seeing Patterns
Jeremy | Yes. I think that is crucial. Yet, I do think there was a lot in that nomadic hunter-gatherer way of living that was very conducive to a sense of well-being, because that is how we evolved as humans. At the same time, as you point out, there was a lot going on from our perspective now that we would look at and be horrified: the rate of infanticide, for example, was quite high. And similarly, if somebody was injured—the whole lifestyle was always about moving on—they might be left to die. There were a lot of things in that life that we would not want to go back to. That’s absolutely the case.
And, I think that it’s worth understanding that when we had that shift from that nomadic lifestyle to what’s called sedentism, which really correlates with the rise of agriculture, a lot of the values (and vices) that we now take for granted as being part of human norms, actually became part of the human experience for the first time. That was only about 10,000 years ago, and it includes patriarchy, as well as chattel slavery.
I think it’s important because it shows that those things are not actually intrinsic to human nature. Oftentimes, people who don’t have this perspective will get that conflated, and they’ll say, “Well, it’s human nature to do this and that.” Actually, it’s not. It’s only human nature as a particular response to a particular way of living.
Kosmos | Fascinating, because when you look at the challenges of our time, it is helpful to look back and ask: where, precisely, did we go wrong? Where did our thinking get sidetracked? Take economic disparity—it became part of the dominant culture somewhere along the way. When exactly did that become OK?
Jeremy | Well, again, it’s really correlated with the rise of agriculture. And the reason for that is that if you’re a nomadic hunter-gatherer band, there’s no value in possessing a whole lot of stuff. In fact, it becomes a negative because you’ve got to carry it around with you. But as soon as you begin to settle, these differences, these inequalities, emerge. If a farmer gets lucky or works a bit harder and manages to make more produce, all of a sudden he’ll put fences up around his property, and then he might employ somebody else who wasn’t so lucky in the field next to him, so these inequalities arise.
The very notion of wealth itself becomes something to value, and that’s what leads to a ratchet effect, because the more powerful certain groups become, the more they’re able to go and conquer or steal the possessions of another group close by them. And so chieftains begin to emerge, and slowly these hierarchies begin to arise. Along with that, came a new worldview. If the hunter-gatherers viewed nature as ‘giving parents,’ the new worldview with agrarian civilization was really about a ‘hierarchy of the gods.’
People saw hierarchies around them—when the Big Chief came to visit, you’d prostrate yourself and tell him how wonderful he was, hoping that he wouldn’t take your possessions away. They viewed the gods in the same way. You’d have priests who could mediate your relationship with them, and you’d start to sacrifice to the gods and pray to them and tell them how wonderful they were, too.
They were taking the patterns of behavior they saw in their lives around them and applying it to these divine hierarchies. And then this ratcheting effect kept going, so these chieftainships became bigger and bigger, and then they became empires. And so this incredible inequality—this wealth inequality—started thousands and thousands of years ago. But it did reach a certain stable equilibrium, because the people at the top could only have so much wealth. They might want to build pyramids or other massive undertakings so they could feel that sense of status—almost divine. Yet, there was still a certain limit in how much more wealth they could enjoy than the other people around them. That changed once again with another ratcheting effect—the scientific revolution and the rise in European power around the 17th century.
That led to a whole different layer of exploitation where the European way of thinking and institutionalized racism—the sense of white supremacy—in just a few hundred years took over the world and became the dominant worldview that we’ve inherited today.
Kosmos | You devote a lot in the book to that period. So, we dragged all our baggage with us into the idea of nature as something to exploit and tame, and you contrast that with what was going on in the East—ways of thinking about the universe. Two very different models. Can you just lay that out for us a little bit?
Jeremy | Yes, sure. And that’s one of the things I try to focus on in The Patterning Instinct, because usually in the West, we’re given world histories and they really are just histories of European thought. They don’t incorporate what else has been going on in the world.
Before I say anything more about it, just like you were saying about the tendency to idealize hunter-gatherer and tribal cultures at times, I also want to make sure that we don’t idealize the East Asian way of thinking.
It was also very patriarchal and hierarchical, and based a lot on empire. So, once again, I don’t want to give the sense that, “oh, we should go back or we should transmute our way of thinking to that way of thinking.” But there was a way of thinking in East Asia that was fundamentally different from how we think in the West. We can learn much from it now, I believe, and that’s what’s so exciting. What arose in East Asia was a further development of that sense of connectedness that the hunter-gatherers had. There was never a clean split in East Asian thinking from hunter-gatherer ways of thinking. Instead, it developed into a very sophisticated cosmology of interconnectedness, which I describe in the book as using this new core metaphor of nature as being a harmonic ‘web of life.’
In traditional Chinese thought, when people looked at the ways in which everything was interconnected, they sensed everything was always changing. And the goal of humans was not to try to conquer nature, but rather to be part of nature, to harmonize with nature. Think about how you might be in the forest and see a spider’s web connected to a branch or something like that, and you know that just a little leaf falling on it or a drop of water will cause that web to reverberate. All the different parts of it resonate through one small action. The Chinese understood human activity in the same way—that everything you did had reverberations through Heaven and Earth—which led them to a sense of reverence.
The Tao Te Ching talks about how humans should act like reverent guests of nature. And that’s a sense that was lost in the Western way of thinking, which saw humans as being fundamentally separate from nature and conquering nature and seeing nature as a machine, which was unthinkable from an East Asian perspective.
Kosmos | The separation between self and nature obviously has played out in the Western worldview in all the ways we have colonized, extracted, and tried to bring nature under our control, and commoditized everything, right up to where we are today. But look at what’s happening in Hong Kong right now and the rise of populism all around the world. What does this say about our worldview today?
Jeremy | Yes, I do think there is now a globalized, dominant worldview. One of the things that I explore a bit in this book is the ways in which worldviews change. They can be incredibly stable and last for millennia, from one generation to the next. But when there is a major transformational shift in power, the old worldview can change dramatically and quickly.
As a result of the European conquest of the rest of the world, there is now this dominant global worldview, a reductionist worldview that’s based on seeing nature as a machine, and not questioning the idea that the whole world is there for humans to dominate. And that’s where, I think, it’s so important for us to realize there are other ways of making sense of things.
It’s a mistake to think that the current way in which we hold values, and how we assume the world works, is the universal way of human nature. It’s actually just one particular form of making sense of things that simply became dominant because it led to the development of powerful technologies.
We’re looking at this incredibly precarious place where we seem to be heading at an accelerated pace—toward the potential collapse of our global civilization—because of these imbalances that we’ve created, and ultimately because of the dominant worldview. But we also have, for the first time in human history, an opportunity to learn from other cultures and to incorporate—not go back to being hunter-gatherers or go back to some sort of idealized Chinese golden age—but to incorporate some of the insights that those different cultural complexes had about the universe. And actually make that part of a transformed worldview that could potentially lead us to steer away from the collapse that we seem to be headed toward right now.
Kosmos | Transcend and include. I think you can say that about all of modernity, right? That you can’t just throw it out with the bathwater. It’s given us many breakthroughs in science and in medicine, and understanding the universe and the body, and human rights. There’s a lot of good that has come out of scientific rationalism, let’s say, but now we know that we’ve run up against its boundaries in terms of resources and how we cooperate with nature and each other. It’s time for another great shift, as you say, to an ecological civilization. Do you feel such a shift is inevitable? Or, left to our own devices, will humans rush headlong off the cliff?
Jeremy | I tell you, these are the big questions that I think anyone looking at the world today is asking or should be asking. Well, the first thing I really want to emphasize is that there’s nothing inevitable about the direction we’re going to take. There are some people who put patterns on history, and there’s no question that if you just look at life in general over billions of years, there is a seemingly inexorable move toward increased complexity. Even that is not absolutely inevitable, but it does seem to be a pattern. I think the one thing we can really be sure about in terms of where we are this century is that we are undergoing one of the great transformations in human history.
It’s the same way that the transformation from hunter-gatherers to agrarian civilization occurred, and the same way we saw this transformation with the scientific revolution. It’s a transformation that affects virtually all humans on Earth, and almost every aspect of life, and all the ways in which we make sense of things. So, the big question, and I think what none of us can actually know is: which direction is this great transformation going to take?
In my book, in the last chapter, I look at these potential trajectories to our future—summarizing some of the really deep thinkers who have looked at this—and there seem to be three different trajectories that could take place:
One of those is clearly collapse, and that’s something that increasingly alarms a lot of people who are awake to what’s going on. All we need to do to see that we could be headed toward that collapse is to look at climate breakdown and the fact that right now we’re heading toward a world which, according to thousands of scientists, is simply not commensurate with continued civilization. And even if you were to somehow magically fix the climate issue without changing some of the underlying fundamentals, we’d still be headed toward that kind of collapse because of the massive destruction of the life support system of Earth itself—whether deforestation, species loss, or the vast destruction of marine life. By mid-century, there’ll actually be more plastic than fish in the ocean.
Incredible statistics that just make the mind boggle. In each place we look, that’s going on. It’s very easy and straightforward to draw these lines a little bit further forward and see collapse as a trajectory.
There’s another trajectory, which people don’t talk about enough, but I think, honestly, is one of the reasons why those who are in power right now aren’t doing the things that we all feel they should be doing to respond to this crisis. It’s one that I call that the techno-split trajectory. Look at these incredible inequalities, these economic inequities that we see right now in the world. And imagine them deepening even further over the next few decades, along with technologies of genetic enhancement, access to clean water and food, and access to the internet and AI, then you see where we could end up.
