21 December 2012 - End of the World?

Thinky thoughts today about 21 December 2012 – the end of the Mayan calendar. And thinking about something my dad said when I was over visiting him in Adelaide this weekend. He said to me during one of our many philosophical conversations: “I think there’s something in it. People all over the world are boiling over at the injustices. You can’t have 5% of the people in the world owning 90% of the world’s limited resources, while everyone else goes hungry. Things just can’t go on like this much longer.”  I paraphrase very slightly, but that’s the gist of it.

I’d never heard my dad talk like this before – of change in the wind, of injustice and people the world over being ready to address it. I’d never heard him talk about positive change. Mostly my dad has been a ‘the world sucks and that’s just the way it is’ type of guy. Mostly what I’d heard as a kid consisted of ‘it’s each man to himself…  money makes the world go around…. don’t be idealistic’. So to hear him talk about it in this way – only days after another friend of mine and I had a similar conversation, which was only days after my hairdresser started talking to me about related issues quite unprompted by me – got me to thinking.

There’s change in the wind. There’s no doubt in my mind.
Everywhere I go I have conversations with people that point to an awakening.

This may seem counterintuitive because everywhere I look I can also see people yelling at each other, talking past each other, being angrier than they’ve ever been, abusing each other, nay-saying, fearing, dismissing, being generally unhappy about things and also being sure that it’s completely someone else’s fault.

So how to account for those conversations. Conversations of empathy, of seeing that something is very wrong (or perhaps finally very right for change), of noticing that something’s got to give. Conversations of people finding their own path and figuring out how they can make a difference in the world. Conversations that point to a desire to create a better future, and not just that, but the certainty that the better future is within reach and in some ways utterly inevitable.

I could point to lots of ‘evidence’ and eloquent articles about how our current paradigm – the way we’ve structured things – is in the middle of a serious decline and disolution.
Articles like this one:  http://paulgilding.com/discussion-papers/scream-crash-boom-2

But for me what’s most ironic is that it is being enabled by the very thing that is now in the process of forming into something new – the principles that led to the industrial revolution which saw the emergence of widespread public education. The industrial revolution is in many ways I think partly responsible for the social revolution that has followed in its wake. A social movement that has seen many people rise out of poverty, women’s suffrage and the right to an education and a vote, a civil rights movement, the formation of unions and worker’s rights, the rise of the secular state, the rights of the child and banning of child labour, international bodies of cooperation like the UN, the banning and dismantling of slavery in Britain and the US, human rights charters, the incredible rise of environmentalism, LGBT rights, the Arab spring, corporate accountability, and the rise of a generation of people who are not religious but who are defining their own personal spirituality based on empathy and civic responsibility. Even Pussy Riot – a group of young feminists taking it to one of the most patriarchal societies in the world – and the outrage in the US over the GOP’s misogynistic platform points to a much-needed re-emergence of feminist thinking.

If you picture this all as a big bang, with its germination in the incredible intellectual progress and in many ways spiritual crises of the late 1800’s, we are only now starting to see how it is reframing and redesigning our world; and how it is beginning to impact even the most conservative countries and cultures. By anyone’s definition, the last 150 years have been privy to the most incredible social revolution and evolution of human consciousness that the world has ever seen.

Sometimes we get lost in the microscopic view of what is happening right now, and of the short-term rises and falls on a longer path. But pull out a bit and suddenly the bigger picture comes into view. You start to see that the change that began with the rise of the unions and the vote for women is still ongoing and that we are the generation stuck between what was and what will be.
That we are the generation  that gets to decide where to from here.

Yet how do we account for all the negativity. How do we account for Syria, and Putin, and the industrial-military complex, for the Tea Party and the rise of the extreme right. How to account for the corporate criminals and Wall Street greed, for the Andrew Bolts, Alan Jones’s and Tony Abbott’s of the world who feed and live off people’s fear of the unknown… who sow the seeds of division. How do we account for the two world wars, for Vietnam and Korea, and Afghanistan and Iraq, for 911.  For Israel and Palestine. In many ways this warfare and greed is not new – it’s just the same stuff of centuries past, repackaged into a convenient 24 hour news cycle.

