All posts tagged COVID-19

21 Questions for 2020: #20

#20. How will we find the inner fortitude to make it through this time?

I am writing today with a heavy heart, as I look out into a social landscape that seems to be ever-darkening. “I can’t breathe” has come to be the anguished whisper of our time, whether it comes from yet another Black man being criminally choked to death by supposed “law enforcement officers,” or from one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have fatally succumbed to COVID-19. 

Watching the contagion of violence spreading across the U.S. while the immoral  “commander in chief” twiddles his thumbs, seeming to maliciously relish the ensuing chaos, it’s impossible to see where this will end. The November election is still far away, with a lot of turbulence before us. 

How will we find the inner fortitude to make it through this time?

Each of us will find their own answers to this question, day by day. Here is what I am coming up with today.

Despair serves no one.

If we respond to the darkness of our time with a darkening of our souls, then the world will quickly become a very dark place indeed. Light has many gradations. I am not talking about “sunny optimism” that refuses to process reality. Nor am I talking about the pyromaniacs who take pleasure in setting the world on fire. 

I am thinking of the inner light that beams steadily within every living being on the planet, an inner flame that that connects us to the world soul, the anima mundi. This soul light is fueled by the same life-giving energy that turns our whole planet green in the spring, that for untold millennia has welcomed new life with joy and abundance. We humans are part and parcel of that cosmic dance, and we serve no one by letting our inner light gutter and dim. 

On the contrary, as revolutionary leaders throughout human history have shown, we take the first step towards a better world by standing firmly in the light of our own ideals and sharing our positive visions with others. 

Take our cues from Nature, and the Gaians around us. 

We are drawn to Nature in times of trouble because she models for us, without fail, the potential of positive energy manifested into form. In doing so, she gives us a glimpse of the full glory of a world suffused with the sacred: that sense of rightness that we call divine. 

All around us, in the natural world, we see enacted the principle of equality. The sun shines down equally on every particle of this world. The raindrops fall equally on both sides of every artificial border humans try to impose. 

We see Gaia providing, free of charge and with no strings attached, the conditions of flourishing life for every last member of her glorious Being. We see the tenderness of new life being nourished by the graceful death of the previous generation, a spiraling of life and death without end. 

Looking around us in the natural world, we see our relatives, our sister and brother Gaians of every shape and size, pursuing their life purpose with a fierce joy that knows no bounds. Despair is a uniquely human condition, which we sometimes force on animals we cage—but in Nature, all beings go at their lives with a fearless intensity that makes each new day an unfurling blessing. Death may come any moment, but a being who is tuned into Mother Gaia knows she is held in a secure, loving embrace at all times and does not live in fear. 

Embrace the light—and the darkness. 

The essence of Gaia is not only material, it is spiritual. Gaia is positive energy made manifest by the collective activity of each and every particle of her being. Spirit is the light that shines in and through each of us, and it is our task, each day, to tend our inner flame so that we shine out brightly into the world. This is all the more true when it seems like darkness is threatening. 

Just as there are different gradations of light, all animated by the great Light that gives this planet life, there are different gradations of darkness. The sweet darkness of the womb time, the dreaming darkness of a still, starry night, are not the same as the miasmic darkness of a world set upon by the demons of greed and cruelty. 

Knowing this, we must be discerning, rejecting the manmade darkness that we often call “evil,” while welcoming the blessed darkness of night-time, which we need, just as we need sleep, to nourish the creative power of the Light. 

Living as we do in a time of artificial light and manipulated darkness, we find ourselves under the thrall of artificers who have made us dependent on their spells. We must take care to use our magical technologies to enhance life, not to detract from it. This is not always easy: for example, we can see clearly these days how the connective fibers of social media can be used for good or for ill. 

That is where choice comes in. When we are fully connected to the positive life-giving energy of the anima mundi, we know instinctively, by our inner emotional gauge, when our actions contribute to the Light. 

Yes, there are sadists among us who take delight in others’ suffering. But those are the outliers. I believe that the vast majority of humans come into this world as light-bearers, ready to love and be loved. 

If only we could make society into a welcoming, nourishing garden in which every new soul could grow to its full potential….what a beautiful world it would be. 

Approach adversity with steadfast love and light. 

It’s always been true that we make history with each of our daily choices, but in times of great pressure and sorrow, like now, how we live each day becomes especially momentous. We each have a role to play in creating this great collective tapestry we call Life.

If adversity is the mother of invention, then we are surely in for some adventurous new twists and turns in human history, which afford us unprecedented opportunities for innovation. The specifics are up to each one of us, but the basic task is clear: Whatever you do, do it with love. 