Right now, if you look at certain pockets of society like Silicon Valley—close to where I live—there are people who don’t think about collapse at all, they just get so excited by these possibilities of what technology can offer. This can lead to the techno-split scenario, where the vast majority of humans do suffer the absolute devastation of collapse and climate breakdown and their societies falling apart, but a small minority, maybe as many as a billion people—I’m not talking about just the one percent, I’m talking about people who are living affluent lives right now—get increasingly separated into fortress communities, and live lives where they are not as profoundly affected by the devastation. One observer compared it to people having a gilded lifeboat and kicking everyone else off the lifeboat so they could just enjoy their life of luxury.
If this scenario occurred, it would the greatest moral crime that humanity has ever committed. But I think people conveniently don’t think about that. In the affluent world, we go along with our lives, we look at these breakdowns taking place elsewhere, and there’s this is kind of quiet sense of satisfaction: “Well, we’ll be okay. We need to look after ourselves. We need to develop our local resilience.” But we are an interconnected human race, and we must recognize that all other humans—according to the Declaration of Human Rights of the UN—all humans have the right to a life of dignity, to enough food to live, to education, to enjoy a full human life. We are absolutely at risk of destroying that fundamental moral precept the way we’re going. So that’s a second scenario that I think we need to be more aware of.
But then there is this third scenario, which is what would it look like if we could actually transform the values that our modern society is based on and create a world that is regenerative—one which does allow for human flourishing on an Earth where life itself can be allowed to flourish. Some people, looking at the way things are going right now, might view that as just pie in the sky. The thing that’s amazing about it, is that it’s what most of us as human beings want. So we have to ask ourselves: what is it that’s stopping us, as humans, from living the life we actually want? A life with community, a life filled with our own sense of quality, a life filled with connection with nature. I think that there are enough people waking up and recognizing that something is going very, very wrong in the world right now.
If we can tell the story of this flourishing life with more clarity, and look at what deeply needs to be rethought in order to get to that life, there’s a possibility of seeing a transformation in culture and economics that could allow us to get there.
Kosmos | Thank you for laying out those three visions of possible futures for us, Jeremy. The second one is more frightening than the first.
Jeremy | In many ways, yes.
Kosmos | Looking at the first one, when we talk about collapse, I think even that word really has to be unpacked. What do we mean by ‘collapse’? Evolutionarily speaking, that’s been the story of human history—the rise and fall of civilizations. Nothing lasts forever, right?
Jeremy | It’s completely true. That’s right.
Kosmos | But the second scenario is more nightmarish because it’s almost like, “this was the test and we failed,” utterly. Humans have this opportunity to create heaven here on Earth, and instead we create a hell for all of us.
The third one, of course, is a Kosmos perspective we’ve been talking about for more than two decades—the rising global transformation. That everywhere you look, you see consciousness on the rise. People waking up from separation, from I to We, to All. The irony is, for that to happen on a global scale, it almost seems like the entire Earth community needs to face the dark night of the soul, like the one you faced before writing this book—and then it may be too late!
Jeremy | Yes. It’s very easy to fall into despair. If we had plenty of time for a deep cultural transformation to happen, like a few centuries, we could all say, “Okay, we’re moving in that way.” And so we could feel hope about that. But then when we look at the urgency of what needs to be done, we know that we need to be making these profound shifts, basically, right now. We have maybe a decade or two at most to make these things happen, and then it feels hopeless, which leads many to get to a place of deep despair and talk about the inevitability of some kind of collapse.
I draw a sense of … I don’t want to say the word “hope,” because I think that word becomes so controversial and gets misused. I draw a sense more like feeling into the mystery of where we’re headed as human beings and where the Earth is headed, and a recognition of the nonlinear aspects of change. In human society right now, it’s not only things like the economy, the material stuff, that nobody can predict. There’s also a whole cognitive shift taking place that no one can predict.
When we start to look at that, one thing we do know is pretty much any complex system, whether it’s a single cell or an ecosystem or human society, goes through four phases that ecologists have recognized. One of them is a conservation mode where things stay relatively continuous until they enter a release phase, when things start to unravel. That’s really where change starts happening at a much more rapid pace. Some of these shifts in cultural thinking that, as you say, Kosmos has been leading the way in thinking about.
But as things unravel, with each new catastrophe that takes place, more and more people of younger generations grow up saying, “We’re not going to accept this anymore.” A great place to look, of course, is the incredible impact that Greta Thunberg has had and the school children’s climate strikes across the world, where in a very short time you see millions of school kids around the world saying, “We don’t accept this.” Each wave of younger folk grow up becoming more aware of what’s going on; they look at the unraveling and they reject the mainstream worldview that they see is not working anymore. And that’s where I feel that those of us who’ve spent years exploring different ways of thinking have an amazing opportunity and responsibility to offer to younger generations a coherent way of making sense of the world—one that rejects what is wrong about the old reductionist way, and yet offers something that can be truly be life affirming, rather than life destroying—which is what our civilization is currently doing.
Kosmos | I think that’s the fourth scenario—a combination of the three before it. There’s going to be severe disruption. There’s going to be a split in terms of those with economic means to survive the disruption and those without the means to survive it. And that’s going to lead to increasingly vivid moral choices. There’s going to be so many challenges on so many levels, and yet, at the same time, there will also be the great awakening and blossoming of new ideas. We have the opportunity to prototype the kinds of future that may still be possible.
There have been times in human history, as you well know, where the human species has been radically diminished, and maybe just 10,000 individuals survived who carried the flame forward. We may face such catastrophe again, and whether I survive or my loved ones is not the point at all. Rather, if we believe in Life and if we can affirm Life, then we don’t need to be fixated on a particular outcome. We can awaken now and we can create heaven on Earth now—in our own being, in our families, and in our communities—and cultivate a legacy of wakefulness for those who come later. That’s helpful.
Jeremy | Yeah, I just couldn’t agree more. The words that come to my mind, I think it was Otto Scharmer who said we have an opportunity to live into the emerging future. We’re not spectators looking from outer space and saying, “Oh, I think it’s going to collapse.” Or, “I think it’s going to do this or that.” We are a part of whatever takes place. And so the choices each of us makes, and the values that we live according to, become part of that future.
We each have a responsibility to carefully assess our own values. If there is a kind of a future that we want to see, we can live that future now. To exactly your point, it’s not just what we’re doing for ourselves and our community, but we’re sowing the seeds for what may come after us.
There’s a wonderful quote by William Gibson, the comedian: “The future is already here, it’s just not very well distributed.” And that’s consistent with your sense of the fourth scenario. Really, all three of those future scenarios are already taking place. We’re already seeing an incredible divide between the haves and have nots. We’re already seeing collapse in different parts of the world, such as the Central African Republic or Syria. We’re seeing pockets of people choosing to live life according to the concept of an ecological civilization—where we’re actually living by the principles of how Life itself evolved and developed with resilience and strong ecologies.
We have those options, and I think that one of the most important things for people to remember is that each of us is part of that emerging future. We’re not separate spectators. We’re all part of this interconnected web of life and meaning.
Kosmos | Well, if what you say in the book, quoting George Lakoff, is true, that “new metaphors have the power to create a new reality,” then I think that is exactly the metaphor, as you just stated—the interconnected Web of Life—that we need to live into. I thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us today. Just wonderful and really helpful insights. I hope that your next book comes out soon, because I’ll be the first one in line for it. Did you want to say anything about that, Jeremy?
Jeremy | Thanks Rhonda. Essentially, the book I’m working on looks at the underlying foundation for the new worldview that could replace the current destructive one. In a way, it’s a sequel to The Patterning Instinct. If The Patterning Instinct looked at the history of worldviews up to the present, this next book looks at the potential worldview that could lead to sustainable flourishing. The book is called, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe.
Modern science in the last few decades, whether it’s cognitive science, evolutionary biology, or systems thinking has shown how the old reductionist science of separation is wrong in many ways, and looks at the world based on the ways in which things connect. This new book shows how the modern scientific way of thinking is fully consistent with the great insights we’ve received from traditional wisdom—from indigenous wisdom, Buddhist wisdom, and from Taoist and other East Asian ideas.
All of these different insights are really lenses into the same underlying reality of our true interconnectedness. It offers, really, a foundation for the new story that we’re all looking for, that we know we need if we’re going to move into a flourishing future.
Kosmos | A truly integral worldview for a new era of interbeing. Jeremy, thank you for your clarity and your bodhicitta and your hopefulness as we all prepare for the profound changes to come.
Jeremy | Thank you, Rhonda. It was great talking with you. I so appreciate it.
Global Social Witnessing
Global Social Witnessing
You swipe through your favourite news site while sitting in a train, and you enter the typical bombardment of information—“four degrees climate change temperature rise possible,” “rainforest burning,” “Iran-US-tension on the rise,” “East Germany soon run by right-wing populists?” Can you feel the contraction of your chest, the narrowing down of your attention, the closing of your heart? What if there was a reset button? What if we could take another breath before re-entering the Anthropocene?
Almost unnoticed, there is a new movement being born. Young people in Generation Z are waking up. They are aware that change will take more than just politics; it will take a shift of mind and consciousness. And they are equipped with the most powerful technology ever in human history. What if we press the reset button, and free our minds from an overload of information, of unnoticed negative emotional charge, or apathy? What if we decolonize our attention and start to simply witness?
