"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
De nial: ain't just a river in Egypt.
I was most impressed with the "Five principle bulwarks against denial" as referenced following this article.
I have written before about our need for balance. The world reflects our own individual imbalances. A primary culprit of our instability has been in the denial or repression of our emotions throughout history. The first principle bulwark against denial states that people go into denial because they don't feel entitled to be afraid. Why not? Fear is quite a healthy and necessary instinct to have. During times of catastrophy it is essential that we are attuned to our emotions/instincts. They can quite literally keep us alive as may be illustrated in the following account. Repression is not an option--and is counterproductive as well.
During the Christmas holidays of 2004, we were all stunned by the news of the tsunami which killed over 280,000 thousand people throughout the countries adjoining the Indian Ocean. What we were unaware of at the time was that the catastrophe claimed the lives of very few animals compared to the enormous loss of human life. The animals, relying on their instincts, sensed danger and had run ... We might wonder, what were these senses that the animals had that the people so tragically seemed to have lacked? Upon reading about how the animals had escaped death, I realized that our instincts are accessed through our emotions and as is seen in the case of the tsunami, are literally essential to our survival. The problem is that our instincts as humans have been sacrificed by adhering to the “rules” of our societies and to having learned to defer to authorities outside of ourselves. There are so many constraints and obligations to the marketplace, to the law, to religion, to employers, etc. We are, all too often, totally cut off from our own inner wisdom, and so have learned to discount our own feelings in our attempts to fulfill our duties as parents, employees, citizens, consumers, etc. If you don’t feel like this relates to you consider a simple test: Do you begin your day according to your own biorhythms, rising at whatever time that your mind and body awakens naturally, or rather at some artificial scheduled hour in order to accommodate someone else via a job or school, etc.? If you’re not even aware of such an option then you have learned early on, like most of us, to surrender your inner impulses without complaint.
Our instincts are often inconvenient in the world as it has evolved throughout history. We’ve each developed various strategies to dull them—as any attempts to validate those impulses would place us in social and economic exclusion and jeopardy. We mute those objectionable inner stirrings through our various addictions to cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, antidepressants, food, sex, obsessions with money and power, adrenaline junkets, media, drama, and the list goes on. There are so many people sedating themselves from the daily, often brutal, demands of life that we might begin to acknowledge by the sheer numbers, not personal failures, but rather signs that something is hideously amiss with our world.
Continue reading extract from "Back to the Garden: Searching for Self-authenticity."
| 1. | Legitimize fear. People go into denial because they don't feel entitled to be afraid. The more entitled people feel to be afraid, the less likely they are to go into denial. This is why the message, "Don't be afraid," is a very destructive message in serious circ**stances. Much superior is the message, "Well, of course, you're afraid, I'm afraid too. We're all afraid. We'll get through this together." |
| 2. | Things to do. It's not that if you have things to do you are less afraid; it's that if you have things to do you are better able to bear your fear. The military understands this very well. It tries to keep soldiers busy so that they can tolerate their fear. |
| 3. | Things to decide. Whenever possible, offer people menus of things to do so they have opportunities to decide what they want to do and what they don't want to do. This makes them less likely to go with the denial, because it makes them more able to bear their fear. |
| 4. | Love. Anyone who has had the experience of loving knows that we are much better able to bear fear on behalf of those we love than on our own behalf. The military knows well that soldiers don't fight for their country, they fight for their buddies. Again, it's not that loving makes you less afraid, it's that loving makes you more able to bear your fear. |
| 5. | Hate. This is the more controversial bulwark. Having somebody you hate, or maybe a virus you hate, can enable you to bear your fear and hang in there without tripping the circuit breaker into denial. |
Fear is a solution, not the problem. It simply makes no sense to say, "I want you to take precautions, but I don't want you to be afraid."
Views: 27
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Comment by Turil Cronburg on April 29, 2010 at 6:42pm
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I wonder how we can support people in feeling like they do have the freedom to choose to respect their own animal nature and their own bodies and minds when it comes to listening to our instincts.
I know for me that I've had to actively work to find ways to be in environments and situations where I'm able to be free to express my instinctive behavior (such as waking up when my body wants to wake up, rather than due to some kind of arbitrary obligation, or such as needing to cry when I get sad, rather than repressing my energy and letting it fester and turn into depression and harm me, or turn into anger and harm someone else). Clearly it would be better if having that freedom and respect for our natural selves was the norm for all of us.
Anyone have any ideas on how we might make this happen?
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Comment by Catherine Gentry on April 29, 2010 at 7:05pm
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I think by discussing such surely, but perhaps most effectively by living the example and becoming comfortable in our own skin in regards to feeling and expressing our emotions. I know for me crying was impossible when I was younger. Also, I was not allowed to express anger. Evidently I had learned, due to my parents responses, that these expressions were dangerous or somehow threatening to my parents, so I learned to block the energy. (Of course, they got to express those emotions--but only them. My authentic feelings could not be expressed. Eventually I became numb and could not feel anything or perhaps rather didn't have a clue how I felt about anything.)
We make it happen every time we don't allow others to dictate our authentic responses to the world around us. Have you noticed that the people most apt to have a negative response to an authentic emotion, are the most repressed and in "denial?" After I had connected to my own rage, angry people no longer scared me. After I could cry, others tear no longer made me feel uncomfortable. After I had confronted my own inner demons, I could empathize with other people expressing their own.And allow, allow, allow.
As the Hopi Elder's poem begins: "We are the ones we've been waiting for..."
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Comment by Jeremy Laird Hogg on April 29, 2010 at 8:38pm
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Really like it. Thought and feeling suppression is a big problem in society. I particularly like this line -
"Our instincts are often inconvenient in the world as it has evolved throughout history. We’ve each developed various strategies to dull them—as any attempts to validate those impulses would place us in social and economic exclusion and jeopardy."
Really shows the fine line between self-mastery and mere suppression.
You 'sparked' me to blog on denial from a specific vantage point:
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/self-esteem-and-crisis
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