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The Culture of Pretend: How Psychotherapy Keeps Our Communities Sick

Early in my experience as a psychotherapy client I received the therapeutic counsel that “Secrets keep you sick.” As scared as I felt when I identified and then disclosed secrets to my therapist, I saw the healing power that came as as a result.  I worked hard in therapy.  I realized how much material I had kept secret, even from myself.  I learned the power and value of deep insight, as I recalled forgotten events, experiences, and emotions.   I committed myself to make the most out of my therapy and that counsel about not keeping secrets proved to be of great personal value.  I felt real relief at finally knowing myself and then at allowing someone else to know me to the bone.

I saw some smart and helpful therapists along the way. It is not a stretch to say that psychotherapy very likely saved my life. It definitely improved my life and my regard for myself.  But, like most people who have been on either or both sides of “the couch,” I didn’t expect complete healing of everything.  I accepted on-going self-doubt, neuroses, bouts of insecurity, and inner triggers and over-reactions as part of being human. I’ve kind of accepted, like Jack Nicholson does in one of my favorite movies, that this is “As Good As I Gets.”

Now, after twenty-five years of being a psychotherapist and some thirty-five years since I first entered therapy as a client, I’m questioning some basic assumptions about the institution of psychotherapy.  And it is because of that counsel about not keeping secrets, that I have begun this questioning.

Psychotherapy can help people to acknowledge their own history of unmet needs, hurts, and trauma, and the resulting emotions. It also can help us to acknowledge the pain of friends and family who take the risk to share themselves deeply.  Of course that is good and can be helpful. But the institution of psychotherapy also serves to enable a sick, isolating society to remain so.  We get patched up enough in our therapist’s office that we can continue to hide the depth of our on-going life challenges from our day-to-day community. That hour in a therapist’s office takes the edge off of our pain and loneliness. So upon walking out the door we are able put on a happy face more effectively.  We limp along, individually and collectively, and keep our status as card-carrying members of The Culture of Pretend.

Secrets DO keep us sick.  Our secrets keep us strangled with shame.  One of the most potent healing effects of twelve-step group recovery work is that people reveal to one another the fact of their addictions and dysfunctions.  AA meetings begin with introductions and acknowledgement of each person’s addiction to alcohol. Those repeated revelations of the fact of one’s addiction breaks the back of toxic shame.  Recovering addicts do not hide, at least from each other.

So I  might introduce myself in a similar manner.

Hello, I’m Sally and I’m a survivor of The Culture of Pretend.  Hello, I’m Sally and I’m sad and lonely.  Hello, I’m Sally and I have little contact with my family of origin.  Hello, I’m Sally and I’m ashamed about sexuality.  Hello, I’m Sally and I have issues around money and self-esteem; I’m panicked about climate change; I feel grief over the loss of community; I struggle with my weight and aging body; I regret mistakes I made in the parenting of my children.  I’m Sally and I’ve spent hundreds of hours in therapy and I still have wounding and dysfunctional patterns that haven’t healed.  I’m Sally, I’m 57 years old and only in the last six years have I learned to communicate clearly, honestly, and effectively with a mate and a small handful of friends. 

 The river meanders on in different directions, depending on the day, depending on the storm. 

 Hello, I’m Sally and I have secrets.

I love my work as a psychotherapist. I feel honored to bear witness to the courage of people who unpack their secrets and their shame in front of me.  In the safety inside the walls of my office,  people get a taste of the health and freedom to be who they are.  I work consciously to create that safety.  I disclose to my clients that I too am human and continue to have “issues.”  I work to help people understand the connections between their past history and their current problems, so they understand where their “issues” come from, and so that they can treat themselves with more patience, kindness, and compassion.  I love my work because I see it alleviates some of the suffering, including some of the suffering of toxic shame.

In recent years I’ve grown uncomfortable with the institution of psychotherapy and have begun to call into question the ultimate value of this work. While I create a safe place for people to unpack their secrets, I also simultaneously and unwittingly, collude with the Culture of Pretend.  I make it easier for people to cope with, instead of confront, this culture that breeds shame and dysfunction.  I send people out the door with their baggage somewhat lightened, repacked in a more orderly fashion, perhaps with some more space where before there had been shame.  But, when they hit the street, they likely continue to keep their secrets packed away in that baggage. They continue to hide the fact and details of both their past and on-going suffering.  They pick up more unspeakable experience and it gets added to the load. And thus the Culture of Pretend reigns on.   

I am trying an experiment.  With others in my local community, I’m exploring the idea of creating a “conscious conversation” group, to meet on a weekly basis.  It is not a support group for people who share a common dysfunction or addiction.  It is not a therapy group for people who are trying to get over a diagnosed neurosis or character disorder with a professional therapist on hand.  It is a group interested simply in seeing what happens if we show up and learn to speak honestly, and to listen in turn respectfully, with the intention not to fix, to heal, or to advise, but to understand and to connect.  And ultimately to tap into the deeper wisdom that is possible, such as I’ve experienced with groups who stay the course.

As I was thinking about how to create this local group it occurred to me that the best way would be to personally invite people to it, rather than to send out an email invitation or to put up a flyer at the bookstore.  I thought about some of the people I might approach.  And I got scared.  I got scared because of my own shame that I even want and need such a group. 

These are some of the shame-based questions that went through my head:

What will people think of me? Will they think I’m lonely and pity me? Will they think me weak and unfit?  Will they wonder if I’m trying to start a cult?  Will they just be confused by the whole notion?  Or will people feel offended by the idea that I want to start a group for “conscious” conversation because that implies that what I experience in my day-to-day interactions is “unconscious” conversation? 

Those questions arise because in the Culture of Pretend we aren’t lonely or wounded or in need.  Despite the years of therapy and the healing I’ve experienced, there still resides in me a deep fear that I’ll be seen as wrong, sick, and needy because I am not satisfied with the quality of human connection and interaction that is available outside of therapy or weekend workshops.  It’s not enough for me.  So I’ve doubted myself and wondered if I’m odd and damaged?  If what is available in terms of intimate community is not enough for others, would there not already be something in place?

I began to think about conversations regarding this subject I might have with people.  Could I ask if they had ever been in therapy and who they currently turn to when they are sad or angry or scared?  Could I suggest that all is not well in this community?  As I sat with that idea I felt a cold damp chill come over me.   What if I’m the only one?  What if everyone else is doing just fine? 

I know this fearful and shameful inner territory.  It’s as old as I am.  It began in my family of origin.  It’s why I no longer have much contact with them.  No one in my family talks about how they actually feel.  Since I was very young we all circled up psychically around my mother who, with her incessant talking and obsessive housekeeping, is one of the most anxious and compulsive people I’ve ever met. 

In this regard an old saying from the South comes to mind:

 “If Mama’s not happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

That rings frighteningly operative for my family.  To keep Mama happy, the overriding family rule was to orient around her and her needs, weaknesses, and dysfunctions. There were other specific, unspoken, but very effective corollaries to that general rule:

“Don’t talk about Mama’s craziness,” “Don’t feel anything about Mama’s craziness,” and “Don’t try to do anything about Mama’s craziness.”

In other words, keep Mama’s craziness and your feelings about Mama’s craziness a big secret.

As a result, our family was emotionally isolated.  We didn’t talk with each other and we certainly didn’t talk with anyone outside the family. We cut off from our own selves, our own experience.  With no safe place to talk and to feel, we shut off access to our own gut responses to the situation. We numbed out and sought refuge in our big brains, in school achievement, in compulsive work, in food, and in some cases in numbing depression.  This situation persists in the rest of my family to this day.

Most families have secrets, and most people keep those secrets because, like our family, they have no place that feels safe to unpack them.  The exceptional individual or family may visit a therapist’s office on occasion, or, with luck, participate in a self-help recovery group.  For members of The Culture of Pretend, the closed doors of a paid professional or support group provide almost the only places to be fully who we are, to speak freely about our experience, and to feel the depth of our feelings. While therapy provides partial relief from shame and isolation, it does not allow us deep connection and honesty in our larger community.  We continue to hide much of our experience from one another.  That keeps us individually and collectively, sick.  The community becomes a collection of individuals who are walking around, acting happy, but toting lockboxes full of secrets. Secrets keep us sick as individuals.  And sick individuals hiding from one another do not make a healthy, honest, loving community.  And sick communities make a sick American culture, The Culture of Pretend.

Here are some keys with which to unlock the American box of secrets:

More than 10% of Americans are being treated for depression.  That comes to 1 in every 8 Americans, and mental health officials believe that the condition is still under-diagnosed and that 1 in 5 should be treated. www.wrongdiagnosis.com/news

About 28 to 30 percent of the population has either a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder.  That’s almost a third of our population. www.surgeongeneral.gov

And as a whole we are incredibly isolated.

“A quarter of Americans say they have no one (my emphasis) with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.” www.washingtonpost.com

 Clearly you and I are not alone in our loneliness and the fact that we have “issues.” And I know I suffer less acutely than many members of the Culture of Pretend.  I do have more than two people I can confide in and I’m not depressed or anxious to the degree that would warrant a major diagnosis.  So I’m one of the lucky ones.  Yet, even though I do not suffer as much as many, I still suffer.

Think about it.  A third of the population suffers with either a diagnosable mental disorder or an addiction, and a quarter of the population has not even one person in whom they can confide.  People of The Culture of Pretend are troubled, isolated and collectively stuck in our shame.  As a result, we habitually and routinely hide these things from each other. It seems many, if not most of us, have lost both the inclination and the skills to establish a network of honest, intimate relationships. We don’t even think to imagine what that might feel like.

Why do we hide?

Think about sitting with someone you know but with whom you are not intimate.  Think about not hiding, about acknowledging that you have “issues” with any number of things: anger, helplessness, sadness, fears, family problems, relationship struggles.  What do you expect will be the response from the person with whom you are talking? 

Likely it will be one of two things.  This person will nervously change the subject or rapidly start suggesting solutions, offering advice so that you no longer have to feel unhappy or confused or stuck. Both responses reinforce toxic shame.  The first response sends a message that you accidentally broke the code of silence and pretense and need to be rescued from the shame of that by a rapid change of topic.  The second sends a message that your problems are simple, that the person has advice that will help.  Therefore your suffering results from some way you are inherently inadequate.

People don’t want to reinforce shame with either message. Most people genuinely want to be helpful, either by rescuing you of the shame of having exposed yourself or by offering well-meaning advice.  But neither response is truly helpful. Truth is the listener does not want to admit that, down deep, she or he also feels helpless or sad, scared or stuck or enraged.  The person doesn’t want to have to feel upset for either of you.  So quick advice is offered.  And advice provides a good distraction from the uncomfortable feelings of both speaker and listener.  It relieves both of the challenge to “sit with” uncomfortable feelings.  We accept this kind of interaction as normal social discourse.  It’s kind of insane.  But because it’s very difficult for most people to “sit with” emotions, we don’t.

