Author: isaritchie

trying not to hurt someone, and other self-fulfilling prophecies

It is almost the plot of every romantic comedy and about half of all dramas: X knows/thinks/finds out something about Y but doesn’t say anything. Ridiculous things ensue that would never have happened if X was just honest about the situation from the beginning, but hey, then we wouldn’t have a plot, would we? Y eventually finds out and feels betrayed/hurt/angry – and much worse than had the information been effectively communicated in the first place.  We are often careful about what we say to the people we love. Sometimes this is sensible, there’s no need to be an ass, after all, but usually when there’s a real tension, and often insecure attachment, trying not to hurt someone goes beyond politeness into dishonesty and manipulation.  We are actually trying to escape taking responsibility for reality, and we might be deluding ourselves on the road to even more pain and destruction. trying not to hurt someone walking on eggshells It is one of life’s great ironies that being well-meaning often leads to making a much bigger mess.  The little wall of dominoes we build up in order to protect people we care about from what we actually think is just waiting to cascade into chaos.  If only things were simple and easy. If only contradictions cancelled themselves out and disappeared in a puff of logic. Most of the time we are not even honest with ourselves. We convince ourselves we are doing the right thing when really, trying not to hurt someone is actually trying not to hurt yourself. No matter how altruistic you think you are, you’re acting in your own self interest and avoiding potential stress/pain/guilt. Speaking of guilt… what I call guilt-cake is another fear-based self fulfilling prophecy. This is evident in people dieting in a conventional way (or giving up smoking). People start by feeling guilty about their weight and fearing the social/personal stigma and so on. This motivates the restrictive diet. The diet causes stress which causes people to feel bad which causes them to feel entitled to eat cake to feel better. Cake causes more guilt which causes more cake which causes more guilt. Here is a carefully constructed diagram: guilt-cake If guilt is a secondary emotion based on fear, as we have been led to believe, then perhaps all this fear stuff is self-fulfilling when left unchecked. This sentiment is expressed by Wait But Why in their post How to Pick Your Life Partner:
Fear is one of the worst possible decision-makers when it comes to picking the right life partner. Unfortunately, the way society is set up, fear starts infecting all kinds of otherwise-rational people, sometimes as early as the mid-twenties. The types of fear our society (and parents, and friends) inflict upon us—fear of being the last single friend, fear of being an older parent, sometimes just fear of being judged or talked about—are the types that lead us to settle for a not-so-great partnership. The irony is that the only rational fear we should feel is the fear of spending the latter two thirds of life unhappily, with the wrong person—the exact fate the fear-driven people risk because they’re trying to be risk-averse.
Of course, it all comes back to fear, so be careful if you’re making decisions out of fear, they may not be the best ones. Human beings are not very good at dealing with fear.  The protection patterns we develop unconsciously through watching our parents and society, as children, are often not very helpful, in fact, they are awfully dysfunctional and account for a lot of what is wrong with this world.  The end. Oh wait, not the end; there needs to be some advice. Okay, so here’s the thing: be honest if you possibly can. Don’t be an ass, but try not to hide the truth either. If your significant other is really insecure, you’re not doing them any favors by propping up their insecurity with lies and obfuscation. If you can’t work out how to communicate effectively and openly, you may both need therapy.  But really, who am I to judge? I’d just rather not have to cringe at the obvious chain of events leading to relationship train-wreck that comes from trying (too hard) not to hurt someone. Oh yeah, and don’t feel guilty for eating cake. Break the cycle.

deconstructing convictions, beliefs and meaning-making

People tend to be chained to particular ways of seeing… We are meaning-making beings, and while we don’t really 100% know if any of the meaning we’re making is actually REAL, outside of our heads, we continue to make meanings all the same – in much the same way a spider spins her web. We have some ‘free will’ or agency in the meanings we choose to create, outside of those we are taught from others. We can question, observe and weave new meanings from experiences. Subjective experience We can look at whether the meanings we are making actually serves us of makes life difficult (PSYCHOLOGY). We can construct interesting patterns of meaning and argue about whether some are better than others (PHILOSOPHY). We can develop ways of testing our meanings with repeatable, measurable observations (SCIENCE).(Yes, I know science is a methodology, so stop treating it like a religion already). We can turn our intuited, felt or thought meanings into art, music, creation, function. We can sell or buy some representations of meaning, others, we may consider priceless.  The bottom line is, we are all continuously creating, co-creating and re-creating meaning. That is basically what human beings do.  If nothing else is gained from an experience, we can use meaning to learn and interpret experience into ways of making sense (THINKING) that may serve us better and perhaps even lead to less suffering and more joy… or we can keep being miserable, if that seems like the easiest, safest option. Either way, people tend to choose the meanings that they think will cause them the lease amount of pain. We are pretty simple that way.   Meaninglessness? There may or may not be a greater ‘meaning of life’ or lesson – but having one may either help or hinder us. It is more practical to have meaning that helps us. ‘Objective’ reality is possible, but we are not it – we are meaning makers. We have some relatively consistent experiences of ‘reality’, day and night for example, but we cannot help but make meaning out of them – it is our condition. Even to say something is devoid of meaning is a kind of meaning and assumption. The only real truth is not to know… But we can chose to make meaning that serves us.   meaning making 1   Does my meaning serve me? (THE ETERNAL QUESTION) • Does it resonate? • Does it make me happy, or worried? • Does it help me do/be well? • What does it make me create? (relationships, dramas, pictures, love, art, communication, joy, spreadsheets..?) • What am I afraid of? • What am I joyful of? • Can I alter my meaning to make me more joyful and less afraid? (if not… why not?) • How? Some potential meanings: We are the universe’s meaning-making babies – we were created by god/universe/whatever(?) To make meaning (love, art, abandon) Having purpose is practical – whatever it is (within reason… uh?). Without purpose the chances of being effective are very low. Some purposes:  To learn  To love  To be safe (the catch 22)  To make better  To challenge and question  To help  To share  To be recognised  To change  To heal  To be happy Goals It’s hard to achieve any goals if you don’t have any. Achieving makes for happy brain joy <3. Unfortunately, having goals makes us vulnerable. If we want something, and it has meaning for us, and we are attached to that meaning, it can feel really shit if we don’t get there.  On the other hand, it will feel really shit anyway if we’re too scared of getting hurt to even risk having goals. Life’s tricky like that. This is why they invented motivational posters. REMEMBER Other people’s meaning is different, not necessarily inferior… bastards. Sometimes other people’s meanings don’t make sense – at all – but that is probably true for everyone. That is why self-examination is quite handy.  There are probably a handful of wobbly underlying-thought’s/meanings that underpin your basic assumptions about life. If you don’t mind excruciating mental discomfort for ultimate rewards, try picking your brain apart, piece by piece, figure out where all the things you think you know come from… Mum/Dad? Science? Religion? Yes, they were all a bit wrong. That is how meaning works. It is always at least a bit wrong, because we are subjective meaning-making creatures. That is just what we do… so when you come across those meanings that seem dreadfully wrong, in comparison to yours, just remember not to be a dick about it, or all the other people will learn is that you’re a dick.