Let your light shine out like a loving beacon on a darkening shore. As each of us kindles our inner light, our connection with each other and with the Gaian world grows stronger, our little lives becoming a prayer rising in a chorus of celebration of the fierce, fearless, unquenchable soul force of Life. 

Let every breath be a prayer. 

Even as we grieve for the unjust deaths of those whose lives have been harshly cut off too soon, life continues to surge through each one of us. 

With each breath, we have the opportunity to offer gratitude for the Gaian world that sustains us. 

And more: with each respiration we can offer inspiration, following the ancient Buddhist practice of tonglen: breathing in suffering, breathing out love. 

Breathe out the light that shines within you; or if you feel your light guttering, breathe in the restorative light of all the bright souls that are dancing beside you, visibly and invisibly. 

Just as Fire needs Air to kindle, we can blow on the embers of our spirits as we breathe, igniting the passion of our soul’s purpose in each cycle of breath. 

Let your breath be a song of love and gratitude, a quiet but mighty offering of the light that you are. 

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on May 30, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in 21 Questions for 2020, Alternative Futures, Leadership, love, Resilience, social justice, Spiritual Ecology
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on May 30, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/05/30/21-questions-for-2020-20/

21 Questions for 2020: #19

#19. How does a bigger-picture understanding of the COVID-19 crisis change the questions we ask and the solutions we are able to perceive? 

Since the “novel coronavirus” burst onto the global scene in the early months of 2020, we’ve been barraged by “experts” telling us how to process the events unfolding before our eyes. Much of what they are saying boils down to common sense: wash your hands. Don’t sneeze in people’s faces. Stay home if you’re sick. 

COVID-19 is a nasty little bug. But it’s a strange bugger, too, because it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Some people host this virus with no symptoms at all, while others get horribly sick and die from it. 

What is the solution to the mystery of why northern Italy was hit so hard, along with Wuhan and New York City, while in other places it is rolling through more or less like the common flu? 

The dominant voices—the experts who are testifying before Congress and sharing their views through major media outlets—don’t really have an answer for this, or at least, I have not heard one. 

But there are a few voices suggesting that the answer may lie not with the virus per se, but with the relative health of individuals’ immune systems. 

To me this perspective makes sense. We live on a planet that is naturally teeming with countless viruses and bacteria. Our immune system enables us to keep all the various viruses and bacteria that enter our system under some kind of balanced control, which we experience as feeling well. 

The problem we’re facing in 2020, according to researchers and activists like Winona Laduke,  Sandra Steingraber, Zach Bush and many others, is that for the past 70 years or so we have been systematically attacking and exterminating the natural microbiome of the soil, as well as contaminating our waters and polluting our air. Is it any wonder that so many of us have weakened immune systems, since we’ve been breathing, drinking and eating these toxic chemicals for our entire lives?

It is common sense to correlate those who are getting sick and dying from COVID-19 with what the doctors call “underlying conditions”: 

  • People who are already sick with chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and asthma are more at risk. 
  • People whose immune systems have been weakened by mental health issues like stress, depression and isolation are more at risk.
  • People who live in unhealthy environments are more at risk: cities with major air pollution and crowding; industrial areas, including Big Ag areas where toxic chemicals lace the environment; and possibly, though this is unproven, areas that are being suddenly flooded with 5G electromagnetic frequencies. 
  • Elderly people living in nursing homes are more at risk—no surprise as they are often living in poor conditions, with unhealthy food and lots of medications that disrupt their immune systems. 

Yes, it is true that we are hearing about the occasional young, healthy person who gets sick and even dies of COVID-19. But we are also hearing that doctors are being pressured to write COVID-19 as the cause of death even when they are not sure this is so—something to do with insurance payments. Many of the health care workers who have succumbed were probably stressed, exhausted and frightened—a potentially lethal “underlying condition” that a virus can exploit. 

I certainly don’t have the answers here, but at least, like Socrates, I’m willing to admit how much I don’t know. I want to stay open to a wide range of voices, knowing that in our age of viral fake news, all information has to be parsed very cautiously and with active intelligence. 

As usual, one question leads to another. Why, in the 21st century, have we seen such an explosion of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, auto-immune disorders, autism and mental health issues like depression, anxiety and addiction? Why, in the country that likes to think of itself as the richest and best in all ways (the United States, of course), is the population the sickest and most stressed and unhappy? How does the GNH (gross national happiness) correlate to a population’s ability to fight off “novel” viruses like COVID-19? 

Although I am in no way an anti-vaxxer (I have been getting my flu shot annually for decades, and made sure my children were fully vaccinated), I have to wonder whether a COVID-19 vaccine is going to be the magic savior that people are hoping for. A vaccine is not going to cure the underlying conditions that created the perfect storm from which the COVID-19 crisis emerged.

