The story I'm telling today is only "old" in the sense that it happened almost thirty years ago, and to some extent I've been anxious about telling it. However, if it will ever be relevant, I guess it is now!
Back in, I think, 1995, I spent a summer working at Omega Institute. I had left the corporate world only five years earlier, but I already knew that, in effect, I was "up a creek without a paddle" (or whatever expression you prefer!) The world of my musical passion not having been open to me, and having gotten off the corporate train, I realized that there wasn't one area of modern American life that I enthusiastically wanted to work in. Worse, although I probably could not have articulated the reasons for it yet, I was coming to understand that my values were completely 180 degrees opposite most of those in our culture. I didn't want to profit. I didn't want to own. I didn't want to compete. I didn't want the consumerist way of life I saw around me. I knew my experience from this point forward would probably be a struggle, and I saw the opportunity to work in exchange for food and a tent platform as momentary relief.
Part of the agreement was that at some point during the summer, I would be able to attend the workshop of my choice. Now, that ended up being harder to schedule than I thought, and in fact, I didn't end up in the workshop of my choice but perhaps rather the one where I would hear something I needed to hear. At the question-and-answer time, one young participant brought up the fact that he had seen an interesting chart, perhaps in a magazine article, I don't remember. Someone had created a graph that showed the history of human inventiveness...how, early in history, we created new technologies rather slowly, and the line stayed almost horizontal for many thousands of years. But back several thousand years ago, the pace of our inventions (of tools, etc.) began to pick up, rising quite strikingly during the Industrial Revolution. Of course, in the 20th century, the rate of change rose exponentially, and was reaching the point where the line on the graph would go straight up vertically. A discussion ensued about when we thought this moment would happen, and what would happen next. The general consensus of participants in the class was that there would be some kind of breaking point, where the "line" would fold back on itself, and we would be sent backwards to an earlier phase of human technological development.
Of course, if I was finding it difficult to engage "normally" in the world already, this discussion cemented the deal. It was hard to take most of our constructs seriously, sensing even in myself that they were not beautiful or sustainable. More recently, the environmental piece of this has come far more to the forefront than it was in the '90's...on the news this morning, someone was commenting on how toxic the smoke in Maui was because of manmade materials, and that this toxicity would extend also to the water and soil for years to come. It's astonishing that we're only now thinking about these things. How could we have even considered filling the world with such materials without any concern for their eventual disposal in the best or worst case scenarios?
I guess the reason it's taken so long to tell the graph story is that I know that there is a lot of human fear surfacing, and I've even had to face that in myself. In me, it's mitigated somewhat by having become clear that a) there is no death in the divine mind and b) love and beauty will survive whatever comes. Last night, I heard a remarkable string quartet and pianist, and I was reminded of how musicians, artists, craftspeople, poets, and most creators of beauty have always had the key: create beauty. Nourish joy. Create only things that healthily support life on earth and the earth itself.
