[Scpg] Joanna Macy: don't try to escape eco-despair

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THE  GREATEST DANGER: TRYING TO ESCAPE DESPAIR, By Joanna Macy    
(http://carolynbaker.net/site/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=514&pop=1&page=0#
)     Saturday, 31  May 2008    
[In her own inimitable way, Joanna Macy counsels us  to stop trying to escape 
our despair, and instead, discover the  power IN it because "Speaking the 
truth of our anguish for the world  brings down the walls between us, drawing us 
into deep solidarity.  That solidarity is all the more real for the 
uncertainty we  face."--CB]  
Reprinted from _YES MAGAZINE_ 
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2295)   
If you’re really paying attention, it’s hard to escape a  sense of outrage, 
fear, despair. Author, deep-ecologist, and  Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy says: 
Don’t even try.  
How do we live with the fact that we  are destroying our world? What do we 
make of the loss of glaciers,  the melting Arctic, island nations swamped by the 
sea, widening  deserts, and drying farmlands?  
Because of social taboos, despair at  the state of our world and fear for our 
future are rarely  acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any 
deep  recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche.  
Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve  had been cut. 
This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and  sensory life. Flowers are 
dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less  ecstatic. We create diversions for 
ourselves as individuals and as  nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we 
pursue, and the  _stuff we  buy_ (http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=2268) 
.  
Of all the dangers we face, from  _climate  chaos_ 
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2276)  to permanent war, none is  so great as this deadening 
of our response. For psychic numbing  impedes our capacity to process and 
respond to information. The  energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted 
from more  crucial uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for  
fresh visions and strategies.  
Zen poet Thich Nhat  Hanh was asked, “what do we most need to do to save our 
world?” His  answer was this: “What we most need to do is to hear within us 
the  sounds of the Earth crying.”  
Cracking the Shell
How  do we confront what we scarcely dare to think? How do we face our  
grief, fear, and rage without “going to pieces?”  
It is good to realize that falling  apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it 
is as essential to  transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells. 
Anxieties and  doubts can be healthy and creative, not only for the person, but for  
the society, because they permit new and original approaches to  reality.  
What disintegrates in periods of  rapid transformation is not the self, but 
its defenses and  assumptions. Self-protection restricts vision and movement 
like a  suit of armor, making it harder to adapt. Going to pieces, however  
uncomfortable, can open us up to new perceptions, new data, and new  responses.  

Speaking the  truth of our anguish for the world brings down the walls 
between  us, drawing us into deep solidarity. That solidarity is all the  more real 
for the uncertainty we face.  
In our culture, despair is feared and  resisted because it represents a loss 
of control. We’re ashamed of  it and dodge it by demanding instant solutions 
to problems. We seek  the quick fix. This cultural habit obscures our 
perceptions and  fosters a dangerous innocence of the real world.  
Acknowledging despair, on the other  hand, involves nothing more mysterious 
than telling the truth about  what we see and know and feel is happening to our 
world. When  corporate-controlled media keep the public in the dark, and  
power-holders manipulate events to create a climate of fear and  obedience, 
truth-telling is like oxygen. It enlivens and returns us  to health and vigor.  
Belonging to All Life   

Sharing what is in our heartmind brings a welcome shift in  identity, as we 
recognize that the anger, grief, and fear we feel  for our world are not 
reducible to concerns for our individual  welfare or even survival. Our concerns are 
far larger than our own  private needs and wants. Pain for the world—the 
outrage and the  sorrow—breaks us open to a larger sense of who we are. It is a  
doorway to the realization of our mutual belonging in the web of  life.  
Many of us fear that confrontation  with despair will bring loneliness and 
isolation. On the contrary,  in letting go of old defenses, we find truer 
community. And in  community, we learn to trust our inner responses to our world—and 
 find our power.  
You are not alone! We are part of a  vast, global movement: the epochal 
transition _from empire to Earth  community_ 
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1463) . This is the _Great  Turning_ 
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1473) . And the excitement, the  alarm, even the overwhelm we feel, are 
all part of our waking up to  this collective adventure.  
As in any true adventure, there is  risk and uncertainty. Our corporate 
economy is destroying both  itself and the natural world. Its effect on living 
systems is what  _David  Korten_ 
(http://www.yesmagazine.com/article_list.asp?Type=1&ID=4)  calls the Great  Unraveling. It is happening at the same time as the 
Great Turning,  and we cannot know which way the story will end.  
Let’s drop the notion that we can  manage our planet for our own comfort and 
profit—or even that we can  now be its ultimate redeemers. It is a delusion. 
Let’s accept, in  its place, the radical uncertainty of our time, even the 
uncertainty  of survival.  
In primal societies, adolescents go  through rites of passage, where 
confronting their own mortality is a  gateway to maturity. In analogous ways, _climate 
 change_ (http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2270)  calls us to 
recognize our  own mortality as a species. With the gift of uncertainty, we can  
grow up and accept the rights and responsibility of planetary  adulthood. Then we 
know fully that we belong, inextricably, to the  web of life, and we can 
serve it, and let its strength flow through  us.  
Uncertainty, when accepted, sheds a  bright light on the power of intention. 
Intention is what you can  count on: not the outcome, but the motivation you 
bring, the vision  you hold, the compass setting you choose to follow. Our 
intention  and resolve can save us from getting lost in grief.  
During a recent visit to Kentucky, I  learned what is happening to the 
landscape and culture of  Appalachia: how coal companies use dynamite to pulverize 
everything  above the underground seams of coal; how bulldozers and dragline  
machines 20-stories high push away the “overburden” of woodlands and  top 
soil, filling the valleys. I saw how activists there are held  steady by sheer 
intention. Though the nation seems oblivious to this  tragedy, these men and 
women persist in the vision that Appalachia  can, in part, be saved and that 
future generations may know slopes  of sweet gum, sassafras, magnolia, the 
stirrings of bobcat and coon,  and, in the hollows, the music of fiddle and fresh 
flowing streams.  They seem to know—and, when we let down our guard, we too know—
that  we are living parts of the living body of Earth.  
This is the gift of the _Great  Turning_ 
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/default.asp?ID=179) . When we open our eyes to  what is happening, even when it breaks 
our hearts, we discover our  true size; for our heart, when it breaks open, 
can hold the whole  universe. We discover how speaking the truth of our anguish 
for the  world brings down the walls between us, drawing us into deep  
solidarity. That _solidarity_ (http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=2272) , 
with our  neighbors and all that lives, is all the more real for the  uncertainty 
we face.  
When we stop distracting ourselves by  trying to figure the chances of 
success or failure, our minds and  hearts are liberated into the present moment. 
This moment then  becomes alive, charged with possibilities, as we realize how 
lucky  we are to be alive now, to take part in this planetary adventure.    
____________________________________
  
Joanna Macy wrote  this article as part of _Stop Global Warming  Cold_ 
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2416) ,  the Spring 2008 issue of YES! 
Magazine. Joanna is a scholar of  Buddhism, general systems theory and deep 
ecology, whose  latest book is World as Lover, World as Self. She lives in 
Berkeley, CA. _www.joannamacy.net_ (http://www.joannamacy.net/) . 



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