“We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.” ~William James
Fuck fear! Fuck angst! Fuck existential dread! Turn it all into fuel for the fire of life instead. Life is less about getting what you want and more about making the best of what you get. It’s about playing a shitty hand of poker like a boss. So you got dealt fear, angst, ennui, dread, and a sense of meaninglessness? So what? Play the hand! Own it. Double down on it. Bluff the devil and take God for all he’s worth. Turn it all into gold by becoming unfuckwithable.
Unfuckwithable (adj.): When you are truly at peace and in touch with yourself, and nothing anyone says or does bothers you, and no negativity or drama can touch you. ~Urban Dictionary
Transform fear into fuel for fire:
“The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire.” ~Carl Jung
Rule number one of being unfuckwithable: Fear is fuel for the fire of doing what you love.
Never forget that. It will get you through just about anything. And even if it doesn’t, at least you’ll have the ‘fuck-it bucket of your daring’ to toss all your fucks into.
At least you’ll have what you love. At least you’ll have your passion. Whatever that is. It will be unique to you. It might even be something that nobody else will ever need to know.
As long as what you love to do is valid and in alignment with the universal laws of health, you can’t go wrong. Be savage. Be fierce. Love dangerously. Love as you live—on the edge. Love on purpose, with purpose. Love like you’re not going to live forever. Because you aren’t.With a love this fierce, this bold, this full-frontal boss-mode, fear has no choice but to become fuel for its fire. For—have no illusions—love is fire. Fear is its kindling. Because of this, it is the hottest fire that ever burned. No moth can resist it. No moth can survive it. Only the Phoenix thrives there. Or fire itself.
Be fire itself! No fear, but for the fuel of it. No concern, all burn. This is what fearlessness truly is. Your love is a blaze of glory just waiting to flare up. Let it flare through the sieve of what you fear.
Be brave despite danger or hardship:
“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.” ~Thucydides
Rule number two of being unfuckwithable: Focus on what you can control, let go of what you can’t.
You can’t know the future. You can’t control how things will turn out. You can only control how you react to how things turn out. Even then, it’s not about control. It’s about being adaptable. It’s about being flexible and resilient. It’s about being prepared for the worst, even as you hope for the best. It’s about pulling your fragile past toward your antifragile future.
In that speck of hope is all the courage you’ll ever need. A dash of courage trumps an ocean of doubt. Use that courage like a sword. Or, even better, a scythe. Cut through the storm of the unknown. Shred the shroud of not knowing. Slice and dice the thickness of uncertainty. Not for the goal of invulnerability. No. For the transcendence of absolute vulnerability.
Cut with your soul. Meet the danger in the throes of adventure. Meet the glory in the field. Meet the albatross on the path. Meet the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Cut! To cut means to engage absolutely. To cut is to become the sword. Even if you have no sword. Cut. Cut the obstacle until it becomes the path. And if God Himself should stand in your way, cut that bastard down and become one with all things.
Nip fear in the bud through self-inflicted knowledge:
“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is the equation.” ~Averroes
Rule number three of being unfuckwithable: Stay as close to the edge as you can without going over.
Death is a given. Use it to hone a proper perspective, to sharpen the sword of your courage. This soul-sharpening comes in the form of spiritual circumspection, or existential skepticism. Ignorance will lead to fear and fear will lead to hatred—with paranoia, nihilism, and ennui in between—if you’re not careful.
Stay ahead of the curve by questioning things to the nth degree. Be a razor-sharp question mark in the dark. Just don’t forget to also cut through the blinding light. For blinding light can be just as unhealthy as too much darkness. Be both: a beacon of light that cuts through the darkness and a beacon of darkness that cuts through the blinding light.
Allow uncertainty to become your guide. Just as fear can be transformed into fuel for fire, uncertainty can be transformed into fuel for curiosity. Curiosity is the cure for certainty. It will give you an edge. It will keep you ahead of the game. You’ll be playing James P. Carse’s Infinite Game while everyone else is toppling over themselves in the myopic one-upmanship of the Finite Game.
Most of all, even as it cures certainty, your curiosity will be your guiding light through uncertainty. It’s double-edged. It will help you become resilient despite discomfort. It will help you stretch your comfort zone despite comfort. It will help you become adaptable despite an inhospitable world. It will help you overcome yourself by not getting hung-up on your ego.
Why? Because curiosity is always on the edge. It is always the tip of the spear. It is always foremost. It is utmost, supreme, ahead of itself because it is always on the edge of its seat. It is always cutting, despite the world’s attempts at dulling its mettle.
Use it. Harness its trailblazer essence. Channel its catalyst synergy. Recalibrate the universe with it. Discover the cheat codes hidden in the storm. Do it despite the storm. Do it despite the slings and arrows of vicissitude. Do it despite the worst the tempest can dish out. Do it despite the fear. Do it because of the fear. Do it for the tribe. Then come back and share the magic elixir of being unfuckwithable.
Back to that shitty hand of poker… So you got dealt fear, angst, ennui, dread, and a sense of meaninglessness? Transform the fear into fuel, the angst into hunger, the ennui into curiosity, the dread into humor, and the sense of meaninglessness into meaning. Then go all in.
You are a Universal Being. Your body is just a vehicle for the manifestation of this Universal Being here on Earth. As a Universal Being your ‘essence’ lives forever. Start identifying your Self as a Universal Being, merged with the source of all existence. The more you live in this Self – the Real You – during this lifetime – the more seamless is the passage onwards at the time of passing.
Say:
“I am a spiritual entity and nothing can harm me, because ‘I’ am not this physical body which carries me through this third density existence experienced here on Earth. ‘I’ am soul, ether, spirit, plasma – and I chose to come back to planet Earth and to be reborn into a human body in order to perform valuable tasks and help realign Earthly existence with Cosmic existence – and thereby create harmony and balance.”
Repeat this – and feel the fear fall away. Feel it dissolve like the sun-burned morning mist.
Fear is a state of mind. A cramped mind. Every part of it is alien to us save that useful bit that warns us not to do some crazy act – like jump over the edge of a cliff under the illusion that one will sprout wings and fly away into the blue horizon!
Yes, the ‘real you’ can fly. The ether/spirit you. But the physical you is a gravity respecting entity here on dear mother Earth. Respect this type of fear, for it is a God given preservation instinct.
