Today is sunny and chilly. There was a bit of snow overnight but it has melted. The forecast is for warmer temperatures today after a couple of cold days. It is forecast to be warmer still tomorrow and Sunday before a tad more snow and frigid temperatures next week.
I’ve been keenly aware that the world is watching us. I was taught that everything, including this keyboard, is conscious, an idea I accept on faith as it is a stretch for this Western trained mind to grasp. I have no difficulty, however, experiencing the greater world as awake and intentional.
Children often experience this until they learn that the culture can’t tolerate the idea. After all, if every tree, blade of grass, and gnat is aware and purposeful, then our collective moral compass is woefully off. In this culture, when people tell us that our compass is off, we tend to kill them off in one way or another (like forceful female characters in the films novels of the fifties, sixties, and seventies) .
The entire colonial enterprise (including liberalism, neoliberalism and fascism) is predicated on the idea that Nature, Indigenous people, people of color, other peoples children, and women are neither conscious or valuable as anything but raw material, resources if you like. In capitalism’s eye, we are nothing more than sources of potential income.
Until recently, late capitalism cloaked this in a public stance of support for children, oppressed peoples, disabled folks, and the environment while relentlessly working to marginalize and exploit them. It has remained true to its colonial roots by privileging new technologies and the accumulation of exorbitant wealth, while actively undermining community. The result has been a strange brew of environmental toxins, species decimation, undermined civil rights, loneliness, and a seemingly endless supply of consumer products.
But I digress. The world is filled with conscious beings, and seems to be aware herself. This is not anthropomorphism, which by the way is a term designed to invalidate the experience of connection. Rather, it is the lived experience of many peoples. (Remember when experiencing pets as active agents in their lives was considered anthropomorphizing?)
We probably should not be surprised that governments throughout the world feel threatened by a persistent demand from everyday people for a life of connection, a living wage, and a healthy environment for all beings. After all, such aspirations threaten the very assumptions capitalism and its parent, colonialism, are based on, even as they point to exorbitant wealth as immoral.
One gets the impression that the ultra-wealthy are quite willing to destroy the future of most in order to make ever more money, that disaster capitalism (most of our disasters are now human created or enhanced) has become an enormous, self-generating machine. They seem to imagine a future without consequences; this seldom turns out well.
A postscript:
Given all of this, I find myself wrestling with how to approach social media. If I leave Facebook and Instagram, how will I share my work and stay connected to distant friends? If I don’t, I continue to feed the beast. Somehow, this seems like the quintessencial colonial subject’s dilemma.
Please share your thoughts and join the conversation!