(Although did you know, we are the most peaceful generation of humans in the history of our species: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html)  

In any case, to understand this on an archetypal and meta level, I look to Jung and his description of the Shadow. When talking about the Shadow, Jung wrote: "Everyone carries a shadow… and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

According to Jung (and Wikipedia) the shadow is instinctive and irrational and prone to projection. (That is it is good at turning a personal moral deficiency and inferiority and reflecting onto someone else).

But Jung also believed that while the shadow might be the dark and sinister part of a human being, it was also the seat of creativity and represented “the true spirit of life”.

For Jung the only way to deal with the shadow was to first see it and accept it in its entirety. That is to bring it out into the light for examination. In fact, he considered encountering the shadow as crucial to evolving consciousness and the breakdown of the constructed ‘persona’.

Putting it into my own words then, it seems to me that on any journey to become a more conscious, aware and empathetic person, we must first look at our shadow side – that part of us that we project onto others because it is too painful to admit it in ourselves.

Look at the way conversations between right-wing and left-wing people run in the online world and you will find ample evidence of projection. Both accuse each other of moral deficiency. Both accuse each other of intellectual-inferiority. Both accuse each other of hypocrisy. That is no accident to my way of thinking. We are mirroring each other… which is shadow-projection in practice.

I think that what is happening culturally now on a super-narrative level is the bringing of the shadow into our conscious awareness. If we are seeing an explosion of light and awareness and empathy, we are also seeing an explosion of fear and negativity. And it is no coincidence in my mind that we are seeing both at the same time.

Rather I think it is evidence that the old structures and belief systems around us are starting to finally dissolve and as they do human fear and negativity is hitting a high. It is everywhere to be seen and everyone can see it. People are finally starting to ask the question – why are we so afraid… and they are discovering that the answers lie often with ourselves, our belief systems, and the stories we are telling ourselves.

The only question then remains for me, what beliefs, stories and structures are we going to replace them with, and that in my mind is far from decided.  We are still writing that part. That is still vague and shrouded in future mist.

Martin Luther King once said: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”

I would say that maybe we are on the far-end of that arc now – a moment of technological, social and spiritual revolution. A time where the old structures are finally coming down. That what looks like destruction, is actually the communal shadow being integrated and bringing with it a moment of genuine creative potential.

I think that’s something worth celebrating.

Just a thought.

Why the environment?

Thinky Thoughts today on environmentalism and the question of why. I know a few of my friends have asked me why I’m so passionate about the environment. What is it that makes protecting this natural world of ours so important to me. Is it the koalas or the kangaroos. Is it cute fuzzy animals. Is it because whales are beautiful to look at or because baby seals are so sweet.

No to all of that. At least, that’s not the real reason. Yes, whales are beautiful and majestic. Yes, baby seals are like balls of cotton wool with big, black, earnest eyes that make you want to pick them up and schmoosh them. (Side note: one of the most endearing images for me of sheer guts and compassion is of Paul Watson, the Captain of the Sea Shepherd, carrying a baby seal in his arms and running away from a massive seal-hunters ship coming up behind him. This man is now being hounded by the legal systems of three countries because our law has been shanghaied by the corporates. That’s justice for you.)

My first environmental act was when I was seven or eight years old. I read a story in my mum’s Woman’s Weekly magazine about sealing. They had photos in it of a seal that had been clubbed to death. To this day, I’m not sure how such an important article got in Woman’s Day but there it was. I was horrified. My eight year old brain couldn’t understand why anyone – anyone – would do this to a helpless creature for any reason. What possible reason could there be for this violence?

I cut the photos out and pasted them in a letter. I used big red arrows to point to the pointless violence visited on this poor creature and I sent it to then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser with the words ‘Why Prime Minster? How could you let this happen?’

I got a letter back. It was a standard form letter – we support the regulations and guidelines set by Canada – but to this day I wonder about the public servant who ripped open my letter and read it first. Did he or she feel something? Did it move them? Did they for a moment consider doing something different from what they did every day?

I’ll never know.

So why environment? Is it really about the seals?

No. It’s about us. Scientists haven’t entirely figured it out yet, but they’ve figured out enough to know that we need the environment for our survival. I’m not just talking about for food, air or water. I’m not talking about the economic rationalist justification for why would should care. That insidious paradigm that dictates we must whittle everything down to a dollar value so that we can understand its worth.