What makes it feel so awful to “sit with” our emotions is that heaped on top of those emotions are large doses of shame.  We have an ingrained story in the Culture of Pretend that tells us that we shouldn’t feel angry, or sad, scared or helpless.  And if we happen to experience one of those “negative” emotions,  it should last only very briefly.  We should get some advice, and get on with it.  We should be happy.  After all we live the American Dream.  We are the bright, beautiful children of rugged immigrants, noble working class, or good middle- or upper-class families. Our folks struggled to give us a good life.  We are well-educated and well-fed.  It’s not pretty or appreciative to feel or express these so-called “negative” things.  So we hide what we feel. We pretend we’ve got it covered.

That is just a story however. There’s a more accurate story we could start to tell.  Here is how I would tell it:

America is part of Empire and our way of life “peaked” many decades ago.  There’s much to feel “negative” about, much in our personal and collective past and much in our present.  Americans are not happy.  The Culture of Pretend is simply that, pretense and fluff.  Life for most people is not good or easy.  And if one’s life circumstances happen to be better than others’, those circumstances ultimately exact a horrific cost to the non-human and indigenous worlds that Empire has exploited to supply us with our comfort.  And the truth is, even with our “comfort,” we are not happy or fulfilled, only comfortable. 

Freud, bless his limited, cigar-smoking, neurotic, Austrian self, had some wise ideas.  One of his wise ideas was this:

 “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”

That has always rung true for me.  So how, in fact, are Americans doing with those cornerstones of our humanness? 

On the work front things are not so good.

“According to a recent survey, job dissatisfaction is widespread among workers of all ages across all income brackets.  The study found that only half of all the workers are satisfied with their jobs.  Worker satisfaction has declined across all income brackets over the last nine years (click here for more on this study).  Surveys over the past 40 years have shown that 40% to 50% of workers would change their line of work, if they could.” www.careerkey.org

The survey was reported in 2007.  So that study addresses only the part of the population that currently has a job.  Our collective pain in the arena of work has increased hugely with skyrocketing unemployment since the economic meltdown of 2008.

And despite what the Culture of Pretend would have us believe, Americans are not doing so hot at love either:

“The divorce rate in the United States is the highest in the world. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. Sixty-seven percent of all second marriages end in divorce.” www.mediate.com

 And further,

 While almost a half of marriages in Australia end in divorce, the half that don’t are apparently not much happier according to a recent study.

The British firm Seddons surveyed 2000 married couples and found that the majority are dissatisfied and only stay together for pragmatic reasons. The survey found that:

·      59% of the married women would leave if they could find financial security elsewhere.

·      51% of the men thought their marriages were ‘loveless’.

·      Over 50% of the couples had thought seriously about divorce

·      10% wished they had married someone else.

·       37% said they stayed together for the sake of the children.

·       30% stayed because they could not deal with the ‘massive upheaval’ of separation.

·       35% thought their marriage was about to ‘turn stale’.

 

It seems likely that with divorce rates similar to Australia, the survey statistics would be mirrored in Britain, the US and other Western countries. www.ultimate-self.com

I am not surprised by these studies.  I have had my share of sorrow around relationships over the years and I count myself extremely fortunate that I found work that I’ve loved and could pursue in balance with the rest of my life for much of my adult life.  Most people hold little hope to have work that they both love and that pays the bills, and would consider themselves extremely lucky if they did.

Where is My Tribe?

 As a people, Americans who feel, feel deep dissatisfaction.  But we are not bound together, in ways earlier tribal peoples were, such that we can help one another address that dissatisfaction.  We are isolated and trapped in the Culture of Pretend.  We don’t talk about these things openly and so we can’t solve them collectively.  Most people feel unhappy in one or more areas of their life, in work, in love, or in both.  But because we live in The Culture of Pretend we fear we are the only ones suffering.  It’s become a deadly spiral:

The more isolated and ashamed I feel, the less likely I am to talk about it.  The less I talk about it the less likely I am to know that I’m not alone, that I can reach out for acceptance and support.  The less acceptance and support I get, the more helpless and ashamed I feel. The more I feel ashamed, the more I hide.  The more I hide, the more everyone else hides.  The more we all hide, the more helpless and ashamed we all feel.  

Members of the Culture of Pretend run a never-ending race between shame and isolation. We hide most of our difficulties from most of the people in our lives.  The hiding arises from, and reinforces, shame.  Both the hiding and the shame become intractable parts of a self-reinforcing loop.  And we all lose in this race, even those of us who do not currently suffer acutely.  Because we’re all missing out on having our tribe, our clan, our village.  We collectively miss out on the richness of loving community: giving and receiving the very love, support, honesty, and understanding that would help ourselves and our neighbors.

Enter “learned helplessness.”

Learned helplessness describes the condition of a human being or an animal that has learned to behave helplessly in the face of pain even when the opportunity is present to alleviate the pain by changing the unpleasant or harmful circumstances.

“Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation (Seligman, 1975)”. ~Wikipedia

The “learned helplessness” studies which began in the late 1960’s went loosely like this:  a dog is placed in a closed cage.  The cage is shocked a number of times. At first, of course, the dog tries to escape from the cage, fighting and howling.  But after a period of unpredictable, inescapable shocks the dog gives up and becomes passive in response. We can surmise that the passivity arises from an inner blunting of the pain, a shut-down of the normal feeling stimulus-response pattern.  The dog becomes psychically, perhaps physically, numb in an effort to cope with the inescapable pain of the shocks.  Then the door to the cage is opened.  The dog is shocked again, repeatedly.  However, because of “learned helplessness,” even though there is now an escape, even though the dog could freely leave the cage, she does not. She has “learned” that nothing she does will change the situation.  She has learned that the best way to cope is to blunt the feeling of the shock, go passive, and so suffer less.  Thus the opened door, the way out, becomes irrelevant in the face of “learned helplessness.”

Learned helplessness is directly tied to our beliefs regarding the source of our difficulty.  We remain caught in learned helplessness when we attribute the problem either to

1) what we believe to be our own irresolvable inadequacies, or to

2) what we believe to be outside forces beyond our ability to change. 

It is those beliefs that give rise to resignation, numbness, and passivity. If, instead, we were to attribute the problem to either inner or outer conditions over which we can have an influence, then we can to resist the urge to become numb and instead look for ways work to change our situation. 

The persistent messages of The Culture of Pretend, spoken or otherwise, reinforce our tendencies to stay numb and passive. Most often family, friends, neighbors and the media reinforce the idea that our unhappiness is due to our own inadequacies or to forces beyond our ability to influence. So we get caught in the pattern of learned helplessness.  By not talking openly about our unhappiness and dissatisfaction, by hiding those from others in our day-to-day lives, we all stay locked in a cage of shame where we continue to suffer and remain isolated.

We’ve lost our village, our tribe, our sense of belonging.  Everyone is pretending, whistling past the graveyard, hoping no one will notice, trying to look good while actually feeling far from happy and fulfilled, and instead often distracted, numb, chronically busy, but rarely at peace.

I have never met one person who had a truly happy childhood.  But even if one did have a truly happy childhood and also a rather good education with kind, decent mentors, only people who are in denial can be without sadness and horror as we stare down the exploitation and devastation of the non-human world, the wholesale theft of the native landbases and abuse of workers from third world countries, and the destruction of countless first nation cultures.  And since we don’t talk about the larger, global pain any more intimately than we do about individual pain, everyone is impoverished.

The choices seem to be, like the dog in the cage, to smash one’s self against the wire bars of Empire or to give up in numbed exhaustion and retreat into passivity.  But there are other choices.

Those choices will require that we tell the truth.  And to do that will require us to take some risks.

The way out, of course, is to notice that the door is open. 

The way out of our loneliness and isolation is first to look at the situation as it actually is.  When we study quality-of-life and mental health statistics we realize that we are not alone, that virtually everyone is suffering, at least to some degree.  With that understanding we can begin to risk talking about what our actual experience and look for others who want to escape that cage of shame as well.  As we risk talking and listening to others we will create greater degrees of connection and community.  We will discover how much of our depression or anxiety or general malaise is actually rooted in isolation arising from toxic shame and hiding.  In turn as we investigate further, and as we hear one another’s stories, we will discover that the root causes of unhappiness reside not in our personal inadequacies but in larger systemic forces. 

Those forces have been at work for a long time. Empire has been about the task of destroying family and village systems, breaking down our sense of belonging and relatedness, removing opportunities for meaningful work and deep connection to a close-knit community or tribe for centuries, perhaps millennia.  And that situation is escalating, especially in the US.  It stands to reason that the rise of child neglect and abuse has coincided with the breakdown of vibrant, close-knit, healthy, family and village support structures.  Our pain from childhood is the direct result of those breakdowns.

As inadequate as individual psychotherapy is to address the erosion of family and community, the strategy of treating depression, anxiety and other symptoms of this sad culture with pharmaceuticals alone is even worse.  While those conditions often accompany neuro-chemical imbalances, we don’t know that those imbalances are the cause of depression and anxiety.  Just as likely chemical imbalances are the result of the toxic cocktail of life circumstances that individuals imbibe in this stressful culture: exposure to neuro-toxins, stressful work situations, difficult relationships, insecure economies, isolation, etc. 

So which came first, the depression or the isolation?

Treatment of serotonin deficiency with a pharmaceutical alone carries the same serious collusion with the Culture of Pretend as individual psychotherapy. Pharmaceuticals do nothing to address the very real loneliness, isolation, and shame that come with living in a toxic culture that pushes overwork and mindless distraction in lieu of intimate family and village relationships, significant and fulfilling work, and creative individual expression. 

People who lack loving support, who suffer from toxic shame and learned helplessness, flat out don’t have the inner resources to gain insight and to make a creative response to their situations.  They end up, like the dog in the cage, needing to shut down their neurological systems, to “depress” their feelings and reactions.  All too often pharmaceutical treatment alone simply take the edge off the discomfort of that numbed emptiness of not feeling. We can imagine that a medicated dog, head down, doing whatever is necessary to simply survive, will be even less likely to notice that there is a door and that the door is open. Likewise, a medicated worker, head down,  continues to keep working, numbed and confused about what actually needs to be changed in her life if real and lasting recovery is to be found.

This situation is everywhere.  And the truth is, all of us, even those of us fortunate enough not to be currently suffering with acute or chronic work or relationship problems, still suffer.  We, too, are cut off emotionally from the richness of a loving, honest community, and from the fulfillment we would realize by feeling deeply connected and able to offer effective kindness, support, and shared insight to our friends and neighbors. 

I have a vision that as the large structures of this culture break down we will be compelled to return to more intimate connection in our neighborhoods and communities.  We would do well to prepare now by forming ever more honest, intimate connections with one another.  It would do much to enhance our lives currently and it would provide a safety net to catch others as they fall.  It is now inevitable that economic turmoil, social and political unrest related to Peak Oil, dislocation and food shortages related to climate destabilization, and the decay of unsustainable physical and social infrastructures will coalesce to stretch the high wire of this culture beyond the breaking point.

