Can you be well in a sick culture ?
I mean from my own experiences I don’t think so, not long term.
Years ago Jiddu Krishnamurti said:
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
I would say the culture that I exist in today is seriously unwell.
It feels to me that if you can somehow shield yourself from all the suffering, violence, divisiveness, extraction and increasing insanity of the story of modern 'progress' then perhaps you feel...ok ?
But how does one do that?
And how long can you stay there?
It seems like it requires a shut down of one’s empathic circuitry to not allow the sickness in.
And/or numbing yourself through whatever distraction or addiction you can find so that you don’t sit with the sickness for too long.
And lets face it there’s plenty of ways to do that as I’ve discovered painfully over the years.
But the cultural unwellness is spilling over everywhere if you pay attention.
When I make fermented bread, I have to cultivate a starter, a wild living yeast - It’s called a culture.
You use the culture to seed the bulk of flour to make the bread.
- If the culture you are seeding is healthy, you get nutritious beautiful bread.
- You need to look after the culture, feed it regulalrly with what it needs to maintain health
- In this case flour, water, attention and connection (wild yeast likes hands)
If the culture becomes unwell, usually because you’re not paying close attention to it, then the culture turns, it becomes sick and the bread will decline.
Really this is no different with human cultures.
What are are we feeding our culture with right now that might be making us unwell?
What are we not paying attention to ?
I mean where to start ?
I’m trying to make this a short post ...
I just listened to the latest episode of Planet Critical with the brilliant Rachel Donald and her guest the most excellent Paddy Loughman, my friend and Co-Author of Stories For Life.
Paddy was riffing on cultural trauma, collapsing systems and where/how will we find ways through. A beautiful conversation, well worth a listen.
Mysteriously, I published my first episode of 2024 from The Spaceship Earth Podcast yesterday.
A conversation with Dr Rosalind Watts which feels to me at least a part of the antidote to what Paddy was chatting about.
Dr Ros is one of the most prominent voices and minds in the field of psychedelic research, recently named as one of the 50 most influential people in the sector.
Her core focus today following years integrating people who’ve been through therapy back into society has led her to the question:
How can cultures heal themselves?
And this is the work she is dedicating her life to, growing healing infrastructure with people (and trees) from the ground up.
You can listen here or on any podcast provider
What signs of a sick culture are you witnessing ?