Last Week in the SPACE - Part 1

Claudia, Jessica, Jessica, Tara, Alice, Cordula, Gabrielle

a path or the path?

In From War to Peace Claudia Dommaschk writes,

A friend recently asked whether psychotherapy might be reinforcing the individualistic, hyper-independent culture so prevalent in the West. More specifically, he wondered if virtuous friendship and collective wisdom could offer many of the same benefits and perhaps something even more meaningful than what psychotherapy alone provides.

There is wisdom in this article, but there is more to the story.

After or in conjuntion with psychotherapy comes the work of integration in real life and this is where intimate, trusted relationships become essential.

I know the friend to whom Claudia refers as we are all members of the Wisdom Exchange, a small group of trusted friends able to have meaningful discussions that are transformational. Three times in my life I needed professional help and I value psychotherapy based my experiences, one which was very, very good. And I have done considerable work on myself alone over many years. Together these approaches to personal growth can be quite helpful. And now I am experiencing another path to growth within a small group of trusted others.

And from considerable experience with her, I can share that what Claudia offers could fill a book.

I’m grateful for the question. It offers me an opening to begin naming some of the themes at the heart of my upcoming book.

I do not often comment on articles by Jessica Wildfire who focuses on the dark side. However, intuitively, it seems to me that she has the capacity to wisely face doom. As she describes in her article, Mental Health, The Other Side of Prepping, this comes from her lived experience and yes, Jessica, I do want to hear about it.

Sometimes, people assume I’m new to doom or I’m one of those sheltered suburban types who’s never endured hardship. Most people don’t want to hear about it, but I’ve got to remind them that I did grow up feeling unsafe in my own home. I grew up with a parent who suffered from severe schizophrenia, the kind that brings patrol cars and ambulances to your house in the middle of the night and makes your neighbors wonder what’s going on.

At the age of 14, I knew what it felt like to spend entire nights in emergency rooms and then go to school the next day and lie to your friends. I knew what it was like to lock your door and cross your fingers. I knew what it was like to reach out to family and watch them turn their backs on you because your problems were too much for them to handle, and they had to abandon you. I knew what it was like to be a parent, because I had to take over my mom’s duties and help raise my brother. While my sheltered friends were freaking out over prom, I was buying groceries, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, helping my brother with his homework, and trying to get my mom to take her meds. My senior year, I spent many nights and weekends working as a cashier, dealing with strangers at the height of their entitlement. I wasn’t a very good surrogate parent, but I tried.

Another Jessica I follow, Jessica Böhme, asks a good question: Does Transformation Require that We Know Where We are Going?

Despite the profound appeal and experiential validation of letting go, I confess, I have always found these two poles - control and surrender, planning and emergence - to constitute a huge, persistent tension within me. One part of my mind, the pragmatic, perhaps conditioned part, constantly wonders: How can anything meaningful ever get done without making plans? How do complex projects get built? How do societies organize? How do we ensure basic needs are met without foresight and coordination?

Yet, another part of me, the part that has actually lived through my own existence, knows with certainty that I could never have anticipated, let alone planned, many of the greatest gifts, opportunities, and transformations that have occurred in my life.

I wish I had more time for the work of Tara van Dijk who feeds my interest in feminism with her article A FEMINIST AFFLICTION - Hysteric, Obsessive, Perverse and Psychotic Attachments to The Patriarchy.

My ongoing work on the elephant in the room of feminist discourse—namely, that feminism is in denial about how the patriarchy is history, dissolved by the changing forces and relations of capitalist development—distresses many feminists. They take offense at my thesis that, while patriarchy is analytically and theoretically useless today, The Patriarchy narrative is indispensable to feminist ideology and libidinal economy.

Another writer I wish I had more time for is Alice Evans who asks Can We Track the Great Gender Divergence on TV?

Is the secret to women’s liberation in your living room?

While each culture has a unique cultural inheritance, creating a spectrum of acceptability, conservatives and progressives are constantly battling to control state power and media platforms.

Cultural entertainment gets us hooked! Through exciting plot-twists and comic wit, viewers become engrossed in alternative realities. Imagination enables us to transcend our local communities and contemplate something different - whether that is moving to the city and forging a career or leaving abusive husbands and finding true love. Media can also resolve social coordination problems: whereas each individual may self-censor for fear of ostracism, television can make deviance appear prestigious, thereby encouraging wider emulation. The ‘Quiet Revolution’ unfolds on screen.

Cordula Frei is new to me but I have been keeping one eye on Parallax for several years. It seems to me, based on nothing but my intuition, that there is more healthy masculine and healthy feminine energy in Europe than in North America, and I have experience with all three countries on this side of the ocean. It seems to me that the USA in particular is currently experiencing a rise in toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. I appreciate seeing feminine energy at Parallax. And Cordula’s article, The Red Goddess Rising: Jean Gebser, Consciousness Mutation, and the Feminine Reawakening, fascinated me.

Who is the woman becoming? Not just the woman of contemporary society, but the woman who remembers — not only history, but deep time. Who is she in an era of consciousness mutation, and how might she embody a future not yet fully born?

As an aside, I have had my own journey with Jean Gebser and I tell that story on my website where I reported on the book Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness by Jeremy Johnson.

And I have an unsolicited message for Gabrielle Feather who is Finding the Middle Way.

Maybe the path forward isn’t about tearing it all down or retreating into the past. Maybe there’s a middle way, one that honours the Earth without discarding the genuine progress we’ve made. A way that doesn’t ask us to live like it’s 1600, but doesn’t sell our souls to a silicon future either.

Gabrielle, the path is perhaps best understood as a metamodern path which consists of many paths. Some will try to tear it all down and that seems necessary. Some will try to retreat into the past and that seems necessary. Some will seek a middle way and that seems necessary. And your path is your path and I appreciate you sharing your journey.

And now I will begin writing Last Week in the SPACE - Part 2.