It seems to me that this is constantly, constantly, the question. In each and every moment. Compassionate or condemnatory. If we listen to the noise of the external world, the story is clear. Be condemnatory. "Save yourself, that's what everyone else is doing." It's the worst self-fulfilling prophecy I've ever heard of. And we are entering into, more and more, an extremely high stakes world where survival seems less than guaranteed, and so we are vulnerable to propaganda that presents the survival mechanism we should be acting on. We have to be more aware of this than ever, it is an extremely dangerous time. Like the moment when Mowgli has already looked into Kaa's eyes, it is almost too late to avoid being lulled into submission by Big Business, and their Government and Media seducers.
With the seductive eyes of Kaa before us, this life or death situation is, more visibly than most life or death situations, rooted in inner strength moreso than outer. The only hope is cultivating a connection to inner self, and inner wisdom, which will rekindle an awareness of a self-authorized action to take.
In a moment like this, it is all about where in the world we expect to see, and assign merit to, authority. We are being pulled, by cultural gravity, to seeing authority outside of ourselves, without seeing that it will be to our own destruction. Though I like to remain non-conspiratorial, whatever that means, I have little cause *not* to believe that there are actors within the systems I partake in, actively working to create that cultural gravity.
One could ask me for evidence of that, I guess, but to ground myself in this article, I would have to say that I don't need a mountain of evidence, I am consciously relying on a part of me that *knows* what is going on in the world. I try not to play heavily to confirmation bias, and remain open to diverse perspectives, but I take *all* perspectives with a grain of intuitive+critical salt.
And that dynamic itself is what I am advocating for. To lean more heavily on the intuition in our grains of salt, and listen to inner authority, wisdom, and compassion.
We will be faced with situations daily that merit a 'decision', or at least making sense of, such as being presented with news of another school shooting. Being condemnatory is easy. Media does it. "People" are doing it. The story arises, "I don't want people thinking I somehow endorse what happened, just because I'm saying it was more complex than people are saying."
"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance." - Albert Maysles
I keep going back to this. Our self-authoritative selves know that this Universe is complex and nuanced. It is a foundation for compassion for other humans. What goes on in the brain and the human psyche is complex like the Universe itself. If we start listening to our internal authority on and in these daily situations, we have a new compass by which to find our way through them, navigating difficult 'moral' waters.
Where will the cultural gravity for this self-authority come from? The number of audible voices calling us to live compassionately are so far, a poor counterweight, but gaining momentum. The voice of the people has been rising on social media, to counter balance the tack of the mainstream media, which plays heavily to condemnation. Take the lack of the BBC coverage of the recent protests against the re-election of David Cameron in London, people made much noise on Twitter. Other people like Alaine De Boton, with his Art as Therapy exhibitions, are working to remind us of that nuanced, complex nature of... one another. People who know me may tire of hearing his name, but Russell Brand is currently the most external force activating my own internal authority. By constantly 'giving away' his own authority, Russell has won my utmost respect. I connect with him not on the level of an authority to bow down and worship (as some claim my generation is doing with him), but more on the level of Namaste - The spirit in me salutes the spirit in you. For frequent re-inspiration and connection in with a deeper sense-making process of global events, I highly recommend following along with Russell's youtube channel.
Rumi spoke on this in the 13th century: "Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field."
And in the 1900's Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
So simply by taking this question upon ourselves:
"Which side of myself do I want to be plugging into:
the compassionate side, or the condemnatory side?"we are already in rebellion, giving a nod to the possibility that the answer to the question is important: that what we each do, and which side of ourselves we choose to act upon, makes a difference. I believe it will make all of the difference in the world. There will be a world worth saving.
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For a language process, and awareness discipline that embody self-authorization, checkout non-violent communication.
For the voice of a real human that is speaking up on behalf of real democratic power, to make up for impotent politics, check out David Graeber on twitter. It will provide a line in to very stirring things going on in the UK in general.
For strictly factual, crowd-sourced news, check out the Infobitt platform: http://www.infobitt.com/
For regular news from non right-wing controlled media, check out Al-Jazeera and Democracy Now
I will post more resources to come on the topic of what does being self-authorizing actually look like.
don't be mesmerized, be mindful
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