The Conversation: Making Sense of These Times
A Mighty Companions Project
"WHAT DO WE MAKE OF OURSELVES AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001?"

CONVERSATION ON BECOMING A FORCE – Page Two

[This is page two of our Conversation on Becoming a Force. Visit page one to read the conversation from the beginning.]

Suzanne writes:

Look, Jim – There is an excerpt in "Scientific American" from E.O. Wilson's, "The Future of Life," which talks about the need to shift from short term survival practices to what's long term – going from catering only to the separate self, to where oneness becomes clear to you. Understanding this – that we need to to tune ourselves in to another layer of reality – I think is the consciousness shift. And, then, you are teaching us how to do that.

Here are some quotes:

Humanity did not descend as angelic beings into this world. Nor are we aliens who colonized Earth. We evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as one organic miracle linked to others. The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness was our cradle and nursery, our school, and remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life. "That is the essence of environmentalism. It is the guiding principle of those devoted to the health of the planet. But it is not yet a general worldview, evidently not yet compelling enough to distract many people away from the primal diversions of sport, politics, religion, and private wealth...

The relative indifference to the environment springs, I believe, from deep within human nature. The human brain evidently evolved to commit itself emotionally only to a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen, and two or three generations into the future. To look neither far ahead nor far afield is elemental in a Darwinian sense. We are innately inclined to ignore any distant possibility not yet requiring examination. It is, people say, just good common sense. Why do they think in this shortsighted way? The reason is simple: it is a hardwired part of our Paleolithic heritage. For hundreds of millennia, those who worked for short-term gain within a small circle of relatives and friends lived longer and left more offspring – even when their collective striving caused their chiefdoms and empires to crumble around them. The long view that might have saved their distant descendants required a vision and extended altruism instinctively difficult to marshal. The great dilemma of environmental reasoning stems from this conflict between short-term and long-term values.

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Irv writes to Suzanne:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the thrust of your emails. I don't really think we can do what you are hoping to inspire. There is a logical flaw in it.

The state of being cannot be reached from an approach with any agenda, and I don't see how it can even be approached without having the agenda to motivate us. Those who may have reached it in the past – and I can imagine that it has been done – had to have come to it with clear, absolutely clear, minds. For better or worse, this is not our condition, given the present circumstances, and it is not just 'a hat you can decide to wear.' We are as tightly bound to our agenda as...well, as Bush is to his.

But it doesn't need to mean that all is lost. What we are really doing – all of us who care – is trying to 're-agenda consciousness' on a human-wide scale. As the present situation gets tighter and tighter, more and more acutely ironic, given the paradoxical similarity between the Bush agenda and the Sharon agenda, it may begin to dawn on people that the agenda, itself, is bankrupt – as much for us as it is for Israel.

But it is a tight battle of ideologies shaping up, and the screws will likely get tighter as the summer moves along. The Palestinians will bomb again, and the Israelites will invade again, and it will take a lot more tragedy before some really fresh thinking begins to come in on it. More likely, yet, it will take a nuclear disaster...somewhere! And humanity will be on a knife-edge of decision on what's to be done with it.

You and I and 'our kind' have only one kind of power in the situation, and that is the power of consciousness. Enough of us will prevail...if there are enough of us. There is nothing wrong with thinking breakthrough, so long as you don't risk either burnout or apathy when breakthrough doesn't so readily arrive.

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Suzanne responds to Irv:

Ah well, what else is new? Then again, chewing on possibility can only get you depressed. Do we know this scenario will play out this way? No. So there's a kick myself dysfunction in predicating behavior on it. You don't need the world to beat you up if you volunteer like this. So, not to be self abusive is to look ahead. It's the only direction that's real, and you don't know how it will be.

I've got a note kicking around here that says, "Remove discontent. Desire, without discontent for what you don't get."

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Jim Dreaver writes:

Good comments, Suzanne, in your latest update.

I appreciate your perspective, though I still believe we need to militarily hammer the terrorists, don't give 'em an inch to breathe. Al Qaeda and their ilk are ALREADY committed to our destruction, regardless of whether we retaliate or not. If we don't fight back, it will just make it easier for them to achieve their Hitlerian goals. Honor the idealist, peace-loving view, yes, but at the same time let's not forget who we are dealing with here.