Curing what ails us means addressing underlying conditions such as: 

  • social inequality, poverty and crowded, unhealthy living conditions, along with the stress and unhealthy behaviors that emerge from despair and anger;
  • debt bondage that keeps people in harness to the system, preventing us from exploring creative forms of living;
  •  massively unhealthy agricultural practices that result in toxic soil, water, air and food; 
  • widespread chemical contamination from fracking and other forms of fossil fuel extraction and consumption; 
  • the relentless destruction of the forests and oceans that give our planet its oxygen and keep the climate system balanced.

None of this can be medicated or vaccinated away. There is no quick, clean, easy fix for any of it. But we do have many good ideas about how to start—visit the websites of Project Drawdown, the Bioneers or Yes! Magazine for lots of excellent ideas and inspiration.

It’s going to take slow, careful, loving regeneration to remember how to farm in healthy, sustainable ways, weaning ourselves away from the cheap industrial food that has been so damaging to both our internal and our external biomes. 

The way we educate our children has to change—no more sitting for hours at desks under fluorescent lights, learning how to take tests. To meet the challenges of the 21st century, we need creative, active, lively young people, who understand the importance of respect for the natural world, and who are not afraid to challenge orthodoxies and lead the way towards deep systemic changes in every aspect of life. 

A healthy Earth = a healthy human. I know people are imagining future scenarios where the health of the Earth becomes irrelevant, as human beings take off for Mars, or live on space stations, or transition into virtual reality—but is that really the kind of future we want to create and leave for descendants? 

I am a living cell in the great body of Mother Gaia. There is no boundary between us: every particle of my body is part of the woof and weave of her grand living tapestry, and every moment of my life she and I share breath. In death, I will return my body to her flanks to be regenerated in new forms. 

How could I not wish with every fiber of my being for the health of this grand system of which I am a tiny part? How could I not do whatever I can, with the intelligence and creativity I’ve been given, to ensure that the vitality of this system is regenerated, for the benefit of all life on Earth?

Solving the COVID-19 crisis is not about attacking a novel virus. There will always be more where those came from. It’s about restoring the well-being of the Gaian environmental and social systems—starting with lovingly tending our own individual immune systems, realizing that as we do so, we will also be tending the wider world that is our larger Being. 

7 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on May 15, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in 21 Questions for 2020, Alternative Futures, Environment, Resilience, Spiritual Ecology
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on May 15, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/05/15/21-questions-for-2020-19/

21 Questions for 2020: #15

15. Question for Earth Day: Will humans seize the potential of this corona-induced “time-out” to move towards “conscious evolution”?

For some time I’ve been writing with grief and shame about the way humans, particularly my Euro-descended people, have been battering our beautiful Earth. I have been not only a bystander to the violence, but complicit as well—burning fossil fuels, consuming food and products produced in violence. 

I sit in judgment on myself, and shame myself for all the ways I have not done enough to stand up to the prevailing culture, every single day. 

But I also know that this way of looking at the human-Earth relationship is fundamentally human. Mother Earth doesn’t blame or shame. She doesn’t waste time and energy in grief and rage. Her entire Being is dedicated to Life; Life is her business, pleasure and purpose.

For Gaia, if humans are flourishing, all well and good. If humans are flourishing so much that they are consuming more than their share of the Earth’s bounty, then a correction will be made. Not with anger; it’s not a punishment. It’s just a rebalancing to restore Earth to her optimum conditions for the flourishing of life. 

A pandemic is a perfect example of such a correction. 

Climate disruption is a bit different; more long-lasting, more transformative. 

Past episodes of climate disruption on Earth have been caused suddenly by seemingly external, random events—a meteor hitting the Earth, a volcano erupting. 

Human-induced climate change, accompanied by deforestation, the acidification of the oceans and the rapid decline of all species on Earth, is not happening overnight, but it is happening very quickly in geologic time. As Mother Earth seeks to reestablish her steady state, optimum for bringing forth and nourishing life, those who can’t adapt to current conditions will have to give way to those who can, just as the Dinosaurs long ago succumbed and made way for the Mammals. 

I am thinking about this as I contemplate Earth Day, 2020. In the 50 years since Americans began to celebrate Earth Day, there have been some advances in protecting the health of Earth and all her denizens. But mostly it’s been a steady slide into human over-population, toxic contamination, climate destabilization, and the loss of so many of the sweet species with whom we were born to share the planet.

The greatest human misconception is that we have total control in our abusive relationship with Mother Earth.

In fact, Gaia is much stronger than we are. She will take our battering the way a mother tolerantly submits to the pummeling of a small child—for just so long. 

Gaia continues to go about her business of turning the oxygen, water and carbon into Life, in partnership with the Sun. She does not favor one of her children more than the others; she knows that the health of any one individual depends on the health of the entire system. 