Let this be my challenge to others in the helping professions to step into re-visioning their work, to tell the truth of the toxicity of this culture, and to help now, on the ground, to create deeper, more profound, more healing community-based structures rather than colluding in the larger system that serves only to perpetuate individual shame and helplessness.

 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Sally's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

34 Responses to “The Culture of Pretend: How Psychotherapy Keeps Our Communities Sick”

  1. Richard Morell Says:
    November 10th, 2009 at 5:37 pm

    Beautiful post, Sally. Strikes a number of cords with me.

    Recently I went to a Transition Initiative Training – not too-too far from y’all, in N. Bennington – and I felt a relief about really having the conversations I have been longing to have with people who have come to similar understandings to myself. There’s a lot of potency in facing these crises together, and I have a feeling that the circumstances and people necessary are coalescing around me and my partner to make the transition, if not enjoyable, then at least giving a sense of trust and faith.

    FYI, I have tried my hand at writing a novel about an upstate New York-for-now town that attempts to operate from 12 Step/12 Tradition principles. The Traditions don’t get much play in “the rooms,” but they are absolutely stunning and with a brilliance and depth in their workings that truly stuns me. (The 7th and the 12th are the most amazing to me.) The novel got off-track, alas. I was trying to write it as my “morning pages” and lately I’ve needed to use my morning pages for different purposes.

    I would love to be a part of the conversation, even if it’s just online. If any sort of Transition Initiative starts to take off in Troy, I will be sure to let you and Tim know.

    All the best this Holiday season,
    Richard

  2. David Says:
    November 10th, 2009 at 9:49 pm

    Thank you, Sally.

    The bit about learned helplessness resonates with me, since I seem to be thinking about this lately. What I’m seeing is that many of those who have the best shot at becoming powerful agents of change — the ones who have a clearer vision of what is really happening inside Empire — end up wasting their energy fighting against forces much huger than they are.

    My suspicion, although I don’t know how to think my way around this question, is that some of sense their power and consciously choose to dissipate it in endless frustrating battles, rather than face away from the machines of death and find a way to create something of positive and real beauty.

    The final victory of the prison is to throw open the doors and still hold its prisoners.

    Learned helplessness becomes one’s prize possession, to be reaffirmed whenever possible.

    This is making me crazy. I hope I’m wrong. I seem to be the only person in my small community of like-minded people who is not attracted to these ‘heroic’ struggles against the corporations and their political allies. And my desire to turn away and instead focus on creating a small temporary autonomous zone of possibility and hope comes off looking (even to me) as a cop-out from the really important work — of banging my head against an infinite series of indestructible walls.

  3. Bob Says:
    November 10th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

    Hi Sally,

    Good post.

    I solve this problem by following the red road, the native american spiritual path. What takes place in the sweat lodge (a true indigenous-style lodge, not a new age imitation) goes a long way towards accomplishing the things you talk about in this blog. It also builds community. However, it is not a path for everyone. It calls to you or it doesn’t.

    So what do you do if it doesn’t, or if it isn’t even available for a person to explore locally? I think you are on the right track with what you propose here. Just don’t get lost in the technical details of twelve step programs, etc. All that is needed is good, honest communication between and among people, and that can only be accomplished by having a group of people who actually form the essence of the “tribe” you speak of. It cannot take place among the myriad surface relationships we all have in our casual day to day world. It takes place only among people who get to know each other over a long period of time and are consistent in their relationships and acceptance of each other. That is the failing of the one on one psychiatrist couch approach. It does exactly what you describe – blunts the pain for the individual temporarily so that he or she can keep on keeping on with the deception of their life.

    In this regard, I also have a problem with your two or three day seminars. Those seminars indeed simply perpetuate the “Culture of Pretend” which you so accurately describe. None of us can “get over” our problems with a three day quick fix seminar. It takes real long term on-going community to do that. And so, I would suggest that you focus your intentions and ideas on creating an on-going group with your “conscious conversation” theme, rather than the weekend seminars. That can be very helpful to people and actually work. You will, as always, have people that come and go with the group, but there will be a core that survives and reaches for just what you are talking about.

    You are on the right track. Just keep it going, Sally and Tim.

    Mitakuye Oyasin,

    Bob

  4. Jen H. Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 1:22 am

    Sally, thank you, thank you for writing this. So much of this resonates so deeply for me. It’s eerie because I wrote a blog post just the other day in a very similar vein, and then a commenter on my blog directed me to another link which was also eerily similar in another vein. I have been struggling so much with isolation and shame, and trying to put out tentative little feelers nonetheless, trying to connect, trying to be truthful.

  5. Jonny Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 3:10 am

    Hello, Sally.

    This isn’t the first time I’ve read your blogs, but it is the first time I felt that something was so painfully familiar to me. I’ve always called it “culture of isolation” or “culture of the fragmented psyche,” but the name “culture of pretend” works wonderfully. Anyway, the name itself doesn’t really matter.
    I often feel especially ashamed because the thoughts you have now are what I have. Only I’m 21 years old. As you could guess, everybody around me who I could possibly talk to would say “don’t worry. You’re so young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” The worst part is they are right. I do have my whole life ahead of me (hopefully). But what life is that? More of this!?
    I feel despair. I feel despair and shame on a daily basis. However, I don’t have the right to complain according to what mother culture is telling me. The right to complain is important to me, but I’m just too young. I’m just too healthy. I’m just too sheltered in a sense.
    If you ask me how I feel, I’d tell you that I’m just too alone. Just too different from those around me. Just too unsatisfied with both of the homes I bounce in between (college and parents’ house). I’m just too scared about my future. I’ve never in my entire life been convinced that there was a single adult who could help me, guide me, make me believe that there is a place for me or at least, there will be. As I’ve gone from one institution the next, I’ve never felt like anything more than a number. If that feeling disappeared, it was fleeting. I feel especially afraid because nobody I’ve met has ever made their life anything similar to what I want mine to be. If that is so, then how COULD anyone help me? It’s all just a big program I’ve been raised into, and when the program ends….maybe I will, too. I hope not.

    I’ve always equated American culture to a plate of food. They encourage you to lick the plate clean, take it all in. They lead you to believe that you will starve if you don’t (literally in some cases). Those who like this culture will make that plate shine! Those who don’t know any better will take it all in as well. Those that are wise might take some and scrape off the rest. I’d like to think that I fall into that category. Then again, there are those who are completely dissatisfied and will hurl the plate against a wall in disgust. I say hurl all the damn plates you wanna! Good luck to that crowd.

    I still think that your workshops were a fine idea. Your community is likely to be even more effective. I say try anything you can to alleviate these feelings in whoever. Every bit counts because there are many of us who don’t even have the courage to do our part.

    -Jonny

  6. Floyd Robinson, LMSW Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 8:12 am

    Sally,
    Great insight! But, here is the catch 22. Because the culture of pretend is locked away, many don’t know that they are wounded. Also, as the wounds develop scabs, many no longer feel it, in the sense that you are talking about. I am from urban America (Detroit)where it is common for people to be shot, raped, robbed, on-going nonstop! etc..This has gone on as long as I can remember. Yet, no one seems to care about this. The general society doe not seem to care. Nor do the wounded souls that live there. So, I don’t know what the answer is.
    I did tons of therapy in Detroit Public School (as a social work therapists). I saw lots of anger, rage., frustration and then the state ended the program. Go figure. I salute you for your courage and honesty.
    Peace and Blessings to you

  7. auntiegrav Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 3:55 pm

    A great concept and very deep thoughts on the subject, Sally. Thank you.

    Now for the short version:
    “Stay home, buy less, make it yourself. Use muscles instead of money to accomplish things. Turn off the TV, the computer, the iPhone, and turn on the person you are with.”

    Ruppert’s movie is coming out soon. Perhaps it will get some press and exposure. Collapse is inevitable. We have to decide if we are going to be in the front of the roller coaster when it goes into the pit at the bottom of the climb, and die quickly, or if we are going to find our way to the back and possibly survive by landing on the pile of dead bodies.

    Good luck to you.

  8. Jen H. Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Sally, I was so glad to see your post reprinted in its entirety on Energy Bulletin. People need to read this. And I’m so glad you didn’t try to turn it into a short sound-bite type thing. I am still reflecting on your words and feeling their palpable support, strength, and truth.

  9. Tim Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

    Bob,

    I trust you guys are well out there on your mountain. We are well here, nestled amongst our elder peaks.

    I must say, when I read your comment I felt irritated and tired and sad. Your advice to Sally about how to build community demonstrates, in my opinion, exactly what she talks about in her essay, about how advice can reinforce “toxic shame”, intimating that the answer is simple, that you have already figured it out, and that it’s simply a matter of some deficiency of knowledge on Sally’s part.

    You follow that with a comment on our dialogue circles, none of which you have ever attended. Since these circles have no agenda to help people “get over” their problems “in three days” and are, in my experience, unlike pretty much anything else I’ve ever experienced, your critique does not resonate. Though we are open to the notion that this work can and needs to be improved or expanded, to which end we constantly seek feedback and input, it feels awful to receive such feedback from someone who has not experienced what we do. It would be like me making some disparaging comment about “the red road” while knowing virtually nothing about it.

    You follow that with more advice, suggesting that Sally do what she’s already doing, and focus on what she’s long focused on. I find this perplexing. Between the two of us, we’ve got almost 30 years of community building experience. Your advice again intimates that this is all just simple. How could we have missed such simple stuff?

    Finally, by telling us we are “on the right track”, you send the message that there IS a right track, that you know what it is, and that, since you can see us on that track, that you must have already taken it. Advice again, though more subtle.

    So, going back to Sally’s essay, I’ll say that I know you have only the best intentions, that you really do want to help. So I will ask: what’s with the quick advice? What’s going on with you that you have fallen into these communication traps? Giving advice, saying how “it is”, making judgments with little information… these look to me like some of the worst habits of the White American Maleâ„¢. And it has been my experience that these habits get in the way of intimate connection and community and true dialogue, all of which feel greatly needed in this time.

    My life teaches me that the work of community begins by confronting the wounded, twisted and delusional ego structures right in our own being. Without that, communion feels pretty much impossible to me.

    Tim

  10. colin crawford Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 11:11 pm

    Wonderful article, Sally, and I commend and thank you for writing it. For nigh on a decade now I’ve been calling it “The Land of Make-Believe” and striving to bring family, friends and acquaintances back to reality… with utter and complete futility. Alas, it appears that the mindless masses that comprise the “flocks” and the “herds” are absolutely content in their realms of self-delusion. I’ve found no combination of facts, logic or even “shared experience” capable of breaking their numbed awareness. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised to find you and this site from this article’s replication on energybulletin.net. Moreover, having discovered that I am not as completely “alone” as I’d thought, I’m finding the courage to finally write the “project” I’ve been hesitant to do.

