Hello Hedge Schoolers,
In a world that is screaming divide across algorithms designed to polarise, we have been drawn into a shouting match where the only play is to drown the other out with volume, fact warfare or groupthink.
There is a better way. But swords must be downed first. We are not the enemy. Ideology is. Constructs are. At a biological level, we are the same. Homo Sapiens. Born with the beautiful gift of making up our own minds. It is this gift we must protect. This gift we must honour in others.
This breeds diversity.
Diversity helps ecosystems thrive.
Diversity promotes innovation.
Diversity matters.
So your choices are yours. I honour that. Honour your ability to carry them out as you please. I may not agree. That is my choice. As warriors of the heart, we must acknowledge the sovereign right to make our own minds up. But must also remember that our minds are often just made up.
Waking up in our Reality Tunnel
My worldview is biased. Narrow. Culturally linked. Localised. Stating it any other way would just confirm the bias. I do my very best to broaden the view by spending time in the shoes of others, listening with open ears, and walking curiously with deep questions. A search for better questions.
The further I walk, the more knowledge I come to meet. The more I know, the more uncertain I feel. The dissonance stills me. Provides a halfway meeting point for the world of the adjacent possible to show up. Being in this uncertainty is challenging. A desire for some semblance of control can lead to our boat anchoring in certainty.
But certainty comes with bias.
I've written before about certainty and its role as the eternal trickster. Polarity is not two poles. It is a continuum where degrees matter. The weather is more than hot or cold, it is degrees along a continuum. A united continuum. Unity is both hot and cold.
“Unity is plural, at minimum two.” - Buckminster Fuller
Only zooming out shows us this. One cannot exist without the other.
The challenge in our current intense timestamp is seeing the bigger picture. While the intensity of the moment can feel like forever, it is but a speckle of time across our landscape. Zooming out allows us to see and honour the long game.
We are a community of Homo Sapiens.
We are Spaceship Earth, as Buckminster Fuller so beautifully framed it.
Our home is the same home. It is this bigger picture that can provide what Dr John Demartini calls the "Astronomical vision." A vision so big it incorporates all of us. Such a vision can help us rise above the present ideological warfare and "stretch our mind across time." We can honour the past and rally for the future. For a world with a future needs a world to inhabit. No matter your view on the climate crisis, you can appreciate the fact that this is our home. And this home has felt the impact of human progress. Felt the impact of a disconnected relationship. Earth is not an endless ATM for progress. Its treasures are finite. Awakening to this prepares us for the Great Work.
The Great Work
“The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.”
Thomas Berry - The Great Work
Being present to the planet is a call for relatedness. An opportunity to step back into a role we have long played. Caretaker. Caretakers with a gift to time travel between multiple pasts and futures. Caretakers with gifts to feel into the hardship of others. To think beyond ourselves and our biological programming. To imagine and create another way forward.
To stretch our minds across time.
“Stretching the mind across time—even in the most speculative ways—can help us become more responsible planetary stewards: It can help endow us with the time literacy necessary for tackling long-term challenges such as biodiversity loss, microplastics accumulation, climate change, antibiotic resistance, asteroid impacts, sustainable urban planning, and more. This can not only make us feel more at home in pondering our planet’s pasts and futures. It can also draw us to imagine the world from the perspective of future human and non-human communities—fostering empathy across generations.”
Vicent Lalenti - Deep Time Reckoning
Zooming out enables us to do this. Holding multiple realities in our minds enables us to do this. In these times, it is this skill that can also give us an opportunity to rise above the tumultuous seas of a moment and see the bigger picture.
To connect to the greater mission.
To unite for the Great Work.
For the world is not us vs them. We are degrees on a continuum. A continuum that is in relationship with the greater world we inhabit.
“We cannot doubt that we too have been given the intellectual vision, the spiritual insight, and even the physical resources we need for carrying out the transition that is demanded of these times, transition from the period when humans were a disruptive force on the planet Earth to the period when humans become present to the planet in a manner that is mutually enhancing.”
Thomas Berry - The Great Work
My worldview is biased.
Biased towards a worldview.
I'm missing pieces. But my heart is open to listening, learning and uniting.
From my heart to yours,
Steve
Stretching our minds across time for the Great Work