We are all aware that the challenges the world is facing today—with even more tomorrow—such as climate change, scarcity of resources, social-systemic injustice, and migration, call upon the human ability to co-create solutions on a global level, while being aware of local realities. However, it is questionable whether our collective levels of awareness and collaboration measure up to the complexities we are facing globally. Rather, we seem to be ill-prepared for complex solutions. The tough question seems to be: how do we move fluidly from the personal to the global without being trapped in abstract charts and lofty globalist theories, but rather in an embodied experience of the world process as it unfolds? As educated students and professionals in academia, we often consider ourselves to be global citizens who hold a more complex view of things than on average. But, is this true? We may identify ourselves as ‘global citizens’ cognitively, but do we embody it? Are we aware of our own subconscious biases and ideologies? How can global citizenship become a practice, rather than an identity?
Why Practice Global Citizenship?
Evolutionary biologists and developmental psychologists have found that, generally speaking, humans develop through a sequence of stages, both individually and collectively, toward greater inclusion and complexity. These stages progress from survival-focused, egocentric stages, through ethnocentric, toward more cosmopolitan ways of sense making and acting in the world. This means, very simply, that even though every human citizen is born on the globe, no one is born as a global citizen; i.e., no one comes to life considering the wellbeing of all. Thus, this is an acquired stage, one that requires a ‘holding’ environment created through education, life experience, self-awareness, and dialogic skills, based on deep listening and exposure to various learning communities. This will very likely look quite different, depending on the geographical and cultural context.
The Awareness-side of Global Issues
“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
– Gus Speth, US advisor on climate change[1]
This quote has gone viral as a Facebook meme for some time. It illustrates what the scholars and practitioners of systems change and institutional or organizational development have been pointing out for many decades: the root causes of systemic issues often lie on the level of ‘mental models,’ ‘the interior condition of the intervener,’ or the ‘quality of attention and dialogue.’ It has become commonplace even among tech giants to fear the dangers of humanity’s technological advancement. Thus, global activists, like Nicanor Perlas from the Philippines, stress the importance of moral and spiritual evolution to measure up to our technological possibilities.[2]
The Neuroplasticity of Global Politics: How Do We Practice It?
The good news is that we humans are equipped with a brain that learns. Neuroplasticity has shown that the capacity for compassion and empathy, for instance, can be deliberately practiced and even result in the growth of cortical thickness in respective brain areas.[3] At least we know now that humans can, indeed, systematically change their ‘interior condition.’ Such brain changes, however, do not result from the way we usually engage our mind, e.g., in reading the news, obsessive consumption, fear-driven control, or worse, apathy and dissociation. These will not result in an increase in compassion, or the progression toward a more complex and integrated sense-making. What is required is deliberate, mindful, and embodied awareness, while engaging with the world events at hand. Social cognition, the ‘inner place’ from which humans relate to others, comes in varied forms. While we can only empathically relate to a limited number of friends in our tribe or in-group, our cognitive perspective-taking and compassion skills can be stretched to include those former ‘out-group’ members who are very different from us.
Global Social Witnessing
To briefly summarize our current predicament: (a) we live in a highly-interconnected world; (b) current and forthcoming major challenges can only be solved globally; (c) for chances of human survival to increase, a number of competencies, including the development of awareness and a global identity, need to better match the level of complexity we actually engage in; and (d) practice can actually develop these competencies, as suggested by neuroscience. This leads us to the proposition of Global Social Witnessing (GSW) as an awareness-based practice of global citizenship. To quote Gus Speth’s words, lets learn “how to do that.” This practice should not be read as a recipe to save the planet; nor do we claim to know exactly what this practice ‘should’ look like. This will very likely change depending on place, time, historic context, and culture. But, we do believe that GSW is very worthwhile, if considered as a missing piece in our understanding and practice of global responsibility. The inspiration for this comes from both ancient traditions and modern-day teachers of consciousness development.
What is GSW?
‘Global’ refers to large-scale events and processes affecting large numbers of people or the planet as a whole.
‘Social’ refers to the fact of interrelatedness of humanity.
‘Witnessing’ points to the capacity of fully attending to, and testifying to, critical events.
GSW, then, is at its core the emergent human capacity to mindfully attend to global events with an embodied awareness, thereby creating an ‘inner world space’ mirroring these events.[4]
How Does GSW Work?
As a practice of contemplative social cognition, GSW involves a sequence of micro-actions: a conscious choice to pay attention to world events, to allow oneself to be affected by them, to become aware of phenomenal impressions on various levels (mental, emotional, somatic, relational), to attentively remain with these impressions, and their unfoldment within one’s awareness.
Group Practice
GSW can be practiced individually or by a collective entity. The potential collective practices are two-fold. First, they are initiated through a shared intention of the collective, while a particular global event is mirrored simultaneously within each individual member. Secondly, the collective entity’s social field mirrors the complex systemic dynamics of the given global event, and its potential unfolding. In this way, the various elements of that event are represented by group members. Examples of this second type of practice are Social Presencing Theatre and Systemic Constellation Work.
Impact of Social Presencing Theater
What’s the Outcome?
Attempts to address threatening global events like climate change have been found to lead to feelings of apathy, fear, or overwhelm in both individuals and groups. As a consequence of these negative effects, such topics are largely avoided or repressed.[5] GSW counteracts this avoidance as a therapy for these social pathologies through deliberate self- and world-awareness and engaged participation that fosters the re-establishment of formerly broken systemic feedback loops.
As mentioned earlier, generation Z is, in particular, aware of and confronted with the complex contradictions of the interconnected, interdependent systems in our world. An essential capacity for future education to provide is to help students practice a global identity in order to respond mindfully and compassionately to the issues at stake, rather than just feeling overwhelmed by their magnitude and complexity. Confrontation with real world issues, and the struggle to solve them, becomes the true site of learning. In this context, GSW is an educational practice to help establish a cognitive and affective foundation for global citizenship.
This original essay was first published on 3rd Space. It appears here with permission.
Notes
1. Gus Speth, Practicing Sustainability, ed. Guruprasad Madhavan et al. (New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2012).
2. Nicanor Perlas, Humanity’s Last Stand: The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence – A Spiritual-Scientific Response (Forest Row, UK: Temple Lodge Publishing, 2018.
3. Sofie L.Valk et al., “Structural plasticity of the social brain: Differential change after socio-affective and cognitive mental training,” Science Advances 3.10 (2017): e1700489.
4. Kazuma Matoba, “The refugee crisis as a test of our collective conscience: Global perspective taking and witnessing” (paper presented at Innovative and Transformational Ideas to Improve the Development and Policy Response to Forced Displacement, Virginia Tech, VA, June 7, 2019), available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334138539 The refugee crisis as a test of our collective conscience Global perspective taking and witnessing
5. Joanna Macy, “Working Through Environmental Despair,” Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind 2, ed. Theodore Roszak et al. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Press, 1995), 40–259.
Freedom to Make Music
Freedom to Make Music
The Pros and Cons Program in Canada mentors people who are incarcerated in a music program that focuses on rehabilitation and restorative justice. The program was founded by Hugh Christopher Brown. He and the incarcerated individuals write, arrange, and record songs entirely within the confines of the prison walls. All music from the program is given freely and anonymously and is downloadable from their website. It is the wish of everyone involved that any monies be directed to three extremely worthy charities listed on their website. Chris Brown spoke to Kosmos about the Pros and Cons Program inception, ethos, recent developments, and plans for the future.
“This civilization has to take responsibility for itself beyond warehousing human beings, and beyond just our acceptance of collective punishment. I’m offering a microphone and something else…” —Hugh Christopher Brown
Kari Auerbach | As founder of Pros and Cons, can you tell me a little bit about the events or the journey that led up to the founding of this program?
Chris Brown | Yes, I started a music studio up on Wolfe Island, which is across the St. Lawrence River from the mainland of Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Kingston is the prison capital of Canada; there are seven prisons there. Everybody in that area is connected to the prison in some way, and one of the deep ways was by the agricultural program, a 200-year-old farming program inside the prisons where they grew food for the food bank and for other institutions. The inmates learned farm skills and animal care, and they developed close relationships with the animals. Then, Stephen Harper’s government decided to destroy that program, which had a 0.1% recidivism rate, meaning if you went through that program, you were less likely to re-offend. So, why destroy a successful program? A lot of my friends who are farmers were getting arrested during the protests. I remember a few of my farmer friends saying, “Chris, you go sing about it.” I thought, “Well, I just need to get inside and do something positive.” I play music, so I just started going inside and playing music.
Kari | What does social justice mean to you? Can you recall the birth of social justice in your music, or is it just an ingrained symbiosis?
Chris | When I was 15 years old, Gil Scott-Heron played in Toronto and I had a great epiphany watching him talk so eloquently about the social temperature of the day. His singing and his social engagement were one and the same. I realized that music has always been about expressing the human condition. Beethoven has a whole symphony set in a prison. What we now know as protest songs are just songs of people’s lives. Secondly, it’s the aspect of ceremony. I grew up Catholic, which has many tiers to it, but certainly music was always ritualized for me as a kid—adding music to the fold of an effort, whether to ease people’s lives or to raise money for a certain cause.