So, you are not convinced? You hold onto your fear because it seems ‘real’, doesn’t it? You quite like it, a sort of drug. After all every TV, newspaper, radio and neighbour is telling you ‘to be afraid.’ It’s easier to give in than not to. There are so many things you need to fear, they say, so many that there is almost no room left for anything else to get you going in a positive direction.
We live in a culture of fear, imposed by those we elect and allow to manage our lives. Think about it – so determined are most of us to avoid taking true responsibility for our lives and the lives of other living beings that we allow our minds to say to us “OK, that’s fine, leave it to the politicians, bankers and corporate board members to run our affairs for us.” Then we turn around and curse them for introducing a despotic top-down police-state agenda that makes a misery out of our lives!
How foolish can one get?
All the while ‘the elected ones’ (by us) learn better and better how to manipulate those who elected them, so that they can hold onto the power. They are addicted to power – and use it to make us addicted to fear. So we shrink, while they expand.
How very foolish so much of mankind is. Both parties, the purveyors of fear and the fearful, bogged-down in a rail siding leading to nowhere. Both sides bogged-down in a rail siding completely terminating our natural evolutionary instinct and putting in its place a state of perpetual self-imprisonment.
“Fear not!” say I, for anyone reading this is not heading for the end of the line or the gallows; is not busy constructing a hangman’s noose to stick his/her neck in. Nobody reading this can suffer the delusion that to profit from worldly riches is superior to profiting from the flow of Divine uplift. An ecstatic state which comes from rejecting fear and ceasing to hide in the shadows of a frightened ‘little me’.
This ‘little me’ is a hypnotised being who has convinced himself/herself that one can never step forward and take responsibility for one’s destiny, or make a valuable contribution on the stage of life.
Out you go ’little me’ – and stay out. No place for you in the unfolding age of Truth. For as has been said, You are not a cipher, You are a Divine eminence – and is that a quality to hide away under a cloak of self impoverishment? Well, is it?
After what seems like an interminable pause, an answer emerges: ‘NO’
And immediately, as if shot from a cannon, the Real You bursts upon the scene – soul-burden immeasurably lightened! Yes, I can see this Real You, right now, and I can tell you – you are an outstanding being with enough potential to single-handedly transform both yourself and your community into manifestations of an age of instant enlightenment!
Yes, my friend, I’m not talking about someone else, it’s you who is transformed. ‘Little me’, who was that? Never mind, gone forever.
Now you stand single, strong, proud, all traces of fear banished forever. Maybe for the first time, you are free, out of jail, ready to be intoxicated by the sweet scent of the wild rose, the symphonic triumph of the dawn chorus, the illustrious beauty of awakened nature calls you forth – rejoice in her and act in her defence!
Proudly step forward to defend her precious wealth of vital diversity, so cruelly sterilised by vampires wearing carefully pressed city suits and a fixed smile on their faces. They and their clan scared you once, didn’t they? But no more, you now see the fake smile for exactly what it is.
You are metamorphosed and stand shining, a ray of the living sun. Use your new gifts well, my friend, millions need the support of your awakened powers to themselves be awakened and freed from the hypnosis of fear. These are the builders of the New Society which is our imperative to create – and no one else’s.
“We abuse the land because we see it as a commodity belonging to is. When we see the land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” ~Aldo Leopold
If, as Krishnamurti said, “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” then it stands to reason that remaining “well adjusted” has kept us in a perpetual state of ecocide.
Our society poisons the air it breathes, the water it drinks, and the food it eats. And then it has the audacity to poison the minds of its citizens by convincing them that this is somehow “progress”.
The problem is that we don’t have a healthy sense of community. What little sense of community we do have is wrapped up in the unhealthy society that we were born into. It’s caught up in the nine-to-five daily grind and the rat-in-a-cage drudgery of a fear-based lifestyle that’s codependent upon a corrupt state. And this is happening on a global scale. You would be hard-pressed to find a healthy society: that is, a society that does not poison its air, water, food, and minds.
It all comes down to perspective—or the lack thereof. We have been conditioned by a sick society to perceive the world as a commodity that belongs to us. In order to cure ourselves, in order to no longer be sick, we must find a way to flip our perspective into perceiving the world as a community to which we belong.
It will require unlearning what we have learned from the profoundly sick society. It will require unwashing the brainwash and reconditioning the cultural conditioning. It will require living a courage-based lifestyle despite the fear-based lifestyle that surrounds us. It will require becoming interdependent from, rather than codependent on, the profoundly sick society. It will require obtaining an eco-centric perspective while rejecting the egocentric perspective that got us into this mess.
This will be an arduously Herculean task. But no battle is more important for the continued survival of our species.
World as Commodity:
“Do not become one of those who only has the courage of other people’s convictions.” ~A. Bartlett Giamatti
What makes it so difficult to flip our perspective? It’s the fact that the sick society keeps us comfortable, safe, and secure while at the same time that it keeps us unhealthy and codependent. The other reason is that it is so much easier to use the world as a commodity.
And that’s the rub. Nobody wants to take responsibility. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable, unsafe, or insecure. Everybody wants to take the easy road. And so the profoundly sick society just keeps on getting sicker.
It’s all too easy to simply rely upon unsustainable corporations that pollute the air and poison the water. In order to keep up with the rat race and keep food on the table, we are forced to rely on corrupt corporations and bureaucratic governments that are dead set on using the world as a commodity while calling it progress. After all, even unhealthy food is better than no food at all. Right?
And even when we do try to become independent and grow our own food or catch our own rainwater, we have overreaching governments with the monopoly on violence coming down on us and slapping us with fines or threatening us with jail time.
The ‘world as commodity’ is an unhealthy snake eating its own tail. Even worse, it gives birth to citizens that are codependent sheep grazing on the unhealthy snake shit and somehow managing to convince themselves it’s food. “Hell! If it’s cheap and easy and keeps me comfortable and safe from government oppression, I might as well eat it. Ignorance is bliss, right?” Right.
And that’s the real kicker. Any awareness of living in a sick society is easily pushed to the side and repressed through the psychosocial convenience of cognitive dissonance. Which usually sounds a little something like this: “It’s uncomfortable for me to believe that I live in a profoundly sick society, even though the evidence is overwhelming. So, rather than think about it, I’ll simply ignore it. After all, there are bills to pay. My kids need to eat (probably McDonald’s or Roundup-laced vegetables). Who do you think I am? Captain Fantastic?”
