Tag: Essential Elements of Life

Beware: As society wilts, self-preservation takes over

Self-preservation: the protection of oneself from harm or death, especially regarded as a basic instinct in human beings and animals. (merriamwebster.com)

Self-preservation is a skill that is important for life to continue, it’s what helps us anticipate risk and keep us safe. This historically instinctual habit seems inherent, something that will simply kick in when necessary. However, this skill is connected to our emotions, as most human concepts are, and anything that deals with emotions can be manipulated and twisted if we are not careful.

Learning from the past

Self-preservation is something I know a lot about, for while I was born during a time of relative peace, my own personal life was full of dissonance, chaos, and ambiguity. My parents divorced when I was six; a messy and angry divorce full of hurt feelings and a lot of pain.

Adults surrounding me during this time were young, inexperienced, and grew more and more self-absorbed as time went on, focused solely on finding their way out of the hell they had created. I could feel, even at six, that this path they were traveling was too much for them, and I “knew” they would be unable to help me in my quest: my quest to not just stay alive, but to explore and understand the world, and to become a happy, well-adjusted person who lived a meaningful life.

Finding A Way Forward

In order to combat this war zone that constantly affected my life, I started to tap into my self-preservation. Planning for the future became my life, learning as much about the outside world as possible was my duty, so that I could create the best possible life and fortify it against any chaos that could disrupt it.

Things grew worse as my parents separated and new adults entered my life. Stepparents that either wanted to hurt me, control me, or act spitefully towards me became overbearing; heavy blankets that threatened to crush me before I was able to reach my dreams. Still, I soldiered on, knowing that someday, if I could just keep pushing forward, I could be far away from them and anyone that hurt me. Gratefully, my self-preservation muscles grew strong and resilient.

A Saving Grace

In my life, self-preservation was my savior. I learned what I needed from books, movies, television, school, and I learned what NOT to do by watching almost everyone around me. Admittedly, not everyone was horrible all the time. Bright spots popped up providing me solace and love at different times of my life, but often were fleeting or intermittent, and soon enough the blanket of tyranny was back again.

Self-preservation became my saving grace and helped me to not only create a life I love dearly but (probably more importantly) become the person I am today. Resiliency took time, and I stumbled a lot, but having that vision of what I wanted my life to become really helped me face my fears AND my failures as I moved through time.

Perhaps one may feel that this is the end of the story. A story of triumph, of learning, of strife and perseverance. While I hope that my story brings a speck of inspiration to others in a similar experience, my story must be balanced with the nuance necessary for our environment today.

The nuance of self-preservation

Self-preservation can be a helpful ingredient to pull us from despair and help us achieve our goals. However, too much self-preservation can lead us to an insular, wary, suspicious existence if we are not careful. Earlier I mentioned that I grew up in a time of relative peace. It was my internal world that was at war.

Our environment is an important part of the equation as the right thing at the wrong time can cause disastrous results. While doing the hard work of becoming who we are meant to be, we must have a safe space to run to when that work becomes exhausting. Having only my internal world to fight but an external world of peace allowed me to retain and strengthen the necessary Moxy I would need to survive my internal chaos, while still reaching out and connecting with the world around me. Remember the bright spots? That was what I was hoping to recreate consistently in my world. Remember the media that I absorbed? Much of it was extremely age-appropriate while sharing a world of connectedness, caring, adventure and peace.

A different world

We do not live in that same environment today. Our outside world is chaotic, fear-inducing, and full of the unknown. Environments of this sort can cause our connections to break down, and we shrink our physical world. We close ranks in order to keep our loved ones safe. Adding even more self-preservation to this equation pushes all of us further into our homes and creates enemies everywhere.

Throughout these hard times, we need to remember that our connections are what make life worth living and add to our overall well-being. Technology cannot save us from this fact. Humans will always need each other even we would like to wish this were not the case.

