Around this time last year, I was staying at a retreat center in rural Netherlands. The area is called Riverland and that is totally apt. In the middle of the Netherlands the Meuse from France and the Rhine, from Germany make their way to the North Sea, by then swollen to mighty rivers that flood the surrounding lands in spring. In winter it’s usually windy, bone chilling cold and muddy under grey skies. Not without a certain tranquil beauty.Apart from lone walks along the dikes overlooking icy rivers and muddy banks, there was not much else to do but go inside. Inside my cozy attic room at the old retreat farm house, and inside my own attic of mind and consciousness. Right when I had about had it with inner work and was planning on moving back to the sunny Southern United States, COVID hit. For many people, COVID changed everything: the way they worked or lost their work altogether; the way they socialized or now were confronted with their immediate exasperating families. For me, not so much. It was as if I were told to go deeper, if I wanted to or not.
Now, 2020 has come and gone. We all have witnessed and experienced what has happened. So let me share a couple of significant, empirical observations, which I have tried to keep as objective as I could.
OUR ECONOMIC. ECOLOGICAL, CULTURAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WORLD IS A SEMI-CHAOTIC SYSTEM
Key characteristics of such a system include unpredictability, and there are always multiple causes and multiple effects. Let’s be clear here. This is not just one incidental, weird, virus gone wrong. There are hundreds of known Corona viruses, almost all harmless to humans. No, we are dealing here with a normal virus that simply was able to jump from animal, bird, bat, mink, whatever, …to humans, because we have turned the pathways that make it easy for a virus to mutate and jump into highways. Or in scientific terms… we have massively increased the risk that such contaminations (jumps) will happen. With our relentless subsumption of nature, industrial farming and multifarious and frenetic global interactions, shipping whatever living stuff, including ourselves, all over the globe, this risk was bound to increase to 1 (one) and thus would occur. We have been creating a physical, ecological and social science experiment, on a global scale that we can’t understand let alone control.
APPROPRIATE MEANING MAKING IS CHALLENGING FOR MANY
We do not understand humanity’s role as described above, and clearly most of us have not been taught to think in terms of risk, chance, and patterns, i.e., systems. Accordingly we are unable to imagine sensible approaches to improve the situation we are in. Our leaders in government and business are desperate to go back to ‘normal.’ Forget it! Again, according to systems science, the old normal is gone. A new, unknown, ‘normal’ will be reached once the system settles within it’s new parameters.
Worrisome is that many ordinary people resort to improbable theories or blaming one cause or group, be it China, Bill Gates, or a nefarious power group. This is putting the cart before the horse. The interests that hold the power, which include Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the Chinese government, are indeed powerful and they are off the mark and therefore an impediment. But they are simply responding and taking charge in the only way they know, which is exactly the outmoded way that got us in our predicament. This speaks to stupidity, and certainly not to a clever theory.
On top of all this, anger and frustration have burst out into the open after simmering under the surface for very long (think BLM). Regardless of epidemiological and economical fixes, the world will have to heal it’s social dysfunctionalities and festering wounds that have burst open. It will also have to heal its systemic connections with the natural world.
A COSMIC PERSPECTIVE
What is it that we should learn from this global networked chaos of crises? There is a certain wry, ironic elegance to what is playing out. Afterall, it’s the tiniest of organisms from far away that brought our mighty industrial titanic world to a halt. Rugged individualism at the personal or national scale is becoming fallacious, because we are now experiencing that what happens to one, happens to all. Life is interconnected. The Earth is undeniably alive, because it consists of one huge living ecosystem. But what if with that aliveness also came intelligence? Then, what could be the obvious message that she is sending us?
Clearly, we have been forced to go inside, literally. I remember my attic near the relentlessly flowing waters clearly. But weren’t our homes or rooms also a metaphor for our own physical and mental interiors? Going inside, often alone, we were confronted with hard questions concerning our existence. I am convinced that the underlying message that the Earth has for us by means of the bitty COVID-19 virus is this:
“Get that all life is interconnected, take responsibility and live within the means and laws of the bio-spiritual ecology of your home, the Earth, and do it NOW!”
The question, of course, is…. Are we getting it? On the surface the answer seems to be no. Yet, looking deeper I see signs of hope. When we suffer we evolve the most, and many of us are suffering. The hardship and confrontation with both external facts of life and our Selfs and selves is instigating change even if we can’t see it yet. With so much outer change, there has to be inner change happening as well. “As within so without!”
Paradoxically, the vehement signs of denial are also a sign of hope. For those dealing with trauma, and the whole world is in a collective trauma!, this is a normal reaction, and is to be followed by grief and finally acceptance, and then we can start to heal. The word to heal means to become whole.
Also, I am noticing a groundswell of numerous small bands of people that are organizing to create more holistic and wholesome forms of living, from eco-villages and neighborhoods to digital platforms where people can support each other. There is a deep and growing awareness that we will change regardless if we want to, and that opportunities are there for those who look. At the 2nd.life, we are working on creating a user-friendly, learning tech platform to better enable and support these initiatives. Much work lies ahead, but we have a formidable ally. The Earth is there to help, if and only if, we heed her warnings, listen and learn fast. When we align ourselves with her flows, we can prosper. If we don’t, systems science will tell us that we will have another unpredictable global shocker soon that will likely be worse than COVID-19.
A hopeful 2021 you all!