Satire aside, comfort and convenience are the front lines in the battle against the world as a commodity. If we have any chance of winning this battle, every single one of us will have to win that war at the front line. Which will mean a lot of discomfort and inconvenience.
World as Community:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~Aristotle
The solution to winning the war against perceiving the world as a commodity is flipping our perspective and perceiving it as a community. Unfortunately, this will require discomfort and inconvenience.
This will require peeling away layer upon layer of cultural conditioning. The first layer is fear of the unknown. It’s the fear of trying something new, of making a healthy lifestyle change. It’s the fear of being ostracized or left out. It’s the fear of some arbitrary authority coming in with some arbitrary power and fining us with some arbitrary law.
So, the first thing we’ll need is courage. But not just any kind of courage. We’ll need a particular flavor of courage that is willing to be “the bad guy,” the maverick, the martyr. It will require the kind of courage that can stand up to codependent peer pressure and take independent leaps of courage, despite goodie-two-shoe conformists and weak-kneed milquetoasts.
The kind of courage that will make the sick society hate you for being healthy; when, really, it just hates itself for remaining sick. It’s the kind of courage that eco-centrically crushes out into healthy interdependence with cosmos, despite the sick society that egocentrically flushes everything away in codependent excess and greed.
The second thing we’ll need is the ability to question the sick society to the nth degree. But not just any kind of questioning. No. We need a particular flavor of questioning that is ruthless, penetrating, interrogating—no-holds-barred.
The kind of questioning that puts unsustainable corporations on blast. The kind of questioning that’s civilly disobedient. The kind of questioning that tears apart the outdated, xenophobic reasoning of the sick society; that reveals the chain-of-command as nothing more than an up-jumped human centipede, blind and poisonous to reason. Indeed. The kind of questioning that has shock value; that won’t allow the sick society to fall back into pretending it’s asleep.
Most of all, it will require us all to practice self-interrogation, self-improvement, and self-overcoming—all of which are exceedingly uncomfortable and inconvenient. Oh well.
When it comes down to it, things will probably get worse before they get better. Transitioning from a sick society that treats the world as a commodity to a healthy society that treats the world as a community will not be an easy task. Things may even slip into anarchy (no masters, no rulers). But even uncomfortable anarchy is healthier than comfortable tyranny, or convenient sickness. Especially when the tyranny and the sickness are ecocidal. Without a healthy planet there can be no healthy people. It really is that critical. Indeed. We may need to sow a little strategic disorder to reap a higher order.
The world can be a community to which we belong, full of compassion, respect, love, and tolerance. But only if we let it. And not if we continue to treat the world like a commodity that belongs to us.
Our tolerance of a ‘profoundly sick society’ can only go so far. Lest we inadvertently end up on the side of the executioners, we must draw the line somewhere. It must be drawn at sickness, at excess, at violence, at greed, and at ecocide. And only free, healthy, courageous individuals will have the wherewithal to draw it.
“Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask yourself this crucial question, does this path have heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, then it is of no use.” ~Carlos Castaneda
The art of shadowing yourself is a ruthless form of self-overcoming made popular by the writings of Carlos Castaneda (he called it stalking the self), who was inspired by the Yacqui Shaman Don Juan.
The shadower needs four essential qualities: ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and humor. The fundamentals of the art of shadowing yourself are three-fold: shadowing the self, shadowing the world, and shadowing the unknown. Let’s break it down…
Shadowing the Self:
“Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.” –Rumi
Shadowers are seekers. They are ruthless explorers. When shadowers shadow themselves, they are shadowing inner knowledge, sacred wisdom, and hidden information. They are in search of the golden shadow, where latent creativity is hidden beneath layer upon layer of cultural conditioning, religious indoctrination, and political brainwashing.
When a shadower shadows him/herself, he is a hunter mercilessly routing out codependence, weakness, and cowardice. He uses self-interrogation like Occam’s Razor, shaving away the superfluous, cutting away years and years of false knowledge, unlearning what was learned, un-washing the brainwash, and reconditioning the conditioning that came before.
A shadower audaciously digs a hole right into the center of his own comfort zone. He digs deep. He keeps digging, hungry for something more, for something he knows not what. He digs until there is nothing more than a snarling abyss, a soul-shattering existential darkness that presses in on him, that smashes his fragile ego into a million little pieces.
It is at the bottom of the abyss, deep in the throes of a Dark night of the soul, with his shattered ego reassembled into an individuated tool for further exploration, that the shadower discovers the diamond hidden in the rough of his soul: shadow’s gold.
Shadow’s gold is our sacred wound glowing like nothing else can glow. It is the accumulation of all the repressed pain, failure, setbacks, and loss experienced in a lifetime pressurized into a powerful force of darkness made conscious. It is our repressed shadow married with our inner light.
Having discovered the inner darkness of his soul’s abyss, the shadower takes his shadow’s gold and uses it to climb out of fearful codependence and into courageous independence. Now it’s time to use this newfound independence—this unity of abyss and summit, of shadow and light—to stretch his tiny comfort zone into the world.
Shadowing the World:
“The shamans say that being a medicine man begins by falling into the power of the demons. The one who pulls out of the dark place becomes the medicine man, and the one who stays in it is the sick person. You can take every psychological illness as an initiation. Even the worst things you fall into are an effort of initiation, for you are in something that belongs to you.” ~Marie-Louise von Franz
Now that the self has been thoroughly interrogated, shadow’s gold discovered, abyss and summit united, it’s time for the shadower to shadow the world. It’s time for the shadower to rise up out of the ashes of his codependence and break down the walls of his tiny comfort zone. It’s time to piece back together his shattered ego into an individuated ego. The shadower uses the knowledge of his individuation to take a leap of courage out of his comfort zone. He finally has the ears to hear the call to adventure. He is ready to take the next step into his hero’s journey.
But the world is dangerous. Living a life well-lived is full of risks. Adventure is at hand, yet when a shadower stretches his comfort zone, he understands that he is stretching into risky adventure. Hence the need for courage.
Shadowing the world is not for the faint of heart. It requires questioning all institutions to the Nth degree. It requires getting in the face of all so-called authorities. It requires ruthless civil disobedience that puts the powers that be in check. It requires David-like courage challenging any and all Goliath-like power structures. Sometimes, it even requires amoral agency to balance out the extremes of the overly moral goodie-two-shoes and immoral psychopaths of the world.