    I think you may agree that we, as a culture, have become a nation of self-absorbed, solely self-interested frauds. The prime examples I use of late are the accomplices of Bernie Madoff. They were content with their incomes so didn’t feel any compulsion to question the legality or the ethicality of Bernie’s “business plan” (scheme). Alternatively, look at the legions of “humanity” aiding and abetting the credit-card companies and investment banks as they steal every penny they can from everyone they wish… including their employees and stockholders. Alas, those employees and stockholders are blissfully content with their “crumbs” and willingly endure the stress (pain and shame) in order to escape into their next booze or drug induced fog or acquire the next shiny gizmo their masters tell them to desire. Regardless, there is a “correction” coming that will make the current economic crisis look like the “good old days” and there is no way to avoid it. Sally, if you are inclined, please feel free to send me a comment or query. Jonny, you have my sympathy and I wish you all the luck possible, you’re going to need it.

    colin

  11. Tim Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 8:02 am

    I am reminded of my favorite poem, which can be found here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=237526

    A Message from the Wanderer
    by William E. Stafford

    Today outside your prison I stand
    and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
    you have relatives outside. And there are
    thousands of ways to escape.

    Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
    cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
    and shouted my plans to jailers;
    but always new plans occured to me,
    or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
    or some stupid jailer would forget
    and leave the keys.

    Inside, I dreamed of constellations—
    those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
    their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
    heroes that exist only where they are not.

    Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
    just as—often, in light, on the open hills—
    you can pass an antelope and not know
    and look back, and then—even before you see—
    there is something wrong about the grass.
    And then you see.

    That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

    Now—these few more words, and then I’m
    gone: Tell everyone just to remember
    their names, and remind others, later, when we
    find each other. Tell the little ones
    to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
    where they can. And if any of us get lost,
    if any of us cannot come all the way—
    remember: there will come a time when
    all we have said and all we have hoped
    will be all right.

    There will be that form in the grass.

  12. Ron Horn Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    I was so startled by, and felt so connected to your article, which I found on Energy Bulletin, that I’ve have spent the past two hours mulling it over. It’s gotten in the way of my daily project–but that’s okay! My daily project is to scour the web to find insightful, interesting articles about contemporary issues and email these of to a few friends. Actually I don’t think that the latter read them much, but I do it anyway. Needless to say that your article will be included as the best one yet.

    Anyway a few thoughts that your article has inspired in me. I, too, fear that our human race is going down a very destructive, and self-destructive, path. And I fear that human beings are mostly very adaptive and thus will not be able to confront their “learned helplessness” and their sick culture until it is too late to do much about it. I fear that those of us more sensitive, inner-directed souls are too few and too scattered to make much of a difference. But we can’t give up trying.

    I have tried to connect with people in my local area of Bellingham, WA without much success since moving here three years ago. So, I too feel isolated. Hence I am particularly interested in your experiment you call “conscious conversation” group. I hope you keep us informed as to how it goes.

    Thank you so much for putting your observations on the web.

    Ron

  13. Mike Bendzela Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 8:33 am

    Anyone interested in taking some antidotes to this stuff should start with these entries in the Skeptics Dictionary:

    Substance abuse quackery: http://www.skepdic.com/sat.html

    Psychotherapy scams: http://www.skepdic.com/therapy.html

    Codependency delusions: http://www.skepdic.com/codepend.html

  14. Glenda Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    Wonderful, thoughtful article.

    I recently read an essay, possibly David Korten’s entitled Peace Economy, in which he talks about our sociopathic society. There was a book written maybe five years ago by a Harvard professor called the Sociopath Next Door that claims 1 out of 10 Americans can be defined as a sociopath. It seems to me that our competitive, materialistic culture — a culture of separation — has led us to the point of being fearful of who we open up with. In many instances, for good reason. Ruthless politics in daily lives have hurt many good people.

    It seems to me it is one thing if you live in a community of conscious, like-minded people that is somewhat self-sufficient. It is quite another if you’re one of the majority stuck inescapably in the rest of the system.

    I often wonder if it will actually take a global collapse to start to change things. But then will that mean we have 10% sociopaths running around without any daily structure, until the point that a new coalescing culture could have a chance of changing with new generations?

  15. April Thomas Says:
    November 15th, 2009 at 12:29 am

    David Edwards, author of Burning All Illusions, stated, “If the first rule of a dysfunctional system is don’t talk about it, then our primary goal should be to tell the truth, and to be as honest as we can manage to be” ” (Edwards in Jensen 2002: 141). “We build our lives on certain beliefs, then spend much of our time protecting ourselves from conflicting facts, experiences, ideas…. Say a corporate executive is convinced of his own fundamental goodness, as most people are [need to be]. That person would have a terribly difficult time entertaining the notion that the corporation for which he’s worked over a lifetime – indeed, the entire corporate system of which he is a part – is responsible for terrible loss of life and destruction of Nature. To acknowledge that reality would be to acknowledge that he has lent his talents to ecocide and genocide. He can’t do that. He’s spent years building up a career. His prestige and sense of self-worth are tied to his success. Given this, serious consideration of the moral status of his work would create a profound conflict between his morality and his financial, not to mention his emotional and social, needs… It may seem that he has everything to lose from that sort of serious examination, and so his unconscious will protect his sense of self by dismissing/ignoring any evidence that he participates in these atrocities. And it will do so in such a way that it never even occurs to him” (Edwards in Jensen 2002: 142, 143).

    This said, thank you Sally, for your courage and tenacity in forging that road so less traveled, in impeccably scrutinizing the functions of your work as a therapist. In this instance of investigation, redemption is possible, because yours is work (much like education which has been known to colonize or to inspire freedom), that, when practiced with consciousness, can be authentically empowering or freeing. I think that acknowledging that a weekly hour with a therapist is a terribly inadequate outlet for the kind of psychic assaults that we all witness on a daily basis, is one important aspect of how therapy keeps communities sick. I think that the entire diagnostic paradigm which underlies modern healthcare practices more broadly is another. As Richard Moss astutely stated, “If there is one disorder that eclipses all others in this world, it is that our capacity to manipulate reality, materially and subtly, far exceeds our capacity to recognize life’s wholeness.” And recognizing that to be objective is not a human possibility is yet another. Not only is objectivity not possible, but it is also not desirable, as the intimate connectedness of truly feeling with others as they confide intimate realizations of their experiences, is the very stuff of healing. And I believe that each of these statements are worth much reflection.

    Many authors, following in the thoughtful wake of Michel Focault, have written about the peculiar phenomenon of diagnostics which originated in modern society. John McKnight, Ivan Illich, Victor Fuchs, Peter Berger, Richard Neuhaus, and others, have elaborated on this phenomenon in the context of the commodification of health in the North. John McKnight believes that a foundation of domination and control in industrialized nations, and even more fully in service economies, has been “the power to label people deficient and declare them in need” (Mc Knight 1995: 16). Or, as McKnight simultaneously quite eloquently and simply put it, the “economic need for need creates a demand for redefining conditions as deficiencies” (conditions such as old, young, mentally challenged, autistic, handi-capped, low-income, or in the case of most of the world’s people in an increasingly globalized economy, underdeveloped) (McNight 1995: 29).

    A difficult dilemma is created for challenged communities (challenged by the development of illnesses and birth defects within the community as a result of toxic waste, to offer one example) when individuals who, after having been needed to have been in need or deficient, find it difficult to recognize and believe in their own capacities to actively engage in difficult communal problem solving. Brazilian MST leader Joao Pedro, upon explaining the process by which landless people gain the courage to stand up for themselves said, the first step is losing naive consciousness or no longer accepting what you see as something that cannot be changed. Second, is reaching the awareness that you won’t get anywhere unless you work together (Stedile in Lappe 2001: 80). This is a realization that more and more people are coming to in our own country through a process of politicization. “Politicization is a term used to describe the ways in which individuals develop a framework of meanings and beliefs that challenge dominant ideologies and empower political action”(Krauss 1998: 131). Celene Krauss, among others, has written about this process based on her experience with white working-class women, who generally are more likely to enter the political arena with an attitude of confidence that the government is there for the people as a source of protection from harm. Celene has found that, despite oppressive situations, oppositional consciousness cannot be assumed, because “oppressive experiences are interpreted and internalized through the distorting lens of dominant ideologies, which mask the systemic causes of oppression and lead people to view their personal troubles as individual or idiosyncratic, and constrain their political action (Krauss 1998: 131). Here we can clearly see the connection between isolation, silence, and latent potential for transformation upon joining in political activism, because in political organizations people share ideas and experiences. Once a person understands that his or her oppression is a common experience, it can no longer be personalized. In the process of restoring broken communal bonds we often become, increasingly, ourselves restored, as problems that were once perceived as personal, become recognized as common and collective through communal political process and community action (Krauss 1998).

    Change happens when people who have been “defined as problems achieve the power to redefine the problem,” and, rejecting their “clienthood,” “they seek liberation by defining the problem as those who have defined them as the problem” (McKnight 1995: 16,17). There is a term for professionally administered injury, which, to some, means essentially “side effects,” and this term is “professional iatrogenesis” (McKnight 1995: 21). But Ivan Illich found the “iatrogenic capacity of professionals” to be much more a systemic symptom complex than a “side effect.” Illich stated, “Afflicted with sick-producing medicine, stupifying education, and criminalizing justice, the citizen reacts with inchoate anger” (Illich 1976). To post-developmentalists (those who believe that the ill affects/effects of modernity are central to our problems, as opposed to the “side effects” of an essentially good thing), the time has come to move beyond endless experimentation with new technologies which attempt to undo the erroneous affects and effects of the last attempt to treat the last attempt to remedy, what was never a side effect to begin with, but rather a consuming reversal of a Life-affirming fully human worldview and societal web of Lifeways, which once (for most of the vast expanse of lived human story embedded in this wild and awesome planet) resonated in intersubjective harmony with all other beings within the Life-world.

    Messengers of deficiency and need are everywhere in modern society. The advertizing industry lies vast in this venture of representation/modern sorcery. Thus, I think that when practicing psychotherapy, it is important to acknowledge how common peoples difficulties are, and that there are many situational factors contributing, over which individuals do not have control. This is a slippery slope, as it is not easy to do in a way that doesn’t, at the same time, trivialize the difficulty. But, as you’ve pointed out, there are ways that we are all being injured psychicly by subscribing to the existing social rules, which pressure people to deny victimization of citizens by the existing socio-political-economic paradigm. It’s important to acknowledge the sources of the ideas that produce feelings of inadequacy and shame, and to work on changing the ideas, much as you have redefined the idea of work for yourself. It’s important to stop denying the external sources of the ideology that injures mental health and fragments thought, and the economic activity that destroys our world and our health. People often rationalize that there is nothing an individual can do to change the system within which we live and to which we are inextricably tied, and so what is the point in addressing this? But to continue to work only on what an individual can change, is to continue to avert the only kind of effort that can undermine the political economy, which is a collective one.

