Session 3
Of all the beings in the earth metabolism, the humans are the youngest. Of all the cultures, the western is the youngest.
Indigenous populations have a lot of knowledge to share, but it is unintelligible for us.
Frameworks to work together
4 denials
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The denial of systemic, historical, and ongoing violence and of complicity in harm: the fact that our comforts, securities, and enjoyments are subsidized by expropriation and exploitation elsewhere.
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The denial of the limits of the planet and of the unsustainability of modernity/coloniality: the fact that finite earth-metabolism cannot sustain exponential growth, consumption, extraction, exploitation and expropriation indefinitely.
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The denial of entanglement: our insistence in seeing ourselves as separate from each other and the land, rather than “entangled” within a wider living metabolism that is bio-intelligent.
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The denial of the magnitude and complexity of the problems we need to face together: the tendency to look for simplistic solutions that make us feel and look good and that may address symptoms, but not the root causes, of our collective complex predicament.
We have been conditioned to behave in a way that is comfortable.
Citizenship
First of communities, then in countries, and then international. Now citizenship is more flied, shifting to:
The ones in blue are the human constructs.
- Plastics are now in our body.
- Our own unconscious is part of the metabolism of the planet.
- The earth suffering is also happening within us.
- Plant medicine can stop the numbing and connect.
Composting the shit
Rude diagnostic exercise of modern/colonial internal infrastructures.
Dominion and triumph
Of humans over nature
Of men over women
Of women over men
Of white over Indigenous/Black/brown
Of Indigenous/Black/brown over white
Of cis-hetero over trans-queer
Of trans-queer over cis-hetero
and so on and so forth…
Ownership
Of land
Of human bodies
Of other species
Of others’ labour
Of merit
Of capital
Of pride
Of privilege
Of delusions of superiority
Of own brand and carefully crafted self-image
Consumption
Of stuff
Of knowledge/information
Of critique/erudition/data
Of experiences
Of relationships
Of outrage
Of love and care
Of arts and politics
Of beauty and pain
Of community and intimacy
Entitlement
To self-expression
To self-satisfaction
To moral high-grounds
To authority, autonomy and arbitration
To validation and affirmation
To possessions and possessiveness
To emotional extraction
To relational exploitation
To intellectual masturbation
Demands
For self-congratulatory
For self-celebratory
For self-promoting
And self-reaffirming experiences
For reality curated to one’s liking
For certainty, comfort and control
For attention, likes and dopamine
For soothing, numbing and coddling
For self-actualization and self-realization
For easy formulas and quick fixes
For pleasure-filled idealizations
Birthrights
Self-interest
Self-centredness
Exceptionalism
Complacency
Escapism
Arrogance
Innocence
Purity
Futurity
Impunity
Immunity and indifference
…to harms inflicted and one’s metabolic entanglement
right, left and centre…
Take a minute to do a self scan of all the voices that come up in response to the poem. A whole bus of voices inside of us, reacting, feeling, talking to each other.
If we can’t hold space for ourselves we won’t be able to deal with what’s surrounding us without giving up, making a tantrum, throwing up.
The offering of ceremonies and medicines comes with the expectation of a commitment to indigenous struggles. Personal transformation was happening, but the transformed human just moved on with their lives. The invitation is to become a good ancestor.
Modernity is self-infantilizing, disconnecting us to our responsibility. Education in the west socializes mastery, a dopamine approach. What would be an education that focuses on depth, peeling layers, not numbing the pain. Learning animated by engaging with mystery, collective epiphany.
7 steps back, 7 steps forward/aside
- Stepping back from one’s self image, to decenter the ego and center the challenge at hand.
- Stepping back from one’s generational cohort, to have a sense of how incoming generations may interpret and experience the challenges differently.
- Stepping back from the universalization of one’s social/cultural/economic parameters of normality, to understand one’s privilege as a loss of perspective.
- Stepping back from the immediate context and time, to see wider historical, structural and systemic patterns.
- Stepping back from normalized patterns of problem-posing, problem-solving, and relationship-building, to tap what is already viable, but unimaginable/unintelligible in the mainstream.
- Stepping back from the elevation of humanity above the rest of nature, to consider our metabolic entanglement.
- Stepping back from the impulse to find quick fixes, in order to expand our capacity not to be immobilized by complexity, complicity and uncertainty.
- Stepping forward/aside with honesty and courage, to see what you don’t want to see.
- Stepping forward/aside with humility, to find strength in openness and vulnerability.
- Stepping forward/aside with self-reflexivity, so that you can read how you are being read and learn to read the room.
- Stepping forward/aside with self-discipline to do the work on yourself so that you don’t become work for other people.
- Stepping forward/aside with maturity, to do what is needed rather than only what you want to do.
- Stepping forward/aside with expanding discernment and attention, increasing care in proportion to risk.
- Stepping forward/aside with adaptability, flexibility, stamina and resilience for the long haul, and be prepared to fall, to fail, to have your plans shattered, to be stretched, to change course and to find joy in the struggle itself rather than in the imagined prize at the end.
Heads up
- Hegemonic practices: reinforcing and justifying the status quo.
- Ethnocentric projections: presenting one view as universal and superior.
- Ahistorical thinking: forgetting the role of historical legacies and complicities in shaping current problems.
- Depolitized orientations: disregarding the impacts, power inequalities, and delegitimizing dissent.
- Self–serving motivations: invested in self-congratulatory heroism.
- Uncomplicated solutions: offering feel-good quick fixes that do not address root causes of problems.
- Paternalistic projections: infantilizing the other, and seeking gratitude from those who have been “helped”.