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# 2021-10-24 - Integrated Living by Damaris Zehner | |
Excerpts from Damaris Zehner [1] interview hosted by | |
Michael Dowd. | |
... the advanced industrial western world, where all of the deepest | |
needs that we have as people; for health, for exercise, for community | |
and communion with others, for spiritual growth, for fun; all seem to | |
be interfered with by the way society is set up. | |
What I wanted was to live an integrated life. Because of the | |
industrial and modern world, everything is disconnected. If I go to | |
work, I am not getting in shape. So if I need to go get in shape, | |
then I need to earn enough money to get a membership at the gym and | |
take the time to go to a gym. When I am at the gym I am not hanging | |
out with my family [and] I am not gardening. All of these things are | |
disconnected and in conflict. So I did enjoy the two years that I | |
spent in very primitive circumstances in West Africa, where my | |
exercise and my shopping were the same thing. I was carrying it home | |
on my head, which my neighbors thought was very funny. Where my work | |
was with people. I walked there through dusty roads to get to the | |
building where I worked, and everything seemed more real. My daily | |
activities seemed really to have to do with life and survival. | |
History has been very important to me. ... And then Barbara Tuckman's | |
book called A Distant Mirror [3]... she wrote it in the 70's and was | |
focusing on the middle ages during the time of the Hundred Years War | |
and the coming of the bubonic plague. The reason she wrote it was | |
during the 70's she faced the idea of the cold war and this was the | |
most catastrophic thing that she could imagine, and she asked herself | |
how have people in other times faced the thought of their own | |
annihilation. So being a historian, she went back and looked at what | |
people went through during the time of the bubonic plague, which in | |
some parts of Europe killed up to 75% of a particular town's | |
population; so apocalypse by any definition, certainly. And I | |
thought it was neat that one of the things she found was that life | |
went on. Even while people were doing crazy things and terrible | |
things were happening, we have records of marriages and sales | |
contracts that were signed. We have evidence of daily life | |
continuing. This type of perspective is helpful to me in the sense | |
that terrible things can happen but the average person lives daily | |
life even in the midst of terrible things. | |
I think one of the things that helps me the most is the story of sin: | |
that the way we are now is not the way we were meant to be. | |
The word integrity, we use it in two different ways. One is the more | |
common usage of acting honorably: telling the truth, being who you | |
seem to be, all of those things; acting with integrity. But it also | |
is related to the words integral and integrated where all the pieces | |
fit together and work in harmony with one another. So it expressed | |
very much what I wanted to explore in the course of my writing. | |
Nature is preparing an intervention for humankind. ... Now it is time | |
to change your addiction, to get off these bad habits, to get off of | |
fossil fuel, the growth mindset, wealth, and imperialism... | |
I don't like the word doom because too many people go immediately | |
into an apocalyptic vision... [this] is just a way that people avoid | |
responsibility and avoid things that they could be doing to make it | |
better. But, then when I thought a little bit more about the concept | |
of doom: the word goes back in Old English [and] its original meaning | |
is judgment. We have it in the modern word, to "deem" something... | |
So if this is after our judgment, after, whether you want to see it | |
as God or as The Earth, steps in and slaps us upside the head and | |
says "Guess what, you can't keep doing this anymore" then I am good | |
with the term post doom. | |
There's the refusal of the imagination of the story, and by story I | |
don't just mean literature, it's philosophy, it's the creative aspect | |
of science, it's medicine, it's all those things; but as soon as it | |
becomes a grind and becomes a job [and] you are a cog in a larger | |
machine [where] you've got a schedule, you've got money to earn; you | |
lose the human element, there's no soul, there's no sense of past or | |
future, there's no sense of the beauty of here and now, it's just a | |
grind. | |
There is the gift of challenge. We think of happiness nowadays in | |
modern western culture as having stuff, as luxuries, as comfort, and | |
yet our suicide rates are exponentially higher than the suicide rates | |
of people in third world countries who may be facing war and | |
starvation and everyday want to get up and want to go on living. So | |
I don't think comfort, luxury, security are really what we're made | |
for, and I think that there's a level of heroism and happiness even | |
that arises in difficult circumstances. Nobody wants to be shot at, | |
nobody wants to starve to death, and I hope nobody does, but | |
nonetheless we are more truly who we are in those moments than we are | |
sitting on the couch with a bag of chips watching Netflix. And that | |
is a gift... getting us back to who we were made to be. | |
When we had children my husband and I talked about it. We realized | |
that children are seen as an expensive luxury. What does that do to | |
somebody's psyche to grow up as someone who cost their parents money? | |
Now I've got to put you in day care. Now I've got to find a | |
pre-school. Now I need to buy you a car. Now I need to pay for | |
college. Phew! Now you're gone! That's a terrible way for somebody | |
to grow up. They are not integral to their family's life. They are | |
not a benefit to the world around them. And when people genuinely | |
can contribute, not just go to a cube farm and get a paycheck, then | |
they know what they are doing is providing food and shelter and | |
inspiration to the people around them. Then they'll be happier, | |
they'll be better. | |
We may not be able to change the trajectory of climate change, but we | |
can certainly change our response to it and our adaptation to it. We | |
might not be able to stop climate change but we could adjust to it a | |
whole lot better than we are. | |
It is more fun to spend time with people, to be closely related to | |
the land, to know your limits and to enjoy your life within them, and | |
to not be pounded on the treadmill of modern life. I like what John | |
Michael Greer [4] says: Collapse now and beat the rush; about leading | |
a simple life, pulling back on our impact on climate change. I don't | |
want to paint that as suffering in misery. It's going to be more fun | |
than sitting in front of a computer gaining weight and having high | |
blood pressure. | |
[1] | |
Interview with Damaris Zehner | |
[3] | |
A Distant Mirror @Wikipedia | |
[4] | |
John Michael Greer, see section Economics and politics | |
tags: collapse,notes,podcast | |
# Tags | |
collapse | |
notes | |
podcast |