Context
I like you am fearfully and wonderfully made (Brand, P and Yancey, P. 1981), literally awesome and unique. We were made to laugh and cry and sing. Born to hug and dance and touch. Destined to be free and to love being in close community with others. Interconnected. And blessed with a natural immunity to disease that has evolved and strengthened over millions of years. We have a built-in capacity to wrestle with issues, discern truth, and make sense of things – to see what we see.
A prophecy come true?
We should look for truth and wisdom in a myriad of sources - people, disciplines, information channels. Science and the arts. As widely as possible (Narrow-view peer reviews toe the party line and often distort and compromise the truth). Adopt left and right brain wisdom.
This pearl is from the New Testament, a mentoring letter written by Paul while in jail in Rome to Timothy in Ephesus (Turkey). It is in four sections that cover looking after what you believe in, suffering hardship for that if necessary, staying true to what you believe in and being inclusive – sharing with others. Staying true was the bit that captured my attention.
Paul’s prophesied context is that people will become “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive… without love, unforgiving, slanderous, brutal… treacherous, rash, conceited …” (2 Tim 3: 2 – 4)
All of what was predicted can be verified by recent sound, valid and reliable research and reasoning and captured in previous newsletters. In summary, the following trends and conditions have been exposed:
- Narcissism, boastfulness, being better than, arrogance are all on the rise (Jarrett, C. 2019)
- Love of wealth, power and control of others prevails (from big corporate to individual levels)
- Compassion, empathy, gratefulness and forgiveness are all on the decline (Williams, G. 2020)
- Divisiveness and polarisation is spreading rampantly
- Deceit, treacherous manipulation by fear and falsehoods, divide and rule, and the coercive employment of propaganda characterises government's imposition of Draconian societal controls (Robinson, P. Dr 2021) - especially now under the guise of a covid-19 “pandemic”.
Humanity has been slowly drifting into World where “winners” take all; capitalism is often irresponsible; the power - holders and wealthy “elites” exhibit a MacBeth-type, falling-over-itself, “vaulting ambition”; fake news, lies and deception are the order of the day; faith is placed exclusively in the rational, scientific, the military and the technological - for the determination of humanity’s sense-making, direction and values. The puppet masters are busy engineering and bringing into being a new world that remodels who we are, how we live and relate to each other, and become pawns in the hands of the wealthy elite and political power-holders. A dramatically different new model is urgently needed. (Williams, G et al. 2021)
(20 years ago, Peter Senge pointed out the dangers of a “shifting the burden” dynamic becoming imbedded in our culture. Instead of addressing human development as whole persons we have increased our reliance on science and technology for solutions to symptomatic problems, all the while suppressing our poetic, artistic, nature-inspired and spiritual natures and other human qualities and capacities. A trap we have fallen into. (Senge, P. et al. 2004) This had led to widespread individual and collective trauma and to the very real danger of “augmented” humanism. A new narrative is now an absolute imperative).
A road to recovery?
We have lost a great deal of our social conscience, sense of justice, ‘old’ community values, care for the planet, a sense of meaning based on higher purpose, our very humanity. In our efforts to recapture this we could heed Paul’s charge to Timothy to live a life of good conduct characterised by the virtues of “purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance…”. For me, a part of his exhortation at the individual level is to shift away from the small p’s (increasingly driven by our addiction to information and communication technologies and algorithmic manipulation and peer pressure arising from that addiction) - to the BIG P’s as humanitarian drivers of our individual character, values and behaviours, and our interconnectedness and belonging:
Regarding this values-shift, a good start-point may be to contemplate, in order to discern:
- where and how we have gone wrong personally,
- what keeps us locked into values, habits and behaviours that become harmful if not balanced (the small p’s) by the higher values and virtues (the Big P’s),
- what makes us susceptible to authoritarian (even totalitarian) and societal pressures and conditioning (Luke Andreski’s clear analyses , moral compass and unique expression have been of great value. (Andreski, L. 2021)),
- how to regain and reinforce our interconnectedness and togetherness and escape what the puppet masters would have: separation, division, distancing and isolation for their control purposes. What Brand and Yancey say about moral and ethical laws, using the analogy of the human body, applies also to our need for interconnectivity and community as we share the web of life. “If you examine one law, like a random bone plucked from a pile, it may seem strangely shaped and illogical because laws, like bones, are designed for the complex, connected needs of a whole body”. (Brand, P and Yancey, P. 1984) We need each other in order to be fully human. Remember this?!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVoPG9HtYF8
- what concerns us most of the time and where our perspectives, world views and resultant behaviours have become swamped and skewed
Here is a depiction of where a lot of us might be in our thinking patterns at the present time:
I believe that a refocus:
- on humanity’s awesome potential, freedom and equality
- on what could be put right again,
- and on an unselfish giving to and compassionate sharing with our wider family (community and society), the home which we inhabit (the environment, nature, the planet) and how we subsist by contributing and earning, bartering, giving (the economy)
could surely lead to humanity recovering and rising once more (as Buddhism explains) like a bird using two wings to fly – the wings of Wisdom and Compassion?
And then we will sing and hug and trust and cry, commune and be human, be who we are.
References
Andreski, Luke (2021):
The 21st Century lies pandemic
A shield of values
A wall of truth
The Socrates Bomb
Chaplin’s Stiletto
Brand, Paul Dr and Yancey, Philip (1984) Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Hodder and Stoughton
Jarrett, Christian (2019) Psychopaths and Narcissists Have Hogged the Limelight, Now It’s Time to Explore the Saintlier Side of Human Personality, Say Researchers, as They Announce a Test of The “Light Triad” Traits British Psychological Society, Research Digest 22nd March, 2019
Robinson, Piers, Dr (2021) Propoganda Allowed Extraordinary Measures Interviewed on Asia Pacific Today 4th August, 2021
Senge, Peter; Scharmer, C. Otto; Jaworski, Joseph and Flowers, Betty Sue (2004) Presence: exploring profound change in people, organizations and society Society for Organizational Learning
Williams, Graham; Gargiulo, Terrence and Bánhegyi, Stévé (2021) Story-Bridging: from walls to bridges with story - exploring ways of countering the societal, economic and environmental impacts of negative, belittling, divisive, harmful and false narratives. Unpublished manuscript
Williams, Graham (2020) Are We Becoming Less Compassionate, Less Fully Human? How Might We Return To What We May Be?
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