People are starting to feel abandoned. Abandoned by their governments, their communities, their neighbors, friends, and families. This can make us want to run away, hide away, and only deal with what is right in front of us.

The kicker is that this is a good place to start.

The issue is, this is no place to stay.

Where to Start

Gaining a better sense of self-preservation to get your “ish” together is necessary during hard times. Times where resources are tight, life is difficult, and chaos reigns. Today, we live in a world where distractions are overwhelming. Where you can find anything and everything you would want to “feel good” allowing us to disregard our conscience and our need for self-preservation. Similar to the frog slowly boiling in the pot, our self-preservation can be overwhelmed with slow, consistent pain.

So please, do look inward to deal with emotional baggage, define dreams, and create a vision for the future.

However, remember to balance that with the relationships we need to help us remember we are a species that thrives when we have connection. Disconnection leads to isolation, depression, added anxiety, and shortens our lives. So, how do we balance self-preservation and connection?

How to Balance

*Create Your Culture – We like to think about culture in terms of food, clothing, and holidays, but culture starts with our beliefs, values, and attitudes. Take a look at this picture – each of these concepts can look different depending on where we live.

How would each of these concepts be described in your life? If you have never thought about a concept before, do research before going with your gut feelings.

*Define your Tribe – Think about all of the relationships you had 5 years ago, how many still exist in your life today?

Research has shown that the pandemic has decimated our weak ties – “people that live on the periphery of our lives”. Those people that added something nice to our day, or friends we do not talk to often, are just as important to keep us tethered to humanity as our everyday tribe members. Weak ties can help us exercise our empathy muscles in new ways, keeping them in shape for when we really need them.

Old Templates Die Hard

Change is hard. Fighting against the overwhelming barrage of distractions is difficult. This is why our world is dying. But there is hope. We can both strengthen our self-preservation AND keep our connections strong, we just need help to see how. The old templates we were taught will not work as effectively any longer. We must find new ways to create our path forward. We all want a world where we feel comfortable, where we feel cared for and about, where we can live our purpose. Following the Essential Elements of Life can provide a new template to bring about that future for us all.

If you, or someone you know, is struggling with all of the change, finding difficulty dealing with emotional pain, hurt feelings, or distractions please check out our programs and see how we can help.

Copyright 2022 – Maven Source International, LLC

The End of an Era leads to a New Horizon

A pendulum’s momentum eventually stalls if the energies surrounding it equalize for too long. It will swing gently back and forth until the friction between the air and its mass conflict at the same rate. So goes our world; slowly stopped over the past decade as the chaos of our world, and our ever-changing minds, have acted like gravity in our social space. Changes often bring an end, but also start the dawn of a new beginning; one that if we start to plan for now can bring about a brighter future.

A new era is being ushered in, one full of Yin energy, the opposite of what we have experienced in the last few centuries. It is a time for rest, strategy, and holistic ideas, an exciting time but also one of immense pain for those unaware or unprepared. New environments and lots of change make humans uneasy, especially change that exists outside of our control.

One may feel they are being tossed along the waves and experience difficulty gaining a solid footing. This discombobulation often leads to pain, confusion, and despair. While the time has passed for finding a way to escape this period of life, there is a way to find the balance we crave. Taking on the adventure of finding our rhythm, working to banish the distractions that stop us from finding harmony, and gaining comfort with ambiguity can help us plan for what is coming next.

The effects of Change

Time is ever moving, it never recedes, but humans historically have been spared from dealing with such heavy effects in such a short period of life. Past changes were often difficult to see until they were past their tipping point, but the more unstable our society, the faster the pace of change. Expanding our view globally exacerbates the number of changes that affect us, and can easily become overwhelming in our digital age.

While some can see this quick pace of change as exhilarating, and look to welcome this sea of change with open arms, others, especially those who have led fairly predictable lives, can crumble under the weight of ambiguity. This can help explain why some have expanded their communities to include people across the world while some become more insular and focused only on what is in front of them. The conflict that arises between people on these different change spectrums only adds to the frustration, confusion, and pain.