A shadower shadows the world with the same ruthlessness in which he shadowed himself, mercilessly interrogating everything the culture has taken for granted. He holds outdated world views against the hot iron of universal law and tosses out what cannot withstand the heat. He counts coup on power. He deflates egos and animates souls. He cuts the strings that once bound him to a profoundly sick society like a mere puppet and turns those strings into a lasso with which he lassos truth.
The shadower acts as a mirror to the world, revealing the shadows of others. People fear their own shadows and so they tend to fear the ruthless honesty of the shadower. They cringe. They balk. They reel inside the slow simmer of their own cognitive dissonance. Nevertheless, the shadower relentlessly injects wakefulness into an otherwise somnambulant world.
When a shadower shadows the world, he becomes the world. He stretches his tiny comfort zone into a mighty horizon, subsuming the world. And the shadow of the world is a mighty thing indeed. He is now ready for the difficult task of shadowing the unknown.
Shadowing the Unknown:
“The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.” ~Ken Kesey
When a shadower shadows the unknown, he goes Meta. He shadows the infinite. He shadows God. He cunningly interrogates mental paradigms. He lives between worlds, bridging gaps. To a shadower, the unknown is merely procrastinating knowledge just waiting to be known.
If, as Einstein said, “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge,” then the shadower turns the power of his imagination on the universe itself, flexing on Infinity, despite his own finitude.
It is in this sense that a shadower becomes a cosmic hero. Having risen up out of his codependent comfort zone, having leveraged a life well lived through shadow’s gold, having embraced the interconnectedness of all things through the union of summit and abyss, the shadower becomes an interdependent self-actualizer projecting the prism of his shadow’s glow into the Great Mystery. He has left behind the fear-based lifestyle and embraced a courage-based lifestyle that manifests the provident-based lifestyle of cosmic heroism.
Shadowing the unknown almost always leads to high art. Cathartic art. The kind of art that changes the world, full of myth and metaphor and existential leitmotifs. The kind of art that becomes the magic elixir that wakes up entire “tribes,” that animates an otherwise inanimate world. A shadower shadows the unknown in order to give birth to the sacred known.
Shadowing the unknown is the art of living life to the Nth degree. It’s inflicting oneself with a life well-lived through a courage of the most high, with a humor of the most high, with honor of the most high. It’s grabbing God by the throat and forcing him to cough up all his secrets, blasphemy be damned. It’s being ruthlessly determined to live life well, as a shining example to those living life ill.
Ultimately, shadowing the unknown is shadowing death. It’s being on the hunt for a good death that balances out a good life. As Castaneda said, “Death is the only wise advisor we have. Whenever you feel like everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you are wrong; that nothing matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, “I haven’t touched you yet.”
“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” ~Henry David Thoreau
Obedience is the connective tissue of oppression.
In other words, any form of control on a collective level can only be carried out through obedience. A dictator can’t arrest or kill an entire population himself; he needs mindless minions to do the dirty work. This principle applies across all forms and degrees of systematic control, even the most subtle.
The desires of any wannabe controller can only come to fruition through the compliance of others. And that’s been the case throughout recorded history (his-story). The desire for control becomes a virus, driven by fear and infecting more and more people, until there are enough drones to oppress an entire population.
This phenomenon isn’t just the case with large-scale atrocities; it applies to anything which is an impediment to freedom or love; be it a person, group, system or idea.
Everything is held up by belief. Laws are merely words written on paper, only legitimized by collective acquiescence. Laws need people to enforce them. And if laws are unjust (as most are), those who carry them out must unquestioningly submit to authority and go against their own inner knowing.
The only way control or oppression works on any scale is through compliance. Too many people do the work of ‘the man’ for ‘the man.’ That’s the problem. The solution lies in civil disobedience.
Freedom Cannot Be Granted
“Freedom cannot be granted. It must be taken.” ~Max Stirner
Asking for freedom is oxy-moronic. If you have to ask for freedom, you’re already a slave.
How is freedom taken? The simple decision to be the master of your own body and mind.
It really is as simple as that, though difficult to apply. It’s easy to blame problems on others, it’s easy to neglect our health and think “the doctor can fix me.” We’ve been conditioned to externalize our power since childhood. We’ve been taught to not trust ourselves. We’ve been taught to submit to authority without question.
This is a recipe for a control system to stealthily and slowly permeate society (the totalitarian tiptoe).
When you attain a degree of self-mastery, you do not acquiesce to the will of destructive people or disharmonious institutions. Which leads to the next point…
Fear-Based Programming
“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service.” ~Albert Einstein
The covert means by which oppression takes over is through fear-based programming.
If you have people in fear, you can easily control them. Fear activates the part of the brain known as the amygdala (the center for emotional behavior/motivation) and inhibits neocortex function (our “thinking brain”). This means that rationality and intellect are thrown out the window, the perfect storm for brainwashing. There’s even a term for this fear response; amygdala hijack.
The media is one big amygdala hijack, perpetually programming the population with which boogeyman to fear next. This is a massive ritual of fear-based programming that insidiously shifts entire populations into thinking and acting irrationally out of fear. Television is called programming for a reason.
Remember the whole weapons of mass destruction fiasco with Iraq in 2003? US military action in Iraq and massive destabilization of the middle east (which continues to this day) was predicated on that lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction. But lingering fear from 9/11 resulted in a string of irrational behavior and many people blindly believing the hype.
The holocaust took place because German soldiers were thoroughly conditioned to carry out orders. They didn’t carry out orders because they liked doing it, but because they feared the wrath of their higher ranking officers, or even because they were conditioned to fear jewish people. These abominations only occur when fear is the driving force.
Fear is hard to pin down. It’s slippery, and ultimately illusory (False Evidence Appearing Real). Yet it’s the undercurrent of all “negative” emotions. Fear is what stops us from saying no to evil. Fear might actually distort our perceptions to support evil. That’s why it’s so dangerous.
When you cultivate self-mastery, you’re able to break the cycle. The spread of fear stops before you and is transmuted by the omnipotent force of unyielding love.
Love Over Fear
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” ~John Lennon
Strive to choose love over fear in every situation. You can never go wrong if you act from a place of compassion. This is the fulcrum of change, and it starts within you.
The change we all yearn to see in the world will only happen in the wake of a fundamental change in consciousness. Everything we see in this world starts in the realms of imagination before coming into manifestation.