Kari | Tell me about the music sessions you do with people in prisons—how much do you lead or guide? How collaborative are the sessions?
photo: © 2014 Kristen Ritchie
Chris | It’s ever-evolving. The first time I was in there, I just took a guitar… and I was terrified. I’d never been in a prison before, and there were 17 chairs in a semicircle with one in the middle that I was supposed to sit in. I just sat in it and sang a couple of songs. Then I said, “Does anybody know a song?” and they sang to me. A couple of them indicated they were in the chapel choir and they sang a hymn I happened to know, so I went over and sat at the organ and accompanied them. Before you knew it, two hours had passed, because we just started exchanging songs. That was the first day.
The following week, a whole bunch of guys brought notebooks with writing in them. There were songs, poems, and journals. We started talking about writing and right about then, I was asked to do a recording for charity, a symphony or anything of my choosing, so I said, “I want to use inmates,” and I got permission. That was the first recording that we did, their version of my song “Oblivion.” By then I could see everybody was really interested in the process of recording. We ended up making a whole record, and over the course of that, we had to bring the gear in every week, set it up and tear it down. Everyone involved became very acquainted with the technical aspects of engineering. These days, we’ve won the right to build studios in the institutions for the recording equipment, computers, and instruments because that way they’re not dependent on me being there. It’s been working generationally because prison is a very transient place. People are moved from one institution to the other, guards and corrections officers are shifted around continuously, and yet this program has grown by shared knowledge. In the first institution where we started, it’s estimated that there’s been over a thousand people who’ve come through the program. We’re on, I’d say generation four or five of the group, the information gets shared and passed down so that now—as you can hear—the production value is exponentially better. Essentially, what I do now is to come in and listen to what they’re doing and make my comments. Occasionally there’s something that needs to be pulled together, and I also supply the gear. I’m bringing in new instruments every week when I come.
Selah
Oblivion
Kari | Maybe, if inmates would think of themselves as a singer, as a producer, as a recording engineer, then it eclipses what got them there and gives them a place to move on from, which is so important. The engineering and technical aspect is great because that is another set of skills for when they get out.
Chris | Absolutely.
Kari | I want to know how the songs get chosen. You mentioned that they’re writing more and more.
Chris | The way it works is different for each institution actually. In the women’s institution, Grand Valley, John Copping just finished the second record. He works one-on-one with people who bring their songs to him. John Copping is a great artist, songwriter, producer, who started a wonderful music program called Black Ball serving youth in the Toronto area. In Joyce, there are over 50 participants and it’s about them sorting out with each other when they get to use the gear. They’ll go in individually for a couple of hours at a time and work on their own songs and then they’ll ask each other to collaborate. Then there is Collins Bay, where we’ve just started up. One of the graduates is getting folks who were recently incarcerated back in to be able to mentor because that’s a very important step.
Kari | Nice! I wanted to ask you how the program has evolved since it started. Material-wise and methodology too, it seems it has evolved. Can you think of any other ways?
Chris | The music has gone around the globe, and it’s raised the money for a number of causes, you can see the consequence of people’s personal actions inside writing and playing. They can feel this echo from it that’s very positive. A man serving a life sentence said to me the other day that when he was working, “The afternoon went by like a shot,” because you’re pouring yourself into something meaningful. That evolution of folks developing a means of utilizing their life energy towards their own betterment, which then raises a positive societal impact, is a really important formula.
My own evolution has been a continual education in terms of boundaries and the implications of the work. I create a contract in a sense with people I’m working with. I don’t want to know what they’ve done unless they want to tell me. I don’t need to know what they’ve done because that’s already been settled. They’ve been tried and convicted and they’re serving their time. I’m offering a microphone and something else.
Kari | I think a very important and beautiful aspect of the way you work is just meeting people where they are and elevating their skills, working, collaborating and moving on from there.
Chris | When they begin to feel right about that, invariably they want to talk to me about what their crimes are. At that point, we’ve passed that crime being an identity. It’s an aspect of their lives, and I think that’s a more advantageous angle for comprehending it and taking responsibility for it. What’s interesting now is that people are getting out and are choosing whether or not they want to be publicly engaged with the music and the work. If they do, then they’re talking about their crimes, often publicly, which is a huge step. That’s really owning something. All of this has to be done with supreme sensitivity, foremost to victims, and then to these folks who’ve gone through very intense events in their lives. For them to step out of the fray and say, “Yes, I’ve done this and here’s what the impacts are on other people’s lives and my own.” It’s restorative justice. This is always an evolution. It will always be dynamic and case sensitive.
Video
TedX Talk
Kari | What have been some of the transformational aspects of the program for you, for the participants, and for the institutions?
Chris | It’s given me incredible compassion and wonder at some of these corrections officials who I work with who are sainted, though not all of them. I’ve said to corrections officials, “There are former offenders that I wouldn’t want to hang out with, there are corrections officials, I wouldn’t want to hang out with.” And the officials agreed. It’s an incredibly intense position and I admire the dedication. A lot of people you meet working in corrections and in the justice world have themselves experienced victimhood or violence in their family and have decided to make a difference in the world.
Kari | And the prison chaplain…
Chris | Yes, Kate Johnson, who initially got me in there. She was very instrumental in getting this started. A real scion of restorative justice, who has given me great education and insight, and who I sometimes turn to still. I have deep respect for the folks I see working within a system and doing so compassionately, bravely, and sticking their necks out to make differences without being bureaucratic. When you have a population that has zero advocacy, guess what? You can sit on your hands all day, and for those who choose not to, it’s amazing.
Kari | Are the various institutions generally supportive of the Pros and Cons Program?
Chris | Well, yes, because we’re creating a more loving and cooperative population. Relationships are developing among people in prisons, where normally isolation and threat are the norm. It’s providing programming and psychological services that were totally slashed under the conservative governments. It really is about your intention. We developed these justice systems and then some dude thinks, “Hey, great, I can make money off that!” Our former prime minister stood behind a podium that said, “Victims first,” as he was announcing these mandatory minimums for marijuana use. Just who is the victim? Depends on your definition of victim! Speaking as a Caucasian male myself, it really is a favorite stance of Caucasian males who don’t think they’re getting what they were born to get, and it’s a degradation of our own personage, it’s a degradation of masculinity, of culture, of everything. For instance, it’s why I see some politicians do not want an Aboriginal person in the room because it takes the light off of their victim status. They didn’t want a woman around for the same reason. Again, this ties back to the beginning in terms of what inmates or people who’ve done bad things are used for. They’re used to rationalize that kind of antisocial behavior. We have to start calling it out, because it’s ruinous.
Artwork by Inmates | (anonymous by request)
Courtesy Pros and Cons Program, click to enlarge
Kari | From the work you’ve done with former offenders, what do you think are some of the common misconceptions that myself or others on the outside might have about who these people are?
Chris | It’s funny, because immediately I go to the way prison is marketed. As a musician, I’ve seen the way record companies a decade ago or more, got involved with the prison system in America for the sake of marketing urban music, and it’s heinous. The history is there—the way that it’s marketed in terms of who survived prison and they’re street and they’re tough. Here we are on the outside now and we can look at them and kind of be scared of them and be titillated. One of the people serving a life sentence that I work with is writing a rap called, “You’re working too hard. Don’t be a fraud” which is all about that. The people serving life sentences are kind of like the elders in prison. I’m thankful for people that get out of prison and have a job of any kind, but that romantic, I’ll call it a ‘ghettoization’ of incarceration, is not working. It’s not serving people. I watch the patience, the camaraderie. If you’re really going to survive it, Malcolm X is a great example of someone who taught himself to read and who educated himself in prison, and that’s repeated millions of times! That’s really what it’s about. Yeah, you have to know how to defend yourself but, the principal way to defend yourself is by knowing who you are and not being seduced into pettiness. You can fight over a dime in prison literally. Small things are worth so much in there. Or, you can choose to do something else, and the music is helping. I know it is. A participant’s mother said to me, “You’re saving my son’s life.” and I said, “No, your son’s saving his own life. I’m very happy to take part in that. It’s his own decisions and his own courage.” These are people, it’s a population, and it’s a facet of our society that is kept separate for many reasons—genuine fear, but also laziness and exploitation. Some say that where we’ve had civilization, we’ve had crime. Well, where we’ve had crime, we’ve had sweat lodges, we’ve had restorative justice.
Kari | What is the prevalence of mental health issues among people who are incarcerated?
Chris | Eighty percent are suffering from some form of mental illness. And those are just the ones who are diagnosed. The convictions are just punctuation marks on a sentence that has been running for a long time. It ties back into the outside in terms of opportunity, education, and child welfare, primarily. We know how people look demographically at data and say, “This population doesn’t have enough men raising children.” Okay, why?
Kendrick Lamar said something really great a couple of years ago in a Rolling Stone interview. When asked why he thought he had escaped going to prison like so many of his peers had, he said, “Because I had a father in my life and having a man around, it helps you deal with emotions.” That’s a very deep statement. We don’t all have fathers around for all kinds of reasons, cultural and otherwise. We have to figure out how we attend to that. What is taking the place of the father? Well, in prison you find it, in mob society you find it… these things replace family. If you stigmatize and separate, if you do this political thing, all it’s doing is running people to these alternate systems that eventually become confrontational with one another and themselves.