Changes abound

Think of the number of times we have heard the words “unprecedented” or “never before seen”. Endings happen when many new things start appearing.

A snippet of shifts happening at once:

  • The Great Resignation confusion – low unemployment but we have the most people quitting at one time ever. Employers a bit unsettled that they may have lost the upper hand.
  • The Changing Weather – Higher highs, lower lows, snow in the south, but none in the west. Regardless of why it is happening, our weather patterns are changing.
  • Conservative business men are “freedom fighters” and liberal tree huggers are “draconian” – I’ll just leave that there….we have a lot of work to do…
  • White men feel like victims in a world they have ruled for centuries.
  • Our technology is what both keeps us together during covid, but also drives us further into isolation and loneliness.
  • Our globe has grown more democratic, but also more selfish over the past decades.

Find your Change Rhythm

Endings are tough, especially when they do not end happily or willingly. During times of change, people become fearful of losing what they have and losing their station in life. This is natural. We work hard for what we have, and want to keep what we have gained. But we must be wary about succumbing to this fear and causing greater problems. This fear can grow dangerous when we start to see others as the enemy and start to hide away from those we used to trust. This fear strengthens our need for safety which drives us further apart.

Instead, we must recognize that it is our struggle against this change that causes our pain. Change will happen whether we like it or not, but we can always change ourselves to maintain our vision. The more we struggle against it only prolongs the pain. Learning how to better manage change can make the process easier.

A Change, according to renowned Organizational Change expert William Bridges, consists of three main phases: An Ending, A Neutral Zone of uncertainty, and A New beginning, and each of us reacts uniquely within each phase. To help clarify these phases, my synopsis is below. Understanding these ideas can help to refine our relationship with change.

  1. Endings come with emotions. These emotions must be felt, understood, and let go before one can leave this stage fully.
  2. Uncertainty/Ambiguity comes with questions. These questions bring anxiety, depression, aggression, and fear. These symptoms can only be quelled by finding the answers to the questions.
  3. A New Beginning can only be reached if you know what it is “supposed to look like“. Paint a detailed picture of what you are working towards so that you know when you have reached it.

Start a New Beginning Today

What to do when you realize that the environment calls for change and it starts with changing yourself?

Start getting back to the basics: Determining what we really NEED not just what we WANT.

We NEED each other. Period. It may not seem so, but we can only survive together. Our world has grown richer, resources are more prevalent, and technology allows us the option of a single life. Psychology Today said it well: “More affluence leads to a greater sense of self-reliance and a detachment from others.” But we give up a lot when we create this type of life. We more easily fall into isolation, depression and suffer from anxiety. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, found that loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity (Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015).

We NEED to remove distractions and regain our connection with nature. This connection allows us to better anticipate the winds of change and better prepare for the future we really want. Removing distractions can be hard because as the smoke clears, all of the emotions we have pushed away come rushing back. Doing this work is hard, and it’s often better with a guide. I use the Essential Elements of Life to guide my students towards building resiliency and finding peace free from their emotional baggage. Please check us out if you are in need, but even if we are not the right fit for you I implore you to seek assistance when searching your soul.

An Ending of Hope

This will not be easy, it will not be quick, but if we start today we WILL see the fruits of our labor sometime soon. Start talking to each other, learning about each other, discovering more about our values, morals, goals, and dreams. Let go of the need to “one-up” someone, let go of the spite, release the hurt, see that we have a chance. A chance to create the world anew, the chance to find ourselves again.

Endings bring fear, but they can also bring hope. When change comes we can run, but we can never hide. It ebbs and flows throughout our lives and is necessary for growth. Growth creates maturity and helps us learn the mysteries of life. If we can find the courage to stand and face our fear, we start our journey to find our rhythm and create a life of harmony and balance.

You are not alone.

It won’t be enough, but please know I hear you and you are not alone.