    In my early twenties, I didn’t question my sanity, but I questioned my isolation, which was much the result of calling what I witnessed exactly as I saw it. I had one therapist who, for the first I don’t know how many visits, but I’d say probably 12 or 15, would listen to me without ever saying anything. I came in one day, and I said, listen, one of my major issues is feeling intense isolation and aloneness, and it really doesn’t work for me for you to sit across from me and stare at me. This only contributes to my feeling of being from another planet. She said, well, if I know that, then I can be more interactive. I’ll never forget what she did say after that – and after another typical session of my ranting and raving about how unbelievable it was to me how I’d witnessed other people behaving toward one another. She said, so what if you’re right? What if what is considered normal behavior in this culture is completely fucked up, and you’re absolutely right about everything that you perceive? I guess that’s what I received for having chosen a black, most likely transgendered, or at least lesbian, therapist. (The presupposition here is that I believe people situated marginally, socially, tend to be more aware of the sources of disempowerment, or the ways by which personal agency is undermined.) I required no more validation. Thankyou Arial. A period of silence followed, and of unbroken eye contact. Yet, while I felt heard, understood, and acknowledged (as I’d expressed having needed), there was no deep relief or release at having been validated in my perception, and I believe that this was because there was a level within which I knew that I was right. I had never lost touch with an internal source of knowing, despite the confusion around me. And I believe that this source is there to be nurtured and strengthened in all people, because I believe that to sense and to be drawn toward health, wholeness, and the interconnectedness that such wholeness necessarily involves, is a human inclination.
    Every once in a while, when my social isolation became complete enough, I’d wonder again if there might be some new antidepressant that I may tolerate (a thought that has long since ceased to occur to me. I recommend instead B vitamins, omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin D3, amino acids and phosphatidyl choline if one’s diet is dominantly vegetarian, and 5htp if there is still depression). So, I’d see a psychiatrist. The last time I did this I walked in and she asked why I thought I was depressed. I answered her question with a question. I said, why do you think all of these people are flooding in here for antidepressants? She shifted in her chair a bit at what she knew was coming next, as she shrugged. I answered for her that they weren’t able to get their needs for connection met within this society. She nodded affirmatively. She too, has done the work of reevaluating her work, and she decided that she was no longer willing to serve in the role of a medication doc. She started a practice based in the work of mindfulness. I consider myself fortunate to have found my way to extraordinary people in ordinary places, in my times of need.

  16. Pangolin Says:
    November 15th, 2009 at 5:49 am

    The dominant culture has one rule: produce or die. My brother hung himself in 2006 with $35K in the bank and a new car in the driveway. He was four blocks from his county mental health clinic. He had lost his job therefore his self-value as a person.

    Now, three years later the stress of no-work and a recurrence of a back injury I am looking at the same door out. It has been made very clear to me by everybody I thought loved me that my only value as a man, as a husband, as a father, son, brother or friend was to to produce income or labor to share out to them. This duty supersedes all others.

    When I go to “self-help” or peer groups of one sort or another there are the constant demands for “donations” or outright $$ only ‘healing services’ touted. As usual the charismatic become the centers of these events and everyone ignores that they are poor healers. If you point out they are a fraud you will get outcast from the outcasts.

    No cash: no love, no housing, no food, no water. Should you forget there are the shambling homeless on the streets to remind you. Sell yourself or we will make you that; one of them. The walking dead. Hungry ghosts.

    Truly, you are a ghost also. You can’t escape any more than they can. Your circle doesn’t make you free because it never solves the political problem that chains you.

  17. Bob Says:
    November 16th, 2009 at 11:39 pm

    Hi Tim,

    Sorry you took offense at my post. My primary intent was to encourage Sally in her new endeavor of the “conscious conversation” group. I took it to be a new approach for the two of you, as she herself called it an “experiment”, and that it was not the same things that you have both been doing for the last many years.

    None of this is simple or easy, and I meant no implication of some deficiency on your part.

    I fully agree with your comment that what is needed is intimate connection and community and true dialogue. It is my opinion, which I attempted to communicate in my last post, that her new and experimental approach which she has labeled a “conscious conversation group” IS the best approach to creating intimate connection and community.

    My love to you both.

    Bob

  18. Tim Says:
    November 17th, 2009 at 8:41 am

    Hey Bob,

    Thanks. You’re right! None of this feels simple or easy. I think, for me, that’s part of the joy of it. I’m writing a novel right now and every day it’s hard and I think that’s the best part: it’s worthy of my efforts. I’m reminded of one of my favorite movie quotes, Tom Hanks to Geena Davis in A League of Their Own: “Hard? It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everybody would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.” (Not that I hold this as true, per se. Just that it inspires something in me.) So I love the hard. Working to regain my sanity as a human animal, pretty much the hardest thing I do, is also the thing I hold as most worth doing.

    I commented on your first comment because this is something that is pretty much guaranteed to come up in a dialogue circle, and which all present end up able to see in action, and then get clear about: how the dominant, insane culture has so shaped our assumptions, our beliefs, our habits and our language that we are caught up in thinking and saying and doing things which, when we stop and give ourselves time and space to question them, we don’t even really believe or think or want to do or say. I know this is true for me. So I saw an opportunity to point that out in action, just as I would in a circle, and took the chance that the “container” which holds us both is strong enough for me to do so. Risky, given the nature of online communication, but so far, with you, it seems to be working.

    I think one way to talk about what Sally and I are up to is that we’re trying to make things personal. That is, rather than just make pronouncements about how insane this culture is (which we have found to be necessary, but not sufficient), we work to feel our way right into that insanity, as it has lodged into our own ego structures, and then work to dislodge it. And we work with others who want to do the same thing, aiding them not only to see into, and work with, their own acquired insanities, but then using our relationships to work with each other directly. Nothing like the eyes and ears of another to root out those parts of my insane ego that I cannot see! We call it the rock tumbler. It can feel pretty rough-and-tumble sometimes. But man, when those rough edges wear away I can see the gems as they sparkle! For myself, I find it to be worth every bit of the pain.

    This work is based on the assumption that if I dive into action, I who am staring into the present predicament, without first doing the work of regaining my sanity, then my actions are more likely to be insane. This is largely what I see in the world around me: insane responses based on unquestioned assumptions, beliefs, and ego structures. And so I speak to that. As does Sally. Because we can. And because we feel called to do so. The work of shedding assumptions and dislodging our insanities has been and remains the bedrock upon which all our accomplishments rest, be they writing and editing a movie, helping found two different communities which both still thrive (albeit in ways we hadn’t foreseen!), covering a two-story studio with broken-tile mosaics, or hauling 30 year old trash from a friend’s basement to support her movement toward freedom. We find that the combination of quiet reflection, direct dialogue, a commitment to sanity, and creative, collaborative action bring us exactly what we want, what we see as possible for human beings. In our experience, when any of those pieces go missing, we do not end up where we want to go.

    Here’s to the path we’re on, and the beautiful souls we meet along the way.
    Here’s to the reclamation of our true and essential selves as sane and sparkling members of the community of life.
    Here’s to redemption, restoration, remembering and reconnection.

    As William Stafford wrote – remember: there will come a time when all we have said and all we have hoped will be all right.

    Here’s to that.

    Take care, Bob.

    Tim

  19. Bob Says:
    November 17th, 2009 at 11:41 pm

    Hi Tim,

    Well, it probably doesn’t feel simple or easy because it isn’t! Yea, Tom got it right. If it was easy everyone would do it.

    We both have different approaches to this work. It is my perception that your approach is focused very much on your own personal development and dealing with what and how the actions and reactions of individuals are shaped by the dominant culture. Did I get this right?

    I have a much different focus. (Now don’t get all off on a tangent that I am dissing your approach! I am not.) My approach has been shaped starting around seven or eight years ago with the full realization of what Peak Oil meant. It was begun with the article “Eating Fossil Fuels” by Dale Allen Pfeiffer, and expanded greatly with much more research. That led to increased knowledge of what is going on in the area of climate change. All of my research into these and related subjects led me to the conclusion that the dominant culture, which is totally destroying our finite planet, is in its final death throes. It will not die quietly. And it will not be a pretty sight. And there will be mass starvation and much human suffering. The present level of human population was made possible by the use of oil. As the availability of oil declines, it will do so relatively abruptly to a population that has been conditioned to expect unlimited exponential growth. The rumblings are already there for those who are paying attention. We invaded Iraq not for any of the false “reasons” given by the Bush administration, but for the simple reason that the USA wanted to establish physical control over the oil in Iraq. USA is engaged in the “last man standing” version of what it thinks should happen to the remaining oil supply of the world. You may recall a certain politician making the statement that the “United States way of life is non-negotiable”. Well, I believe our Mother Earth has a different opinion. In the battle between the politicians and Mother Earth, I choose Mother Earth. In that choice comes the recognition that the planet, without the use of the energy available from oil, can only support about one fourth of the present population, and if you want to be in that one fourth, you better become as self-sufficient as possible. I forsee the day when those who choose to live in the cities, especially the major cities, will find that they come home, flick the light switch, and nothing happens. They will turn on the faucet, and nothing happens. At first it will be sporadic, with service outages that come and go, and finally it will be gone more than not. Third world countries already experience this. I have been in those countries as long ago as fifteen to twenty years where the norm was rotating electricity to different parts of the city. People just got used to the fact that they would not have power during certain hours, or that they would have power only during certain hours. That is not a life-style that Americans can even conceive at this point. But it is coming as the energy available from oil declines. I do not believe that there is a global solution to this problem, i.e. some way that all of the people on the planet can somehow survive if they just make some kind of minor adjustment in their lifestyle. There is a website which I don’t have the link to right now that allows you as an individual to put in various data about how you live, and ends up with the calculation of something like “If everyone lived that way, it would take (and it comes up with the number) of planet earths necessary to support that way of life”. Lua and I have deliberately chosen to live a life-style that can be supported by one planet earth. So our focus is on living as simply as possible, minimizing the engagement with the dominant culture, living off the grid so we are not dependent on the “luxuries” of having the dominant culture supply us with electricity, running water, etc. We provide those things for ourselves. Providing our own food supply is a priority so that we minimize our exposure to the upcoming vagaries of food supply as our present global food supply chain begins to disintegrate and food becomes available only from local sources- either your own or local farming activities that you can trade with.

    I give all that background to establish our vision of what will constitute future communities. It will not be that of large or even medium sized cities. It will be very local. And therein lies the beauty and benefit of the much bandied about word “Community”. By definition a true community IS local. It is comprised of people that you know face to face and interact with on a regular basis. Our current culture has in many ways substituted the internet for community. Regular interaction with discussion groups, like Derrick Jensens, or LATOC (or this very forum on which I write!) brings about interesting conversation and the feeling of friendship with people that we have never met and most likely will never meet. To many people this type of interaction is thought of as a “community”. It is not. Community only comes about with people you actually know and are personally interactive with on a long-term basis. It takes the long term basis for the trust to develop. The surface relationships which most of us have in our day to day lives don’t cut it. It’s the difference between learning of someone going through a nasty divorce and saying something like “If there’s anything I can do just let me know” – all the while knowing that with that kind of approach they will leave you alone and you won’t have to get involved in that messy human condition – and truly being there for that person. Community allows people to actually be there for one another rather than simply give it lip service. Community is a rare commodity these days, but one that will become increasingly necessary for simple survival.

