In typical fashion I am writing from the world view of a cis white woman. I am speaking to white folk, to look at ways we collude with white supremacy. I would like to cover some wide territory, to spark curiosity to support wonder. This is, as always, not exhaustive and full of cracks but if I wait for perfect I collude with harm so with that caveat, let’s begin.

in the natural world everything dies. A seed dies in order for the plant to grow, the plant dies in order for the soil to be nourished. Even the seemingly solid mountain is slowly eroding into a non-mountain state. In their own time all living things are somewhere on the life death life cycle. 

You could say anywhere on that cycle, that there is a will for life or a will for death. Is the tree in a process of dying or a process of living? What is it working towards? Most likely it depends on where you are placed at the time.

The will to live can be seen as the incredible raft of functions that the tree, for example, has to correct any harm being done to it. The sap rises and becomes gum to seal off an injury. The roots communicate harm to other plants to help them prepare. The tree knows to still it’s growth in the winter to preserve it from harm in the cold. This is what the will to live looks like – a self-righting impulse to continue on, to thrive.

Humans too have this force within them, this self-righting impulse to mitigate harm, to navigate threat.

The polyvagal theory is an observation of this in action. When we experience threat our systems automatically respond in ways that are designed to get us out of trouble.  We see a bull running at us and our sympathetic nervous system doesn’t give us time to think, it gives us the blast of adrenalin to run, leap over the fence and escape. The will to live. 

The will to live is not just about surviving, it’s about making the conditions for thriving and our incredible self-righting organism of our bodies support that too. We are not designed to just move around escaping threat, but we are also encoded with the self-righting mechanism to come, like many other herd animals,  to bring us to rest. Interestingly enough rest is not just about to being safe from the bull but also being with others with whom we are safe.  So, no physical threat and connected = safety.

With this embedded equation the will to live and thrive, how do we explain people who are not coming to rest, like people who are experiencing anxiety. We can say that in anxiety our sympathetic drive doesn’t turn off. We feel like they are living in “AAAARRR BULL COMING” mode all the time. We can’t come to rest. 

As a result a lot of things suffer; sleep, concentration, digestion, relationships, self-image etc. etc. When we don’t rest, we don’t thrive. 



Is this a mal-adaption? Is this just a personal issue? Should we just get over it and be sensible and see there’s no bull and get on with it?

Well. No. 

What about the dark cousin of anxiety, depression. Where is the will to live in that? Is that the will to die switched on? Is it the natural systemic response to overwhelming threat?

I would say inside depression is the will to live being confused or contorted somehow. I would say that the system gets overwhelmed by intractable challenge and, under resourced, goes into a shutdown state, aka depression. Depression, like all human experiences can be on a continuum and sometimes the darkness is so overwhelming it becomes the will to die. i think it’s a natural response to overwhelming threat to freeze – emotionally, socially, physically – it can turn up in many ways. 

Would it be great if these people who are living in a state of exhaustion and distress could just switch it off? Well hell yes.  But I think unless we look at the will to live, at the natural process that we come encoded with, we will continue to blame the individual, treat with cruel, disrespectful linear treatments and set them up for more distress.

I think we need to look at anxiety and it’s cousin depression, as natural responses to overwhelming threat.

What if we are able to look at anxiety and depression which is turning up in epidemic proportions in teenagers, and see what this pattern might be expressing or attempting to mitigate. 

What if instead of using mouse’s view - what is wrong with this person, what chemical imbalance are they exhibiting, what thought are they being captured by etc etc, we took the hawks view of the systemic issues our teens are facing and began to see what effect they might be having.

It’s  a modern western cultural norm to blame the individual for pathology and to seek perfection. Those are two  of the features of white supremacy. Ok let’s name them all to get them on the table.

Firstly I want to name this article to thank the author for their rich insights and to name the lineage of this part of my thinking From Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun, dRworks.(1)


• Perfectionism, 
• sense of urgency, 
• defensiveness, 
• quantity over quality, 
• worship of the written word, 
• only one right way, 
• paternalism, 
• either or thinking,  
• power hoarding, 
• fear of open conflict, 
• individualism, 
• progress is bigger, more,  
• objectivity, 
• right to comfort

if we see ourselves, our children, as being embedded in a culture with these paradigms and oppressions as part of the air we breathe, is it unreasonable to think these are threats that the will to live and the drive to thrive are impeded by? 

If we are constantly required to engage in a world that would have us be perfect, for example what does that do?  Let’s look at a young woman. She is supposed to be pleasing and beautiful. She is supposed to be successful, but not too successful, thin, accomplished, academic and sporty, smiley and engaging. I can feel the way these impossibly narrow criteria for approval set young women to walk on a knife edge.

Each week I meet with young women who are sliced by this knife edge, profoundly harmed by this cage of acceptability .They blame themselves for their failing to meet this inhumane ideal. They see their “failure’ as evidence of their unworthiness. Each week I try gently to say “fuck that shit” “this is not your fault” “you are not wrong to be buckling under this pressure”

But often they just think I am trying to be kind to them. I think they sometime see me as naïve or simple because as far as they can see I am just a whisper against the roar all around them.