I hear you even when your tears rush silently down your cheeks.

I hear you when you ask “why me? why us?” when you feel overwhelmed at the unfairness and grief.

I hear when you act strong for others even though you are crumbling inside.

I feel when your soul aches for hope, aches for rest and aches for calm.

I feel you when your heart sinks at the thought of taking one more step.

I feel you when you just want to give up because it is all too much.

Please know your journey matters. Your journey is powerful. Your journey is true.

Please know you are loved. Please know you are cherished. Please take one more breath, try one more day, and please reach out for help.

Feel not like a burden when asking for help, you may instead be another’s wish. For each of us wishes to care, to help, and to provide love. Humans are meant to live a collective experience, and we all have our part to play. We will be there when you need, as you need, how you need. All you must do is ask.

The nature of change that brings our pain also helps the pain (eventually) subside. Even the winter must recede to allow Spring to have its time. So is the truth of our lives, meant to be filled with times of joy and times of grief. A small bit of solace, I must admit, but a day will come where once again a smile will be found on your lips and peace will once again grow in your heart.

If ever you need we will be there, for you are not alone.

Resources:

Sending love, light, and comfort to all who can see this. Sincerely, Jessica

Scaling Maslow’s Hierarchy – America’s fatigue

America is exhausted.

Not just exhausted, but overwhelmed with fatigue.

This isn’t something new. We have been tired for one reason or another for decades, but the issue has only grown exponentially in the past few years and has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Many books have been written about how we need more sleep (think The sleep revolution), and advice on how to get more sleep (put your phones in another room, get a better mattress), but the fatigue I am talking about is different than just a lack of sleep. It is an exhaustion of our current system, a rejection of our current way of life. America’s fatigue is presenting physically, but stems from a mental and an emotional exhaustion that we have not yet come to terms with.

Too much fatigue, hyper-fatigue, is dangerous to the psyche and the soul, our society and our world. We are in danger of crossing a line from which we may never return, so it is important to understand the concept of fatigue: why it is dangerous, where it comes from and how to relieve it so we can move forward towards Belonging and a better future for all.

The Dangers of Fatigue

Humans do not function well under a state of fatigue. Fatigue is the inability to exert the necessary physical force one would expect their body to reasonably accommodate. (skybrary.areo) Mentally, fatigue leads to a general decrease of attention and the lack of ability to perform complex ( or worse, simple) tasks with efficiency. Fatigue causes our emotions to run out of control and present in the most negative ways: crankiness, irritability, frustration, aggression, etc. People break down in times of great fatigue, we don’t want to eat, we often cannot sleep, tears come at no notice at all and relationships suffer greatly.

People who are fatigued should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery, but they should also not be allowed to make tough decisions, be in charge of others, or be expected to solve problems until they have rested and recuperated. Fatigue can take time to expel, and often requires multiple days of rest and even sometimes counseling before it will fully dissipate. The fact that we are allowing a mass fatigue to perpetuate throughout our society is irresponsible. The fact that we cannot recognize it is scary.

Why are we Fatigued?

Americans have always pushed the envelope when it comes to “making the most of our time” or “living like there’s no tomorrow”. Our country was founded on the principle of always wanting more: more freedom, more land, more choices, more resources, etc. The benefits of this mindset is that we seek growth and always want to achieve greater heights, however, even with the best of intentions this concept provides false expectations. Unending growth is just not possible. We cannot take and never give, we cannot work and never rest, the law of the universe is that we must stay in balance. One of my favorite explanations of this is from ‘The sword in the stone‘ where Merlin explains to Wort that balance makes the world go round.

In our current world we believe that we can say NO to this guiding principle and use the concepts of money, technology and size to stress and stretch and warp the environment to strive for constant growth. Americans glom onto these concepts as guiding principles to a good life. Ideas such as “big is best”, “only the strong survive”, “money makes the world go round” and “technology is inherently good” (unless your enemy wants it too) are catch phrases that we live by with little regard for the fact that anything else could be true.

