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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 6/28/10

The Journey From Anger to Anguish: Responding To Eco-Cide

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It is likely that for these individuals, anger metamorphosed into deep grief or despair as a feeling of powerlessness to "fix" civilization set in. Implicit in the emotion of anger is the sense that something can or must be done to alter the that has evoked anger. As one comes to understand the inevitability of the unraveling of industrial civilization and the futility of attempting to prevent it, one may in fact experience a sense of relief that collapse is beyond control and proceeds in its own way, in its own time. One grasps that our mandate as a species is to move with the demise, not against it, and find within the unraveling a greater purpose than the one civilization has offered, proceeding with the work we came here to do. At that point, even though we may carry some residue of denial or anger, and even though our willingness to see what is so puts us directly in the path of deep grief, the embrace of our purpose and our role in the collapse process, is in itself a re-investment in our lives and the well being of the earth community.

However, the individuals I have just been describing do not comprise the vast majority of those in the United States or the world who are fixated in anger because they are also fixated in denial. One cannot move through the Five Stages of Grief if one does not move beyond denial. Refusing to see what is so guarantees that the journey through the stages will not occur. So whether one is an enraged Muslim suicide bomber or a vitriolic white, middle class Tea Party enthusiast, one's emotional state and behavior belie an inordinately diminished perspective of reality, resulting in a desperate need for vituperative scapegoating. In other words, fixation in anger.

The Mary Oliver poem above about loving the world which in part means reveling in the sensual delight of nature which means becoming "accustomed to savoring that which is momentous, concealed within bare bones simplicity." It also means a profound gratitude which the poem describes as "mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here." The world has given us stupendous gifts which Oliver says causes her to "stand still and learn to be astonished."

But does our gratitude for the world mean that we should never be angry about the injustice or self and eco-destruction its inhabitants have perpetrated upon each other and the earth community? Certainly not, but being deeply connected with our purpose in the world provides perspective that buoys us and allows us to keep moving forward when the magnetic pull to become fixated in anger may feel irresistible.

When we are intimately familiar with our purpose, we understand that the world is not paradise, it is not a vacation resort, and it is not a place to which we have come to live in perpetual bliss. Rather, the world is comprised of both the magnificent wonderment and extraordinary beauty depicted by Mary Oliver as well as the horrors engineered by a species about to become successful in its incalculable attempts to commit suicide.

Author and spiritual teacher, Marshall Vian Summers, writes in his book Greater Community Spirituality:

Be without judgment of the world. If the world were a perfect place, you would not need to come here. If the world were a place that functioned harmoniously, without friction or conflict, this would not be the place for you....The world is your place to work and to give. Its pleasures are small but real. Its pains and difficulties are great. The world cannot give you what you seek, for what you seek you have brought with you from beyond the world.

That which we have brought with us from beyond is something greater than our personality or human ego. Summers refers to it as Knowledge, and others use terms like the sacred, spirit, the Self, the divine within. However we choose to name that part of ourselves, it comprises our core. I believe that the more intimately familiar we are with it, the less we expect from the world, and the more we are willing to serve the world in order to imbue it with the sacred. Loving the world, as Oliver names it, is not about sentimental emotion, but about a commitment to the work we came here to do which by definition, serves the earth community.

The mathematical cosmologist, Brian Swimme, in his extraordinary lecture series, "The Powers of The Universe"clearly articulates this concept. Cataclysm, he notes, is one of the inherent powers of the universe, and "it is currently happening on our planet. The choice before us is whether we will participate consciously." Participating means that "as all the structures that are destroying the earth are collapsing, they are releasing us into the essential nature of who we are." While this awareness does not remove our anger or our anguish, it brings us face to face with the deeper meaning of the collapse of industrial civilization and our purpose in it.

I believe that the world of the future will be a chaotic world which will be, among other things, an angry world, especially in the initial stages of the demise of the current civilization. In a December, 2009 article "America The Traumatized" , Adele Stan argues that a series of events that occurred in the first decade of the twenty-first century have made us a PTSD nation--and that was before the BP oil disaster of 2010. Until we understand trauma and post-traumatic stress, the need to blame the traumatizing event or person(s) who inflicted it is exceedingly compelling. When we do grasp the magnitude of trauma and its consequences, we come to understand how futile is our rage in the face of an inundation of horror.

I write these words more than two months after the BP Gulf of Mexico cataclysm. Am I angry as I witness the horror? Am I enraged at the lies of BP with regard to its prior knowledge regarding the safety of the Deepwater Horizon rig? Am I livid when I hear the stories of people who tried to warn the corporation that its bypassing of standard international safety regulations would result in catastrophe? Does white hot rage pulse through my body as I witness BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, taking a yachting trip and begging to "get his life back" as the entire world lays the blame for this debacle at his door and as the entire ecosystem is now in the path of the destruction visited upon it by a multitude of corporations and CEO's of BP's and Tony Hayward's ilk? Am I incensed when I see millions of people immersed in an epic blame-fest, pointing fingers and mouthing incessant sentences beginning with "they shoulda, coulda, woulda"?

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding "yes", and from the moment the catastrophe was first made public, I realized the probable scope of it, and I saw the word t-r-a-u-m-a writ large all over it. What purpose at this point will my anger serve? How could I be seduced by the inherent assumption in my anger that the there is a possibility that the situation can be remedied? In my opinion, the BP oil disaster of 2010 is nothing less than 100 Hurricane Katrinas in slow motion. It is an unfathomable game-changer-perhaps the tipping point in humanity's destruction of this planet. As I witness countless animals dripping and dying from disgusting quantities of crude oil resembling raw sewage suffocating their bodies; as I consider that perhaps 40-50% of the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico will soon be covered with petroleum; as I reflect on the spread of the spill into other oceans and the death of plankton and the ultimate devastation of the food chain; as I consider the economic devastation of a section of the country that comprises about 20 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, and as I speculate that perhaps the entire Gulf Coast region may become uninhabitable, I see, hear, and feel nothing but trauma. Furthermore, if the entire population of the United States were not already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, it is now.

Yet what I have personally discovered about my anger over the years is neither that I shouldn't have anger or that I should discharge it whenever I feel like it, but rather, to approach my anger mindfully. A stellar article by Holistic Psychologist, Jennifer Franklin, entitled "Mindfulness In Practice: Anger Management" defines mindfulness this way: "To be mindful is to be conscious, more awake, more informed about how one lives one's life.

Being more mindful, therefore, allows us to make more awake or informed choices in every moment. Our words and actions would be more mindful if we were more awake or conscious in those moments in which when we choose them." According to psychotherapist Richard Pfeiffer, quoted in the article, anger is a neurological response process that essentially prepares us to fight or flee.

We have many options for creating more mindfulness within ourselves. Meditation is, of course, one of the principal tools for strengthening mindfulness, even if the meditation is not the specific technique called "mindfulness meditation." It is important to remember that mindfulness isn't so much about becoming mindful of the world around us, although that generally accrues from a meditation practice, but rather, mindfulness is about being mindful of ourselves. It helps us become centered observers of our own process.

For example, the Dr. Franklin's article offers the classic example of road rage and how it can be handled mindfully instead of reactively:

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Carolyn Baker.Ph.D., is the author of Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse (2009 IUniverse) and manages her website Speaking Truth to Power at www.carolynbaker.net. She is also the author of U.S. History (more...)
 
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