We're going to need more than
intellectual “armchair” understanding to come to grips with the
challenges we're facing. Analysis alone won't help us deal with the
emptiness or inadequacy we feel confronting a world in which our
economic fundamentals or our kid's future are in danger. All by itself
it won't help us "get" peak oil. It won't help us with the rage we feel
at the hubris that assumes it knows better than nature.
We don't
really get something until mind, heart, and belly are all engaged and
part of our understanding. We make crucial decisions - and we act - from
this deeper something, this “embodied knowing.” Embodied knowing is
what we really know and have made fully our own. It's not just a model
that we've read about or are tracking. No, we need to be actively
connected to and part of the situation we're understanding. We need to
be alive in it, even (or maybe especially) if it's scary.
Analytic knowledge certainly has a vital place. Every day I tune into Carolyn Baker's
news aggregation that goes by the name of Speaking Truth to Power.
Carolyn understands the value of the feeling dimensions too.
I also check in regularly with www.theautomaticearth.blogspot.com,
especially Stoneleigh's writings. I consider theautomaticearth must
reading on the unfolding economic situation. Her work, especially her
presentation “A Century of Challenges” has helped me understand the nuts
and bolts of the economic system, and the virtual certainty of a
profound deflationary depression and what it will look like.
Stoneleigh's recommendations, which are not the focus of her work,
amount to relocalization and community building. She also feels that the
banking system isn't secure and I agree with her. Check it out.
The point is, analysis has a vital place. But the heart of the way forward, what we're likely to act and build our future
on, comes from a deeper understanding that's on the far side of
analysis. We ignore it at our peril. Most of us default to staying just
where we are while armchair viewing the slow collapse of everything that
undermines where we are. It's the frog in the slowly heating water. And
there's a real alternative.
And it's this: there
are already a great number of people working actively co-creating a new
future, and you can too. Embodied understanding is alive and well and
waiting for you (and it gives more than it takes). Resources for
understanding this and taking next steps include Peter Block's book
Community, the structure of belonging (you can read the book at a glance
here), and Peter Block and John McKnight's book The Abundant Community.
They're books but quickly lead to action. For other hands on experience
check out the Art of Hosting and the Berkana Institute. Or Carolyn Baker's books.
We need new vantage points and you'll see them if you're looking. Most
planning and most news stories - and most right and left political
analyses as well - are continuations of tired political certainties.
Check whether what you're reading is an exercise in being a victim with
a bad oppressor, or a way to move make things better.
We have the
smarts we need, and the resources, to move ourselves forward.
Enslavement to the old story and model is the problem; allowing the new
is the emergent direction.
Look for what turns you into a
participant and leader - as opposed to a mere consumer of a future
someone else has designed. The world won't give us the luxury of
armchair viewing for much longer.