We have given our leaders the ability to trick the system because what we want is more important than what is best for all. What we do not realize is what we give up in return for this foolishness. Like Pinocchio and the boys on Pleasure Island, we are in danger of turning into asses if we do not mature enough to realize that unending money, pleasure, partying and fun is only part of the equation. In fact, we are already seeing the repercussions of our folly in our current environment by the sheer amount of different types of fatigue we are currently experiencing.

A Myriad of Fatigue

The myriad of collective fatigue we are experiencing can be separated into the following categories: Fatigue of Change, Fatigue of Expectations, Fatigue of Decisions, Fatigue of Emotions

Many of these fatigue experiences have similar sources and can also be linked back to the distractions of money, size, technology and our unending quest for pleasure. Exacerbated by the fact that we have not yet reassessed our social contract, we are also struggling to connect with what our country and society stands for. People without a country, people without beliefs and culture that tie us together, are forced to go it alone and that isolation and fear only adds to our fatigue. Our lack of connections strengthens the fatigue as we have nothing left to recharge our soul but our piles of stuff. Worse yet, we have lost our connections to the past and most ideas have lost their meaning. Without meaning and without history we are in danger of becoming nothing.

Fatigue of Change

Change is a tough concept, but one we continuously face. Change can be exhilarating if we choose it, but excruciating if we do not. Often, changes come at us and make us feel that our ENTIRE world is being turned upside down. This allows the panic and fear emotions to creep into our psyche and craft an unrealistic view of our environment. Living in a time of unprecedented dynamic change, its not hard to see how many people could be struggling with all of the differences they are faced with every day. Struggling against change causes fatigue, struggling to create change does the same.

The world has awakened and erased the borders that so many conservative Americans had tried to keep in place. Those who had created a bubble around their lives in order to keep change at bay are now struggling through ambiguity and with a feeling of loss. Not so much that they don’t want others to have what they have, but more a fear of losing what they have or maintaining their planned future for their children. Whether or not these fears are irrational or unfounded, intercultural misunderstandings and a lack of awareness and understanding in general have created an uneasy, unfamiliar environment that this group is struggling to rebalance.

Others formerly ostracized for different reasons have now gained a sense of power and are ready for change and opportunity. While happy with the change, it feels like a constant fight; one that brings with it waves of weariness, anger, and pain. Change feels too slow at times, but also can bring surprise when the boundaries once believed to be static are constantly pushed by those wanting even more.

Lastly, a worldwide fatigue has grown from the mishandled and misunderstood pandemic still plaguing us all. Not sure who to listen to, what to believe, or even what to do, many have simply given up and are living with a “Que sera, sera” mindset. Unfortunately for many, this turns deadly and is often irreversible. Still, “revenge” is the new norm whether due to a new appreciation of life or a subconscious death wish and our insatiable desire for “normal” is exacerbating so many other fragile systems in our lives. See how dangerous fatigue can be?

Fatigue of Expectations

Our fatigue has also led to broken down systems in other ways. Our expectations of what life can bring, of how we should treat each other, of expertise and what it means, how we should care for ourselves – all of these have been turned upside down and often we live in a land of opposites compared to the world that existed in my childhood.

We are tired of being polite, tired of having manners, and do not understand why life was ever so stuffy and controlled. Decorum has lost its meaning in many ways, and often we are only concerned with how others made US feel, not the other way around. We have expected so much of ourselves that we cannot go any higher. Men must be soft, but still able to be aggressive or protect their family at the drop of a hat, women must be superwomen able to do everything a man can do; biology be damned. Overtly, these ideas are not unreasonable in theory, but the expectation of always being ON and never being able to stop is contributing heavily to our mental health epidemic.

