Very thoughtful piece, thank you for acknowledging what we can’t say. I’ve been thinking a lot about death recently, seeing a close relative go through the hospital system for 4 months. It’s taboo in this society to talk about death, we must always be optimistic and upbeat, talk about coming home, getting better. No one is ever asked what is sufficient, enough, humane. I think there is a close relationship to our response to overshoot, it’s taboo, we must approach it with optimism, we’ll be fine, don’t be gloomy.
Such an exquisite essay. Literally arrested my breath. So many layers to engage with and this part, that identifies so perfectly what I had not been able to articulate: “ I became dislocated from where I was, from when I was, because the friction that arises from worlds colliding became a slippery varnish which washes particularities into familiar certainties. The possibility of lives crossing became a distilled product to be consumed: peace signs for the ‘gram.”
The friction that provides a grip, versus the slick commodified flume. Such brilliant writing, Rachel. Last week when you lamented that your work doesn’t sustain like farming, and some of us replied that it does—this piece fills and illuminates. Please don’t underestimate the importance of your words. Stunning work. Thank you.
I gain so much from reading your work and listening to the interviews. I wonder if there's a way to contribute less than the annual paid subscription but more than nothing. Also I would love to send you a copy of Being Restorative. I think you would appreciate it and it would be a small way to express my gratitude. I have friends traveling to the UK in June so they could post it to you. If you would like a copy just email me at leaf@leafseligman.com
Honestly, if $85 a year is a cost burden then I don't want you to worry at all—I don't expect everyone who finds value in my work to pay because I don't expect everyone to be able to afford it. That's why everything is open and those who can afford it are supporting not just me but the wider community.
Very striking story. I witnessed my brothers suicide when he was 18, hung himself due to said walls closing. Oppressive dysfunctional schooling. Meaningless college applications. Men becoming invalidated by a culture that promotes nihilism and superficiality. Parents who dont recognize they stamped out the will of their children with their narcissism and nihilism. We had resources. Just no emotional/ mental space to develop. America does this to its own people and to the world.
Trying to be present in a culture that has 40% (give or take) of its population suffering from some variant of mental illness is not easy. To watch the biggest export of Western countries be that very culture must be discouraging.
And our culture makes the individual responsible for curing the pandemic of mental health each all by themselves. It is insanity.
I am sorry you had to be a witness of the aftermath of the suicide, Rachel. It must have been heartbreaking. When the walls feel like they are closing in, remember the way out is community, if you can find it. Reach out if you need to. This is a message to all your readers. Myself included. Kindness is the other most important thing in the world. It is the response to sorrow. (Wisdom taken from Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem - Kindness)
A beautiful weaving of the personal to the relational - to the belonging and the performative. To the fabrication of culture; to the co-opting of culture. To the dangers of extraction and domination.
To the severance of the human species from the rest of Nature.
In my almost 63 years, I have watched as the barrel of this extraction gun has held the world in greater and greater degrees hostage. Place has become more and more Disney-fied, and people less and less willing to feel difference. We crave the bubble of our knowing, fooling ourselves into some fantasy that we can ever know a place from the comfort of a tour bus, a cruise liner, or even a pilgrimage on the Camino.
As Rachel says, we witness to extract - the self, the brag, the post. We are the Roman's on Hadrian's Wall, the Mongols on the Steppe, the Dutch/Spanish/Portuguese/French/German/British/Russian/American... - all seeking to mark our territory with signs of home so the tension of difference disappears.
And that tension? We can no longer tolerate it between neighbors, family members, co-workers, ourselves. We obliterate the feelings with the help of this very platform that serves up sameness in nanoseconds. Our capacity to be curious in the face of "other" atrophied into near distinction. The cocoon of sameness has mined our very God-given uniqueness into extinction and we cannot see it.
I do not know what will break the spell but perhaps a generation that has no option but to stay put, create life together in place, learn what it means to be community again, will break the spell...again.
Wow Rachel, thank you for this, which resonates so strongly with my late mentor David Fleming's doomed attempts to challenge globalisation during his lifetime.
Nonetheless, his life inspired the 'Surviving the Future' collective adventure you joined us for a few months back, building, connecting and defending the sequels to that collapsing, omnicidal system:
"In a society used to cheap travel, and to the idea that destruction—when it comes to boundaries and the rhetoric about 'tearing-down barriers'—is a good thing, the idea of closed access at first invites unease; there is a sense both of being locked-in, and of unfairly locking-out.
But in fact it works the other way. Almost wherever you go in the market economy, you find yourself in the same place—in the globalised market with its shared banality, its fullness; at the end of every lane is a busy road and a housing estate like the one at the beginning of it.
You cannot get out of a globalised world, because there is no out. Closed access does not mean closed-in, it means the protection of distinctiveness: when you are out, you are somewhere else, in a different in."