On Earth Day 2020 humans are coming face to face, as never before, with the boomeranging consequences of our heedless fouling, despoliation and exploitation of our planetary home. 

It’s hard to say right now what the longterm effects of the pandemic will be. Will we become ever more fearful, technologized and controlling? Or will we seize the opening of this worldwide “time-out” to begin to envision and create a harmonious, non-violent relationship with our Mother Earth?

In 2020 we can’t use the excuse that we don’t know how to improve conditions for current life forms on Earth, humans included. 

We know how to limit population; how to create regenerative agriculture; how to deploy renewable energy; how to develop social systems that maximize and reward the creation of quality of life for the majority. We are so smart. We know how to do this.

In 2020, there is no more time to waste. The urgency is real and present. If those alive don’t get into a right relationship with Mother Earth, she will do it for us—without rancor, without shame or blame, but with the efficiency borne of millions of years of ceaseless rebalancing. 

This may be the first time in history that a species has had the luxury of a brief window of time to actively adjust in order to change course and avoid a lemming-like dive over the cliff. 

We have the possibility of “conscious evolution,” now. 

Will we take it?   

4 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on April 18, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in 21 Questions for 2020, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on April 18, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/04/18/21-questions-for-2020-15/

21 Questions for 2020: #14

#14. How will World War III, the Coronavirus edition, play out?

World leaders are comparing the global crisis of 2020 to a war, requiring a mobilization not of guns and soldiers, but of ventilators and medical personnel. The fact that most of us are just civilians on the sidelines, watching the action unfold from afar, has added to the sense of surreality that has engulfed us this spring. All the majority of us can do is stay home, wash our hands, and try to stave off panic. 

I know there are those, myself included, who have tried to see the opportunity in this moment. Look at how the pollution clears up as soon as all the planes are grounded! Maybe now people will see the folly of the industrial capitalist machine and embrace new forms of eco-social community! At the very least, this crisis should upend the regime of the destructive parasite that got us here, Donald J. Trump! 

Maybe. Or maybe it will go the other way entirely. The EPA has already used the crisis to suspend pollution regulations, and Native Americans, the frontline environmental defenders, are getting sick in record numbers. The logging of the Amazon is expected to reach a record high in 2020, and despite the wildfires of January, the giant Adani Carmichael coal mine in Australia is going full steam ahead. 

On the societal front, we are all forced to submit to a “lockdown” that takes away our civil liberties in the name of “staying safe.” The U.S. Treasury is working overtime to come up with trillions of bailout money, but who is in charge of making sure the money is allocated fairly? 

Meanwhile, the Trump political machine has pivoted nicely to take advantage of this new twist in the reality show presidency. On principle, I don’t watch his news conferences any more than I’d watch Fox News, but his usual crowd of supporters continues to cheer him on. What will happen when they all come down with coronavirus? That chapter remains to be written.

To be fair, there are also some positive developments to track. Communities are coming together to help each other out. People are, good-naturedly, staying home even when they feel perfectly fine. The work of newly recognized “essential workers”—from farmers and truckers to meat packers and grocery clerks—is being appreciated and lauded more than ever (if still not fairly remunerated). 

In the absence of Federal leadership in the US, some of the state governors are stepping up—Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsome, I salute you. Globally, biotech scientists have been truly amazing in springing into collaborative action to understand and find treatment and a vaccine for this “novel” virus. 

We will come through this war wiser and warier. As with 9/11, which left us with permanent security check-lines in airports, I foresee that new standards of transportation hygiene and border health screenings will be a lasting result of the pandemic of 2020. 

It seems ironic that the ultimate border-crossing bug, a virus, should have the effect of solidifying the artificial and imaginary lines we call national borders. My optimistic side hopes that the lesson of COVID-19 is that we are all one—everything is interconnected and any tear in the web of life hurts us all. 

It sounds good in theory, but in practice, the war metaphor continues to dominate, and we are all hunkered down in our bunkers, hoarding TP and hogging the wifi, waiting for the all-clear signal. 

Who could have predicted that our civilization would end with such a whimper? Sometimes I think I’d prefer a bang.

6 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on April 11, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in 21 Questions for 2020
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on April 11, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/04/11/21-questions-for-2020-14/

21 Questions for 2020: #13

#13. How can we strengthen our individual and collective immune system in the face of radical destabilization, uncertainty and fear? 

We are living through one of those moments in human history that will—if we survive—become a treasure trove of material for historians to parse, seeking answers to the big question: how the hell did we get here? 

One observational point that seems incontrovertible for the moment: the virus has taken hold most quickly in the cities of the most developed countries: from Wuhan to New York City, with stops in northern Iran, Italy and Spain. What do these places have in common? 