Expectations are also overblown in terms of what we are supposed to care about. Empathy is great, I highly recommend it, but we expect ourselves to be able to constantly care about the entire globe every day. An extremely unreasonable expectation, it has caused us to go around the bend all the way back to having to recreate awareness. While humans are a compassionate species, evolution takes time and the invention of the television and the internet have not happened so long ago that our emotional capacities are able to keep up. Trying to care continuously, always being faced with someone somewhere needing care, has stressed our capacity to the point it has broken. This has caused us to turn inward and unleashed a tidal wave of selfishness that is circling the globe. If we cannot care about everyone then we decide to care about no one.

Fatigue of Decisions

The overabundance of data, media, and options has choked our ability to make decisions. The instability of our leaders and the constant disagreements between experts has left us feeling cheated, and caused us to stop listening to anything but our darkest selves.

Those out of work are struggling to make the necessary decisions to make ends meet, those who never stopped working are exhausted due to living in two worlds. Work has become so hard that many people have left, some without any idea of what the future has in store. Anything is better than what we have now, they think, but have no idea what they really are searching for and no idea how to make the decisions to get them there.

Fatigue of emotions

All of these stressors have cracked our desire to feel. Fatigue of empathy, but also fatigue of emotions in general. We do not want to cry, and little makes us laugh. Anger wears us out and creates a hole in our heart unable to be filled. With everything going on we have no one to share it with because we constantly feel misunderstood.

Depression is cured for a bit only when drowning in wine, drugs or streaming services. Eating comforts, but then we feel guilt and then back to depression we go. Relationships have grown so hard that we would rather not try. Why open up and try to connect when we will have more trouble dealing with both of our emotions that we do with our own?

Even those determined to go out, to live a normal-ish life, feel ostracized by the masses and angry that they have to deal with all of this. They “revenge” themselves in any way they can, but little brings back the joy they remember from before covid. Those unlucky enough to have it rough before find it even harder to find hope for the future.

Regaining Balance

As we have seen, a world-wide lockdown is not possible, neither for our psyches nor our economy, so what else can we do to get our rest? How do we regain our balance and dissipate our fatigue? By being very specific about our path to healing.

The first thing we must do is re-center our Empathy. Instead of caring about everything, or only caring our ourselves, we must reassess our empathy circles. Perhaps that is just you until you can heal, but have a plan to add others back as you do. Maybe focusing on yourself still allows you to open your circle a bit including your partner, your child(ren), your pets, your family or a friend as well. Keep the circle small until you can feel your strength returning. Make notes about other ideas, people, events, or concepts you care about. As your capacity grows, as you start to regain your health, add them back slowly as you are able. Yes, some things need our assistance now, but overstressing and not being able to act because we are too tired does no one a favor.

We can learn to coexist with change, examine our expectations, deliberate tough decisions and embrace all of our emotions, i is possible and I know the way. With help we can start to regain balance, feel less fatigued and more energized, and gain fulfillment in our lives. The answers to our fatigue are found in the concepts of the Essential Elements of life and they can help us regain our health and our strength. Learning them, understanding them and integrating them into our lives helps us create a path towards longevity, happiness and contentment.

Next time we will discuss another element necessary to create an environment of Belonging that leads us towards Integration. Until then, please take care and get some rest 🙂

Scaling Maslow’s hierarchy – Part Three – The road to Survival

Heading into survival, all bets are off. Fear rules the day, and wariness presents itself in all interactions. Scarcity abounds and life becomes a daily fight to make it to the next morning.

As a country, we are heading towards a collective Survival experience at breakneck speed. Our illusion of control is beginning to melt away, and our desired state of prosperity is fading due to the sheer amount of incidents that are becoming difficult to ignore. Emotions have taken hold of our psyches, more negative than not, and our connections to each other are paper thin, dangling over ever growing flames.

A pile of problems

Survival is not usually a chosen state. In fact, it is a state that many fear and strive to stay away from at all costs. When Survival is at our door our anxiety heightens and depression claws at our throats making it difficult to swallow. Our dreams of safety and comfort are no longer a possibility and we are faced with the choice of running, fighting or falling into a strong state of denial.