The change begins within and ripples outward. Embodying the change is the first step, the prerequisite. Without inner transformation, humanity will be stuck on the same merry-go-round of madness.
When a critical mass of people create positive inner changes, it will open up doors we never could’ve imagined before and will provide possibilities far beyond our current limited perspective. Solutions will spontaneously emerge.
Go within and stop the momentum of fear. Learn to listen to and trust your intuition. Have the courage to follow your heart instead of cowardly bowing to fear.
“Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant ‘To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.’” ~Brene Brown
Compliance with destruction, hatred, oppression, violence and fear is cowardice, while noncompliance is courageous. In the depths of your being, in your heart of hearts, you know what is right.
Choose love over fear.
Have the courage of heart and freedom of mind to disobey oppressive forces.
“You ask, ‘what is Zen?’ I answer, ‘Zen is that which makes you ask the question.’ Because the answer is where the question arises. The answer is the questioner himself.” ~Daisetz Suzuki
Zen is ultimately undefinable. It’s paradoxical. It’s a feeling; a meditation on opposites and interconnectedness intermittently. It’s a bridge between the unanswerable question and the unknowable answer. Even more cryptic: it’s No-mind meditating the mind into mindfulness.
No matter what Zen really is, the meditator attempting Zen is Zen. Or perhaps they are Zenning and Zen is actually a verb disguised as a noun—like God.
Either way, Zen practice is never more important than when we are in the trenches, down and out, at the bottom of the rollercoaster ride, experiencing a Dark Night of the Soul. In such a state, Zen is the great equalizer, an individuating leveling mechanism. An excuse to climb out of Hell and into Heaven. Or at least back to level ground.
Transforming shadows into sharpness:
“By accepting the inevitability of our shadow, we recognize that we are also what we are not. This humbling recognition restrains us from the madness of trying to eliminate those we hate or fear in the world. Self-mastery, maturity, and wisdom, are defined by our ability to hold the tension between opposites.” ~Louis G. Herman
Zen is the essence of holding the tension between opposites. It’s a proactive meditation on the paradoxical state of the human condition. It acts like a bridge between the unconscious shadow and the darkness made conscious. When our shadow is hidden from us or repressed—either subconsciously or through willful ignorance—we feel dull, insecure, fragmented, confused, unaware, and less than whole. But when our darkness is made conscious, we fell whole, aware, open, and sharper in mind, body, and soul.
Zen teaches us how to reconcile our dark side. Deep in the trenches of our shadow, Zen plants a question mark seed made of light. Through daily cultivation and practice (attention, awareness, focus), the light brightens the darkness, and the shadow becomes a vital self-aware aspect of the overall condition. Light magnifies shadow out of repression and into self-actualization.
Transforming certainty into curiosity:
“I ask you: what are you? You don’t know; there is only ‘I don’t know.’ Always keep this don’t-know mind. When this don’t-know mind becomes clear, then you will understand. Keep don’t-know mind always and everywhere. This is the true practice of Zen.” ~Seung Sahn Sunim
The most deceptive of all “trenches” is being stuck in the box of certainty. Believing that one certainly knows is the ultimate delusion. Whereas thinking that one possibly knows, but probably doesn’t, is the ultimate escape from delusion. Flexibility and open-mindedness are key. Zen can help us with both.
Zen helps us get in touch with the primordial coordinates of the interconnected cosmos. It helps us recognize the probability spectrum. When Socrates said, “The only thing I know is that I know nothing,” he was speaking in probabilities. He recognized that his was a single perception dwarfed by an unfathomably large universe. He realized that what he thought he knew was incomparably less to what he didn’t know and wisely swallowed his pride.
Better to use Zen to keep us in flow. When we are fluid and dynamic in our thinking, we are less likely to be seduced by dogmatic belief. Zen keeps us questioning to the nth degree. It keeps is open to the vital transformations the universe goes through. Zen is the art of adapting to the ebbs and flows of constant change. Being aware of this deep flow is being curious. Curiosity is the wave of change crashing over the fragile structure of our certainty. We would be wise to ride that wave straight over and learn from the destruction. The debris of which holds gold tantamount to transformative ambrosia.
Transforming anxiety into artistry:
“Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all the tragedies, real or imagined.” ~Nietzsche
Anxiety is like an open wound of the psyche. And when you are down in the tranches, it can be a crippling experience. When we transform anxiety into art, we are using the stress as fuel for the fire of our imagination. The anxiety becomes a kind of eu-stress, which can be quite cathartic. Tension becomes a bridge between ‘stress’ and ‘creative outlet,’ where anxious state meets flow state.
Whether it’s transforming wounds into wisdom, demons into diamonds, or setbacks into steppingstones, the cathartic release of worry and pain can become the active components of a beautiful work of art. Pain is transformed into paint, misery into music, psychosis into poetry. And with enough practice, a kind of existential masochism can arise from the spiritual and psychological plasticity—robustness becomes antifragility.
Insofar as this existential masochism can be applied to a life well-lived, a Zen-full humor arises where all tragedies are laughable aspects of the overall cosmic joke. Life itself becomes a work of art.
Transforming hypocrisy into humor:
“No one ever grows up. They may look grown up, but it’s a disguise. It’s just the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts. They still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won’t let them.” ~Robert McCammon
Governing the precept that life is a cosmic joke, it stands to reason that we get better at laughing at the joke rather than crying over the spilled milk of being the butt-end of it. The humbling effect of Beginner’s Mind can help with this. It reminds us that we are all merely fallible creatures at the mercy of the cosmic joke. Anything else is mere hypocrisy. Especially the title of “grown up.”
The Zen of Beginner’s Mind is the art of tapping into that playful innocence which refuses to be serious but is always sincere. It counters the hypocrisy of the human condition with a sense of playfulness. From which a creative adaptation and improvisation arises. We are fallible creatures? So be it. We are hypocritical naked apes? Might as well have a sense of humor about it. It’s all laughable in the grand scheme of things? We might as well have a laugh.
Adopting a good sense of humor is the best tool we can utilize while in the tranches. It can get us through just about anything. And even if it doesn’t, at least we’re laughing. Our inner child teaches us how to laugh and play through the misery, rather than just be miserable.