the myth of the individual

One of the strangest and most prevalent myths of our times is the myth of ‘the individual’. It is so prevalent, in fact, that it isn’t often questioned: we are all individuals… aren’t we? It is an integral part of our development to identify as ‘I’ (according to Western psychologists). Perhaps it is actually just a developmental phase – perhaps we have been culturally stunted here because isolation is particularly good for the economy… but wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. You probably know the story of The Little Red Hen. You know, that iconic story that libertarian Ayn Rand fans love to tell you in the middle of the night when you’re drunk in their kitchen and have nowhere to escape to – because it proves that human beings are selfish and that poor people are just making bad choices? You know, that chicken who wants to make some bread and asks for help at every stage, but all the other animals in the animal farm are too busy being hedonistic assholes, so when her bread is finally made and they all smell the delicious yeasty scent… and come scrounging… and she’s like: “nah ah”. Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, but that never happened. You know why? Chickens are communal animals. They hang out in groups and scratch for bugs together – sure they fight over food, especially when there’s scarcity, but being together is something they do. It’s good for their survival, and it’s company. If chickens were going to bake bread, you can bet your arse they’d do it together. Human beings are social animals – probably even more so than chickens. We always live in communities. We are never completely individuals. We all depend on each other. It is a bit ridiculous to think of ourselves as independent individuals – when we are all so obviously and completely inter-dependent. It’s a bit like treating a cell in your body as an individual – or taking anything and isolating it from its environment and then trying to understand that thing. It doesn’t work. Individuals can only exist in relation to social and environmental contexts. We cannot be removed. fish The funny thing is that people are so embedded in their culture they really can’t see out of it – it’s the water in our goldfish bowl, right? So the way we thing – well it’s just normal – IT’S JUST THE WAY THINGS ARE: OKAY? It’s hard for us to even imagine a society without ‘individuals’… but actually, our mythology is not universal. There are lots and lots of cultures where ‘the individual’ is not really all that important. This is a bit hard to understand from a Western perspective because our philosophical history is based on the idea of ‘the individual’. Our morality starts with ‘me’ and extends out – hopefully – to other people, sometimes it stretches to other animals, but rarely does it encompass the ecosystem (which is probably why the ecosystem makes a better starting point). The anthropologist David Graeber, points out:
Western social theory is founded on certain everyday common sense, one that assumes that the most important thing about people is that they are all unique individuals. Theory therefore also tends to start with individuals and tries to understand how they form relations with one another (society)… With no concept of either “society” or unique individuals, [the Melpa] assumed the relationships came first. (Towards an Anthropology of Value, 2001, page 36, 37)
The thing about assuming that we’re all just selfish is that it ignores that we’re equally not. Sure, it makes a great economic platform if you like to promote the kind of economy that destroy ecosystems and exploits people as much and as quickly as possible, and it fits with the Christian heritage of Western culture that assumes we’re all sinners, but it ignores the blindingly obvious communal aspects of us – as a species. Basically, if someone was like: ‘dude, when you’ve got a minute, can you help me grind this flour so we can have some sweet gluten-free fairtrade bread in five hours’ and you had the time and energy, and that person wasn’t a talking chicken, you’d probably be all over that, right? You’re a decent kind of person… and people have been making bread communally for thousands of years. Anyway, there’s another reason The Little Red Hen is a terrible story: it sucks to eat alone. If I went to all that trouble to make some kick-arse bread I would want to share it, and the recipe.