Every day more Americans are slipping into this state as we wade through an ever growing trend of epidemics. At the time of this writing we are dealing with: a worker shortage, inflation, water shortages, supply chain breakdown, collective trauma from the Covid-19 pandemic, opioid & overdose epidemics, our failure in Afghanistan, discontent with China, wildfires in the west, floods in the east, plus upticks in crime, suicide, murder and aggression all at the same time.

These stressors may not even be understood by a large swath of our populace, but one needs not to watch the news or even be online to feel the heavy blanket of aggression, fear, frustration and strife that is covering our country. Feelings that we cannot process because they are not understood are the most dangerous we can have as they often cause us to lash out uncontrollably in ways that we would never imagine.

We need to find a way to release the anger, and who better, we think, than to target those who believe in a different world view. Debates turn into fistfights, we scream dirty words at each other online hoping to crush the receiver with little care that there is another human on the other end of the line. We are in dangerous territory, and one where few of our populace has any idea of how to survive if this shit gets real. 

If we continue down this path, things will eventually bottom out. Perhaps it is inevitable. Common knowledge tells us that it is only by hitting rock bottom that we achieve clarity and can then progress towards something greater. That may be true, and for many IS true, however those who see this as a “win” tend to forget that hitting rock bottom first starts with a path full of self destruction. Very often bringing one to the brink of death. On a larger scale, this path is exponentially worse, bringing about war and the collapse of society.

Propping things up

Why, if so many tragedies are in our midst, can we not see what is headed our way and correct ourselves? 

  1. Our size makes it difficult for our citizens to experience similar tragedies simultaneously.
    • While the West is burning, the South is flooding and neither can empathetically understand what the other is going through.
    • If one grocery store runs out of resources, many can simply drive a bit further to obtain what they want.
  2. Technology
    • Our technological prowess has added a complexity and a solidity to our structure that we will strive to keep as long as possible. Renewable energies will most likely guarantee that a majority of our populace will always have some connection to civilization of some sort for the foreseeable future so we do not sweat a collapse.
  3. Money
    • Often when things get bad, we have a tendency to throw money at the populace and hope the issues go away. Sometimes this money is set up wisely, but many times it is a short stop gap that then allows crony capitalist tendencies and leads us into the next disaster with little regard for any lessons we may have learned.

Our belief

The biggest reason we cannot see what is headed our way is our belief in ourselves as a people and as a nation. Since birth over the past few generations we have been bred to have an overwhelming sense of belief in America and its people. We live in a country that loves to be in love with ourselves. American exceptionalism is often seen as a matter of fact. Ask most Americans, no matter what “side” they are on and they will agree that we have the strongest economy, the strongest military, and freedom, God, and democracy seem to thrive here more than anywhere else.

American’s belief

Americans tend to believe the fairy tales and heroic episodes that Hollywood creates. Heroes constantly triumph over dystopian rulers and other evil doers that would cause us pain and give us hope that we will see the same endings in real life. Our written history latches onto our successes (WWII, Civil rights, the moon landing, etc.) and mitigates our failures ( the Vietnam war, slavery, the war on drugs, etc.) finding reasons to explain away our mistakes rather than learn from them.

This tendency for optimism also expands to our own lives, especially when it comes to our survival. One in five people do not believe we will ever have an apocalypse, and of those who do a large amount (42%) believe they would survive a week or more during one.

 Many of us like to fantasize that we are the ones who will kick it into gear. We will be a leader, or at least second in command, making the hard choices, finding supplies and survivors, banding the group together when things get tough. At the same time, only about 17% of Americans have a plan today if an apocalypse should occur. I suppose it is possible to survive without a plan, living by one’s wits and a little bit of luck, but I’m not sure if that many people are witty or lucky.