I remember in 1981 the then President of the New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies, Les Clements* saying to me "I believe we must call things by their right names. Eg. Not "nuclear weapons" but "omnicidal weapons".
(* late father of Prof. Kevin Clements, inaugural Director of centres for Peace & Conflict Studies in Queensland Australia and Otago New Zealand)
The perverted relationship values of market colonialism are the story of Modernity confronted by Oliver Goldsmith's poem The Deserted Village (1850s?) , Pope Leo X111's launch of R.C
" social teaching", Martin Buber's "I and Thou" recognising the spread of transactional/instrumental relationships, the Frankfurt School and the more secular theologians- as I have gleaned through my years..
Rachel's penetrating reflection, understandably provoked by her recent raw experiences seems so tenderly sketched. It seems a master class in respectful awe and wonder in the very act of grasping at the resonances from micro to macrocosm. This allowing-in, this embodiment of the shadowlands of our hydrocarbon-fueled Capitalistocene, feels like a trustworthy inner lamp held aloft by a steadfast Caledonian heart. Magnaminity. A lamp, fueled by gifts of coherence from Planet: Coordinate, revealing again to folk of the auld pilgrim Way, encouragement along narrow paths through the Swamps of fear & Quicksands of distraction and general 2025 overwhelm. We can't change the storm but can adjust our sails towards the harbours of the High Ground of perennial human freedom.
Very evocative piece, for anyone who has lived abroad. Here’s an image which you can relate to: my friend, a widely travelled white dude in his seventies, in a hut with his tour group, trying to keep up with the Polynesian dance of the Rapa Nui. A metaphor for our times: dancing the night away with the Easter Islanders.
I wanted to know more about the mine you are challenging. When I was growing up, France felt very different from England, as did Austria. Unfortunately homogeneity and globalisation is everywhere. It's possible that Columbia and the Columbians benefit financially from this. India certainly has, a least in some ways.
A beautiful piece of writing both in form and content. How wonderful to have had such a conversation with your grandmother. Such candour seems a rarity particularly in those generations that went through the war. It speaks to a special relationship in life.
I've not thought about the term 'uncanny' before but I love your definition and how well it describes your experience. There is a tension in looking for the real in the unfamiliar. A sense that our very presence will make it retreat, that we are introducing some unreality just by being there. So to catch the real and dance with it is precious. I don't know if the locals were affected by the arrival of so many tourists but I can imagine it must have been a little like having someone play the radio over your favourite song.
The few times I have spent time in another culture have had a profound effect on my perspective on life and returning home has been accompanied by some awkwardness as the once familiar rhythms appear strange as though seen for the first time. Tourism has its place but for me travel is about learning and changing.
We were unsure about whether or not to broach our experience with our hosts and friends so we made a vague comment and they immediately shared they had felt the same!
Very thankful fot you being able to calm me down in a busy hotel lobby after a long, eventful day and just taking in the sadness of what we lose every day in our commercial solitude.
Such rich observations. I gleaned two strong themes from your experience. The first is how death-phobic we are in Western industrial consumer societies. And how grieving is something you have to keep private. And please don’t inconvenience us with your grief beyond an acceptable period. We will all go there, but let’s not talk about it.
The second is how travel used to be something you did to learn about other people we share the world with. You would experience “dépaysement,” a French word that captures the essence of being”out of country,” where food, language, cultural mores were so different that you were transported to a different way of being. And maybe you’d have made the effort to learn a bit of the local language. Now it’s as if travel has become a home away from home. You will find the same hotel chains, fast food chains, banks, theme parks, conveniences. They’re just located in a tropical
climate or a northern climate. It’s the great homogenization of peoples with the same multinational corporations operating everywhere. In an effort to democratize travel (because let’s be honest, it used to be only the very rich who could afford to travel and do their European tour), we’ve made travel another form of colonialism. If the point of travel now is to cross that destination off your bucket list, then what are we truly seeking through travel, other than to say: been there, done that.
Rachel, thanks to have taken the time to write all this. There are some many angles you chisel your way through observations and reflections. I don't know how much longer we can go on like that disrupting people's lives all over with our predatory wants and needs to no end.
Very thoughtful piece, thank you for acknowledging what we can’t say. I’ve been thinking a lot about death recently, seeing a close relative go through the hospital system for 4 months. It’s taboo in this society to talk about death, we must always be optimistic and upbeat, talk about coming home, getting better. No one is ever asked what is sufficient, enough, humane. I think there is a close relationship to our response to overshoot, it’s taboo, we must approach it with optimism, we’ll be fine, don’t be gloomy.
I think you're absolutely right: As if we'll beat Earth's limits just like we'll overcome death itself simply by not confronting it.