Transforming Hell into Heaven:
“Morality doesn’t mean ‘follow divine commandments.’ It means ‘reduce suffering.’” ~Yuval Noah Harari
Even in the trenches, we have a choice to be healthy or not. Even in the gutter, we can either drown in our own tears or flip over, take a deep breath, and regard the stars their aesthetic splendor. Yes. Even beauty itself can be healing. And beauty combined with a good sense of humor can be transcendent… Skipping through Hell with bells on. Laughing into the abyss. Mocking all devils, demons, angels, and gods. Using it all as a sharpening stone.
That’s Zen in the trenches.
We either play the victim and wallow in self-pity, or we rise up with a ‘humor of the most high’ and dare to become healthier. In the alchemical transformation of the human condition, Hell is the forge folding the blade of the soul into a sharper instrument.
Our comfort zone just isn’t hot enough. Heaven is too soft. Purgatory is too comfortable. Hell is just right, as long as we don’t make the mistake of losing ourselves there and burning ourselves out. We must remember to kill the devil first, and then make our way back to the “tribe” to inform them that there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.
Zen in the trenches is no walk in the park. It takes daring and flexibility. It takes moxie and mettle. It takes a good sense of humor despite a meaningless universe. It takes emotional alchemy and existential masochism to deal with the pain and suffering.
Practicing Zen in the trenches is whistling, “Always look on the bright side of life” while nailed to a cross (The Life of Brian). It’s creating meaning out of nothingness, building bridges out of bandages, birthing a Phoenix out of ashes. It’s laughing and playing and dancing despite the slings and arrows and in spite of the ever-tightening mortal coil. Indeed.
As Rabelais said, “For all your ills, I give you laughter.”
In a linear world, the external order dictates an artificial way of life to the individual, creating a conformist society and forcing us to relinquish our power to a machine that is unnatural and devoid of life. This passive conformity can be traced back to the origins of the Vedic Hindu caste system and the feudal system under medieval Western Christianity. When a settled agrarian culture such as these is born, it tends to build towns, not only to protect people from outside influences but also to develop a mental framework based on rules and regulations.
The complexity of agrarian culture leads to a division of labour and a division of function. From this division, the ancient Hindus (the Vedic civilisation of Dravidians and Aryans) developed a caste system. The Hindu caste system is made up of the Brahmins (priesthood), Kshatriyas (nobility), Vaishyas (merchants and farmers), and the Shudras (labourers). A direct parallel to the Hindu caste system can be found in medieval Christian society, where we see the priesthood and the church, feudal lords and nobility, farmers and merchants of the commons, and the serfs.
Although we no longer have a caste system, this underlying pattern is still with us today. When we are born into this world, we come out of our mother’s womb (nature) and are taught to submit to the rules of society and culture according to our socioeconomic status. This is the crucifixion of the individual; it is the sacrifice we all make. According to the tyranny of the machine, this crucifixion is for the “common good” or “greater good.” But there is a stark difference between the Hindu and Christian societies of ancient times.
First of all, the function of the Vedic caste system was an act of surrender to Brahman (ultimate reality/godhead). Individuals would crucify their egos and their desires in favour of the lives they had been given by nature. This means they would not seek another path or to try and control their lives according to their interests. Instead, they would abide by the order of society, which helped them diminish their egos so that they could feel the presence of Brahman within themselves. This is dharma as social duty.
The second difference is that, once Hindus have fulfilled their social duties in this life, they are allowed to break away from caste and become renunciate sages in the forest, a practice and title known as vanaprastha in Sanskrit. (This possibility is loathed by Christian society because one is thought of as useless if one does not contribute to the social order.) This breakaway from caste is viewed as a return back to nature and could be thought of as a resurrection. A sage is not part of society and does not conform to its rules. Jesus was a sage in this mould. This is why he was not thought of as a particularly good member of society, and he was actually put to death (if we take the story of Jesus to be real).
Those who submit invariably lose their natural innocence. Conformity is the result of force. When individuals are forced by society and culture into life situations that are against their will, they give away their natural sovereignty in exchange for comfort and servitude and are psychologically reduced to sheep. We developed this sheeplike behaviour as a result of the belief that the morals and ethics forced upon us by society are avenues to success and freedom. This notion is absurd inasmuch as the success and freedom of our world are unnatural. These goals are gauged only by finances. But obviously this is not true success or freedom, as money is empty and void of meaning, and it provides no happiness other than that of acquisition. Happiness cannot be contained in anything that we need to force to happen.
As human life is forced into a sheeplike way of being, happiness is reduced to momentary stimulants of excitement. In such a life we can never express our natural divinity, li, because we are following the model of someone else’s idea of life. Yet conforming to anything other than one’s own innate world destroys us physically, mentally, and spiritually, as te, the virtue of Tao, cannot come through the organic pattern of the individual, li. Anxiety, depression and stress are so prevalent in this day and age partly because we are forced to live such lives. Wars and social unrest then reflect the individual’s anxiety.
Liberated individuals are in alignment with their own nature and with the Tao. They do not benefit the accepted social order and are regarded as useless in the eyes of institutional and organisational power. [Taoist sages] Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu were treated this way because they could see the unnaturalness of an artificial society. The Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth were two other such sages who could see through the hypnotic veil. A liberated sage understands that anyone who continues to act out the unnatural patterns of conditioning is contributing to chaos and destruction, either consciously or unconsciously. One who is liberated, on the other hand, begins the yoking process until a crystal-clear perception of the Tao in reality can be experienced. In Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching, he states:
Not every man has an obligation to mingle in the affairs of the world. There are some who are developed to such a degree that they are justified in letting the world go its own way and in refusing to enter public life with a view of reforming it. But this does not imply a right to remain idle or to sit back and merely criticise. Such withdrawal is justified only when we strive to realise in ourselves the higher aims of mankind. For although the sage remains distant from the turmoil of daily life, he creates incomparable human values for the future. (The I Ching or Book of Changes)
Evidence for these “incomparable human values” can be found in the legacy that a sage leaves behind. Lao-tzu is a good example. It has been over 2,500 years since he lived, and yet his wisdom still reverberates within our consciousness today. This is the power of te.
The virtue of te is only available to those who do not seek power, control, or force. Governments, politics, banking, religions, and commerce, on the other hand, are constantly striving for control by forcing the population to their will. This poses a significant hurdle for humanity to overcome. What would it take to bring the individual and the collective back into harmony with the Tao?
The above is an exclusive extract from Jason Gregory’s book Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony. Gregory outlines the Taoist practice of wu-wei, revealing that when we release our ego and allow life to unfold as it will, we align ourselves more closely with our goals and cultivate skill and mastery along the way. The book is available from all good bookstores.
