Archives for November 2018

Our life’s are to be useful. Advice for productivity and outsourcing fills up bookstores, weekends and heads. We are to use our time wisely. 

Just that nobody actually knows what‘s useful. We assume – by what we learn, by what we constructed as society – that we know. 

We are starting to realize that our focus on utility can‘t be it. Because once we really start questioning ourselves if what we are doing at that moment is useful in a grander scheme, the answer is more often than not: it‘s useless. 

Since everything is useless anyways, why not embrace it and at least do something useless we enjoy. 

There is no good vs evil. No inner vs outer. No me vs you. No top-down vs bottom up. No left vs. right. Transformation is a total metamorphosis of our current understanding of the world, in which we realize that creating dualisms is the fundamental flaw of out thinking. The new understanding will be a „Yes, and…“ 

An alcoholic tells his spouse he wants to quit. He has all the best possible intentions that this time, it’s true. Despite, a few days later, he finds himself back at the bar. Nothing really changed. 

Just like him, we – as a society – want to quit destroying life on this planet. Just like him, despite all our best intentions, we find ourselves trapped. Nothing really changes. 

When you talk to your mum about environmental problems and the devastation you feel towards the planetary development, she will most likely nod understandably and subsequently ask you if you want whipped cream with your cake. Her response is totally awesome and appropriate.

Because talking about it is not really going to change anything. Your mum knows that. She has been there. Trying to save the world is not an outstandingly new idea. Many people tried. Many people failed.

I am not trying to be a jerk, but talking about it is not going to help.

You think “How can mum not be interested and listen to the most important topic of our time?”

Your mum thinks “I wonder if there is enough whipped cream for everyone…”

Talking about it usually makes you and people you talk to anxious. Of course, it is very frightening to think about the global challenges we are facing. But research found out, that bad news only rarely get us to change. When a smoker get’s the news that he has lung cancer, one of the first things he wants to do is to smoke a cigarette. People yarn for normality and safety, and no one wants to be reminded of a growing global threat.

The result? People don’t listen to you and you get pissed because they don’t listen to you.

Next time your mum asks you if you want cake, take it and enjoy.

Because one aspect of sustainability is, no matter what, about the connections you have to other people.

Your mum get’s that. That’s why she invited you in the first place. So shut up for a minute and eat some cake.

 

1. The question we need to ask ourselves for an internal transformation is: how do we experience being alive? 
2. The transformation we need to ask ourselves for an external transformation is: what‘s our role on this planet?

Taking into account that you can‘t answer one without the other, our experience on th planet is related to the role we play. 

Our understanding of the two, which is based on obsolete religious ideas, separates the two. Following the idea that the material and the spiritual are opposites is a flaw in our thinking. 

In order to create a future beyond sustainability we need to overcome this separation and address the material through the spiritual.