Obviously, cities have high concentrations of people who use public transportation and/or spend a lot of time in public places (houses of worship, restaurants, crowded markets). Some of these places, though not all, are international travel hubs—but then so are many other population centers that have not been hit as hard so far, like California. 

There are theories circulating on the fringes of the Web about the impact of 5G on people’s immune systems. Wuhan and New York City were early 5G adopters, as you can see on this map. Of course I’m not suggesting that 5G causes the virus. But perhaps it added a tipping point of pressure on our already-weakened immune systems?

As Charles Eisenstein says in his recent essay on the coronavirus situation, “For a long time we, as a collective, have stood helpless in the face of an ever-sickening society. Whether it is declining health, decaying infrastructure, depression, suicide, addiction, ecological degradation, or concentration of wealth, the symptoms of civilizational malaise in the developed world are plain to see, but we have been stuck in the systems and patterns that cause them.”

Like me, Eisenstein sees both the heartbreak and the opportunity of our global health and financial crisis. “The crisis could usher in totalitarianism or solidarity; medical martial law or a holistic renaissance; greater fear of the microbial world, or greater resiliency in participation in it; permanent norms of social distancing, or a renewed desire to come together.”

Which way will we go? No one knows at this point, as the crisis unfolds with astonishing, mind-blowing speed from day to day. 

A few things do seem clear to me. 

1. We have to stop ignoring the toll the current capitalist economy is taking on the vast majority of ordinary people. How long did we imagine we could go with stress, unhappiness, uncertainty, lack of purpose, loneliness and fear dominating our individual psyches and collective social climate? In such a social landscape, combined with the constant barrage of toxins on our physical bodies, of course we are all getting sick. 

Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu said it beautifully, in a memorable quote from her book Crossing Borders (I am paraphrasing): ‘we are all kernels on the cob of humanity. If one of us is sick, the whole cob is unwell.’ 

And this is not just about humanity. All life on Earth is struggling now, after a century of assault from the extractivist corporate capitalist economy. If things don’t change radically, the entire unsustainable structure created by global corporate capitalism is going down, and will pull a good portion of humanity and our fellow Gaians on the planet down with it. Planetary events like the coronavirus pandemic, the Australian wildfires and the heightened Atlantic hurricane seasons show us in no uncertain terms that this is already happening. 

2. Like cancer, the marauding coronavirus is a symptom of the real illness besetting human individuals and society, which is imbalance. Humans are both the cause and the victims of the multiple imbalances currently destabilizing our planet. 

For starters, there are too many humans. As Jeremy Lent points out in a recent article, humans regularly overshoot the carrying capacity of Gaia by 40% each year, and yet the human population continues to grow. Perhaps, if we began to live in a more consciously sustainable way (ie, eating crickets instead of cows, using solar instead of oil, etc), we could bring our burgeoning population into harmony with Gaian support systems. If we continue on our current trajectory, the planet will have to take her own rebalancing measures—like pandemics, or natural disasters. We still possibly have time to choose: will we shift towards what David Korten calls an “ecological civilization,” or will we continue to march blindly towards the lemming cliff of planetary reset?

3. In the absence of trustworthy leaders, each of us has to reach within for guidance on how to proceed in this moment of radical uncertainty. In what may perhaps be the most important point of his long essay, Charles Eisenstein invites us to recognize the danger of succumbing not to COVID-19, but to fear. 

 “The virus we face here is fear, whether it is fear of Covid-19, or fear of the totalitarian response to it, and this virus too has its terrain. Fear, along with addiction, depression, and a host of physical ills, flourishes in a terrain of separation and trauma: inherited trauma, childhood trauma, violence, war, abuse, neglect, shame, punishment, poverty, and the muted, normalized trauma that affects nearly everyone who lives in a monetized economy, undergoes modern schooling, or lives without community or connection to place. This terrain can be changed, by trauma healing on a personal level, by systemic change toward a more compassionate society, and by transforming the basic narrative of separation: the separate self in a world of other, me separate from you, humanity separate from nature. To be alone is a primal fear, and modern society has rendered us more and more alone. But the time of Reunion is here. Every act of compassion, kindness, courage, or generosity heals us from the story of separation, because is assures both actor and witness that we are in this together.”

We face a choice: will we retreat into what Jeremy Lent calls “Fortress Earth,” based on trauma, fear and scarcity? Or will we work actively, in our own backyards, to build an ecological civilization based on generosity, kindness and cooperation?

I am reminded of Starhawk’s prophetic novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, which imagined a future America as a bleak militarized industrial wasteland, with a small pocket of ecological and social wellbeing remaining in the former San Francisco: a beautiful, happy garden society led by wise women. 