Back in the 1880s, the mathematician and theologian Edwin Abbott tried to help us better understand our world by describing a very different one he called Flatland.
Imagine a world that is not a sphere moving through space like our own planet, but more like a vast sheet of paper inhabited by conscious, flat geometric shapes. These shape-people can move forwards and backwards, and they can turn left and right. But they have no sense of up or down. The very idea of a tree, or a well, or a mountain makes no sense to them because they lack the concepts and experiences of height and depth. They cannot imagine, let alone describe, objects familiar to us.
In this two-dimensional world, the closest scientists can come to comprehending a third dimension are the baffling gaps in measurements that register on their most sophisticated equipment. They sense the shadows cast by a larger universe outside Flatland. The best brains infer that there must be more to the universe than can be observed but they have no way of knowing what it is they don’t know.
This sense of the the unknowable, the ineffable has been with humans since our earliest ancestors became self-conscious. They inhabited a world of immediate, cataclysmic events – storms, droughts, volcanoes and earthquakes – caused by forces they could not explain. But they also lived with a larger, permanent wonder at the mysteries of nature itself: the change from day to night, and the cycle of the seasons; the pin-pricks of light in the night sky, and their continual movement; the rising and falling of the seas; and the inevitability of life and death.
Perhaps not surprisingly, our ancestors tended to attribute common cause to these mysterious events, whether of the catastrophic or the cyclical variety, whether of chaos or order. They ascribed them to another world or dimension – to the spiritual realm, to the divine.
Paradox and mystery
Science has sought to shrink the realm of the inexplicable. We now understand – at least approximately – the laws of nature that govern the weather and catastrophic events like an earthquake. Telescopes and rocket-ships have also allowed us to probe deeper into the heavens to make a little more sense of the universe outside our tiny corner of it.
But the more we investigate the universe the more rigid appear the limits to our knowledge. Like the shape-people of Flatland, our ability to understand is constrained by the dimensions we can observe and experience: in our case, the three dimensions of space and the additional one of time. Influential “string theory” posits another six dimensions, though we would be unlikely to ever sense them in any more detail than the shadows almost-detected by the scientists of Flatland.
The deeper we peer into the big universe of the night sky and our cosmic past, and the deeper we peer into the small universe inside the atom and our personal past, the greater the sense of mystery and wonder.
At the sub-atomic level, the normal laws of physics break down. Quantum mechanics is a best-guess attempt to explain the mysteries of movement of the tiniest particles we can observe, which appear to be operating, at least in part, in a dimension we cannot observe directly.
And most cosmologists, looking outwards rather inwards, have long known that there are questions we are unlikely ever to answer: not least what exists outside our universe – or expressed another way, what existed before the Big Bang. For some time, dark matter and black holes have baffled the best minds. This month scientists conceded to the New York Times that there are forms of matter and energy unknown to science but which can be inferred because they disrupt the known laws of physics.
Inside and outside the atom, our world is full of paradox and mystery.
Breaking News: Evidence is mounting that a tiny subatomic particle is being influenced by forms of matter and energy that are not yet known to science but which may nevertheless affect the nature and evolution of the universe. https://t.co/8cwwhlPCOe
Despite our science-venerating culture, we have arrived at a similar moment to our forebears, who gazed at the night sky in awe. We have been forced to acknowledge the boundaries of knowledge.
There is a difference, however. Our ancestors feared the unknowable, and therefore preferred to show caution and humility in the face of what could not be understood. They treated the ineffable with respect and reverence. Our culture encourages precisely the opposite approach. We show only conceit and arrogance. We seek to defeat, ignore or trivialise that which we cannot explain or understand.
The greatest scientists do not make this mistake. As an avid viewer of science programmes like the BBC’s Horizon, I am always struck by the number of cosmologists who openly speak of their religious belief. Carl Sagan, the most famous cosmologist, never lost his sense of awestruck wonder as he examined the universe. Outside the lab, his was not the language of hard, cold, calculating science. He described the universe in the language of poetry. He understood the necessary limits of science. Rather than being threatened by the universe’s mysteries and paradoxes, he celebrated them.
When in 1990, for example, space probe Voyager 1 showed us for the first time our planet from 6 billion km away, Sagan did not mistake himself or his fellow NASA scientists for gods. He saw “a pale blue dot” and marvelled at a planet reduced to a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”. Humility was his response to the vast scale of the universe, our fleeting place within it, and our struggle to grapple with “the great enveloping cosmic dark”.
Mind and matter
Sadly, Sagan’s approach is not the one that dominates the western tradition. All too often, we behave as if we are gods. Foolishly, we have made a religion of science. We have forgotten that in a world of unknowables, the application of science is necessarily tentative and ideological. It is a tool, one of many that we can use to understand our place in the universe, and one that is easily appropriated by the corrupt, by the vain, by those who seek power over others, by those who worship money.
Until relatively recently, science, philosophy and theology sought to investigate the same mysteries and answer the same existential questions. Through much of history, they were seen as complementary, not in competition. Abbott, remember, was a mathematician and theologian, and Flatland was his attempt to explain the nature of faith. Similarly, the man who has perhaps most shaped the paradigm within which much western science still operates was a French philosopher using the scientific methods of the time to prove the existence of God.
Today, Rene Descartes is best remembered for his famous – if rarely understood – dictum: “I think, therefore I am.” Four hundred years ago, he believed he could prove God’s existence through his argument that mind and matter are separate. Just as human bodies were distinct from souls, so God was separate and distinct from humans. Descartes believed knowledge was innate, and therefore our idea of a perfect being, of God, could only derive from something that was perfect and objectively real outside us.
Weak and self-serving as many of his arguments sound today, Descartes’ lasting ideological influence on western science was profound. Not least so-called Cartesian dualism – the treatment of mind and matter as separate realms – has encouraged and perpetuated a mechanistic view of the world around us.
We can briefly grasp how strong the continuing grip of his thinking is on us when we are confronted with more ancient cultures that have resisted the west’s extreme rationalist discourse – in part, we should note, because they were exposed to it in hostile, oppressive ways that served only to alienate them from the western canon.
Hearing a Native American or an Australian Aboriginal speak of the sacred significance of a river or a rock – or about their ancestors – is to become suddenly aware of how alien their thinking sounds to our “modern” ears. It is the moment when we are likely to respond in one of two ways: either to smirk internally at their childish ignorance, or to gulp at a wisdom that seems to fill a yawning emptiness in our own lives.