Delicate Love
LINKS
https://prosandconsprogram.com/
https://prosandconsprogram.com/postcards/ – Listen Download – Album ‘Postcards From The County’
https://prosandconsprogram.com/undisclosed-location/ – Listen, Download – Album ‘Undisclosed Location’
Kari | You’ve made another very important point there, about that need to belong and the systems we may or may not have that address that need. Thank you, now can you tell us a little bit about how the program has grown and what is on the horizon for and from the Pros and Cons program?
Chris | We are about to receive charitable status, meaning we’ll be able to issue tax receipts, which is amazing For the past three years, we’ve been generously supported by the David Rockefeller Fund, which is a wonderful restorative justice fund. They’ve really allowed us to grow and prosper to the point where we’re now in three institutions. We have others with their doors open to us. I just need to clone myself, or we get charitable status, we get money in, and I’m able to employ more people. Currently, I employ folks when they get out of prison to help with the work, and we need to hire lawyers and other staff.
Musically, there’s a second women’s record that was just finished, due out in the coming months. We have over 150 songs from the first institution, which I think we’re going to release as an album per month over the course of a year. We have a couple of new institutions on the rise and, as I said, we’re creating these open-source materials so that anybody can emulate them around the world. Increasingly too, the people who come through the program are able to speak to these matters and we’re getting to a place where they can do interviews and speaking engagements. As I said to them, they’re the experts. They’re the ones who can come inside and help. They’re the ones who can speak to the outside and start really taking those walls down.
Kari | And this provides a wonderful opportunity for someone who might otherwise struggle to find employment due to their record.
Chris | That’s exactly what I’m doing currently, out of my own means. Once we are a charity, we’ll be able to do that in a much broader way.
Kari | Good. Well, if anybody is reading that’s in Canada and wants to help…
Chris | Yes. They can contact us through the website prosandconsprogram.com. We have methods of accepting donations. Donated instruments are great. They can also donate right there on the site to our chosen charities, Candace House, which is a really amazing charity started and run by Wilma Derksen in Winnipeg.
Kari | Can people donate skills, like pro bono lawyers?
Chris | Yes.
Kari | Great! Well, it’s been wonderful talking to you about this awesome program. Thank you so much, Chris!
Chris | You too.
Healing the Wounded Mind
Healing the Wounded Mind
Images | Gerd Altmann
The Future Now
We are on the cusp of a different world coming into being, and at its centre shall be the human heart and soul. There can be no genuine, lasting future if it is based solely on the exterior life—it must be driven by the values that come from the interior of the human being.
Our technologies have given us the means to communicate across the globe in every moment—yet they have not taught us how to cultivate intuitive thought. Our smart machines and artificial intelligences may continue to advance the means of communication, yet the responsibility is on us to supply the meaningful conversation. As philosopher-mystic Paul Brunton said,
“A change in thinking is the first way to ensure a change in the world’s condition. In changing himself, man [sic] takes the first step to changing his environment and in changing his environment he takes the second step towards changing himself. For the first step of self-change must be a mental, not a physical one.”[1]
If our attention is focused externally upon the objects of our experience rather than the consciousness of the experience, then our minds will exist in separation. So, too, will our place in the world feel one of separation.
The ‘future now’ requires of us that we recognize unity over division. Much of what we witness in the world today are these divisions, dualisms, and conflicts that keep the game of life in play. The dualisms and the distinctions—such as good and bad, and ‘I’m right but you are wrong’—are not essentials (although we often mistake them to be). The world is full of angels and devils (to use a worn analogy), where the angels are winning but have not yet won, and the devils are losing but have not yet lost. And so, the constant interplay keeps the game active and dynamic, and not static. Yet we often lose ourselves by becoming attached only to these secondary aspects and missing the unity that underlies all. When we adhere to definitions or labels, then we have already created a boundary. By labelling, we are creating categories and comparisons that, by their nature, limit us. True things are beyond such defining categorizations. Truth is not a relative position—only human truths are. No wonder so many sages and prophets spoke in parables and riddles. It is the most useful mechanism to deliver the unspeakable.
If we ascribe to a life lived as islands of separation, then inevitably we learn (or are conditioned) to place our trust externally upon a range of institutions; these may range from religious, work/career, social, educational, etc. And if these institutions fail us, then we naturally feel vulnerable, or even betrayed. Yet the truth of the matter is that we betrayed ourselves in the first place by outsourcing our trust. If we live a life relying upon external systems, then we must be prepared to feel distraught should those external systems break down. In times of great transition, such as now, these social institutions are themselves very fragile.
It is important that we recognize that much of our everyday life is negotiated between these ‘belongings’ and similar attachments that we pull and wrap around us, like a protective overcoat. At the same time, we need to recognize that our world of ‘belongings’ is changing. We have ‘belonged’ to our nations, our cultures, our religions and belief systems, to our politics, to our teams, our communities, etc. We were largely brought up within our collective belongings that gave us some semblance of a fixed environment. And now, many of these collective belongings are breaking apart; they are unravelling. In the face of all these challenges, we may ask ourselves: what can I do about this? To this question, the remarkable Carl Gustav Jung answered:
“To the constantly reiterated question ‘What can I do?’ I know no other answer except ‘Become what you have always been,’ namely, the wholeness which we have lost in the midst of our civilized, conscious existence, a wholeness which we always were without knowing it.”[2]
As long as the majority of people expect all problems to be solved outside of themselves, then our societies will continue to be dominated by unruly forces. Our human freedom from these forces depends upon people willing to assume the responsibility of consciousness, and to project this inner reality outward upon an external environment. Whatever the question, being human is the answer.
Soulful Freedom
In a world full of work, family, and personal commitments, it may seem difficult—and, for some, almost impossible—to focus upon the notion of one’s soul and self-development. Yet it is very necessary that we do so. This focus upon our internal development has also been termed as self-actualization. This is a fairly academic term; maybe a more appropriate term would be self-activation, for the truth is that we do need to get activated.
Based upon the theories of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, a self-actualized person is supposed to embody the following characteristics: they embrace the unknown and the ambiguous; they accept themselves, with all their flaws; they enjoy the journey, and not just the destination; they may be unconventional, but they do not seek to shock; they are motivated by growth rather than the satisfaction of needs; they feel themselves to have purpose; they are not troubled by the small things; they express gratitude; they share deep relationships with a few, yet feel connected with the whole human race; they are humble; they resist conditioning; and they recognize that they are not perfect.
The inner essence of the individual—our soul—is timeless. It understands stability and aims for harmony and cohesion. In truth, we long deeply for harmony, not conflict. Within the material world of shadows and mass psychosis, we need to exercise a great deal of patience, tolerance, and empathy whilst preserving the integrity of our soul. The ageless, perennial striving for mystery, majesty, creativity, and conscious development is anathema to those who wish to preserve the power of the abusive mental pathogen that twists and manipulates our human lives. The survival tiger within us has, for far too long, lived within an environment of separation, struggle, suppression, and segregation. This mode of living has fed our egos until we have come to the point of priding ourselves only on our own ‘tiger instincts’ and our ability to get to the top. Yet contact with the transcendental elements within life embody compassionate relations, empathy, and connectedness.
The ancient, perennial wisdom traditions recognized that our morality depends upon our state of consciousness. An unconscious person, or a partially conscious person, is not able to express the same level of morality as a more conscious, realized person. What this tells us is that the moral state of our societies depends upon our internal states. Each one of us is a carrier and transmitter of consciousness. This factor has been abused by the Wounded Mind to spread its contagion. Thus, an unconscious humanity is less capable of making good choices, and is more susceptible to social conditioning, propaganda, and manipulations of the mass-mind.
Soul growth, or inner knowledge, is not an accidental emergence, but something that first must originate, consciously, within each one of us. It’s not a question of ‘should’ we work to become more conscious as individuals, but rather that we must. When it dawns on people that the transformation of the self is more than an interesting idea—that it is an actual inherent potential and living reality—then real change can begin. Perhaps our greatest ignorance is our unawareness of the potential of our soulful freedom and its power to create outward change. We have lived for a long time in ignorance; worst of all, in ignorance of ourselves. There is more to life than just living in the survival mode of the Wounded Mind. It is time to leave the tiger behind us.
Adapted from Healing the Wounded Mind, by Kingsley L. Dennis / Clearview Books / 2019. Reprinted with permission of publisher.
Notes
1. Paul Brunton, The Spiritual Crisis of Man, 1974 ed. (London: Rider & Company, 1952), 64.
2. Stephan A. Hoeller, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2014), 215.
A Cry for Help
A Cry for Help
“It is remarkable that in a society like ours, with so many advantages and such valuable resources available to it, that the rate of suicide continues to increase. . . . Clearly, we face serious dysfunction as a society—with little evidence that our situation is going to improve. But this is not a moment to despair. Instead, we could understand it’s a call to arms—or a cry for help.” – Caring, Tarthang Tulku
I like to consider myself a helper, but when our son, Jon, took his life on Easter weekend of 2019, I could no longer think of myself as a successful helper. In my own eyes, I instantly became a failed one. The truth the Buddhists speak of—that everything is impermanent—has now swept into my life. The truth of this is so palpable that it feels strange that I am still living in comfort in a heated house with a roof over my head, and that I have whole days when I forget I was unable to save my son.
And yet, in an unfamiliar way I am still trying to grapple with, I am still evolving. It is difficult to articulate, but I took a giant step closer to being able to understand the experience of parents who are separated from their children at the border. I began to feel a kinship with those who wander rootless with no land to call home, or who live in constant risk of being hurt or killed.
