I recently went to a local Buddhist event in which the teacher spoke of how, if you ask ten people if they want peace, nine of the ten would say they desire it. Yet, we live in a world rife with conflict, where many people distrust or are even frightened of one another, in large part because many people cannot find peace within themselves.
But it got me thinking that if most of us want world peace, and yet we don’t have it, what’s the problem? Certainly, a major component of that is living in societies with great political division and partisan extremes like in the United States, in which our elected leaders in Congress regularly face government shutdowns because of great political differences. Yet polls will show the extreme views of our politicians do not always reflect the views of the voters who desire more action and compromise.
Looking out further globally, we can see a lot of the chaos of the world, at least in terms of armed conflict, is being directed by a contingent in power comprised of that one out of ten people who does not desire peace. It got me thinking about how on some level, in terms of the human mass consciousness, the majority who want peace are abdicating our responsibility to bring it about and not give in to the desires and power goals of those who desire chaos.
Then I thought about that word: responsibility. We have an obligation to respond to the world’s crises and our desire for peace, and to demand those in power stop their efforts to cause chaos, discord and harm. But part of what prevents us from responding in that way is that so many of us are often caught up in the habits of reactivity, constantly in a state of reacting to the behaviors of others — whether online or offline — living in fear of other people when we go outside into the public, or just living so much off emotion we have forgot how to respond in non-reactivity to both micro and macro stressors and conflict.
It’s got to the point too where people who don’t immediately jump into emotional reactivity over real or perceived crises are assumed to not care. It is not healthy, sustainable and can lead one to burnout and compassion fatigue. And I believe this phenomenon to a degree is by design of the top one percent of those in power, those who want chaos and conflict because they know it is the tried-and-true fertilizer for holding onto political and economic power. This can be seen especially on social media where the algorithms promote the most incendiary, angry and divisive posts and comments, thus feeding this anger and constant state of alarm back into the mass consciousness to keep us fixated on the problems, creating this dark cloud of dread and pessimism that can darken our days.
Certainly, I can be part of the problem in terms of that emotional reactivity in how I behave and respond to situations, and feeding into that dread. Often much of that behavior we see socially is people reacting from trauma, or just from ignorance and lack of awareness. But I do have a responsibility to myself, for my wellbeing, as well as to others, for their wellbeing, to not address difficult situations or conflicts from a place of fierce emotional reactivity.
Yet, I also can’t just avoid addressing and responding to certain conflicts or problems to get through in life. This is true too on a larger level in our communities, societies and world. We often abdicate our responsibility to address problems and find solutions because we fixate so much on the news and social media, and believe that the height of our problems is insurmountable, that we’ll never get past seemingly intractable problems or come up with adequate solutions, or that those solutions are too expensive, or that those in power will never utilize them, etc.
This is the essence of our modern dread, and I especially hear this most from privileged intellectuals in the Western societies who are often very informed, and have some ability to affect change, but find it easier to just throw up their hands and say its hopeless and consign themselves to instead investing in the acceptance of dystopian futures that are popularly represented in fictional entertainment.
I have been one of those people. In my teens and 20s I was an atheist, often to the point of being aggressive toward others about it, out of my insecurity. I invested very much in the material world being all there is and hyper focusing on the negative that became a self-fulfilling prophecy of rarely seeing the good, the beauty in the world, and not being connecting to anything higher, or to the great effervescent love and creativity of life I now call God. It led me into addiction to alcohol and marijuana and accompanying deepening depression and anxiety. I’m fortunate I found Buddhism, then Reiki, and increased my conscious contact with a higher power. It is through that process I have gradually developed a mindset more focused on finding solutions than focusing on problems.
That is not to say I don’t have my low periods where my mind is almost solely focused on problems because I am still an addict in recovery and someone who deals with mental illness and PTSD that has led me to carve some well-worn paths in my brain about self-destruction being a solution. And I still very much have an inner cynic that likes to remind me of how comfortable dread and pessimism are, that it got me friends and, in some situations, kept me safe, or what I thought was “safe.”
But increasingly my soul, who knows on a grand level there are always many possibilities and solutions, and that true inner peace, and world peace, are within grasp, has become a stronger presence in my life. I know this in part from being through great trials, including homelessness and terminal cancer, journeys in which any inkling of hope was worth its weight in gold, even if I didn’t think so at the time.
All that though, about spirituality and hope, can be a hard sell to materialists who fixate on the news or social media accounts focused on problems. There is definitely a place for that, which I say as someone who worked as a news reporter for years. But if we are to truly care about creating a better world, we must dare to put that dread aside, or at least in the backseat, and invest in optimism, that a better world free of many of our intractable problems, even if not the ideal we’d want, is possible, and to cherish and accentuate the beauty we see and find in life.
And it’s not as if this world has never had problems. It is just now through the miracle of the internet and connected news organizations we are more aware than ever of our issues, and indeed they seem many, and grand. But with that technology too come opportunities for greater connection with others around the world to identify problems and their adequate solutions, on which many are working but not making as much noise and seeking publicity as those causing the problems, which sometimes can be us, by investing so much in dread.
One of the main points the Buddhist teacher offered was that, ultimately what we see as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, impossible or possible, are thoughts and beliefs in our mind, the activity of our mind, and that over time we have the ability to transform the nature of our minds and our experience, to see the world as it is, but also see boundless possibilities. That is a tall order for most of us whose minds have been conditioned to focus on the negative, often as a coping mechanism to keep us safe.
But I do believe in my ability to transform in that way, and for collectively, all of us, to transform the orientation of the mass consciousness and bring about a way of taking action from that place of responding, rather than reacting, while at the same time holding space and compassion for those very much still stuck in the emotional reactivity state of development, placing healthy boundaries when necessary.
We have a responsibility to yes, see and acknowledge and feel our trauma, to attend to our personal and collective grief, but then stand up and say we will not allow dread and pessimism to create the darker future we fear.
We have a responsibility to embrace the possibility of finding and executing solutions, to face the future with optimism in the face of great fear and challenges so we can say at the very least we tried.
For that I am, we are, responsible.
Clay The Scribe 