the insecure attachment trap

Are you too needy or too aloof in relationships? Are you constantly pulling or pushing, or are you involved with someone else who is? Do you avoid relationships and attachment altogether, or perhaps you are actually happily attached and not prone to these things at all but are occasionally caught wondering about why other people around you keep getting sucked into the insatiable drama of the insecure attachment trap… Attachment Attachment is the mother of all suffering, according to Buddhism, but it’s also a pretty necessary part of life that can bring deep fulfillment if you do it right. It is rather self-defeating to get too attached to detachment like those meditation geeks who feel super superior to everyone less enlightened and more pleasure-seeking than themselves. Attachment comes in many forms and the the kind we form to other people can be the most volatile and painful – and also the most wonderful and satisfying. In a close relationship, attachment is a lot like a rope that both people are holding. When the attachment is secure, the rope is not being pushed or pulled much, it can hold some tension or hang there comfortably. When the attachment is insecure, however, it gets to be rather like an emotional tug of war.  Attachment theory comes from the pioneering work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. This is a brief spiel about it that may reflect the original massive texts to a greater or lesser degree. What is insecure attachment? Attachment theory looks at the way children develop healthy or unhealthy attachments to their primary care-givers in childhood and how these patterns are transferred into their adult relationships. The following patterns are probably easily recognisable because they are ridiculously common and bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the romance narrative trap one encounters in Hollywood movies and other mass media.  Of course, it is entirely possible you have very secure attachment patterns, but if your emotional needs weren’t met as a child you are likely to fall into one of several categories:
  • anxious–preoccupied (pulling on the rope)
  • dismissive–avoidant (resisting the pull/pushing away)
  • fearful–avoidant (in denial of the existence of ropes and not wanting to hold on in the first place)
Anxious-preoccupied: “I want to be with you/someone, why don’t you want to be with me? I need you. Please respond to my text. I’m going on Facebook to paste love songs on your wall. Why don’t you love me anymore?” Anxious-preoccupied people tend to latch on to attachments easily. They are uncomfortable when not in a relationship and are likely to always have at least one person they are infatuated with, involved with or longing for. They experience a high level of anxiety over the other person’s behavior – especially when they feel neglected. They are likely to put the other person up on a pedestal while devaluing themselves. They are consistently preoccupied with the relationship, with circular patterns and anxieties around it and with trying to figure out what kind of action might generate the desired response from the other person. Anxious-preoccupied people tend to attract dismissive-avoidant people – or generate dismissive behavior because they are so over-anxious about the attachment, however, if the other person becomes too attached, an anxious-preoccupied person may flip and become dismissive, then transfer their anxious pattern to someone who is less available. People with this pattern are so afraid of losing or damaging their ties to the other person that they don’t say many of the things they really think. They withhold any information that might threaten the other person’s attachment to them and as such, cannot maintain an open, honest, genuine connection. Dismissive-avoidant: “I’m sweet as by myself. This person keeps texting me. Awkward. I don’t need anyone because I’m a super human machine. They probably write books about people like me. What I’m doing is way more important than you.” Dismissive-avoidant people don’t need relationships at all, apparently. They want to be independent and tend to be quite critical of the people they are involved with. Instead of putting them on a pedestal they relegate them to the lost and found. They consistently put up barriers against the behavior of anxious-preoccupied people, and their aloofness and disdain is likely to generate anxiety in anyone who is attached to them – even people without strong anxious-preoccupied patterns. Fearful-avoidant “I hope I don’t have to have a genuine intimate human interaction, it might upset my equilibrium. I’m just going to hide behind this rock.” Fearful-avoidant people tend to avoid relationships altogether. They are likely to have had primary carers come and go in their childhood and are afraid to form attachments lest the other person disappear. Fearful-avoidant people are not likely to get involved in them and when they do, it takes a lot of work for them to take down their emotional barriers of steel and communicate openly with another person.  When they do form relationships they may slip into either pattern above at various times, but as they are cautious and slow to bond, they may form quite secure attachments in time – they are also likely to be afraid to leave a relationship for fear that they will never have one again. Secure attachment style “Relationships are pretty awesome. Being single is pretty awesome. What’s the big deal?” People with a secure attachment style probably had stable happy attachments in childhood. These people are mythical, like unicorns. You may occasionally stumble across couples who seem radically free from the underlying tensions most ‘normal’ dysfunctional’ relationships have. If you have never seen this, you probably don’t believe it exists, but as a true believer I can tell you that I have witnessed a handful of really good, healthy relationships in my time. Some of these people are lucky enough to have had happy childhoods, others just sort their shit out emotionally, drop their self-protective behavior, and learn to be good at relationships. The usefulness of knowing Wherever you stand on the spectrum, it is helpful to have some ideas about these patterns. Putting people in boxes can also come in handy when they are getting out of control and need to be contained. Some people seem to flip between different attachment styles, depending on their situation and the people they are involved with – pulling on the rope creates resistance after all. It is probably possible, with the benefit of greater understanding, to begin to resolve the underlying insecurities and childhood issues that create unhealthy relationship patterns in one’s life, rather than just projecting them onto other people.