    Your turn, Tim.

    Love,

    Bob

  20. Micheeal Says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    Spot-on.

    I have heard you never wiser.

    Good luck.

    It sounds so very tribal.

    Thanks.

    ~mike in Spokane~

  21. Tim Says:
    November 21st, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    Hi Bob,

    Thanks for your comment. It has spurred some clarity on our end. We’ll probably put that into a new blog fairly soon. Will be back ASAP.

    Tim

  22. Tim Says:
    November 23rd, 2009 at 3:55 pm

    Hi Again, Bob,

    After repeated attempts to formulate a thoughtful response, I find that what I want and need right now is to give it up. Not that I don’t have anything to say. You’ve asked good and important questions, and I’ve already written a good deal in response to it. Sally has as well.

    But I find that, to speak my truth in this matter, I will need to cross, yet again, what we perceive as a “party line” in the doom-o-sphere, a set of strong but hidden assumptions that limits dialogue, blocks understanding, and ends up with dissenting voices marginalized.

    I do not mean to say, Bob, that you are a defender of this party line. I believe your request for understanding and dialogue to be genuine. I think that you have an openness to what I might have to say that differs from your own worldview. And, if memory serves, you’ve come up across “party lines” yourself, and refused to toe them. So you may have a felt sense of what I’m talking about. It’s simply that your question opens up some larger issues about which we are not yet ready to speak.

    For now, we ask that you be patient with us, as we more clearly define for ourselves what relationship we wish to have with this conversation about our present predicament. At some point, hopefully soon, we’ll articulate more clearly just how our vision lives in us, and how the possibilities we see might live in the world.

    We are glad to hear of your and Lua’s continuing commitment to “on the ground” community, and to finding a life that works for you and for the planet. From our mountains to yours, we wish you well with that.

    Best,
    Tim

  23. magdy halim Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 8:09 am

    after 17 years of studying the subject of the end of civilization,I made a blog about it:
    magdyhalim.blogspot.com
    please have a look.
    Thanks

  24. Bob Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 8:36 pm

    Hi Tim,

    Like we both agreed earlier, none of this is simple or easy. I respect your desire to let it all percolate for a while longer and am always ready here, standing by, for the opportunity to continue exploring these complex subjects with you and Sally.

    Bob

  25. April Says:
    December 1st, 2009 at 9:47 am

    Tim,

    I love “A Message from the Wanderer.” Thankyou for posting that!

    It is as much a statement about seeing, as it is about communicating. If one is blind, it is like unto the story of feeling the elephant.
    And there are so many less literal forms of blindness.

    I often use the elephant on the coffee table, which has long since filled the living room, as a metaphor for what Gramsci termed social “hegemony.” Which to see, or for to be seen, needs to be shrunken, given in homeopathic doses. Such is our pressing work…

  26. April Says:
    December 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    When I read what Kathy the peak shrink at peakoilblues.com wrote regarding the above article. I thought that she really didn’t make any strong argument against that of Sally. It seems obvious to me that she has not experienced the healing power of Community, as Sally, and many of us have. The point of Sally’s article that she seems to take issue with overall, is the proposition that sharing in authentic community is healing. It may be that she wishes to uphold the exclusive rights to intimate confessions, as designated by the institution of professional psychotherapy. I do not, however, know. I agree with Kathy that real community can come via actively working together. Yet, how is it that people of the culture of empire shall learn do this (work together)? Are not she and Sally doing similar work? Could they not be mindful of being supportive of one another?

    I had a similar kind of conflict of minds with a professor who’d lived in peoples China during the cultural revolution. She was unwilling to process with me, despite having become angered and somewhat oppressive toward me both within and outside of the classroom. At one point she stated that if we were in China she might have the conversation I asked/offered to have (but we weren’t in China…I think the point was meant to imply that as a person adapted to a capitalist society, I could not possibly be capable of participating in a partnership relation). Anyway, she could say, with regard to political grassroots movement, that the path ahead is yet unforged and thus we will inevitably be creating the new, opening new vistas and paths as we go. Yet, she could not comprehend the same kind of freeing of mechanism to allow for something new to arise within a context of dialogue. The only way she could conceptualize dialogue was to imagine a conversation in which there is (assumed to exist) a level field for equal participation, but one which can never really exist – thus it is best not to participate (almost like many think of the concept of Utopia). I fail to see any clear difference or boundary between the two scenarios of communal dialogue or communal activity toward change, and this may be because I, like Foucault, believe that thought is inseparable from action, and, as Bohm pointed out, dialogue can allow for thought to arise spontaneously in a new, unadulterated form – a something not merely of the past.

    “Thought is not [merely] theoretical. As soon as it functions it offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates, unites or reunites; it cannot help but liberate and enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is itself an action – a perilous act.” (Michel Foucault, from Language, Counter-memory, Practice)

    “Dialogue – always a testing ground for testing the limits of assumed knowledge – offers the possibility of an entirely new order of communication and relationship with ourselves, our fellows, and the world we inhabit….If each of us can give attention to what is blocking communication while also attending to the content of what is being communicated, then we may be able to create something new between us, and something of very great significance for bringing to an end, the, at present, insoluble problems and contradictions of the individual and of society.” (David Bohm, from On Dialogue)

    Before moving on, I also want to say that I deeply appreciate the professor I made reference to. She taught me how much there can be nothing Spiritual other than that which is human and worldly and lively. She taught me this without intention to do so, because she is angered by the spiritualization of anything, yet she feels deeply that every person is this world is her brother and sister who she would walk that extra mile for, anytime – and this, to me, is simply as spiritual as it gets, whether she considers herself to be a spiritual person, or not! As for her having been unwilling to have certain conversations, I do understand that coping with the same cultural reflexes with regard to certain issues can get very stale, and is time consuming. I’m not saying she was acting with my best interest in mind, but I had to ask myself if there weren’t conversations that I am no longer willing to have; and there are, indeed, conversations that I have grown tired of having, over and over again, out of self-commitment and dedication to collective human evolution. Over the course of two years I believe that she had a significant learning as well, as to just how far from one’s culture of origin one could become, and I felt deeply affirmed in this. I felt deeply impressed because in the class that would be our final meeting, she stressed how much the messages that support a worldview of empire, are everywhere. She looked at me after, and said, “I don’t know how you got where you are.” According to my truth, I believe where we all are now to be deeply problematic. We are so lost, struggling intensely to find our way back to the humanity that could have been our only real birth right, to feel what this means, to lift the iron veils that have bound us to the cultural impetuses that have landed us in a potentially glorious world, yet one within which we, in the throws of our ancestors, have created, and try not to continually create, experientially, the very expression of place we are threatened with, as one possible vision for afterlife.

    When I first read Kathy’s article, I thought about how upholding an ideal of privacy is about fear, and the desire to hide oneself or to hide dysfunction. This has been clear to me, as has been the fact that it is part of the mechanism that prevents healing and holism, because, as Sally pointed out, that which is hidden out of shame and fear of exposing wounds or dysfunction, or out of not wanting anyone else to interfere with the dysfunction (which is also intricately woven of feelings of entitlement – by the way Kathy), does not reach the light which penetrates the experience-backed thoughts that hold the shame in place. Yet, since people are so deeply conditioned to believe that if one trusts in others whom one has not gotten to know well, over time, the typical cultural reflex is for the receiving person to believe that the trusting person is someone who has poor judgement and that he or she is not worthy of respect, because he or she is foolish enough to have trusted easily (Yet somehow it never occurs to this same person to wonder why he or she shouldn’t be trusted!). Personally, I have found that trust is never really about trusting another, it is really about trusting oneself to be able to respond to whatever arises. Time and again in European “settlers”stories of contact with indigenous peoples, they have pointed out how immediately indigenous people have trusted them and offered what was their own to the settlers (who considered them selves to have been strangers to the indigenous). Perhaps it is true that if one is intimately connected enough to Spirit or Lifeforce, one does not feel as a stranger to “others.”

    Based in this flow of thought, despite the obvious potential to do harm of many citizens of white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist culture, I initially took a perspective against Kathy’s argument for right to privacy because I believe that healing this reflex of believing on some level (more or less consciously) that openness is weakness, lies in people understanding that we are all wounded and that this understanding can only come about through sharing. And what is it that makes a person worthy of trust? How many people do we find who have healed themselves enough to accept our common woundedness as a companion that need not frustrate us, or that we need not resent, hate, fear, or hide? I think that receiving healing responses of acceptance to the truly strong position of being vulnerable and transparent in an expanding circle of community, is what will bring people to the state of continual openness that is one from which we can really act together harmoniously, to embrace and utilize the power of synergy toward affirmation of our lives and toward regeneration of Earth, as well as of her communities. I can’t imagine on what basis other than honest verbal communication people might reach enough understanding of the dynamics that plague them and which prevent cooperation. There is still the problem that the majority have not come to a place of being willing to connect deeply with one another throughout daily life, or of the desire to normally (meaning more oft than not) experience real moments of Communion.

    So I concluded that yes, Kathy is right that an ideal of privacy has been what the status quo has been built on, and it is also one of the mechanisms that upholds it. And she is also right to say that it is perhaps wise not to trust a stranger, because, as Sally, and I, have both said, they are yet likely at this humanstorical moment within space-time to be incapable of the kind of response that will be healing, as opposed to merely recapitulating the isolation that binds us, each and other, within a context of pseudo-relating. Yet, ultimately, I believe that we need to move beyond this. I believe that people have the capacity to connect deeply through either words exchanged, or through acting together toward mutual change, should they choose to take the leaps of faith that will amount to something bigger than that available to any of us through any acts of individual will. And I deeply appreciate Sally’s self-expansiveness, insight, and willingness to expose her own intricate and timely journey. I also appreciate the unique contribution that she has made with this, toward ending the kind of hierarchical, one-way, relations which characterize professional relationships, which have in turn contributed to the silencing of the truth of peoples subjective experience, by legitimizing the requirement of professional opinion as a basis for action. By making this statement, I do not mean to disqualify the voices of professionals, but I believe that there must be a balance, they must be a voice, among many, within a local community characterized by reciprocal relations – one in which subjective experiential knowledge is also acknowledged as valid and most worthy of consideration.

    Some of you may have read a long discussion I wrote, which I will repost below this one, regarding how it was that I came to such a view regarding privacy. But, in thinking more about this, I have realized how my own privilege has enabled me to adopt this stance. I have been able to create a life for myself within which I have a safe, peaceful, nurturing home, where I am surrounded by loving people who not only accept who I am or have become, but some of whom even admire me and, I have reason to believe, aspire to share my vision. I have a neighbor who I am particularly fond of, and we share the kind of energizing relationship that I believe comes from thinking beautiful, loving thoughts about one another. My neighbor one day referred to me as “inscrutable;” and when I inquired into the meaning of this, she said, “it is extremely rare to find someone so dedicated to love.” She added, “and it’s really scary. I guess I’m afraid of this in myself.” I consider myself to be very blessed to be surrounded by people who are capable of honest consideration of what they experience. So this, as well as having had abundant time alone in my life to become somewhat integral in my way of being, created my relationship with the concept of privacy.