Science and power
Descartes’ legacy – a dualism that assumes separation between soul and body, mind and matter – has in many ways proved a poisonous one for western societies. An impoverished, mechanistic worldview treats both the planet and our bodies primarily as material objects: one a plaything for our greed, the other a canvas for our insecurities.
The British scientist James Lovelock who helped model conditions on Mars for NASA so it would have a better idea how to build the first probes to land there, is still ridiculed for the Gaia hypothesis he developed in the 1970s. He understood that our planet was best not viewed as a very large lump of rock with life-forms living on it, though distinct from it. Rather Earth was as a complete, endlessly complex, delicately balanced living entity. Over billions of years, life had grown more sophisticated, but each species, from the most primitive to the most advanced, was vital to the whole, maintaining a harmony that sustained the diversity.
Few listened to Lovelock. Our god-complex got the better of us. And now, as the bees and other insects disappear, everything he warned of decades ago seems far more urgent. Through our arrogance, we are destroying the conditions for advanced life. If we don’t stop soon, the planet will dispose of us and return to an earlier stage of its evolution. It will begin again, without us, as simple flora and microbes once again begin recreating gradually – measured in aeons – the conditions favourable to higher life forms.
But the abusive, mechanistic relationship we have with our planet is mirrored by the one we have with our bodies and our health. Dualism has encouraged us to think of our bodies as fleshy vehicles, which like the metal ones need regular outside intervention, from a service to a respray or an upgrade. The pandemic has only served to underscore these unwholesome tendencies.
In part, the medical establishment, like all establishments, has been corrupted by the desire for power and enrichment. Science is not some pristine discipline, free from real-world pressures. Scientists need funding for research, they have mortgages to pay, and they crave status and career advancement like everyone else.
Kamran Abbasi, executive editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote an editorial last November warning of British state corruption that had been unleashed on a grand scale by covid-19. But it was not just politicians responsible. Scientists and health experts had been implicated too: “The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency.”
He added: “The UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines.”
So many conflicts of interest in the decisions that shape our understanding of the world. Here's just one more tiny, unremarkable nugget told in passing:
'Google’s parent company, Alphabet, owns 12% of Vaccitech', the biotech firm behind AstraZeneca's jab https://t.co/XSslDkpDd4
But in some ways Abbasi is too generous. Scientists haven’t only corrupted science by prioritising their personal, political and commercial interests. Science itself is shaped and swayed by the ideological assumptions of scientists and the wider societies to which they belong. For centuries, Descartes’ dualism has provided the lens through which scientists have often developed and justified medical treatments and procedures. Medicine has its fashions too, even if they tend to be longer-lived – and more dangerous – than the ones of the clothing industry.
In fact, there were self-interested reasons why Descartes’s dualism was so appealing to the scientific and medical community four centuries ago. His mind-matter division carved out a space for science free from clerical interference. Doctors could now claim an authority over our bodies separate from that claimed by the Church over our souls.
But the mechanistic view of health has been hard to shake off, even as scientific understanding – and exposure to non-western medical traditions – should have made it seem ever less credible. Cartesian dualism reigns to this day, seen in the supposedly strict separation of physical and mental health. To treat the mind and body as indivisible, as two sides of the same coin, is to risk being accused of quackery. “Holistic” medicine still struggles to be taken seriously.
Faced with a fear-inducing pandemic, the medical establishment has inevitably reverted even more strongly to type. The virus has been viewed through a single lens: as an invader seeking to overwhelm our defences, while we are seen as vulnerable patients in desperate need of an extra battalion of soldiers who can help us to fight it off. With this as the dominant framework, it has fallen to Big Pharma – the medical corporations with the greatest firepower – to ride to our rescue.
Vaccines are part of an emergency solution, of course. They will help save lives among the most vulnerable. But the reliance on vaccines, to the exclusion of everything else, is a sign that once again we are being lured back to viewing our bodies as machines. We are being told by the medical establishment we can ride out this war with some armour-plating from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. We can all be Robocop in the battle against Covid-19.
Pfizer claims people will likely need a third dose of its Covid-19 vaccine within six to 12 months of receiving the first two doses.
CEO Albert Bourla says, from then on, it is also possible that people may require annual booster shots. pic.twitter.com/Ki9nVLVg7v
But there are others ways to view health than as an expensive, resource-depleting technological battle against virus-warriors. Where is the focus on improving the ever-more nutrient-deficient, processed, pesticide-laden, and sugar and chemical-rich diets most of us consume? How do we address the plague of stress and anxiety we all endure in a competitive, digitally connected, no-rest world stripped of all spiritual meaning? What do we do about the cosseted lifestyles we prefer, where exertion is a lifestyle choice renamed as exercise rather than integral to our working day, and where regular exposure to sunshine, outside of a beach vacation, is all but impossible in our office-bound schedules?
Fear and quick-fixes
For much of human history, our chief concern was the fight for survival – against animals and other humans, against the elements, against natural disasters. Technological developments proved invaluable in making our lives safer and easier, whether it was flint axes and domesticated animals, wheels and combustion engines, medicines and mass communications. Our brains now seem hardwired to look to technological innovation to address even the smallest inconvenience, to allay even our wildest fears.
So, of course, we have invested our hopes, and sacrificed our economies, in finding a technological fix to the pandemic. But does this exclusive fixation on technology to solve the current health crisis not have a parallel with the similar, quick-fix technological remedies we keep seeking for the many ecological crises we have created?
Global warming? We can create an even whiter paint to reflect back the sun’s heat. Plastics in every corner of our oceans? We can build giant vacuum-cleaners that will suck it all out. Vanishing bee populations? We can invent pollinator drones to take their place. A dying planet? Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk will fly millions of us to space colonies.
Were we not so technology obsessed, were we not so greedy, were we not so terrified of insecurity and death, if we did not see our bodies and minds as separate, and humans as separate from everything else, we might pause to ponder whether our approach is not a little misguided.
Science and technology can be wonderful things. They can advance our knowledge of ourselves and the world we inhabit. But they need to be conducted with a sense of humility we increasingly seem incapable of. We are not conquerors of our bodies, or the planet, or the universe – and if we imagine we are, we will soon find out that the battle we are waging is one we can never hope to win.
After the Crash 