Reality is a Lovely Place
Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at all cost
Emotional health is facing reality at any cost. – Scott Peck
The wrist band pictured above is from my daughters when they were listening every day to a musician called Owl City around 10 years ago. It the title to a song – here are some of the lyrics:
I saw the autumn leaves
Peel up off the street
Take wing on the balmy breeze
And sweep you off your feet
And you blushed as they scooped you up
On sugar maple wings
To gaze down on the city below
Ablaze with wondrous things
Downy feathers kiss your face
And flutter everywhere
Reality is a lovely place…
The song is happy and bouncy and full of joy. And yet… the next line in the song, like real life, is a surprise:
It appears to me that we are choosing not to live in reality. In fact, all the evidence points to us choosing to be emotionally sick by going out of our way to avoid facing reality at all cost. Why is that? Well, quite honestly, reality is harsh. Reality hurts. Reality will make you cry and fill you with grief. Reality means we all have to accept loss. The loss we must accept now, given the scope of the damage we have done not only to GAIA but also our social fabric, is immense – admitting to our losses fundamentally would annihilate any “goodness” in way the live, the way see the world – admitting to these losses can even risk destroying our sense of self and reality. And yet, as Scott Peck tells us, only by facing these harsh realities can we become emotionally healthy. Here is but one example of the kinds of news that you must face, accepting that it means that our attempts to preserve GAIA and maintain our growth worshipping economy are doomed to failure.
More than 90% of global warming heat ends up in the oceans. How much did the world’s oceans warm in 2021 compared with the previous year? Well, our data shows that oceans heated by about 14 zettajoules (a zettajoule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy). Another way to think about this is that the oceans have absorbed heat equivalent to seven Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating each second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/ocean-temperatures-earth-heat-increase-record
Here is our Catch-22. If we don’t face reality, the planet burns. If we do face reality, our current socio-economic system and all we hold near and dear to our heart must be thrown into the garbage bin of history. Either way, there is pain. So what we to do? Be courageous. Be hopeful, but not a fool’s hope – not the hope that thinks some new technology or some hero will save the day so life can continue as it is. That is not hope – that is delusion. That is not courage – that is cowardice. I have learned from my own brush with death that life only goes on, different, and hopefully better [at least in the qualitative sense] when I accepted the loss of my good health. I could only live a good life when I accepted that there was not going back “to the good old days”. They are gone. They are gone for me. They are gone for our societal norms. Gone. Gone. Gone. With that comes grief. Deep grief. Grief that rips you apart.
Mental health is an ongoing dedication to reality at all costs. – Scott Peck
Let’s make this thought a bit more concrete with two examples. First, the story of a family member who is a drug addict. We tried to help him, but he was unable to face his internal demons. Whatever challenges he had, he could not overcome them, as it was always somebody’s else’s fault when things went off the rails. He talked the talk, but did not walk the walk. We talked about his need for a rehab program and found a 1 year rehab program, but he rejected that option. He did not really want to change, but clung onto his blame game. Eventually we had to ask him to leave as he started doing drugs behind our back and lying to us. He is now in a half-way house, where we wish him the best. Second, I had a bit of a debate with CACOR’s weekly speaker yesterday, Home Dixon, the CDN futurist thinker and author of the recent book “Commanding Hope”. He saw hope as essential to saving our society and I saw that hope for something new/better could only become realistic after we first let go of the desire to maintain our current way of life – it had to die for a new worldview and way of life to be born. He then used this example which brought us to agree on what is realistic hope. Imagine South Africa at the end of the Apartheid era in the 1980s. It looked like a blood bath was inevitable, as everybody knew that the Apartheid system was untenable, but nobody thought the regime of the day would let go of power. But they did. They let go. The apartheid leaders allowed a peaceful transition to a real democracy. This was hope that became reality. That is the kind of hope we both agreed we need today. But note my key point, the old system had to “let go” by those in power, people had to admit that the old way of life could no longer continue, before a “solution” to the problem could be born.
In a similar way I survived my brush with death because I could “let go” of what I had thought I needed to live the good life. You will survive the grief of letting go of our current way of life too. You just have to let go of what you had thought was ‘normal’ and change. In fact, I think that, IF you are supported and go through this catharsis with good friends and dear family members you trust and love, your future life will be better. Not better in the way we now thing of as better. Not a better car. Not a bigger house. Not more lovely vacations and cruises on the other side of the world. Not larger steaks. Rather, more belonging. More community. More meaning. More purpose. More joy. So, dear friend, together we can hope that we can face and accept the loss of our current, rather pathetic socio-economic system and worldview with humans are the centre of all that matters, and choose to embrace reality. The grief will be real. It will hurt. Our problems are not the problem [see quote below], rather not facing our problems is the problem. Once we admit that we have to let go and change we will have what really matters: our and the planet’s emotional health and our joy in living.
It is in the whole process in meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems fall forth our courage and our wisdom, indeed, they create our courage and wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and solving problems that we learn and create a better tomorrow. Scott Peck
Post-lude
I deliberately avoided the obvious question of “what’s next?” or “What is it that we are hoping for?”. That is a whole essay in itself, however, it clearly has to do with living within our limits, living out a worldview where humans are only part of the what matters, and reducing our consumption & population dramatically…
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