    Yet, being a person with a vital ongoing personal dialogue with the world I inhabit, and recognizing the privilege of both of the personal circumstances just mentioned, I was able to see in my attitude toward privacy, the kind of privileged assumption I have difficulty not judging in others when they have no regard for the destruction being imposed upon so many others, because in their own lives they can afford to believe in an ethic of working only internally on themselves, such that world structural aberrations shall simply “fall away.” When I followed this line of thought, I was able to see a complete reversal of my initial flow of thinking, and to come to a logic within another position within the paradoxical world we inhabit in navigating our life journeys. What follows is this second layering of thoughtful meaning making.

    My thoughts were inspired by the words of Edward Said, regarding the nature of imperial culture, “by which land and people are put to use, completely.” I thought about how this is precisely the attitude behind the conditioning I received in my home as a child which produced an attitude of high rebellion within me. From my father’s perspective, a decent human being was not an idle one. I thought about how precisely it was this very attitude that prompted my feelings of wanting desperately to be left alone, those feelings I was considering to fall under the rubric of my need for privacy (however inhibitive these feelings may have indeed been to my receiving nourishment from relationships). In thinking about this, I thought that perhaps I should not link the desire for privacy to the ideal of, or rights to, private property, despite the common root of both the words privacy and private, which is deprive. If desire for privacy is a defense against someone’s desire for control, and for making sure one will be eventually useful in an imperialist regime or a political economy, then perhaps this desire is a Natural inclination in a situation of any coercion. I know that many people find themselves unable to avoid coercive people and thus oppressive environments, so perhaps I should be writing in defense of a right to privacy, and I should recognize that in a context of empire, privacy can be a much needed protection. Like every conversation within a context of empire, there is complexity and paradoxical contradiction as we struggle to find our way beyond this limiting and limited (Gracefully so) paradigm. Still, I have made another argument for, not against, the need for the kind of complex consideration that may come about through deep dialogue, a process characterized by many views born within and of a myriad of experience. To reconsider my own idea regarding privacy, I asked myself a question like the one I ask those who say that if you recognize from where the darkness comes and fight it, then you’ve already done more polarizing and contributed to the world problem. I ask them, how will you feel and how will you react when they discover uranium under your land, and move to usurp your home? I imagine you will peacefully walk away from all of this that you’ve spent your lives creating and building upon, in order to uphold your principle. And so the question I asked myself in this vein was, how will I react when they come to my door? I will no doubt be compelled to say, fuck you, we believe in privacy in these parts.

    These words of Chellis Glendinning seem most fitting:

    “You and I, we too find ourselves at an unknown location: we are lost on the freeway, lost in language and calculations, lost to our own histories… Certainly we have been made aware of the vagaries of the colonized [she is speaking here of those who first recognized themselves as such], although sadly not through our own emergent curiosities or any fervent need to rekindle our humanity. We have been made aware of the horrors, the bloodshed, and bitterness through the irrepressible courage of the colonized. For those of us who have lived our days within the imperial world, and particularly for those of us who come from the most active dominating peoples, the “white race,” the untested challenge is to map our place within the imperial dynamic. It is to grasp how this way of functioning damages [and has damaged] everyone in its path, including ourselves.
    The problem of locating ourselves is a problem caused by trauma and dislocation: in our case, millennia-old dislocations of sight and care that are impressed upon us as children, that are validated by the daily ways of our world, that we carry like secret burdens everyday of our lives. When called upon to locate our place on the map of empire, we immediately spill over with all the reasons why not to locate ourselves… It would hurt. The iron-heavy veils are too ponderous to lift. The histories are too long forgotten to excavate, the confessions too excruciating to make, the revelations too disembodied to draw forth…
    Yet, as colonized peoples of the world continue crying out with increasing conviction and strength, a realization bursts from our hearts: if we are to become fully human, to embark upon these liftings and excavations, these confessions and revelations, is to lay the ground for meeting the other people of this Earth and together, at last, to join in charting a future for us all.”

    Perhaps I am reiterating Sally’s sentiment when she stated, “we are all bozos on this bus.” And perhaps this is why when I initially had visions of strangling Kathy Peakshrink (I’m exaggerating a little), I failed to state my most obvious qualm, which was simply her desire to undermine the validity, strength, and vitality of what was, any intellectual argument aside, undeniably a vulnerable and transparent sharing from the heart on the part of Sally. I believe that seeing, hearing, and responding from the heart is key to charting any future worth venturing toward. When I think about why when I heard what my neighbor meant in calling me inscrutable, it couldn’t have meant more to me. I am often not understood within the context of empire, which imposes the position of weakness onto the qualities that benefit the health of the whole person, cultural and collective evolution, or our world, those qualities which enhance relationships as opposed to destroying them – qualities of yielding, inquiry, empathizing, and making oneself transparent and open to learning and growing with others – qualities which enable our Natural intersubjectivity (position of autonomous power in which we are at once affected and affecting those with whom we share our immediate space). When I think of what enabled me to survive two years in a classroom with someone whose feelings of wanting to spite the privileged were directed toward me, it was my willingness to inquire as to the heart of the matter that motivated me. In this seeking, I was able to see that when this person insisted that the indigenous idea that a tree has power, is false, and needs to be eradicated, it was because she believes that the world we currently inhabit, characterized by a scientific worldview, has moved beyond the acknowledgements that have traditionally characterized an animistic worldview, and her desire to eradicate their view is motivated by her deep desire to protect the indigenous from further scorn, humiliation, and dispossession of there belongings, longings, and very lives.

    Again, here we may glimpse the complex and paradoxical location within which we are situated. While I may reject the view that we must accept a scientific worldview, which I believe has enabled and upholds the dislocation of human as objective onlooker, as opposed to a location of intersubjective being in relationships of reciprocity, I deeply empathize with her position, and her truth regarding protection of peoples whose worldview has been deemed underdeveloped and unworthy by the mighty. Whether might makes right, or does not, it destroys and it kills. Simultaneously, I as deeply recognize the empathically tragic reality, also due to the ideal of use which compels the march of empire, that trees have been stripped of their rights to be.
    If we rid ourselves of linearity, perhaps we can come to see that all of our past is available to us now, even though actualizing something different than that which currently exists, along with our efforts, will involve time – and herein, in between now and our future, lies the inevitability of dislocation.

    “All my fine dreams, well thought out schemes to gain the Motherland, have all eventually come down to waiting for every man [please read human being]”
    (Jackson Browne, 1973, from title track of For Everyman)

  27. April Says:
    December 11th, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    (The above commentary was a reconsideration of that which follows.)

    In a prior comment in defense of Sally’s article, I made the unqualified statement that privacy is “also deeply woven of entitlement.” It has been made known to me that this is something which some people haven’t thought about. Given this, I shall try to explain the basis upon which I made this statement.
    In the early nineties, I studied Chinese medicine briefly with a man who had studied at TAI, now TAI- Sophia. TAI was one of few schools within the states that attempted to retain, within curricula, the ancient Chinese philosophy which has been foundational to Chinese medicine (and I do not know whether this is true of TAI-Sophia). When I heard what was being presented to me as ancient Chinese philosophy, it resonated. I will tell you only the gist. In this philosophy, a person comes into our world with a particular and complex constitution (or if you want the Chinese version, constitution is what happens when Heaven and Earth come together and one is Conceived). Constitution is the constant within ones perception. It determines how one perceives and processes life, and the themes that will be woven throughout his or her life process – his/her preoccupations or particular work. Living then, is a process of using all that one is given in life in pursuit of personal evolution or of the manifestation of personal destiny. And health involves ever cultivating the ability to use all that one is given in order to bring oneself most fully into our world, as well as the ability to let go of all that does not serve one, or which no longer serves one’s process. At the time, I thought this magnificently beautiful. And most striking to me about it was the understanding that what exists between Nature, or constitution, and environment (often referred to as nurture in Western social sciences), is an intricate relationship, which cannot, and need not be disentangled or unwoven, in order to decipher which is more active in the shaping of personality. I appreciated this, as it made deep sense to me.
    Given this exploration, several years later I entered a formal (undergraduate) study in environmental health, with an eye always toward psychic aspects of our environment (those which are affective to the psyche), as well as toward the physical aspects, which inevitably effect human health, by way of biological function (which also affects the psyche). And given this exploration, I had to ever vigilantly consider what the meaning of natural is. When (or unfortunately if) one realizes that chemical alteration of our environment is producing the development of cancers, among other not told enough sufferings, then one must also realize that there are ways that human beings can begin to manipulate our world which are not within the Natural order of things, or that fall outside or beyond Natural law.
    Prior to this study, I’d read the works of Richard Moss extensively. Richard was a physician who discovered that the greatest healing that he has the capacity to help to inspire in others, had come about energetically as a result of being with others, completely, in their psychic journey’s of healing. I was very impressed with his ability to articulate his experience, in terms of energetic exchanges which he’d witness having transpired. Yet he also made statements that I could not imagine to have been, or to be, true. One such statement was that we need to see everything in our world as Natural, in order that we may come to witness and to experience the wholeness implicit in our world. (I think where Moss is caught here is in the inevitability of dislocation I discuss above. For in a non-fragmented world, this would be perfectly non-negotiable.) Thus, I realized while reading Moss, that I had, somewhere along my journey, fallen deeply into a process of discerning the differences among Nature and the humanly created environment, or into an effort to distinguish between those two aspects of the Nature/environment dichotomy. (I choose not to use Nature/nurture to describe this dichotomy or debate, because I don’t believe that much of that which humans have created is any longer nurturing toward life, including our lives.) And I now (about fifteen years following that initial study of Chinese philosophy), I believe that this work of sorting out what is Natural and what supports the Whole and the relationships which sustain this whole, and which sustain us, is very necessary and timely.
    Now, in order to give you a concrete sense of what I am attempting to convey in very general and conceptual terms, I will provide some examples of what I am speaking about. With regard to my personal relationship or dialogue with the Chinese philosophy I attempted to briefly reiterate above, while I found this philosophy useful in thinking not only about my own life process, but also in thinking about a more collective or cultural process of transformation (keeping what serves us, and eliminating that which no longer does), I thought about how this philosophy clearly has contextual limits. For example, the majority of people residing in our world today, as we know it within our daily lives, are sick, malnourished, and unable to gain access to the most basic things of Earth – things which they need in order to biologically survive, or to maintain even minimal ability to function. How then does a philosophy of using all they are given to bring themselves fully into our world apply to them? Since I personally don’t project the results of human confusion onto any notion of Divinity, I believe that to be denied ones most basic needs for survival does not serve anyone. So what I am clarifying here is an example of the contextual limits of a potentially beautiful and purposeful philosophy, but one which was originally conceived prior to a long, vast humanstory of colonization, which has essentially undermined this philosophy of its potential to be either functional or useful within particular contexts which are unnaturally oppressive toward Life.
    To provide an example of a more common confusion concerning Nature versus environment, one assumption upon which Western civilization has been built is that humans are, by Nature, aggressive and selfish. Is this true? If this is true, then how do we account for civilizations’ prophets – those who have lived in ever vigilant pursuit of non-harmfulness and justice? It is evident to me that by Nature, human beings have a vast expanse of potential for creative endeavor. I have thus far been attempting to give you a context for my thinking. But where I have been venturing with all of this is to say that I believe that there are senses of entitlement which are Natural – meaning integral within the Nature of being human. And I believe that to desire to purge oneself of any conditioning, whether instilled by repetitious brainwashing, or psychological and physical abuses (and I believe that all forms of abuse inevitably contain both of these aspects and more), or whether derived from deprivation, or whatever other destructive injury to being, is a Natural inclination. I will site Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, who put this beautifully:
    “It is necessary… that we view the resistance that keeps us alive, the understanding of future as challenge, and the inclination towards being more, as expressions of human nature in process of being. They are fundaments of our rebellion, and not of our resignation, before destructive injury to being” (Paulo Freire, from Pedagogue of Hope).