I’m talking about our spiritual wellbeing and our health. We still don’t fully understand this communally, but the violence we visit upon our natural home is violence we visit upon ourselves. Every time we commit an act of terror on a species or creature or another human being, that chips away at our collective soul. The natural world exists in a balance and we are part of that balance. Were all the trees to go, and big open-cut mines to take their place, we couldn’t last long ourselves after that. Not in any form most of us would care to live in.

To see the price we’re paying for the path we’re taking look around you – look at our indigenous people and the wisdom we’re ignoring, look at our native fauna and flora, look at our dilapidated rivers, look at our polluted skies,  look at our acidifying oceans, our disappearing fish populations, our endangered wildlife, look at our bloodied and battered whales, look at our dead baby seals, look at our disappearing rainforests, look at the dismal, apocalyptic waste-land that is the Alberta Tar Sands. And don’t stop there. Look at our corrupt politicians, look at our broken political system, look at our culture ‘wars’ (yes, even here we must war with each other), look at our apathetic population (count me in that mix, because I could do more than I am), look at our cynicism, look at our societal obsession with beauty and passing, meaningless fads, look at our epidemic of depression, look at our suicide rates, look at our obsession with 'finding' happiness, look at our obsession with reality TV. (Christ! Look at that!)

Look at all of that and ask yourself – is it worth it? Did we get a good return on our investment for what we paid for with our priceless and irreplaceable treasures? Who’s profiting from this? And then ask yourself why we should allow individual profit to trump communal good. Does that really make any sense at all?

I don’t want to leave this on a sour note though, so I’ll go further. Because there is a further.

Look at the community groups that have sprung up all over the world to speak truth to power, look at the courage of the woman who’s been up a tree in Tasmania for months protesting – putting her life on hold for what she cares about, look at the scientists who are discovering new and renewable ways to power our lives, look at the technological advances we are making that promise a cleaner and better world. Look at our scientists and our healers, look at our children and their optimism and dreams, look at the Mars Rover, look at our artists. Look at the women and men out there creating, solving, caring about each other, working to save our trees, our lions, our elephants, our monkeys, our rivers, our tigers, our koalas, our Tasmanian devils, our poor, our needy, our sick and injured. Look at our doctors and nurses, look at our carers, look at our families. Look at the fact that for every selfish person there are ten of us who are not, look at what we’re capable of.

Look at what we’re capable of and ask yourself – why can’t we have the world that most of us want? What’s standing in our way? Is it them – those faceless men in power who have corrupted our system and each other? There’s less of them, more of us.

Look at our planet then turn and look at them, and ask yourself – as I am doing today – who will stand up to them if not us? Are we really going to let these bullies dictate what the rest of us have to deal with, pay for and put up with? Really? Bollocks.

Now one final thing – look at our favourite story heroes. The ones you always wanted to be. The Han Solos. The Luke Skywalkers. The Leias. The Frodos and Sams. The Aragorns and Gandalfs. Look at the Thors and the Iron Mans and the Xenas. Look at our Atreyus and our Harry Potters. It’s fiction... right?

But wait – we have things to defend and speak up for don’t we? Why couldn’t that be you and me?

Maybe the only thing that stands between the world we know we can create and the reality of creating it is you and me.

Just a thought.

Creation/ Destruction

Thinky thoughts today about creativity and destructiveness and how they work in our world. One is so easy and the other so hard. And yet, I see people around me being creative all the time (against all odds), so why does our media only predominantly tell stories of destructiveness.

It takes a lot of energy to create something. Whether it’s a technological advancement, a new policy, a house, a piece of art, a book, or just personal self-esteem – the act of creation takes energy and effort.

It takes a single moment to destroy that something. Whether by violence, cynicism, a cruel word, a swipe of the hand, or just neglect – the act of destruction takes neither intelligence nor real work.

Human creativity takes patience, determination, courage, boldness.
Human destructiveness takes ignorance, cowardice, mean-spiritedness, weakness.

An old-growth tree can take millennia to evolve, hundreds of years to grow, an hour to cut down.
A person’s self-esteem can take a lifetime to build, years of loving care to foster, one thoughtless or mean comment to undermine.
A book can take a lifetime to gestate, years to work through, a half a day to critique.
An individual is a one-off result of millennia of human evolution and universal creative action. They take a moment to kill.

