Marianna,
Greetings from Litibu! We keep Bill and your spirit alive in our midst with the great stories of beginning the Dream. Just had to get that in!
All who decide to take on this topic walk on fragile ground. By that I mean, we are using words as if they conveyed the same meaning, understanding to all. The RS-I short course of: "First, point to a “going-on-ness” and then give it a name." serves us a reminder of how not to dialogue.
We experience actions taken “out there" and we respond from “in here”. We all have filters that inform us through our senses to somehow make sense of the going-on-ness we point to. Remember that those of us who have spent most of our lives in the West, tend to have filters that require left-brain activity; words, rationality and specifics (particulars). It shapes our speech and images of what is real. This process is especially strong, though of course not limited to, men. The Universal dynamics of masculine-feminine are in both sexes. We need more holistic, non-verbal (arts, symbolic and Myth (poetry) to communicate fully.
I do not want to reduce this vital topic to a treatise on human behavior. But we do need to stand still, let silence speak, before we rush into sociological answers and solutions.
Our ability, and indeed everyone’s ability to keep the social fabric within some boundaries is to grasp what is it that tells us: “Stop! you are beyond the boundary.”. We are now experiencing two things, the boundaries have shifted, and the “ties that bind” are breaking. Let me ground that.
Nations, lines on a map, names we gave that which inside the lines, were a great advance in the human journey. It gave us a new “sense" of substance, a story, identity, and a way to create myths that spoke emotionally. We forget it was/is an invention. They don’t exist. Just like we can say it’s raining and cold someplace and not in another we have no problem in seeing that weather is a continuum. it changes and we accept (or curse!) the change. But things that change very slowly, like the coming into being and the going out of being of nations is feared, resisted, fought over, mobilized against, seen as an enemy and even died for. If it kills that which I love, then it has to be Evil.
We now are living in a time of accelerated change. Everything is changing. We “live” with the fires in Australia, the pandemics, the instant banking and global commerce, and on and on. They came so fast and we are so slow! Hell, I have a phone that I have no idea of all the things it can do. I just want to talk to someone! But we all know there is no going back. And what we experience today will do nothing but get faster and faster. It's like we are standing on a pile of rubble and there is not a bright new shiny house to move into. It's a desert, a swamp, and it is easy to say, “The hell with you, I am going to survive, so let me accumulate a safe place, build a wall, gets some guns and find a few more to keep al the doors covered”. Or maybe I should speak of the Mormon Church with its billions of dollars stashed in growth investments to get prepared for the “end times”. And if you don’t think this is feared, just go out where people are shouting USA, USA and tell them a new world is coming! Let us know the date of your funeral!
The “ties that bind” are breaking. I call these Disciplines. We may go on a diet, but unless we develop a new way of living, the habit comes right back. We have a lot of ties that are more like rubber bands. And now, when they break, there are none to replace them. To what boundary do you hook one end? To what internal capacity to you hook the other?
I won’t go longer, but you have just entered the start of my new book (still being written). A hint: it has a lot to do with the NRM.
Peace,
Jack