Which way will we go? Can we transform this terrain of uncertainty into a seedbed for positive radical change? Will we succeed, each in our own sphere and with our neighbors, in choosing love over fear? 

4. Managing our own fear is essential now. Remember, our animal bodies are wired for fight or flight. Living in a state of constant anxiety about something we can neither fight nor flee from saps our strength and weakens our individual and collective immune system. 

To manage fear and anxiety over the uncertain future, work on living in the present moment, focusing on gratitude for whatever makes you a little happier now. Rather than obsessing over everything you can’t control, focus on what you can do today to make life a little better for yourself and those around you. 

In this way, one step at a time in an ever-unfolding present, we will build a positive psychic and physical bridge to a better future for us all.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on April 4, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on April 4, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/04/04/21-questions-for-2020-13/

21 Questions for 2020: #12

#12. What guidance is being offered to us by the Coronavirus about how to live as Gaians?

The little RNA packet of Coronavirus comes with a critical message for us: we are integral members of the Gaian community, and with Gaia we sink or swim. 

To our capitalist economic system, which has been running most human beings and all non-human beings ragged, Coronavirus raps out a forceful, inescapable directive: STOP. 

Stop the fast-flying, hard-driving, super-destructive lifestyle of industrial civilization. Stop the planes and cars, the production of trinkets and baubles, industrial agriculture, the endless maws of the pulp factories and the pumping of fossil fuels. 

To each of us as individual Coronavirus says sternly: Stop running the rat race of school and jobs. Slow down, breathe and remember who you are and what’s truly important to you. 

In my life I have often gotten sick (with a cold or flu) when I am tired and harried and need to take it easy. My body will only take so much of being driven forward before it rebels, accepts a virus, and forces me to stay in bed for a few days.

That’s what is happening now, on a global scale. Coronavirus is forcing us all to slow down, maybe even to stop. 

In this great, worldwide slowdown there is an opportunity to deeply reassess how we have been living—individually and as communities, as countries and as a global human society. 

There is an opportunity to recognize the interconnectedness of the Gaian system; to make new personal, political and planetary choices according to our growing awareness that our own health and well-being depends on the health and well-being of the entire system

Your body is a microcosm of the planetary body. We are all made from the same stardust, animated by the same cosmic energy. The Coronavirus is another form of that same animated matter, with an operating system that impels it to exuberant life and reproduction. In its whirling dance from person to person it taps out a clear message for us, its unwilling hosts: slow down, take care, or return to the matrix to be born anew. 

Today, as I slow down and ponder, I cannot offer answers, only more questions. 

  • How can we put the guidance of the Coronavirus—to slow down and take care—into practice through social policies and institutions? 
  • How can we transform education, work, human relations and Gaian relations to reflect the wisdom of the Coronavirus? 

Your thoughts most cordially welcome and most urgently needed.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on March 29, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in 21 Questions for 2020
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on March 29, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/03/29/21-questions-for-2020-12/

21 Questions for 2020: #11

#11. How can we practice the art of being more fully human in this time of crisis?

Ben Roberts and the Now What?! team are hosting a global conversation on various aspects of this question March 23 – April 14, 2020, and as my “21 Questions for 2020” series is one of the Now What?! Engagement Streams, it makes sense for me to pose this question to myself and my Transition Times readers now. 

To begin, what does it mean to be “more fully human”? 

Humans have always had a sense of our own potential, both positive and negative. 

We know we are capable of great love, and also great hate. Great creative industry, and great destruction. We can be profoundly empathetic, and also the cruelest of all the animals. We live in the uncomfortable awareness of how these binary oppositions shape our experience, in ways we can’t always control. 

Of late, this sense of polarity has been growing stronger. Could it be that the binary mentality of the computer code is coming to dominate our thinking, leading us to see things in moral absolutes? 

Whatever your political stance, it has become a kneejerk reaction to say, “My position is right, yours is wrong, and never the twain shall meet.”  

But then along comes a disaster like the COVID-19 pandemic, and suddenly these political differences are revealed as superficial and even rather ridiculous. 

Coronavirus doesn’t see Democrats and Republicans, white people and people of color; it doesn’t see gender or nationality, class or religious persuasion. It sees humans—its delicious prey. It reminds us how profoundly alike and interconnected we all are—and how fragile we are as individuals and as societies. 

In the recognition of our common frailty lies the potential for becoming more fully human, in ways that will take us beyond the old binary oppositions into what Barbara Marx Hubbard called an era of “conscious evolution.” 

A new hero(ine) leaps into action

For example, let’s take that old bugaboo, masculine vs. feminine. 

The pandemic is pushing us to become more fully human in the typically feminine sense of that term: more fully loving, empathetic, relational, nurturing, and altruistic.