deconstructing the romance narrative trap

Are you wondering why your love life isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be? Why doesn’t your partner bring you roses, arrange surprise weekends away and find all your flaws lovable? Why doesn’t that hot guy or girl you have a crush on accidentally find your phone/wallet/umbrella, track you down then ask you out for a coffee at that cute cafe you’ve been wanting to go to? Why doesn’t the person you’re seeing reply to your texts straight away and always know the exact right thing to say to make you feel good about yourself? Well, my dear, it seems you are stuck in a romance narrative trap. A what?  Well, narratives are the stories we tell ourselves about our lives: our values, our pasts, our future ambitions, our identities.  Romance narratives are those that get all gooey and, well, romantic, like when you start to turn that girl/guy you’ve been hooking up with into a possible modern-day-fairy tale before you’ve even discussed politics with them.  Before you get all slushy and defend romance, just realise I’m not attacking all romance, just the romance narratives that are traps… Whether you’ve been in a long term relationship that doesn’t quite measure up to rom/com standards or you meet someone who gives you butterflies, your brain chemistry goes out of control and all of a sudden you’re a love-zombie, checking your phone every other minute and day-dreaming about your shared future together, you’re in trouble.  Does this sound familiar?  Some people don’t seem to fall into the trap and some fall into the trap so well because it suits them so much that it isn’t even a trap, but I have been falling in and out of this trap for a long time and in the past few years I have been trying to figure out how to avoid it.  Part of the problem with avoiding it is that all those brain chemicals are highly addictive and neptunian-delusional. The other part of the problem is that the romance narrative is just so fucking pervasive. They read ya Cinderella… …you hoped it would come true, and one day your prince charming would come rescue you… Anyone remember that song from the 90s? It’s what I think of when I think of romance narrative examples – and IT’S A TRAP! Well, maybe not always, or maybe some traps are quite nice, but we’ve all grown up with unrealistic and unhealthy, bland and thoroughly hetero-normative narratives around romance – Disney is the easiest to blame, but really, it’s everywhere. Hey look, it’s a… What’s wrong with Aladdin?  Let’s not go into the insidious racism and sexism, let’s stick to the romance issue here.  So there’s this princess right, and she’s been sheltered and protected all her life and dresses like the genie in I Dream of Genie – and she’s just waiting for her hero, who is this nice, poor kid, with cool monkey who is very fit from running away from the police but, overall, a character with a good alignment (chaotic). You know how the story goes, even if you haven’t seen the movie, because it’s how all these stories go – there’s a bad guy, the hero saves the day with the princess helping out as his sidekick and they sail off into the sunset on their magic carpet: happily ever after. This is what is supposed to happen, right?  You’re supposed to meet someone, go through a few trials and tribulations, and then after the plot climax everything’s peachy. I was raised not to believe in happily-ever-afters but my cynicism hasn’t saved me – if anything, it’s only made things worse, putting me at cross-purposes with my brain chemistry addiction. So what brain chemicals are involved?  Dopamine: the reward pathway also associated with substances like cocaine and heroin. Dopamine is also known to affect your serotonin levels which can bring on low moods and further the motivation for more dopamine.  So when you don’t get the response you want, or you haven’t had any positive attention for a while the withdrawals kick in… love zombie attack! Yuck. If you’re wondering if he/she is your soul-mate, watching rom/coms imagining yourself and x as the leading characters, altering your appearance in accordance with what x might like… you’re in serious trouble.  Brain chemistry isn’t the only way of looking at this thing… there is all that aforementioned unhealthy-social-programming to deconstruct, “bad” habits to break out of and psychological issues to consider like insecure attachment. Is it always a trap? Yes and no. I have come to realise everything is a trap. Some traps are nice, some traps are comfortable, some traps help you feel like you’ve achieved something… saying everything is a trap detracts from the meaningfulness of the word ‘trap’, so we’ll just say it’s a trap when it’s dysfunctional. How does that sound? Is your romance narrative causing you grievous emotional harm? Are you wasting energy waiting for a text of continuously hassling your partner to be more romantic? Are you moping because there’s no one who loves you in ‘that’ way? Well, there you go… TRAP! But what if x is my soulmate? If you believe in soul-mates and that reincarnation shiz then take into consideration that a soulmate isn’t someone to give you happily-ever-afters, it’s someone who is here to give you major karmic lessons: lots and lots of pain and suffering, until you figure out how to learn from it and get out of the trap. The more you worry about whether it’s ‘meant to be’, the worse you are making it.  Focus on learning your lessons rather than controlling uncontrollable variables. If something is meant to be it’s not worth worrying about, anyway, is it? It will just happen, whether you like it or not. Don’t get your free-will tied up in your determinism, it’s not sexy. Okay, I’m in the trap, what can I do? I don’t have all the answers, but I have read too many self-help books, so here’s some helpful advice: 1. Get some perspective Step back from the drama of the romance, to stop sinking my energy into crazy fantasies. Don’t turn into a psi-vamp, you’re too good for that, and after a while your friends will stop wanting to hear about x and how awesome or horrible they are. Maybe x is your soulmate, but that’s neither here nor there. In your present life you have other more important shit you could be doing. Do it. 2. Bring it back. Bring your focus and your energy back to you.  You have been leaching it all over the place and it’s making a mess on the carpet.  I have this mantra which also resembles this 90s song, which ironically has extremely love zombie lyrics if you read the rest of it. Play this song and try to dance like in the music video. Go on. 3. Balance.  Balance everything – food, sleep, exercise, entertainment, meditation… be calm. 4. Get fulfilling creative interests.  There’s nothing better than fulfilling creative interests. Do something, make something, build on something. This will get your dopamine pathway functioning more healthily because you are being awesome and getting rewarded for it. 5. Meet ownemotional needs. Easier said than done, but you really are the most qualified person for the job. Be sensitive to your own feelings and figure out what needs aren’t being met – then find more awesome ways to meet those needs. 6. Stop talking about x all the time,  Just stop it. stop thinking about it so much, think about cats, cats are nice.

