,i was listening to this podcast about the world's smartest animals
it was funny and thought provoking.
One of the contestants, and eventual winners, was the sperm whale.
Sperm whale won on the basis of being thought to have a "we consciousness," which meant that they thought and felt as a unit. If one sperm whale was suffering they felt that suffering and responded collectively.
I started to think what it might be like to live in a community where we truly felt as a we.
How difficult it would be to experience your fellow human's distress and humiliation, as if it were your own?
Would it be so easy to hurt each other? To incarcerate children on the border? Leave them to suffer indignity and humiliation?
And what about the planet? Imagine if we could feel we-ness with the earth. With the air's pollution, the river's choking, the fire's burning,
If we felt the we-ness of this place, I imagine things would be very different.
I wonder if part of us remembers being inextricably linked with each other, with our surroundings. I wonder if that is either our default setting; something that we knew in the days when we began to hunt and had ritual to engage with gratitude for the spirit of the deer that we were about to kill.
I wonder if that part of us knew just how to treat the land and the water we depended on because we were in relation with it. We had a "We consciousness".
I wonder if that part of us was selected out as we became more aggressive with each other, more territorial? If we began to lose the we consciousness as a defense against feeling too much when we got greedy or murderous with our neighbours?
I wonder if we are living in a we-consciousness deficit?
If our systems are struggling to cope with the lack of connection and belonging we are experiencing?
If the world around us is showing the result of this lack of we?
Is that why so many of us are living in a state of constant fight or flight? Why anxiety is rampant?
I wonder if that is why children are coming into this world in neurodiverse ways? Is the presence of young ones so averse to the noise and busyness, the harshness of chemicals and pollutants a readjustment to our we-ness?
Are we so biologically far from what it looks like to live in connection with our life support system - the planet and each other - that our systems are sounding the alarm?
I wonder if we are beginning to experience the end of the I-ness?
it was funny and thought provoking.
One of the contestants, and eventual winners, was the sperm whale.
Sperm whale won on the basis of being thought to have a "we consciousness," which meant that they thought and felt as a unit. If one sperm whale was suffering they felt that suffering and responded collectively.
I started to think what it might be like to live in a community where we truly felt as a we.
How difficult it would be to experience your fellow human's distress and humiliation, as if it were your own?
Would it be so easy to hurt each other? To incarcerate children on the border? Leave them to suffer indignity and humiliation?
And what about the planet? Imagine if we could feel we-ness with the earth. With the air's pollution, the river's choking, the fire's burning,
If we felt the we-ness of this place, I imagine things would be very different.
I wonder if part of us remembers being inextricably linked with each other, with our surroundings. I wonder if that is either our default setting; something that we knew in the days when we began to hunt and had ritual to engage with gratitude for the spirit of the deer that we were about to kill.
I wonder if that part of us knew just how to treat the land and the water we depended on because we were in relation with it. We had a "We consciousness".
I wonder if that part of us was selected out as we became more aggressive with each other, more territorial? If we began to lose the we consciousness as a defense against feeling too much when we got greedy or murderous with our neighbours?
I wonder if we are living in a we-consciousness deficit?
If our systems are struggling to cope with the lack of connection and belonging we are experiencing?
If the world around us is showing the result of this lack of we?
Is that why so many of us are living in a state of constant fight or flight? Why anxiety is rampant?
I wonder if that is why children are coming into this world in neurodiverse ways? Is the presence of young ones so averse to the noise and busyness, the harshness of chemicals and pollutants a readjustment to our we-ness?
Are we so biologically far from what it looks like to live in connection with our life support system - the planet and each other - that our systems are sounding the alarm?
I wonder if we are beginning to experience the end of the I-ness?
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