One is the easy path. It requires minimal effort. It brings immediate satisfaction. It requires no imagination: “I am rage or ennui or cynicism. Hear me tear down.”

The other is a hard path. It requires self-awareness and responsibility. Commitment and determination. A willingness to put yourself out there. A willingness to be wrong: “I am work and sweat and effort. Hear me try hard.”

So why is it that we care more about the story of the person who did the shooting, or the person who failed, or the thing that doesn’t look like we want it to? There’s something infinitely more interesting happening all around us all the time – people quietly, and not so quietly in the case of an impro jam, going about the job of creating things. Despite the fact that we know that somewhere along the line someone will come past who through anger or defensiveness or sheer boredom will want to destroy our creations – we do it anyway.

Isn’t that the news story of the century? Isn’t that the real human triumph?

Just a thought.

The power of thanks

I’ve been thinking lately about gratitude. About the difference it makes and the way it can change your life.

For two years in a row now I’ve taken part in M.A.D. Woman’s Grateful in April initiative. The initiative requires you to express gratitude for one thing every day in April and post it publically. It’s amazing how shifting your focus in this small way can bring greater happiness – not just to ourselves but to others we interact with. It’s a small but powerful expression of good.

Then a couple of weeks ago I came upon a book in the bookstore that I felt compelled to buy. It’s called ‘The Magic’. It’s by the same woman who wrote ‘The Secret’. I didn’t altogether love the way ‘The Secret’ was written or mapped out but I felt compelled by this book. Turns out it’s all about gratitude. About how expressing gratitude can change your life.

That compelled me to try something new. So every day, I express gratitude for the things I find in my path. I thank the universe for trees, for the sky, for birds, for roads, for the people I love, for my sweetheart, for my sister, for my dad and his improving health, for my mum,, for lunch boxes, for the internet, for my friends, for my impro community, for the lessons I learn and the challenges I face, for the way those challenges help me to grow, for my job, for my work colleagues, for the grass, for the ants, for my cat, for beautiful clouds, for gorgeous ocean views, for the natural world, for wildlife, for videos of cute animals, for the dolphins Chris and I saw in Queensland, for Elvis the black cockatoo… you get the picture. I can’t ever run out of things to be grateful for. There’s just too much.

It’s improved my mental health to no end and I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of how gratitude can change your life.

That brings me to something that happened today that feels connected somehow – an expression of affirmation for the power of gratitude.

Avaaz sent me an email today. Avaaz sends me lots of emails. Some I read. Some I delete.

This one I was about to delete and would have if I hadn’t been running late to pick up my sister for work this morning. So I didn’t. I left it, thinking I would delete it later on when I got in front of the computer.

Except when I saw it sitting in my inbox I was compelled to read it. It was about an Avaaz member in England called Ria. She’s 65 and dying of terminal cancer. Her message was simple – it was a message of thanks for the peace and comfort it gave her in her condition to be part of a global community focused on changing the world for the better.

So Avaaz was inspired to thank her in return by setting up a facility that allowed the Avaaz community – including myself - to send Ria our own messages of hope and inspiration and thanks.

You can take part in this here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/ria_hope/?beXRccb&v=16620

Gratitude for gratitude. I am grateful for gratitude. That was my daily grateful just yesterday. And today it has played out, in real-time, in the most amazing way possible. Thanks to a lady dying of cancer in England.

With one email, Ria has changed the days and possibly the lives of thousands of people around the world. She’s inspired in me a hope that if there can be so many of us who share this desire for love and harmony, that the world is not so doomed after all. The world is not doomed at all.

I am grateful for gratitude. I am grateful for Ria.

The thing about gratitude is that once you start down its path, you notice how often and how unthinkingly we all moan and groan and complain about the smallest things – multiple times through the day on a daily basis. (My colleague next to me right now is complaining again about the incompetence of someone I don’t know. He does this often. Is his tendency to focus on the bad maybe part of the reason why he almost never meets anyone that is any good?)

If we switch this focus, not to ignore the things that upset us, but to focus on the things that don’t. To be consciously thankful for all the things we have that we take for granted in the world, imagine what that switch in energy and focus can do for our lives.