I am gradually learning that when you join the ranks of people who have not been able to control the most important events in their lives, any lingering indifference to the fate of others starts to drop away—like the skin of a snake that has become too tight to allow caring to grow.
Our private losses open us to the plight of others; but even in that, there are differences. A parent who has their child torn from their arms, or a person who is imprisoned and tortured, suffer untold torments. Yet there is still the hope they will see their children again. But when your son commits suicide, there is no cause for hope. The sense of finality is so unbearable that you find yourself denying what has happened, blaming yourself for it, or trying to flee into the old life you led in your comfortable house with your freedom to drive to the store whenever you feel hungry, or to schedule a date to meet a friend for coffee. (Just for the record, none of these strategies work.)
I used to be able to tell myself that I was doing enough when I was involved with a nonprofit called Friends in Time, that I cofounded with a friend who has ALS. We helped hundreds of people with MS and ALS over the two decades we were in operation. We thought of ourselves as “friends” offering help in a “timely” manner to people feeling overwhelmed by their life situations. It was clear that we were helping, making a difference, and that the recipients appreciated it. And I don’t remember ever feeling then that the suffering was so great we couldn’t help alleviate some of it. I felt I was helping; that was part of my identity.
But I also notice that I do a good job of turning the other way when confronted with the kind of suffering I feel incapable of doing anything about. For example, the growing ranks of casualties of global momentums that show no sign of slowing down. Watching the unfair advantage some wield over those who cannot protect themselves leaves me deploring my own helplessness—and I turn away. And, in the aftermath of Jon’s death, I turn away even from awareness.
I am in the grips of ignorance, one of the three poisons of Buddhism, along with grasping and aversion, which are said to propel the Wheel of Life along the difficult thoroughfares of Samsara. Looking back, I see that I ignored how much suffering Jon was experiencing. And now I am in the grips of another kind of forgetfulness. I can hardly remember how much he was in my heart during the 27 years we shared together. It’s as if a moat has appeared between the past and the present—as I imagine will happen again when each of us dies. My memories of Jon seem to be hovering out of reach, too dangerous to approach.
I am not alone in this experience. Attending Survivors of Suicide (SOS) meetings, as my wife and I have done for the past seven months, I get to see directly how survivors—when our defenses slip—carry regret, guilt, and the threadbare cloak of “what ifs” as our new companions in time.
Then, there are those who push themselves even deeper into the issue or problem. But this can give rise to an ongoing sense that we are failing to do enough. It can be a recipe for exhaustion.
I, the helper, now need help. And now I know why caring matters.
This, I think, is the third place from which to view the world’s suffering: as one who also suffers. For years, maybe I only knew how to dole out help to others, like a Pez dispenser, but now I am suddenly in need of help.
If we can only let our private suffering sink into our hearts, we are in a unique and sacred position to empathize with those who are experiencing the same or similar pain.
There are many in the same boat, especially here in the USA. In many other parts of the world, suicide rates have declined between 2000 and 2012, but the USA has seen an increase of 24 percent. For young people between the ages of 10 and 34, suicide has become an epidemic: it is now the second leading cause of death for boys and girls and for young women and men—with only accidental death claiming more lives.
Why is suicide on the rise? Is it because our planet is being treated like a carcass to be chewed upon by the boldest scavengers? No wonder a new generation feels there is little purpose to their lives, little reward for trying to connect livelihood with honorable intentions.
Jon took his own life in part because he cared so much, and he despaired that his caring mattered.
Franz Kafka may have seen this epidemic coming when he wrote: “He ate the crumbs that fell from his own table and with time he forgot how to eat at the table; then even the crumbs ceased to fall.”
As individual consciousness shrinks to preoccupation with getting our own share of the common good—without much concern for how that ‘good’ is flowing from Mother Earth, and even less concern for the illumination that makes our consciousness possible—Kafka’s vision of scrambling after crumbs is coming to pass before our eyes. As children who may not have eaten for days look on, we see container ships with their holds full of crumbs setting sail for parts unknown.
I am a writer, and so I am attracted to poetic metaphors. But of what value are they, really? Can they help bridge the chasm between those who have and those who don’t; between the desire to help and our sense that we are powerless to do much in the face of momentums that ensnare the human mind and put the least generous among us in the control room? Do they help bridge the efforts of those who act bravely in the face of injustice?
Can metaphor give us strength, or poetry help us heal? Kafka also said, “Let the face full of hatred fall on its own breast.” I take this not as an invitation for us to hate ourselves, but as a source of insight:
Unless we introduce our judgmental minds to our own suffering hearts, we will never influence the momentums that are spawning such suffering in our world; we will not be able to add the ballast of our presence to the sacred task of protecting the common good which Mother Earth is still struggling to provide to all living beings.
I’ve lost my chance to help our son see that his caring matters. And life has not yet brought into my orbit others of a new generation whom I could encourage to feel hopeful about a future we all share. But I am trying to look more closely at the people who are in my life and to see the suffering and confusion that I know is there, because so many have their own losses and must be mourning them. I am starting with myself, the one whom I have not yet learned to treat with enough kindness. Then I hope I can learn to be kind to others, guided by a deeper understanding of how it feels to receive my own kindness.
I dream of one day having something that is truly worth sharing with others, my full-hearted helpfulness. Because I know that the capacity to be truly helpful is the greatest gift that life can bestow upon us.
Ephemera
Ephemera
In China they understand what a blink a century is
an elder coughs out a millennium
spits its phlegm par terre
languages muddle into each other
mint and sugar in a cocktail we no longer drink
in this brown high country
They’re iichíile here
that languid herd beast on the horizon
the Apsáalooke are a horse tribe, the kind
Kevin Costner fantasizes about
beads, tipis, you know the romance
changed so fast, like sandstone breaking
tumbling into powder from the rims
“We’ve been here forever,” the boy says
when he means 75 years, 150 at most
Civil War refugees rolled up from the lowlands
filthy, wide-eyed, stunned to be alive
bonnets and wagon wheels
transformed into icons in an instant
What’s permanent is the grass
what lasts is the sky
fat prairie dogs will cluck beside the deer path
long after the supervolcano has blown
the brown squirrel will paw through our ashes
for the last acorn dropped
by the last oak imported by the white folk
end
Thomas Berry and the Rights of Nature
Thomas Berry and the Rights of Nature
One of Thomas Berry’s major contributions to what he called the Great Work was his articulation of the principles and philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence. He originated the term and explained its key concepts over many years.1 A Gaia Foundation report acknowledges: “Earth Jurisprudence is the term first used by cultural historian Thomas Berry to name the philosophy of governance and law, in which the Earth, not human interests, is primary. It accepts that humans are born into an ordered and lawful Universe, to whose laws we need to comply if we are to be a benign presence on Earth.”2 Thomas developed these ideas over several decades in conversation with others.
As he saw it, even the United States Constitution is fundamentally flawed by reserving all rights for humans and recognizing none for nature. For Thomas, the deficiency cries out for a fundamental transformation of our modern ideas of law. At the heart of this transformation, he noted, is the shift from a human-centered to an Earth-centered understanding of our relationship with the larger community of life. A profound change in perspective, he felt, would enable humans to recognize and protect the inherent rights of the natural world.
Given that the prevailing jurisprudence system does not protect other species or components of the living Earth, Thomas asked what would a different system look like? He pointed to various sources of inspiration, namely nature herself and indigenous peoples’ understanding of law. The starting point, he said, is recognizing that the laws of the Earth are primary. They govern life on the planet and human laws should be derived from these. This is clear for indigenous peoples whose languages, customary laws, and governance systems are rooted in the understanding that nature regulates the order of living processes in which humans are inextricably embedded. Thus, to maintain health and wellbeing for people and the planet, humans need to comply with the dynamics of nature. For indigenous peoples, the relationship between land and species is regarded as sacred and involves reciprocity.
Kosmos Great Thinkers and Seekers
Thomas Berry | Cultural Historian and Geologian
Written and narrated by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim
Produced by Kosmos | (TRT 3:06)
Thomas Berry (1914–2009) was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient and profound thinkers. As a cultural historian, he sought a broader perspective on humanity’s relationship to Earth in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of our times.
Berry urged humans to recognize their place on a planet with complex ecosystems in a vast evolving universe. He sought to replace the modern alienation from nature with a sense of intimacy and responsibility. Berry called for new forms of ecological education, law, and spirituality and the creation of resilient agricultural systems, bioregions, and ecocities.
That nature has rights within this worldview is not difficult to affirm because every component of life is an interdependent dimension of the web of life with inherent rights to exist. But since the language of rights evolved in a modern context, Thomas felt that humans need to acknowledge these biases in recognizing rights in a more-than-human context. These biases include a modern anthropocentric perspective, the objectification of the natural world, a view of the world as inert or even dead, and the assumption of human domination that emphasizes a use relationship with nature in the current industrial system.
Thomas was inspired early on by Christopher Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California. Stone was one of the first to call for judicial reform, with his groundbreaking book in 1974, Should Trees Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects.³ Stone argued for the rights of natural objects (trees) or ecosystems (forests, oceans, rivers) to have legal standing and to be represented by guardians to protect them, just as corporations and charitable trusts have legal representatives. He felt that these natural objects or systems should be recognized for their own worth and dignity, not merely their benefit to humans.
