Systems prepare for their overthrow with a preliminary period of petrification.
R. H. Tawney
In the empires of usury, the sentimentality of the man with the soft heart calls to us because it speaks of what has been lost.
Lewis Hyde
For whatever reason, I’ve always been allergic to group-think. One consequence of this – or perhaps cause – is being an outsider observing others, in judgment more often than I’d like, but less and less as I grow older and hopefully wiser. And if I have indeed grown in wisdom over the last decade or so, it is primarily because I was broken open.
This article will not pick over the details of how that break happened. It looks at the different consequences that flow from open and closed hearts, and the states of being that give rise to those emotional postures. A poem I wrote at possibly the nadir – or zenith – of that period some seven years ago begins the exploration. I think it captures the richness and pain stemming from that particular vulnerability we need to sustain somehow if we are to communicate effectively with each other during this civilisational turning point.
Rid me of me
Hello today’s me.
Hello scattered birdsong and sunlight on the floor.
Welcome to my shifting landscape. Please
the rictus of my looping thoughts.
Raise me up to cast me down across my iron throne. Please
break my back.
Please snap my resistance
to your splendid offerings.
let me go innocent and unready
into the kaleidoscope of your moments.
Help me let the pain,
the unsummoned aftershocks,
the horrid fantasies flowing from my fool’s error
flow through and on
through and on
like wind through my hair,
like trains rattling through a station.
Can I be that open?
I talk it alive around
yet not inside me.
If this has power to change,
then I say: I invite you in.
denuded, faithful, God-serving.
Pregnant with unexpected generosity.
Deep in pain. Deep in Love. Anonymous.
beauty in my hands beauty a blackbird honest and immediate
a song for my eyes
for my embrace trapped to me alone
understood contained made mine.
I will never be worthy?
Is this what I first must learn?
I’ve shared this poem more for what it evokes at the individual level than for any pride or shame I might have about its quality. People tend not to risk profound change, or let go into themselves, unless backed into a corner. When it comes to entire cultures, this is far more than doubly so. We evolve slowly at best. When an evolutionary leap is required – because we’ve been kicking that can down the road –, we don’t submit without a fight. We cling as fast as we can to what we know, to comfort, to familiarity.
Totalitarianism is in some sense a mass-psychotic product of the fear of needed radical change in a modern civilisational context. It has a decent chance to install itself only when certain generalised conditions are met: free-floating anxieties, free-floating discontent, social isolation, meaningless lives, and a controllable mass media.
(“Free-floating” refers to conditions that cannot be explained: we are afraid and discontented but cannot fathom what the causes might be. As such, they seem stubbornly insoluble.)
With a mass media at their disposal, those who would exploit this set of circumstances do so by identifying a cause or scapegoat into which the fears and uncertainties can hook themselves. The totalitarian aspirants then present a structured path by which to defeat that identified cause. In this iteration of the phenomenon, an invisible microbe labelled SARS-CoV-2 is the cause, while lockdowns and ‘vaccines’ are the path to safety and clarity. And this iteration is global. It is nation states everywhere against their people.
Totalitarianism turns societies of individuals into a hypnotised mass that clings fiercely to the solution offered. Anything that threatens to break the hypnosis threatens to cast the mass back into the pit of its old fear and uncertainties. Facts and figures that contradict the narrative must be ignored or dispelled as a matter of life or death. Rather than examine their contribution to the decay and rot that defined their old normal, the hypnotised relinquish their free will to a tyrant or tyrannical group(s) offering them a shiny New Normal.
Which of us chooses the pain of humility over the comfort of pre-packaged certainties when afraid and apparently powerless in the face of what’s coming next? Who wants to be fundamentally wrong and culpable when the stakes are so high that one’s very life seems to be on the line?
Interestingly, the proportion of a people that submits fully to the hypnosis is said to be 30-35%. A further 40% or so don’t really buy into the spell cast but prefer not to voice their doubts for various reasons. The remainder is prepared to express their views and take action to some degree. To prevent totalitarianism from really taking hold and destroying most of society (totalitarianism can only fail; it is entirely dysfunctional), those who are prepared to speak out, who are willing to take action, must hit upon the most effective strategies. This is where love comes in.
The group to reach is the silent majority; those fully committed are now lost to fate. Those individuals who constitute that silent majority must be invited to engage their courage and sense of human dignity. But grass does not grow faster if you shout at it. People can feel when they are being addressed lovingly, i.e. with respect and humility. This can be in the form of conversation, in humour, and in all art forms, whether one-to-one or one-to-many.
Seven years ago, I was in a battle with my fears and self-loathing. Love, which is in fact unconditional, was the way out. The appeal I made to myself, voiced in the poem above, was a call to be totally open to reality as it is. This is the state of being we need to adopt if we are to reach those silent millions and encourage love of life to rise up in their hearts. The rhetoric on display in this article is my medium of choice but when it comes to face-to-face encounters, it is open authenticity that proves most effective. In essence, this means being prepared to be wrong, that one sees every conversation – or heated argument – as an opportunity to learn.
As society is crassly divided into bitterly opposed camps, what we need to accomplish in response is the shattering of our own fears and tensions directly and bravely into a state of open-hearted receptivity and courage. This state of being calls deeply to those ready to hear. The old cliche that we all want the same basic things is true: healthy food, healthy environment, the opportunity to develop our potential, mutual respect, freedom of movement, an effective education, trustworthy institutions, etc. The devil is always in the detail, but compromise functions best when we remember what unites us above what divides us. Diversity is the stuff of life and love, but without our awareness rooted in the unity from which diversity flows, we risk the arbitrary mob rule of scattered multitudes and its consequent pervasive fear and meaninglessness.
Reject the old normal, reject their New Normal, and commit to strong, humble openness and the beautiful creativity it brings. We will be amazed at what we can accomplish.
Let all that is not rooted in truth and love wither and fall away.
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