photo credit: retron
In my last post I asked how we might reimagine society in the context of Britain’s recent riots.
If you haven’t already explored the comments, please do. You’ll be rewarded by compassionate, intelligent and imaginative debate, not knee-jerk reactions.
It seems clear that everyone, media, politicians, pundits and so-called ordinary people blame the riots at least in part on our desire for more “things”. But the political and economic concern around that is very different from mine: fix our broken society and education so more people can get jobs and can therefore afford to buy things, not loot them from stores.
And indeed that’s the way our economy works. But having more things doesn’t lead to happiness and it will lead to environmental catastrophe. I think we must buy much less.
Withdrawing our attention
In one comment to my post, Betty wrote:
Can we create a new world? Maybe it’s time that the average person opted out of all of these greedy monsters and just quit feeding them, just let them die. What if we all slowly began to be satisfied with less stuff and want better quality in our lives, to barter goods and services on a local level? To invest our time and money in each other rather than the stock market? Forget about the banks, the insurance companies, the big corporations and organize ourselves for a better quality of life? Can we do that? I think we have to.
This reminded me strongly of the Cherokee story of the two wolves, which some of you will know:
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil: he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good: he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Will it work?
So in the words of the advice we were probably all given at school: ignore the bully and he’ll leave you alone.
The thing is, I’m not sure he will.
Those of us slowly moving away from a consumerist way of life – we’re pretty few at the moment, but there are more and more of us, and I think we’ll reach our own tipping point soon. And then the bully will notice us.
I wonder what will happen next…
I wonder about that too. That machine has a lot of glitter at its disposal to try to lure us in.
I do get a little paranoid sometimes about what “the system” will try when the consumers tire of eating its sugar-laden low-nutritive someone-always-loses-and-its-not-the-rich-folks goods.
I think about Clarissa Pinkola Estes talking in Women Who Run With the Wolves about feeling like a tired grey old dog when she hears young girls talking as if there are no external predators out there. When she hears naive girls saying that if they can just work the world in the right way, all will be roses and sweetness, she knows that that girl in front of her is going to go a few rounds with the predator before she has her eyes opened.
Well, we’ve all certainly gone several rounds with this predator by now. I don’t know what its tactics will be if it loses its “supply”, but I do know that what I can do now about that is face my own predator and learn to deal with it.
I must say, though, when I read your para about so many different people blaming the riots on the desire for more “things”, it made me feel like, “No, no, no, no! That’s not so!” I think if anything the riots would have been more fuelled by our drowning already in the things we’ve got, and a desire for something we know not what. But hey, what do I know? :p
Sue recently posted..The Limitations of Language
Hi Sue, yes Clarissa Pinkola Estes refers to this in her audio talks “The Dangerous Old Woman”. And she talks – in the context of unpicking the story of Snow White – about the necessity of taking definitive destructive action when all other possibilities have been tried.
I LOVE what you say about it not being about the desire for more things. That’s a symptom, isn’t it? Underneath it’s much sadder and we are, as you say, drowning.
I ma 43 and a stay at home mum to a little boy of just four. We are home educating but I’m still disturbed at the subtle coercion of the authorities at every turn – the NHS doctors and dentists, library, some play groups &c – to “socialise” him. As though by removing him from the education system I’m shutting him up in a cupboard. I have to keep gently pointing out that I think it best for our family that he is educated at home and that we mix with other parents and children at home ed activites.
I think what I’m trying to say is that even though it has become apparent that the education system and economy are not working, there is already a great suspicion of those who choose a different path, even when it is well within the law. I strongly believe that by the time my boy is grown the world will be a very different place, one way or another, and I’m trying to prepare him for whatever comes.
Another point I’d like to make is that although we are relatively and cheerfully unmaterialistic – rented house, no car, secondhand clothes, furniture from Freecycle & charity shops &c – we are trapped in the economic system by debt. We didn’t incur it buying material goods but from circumstance – my husband’s going to uni as a mature student, a period of redundancy, and getting evicted from our property because the landlord didn’t pay his mortgage.
If I am to stay at home and nurture our boy (our absolute priority) my husband must work at a certain level to repay the debts and give us the cost of basic living. We would love to live somewhere more rural, and participate less in the consumerist society, but have this dreadful millstone around our necks. I’m sure many are in the same position. We have to feed the wolf a little or he will gobble us up
Poppy, welcome to my site and thanks for this very perceptive comment.
I really admire you for home-educating your boy. I know a few people who’ve done it, and it isn’t easy but has huge potential.
I agree that there is huge pressure in all kinds of ways to conform. Perhaps the authorities you mention feel their own role is under threat.
And your last point about having to feed the wolf a little is really important. I’m in the same situation. Not because of debt but because even whittling down what I buy and own, I have to pay the mortgage and eat. I think most of us compromise in one way or another. One of mine is still running a car, although it’s old and shared between two families. Still a big compromise though.
Hope that millstone lightens up a little for all of us!
Poppy,
I want to commend and encourage you in your efforts to raise and educate your child–you are truly on the right path.
In the 80s I lived nextdoor to public schoolteachers who were homeschooling their 4 daughters. At the time I wondered about it. How would the girls be socialized? How would they deal with the world as it is. Well, I shouldn’t have worried at all. I watched them grow up over the backfence. Every one of them grew up to be very well educated and articulate–able to carry on a conversation with anyone of any age or background. All were sought after by colleges (homeschoolers have an advantage here in the US in college admission). They too interacted with other homeschoolers, friends, neighbors and a church community. What they didn’t have was the “disadvantage” of being institutionalized for most of everyday in just one more broken system.
Listen to your own good sense!
Betty, such an interesting snippet that homeschoolers have an advantage in terms of college admission in the US.