Damned If I Do...

... damned if I don't...

How to get from here...

Right at this moment, I feel we are a mess, as a species...

Daily, in every place I look, I see/hear/feel a harsh, cruel darkness descending on us...

We've been in this place before, I know...

We could be excused for that in the Middle Ages and even up to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, because it could be argued that we didn't know any better and/also didn't have the technology to do better, for the planet, for our fellow beings on the planet, for our fellow humans...

But that excuse is no longer valid...

So now we are in the midst of a final struggle, where we either commit, finally, to doing what we know is healthy for all life on the planet, or we drag much of life with us into a body and soul-killing blackness, from which we might never emerge...

I want to turn my back on it all and just do the best I can with what I have for me and the boy - AND - at the same time, that feels like collusion, collaboration - being like the Germans who knew what was going on under Hitler and turned their heads and hearts away...

And this time, it's a global issue, occurring on the environmental, economic, political, social, psychological, spiritual levels, all at once...

How to keep holding the space, doing what I can to push back against the blackness, make space for more light to come in, and stay present for the boy, stay sane, clear, tranquil, take care of our physical, emotional, spiritual needs?

... to here:

"The tranquil clarity, which is devoid of mental turmoil, alone is the samadhi which is the firm base for liberation.

By earnestly trying to destroy the deceptive mental turmoil, experience that samadhi as the peaceful consciousness which is inner clarity.

In yoga the term samadhi refers to some kind of trance and there are various kinds of samadhi.

But the samadhi I speak of is different.

It is sahaja samadhi.

From here you have samadhana [steadiness] and you remain calm and composed even while you are active. 

You realize that you are moved by the deeper real Self within.

You have no worries, no anxieties, no cares, for you come to realize that there is nothing belonging to you.

You know that everything is done by something with which you are in conscious union."

~Ramana Maharshi

I obviously haven't reached that state yet!

I get to it sometimes, for several moment, hours, a day even...

AND more often than not, I am so tired and depressed watching this train wreck happening all around me on so many levels, in so many arenas...

I've been thinking along several lines...

One is the concept of non-attachment which I think is related to sahaja samadhi, and I'll write about that in another post...

The other is the realisation that life in this reality IS about movement and change and our own participation, responsibility in that...

AND that I'm not sure anything in our current model can be saved...

Bucky Fuller said you cant fix a broken system - that you have to create something new alongside it... 

And who was it that said that you can't find solutions using the same thought processes that created the problems in the first place?

One idea that's been percolating in my thoughts has been that of using the Dual Power Strategy to move from here to there...

"Dual power is a method of struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society.    It presupposes a pre-existing, fundamentally flawed social order.

 

Within that society, those who envision a different future create alternative institutions (AIs) that embody their vision.

 

AIs are places for experimentation with new social forms as well as places for liberation for those who are oppressed within the larger society.   As AIs spread and diversify, they take on more and more of the functions of a larger social system: creating over time an "alternative social infrastructure" that fulfills economic, political, social, and cultural needs.   In addition to their direct functions, AIs demonstrate the viability of new ways of organizing society, and attract interest to the ideals behind them.

As the ideological monopoly of dominant institutions is broken and people increasingly rely on AIs, those who benefited from existing arrangements may seek to dismantle their upstart competitors.

 

At the same time, those who seek fundamental changes in society or who find the alternative ways of organizing it valuable, may seek to enlarge and strengthen the alternative infrastructure.

 

Counter institutions (XIs) are created both to defend the AIs and to promote their growth. These work to challenge and attack the status quo while creating, defending, and securing space for opposition and alternative institutions.  They do this with everything from political protests, to direct appropriation (of plantations, government buildings, factories, etc.) for the use of alternative institutions, to civil disobedience or armed resistance.

 

The line between AIs and XIs is seldom entirely clear as many alternative institutions are also self-promoting or defending.   Together the AIs and XIs form an alternative source of power in society which is "necessarily autonomous from, and competitive with, the dominant system, seeking to encroach upon the latter's domain, and, eventually, to replace it."

During the process of building the alternative institutions and the ideology that supports them, the advantage of dual power is the creation of real, and not merely political, momentum towards the revolutionary transformation of society.

 

Actual changes are ongoing, rather than postponed to a revolutionary moment, so needs unmet by the pre-existing order are being met during the struggle and no sector of society is told that its concerns can only be dealt with after victory is achieved.  That is, creation of AIs and the political space for them has intrinsic benefits, apart from the advancement of the revolutionary project.

 

Over the course of building AIs, the society at large is empowered, committed to change, and skilled in running society. Simultaneously, the credibility of a revolutionary vision is increased immensely by putting it into practice and by refining and improving it over time.

 

It is also conceivable that factional splits between revolutionaries and reformers (and all the shades in between) could be reduced by having a common project that both find useful. Those forces that would be sent to suppress a revolutionary movement find themselves confronting people who have taken control over their own lives, rather than armed cadre attempting to impose a vision on the country, potentially obviating military conflict or at least reducing its severity.

Successful dual power rebellions end with the acceptance of the new social forms by much of the populace and the realization by the old rulers that they are no longer capable of using their systems of force against the revolutionary movement.  This can occur because non-cooperation has crippled the old structures of power, because too few people remain loyal to the old rulers to enforce their will, or because the rulers themselves undergo an ideological conversion.

 

At this point, there is not general confusion.   The disappearance of old leaders and structures of power is accommodated by the expansion of the alternative system.

 

The alleged "necessity" for a revolutionary vanguard to guide the revolutionary impulse is shown to have no basis: because the people have already learned how to govern their own affairs, they need no tutelage from above.

 

The possibility of co-option is minimized: "When the people recognize their true power, it cannot be taken away by rhetoric or […] imposition."

Dual power is a strategy, rather than an ideology, and it could plausibly be used to advance a variety of forms of social change.

 

However, the advantages of the strategy make it most compatible with perspectives that emphasize the exercise of power at the community level, that seek to make the revolutionary movement accountable to the people, that see the capability to revision and transform society as common rather than rare, and that seek decentralized forms of power.

 

Call this version of the strategy grassroots dual power, the bottom-up transformation and replacement of the mechanisms of society."

~ Wikipedia

I can't see any way of fixing what we are living with/through now...

So...

I want to use my limited energy on building something new using the Dual Power strategy, approaching it, as a friend suggested, with a spirit of generosity, shifting from the place of problems and deficits (or even finding solutions to these problems) to valuing people for the gifts they bring to community...