pathways to sustainability through food sovereignty and agroecology

This post is based on a presentation I did at a sustainability symposium at the University of Waikato in January 2015.   Food sovereignty and agroecology have been the focus of much academic attention in recent years, although very little has been published on these topics in a New Zealand context. These paradigms have been instrumental in highlighting multifaceted problems of social and environmental exploitation emerging from the existing industrialised food systems and identifying more sustainable solutions. This presentation draws on preliminary findings from doctoral research focused on food sovereignty in New Zealand. Qualitative data was were gathered through ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with people who produce, organise and distribute local food in a small coastal New Zealand township, as well as in several contrasting settings. It presents diverse understandings around organic and local food, environmental protection, community resilience and living economies. The findings are that genuine pathways to sustainability are possible through agricultural models based on ecosystems and indigenous knowledge systems, and through the proliferation and support of small-scale community initiatives.
Sustainability has become a catchword…
A linguistic representation of a cultural shift in perspective that has increasingly necessary in the face of emerging global crises – climate, food, waste, energy and inequality
This wave has reached the point where it’s no longer just a few hippies waving placards, it is increasingly ubiquitous
The movement that first became mainstream for my generation with the likes of Captain Planet has now reached critical mass
But does this mean the words are being over-used? Green-washed?
Has sustainability lost meaning? Has it been corporatised?
A critical perspective is important here…
While there is plenty to be critical of, it is also helpful to look for solutions, to find working models and inspiration
Genuine sustainability must come from the grass-roots, upward. It must be holistic and multi-faceted.
Economic, social and environmental – genuine sustainability is synonymous with healthy interconnected ecosystems.
Agroecology is a whole-systems approach to agriculture and food systems development based on traditional knowledge, alternative agriculture, and local food system experiences: linking ecology, culture, economics, and society to sustain agricultural production, healthy environments, and viable food and farming communities. It’s also a less ‘hippy’ term for permaculture
Permaculture (permanent agriculture/culture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems
Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fibre and energy for provision of local needs.
It is a system which can be applied to anything – society/community, economics…
Sparked in 1996 by Vía Campesina, an international peasant movement representing more than 180 international organisations advocating for peasants, migrant agricultural workers, indigenous food providers and small-scale farmers.
Food sovereignty is about:
  •   Producing food for people, not for the global commodity market
  •   Valuing food producers
  •   Localising food systems
  •   Local control over resources
  •   Building skills and knowledge
  •   Working with Nature
This local food map was made by one of the local groups in Whaingaroa, where my research is based.
Whaingaroa is a dynamic community engaged in activities related to food sovereignty
Groups and initiatives are closely interconnected
There is a strong focus on ‘local’, ‘organic’, ‘sustainable’
There is still a long way to go….
•Supermarket culture: a lot of food is still purchased from the town supermarkets or from Hamilton
•Not enough local food producers yet (more coming?)
•Poverty and social exclusion vs the ‘green bubble’
Interconnectedness is key
Food sovereignty is about relationships
What can we learn from the local food producers of Whaingaroa?
* People can lead incredibly rich lives without much material wealth
* Balancing the economic, social and environmental  – and viewing them as interconnected
* There are strong critiques, here, of the corporate food system: control, ecological damage and exploitation
* People have gotten too disconnected from food: need to reconnect, Food needs to be real
* Food should be: local, sustainably produced, safe and abundant.
* There is a strong focus on supporting local food producers: avoiding competition, working together
* There is also a strong focus on respecting indigenous values and learning from indigenous wisdom
Indigenous systems have been developed alongside ecological systems – necessarily –
We can learn a lot from ecological systems, from the indigenous knowledge systems in our local landscape
Without considering the flows and cycles of ecosystems, without considering ourselves part of them, we cannot move past sustainability as a catchword
Through understanding the interconnectedness we can repair fragmented ontologies, heal rifts and avoid environmental, social and economic exploitation.

a children’s story to explain sociological theory

The following was developed for an honours theory paper.  It is a children’s story about praxis.  The italicised sections of text are told in more of a fairy tale narrative using the first names of the philosopher characters: Georges Hegel, Karl Marx and Paulo Freire.  The non-italicised text uses their last names and gives more description. The Story of Praxis This is the story of Praxis, a mythology of sorts, stemming from the human tradition of fairy tales and Pakiwaitara observable all over the world in every corner of history.  It is an example of the praxis of story telling, and a reminder that this is all we ever do as we weave the fragile webs of academia. “The Garden of Praxis”

In the city of logic, in the land of modernism, everything was black and white lived a man named Georg.  Georg was bored of the city and its limits, he longed for something different, something bigger and more wonderful.  Praxis grew out of an age of modernism, where logic was the primary dogma.  It all started with Hegel, for it was his idea of synthesis, of incorporating frameworks rather than excluding those that aren’t ‘right’, that made it possible for Praxis to exist at all.  Or we could go back further and claim that for ideas to be synthesized they must have been separated in the first place, and we could accredit this to Descartes work, a century or two before, because he is well known for severing the body from the mind.  Or we could go back further to the Greeks or to the pre-literate societies we know so little about, because as Hegel himself points out, we are repeating this cycle throughout history.  But for now we will begin with Hegel, the mender of the schism was mended by Hegel, a pioneer of holism and the open mind. …………..