Such an exquisite essay. Literally arrested my breath. So many layers to engage with and this part, that identifies so perfectly what I had not been able to articulate: “ I became dislocated from where I was, from when I was, because the friction that arises from worlds colliding became a slippery varnish which washes particularities into familiar certainties. The possibility of lives crossing became a distilled product to be consumed: peace signs for the ‘gram.”
The friction that provides a grip, versus the slick commodified flume. Such brilliant writing, Rachel. Last week when you lamented that your work doesn’t sustain like farming, and some of us replied that it does—this piece fills and illuminates. Please don’t underestimate the importance of your words. Stunning work. Thank you.
Thank you so, so much, Leaf. I wouldn't be here without this community's dialogue with me and am so grateful you show up every week.
I gain so much from reading your work and listening to the interviews. I wonder if there's a way to contribute less than the annual paid subscription but more than nothing. Also I would love to send you a copy of Being Restorative. I think you would appreciate it and it would be a small way to express my gratitude. I have friends traveling to the UK in June so they could post it to you. If you would like a copy just email me at leaf@leafseligman.com
Honestly, if $85 a year is a cost burden then I don't want you to worry at all—I don't expect everyone who finds value in my work to pay because I don't expect everyone to be able to afford it. That's why everything is open and those who can afford it are supporting not just me but the wider community.
It is difficult to find voices that are able to be so present and with such compassion and wisdom!
Very striking story. I witnessed my brothers suicide when he was 18, hung himself due to said walls closing. Oppressive dysfunctional schooling. Meaningless college applications. Men becoming invalidated by a culture that promotes nihilism and superficiality. Parents who dont recognize they stamped out the will of their children with their narcissism and nihilism. We had resources. Just no emotional/ mental space to develop. America does this to its own people and to the world.
I'm really sorry to hear that, Jace. That must have been tragic and formative.
Trying to be present in a culture that has 40% (give or take) of its population suffering from some variant of mental illness is not easy. To watch the biggest export of Western countries be that very culture must be discouraging.
And our culture makes the individual responsible for curing the pandemic of mental health each all by themselves. It is insanity.
I am sorry you had to be a witness of the aftermath of the suicide, Rachel. It must have been heartbreaking. When the walls feel like they are closing in, remember the way out is community, if you can find it. Reach out if you need to. This is a message to all your readers. Myself included. Kindness is the other most important thing in the world. It is the response to sorrow. (Wisdom taken from Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem - Kindness)
Thank you, Ronald!
A beautiful weaving of the personal to the relational - to the belonging and the performative. To the fabrication of culture; to the co-opting of culture. To the dangers of extraction and domination.
To the severance of the human species from the rest of Nature.
In my almost 63 years, I have watched as the barrel of this extraction gun has held the world in greater and greater degrees hostage. Place has become more and more Disney-fied, and people less and less willing to feel difference. We crave the bubble of our knowing, fooling ourselves into some fantasy that we can ever know a place from the comfort of a tour bus, a cruise liner, or even a pilgrimage on the Camino.
As Rachel says, we witness to extract - the self, the brag, the post. We are the Roman's on Hadrian's Wall, the Mongols on the Steppe, the Dutch/Spanish/Portuguese/French/German/British/Russian/American... - all seeking to mark our territory with signs of home so the tension of difference disappears.
And that tension? We can no longer tolerate it between neighbors, family members, co-workers, ourselves. We obliterate the feelings with the help of this very platform that serves up sameness in nanoseconds. Our capacity to be curious in the face of "other" atrophied into near distinction. The cocoon of sameness has mined our very God-given uniqueness into extinction and we cannot see it.
I do not know what will break the spell but perhaps a generation that has no option but to stay put, create life together in place, learn what it means to be community again, will break the spell...again.
Break the spell, again. I dare you.
Excellent comment (I'm thinking you typed "atrophied to near extinction" not "distinction". )
Yes Allister! I can't find the edit option so the readers will need to forgive the typos.
Wow Rachel, thank you for this, which resonates so strongly with my late mentor David Fleming's doomed attempts to challenge globalisation during his lifetime.
Nonetheless, his life inspired the 'Surviving the Future' collective adventure you joined us for a few months back, building, connecting and defending the sequels to that collapsing, omnicidal system:
"In a society used to cheap travel, and to the idea that destruction—when it comes to boundaries and the rhetoric about 'tearing-down barriers'—is a good thing, the idea of closed access at first invites unease; there is a sense both of being locked-in, and of unfairly locking-out.
But in fact it works the other way. Almost wherever you go in the market economy, you find yourself in the same place—in the globalised market with its shared banality, its fullness; at the end of every lane is a busy road and a housing estate like the one at the beginning of it.
You cannot get out of a globalised world, because there is no out. Closed access does not mean closed-in, it means the protection of distinctiveness: when you are out, you are somewhere else, in a different in."
(quote taken from his freely-accessible: https://leanlogic.online/closed-access/ )
That was such a brilliant conversation and triggered so many avenues for me—thank you again for having me there, and for being here!