I visited the crop circle pictures [hit "Steve Pattersons Crop Circles," and then keep hitting "next"].... I don't know how they got there, but they sure are beautiful!

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Suzanne responds to Jim:

The argument isn't against the use of force, but that a war is different from a criminal action. We are in a perpetual, unwinnable war, hurting people wholesale, instead of an operation that would target guilty persons. If you disagree, what military deployment do you support?

Nobody knows how the crop circles got there – the only thing we know is that it's not us!!!

And thanks for sending the excerpt from the Intro to your new book. Sounds good. There's some thrust I keep thinking should be popularized – even before a cogent path like yours is presented – for people to get it that everyone needs to do the work, whatever path they take, of tuning into the larger reality we are swimming in. You start the chapter with this:

"To accomplish anything worthwhile in life, you must have a goal. You must set an intention. You must start out with the end in mind, so you know where you are going."

I think this is very good. But is there something even prior to this to cheerlead for, re how vital it is for everyone to get on the path? Maybe it's in other parts of the book. But I've been thinking it's not the story we generally tell – as we talk about at the start of this conversation.

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Elihu Edelson writes:

Just learned about your site from an old high school classmate. I publish the print zine Both Sides Now, which is very interested in the crop circle phenomenon, and wants to be kept up to date. We are also interested in the political implications. The last issue had a picture of the giant crop circle.

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Suzanne responds:

We've put you on our list for TheConversation.org, to keep you tuned into us. And we'll subscribe to your zine – grateful that you draw what's best from many good sources. That's what I do, too, and believe that this sort of thing is tremendously useful to others, saving them the effort that we are making to pore through so much. I presume you do this for love, not money, which is lovely. How many people subscribe, and is there any interaction among them?

I see that we are barking up the same trees, and am glad to be in touch. Our site has been circulated so that new people come to our list from people I don't know, as in your case. I think that horizontal communication is by and large lacking, and hopefully the resonance among those drawn to my site will make something sizzly. I encourage you to share your thoughts...

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Elihu responds:

It was a delightful surprise to hear from you so soon. You seem to have your hands full keeping so many balls juggled in the air. Yes, I do not make money off BSN. It costs some, but not too much. Often wonder if I do it for love or compulsion. More of a form of expression, like art (which is my vocation). Just have ideas I want to communicate.

Only a little over 100 copies go out, and only a small fraction is paid subscriptions. Even though BSN has been around for years, it's hard to get known. At that I get almost no feedback from subscribers, and know of only a bit of interaction (maybe swaps). I think of it as sending out messages in bottles, not knowing where they'll wind up. Also relate to the "Butterfly Effect." I really shouldn't charge you for a subscription, seeing as it's kind of a swap. I also realize that I didn't invite you to send in copy for a networking ad, similar to those in BSN and on the contact page of the BSN web site, so you are now hereby invited. If you like, I can also put in a plug for you on the PsychicChildren site, which turned into a sort of chat place about Indigos.

It will take a little time to get out the next BSN and update the web site. I just retired from an art teaching job so I can put the time & energy into my own projects, besides which I'm 77 (magic #). While working, things piled up incredibly at home. My younger son is coming to help for the month of July, so I hope that afterward I'll be able to function better.

Looking forward to your postings...

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Suzanne responds:

Happy to pay – it's such a little bit, and you've got postage and paper. But I feel your heart, beating with what we need more of.

The "contact" page refers to what you call "other sites" on your site, yes? I'd be happy to be amongst them.

You can have your own say about my sites, or perhaps this:

"Making Sense of These Times" – http://www.theconversation.org, with a good eye for posting the best of the bests written since 9/11, offering a chance for perceptive people who are appalled at the government's policies to create a much needed alignment. A sister site from the same people deals with the fascinating crop circle phenomenon, a hope on the horizon for a shift of consciousness that could get us out of the mess we are in: http://www.mightycompanions.org/cropcircles.

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