One day a beautiful thing fluttered past.  It was a bright colour Georg had never seen before.  He told the people of the town, but they didn’t believe him. “There is only black and white.” They said Georg went to school and studied all the knowledge he could find.  All the modern books were black and white, but some of the oldest, dustiest books seemed to be different, they spoke of colours and plants and creatures, their pictures were strange and beautiful,  and there was a chance, Georg imagined, that they might once have been colourful. But there was nothing quite like the beautiful thing in the bright new colour he had seen flutter past. So he went exploring. Outside the city limits he found a whole new world with a bright blue sky, filled with creatures and plants Georg had never seen before and each one seemed to have more amazing colours than the last.

Hegel, as a child in the 1700s was curious about the world, he wanted to understand it, not just in the objective way that scientists do.  He wanted to understand how his internal experiences related to what was happening in the world around him.  He read books and poetry, he studied the ancient philosophers and the contemporary, he watched the French revolution unfold and the siege of Napoleon and he sought to understand the intricate patterns of humanity, of mind and nature, the subject and object, of psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy. …………………. Georg went back to the city.  He tried to tell the people about the amazing world, but they did not believe him. “There is only black and white” They said.  “If there was colour, then our city could not possibly exist.”  That did not make sense to Georg.  He knew that it was possible for black and white and colour to exist all at the same time.  So he went back outside the city limits and he asked the creatures there.  The creatures said nothing, so Georg watched and observed.  He saw how the rain seemed to make the plants glow, he saw how the smaller plants must grow into large trees, he saw the seedlings and he thought “If I could bring this into the city, then they would understand.”

So Georg went about collecting the seeds of all of the magnificent plants, the trees and flowers and the sweet fruits.  He gathered them together and brought them back to the city of Logic.  He found some bare ground that no one was using and he dug it up, mixing the black and white, turning it to grey.  He planted the seeds in the ground and watered them, like the rain.  And he waited. The people stood around and they said “This will not work.” Georg waited and waited, white the people called him names, convinced that he was a fool.  They forgot about Georg and his astounding ideas that must be crazy and they went back to their lives and their jobs, meanwhile Georg waited, and waited and waited.  Nothing happened.  He went back to the amazing world outside the city and he watched and observed more.  He saw how the leaves would fall from the plants and turn brown on the ground, he wondered if this ground was different to the ground in the city because of the leaves falling for so long.  He put mounds of leaves into a bag and brought them back to the city of Logic.  He sprinkled them onto the earth he had dug up and he watered them again.  The earth turned brown and still he waited… One morning Georg noticed he was not the only one watching and waiting, a group of children gathered round, they pointed at the ground and smiled, and talked to eachother in hushed voices. Georg looked closely at the earth he had so lovingly prepared and saw, to his utter joy and amazement, a tiny shoot emerging from beneath the dirt and leaves in a bright, beautiful colour. The people gathered round again.  Some still said he was crazy, some moved quickly along and went back to their jobs, some were interested and they stood with Georg and watched the miraculous garden grow.  Some people became angry and yelled at Georg, “it is all an illusion, an illusion.” they said “This is a waste of time, we all know what is really real and it is black and white.” But Georg didn’t listen to them.  He said “look, we have room enough in this city for the black and white and for the colours.  We don’t just have to have one or the other.” And he watched and waited, as more and more shoots began to grow and more and more colours emerged. Hegel became a professor at various universities and wrote books about his ideas.  Throughout his life he had witnessed much conflict between people, countries and ideas and he discovered a solution; very different ideas could be incorporated together in philosophy, contradictions could co-exist, and indeed, all sides of a story would be necessary for absolute knowledge to exist. ……….. Many years later Karl came along and saw the beautiful garden that Georg had created.  It had grown wild and some people liked it, others said it was a mess and that the city should go back to being black and white.  Karl sat in the garden and he thought and thought.  He thought about all the good work Georg had done in creating the garden and bringing colour and new life into the city of logic and he came up with a name for the garden.  “This is the garden of Praxis!” He said, “Because this garden was created through the great ideas of Georg, combined with his real work.” He thought of all the scholars sitting up in the black towers of logic, thinking all day and never doing anything.  “What use is that?” He wondered.  He thought of how the people in the city lived, spending all their time working hard and never being happy, and he had an idea “If we all grew these gardens, we would have enough sweet fruits for everyone to eat, the people wouldn’t have to work all day, and they could be happy and enjoy their lives. Karl tended the garden, and other people helped him.  Together they explored the world for new seeds so they could plant more seeds of sweet fruit trees and vegetables, in every colour and flavour imaginable into the garden.  They dug up more land and made the garden bigger.  Along came Marx, a man from the upper classes who chose to spend his life campaigning for the working class.  Marx is well known for many things, particularly for the role of his ideas in the Russian revolution and other similar movements around the world.  It was he who re-created the concept of Praxis, originally a Greek word related to action.  Marx saw Hegel’s Dialectic as revolutionary in it’s ability to include many different perspectives previously ignored by people in power.  He borrowed Hegel’s concept of integration and also Feuerbach’s idea that the physical world and material satisfaction are important. Marx was a very practical man, he is well known for saying “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it”. To Marx, theory and philosophy were useless if they did not seek to change the world, and action, without theory could be futile. To remedy this Marx constructed Praxis as the synthesis of theory and praxis.  Praxis was about taking philosophy out of it’s lofty tower and putting thoughts to work in the real world in order to change the world.  Praxis was revolutionary. When Karl was very old and tired, he handed the garden over to his friends and followers.  One of them was Paulo.  ………… Paulo liked what Karl had done with the garden, and he had been happy to help him, but he also had ideas of his own.  “We have been growing so many plants in this place.” He said to the other gardeners, “But not everyone in the city is able to eat them.  Why don’t we teach the other people in the city to grow their own gardens, with the fruits that they will enjoy, then everyone can have enough delicious food to eat and enjoy their lives.”  “How will we do that?” asked the other gardeners, “What if they don’t want to learn?”  Paulo thought about this for a while.  He saw a boy on the street and he asked him “Little boy, what is important to you?  The little boy said “I like to play sports with my dad.” Paulo nodded, “Does he play sports with you enough?” “No,” said the boy, frowning “He is always working so that he can feed our family.”  Paulo was very interested in this, he asked the boy “What if you and your father, and your whole family could grow your own food together, delicious food like the fruits in this garden, and then you would all have more time together and spare time to play sports.” The little boy looked at Paulo and smiled, then he ran off to find his father. Paulo went back to the other gardeners.  “I have figured it out!” He said.  “This is the way we can teach people – we must find out what they really want to learn and why, and then we can help them to learn it.  This is the best way to teach because we can do it with love and humility, with respect and creativity, and through this we can help people to think for themselves, to choose their destiny and to grow their own food.  Together we can turn the whole city of Logic into a garden of Praxis!” Freire drew on Marx’s ideas.  He envisioned society as one liberated through education.  He didn’t agree with the kind of education he saw in schools, where children were treated like knowledge banks, being deposited full of information.  He didn’t see education as something that should be instructed or forced on people.  He believed in learning empowerment.  He thought that if people could learn about what they were passionate about they would learn much more quickly.  He thought critical consciousness was necessary in real learning and communication.  He wanted to help people in developing the ability to act  reflect on action and act in light of their reflection.  This is his action-reflection cycle. Freire believed that through praxis human beings create and recreate society.  He thought that praxis required self determination, intentionality, creativity and rationality.   He developed a system for people to learn about the world through a process he called ‘dialogue’.  He said   “Dialogue cannot exist, however in the absence of a profound love for the world and for men.  The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love.  Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated.”  Freire’s ideas have been used, with great success in Cuba, with their literary campaign, and other places around the world.  Although they have amazing potential to educate people they have not gained much popularity in the Western world, probably because they create a gateway for people to become more political which is something governments would find difficult. So what is praxis? Praxis is the union of the mind and the body, of thoughts and actions, of theory and practice. Praxis is empowering and transformative.  It is the process through which philosophy can impact reality, to create positive change.