And also more fully human in the more typically masculine sense of the term: more fully active, protective, galvanizing, courageous, and problem-solving.

In this brave new hero’s journey of 2020, the hero cannot be the rugged individual quester of yore, going off to slay a distant dragon. Against the enemy virus, the best weapons are not made of steel, but of gauze. 

Indeed, the metaphor of “war” or “battle” is not really appropriate for our current crisis. We can’t “fight” for our loved ones and our society; we can only “take care” of ourselves and each other.

What a huge shift! It’s as if the virus has done what centuries of feminist activism could not do: effected a merging of the hero and the heroine of our old stories, calling forth the best of what has here-to-fore been deemed “masculine” and “feminine” into a new androgynous type of more fully human being, leaping into action in hospitals and food pantries, in banks and businesses, in homes and shelters across the world. 

At least, this is the potential that is now glimmering into reality.  

Leading from the heart

As Joanna Macy reminded us long ago, being more fully human lies in becoming the prophesied Shambhala warriors, our courage motivated not by aggression but by compassion. 

In a more recent transmission, retired Mt. Holyoke College professor and dean Penny Gill received similar guidance from a voice identifying himself as “Manjushri,” who said that the way to become more fully human in this time of crisis is through the heart, not the mind.  

“The human heart center must open,” Manjushri says in What in the World is Going On? “When we say “heart center” we refer to that seat of consciousness at the center of the human person that is informed both by deep values and a complex understanding of the real world. It is the nexus where knowledge and human feelings are brought together to nourish and direct a richer and more inclusive understanding of people in their community, earth and the universe (73).

What prevents the opening of the human heart, Gill writes, is fear. And this brings us to the “crisis” part of the Now What?! question. 

Overcoming fear by recognizing interconnection

I don’t think any one of us is exempt from feeling the terrible fear of this moment. The gyrations of the stock market reflect our individual and collective panic as we watch the global economy going into free-fall in response to the pandemic. And we are being told that the only way to stop the virus is to stop the production and consumption that has been the hallmark of our western way of life for all of our lifetimes.

Essentially we are being told to go back to a pre-industrial lifestyle for a few weeks or months, but we have lost all the tools and knowledge that our ancestors had of how to live self-sufficiently, simply and locally on the Earth. We cannot be blamed for our fear of this sudden crisis. It’s like being suddenly cast off the mother ship in a little boat with a few supplies and no guarantee of rescue.

What we have not lost is the innate human ability to reach out to one another in compassion. We are instinctively tribal—a term that has gained a pejorative connotation in recent history, but can also be understood in its positive guise as a caring, united community. In the 21st century, we have the potential to understand our tribe in a much larger, more inclusive sense. 

Manjushri, through Penny Gill, invites us to move beyond the fears that divide us into a profound recognition of our interdependence:

“We are looking now on a world built upon fear,” he says. “It is uninhabitable, dysfunctional and teetering on the edge of collapse. The heart-center must be restored to its central function as the source of both compassion and wisdom. The cultural values and practices accumulated around fear must be altered dramatically, before they undermine earthly life itself.” 

Humans must come to see that “the fundamental reality of human life—indeed of earthly life—is interdependence, not solitary individualism and competitiveness. It is the false belief in the latter which gives rise to so much fear, and from fear arises a cascade of dysfunction, conflict, and frankly, stupidity in social and communal human life. The only antidote to this is life from the heart center. That will be possible, one person at a time, as fear is named, deconstructed and disabled” (84). 

Getting past our fears is not going to be easy, and yet I do think this is what is being asked of us as we seek to become more fully human in this time of crisis. 

Now what?!

How to do it? Staying active, in heart-centered projects, seems to be key. A frontline doctor in New York City wrote recently in The New York Times: “Please flatten the curve and stay at home, but please do not go into couch mode. Like everyone, I have moments where imagining the worst possible Covid-19 scenario steals my breath. But cowering in the dark places of our minds doesn’t help. Rather than private panic, we need public-spirited action. Those of us walking into the rooms of Covid-19-positive patients every day need you and your minds, your networks, your creative solutions, and your voices to be fighting for us.”

I have been heartened in recent days to see networks of “caremongerers” springing up in communities across the globe. Even our political leaders, who have seemed so heartless in the past, are responding with greater compassion now—and yes, we can cynically view this as self-interest, but even so it illustrates a dawning awareness that to be more fully human in a time of crisis is to understand our interconnectedness. Together we swim, or together we sink. 