They understand the world telling them that they are wrong and not that the world is wrong.

What if they are not wrong? What if their response to this world is healthy and adaptative? What if their system perceiving the threats all around them is working just as it should?  What if it’s a will to live screaming at them “get out, GET out, GET OUT!!!”?

What IF all the anxiety that is flooding the nervous systems of so many people is in part a response to the inhumane threat posed by white supremacy?. 

Of course, if you are in a Black body or a brown body, you have a disability, are not cis, or adhering to the gender binary, or you are old, these things are a real physical threat.  As a white person we are automatically privileged by this system. Imagine being this harmed and being privileged at the same time.

Make no mistake this system is one of deep harm making where very, very few are advantaged and it has us stepping over each other to get out of harm’s way. The criterion for thriving in this system are in being able to be the top of the pile and to get there we climb over the “imperfect”, the slow and gentle, the collective, the powerless…

What if this rise in anxiety and the smashing down of depression are our system saying fuck this shit. What if this will to flourish is saying we are at peak toxicity and we are not going to survive, let alone thrive?

My grandad was a coalminer so I lean into his legacy when I ask, what if all these heartbroken young people are the canaries singing “enough” while they can? What if with each cut they make they bleed out a little of the harm they are holding? What if with each negative thought they are hearing the whispers of the system we all participate in?

What if the treatments that tell them to work harder, think themselves lucky, be mindful are just corralling them closer to that which is hurting them?

Now of course, not all treatments and not all therapists and not all paradigms…. But  until we can be assured that we can help each other see how our oppression guarantees us harm we will be suffering from our own collusion and I don’t think we can afford to do that anymore.

IF you are willing to leap you might want to wonder about this with me too. What if, seeing we humans are, in our true state and origin, a part of the natural world. We have become so “superior” in western culture that the idea of humans as natural seems risible. But if you are willing to leap with me – what if we are seeing the rise in anxiety and depression because we are part of the natural world? What if the suffering of the natural world (at the hand of humans and mostly white humans) is calling us into a deeper sense of alarm?

What if this is again, a healthy response to a planet that is suffering and that we are irreducibly linked to? What if these young people’s systems are reading the distress of the planet and are able to take on their responsibility where many of the older generations have failed? What if they are living expressions of “we can’t do this anymore”?

I believe that if we see these young people, well, all of us with anxiety and depression, as purely pathological we collude with the paradigm of perfectionism, with either or thinking, with reluctance to confront what is really there. 

What if we can see our collective responsibility, we can honour the will to life being expressed by people with anxiety and depression? 

What if we could use this as a chance to listen to the grief, to stay with the discomfort and learn what’s really there?

What if we could listen, to each other and to our collective and we could disconnect both as individuals and as communities, from this toxic paradigm and start to reclaim our humanity? 

What if our systems could finally read each other as safe, because we are no longer treating ourselves like production machines?

What do you think?

What if we could honour our will to live outside of what this toxic system tells us is the only right way?

What if we could become safe with each other again?


https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-culture-characteristics.html

 
Caveat before we begin. This is not exhaustive and doesn’t look at every facet of how Modern Western Culture causes harm. It’s not my intention to gather all those threads. This is just the lens I am looking through today because i am a fallible woman who is learning to use her voice and not the oracle at delphi.
 
Modern Western Culture (MWC) is a collection of forces that unconsciously shape our social landscape. MWC has a central theme that tough and hard is good. We see that in the honouring of the warrior archetype, the ruthless businessman, the go get ‘em entrepreneur.
 
The be the best, winner takes all, no prizes for second, go hard or go home mentality is the air we breathe.
 
If we try to navigate life  in MWC without a critical eye, we can think the world is a pretty hard place. We learn quickly that neediness and vulnerability are considered weak and undesirable, that rest and disability and failing are not. an. option. We should just Do It ®. In relationships, news media, social media and current popular political movements we are encouraged to go hard regardless of suffering, regardless of the impact on others (aka the weak) and the planet.
 
To be human is to fail, it’s always going to mean stumbling and falling. It’s always going to be messy, painful, embarrassing, but this MWC thinking has us repelled by our own softness. It teaches us to be disgusted with our wobbliness as we learn, our own hurt and emotional response to the inevitable tender and difficult aspects of life.  .
 
We are always going to need things aka be needy and if we are growing and learning we will always make mistakes. When we believe that these very human responses to life are things to hide and be ashamed of we begin to make maladaptations.  In these mal-adaptations we attempt to shut down our neediness and instead try for invulnerability. We shut down to our failures and stop trying. We learn, for fuck’s sake, to think we have done well if we don’t cry at a funeral.
 
In a world where it’s not so much who we are, rather what we make that matters, we begin to jettison our innate humanness.  We value how we appear and what we produce over our truth and experience. We become the ones who say what we do rather than who we are. We are repelled by the very things that encourage us to belong; things like story-telling, vulnerability, connectedness and nurturance.
 