nursing the primal wound

Every now and then someone will treat you really badly, whether it’s accidentally, incidentally or intentionally, and trigger all this horrible emotional stuff, right? Maybe it’s your boss, your current or former lover/partner, your best friend, mother, father or child. Maybe the’re triggering anger, detrayal, anguish, fear. Maybe you react assertively or barely react at all but either way the feelings are there. The projections run wild: “That bitch!/bastard!/creep!/idiot!/scoundrel!” How dare they? We feel wounded, underneath all the other emotions. We feel hurt. We probably feel like the other someone else has hurt us and is doing us damage, but most probably, the damage has already been done – was done ages ago – and we are re-living it over and over, and over…

The primal wound is the center of all other turmoil.  It probably comes from the drastic post-natal separation from the womb or some other very early childhood trauma and every other painful experience has compounded it. It is what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain-body. He describes it as a tangled mess of wounded ego – of trauma, abandonment, betrayal, hurt, fear and general suffering. The pain-body is often dormant. We wander around living pretty sweet lives until something nasty happens and triggers all this shit. The wound is primal because it pre-dates narrative-memory, it is part of primary human experience.  It is the wrenching separation from the feeling of being connected, of being absolutely safe and warm, of floating in the centre of the universe. It is so difficult for us to learn that we aren’t the centre of the universe – at least not to everyone else – because everyone is struggling to learn the same thing. This traumatic separation triggers our base survival fear. We are terrified of our limitations, or our mortality, of our insignificance. There is only so much a young ego can take before it ruptures and becomes wounded. Although it’s obvious that living life through this woundedness is not in one’s best interests, we can become awfully attached to our wounds and the traumas and dramas that inevitably surround them. We construct our identities around them: “I am so-and-so and I am ____” insert addiction/trauma/negative label here. We can even be proud of what we’ve suffered to the point that we refuse to stop suffering. Our woundedness gives us an excuse to opt-out of life-obligations, it gives us an excuse to be nasty because we were once treated that way. Really, you don’t need the excuse. If you want to opt-out, do it, if you want to be nasty, go ahead. Excuses are just more unnecessary justification. If you want drama, there is plenty to create and share. If you’re over it and want to move on then begin the disentangling process. We feel justified in our suffering, in our anger, in our vengeful thoughts. Maybe we are justified, let’s assume we are, either way justification isn’t useful. If we just stay ‘justified’ we tangle the wound even more. We can hold onto all the crap. We easily get stuck. Let’s try something different. Let’s try disentangling from current projections and old trauma. Drop the other people from the equation for a minute. Good work. Now, what is left? That wound. Over the years it has been pushed down into the unconscious to fester, it has been covered over with all sorts of ugly and pretty things. It has become like a boil, an infection seething under the skin and this new trauma, this new trigger of pain/fear/anger has brought it to the surface. It’s not a pretty sight, but it is a chance to clear out the pus, clean the wound and let it heal. Awareness is always helpful, like a flash light in the dark. If we can focus on this wound – not in an unhelpful dwelling-on-it-going-around-in-circles kind of way because that will only get us more tangled up – but in way that is clear of projections, in a way that regularly cleans it out and wraps it in safe thoughts, in a way that occasionally squeezes out more of the pus until there is none left, then we can give it all the right things to heal. We don’t do the healing in our minds, we just remove the barriers. Healing is automatic in the right circumstances. To speed it up we can nurture ourselves. We can eat the foods our body really wants (not the kind our wound-wrapped-mind craves for comfort), we can move and stretch and exercise in the way our bodies prefer. We can create and be with friends and in nature and do all those things that feed us. We can listen inwards to what we really need instead of looking outwards into projections of happiness on the buffet-table of life that may be all empty-calories and no nutrient-density. A special kind of freedom is possible when we can separate ourselves from the drama and projections of the mundane world, and freedom can be terrifying too, but at least it’s not tedious repetitive cycles of pain.

