Consciousness

I start with a simple question: What sort of consciousness does it take to change the world? Yes, we need a changed world, now. But, too, what sort of consciousness has it taken at various times throughout time and space? And, how might we map such paradigmatic shifts in thought onto current times? One could even posit that, with 2012 mere days away (and 12/21/12 about a year away), this is an extremely apropos time for such meditations and (conscious) actions.

For me, it's this critical preoccupation with the environment and the ruin we are currently inflicting upon it. But, too, one can't simply say I want to stop environmental and ecological violence but neglect other atrocities (that are most always inextricably linked to our assault on the natural world and non-human others). It's a matter of social justice, if you will, where one cannot choose to dismantle certain forms of oppression (e.g., racism) while letting other forms of oppression slide (e.g., sexism). It's all things at once, all directions at the same time...better yet, seven generations forward and back...all our relations.

All that said, what would be the practice, beliefs, and texts and that would make this happen? What would not be? For me, pretty much everything our dominant culture is doing currently falls in to the "don't do this" category. Historically, there were other ways of being and ways of knowing that seemed more sustainable, but there were transformations or cataclysms or colonizing/colonializing that shifted or obliterated these paradigms. In broads strokes the eraser was imperialism and materialisitc conquest, but there' s a deeper seed---one that maybe was created to support imperial pursuits or vice versa. That seed is ideological in nature and had the effect of committed violence upon cultures and religions, peoples, non-human others, our natural world and its possibilities. This ideological seed (e.g., rationalism, Christianity, etc.) became a consciousness, a pathos, a contemporary compulsively destructive and violent psyche. It's a consciousness that will end us, probably sooner than later, if there's not some rerouting.

For next few blog posts, I'll try my hand at ruminating on how we might alter our consciousness and I'm open...I'm open.