Thomas drew on this position of the inherent value of nature and of natural processes:
…every being has rights to be recognized and revered. Trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, mountains have mountain rights. So too with the entire range of beings throughout the universe. All rights are limited and relative.4
Thus Thomas emphasized that: “Every component of the Earth community, living and non-living has three rights: the right to be, the right to habitat or a place to be, and the right to fulfill its role in the ever-renewing processes of the Earth community.5” This position has been foundational for many of those involved in formulating and making operational an effective rights of nature approach rooted in Earth Jurisprudence.6 Similar perspectives have arisen in the contemporary period with scientific understanding of the interdependence of Earth systems, particularly in ecology. Thus, by drawing on both indigenous and scientific knowledge, Earth jurisprudence is arising to respond to the needs of the larger community of life.
Emerging Developments of Earth Jurisprudence
Groundwork for the articulation of Earth Jurisprudence emerged with the United Nations’ World Charter for Nature in 1982. This was further developed with the Earth Charter issued in 2000 and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010. Thomas was especially appreciative of the World Charter for Nature. He felt it embraced a dynamic bio-centric perspective, and he built on this in his early articulation of the rights of nature.
In this spirit, in 1984, Thomas urged the Gaia Foundation in England to commit to the protection of biological and cultural diversity, restoration of healthy ecosystems, and support of indigenous peoples, especially in the Southern hemisphere.7 Inspired by a workshop led by Thomas more than a decade later at Schumacher College in 1996, the Gaia Foundation launched an Earth Jurisprudence initiative.8 This initiative involved a commitment to explore, develop, and promote pathways to affirm that Earth-derived law take precedence over human law to protect the wellbeing of all components of the Earth community.
In April 2001, the Gaia Foundation and Andrew Kimbrell, founder of the Center for Food Safety, organized a conference with Thomas Berry at the Airlie Conference Center outside Washington. A group of people involved with both law and with indigenous peoples came together from South Africa, Colombia, Britain, Canada, and the United States.9 One of those in attendance was the South African lawyer, Cormac Cullinan, who was inspired and encouraged by Thomas and the Gaia Foundation to write his path-breaking book, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, which was published in 2002.10 In the foreword, Thomas calls for the need for explicit legal protection of the larger Earth community. In December 2002, Thomas delivered this message in his plenary talk to an international conference on Earth Jurisprudence at Pace University Law School and its Academy for the Environment. Robert Kennedy, Jr., an environmental lawyer at Pace, was particularly influenced by Berry’s thinking. The following year, in October 2003, Thomas delivered the E. F. Schumacher Lecture in Great Barrington, MA titled “Every Being Has Rights,” which was received with enormous appreciation.11
In 2002, an African regional network was formed—the African Biodiversity Network—with one of its major priorities being to revive indigenous knowledge systems and their Earth Jurisprudence underpinning, inspired by Thomas and supported by the Gaia Foundation.12 In 2005, the Nobel Laureate, Wangari Maathai, and her legal adviser, Ng’ang’a Thiongo, campaigned, as advised by Thomas, to incorporate an Earth Jurisprudence preamble in the new Kenyan constitution.
In the fall of 2006, a major step forward in institutionalizing Earth Jurisprudence occurred with the creation of a Center for Earth Jurisprudence (CEJ) at the Schools of Law at Barry University and St. Thomas University in Florida. Sr. Patricia Siemen, an environmental lawyer and professor, was the founder and first director. Drawing on Berry, she has written on Earth jurisprudence in a cosmological perspective.13 The establishment of the Center was inspired by: “the processes and laws of the natural world that sustain all life forms, the writings of Thomas Berry and other environmental philosophers, lawyers and scientists, and the reverence and care for all of creation.”14
In 2008, the Center for Earth Jurisprudence created the Earth Law Center. Its first Executive Director, environmental attorney Linda Sheehan, advanced passage of new Rights of Nature laws, advocated for rights of rivers to flow, held local Rights of Nature Tribunals, promoted Rights of Nature before the United Nations, developed and taught an “Earth Law” class at Vermont Law School, and offered specific strategies to address the growing number of “co-violations” of nature’s rights, human rights, and the rights of indigenous peoples.15
Milestones in Implementing Earth Jurisprudence
Thomas’ notions of the rights of nature required the transformation of the dominant legal philosophy and principles, widening their ethical perspective to include the whole Earth community of which humans are a part. He often spoke of the need for principles, strategies, and tactics for transformation of individuals, society, and institutions. He and others realized that strategies and tactics leading to the enactment of the rights of nature would be difficult, but contrary to expectations, several significant breakthroughs have occurred. These began the year before Thomas died and have continued since.
In 2008, Ecuador adopted the Rights of Nature into its new constitution. Article 71 reads “Nature, or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.”16
In 2009, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed April 22 as International Mother Earth Day. In so doing, Member States acknowledged that the Earth and its ecosystems are our common home. The same year, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution on Harmony with Nature.17
On April 22, 2010, World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, approved the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Over 30,000 people attended, representing more than a hundred nations. The vast majority present were indigenous peoples, especially from Latin America.18 As a follow up, in September 2010, individuals and organizations from four continents gathered in Patate, Ecuador. Out of this four-day meeting, the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature was formed.19
In December 2010, the first indigenous President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly established the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth. The Law defines Mother Earth as “…a dynamic living system comprising an indivisible community of all living systems and living organisms, interrelated, interdependent, and complementary, which share a common destiny.”20 It calls on all people to “respect, protect and guarantee the rights of Mother Earth,” which is considered sacred in the worldview of Indigenous peoples and nations.
Several other watershed moments have emerged in the Rights of Nature movement. These include the adoption by the International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) at its 2016 meeting in Hawaii of a resolution calling for no development or extractive industries in Sacred Natural Sites and Territories and the recognition of customary governance systems. The IUCN in 2012 also committed to the Rights of Nature in its Resolution 100 and included action on Rights of Nature in its 2017-2020 work plan.
In New Zealand, the Whanganui River was the first in the world to receive legal personhood through a law passed on March 16, 2017.21 This was followed on March 21 by court recognition of legal personhood for the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in northern India.22 Rights of Nature legal provisions also now exist in Colombia, Mexico, and dozens of municipalities in the United States, and are being debated in a number of other nations. Education in Earth Jurisprudence is also emerging.23 In April 2018, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled that stronger efforts must be made against deforestation in the Amazon and the country as a whole must be protected from the effects of climate change. In this ruling, the Colombian Amazon is granted personhood and thus is regarded as an entity with rights. This is the first such ruling in Latin America.24
Thomas’ contribution to this growing movement was his articulation of the principles of Earth Jurisprudence. This has influenced many individuals and organizations working to promote the Rights of Nature both in theory and in practice. Thus, in the areas of law and religion, as well as in other fields such as education and economics, agriculture, and bioregionalism, Thomas made significant contributions to actualizing the Great Work.
Excerpted from the book, Thomas Berry | A Biography
By Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, and Andrew Angyal
http://thomasberry.org/publications-and-media/thomas-berry-a-biography
Courtesy Columbia University Press | www.cup.columbia.edu
References
[1] This is confirmed by Mike Bell: “The need for a new jurisprudence was first identified by Thomas Berry who described destructive anthropocentrism on which existing legal and political structures are based as a major impediment to the necessary transition to an ecological age in which humans would seek a new intimacy with the integral functioning of the natural world.” Mike Bell, “Thomas Berry and an Earth Jurisprudence: An Exploratory Essay,” The Trumpeter, Vol. 19, no. 1 (2003). Bell, a community advisor for Alaska’s Inuit peoples, frequently visited Thomas in Greensboro discussing ideas and sharing writings.
[2] See history of the Earth Jurisprudence movement at Gaia Foundation: https://www.gaiafoundation.org/what-we-do/earth-jurisprudence/story-of-origin-growing-an-earth-jurisprudence-movement/full-story-of-origin/
And stored at Ecozoic Times: https://ecozoictimes.com/reinventing-the-human/earth-jurisprudence/history-of-earth-jurisprudence/
[3] Christopher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann Inc. 1974).
[4] Great Work, 5.
[5] Evening Thoughts, 149.
[6] The UN Harmony with Nature website lists experts who are committed to Earth Jurisprudence: http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/knowledgenetwork/all-members/.
[7] In 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio, the United Nations issued the Convention on Biodiversity, which helped support this perspective.
[8] Gaia Foundation: www.gaiafoundation.org
[9] Those attending included Liz Hosken, Ed Posey, Andy Kimbrell, Jules Cashford, Cormac Cullen, Brian Brown, Martin von Hilderbrand, and John Grim.
[10] Cormac Cullinan, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, 2nd Edition (Dartington, UK: Green Books, 2003).
[11] http://thomasberry.org/publications-and-media/every-being-has-rights
[12] africanbiodiversity.org
[13] “Earth Jurisprudence in a Cosmological Perspective” in Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, eds., Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016).
[14] www.earthjurist.org
[15] There is the rights-responsibilities distinction, under which indigenous peoples operate more pursuant to a responsibilities frame, with the rights frame more a “modern” human concept. See Catherine Iorns Magallanes and Linda Sheehan “Reframing Rights and Responsibilities to Prioritize Nature,” in Melissa Scanlon, ed., Law and Policy for a New Economy: Sustainable, Just, and Democratic (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2017).