shadow self-work

I was about fourteen the first time I was introduced to the concept of the shadow through Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet, in which Ged split off a part of himself out of a foolish desire to prove himself and spent many years running from his shadow.  Later, when I was sixteen, my counselor, Fiona (who was also practiced in Celtic shamanism) explained the shadow as all the parts of a person they don’t like – that they are afraid of – that they don’t want to deal with. She talked about bringing the shadow into the light of awareness and encouraged me to write a list of all the things in myself that fitted this description. It was easy to pinpoint external things: the things I felt guilty about, the obvious things I struggled with. It was harder to dig deeper than that, into the tangled unconscious web of depression and trauma that I wasn’t ready to face. I wanted to make things special and spiritual. I didn’t want to deal with the raw ugliness of reality. The shadow is the realm of nightmares and the parts of psyche that are hard to face: pain/sadness, fear, rage, the horrific: too hot or too cold for comfort.  A friend of mine who was who was practiced at lucid dreaming was warned never to try to meet his shadow. He took that as a challenge and so one dream, while he was flying along, he decided to do it. Suddenly a figure appeared, a doppelganger of himself, but darker, with a malicious grin. The dream abruptly morphed into his worst nightmare and my friend, an arachnophobe, was being eaten by an enormous spider while his doppelganger laughed. The shadow is a terrifying concept, yet compelling. We might know there is something there but we don’t know what, and perhaps there is another level of naivete, or several more layers, or hundreds. We will never know until we begin the arduous task of peeling them back. We may hope for specialness, for treasure, but that is unwise because it opens us up for unhinged delusions and losing our path. I think of shadow work as stumbling in the dark, like the le Guin’s priestess in her underground labyrinth, there is danger in rushing in: the danger of being lost to the blackness, of starving to death. We have to feel our way, to edge carefully around the walls until we learn the map. Then we can be at home in the dark landscape of unconsciousness.   That is why the work is worth doing: because when you face the most terrifying parts of self, there is nothing left to fear and as if we can process these things in the light of consciousness, they don’t need to manifest externally.

removing emotional splinters from the psyche

splinter-of-wood Lately something has been triggered for me, but I’m not exactly sure what it is or how to deal with it. In this vague, ambiguous state I feel a bit stuck. What is holding me back? It isn’t big or dramatic. It isn’t agonising. It’s more like a splinter in my chest – of fear or doubt, of past pain. Like a physical splinter, it is inflammatory. For me it is connected with insecure attachment issues and feeling vulnerable… but probably, you have something like this too – that might come up at some point in your life, triggered by someone being a dick or not answering your text messages or something. Western society is not particularly good at emotions – probably because it is founded on denial and a false dichotomy between the body and mind – which is, ironically not very scientific… so we might as well develop processes to deal with our emotions, right? This is something I just made up, and as a qualified hypnotherapist, I’m totally allowed – this also means when you read it you can make the voice in your head sound very relaxed and hypnotic 🙂 As we know, to clean emotional wounds you need to focus on them. It’s not pleasant, but it’s important work if you actually want to get over something. Focus on the sensation and where it is in the body. It might feel uncomfortable. Focus… focus… When your attention slips, that’s okay, just focus again. It’s a bit like a surgeon, or a mum removing a splinter from a child’s foot. Focus. Can you name the feeling? Let it well up Submerge yourself in it. Keep focussed. What’s underneath? Let it well up again – feel it out – go through the middle… again… that centre of the splinter… the eye of the storm… splitting discomfort fear/pain/trauma Separate this from anything external. This is part of you. It’s all about you. Focus. Focus. Feel it. Has it moved? Has it shifted? Sneaky little splinter. You could keep distracting yourself – numbing the pain with facebook or beer or movies or whatever floats your boat, but unless you really get in there and focus it will stay there – keeping you stuck. Stretch from side to side. Focus. As you focus it may grow or diminish… maybe both, alternately. It may hide and re-emerge. Eventually it may crystalise so you can see the damn thing. What is it? A fleck of wood? A shard of glass? A prickle? A dagger? A mighty spear? How big is it? What colour? What does it look like? Does it change? Distractions are important coping mechanisms – let them come and go. Re-focus every time. What more can you find buried here? Memories? Baggage? Focus Stretch Focus Walk it out… Go for a walk alone, in as peaceful place as possible, with as much of a clear horizon as possible… …and feel. Every time your mind drifts off, Bring it back. Keep doing it until you can figure out how to remove the splinter. Then you can just leave it alone and let it heal.