Loving being human, despite a fracturing world

Anything imagined and created by people can in theory be changed or stopped by people.. Including destructive systems of civilization. And new, restorative Systems can be imagined and created. In fact, don’t waste time trying to stop or change the old, destructive, extractive Systems, simply start looking for or creating alternatives wherever you are, with love and spirit.

Prof Jem Bendell

Last week in London I began my talk about Breaking Together by asking the people gathered to raise their hand if they felt proud of being human. Only a couple of people did. I then asked for a show of hands on the question on whether humans are inherently destructive to nature. A small majority supported that idea. I asked these questions to get to the heart of the issue of how environmentally-conscious people understand our situation. Because I know how sadness, anxiety and frustration pulse through us in regular waves. I wanted to explore how we can love ourselves and each other, fully, despite the destruction that has been caused by modern societies – and how that can guide our future action as situations become more difficult.

I shared some lines from Chapter 9 of my book, where I use the latest archeology and anthropology to debunk some of…

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all my nightmares

all my nightmares riding down on me
on a muscle-cramp horse that bucks and tosses
i cried out at 3am, could not sleep til 4.

now I drag this pencil across the unforgiving page
fighting off a rage that builds like a storm

cloud dark on the horizon
the horizon
the horizon that shifts and tilts like a fairground ride
ride and hold
hold on and keep breathing
let the air fill you up
fill me up
fill us up and bind us in common
in common can we find the shared path
?
or do we traverse unfair ground
that splits and divvies us
driving us round and out

out of sight
of each other’s eyes
eyes that show and yet disguise
the soul

the essence that hides
peeks out from time to time…

it’s getting hard to push

out these thoughts
to push out

the rhymes to push

away the sky the clouds oh let the sunshine in
but I must keep going
apparently
despite the bad dreams
despite the shite
despite the pains
because the night is made for lovers
and loners too

we are sometimes blue
surely there must be something else we can do?

you (me?) seem to know what to do
yet underneath that irksome confidence
is a lone soul looking

for some truth

or just a good time

connection
pleasure over pain
again and again and again
– and again the pain
the pleasure got to get
the right measure
what’s the right dose?
there is no truth
there is no absolute
but the zero point of everything is here
in my hand
in my heart
in my eyes
in my loving
in my sex
in my fingers
in my music
in my saying
in my … oh my….

and why are we waiting?
Where are we not demonstrating?
protests unnoticed,
a child screaming in a playground of screaming children
we slowly grow into men and women
and the screaming goes below

somewhere
deep within
does it ever merge with the light the love the One?
how would one know, until the verse is done?

the screaming goes below beneath
the threshold
of human hearing
released in nightmares that break through the veil
of night’s thin substance, the moon’s wan smile

keep breathing, and wait a while –
the dawn may release you from the night’s howl.

—-

4.7.17
(11.7.17)