And though I said that our ancestors’ knowledge of how to live self-sufficiently and sustainably has been lost, that is not entirely true. There are those who have been preparing for this moment of crisis for a long time: Rob Hopkins of the Transition Town movement, Findhorn and the Global Eco-village Network, Schumacher College, the California Institute of Integral Studies, the permaculturists and the regenerative economists…there is indeed already a large global network of creative thinkers who have been working steadily, cultivating the compassionate, heart-centered wisdom and knowledge that we will need now to become more fully human, in this time of crisis. 

Many of these thinkers will be joining the Now What?! conversations over the next few weeks, and I hope you will too! Our World Wide Web is a wonderful tool of interconnection, as so many of us are discovering as our livelihoods are shifted, without fanfare, into remote online work. 

The art of being more fully human in this time of crisis starts with simply showing up and asking, as Julia Alvarez asked in the poignant essay she contributed to my first anthology, Women Writing Resistance: “How can I help”?

Find out more and register for Now What?! conversations here.  

1 Comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on March 22, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in 21 Questions for 2020
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on March 22, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/03/22/21-questions-for-2020-11-2/

21 Questions for 2020: #10

#10. COVID-19 is trying to tell us something. What is the message in that virus-shaped, ever-replicating bottle?

Much like climate disruption or computer viruses, the rapid global spread of COVID-19 is showing us just how interconnected we are. What happens anywhere in the world, to any of us, concerns all of us, everywhere. 

Like heat waves, viruses do not discriminate, although it is true that the most vulnerable will always be disproportionately affected. On Earth these days, this means not only poor humans, but also all non-humans. 

I have been thinking about the bats and the pangolins, which are suspected of being the initial carriers of COVID-19. They have been suffering lately—bat populations have been crashing worldwide (along with the insects they depend on), and the poor pangolins, which look something like golden armadillos, have been hunted practically to extinction by the Chinese. COVID-19 is making it clear that what happens to other species matters to all of us. Their suffering will come back to haunt us too. 

Pangolin

Within the human realm, COVID-19 is teaching us the hard way about the dangers of outsourcing manufacturing supply chains to faraway countries. When the Chinese got sick, their health crisis reverberated around the world and hit global investors especially hard. Corporate executives had imagined that they could profit endlessly from reliance on “cheap” labor, and turned a blind eye to the effect this has had on the American working class. The opioid crisis and ever-rising suicide rates bore witness to the despair in America’s abandoned manufacturing communities. 

COVID-19 is showing corporate chieftains and investors that in the age of climate disruption and pandemics, exploiting some people and neglecting others is a losing strategy. Local resilience and self-sufficiency is essential, and will pay a “happiness dividend” as it puts people back to meaningful work in their own communities. 

COVID-19 is shining a light on the tattered state of the American social safety net. People are at the mercy of the health insurance industry, which can and often does bankrupt sick people with inflated health bills. The number of workers in the part-time gig economy, from adjunct professors to Uber drivers, continues to swell, and not only are these people less likely to be insured, they rarely have paid sick leave or any job security. COVID-19 is making it clear how this sorry state of affairs for millions of Americans affects all of us. 

COVID-19 is also weighing in on the question of air travel, forcing us to recognize that just because we can hop on a plane does not mean we should. Burgeoning air traffic is not only spreading pathogens around the globe, it’s also a key driver of climate disruption. But we now have technology that makes it quite possible to travel virtually. Though I can’t imagine that virtual reality will ever be able to match real live experiences, there are many cases where face-to-face interactions could be accomplished via video-conference. Many global gatherings could take place online. COVID-19 is urgently suggesting we reconsider the benefits of armchair traveling.

In my own field, higher education, the coronavirus is pushing faculty to think more creatively about how to deliver course content and evaluate student work online. While MOOCs (massive online courses) have not worked so well, it’s possible that smaller groups of students, under the attentive guidance of faculty, could learn just fine online. In fact for some students, it might even be better that way. 

Classrooms are often fraught, anxiety-inducing spaces, and the whole experience of living on-campus has in many ways lost its allure for young people—not to mention being very expensive. If we reconfigured education so that most content was delivered online, students could meet in person to focus on social skill-building, like how to deliver an effective presentation, or how to have a respectful, dynamic discussion. Or simply to have some old-fashioned fun together!

If there is a bright side to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is this: we are being pushed to become much more thoughtful about how we live and work together on our crowded planet. COVID-19 is forcing us to recognize that there is no way humans can flourish in a world where so many animals are abused and suffering; so many people are exploited, sick and unhappy; and where the Earth herself is over-crowded, contaminated, diseased and dying. 

In this interconnected world, what we do to others (whether other humans or other species and the natural world) will come back to us in spades. COVID-19 is telling us loud and clear: It’s time to clean up our act. 

10 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on March 15, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in 21 Questions for 2020
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on March 15, 2020

https://bethechange2012.com/2020/03/15/21-questions-for-2020-10/

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