The Torpor of Being a "Good Person"
We are but seeds.
When, in times of crisis, we venture onto the thresholds of knowledge, instinctively looking for other references to sustain us, we are initially led to open up to other ways of being, thinking, feeling and doing. Curiously, the discomfort of "not knowing" doesn't allow us to savour the process as a discovery, leaving us fragmented, anxious and hurt, in cognitive dissonance where we innocently demand that the known references and paradigms still work.
Especially when we feel that other ways of "being in the world" are directly confronting us, probing and exposing our ignorance and supposed innocence. We react with pain and groan in defence of a being good person, because we assume that we have to bear the guilt and sins of an entire culture (such is the built-in weight of individual sin).
We hold rigid frames of reference about what is real or true —not just ours, but collective and intergenerational. We carry heavy, invisible frames, like the truth itself, absorbing and twisting other paradigms into intelligible lines for us. We all do it, and at all times, there are processes of abduction, translation, and interpretation, converting everything into our familiar frames of reference. The dissonance is doing this in an impermanent world through the logic of rigid dogmas.
The familiar frames of reference are neither the best nor the most accurate, and certainly not the most correct. They are just the norm and the invisible dogma. Now, according to superficial modern logic, methods, and techniques can explain everything; you have to practise enough; moreover, the modern way of knowing considers itself hegemonic, being naturally superior morally, rationally, technologically and philosophically. In this causal and linear logic, all we have to do is find our mission, meaning, or purpose, and everything will be clear. Then, we can rest and belong without tension. This is dangerous in a collective, complex, impermanent world where we are not at the centre.
So when we venture onto the threshold of "not knowing", we find it very difficult to let go of the familiar paths and languages of modernity and embark on hidden trails that can't be translated into our domesticated, contemporary logic. Tracks where we can humbly be in relation but not in control; rich and fertile paths where nothing is just about us.
We get lost and struggle with what modernity has taught us to ask: what about practice? Waiting for practice —which should really be practised, experienced, trained and repeated over and over again— to give us the answers or solutions. But practice alone doesn't change our frames of reference, it doesn't make us see the lenses through which we view the world, and it doesn't undo the perverse mouldings of normality.
In general, I feel it's almost impossible to shake off our self-indulgent innocence and ignorance, based on the premises of a culture that claims to be superior. The wellness industry with all its self-help methods and recipes, as well as the perverse ideas of self-development based solely on the Western psychological model —which, when they do bring in other references, are in cultural appropriation mode, squeezing and suffocating other paradigms so that they can be used linearly and irresponsibly— make it very difficult to shake us out of our daze of "being a good person." In addition, we have the cruel entertainment industry that permeates everything —learning itself as entertainment, where the demand is that everything has to be light, chewy, fun or inspiring— which, along with the fast economy of attention, makes it easy for us to follow the lines of cognitive extractivism: constantly looking for answers that don't question us too much, but that give us quick and painless well-being; without us having to invest too much attention or responsibility in the process, after all, we follow multiple interests at the same time, without taking the time to integrate or incorporate anything.
Many people who come to study with me are usually attracted by the language, which they feel is the same as what they know, but easily feel demotivated or fragmented by the emerging process.
This is because trails open up full of brambles and nettles, dissonances and tears, which aim to shake us out of the violent modern ideations of hyper-individualism, anthropocentrism, transcendence or universalism; perspectives that severely cloud and limit our capacity for reciprocal and responsible relationships, locking us into deeply extractivist processes. It's neither quick, painless, inspiring, nor performative. It's hard and raw. It's slow, because there are no quick results or solutions.
I'm continually searching for the sweet spot between "theoretical concepts" and practice or experience, although I consider this polarisation a false dichotomy. There is a constant practice of undoing and redoing theoretical concepts, just as the same practice is radically different when shaped by different theories. The constant demand and speed of only wanting to practice is solutionist and extractivist. Because "doing" without any stimulus or reformulation of the conceptual references of one's practice easily leads to cultural appropriation and the replication of the same invisible cultural algorithms over and over again. Where we only feel good at the time, but where there has been no real learning, only individualistic conclusions.
This is not a criticism of anyone in particular; it's not a fault or a mistake; it's just an observation of years and years. It's simply a raw look at cultural metabolism, our frame of reference, the starting point for anything. We all have deep and complex layers of dogma that mould how we participate in things, gears that adjust and sculpt what we can see, feel and relate to. There are many pitfalls along the way because the modern capitalist algorithm is insidious and replicates itself effortlessly, even when we think we are out of the quagmire.
Amid these processes, and in a world undergoing profound and painful transformation, going through constant ecocide and genocide, lifting our cultural skins leaves us vulnerable. May we accompany each other in this dissonant and painful process, hold each other collectively, laugh at our goofiness, and relearn how to relate reciprocally and responsibly. May we, together, mend the web, not for us or to us, but for life. We are but seeds.