 
Nurturance.
 
The world nurture has its root in the word meaning to suckle or to nourish. A nurturing relationship then, is one in which we are nourished and where we are safe to bring our innocence and child-like tenderness.
 
In the view of the polyvagal theory regulating our system and coming into a sense of safety requires two things;
1. we need to make sure we are not under threat – there’s no sabre toothed tiger in the room and
2. We are able to connect and cooperate with trustworthy others.  This connection is predicated on the need for nurturance, we have to be safe to be vulnerable and to receive nourishment.
 
Despite it being the central quality for a sense of safety which is the bedrock of development and coping for all humans MWC would have us dispise nurturance.
 
In a dog eat dog world there is little place for nurturance.  
 
One of the biggest signals of value in MWC is where the money is. When you look at roles that are by nature engaged with nurturance you see the truth; parenting, childcare, teaching, nursing, death-work, all of these nurturing roles are low paid work. They don’t have value in MWC.
 
The impact of devaluing nurturance
How does this lack of value of nurturance impact us. Does it show up in our undervaluing of self-knowledge, the so called navel gazing of self-reflection? Does it show up in how self-care is considered a mani-pedi and a haircut or buying a bigger car? Does it show up in our vicious inner critic who has no limits on how cruel it can be if we stumble or fail? Does it show up in our rigidity, lack of rest and addiction to busyness? Are we lead to believe we are like a machine and drive ourselves into suffering while neglecting the signs along the way?
 
How does it show up in our relationship? Does it show up in our desire to give someone who is crying a tissue and a platitude, to hurry them into happy? The shiny impenetrable glaze of “think positive” and “look on the bright-side” that’s offered to people who are suffering? Does the nervous system, get what it needs? Is that need over-ridden so many times that we begin to feel we are intrinsically wrong? What does that do to a nervous system? To our wellbeing? To our ability to connect with others?
 
What does the social devaluing of nurturance do to the family system. Does it teach us to value pushing ahead and the striving into the outer world rather than the resting with and tending of nurturance. Does it have us stay busy in our outer lives rather than taking time to be with each other. Does it have us turn away from the vulnerabilities of ageing? Does it make people who are just mothers or just fathers or just guardians shrink or become invisible? Does it mean that the broken relationship to nurturance in a family system becomes a burden? Are children taking on the thinking that despite the neurobiological imperative, the fact they are missing nurturance means they are bad/faulty/not enough or too much? Does that mean we go into life trying to disguise our neediness and faultiness and doing so by not listening to ourselves and perpetuating the cycle?
 
What if on a global scale neediness is discouraged and shamed? Does it misshape neediness and the call to interconnectedness into entitlement?  Does the denial of our own natural neediness twist into greed. Does it turn up in the behaviour of the “weak” being exploited by the “strong”? In the powerful taking what they want and damn the consequences?
 
 
 
What if we repatriate neediness?
 
Chris Zydel an expressive arts therapist in San Francisco and general glorious human encourages her students to be

“needy greedy and proud of it.”
 
This invitation opens the door to self-acknowledgment. As that long-shut door creaks open, often what rushes in is hunger, grief and confusion. How long have we been waiting for someone to tell us it’s ok to want and to need? How do we learn to understand that which we have taken such pains to deny?
 
This invitation is the beginning of a quiet revolution. It’s in this nurturance that we start to uncouple from important parts of the harm-making of modern western culture.
 
It’s in the living into the acknowledgment of this woundedness that we begin to come into clarity; clarity about what we long for, clarity about what works and doesn’t work for us, clarity about what is true.
 
It’s in this state of clarity that we can begin to resource ourselves and fill our cups with what works, without having to grab everything, we learn what is enough.
 
It’s in this well nurtured, replete state that we begin to understand ourselves, that we begin to humanise. We learn to listen to our bodies, we learn to rest, we learn when to leap and when to wait. We learn about who is with us and who is harmful to us, who to trust and who to turn away from. We build healthier connections and respectfully see ourselves as part of the ecosystems of our lives. We learn to connect to meaning and our sense of purpose and live into that in a respectful way.
 
It’s within the gentle holding of nurturance that we learn to respect. When we see ourselves as worthy of respect, through the nurturing eyes of another, we come into a new relationship with enoughness. When we respect ourselves we learn to behave in honourable ways;  we learn to respect ourselves, our limits, of others, of the system around us.  We come into an interconnected and respectful relationship that acknowledges if we cause harm to ourselves, we cause harm to the interconnected system we are a part of.
 
It’s in this right relationship with nurturance and respect that we undo the imperatives of dominance and control that MWC is predicated on. It’s in this right relationship that we can begin to find solutions to the challenges of this broken paradigm. It’s in the arms of nurturance and respect that we become free to be human.

So fuck harden up. let's go soft. let's nourish and nurture. let's create a rebellion of tenderness. 

Are you in?