[16] It is important to note that not all of the aspirations have been achieved in Ecuador. See Neema Pathak Broome & Ashish Kothari, “A Green Revolution Runs into Trouble,” Resurgence, No. 307 (March/April 2018).
[17] In subsequent years, Maria Mercedes Sanchez has been a leading force in the UN Harmony with Nature initiative, organizing annual Interactive Dialogues of the General Assembly. http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/chronology.html
[18] It has also figured prominently in several International Rights of Nature Tribunals, the first of which was held in January 2014 in Quito, Ecuador. This was followed by International Tribunals in Lima, Paris, and Bonn, all held during the COP climate conferences, and Regional Tribunals held in Quito in Ecuador, in San Francisco and Antioch, CA. in the United States, and in Brisbane in Australia.
[19] www.therightsofnature.org.
[20] Bolivian Plurinational Legislative Assembly, Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, accessed at World Future Fund: http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Projects/Indicators/motherearthbolivia.html.
[21] New Zealand’s Te Urewara National Park had been granted the same legal status in July 2016.
[22] The Supreme Court of India later stayed the effect of the ruling pending the outcome of an appeal by the state government of Uttarakhand, which argued that its new responsibilities were unclear.
[23] In Africa, a three-year training for Earth Jurisprudence practitioners was initiated by the Gaia Foundation, to explore both the philosophy and practice, and an endogenous approach to working with indigenous communities to revive their traditional knowledge, customary laws, and governance systems. The first African Earth Jurisprudence practitioners graduated in July 2017, and a second group has embarked on their training. See https://theecologist.org/tag/earth-jurisprudence. This movement catalyzed the passage of a new Resolution from the African Commission, which recognizes sacred natural sites, ancestral lands and customary governance systems as rooted in Earth Jurisprudence. The strategy is to open spaces in the dominant colonial human-centered legal system in Africa for the recognition of its plurilegal systems, as promoted by the African Charter, which are derived from the laws of nature.
[24]Yessenia Funes, “The Colombian Amazon Is Now a ‘Person’, and You Can Thank Actual People” Earther.com, accessed April 14, 2018. https://earther.com/the-colombian-amazon-is-now-a-person-and-you-can-thank-1825059357.
Sacred Season Gathering of Songs
Sacred Season Gathering of Songs
Music Editor’s Note:
This is an effort of many hands and hearts – our first ever Kosmos music compilation. We are so grateful to the artists who make this music and thankful that we have your voices in Kosmos and in the world. We are honored that we get the chance to listen, and hope everyone enjoys this “Gathering of Songs” playlist. It features artists that have been so generous to Kosmos with their talents, time and energy over the past two years, sharing their work. Jesse Paris Smith couldn’t be reached as she is touring Italy right now, but you can find her words and music HERE. Kendra Smith could not be reached because she is deep into her 30th year of off grid living. She continues to make music in her solar cabin and you can read and listen HERE.
CLICK VIDEO TO THE LEFT to play all songs continuously, or scroll down to browse.
– Kari Auerbach
1. Minuit
PFC2
Playing For Change, (Winter 2018)
Playing For Change keeps perfecting the art of their Songs Around The World which layer musicians from all over the world collaboratively on tracks. These songs can take months, sometimes even years to produce!
This beautiful song features Baaba Maal of Senegal with international accompaniment, singing about midnight song and dance.
2. One More Day (Jon’s Song)
Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars
Yorkston Thorne Khan, (Summer 2018)
This brief song, characterized by Jon Thorne’s charming vocal is a perfect example of how this trio seamlessly blends melodies, traditions, and cultures by way of their deep-seated, natural bond and total willingness to embrace one another’s artistic vision.
3. Language Of Love
My Moby Dick
Jeff Finlin, (Fall 2018)
A poet and writer as well as an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, Jeff Finlin follows in the tradition that extends from Walt Whitman to Raymond Carver, preaching the gospel of everyman—but with the tongue of a 21st century skeptic and the muscular grace of a rock and roll spiritualist.
Jeff says, “‘Language of Love’ is about the miracle that is love and how it shines through our deepest doubt, shame, and experiences to become our choice in realization.”
4. Selah
The Pros and Cons Program
Prison Music Set Free, (Winter 2019)
Masterfully written by David Corley, who says, “This song’s free, and for anyone and everyone…a prayer and a song of life and love and time passed.”
“Selah” comes from the Pros and Cons Program, founded by Hugh Christopher Brown, who in this song, is accompanied by a chorus of anonymous voices recorded within Pittsburgh Institution, a prison near Kingston, Ontario in Canada.
Hugh Christopher Brown was kind enough to talk to Kosmos about his restorative justice program and how music gets made in prisons.
5. Benedictus Chant
A Celtic Mass For Peace, Songs for the Earth
Sam Guarnaccia, (Spring 2019)
“Through language, each human carried an entire universe within, saturated with dreams and laughter and blazing with imagination.”
You may know Sam Guarnaccia for the Emergent Universe Oratorio, but on this track, he is turning his composing efforts toward a more traditional, regional mass for peace.
6. Nyansapo – The Wisdom Knot
Sapient
Steven Chesne, (Summer 2018)
After unearthing ancient, precious peace invocations and prayers from all over the world—words of the oneness of mankind, spoken by Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Mohammed, the Sikhs, the Hindus, the Jews, the Cheyenne, the Kikuyu, and the Baha’i—Steven Chesne was aided by scholars, clergy, and linguists to study the meanings. He set each one to music and this is the culminating track from that record, the finale, in which phrases from all of the traditions are interwoven together—one on top of another—in an assemblage of blissful counterpoint, accompanied by an orchestra.
7. Everlasting Arms
Listen To The Music
Playing For Change, (Winter 2018)
This hymn gets a PFC tour of the world stemming from the belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. The children in this image are from one of the many schools the Playing for Change Foundation builds globally to afford arts and music training to children. To be clear, the children do not play on the track (yet), but we do have Luke Winslow-King, Vasti Jackson, Dr. John, and Roots Gospel Voices of Mississippi in collaboration with musicians in Argentina, Anguilla, and Italy to name a few.
8. Good News Gorillas
Tablatun
David Rothenberg, (Summer 2019)
David is best known for his interspecies collaborations, but here he is collaborating with humans and a computer program for tuning tablas. David says that Matt Aidekman, the creator of the Tablatun software, came up with the song title, although at one point he wanted to cut this tune from the album. It’s the happiest one! Matt’s software digitally retunes the tabla.
The band is tabla, computer, and clarinet, with the computer retuning the tabla live as they play—quite different from how the tabla is used in traditional Indian music. Mike Lukshis, the tabla player, runs the Taalim School of Indian Music in New Jersey, one of the largest institutions of its kind in the New York metropolitan area.
9. Delicate Love
The Pros and Cons Program,
Hugh Christopher Brown, (Winter 2019)
“Delicate Love” is a reggae song from Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Hugh Christopher Brown, the founder of the Pros and Cons Program spoke to us about the project and what is on the horizon for this restorative justice music program.
10. Girl
Dear Trouble
Stephen Ulrich, (Fall 2019)
“When I was a little kid, I remember looking at the Beatles’ album Rubber Soul and thinking they made it for us personally, that there was one album and it was for our family. I also loved the album cover itself. It could have been shot in our driveway, the pine trees, it just felt like a family portrait or something. That’s the connection I had to music.” —Stephen Ulrich
Stephen’s band Big Lazy adds their instrumental film noir touch for a refreshing take on this femme fatale favorite.
11. Keeper Of The Flame
Pacem
Hugh Christopher Brown, (Winter 2019)
When Hugh Christopher Brown isn’t working at the Pros and Cons Program or running his record label, when he is not recording and producing other artists or touring with them, he finds time to write and record his own songs. This is one from his latest release, Pacem.
12. Hands Off The Wheel
The Tao Of Motor Oil
Jeff Finlin (Fall 2018)
Simply stated, Jeff Finlin says, “’Hands Off The Wheel’…. is just a montage on letting go.”
13. Tlahuilis / Light
Break Free
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, (Winter 2018)
“It’s an old Nahuatl poem that my father taught me; it’s a reflection on legacy. Telling our stories is a part of our cultural survival, an act of resistance, and an act of love. At the very least, what we have left behind is flowers and songs, and that is where the beauty and the lifeline of our culture lies.” —Xiuhtezcatl Martinez
14. Nziwaldam
Bush Lady
Alanis Obomsawin, (Spring 2019)
Before establishing herself as one of Canada’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers, Obomsawin began her artistic life as a singer-songwriter in the 1960s. The journey of her one and only record Bush Lady is chronicled in her own words by Alanis for Kosmos Quarterly.
On the record, she sings in English, French and, in the case of Nziwaldam, Abenaki.
BONUS | The Moon Shines Bright, feat. Elizabeth Fraser
Old Wow
Sam Lee, (Summer 1019)
Sam Lee has a new record coming in late January of 2020. This track is a pre-released song from that record which will be called Old Wow. “The Moon Shines Bright” features Elizabeth Fraser whose otherworldly, beautiful vocals have delighted audiences for decades. If you’ve never heard her sing “Song to the Siren,” it’s an uncannily haunting ballad—pure audio magic!
This video gives us all a peek into the recording process and how beautifully Sam and Elizabeth work together, how intense and well crafted their vocal stylings are. Thank you, Sam, and congratulations on your upcoming release. We look forward to it!