Could it maybe change the world?

Just a thought.

I believe therefore I am

Recently I had an experience I call life-changing. Something that I had been desiring for a very long time finally came into my life. That in and of itself would have been enough, but for me it was extra so because some time before I had made a decision that I would stop waiting for this thing to occur. 


I would stop feeling like a ‘victim’ of circumstance. I would bring this energy into my life for myself. And more than that, that it would be better than what I could imagine. That it would exceed my expectations and surprise me in ways I hadn’t even conceived of.

This prompted me to begin a process of self-examination. I looked at every belief and assumption I held about this thing. Every paradigm and framework I had built around it. And I started dismantling them. Because my reality was based strongly on beliefs that I had never questioned, but that were at the heart of my unhappiness about this thing - I questioned even the most foundational ideas I held and began exchanging them for beliefs that felt more true and life affirming to me. Then, I started acting in accordance with these new beliefs (as if they were already true) to cement them further and start bringing in for myself the things I had been looking for. I want to repeat this because it’s the most important part of it – to bring in for myself (rather than waiting for someone else to give me) the things I had been looking for.

I ignored the pundits. I ignored the ‘rules’. I ignored the magazines. I ignored what people told me ‘was’ and ‘wasn’t’ possible. I ignored the statistics. I ignored the critics. I created my own truth. And it worked. Beyond my imagining of it.

What it made me realise is that part of the reason we communally get so many things wrong is because we have constructed our world around beliefs we’ve rarely questioned… about the nature of things, about ourselves, our identity, our place in the universe, what we have to put up with, what we can expect… and we act in accordance with that. Which of course means we create it – like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We focus almost exclusively on everything we hate and dislike. Our complaint habit is quicker than our gratitude habit.

As a society it is hard to question the underlying paradigms around which we travel. So we keep creating the same stuff – poverty, war, environmental mismanagement, culture wars - even though it makes very few people really happy.

We believe things like: “it’s just the way the world is” and “I can’t make a difference anyway” and “people are inherently selfish and greedy, so I have to look out for myself first” and “money makes the world go around” and “that’s the way the world’s always been” and “all conservatives are like this” and “all liberals are like that”.

And we act from those beliefs.

Then we pretend that some unknown third force is the one that’s doing all of this to us, causing all of this to happen, creating all the misery. We throw responsibility at anyone and everything else except ourselves.

But we’re the ones making the choices. We’re the ones taking the risks or choosing not to take the risks. We’re the ones that choose to demonstrate courage or not to demonstrate courage. We’re the ones creating this. At first I found this an unhappy and terrifying thought. Is it really all up to me? Can’t I blame anyone else? Then, when I began to embrace it, I found it an incredibly liberating thought.

Here’s a question I heard not long ago, that sums it up nicely for me. How is it possible that 7 billion people can all essentially say they want the same thing – good health, security, love, peace, enough food to eat – and be so manifestly incapable of creating it?

I think it’s the underlying beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world. If you thought differently, you’d act differently. If you acted differently, your life would be different.

For example, you enter a room of friends and acquaintances. You believe those friends and acquaintances don’t really care about you being there. As a result, you act distance and aloof. Or maybe hurt. Or maybe needy. That creates a tension between you and your friends. They react to what they sense from you. That confirms your original belief about them. And so it goes.

Alternatively, if you entered a room where you believed you were loved – where you were grateful for everyone in that room - you would act entirely differently. Your reality would be completely different. Your friendships – different.

I really think it’s that simple. But first we have to look at ourselves for the answers. Place the responsibility more largely on ourselves. Examine our feelings. Is what I’m feeling really what is happening here?

Question: How would you behave if you chose to believe differently about the thing you’re most anxious about or fear in your life right now?

What is that thing? What do you currently believe about it? What do you think that means about you? What might your deeper truth be?

Most people would call me an idealist. And yet – it is utterly practical. Bad things can and do still happen. But even in those moments we can choose how we respond to them. We can choose what we believe about them. We can choose what we believe they mean.

Belief creates Thought. Thought creates Action. Action creates our Reality. 