Harbingers of the future

Many examples of what this new normal could look like are foreshadowed in our world today. Take Lebanon for example: their economy collapsed under the weight of multiple catastrophes and the government finally succumbed to their (often self inflicted) wounds. Whenever we hear that a government has collapsed it probably brings with it images of buildings destroyed, terror running rampant, people running fearfully for their lives, but in real life it can be much more quiet and unassuming.

A Sorted History

Looking at Lebanon can provide us a window into what we may have in store for us if we continue heading down our path of divisiveness, greed and ignorance. Lebanon’s citizens headed for the same civil war that other countries balanced on the border of in the 60’s and 70’s, and due to a lack of interference from the outside world, this civil war lasted until the 1990’s. While we were waking up to the internet, they were waking up to a new beginning of hope and peace. That uneasy peace between the people is now on the edge of failure once more as the country has slipped into a place of survival.

How did this happen? The world was convinced that Lebanon’s worst days were behind them as they worked their way past their civil war. Soon after the tribulations it became touted as “a vacation spot, a tourist mecca, home to a thriving middle class” it was a beautiful, vibrant country that felt like it had weathered the worst that fate had to offer. Underneath, however, they were still being plagued with insolence, corruption and greed, creating an economy more similar to a house of cards.

Then in 2019, a huge explosion that destroyed much of their grain reserves became the straw that broke the camel’s back. The government lost confidence in itself and disbanded, banks froze withdrawals, medicine availability dropped, periodic blackouts are the norm. 70% of the population doesn’t have enough food or money to buy food, and people are waiting in gasoline lines for hours a day with no luck and little hope.

A possible future

Their country is experiencing a collapse that could lead to them becoming a failed state. A series of events, both intended and by accident, that slowly deteriorated a society’s belief in itself and created a slippery slope for the populace. While this is happening in a smaller middle eastern country, we must not be so arrogant to think the same situation couldn’t or wouldn’t happen here.

Our size, our money, and our standing in the world allows a type of myopia that is dangerous. Focusing only on ourselves it is hard to see that our country has already broken into multiple pieces. The size of those pieces allow a mass delusion of comfort, but make no mistake, the pieces are still cracked and severed.

We may believe that we are invincible, but if we are not careful reality may be quite different than we imagine. Especially seeing as we have made and continue to make similar mistakes. We prop things up continuously, allowing our economy and our government to be hollowed out. Our constant desire for more our only saving grace to keeping this system intact. While our pasting and stapling have seemed to stave off the worst thus far, do not be fooled. Our apocalypse is on the horizon, in fact it is already here, and will feel more like a slow moving death.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.salon.com%2F2010%2F12%2F06%2Famerica_collapse_2025%2F&psig=AOvVaw3ZCVXJ_PSG4w7Y-V0Aqtka&ust=1635081402869000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCJCgnorR4PMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAG

Jared Diamond, a renowned anthropologist predicted this slow road to societal failure in his book Collapse: How Societies choose to fail or succeed in 2015, when discussing the possibility of a collapse of the United States. He says “Much more likely than a doomsday scenario involving human extinction or an apocalyptic collapse of industrial civilization would be “just” a future of significantly lower living standards, chronically higher risks, and the undermining of what we now consider some of our key values“. (Diamond, 2015)

Correcting our Vision

Lebanon’s shared culture and collectivism has allowed them to stave off mass chaos, but war is already on the streets and is only getting worse. Our unshared culture and home grown division will push us to the brink more quickly, at each other’s throats like a couple in the throes of a horrific divorce. In order to stop our forward progression towards destruction, we must first decide that our countrymen and women are friends, not foes. Only by bridging our divides can we stem this path towards destruction. This means creating a new social contract where we are all bound together by the things we have in common, and distancing ourselves for a time from that which divides us. We can create a path towards Belonging. The work will be difficult, but worth not losing our country or ourselves. 

Next time we investigate this path towards Belonging and the necessary ingredients we need to activate in order to move towards a more peaceful environment.