    I do not, however, believe that to feel entitled to privacy is necessarily Natural. I believe that human beings feel nurtured by time alone for rest and regeneration and that there is sustenance in this. But, I believe the former based solely in my own process of the undoing of psychological assumptions, some of which had been rooted in the experience of having had my autonomy violated by parents, and by others who firmly believed they had entitlements to authority over my own autonomous desires to be who I was within any given moment. I know that I no longer feel the need to control whether or when other human beings enter the space which I’m inhabiting. I also do not have people in my life who would willingly violate my desires. If they happen to act in a way in which their timing hasn’t been harmonious with my own, I need only communicate that. But most often I welcome others into my space, because I feel that they will bring some blessing, as opposed to some form of invasion. I can also tell you that an ideal of privacy goes against my deep desires to be seen, heard, understood, and loved as I am in any given moment – those deepest needs for connection and for being appreciated and loved based solely in who I am, experientially, to others within a context of Community or intimate Communion. From my own subjective experience, I know that to desire to bring myself fully into this world and to be recognized as I am (which requires that I expose myself) is Natural, and to need to hide myself, in all my glory, is not. In fact, it keeps me from receiving that which I need.
    When privacy becomes a culturally sanctified need and habit, as opposed to a consciously chosen temporary or transitional position felt needed for a particular time (which I would instead refer to as time spent alone), I believe that it prevents the nurturing of human needs and thus stunts growth. I realize that my subjective experience is a result of not only who I essentially am, but also of my human story; and the reality of that story is that I have had an abundance of time alone for reflection throughout my life, time which has involved the undoing of psychological structures which had not served me, but rather had inhibited me. Thus, I am where I am in relation to need for privacy. Consequently, I don’t believe that privacy is synonymous with aloneness, or time alone. To me, these circumstances, of privacy or manufactured need based in ideals that uphold private ownership, individualism, and objectification of others, and of time alone or need for an uninterrupted flow of self-nurturing, are related, the latter being capable of undoing the former in an ongoing process of decolonization of psyche – and I mean that (psyche) in the Zen sense of the word, which includes the whole body or heart-mind-spirit constitution.

  28. April Says:
    December 13th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    For Karen D

    Hey all,

    While this is more loosely related to Sally’s article, I just wanted to share this experience.

    I fly back and forth to the Berkshires, my home of of fifteen years, often enough to have that difficulty one has with the foot falling when one is too intimate with the highway and thus constantly resisting transmission to autopilot (yes, cruise control would help. Well okay, I took too long to replace my studs last year as well.) So, I chose to attend the Massachusetts defensive driver program yesterday, in order to avoid suspension of my right to operate a vehicle.

    Our teacher for the day was Karen, who is an educator as well as a counselor. The curriculum of the course has changed dramatically over the years. The better part of the day was spent on Glasser’s Choice Theory (psychological theory and praxis thereof) which Karen clearly appreciated. It was really inspiring to attend a government run program, and to find a truly awake, self-actualized person teaching, and to witness the conscious creation of social justice in the classroom, by someone who truly cares, and someone who isn’t afraid to show that! It was also personally rewarding to have been appreciated as an equally self-actualized person who is capable of a high level participation, as opposed to being feared for being so full of Life energy!

    We are out there – in all kinds of places…

    Off to fall down Okemo like a leaf, effortlessly, yet fully, using my edges! Yes!

    Thanks again Karen!

    PS. Check out bell hooks by googling her name only, and clicking on the image of her in a yellow shirt holding a mic. It will bring up an eight part video series on Hollywood production – a must see.

  29. corneilius Says:
    December 13th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    What you are writing about here, with such honesty and compassion, is the core issue for our culture : the historical fact of conditioning as a tool of adverse power.

    Unless and until the mainstream movements for change face that fact and bring it to the fore, their work will fail.

    Children, like all natural beings, embody a set of natural expectations, in much the same way eyes are an expectation of light within a certain bandwidth, flowers are an expectation of bugs, ears are an expectation of pressure waves (sound) within a certain frequency range

    The extent to which those innate, intrinsic expectations are not met defines the extent of dysfunction likely..

    Biologically, and functionally, children are expecting to be empathetically loved and understood, to meet adults who know what they are doing, to be able to explore the world into which they are born in ways that allow them to master themselves as living beings, intelligently, in connection, with, within and of the habitat from a grounded sense of self. They also are expectations of joy, laughter, bliss as well as some pain : falling out of a tree…. but not torture or abuse.

    These are fundamental. Nature works with precision, and that precision is the result of consciousness, not mechanical operands. This is understood by Science, though not often mentioned : as in the ‘climate debate’ …

    Here is my song about the natural expectations :

    http://www.youtube.com/djlookwood#p/u/4/-c5BcCsssM0

    Enjoy…

    Kindest regards

    Corneilius

    do what you (honestly) love, it’s your gift to universe

  30. corneilius Says:
    December 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    ps: I found your movie to be very very empowering, above and beyond any I have yet come across : and it is the HONESTY and the unwillingness to prescribe a cure, which must come from a deep trust …..

    This culture does not trust children and the powers that be fear them.

  31. Ker Says:
    December 13th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    I find it odd that as a psychotherapist you have not (apparently) encouraged clients to take the work out into their lives. I consider – and tell clients – that therapy is where they can rehearse safely for speaking their truth in the rest of their lives, changing habits and relating how they want. They get to practice in a completely open and accepting atmosphere and when they get used to their new ways of being themselves, they go out and experiment in their real lives, and can come back and report and refine as needed. I would be concerned indeed if all my clients (some do, of course) simply used therapy as a place to blow off some steam and never transferred the new skills and practices to the rest of their lives.

    I also never had the assumption that I – or anyone – would be “perfectly healed” forever – healing is an ongoing spiral process, some internal, some external. It continues to unfold over lifetimes. Which is why I teach tools rather than seeing therapy as a fix. Tools can be taken forward into life. A fix is temporary, as are all phenomena and experiences…

    I understand the urge to form a special group in which to have these conversations, but it makes more sense to me to be trying to have the conversations with anyone and everyone in one’s life. Why be friends with people if you have to form special groups of other people to have conversation about what matters?

    I think we could all use a little more courage, a bit more flexibility and hope, and the ability to tolerate the learning curve of our loved ones. If they don’t know how to listen to us, it is our job to teach them. If they don’t want to learn, they move to an outer circle of people and we continue to try to connect with the people we are supposedly connected to.

    If everyone is so lonely and longing for connection, the odds of striking up a conversation with someone we already know and having that be a relief to them, too, are pretty high, aren’t they?

    I think we are all just scared, and lacking in strength and equanimity. This gets me thinking about the whole co-housing boom, which, in my experience (I have some second hand experience) is mainly people who can’t get along with the random neighbors they have trying to hand-select neighbors they think are more likely to agree with them…

    Apparently this brought up a lot for me. Thought-provoking, indeed.

  32. corneilius Says:
    December 13th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    Think also on the possibility that people can develop precise and personal self-healing tools themselves, through learning to trust again their imagination, inner vision and innate creativity – with the kind of precision that nature exhibits in response/adaptation to changes in the habitat, slight or large….

    The kinds of dynamics that produce local accent and culture etc might be akin to the dynamic of nature. We are after all Nature first, ‘civilised’ second….

  33. tam Says:
    December 22nd, 2009 at 9:45 am

    Thank you Sally. These words feel very lame compared to how deeply I feel about this subject. I’m tired of pretending, so very tired.

    I used to be very open about my feelings and thoughts, and had a general trust of people. You were correct, Sally, in stating that people either ignore/redirect, or offer simple solutions to complex problems and feelings. There is one other reason, however, that I’ve learned to keep it all inside. Very often when I am honest about how I’m feeling, I get the “What are you complaining about? You’ve got it so good,” response. People see the surface; I’m well-educated, well-dressed, drive a new car, have a well-paying job, so I’m supposed to be happy. It’s all so shallow.

    Thanks for putting yourself out there. You inspire me to do the same. This transformation is a bit painful; from someone who knows the game and plays very well, to someone who exposes the game and isolates herself in the process. I trust I will find my people and rebuild my network. It’s a very lonely place to be right now.

    Again, thanks.

    tam

  34. Bruce Says:
    May 19th, 2010 at 6:49 am

    What you are writing about here, with such honesty and compassion, is the core issue for our culture : the historical fact of conditioning as a tool of adverse power.

    Unless and until the mainstream movements for change face that fact and bring it to the fore, their work will fail.

    Children, like all natural beings, embody a set of natural expectations, in much the same way eyes are an expectation of light within a certain bandwidth, flowers are an expectation of bugs, ears are an expectation of pressure waves (sound) within a certain frequency range

    The extent to which those innate, intrinsic expectations are not met defines the extent of dysfunction likely..

    Biologically, and functionally, children are expecting to be empathetically loved and understood, to meet adults who know what they are doing, to be able to explore the world into which they are born in ways that allow them to master themselves as living beings, intelligently, in connection, with, within and of the habitat from a grounded sense of self. They also are expectations of joy, laughter, bliss as well as some pain : falling out of a tree…. but not torture or abuse.

    These are fundamental. Nature works with precision, and that precision is the result of consciousness, not mechanical operands. This is understood by Science, though not often mentioned : as in the ‘climate debate’ …

    Here is my song about the natural expectations :

    http://www.youtube.com/djlookwood#p/u/4/-c5BcCsssM0

    Enjoy…

    Kindest regards

    Corneilius

    do what you (honestly) love, it’s your gift to universe

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