To change our world we need to change what we do. To change what we do we need to change how we think and feel. And to change what we think and feel we need to question our beliefs. Our most fundamental beliefs about everything. Hang them out. Examine them. Tear them down. Throw them at the wall and watch if they bounce.

Just a thought.

Paying the priceless for the worthless

A thought I had some time ago...


There are people in this world who spend their time struggling to protect what's precious. There are people in this world who spend their time trying to create something good. Then there are people in this world who have dedicated their lives to nothing more than making money. This is not bad in and of itself except when the global community is forced to sacrifice things that took millenia to evolve and can never be replaced for those things that will be useless next year. 


Paying the priceless for the worthless. 


It all comes down to what we value. So what are you valuing today? 
And is it something irreplaceable or is it something that'll be worth a buck and half in ten years? 


Just a thought.

Gender in story

I’ve been thinking lately (I do a lot of that you'll notice) about women and how we are represented in the stories of the world. All stories – but mainly television and film. 


The problem with thinking about this is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The overwhelming disparity. The stereotyping. The hyper-sexualisation. The fact that as a woman I can see a film about men and still relate to it, but many men can’t relate to a film about women. (Thus the argument that females aren’t represented because men won’t watch films about us). The fact that even when I do see a kick-arse woman on film that she is generally the exception and not the rule, surrounded on all sides by men, interacting predominantly with men doesn't help. This is despite the fact that like many women, some of the most defining and important relationships in my life have been with other women. 


So what does that tell me about what Hollywood and the media thinks about these types of relationships? This then led to other thoughts of the role our stories play in constructing our world. 


Our stories reflect and set our beliefs. Our beliefs lead us to take action. Action that creates the world. (Did you know studies have found that the more TV girl’s watch, the less options they think they have in life? One of the reasons I so loved Xena when that show was on was it was the first time I’d seen someone who kind of looked like me as the hero – she was female, she was brunette and she was Greek. Jesus. I nearly wet my pants – as a kid I had to pretend to be Luke Skywalker or Atreyu or … you get the picture. Someone with a penis. Not someone whose genitalia looked like mine. On a related note, some years ago I was working on a script based on the life of Boudicca, the Celtic Queen who almost drove the Romans out of Britain. I envisaged it as a sort of female Braveheart. When I told a VCA-grad filmmaker about this idea, the answer I got was ‘you’d need to have lots of tits and arse… the world won’t buy a female action hero’. That was ten years ago. Not sure how much has changed since then). 


It’s my firm belief that the reasons for why the world is as it is can often be traced through and reflected in our stories. To see where a society is, ask it to share its stories with you. Of course this is a simplification of sorts – stories also delve, reflect, ask questions, seek answers. But when most of our stories are about men, feature men, look at the world through men’s eyes, and represent women in very limited ways – when at all – you have an answer of sorts for what is happening in the underbelly of our world. 


That’s not to say – the world sucks and men are to blame. Not at all. It’s just to say that we are unbalanced, and the world seems out of balance. And we desperately need the voices of our mothers, sisters and daughters to be heard, seen and understood in our collective narrative if we are to tell a different type of story. Let me put it another way – when 66% of the work in the world is done by women, and half the population of the world is female, why are our stories so out-of-whack with that reality. Where are all our women? 


This thinking then led me to other thoughts about the way that stories can expand or limit our creative potential. For example, when we play genre in impro our default is often to play what we’ve seen before – characters we recognise, the templates and archetypes and yes, stereotypes, we’ve been exposed to. And because those stereotypes are constructed in ways that often diminish the stories of women, our impro can sometimes do the same. We don’t have to be sexist to fall into this trap either. I’ve fallen into it. Many times. Simply by the way we respond, our innate instinct is to replay those stories we’ve seen again and again and again. 


If we’re going to change the world for the better, we need to expand the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And if we’re going to do that, a big part of it surely is to more fully embrace half the world’s storytellers. 


So what am I doing about it... well, I hope I'm writing a story where gender is less important than character, where at least half of it is explicitly told through the eyes of the women in the world (not because they're women, but because that's what serves the story), where the females are equally as competent and capable with story wants that transcend gender, but more importantly that both boys and girls will love to read. 


Inspiring I hope the next generation of storytellers to tell better and bigger stories of who we are and who we have the potential to be. 


Just a thought.