I remember in 1981 the then President of the New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies, Les Clements* saying to me "I believe we must call things by their right names. Eg. Not "nuclear weapons" but "omnicidal weapons".
(* late father of Prof. Kevin Clements, inaugural Director of centres for Peace & Conflict Studies in Queensland Australia and Otago New Zealand)
The perverted relationship values of market colonialism are the story of Modernity confronted by Oliver Goldsmith's poem The Deserted Village (1850s?) , Pope Leo X111's launch of R.C
" social teaching", Martin Buber's "I and Thou" recognising the spread of transactional/instrumental relationships, the Frankfurt School and the more secular theologians- as I have gleaned through my years..
Rachel's penetrating reflection, understandably provoked by her recent raw experiences seems so tenderly sketched. It seems a master class in respectful awe and wonder in the very act of grasping at the resonances from micro to macrocosm. This allowing-in, this embodiment of the shadowlands of our hydrocarbon-fueled Capitalistocene, feels like a trustworthy inner lamp held aloft by a steadfast Caledonian heart. Magnaminity. A lamp, fueled by gifts of coherence from Planet: Coordinate, revealing again to folk of the auld pilgrim Way, encouragement along narrow paths through the Swamps of fear & Quicksands of distraction and general 2025 overwhelm. We can't change the storm but can adjust our sails towards the harbours of the High Ground of perennial human freedom.
Gosh, Alistair, thank you for your very kind words.
Thank you as ever. Beautifully written. Truthful. Very moving
Thank you for being here, Jiggy
Very evocative piece, for anyone who has lived abroad. Here’s an image which you can relate to: my friend, a widely travelled white dude in his seventies, in a hut with his tour group, trying to keep up with the Polynesian dance of the Rapa Nui. A metaphor for our times: dancing the night away with the Easter Islanders.
I wanted to know more about the mine you are challenging. When I was growing up, France felt very different from England, as did Austria. Unfortunately homogeneity and globalisation is everywhere. It's possible that Columbia and the Columbians benefit financially from this. India certainly has, a least in some ways.
You can read more about it in the article hyperlinked—it was a harrowing experience!
A beautiful piece of writing both in form and content. How wonderful to have had such a conversation with your grandmother. Such candour seems a rarity particularly in those generations that went through the war. It speaks to a special relationship in life.
I've not thought about the term 'uncanny' before but I love your definition and how well it describes your experience. There is a tension in looking for the real in the unfamiliar. A sense that our very presence will make it retreat, that we are introducing some unreality just by being there. So to catch the real and dance with it is precious. I don't know if the locals were affected by the arrival of so many tourists but I can imagine it must have been a little like having someone play the radio over your favourite song.
The few times I have spent time in another culture have had a profound effect on my perspective on life and returning home has been accompanied by some awkwardness as the once familiar rhythms appear strange as though seen for the first time. Tourism has its place but for me travel is about learning and changing.
We were unsure about whether or not to broach our experience with our hosts and friends so we made a vague comment and they immediately shared they had felt the same!
How affirming!
beautiful
Very thankful fot you being able to calm me down in a busy hotel lobby after a long, eventful day and just taking in the sadness of what we lose every day in our commercial solitude.
Ah, Christian, I'm so glad to hear that. That's what these words are for.
Such rich observations. I gleaned two strong themes from your experience. The first is how death-phobic we are in Western industrial consumer societies. And how grieving is something you have to keep private. And please don’t inconvenience us with your grief beyond an acceptable period. We will all go there, but let’s not talk about it.
The second is how travel used to be something you did to learn about other people we share the world with. You would experience “dépaysement,” a French word that captures the essence of being”out of country,” where food, language, cultural mores were so different that you were transported to a different way of being. And maybe you’d have made the effort to learn a bit of the local language. Now it’s as if travel has become a home away from home. You will find the same hotel chains, fast food chains, banks, theme parks, conveniences. They’re just located in a tropical
climate or a northern climate. It’s the great homogenization of peoples with the same multinational corporations operating everywhere. In an effort to democratize travel (because let’s be honest, it used to be only the very rich who could afford to travel and do their European tour), we’ve made travel another form of colonialism. If the point of travel now is to cross that destination off your bucket list, then what are we truly seeking through travel, other than to say: been there, done that.
"Dépaysement", I love it. It's sort of like being tangled up in creeping vines rather than held up by roots.
Not a comment, but just note of what I take is a typo you might want to correct :
"The busyness and insistence of these places felt alienating in a way my [grand]mother’s death". Saludos
Thank you, Michael! I missed that.
Rachel, thanks to have taken the time to write all this. There are some many angles you chisel your way through observations and reflections. I don't know how much longer we can go on like that disrupting people's lives all over with our predatory wants and needs to no end.
I'm glad you're here, Marc. These words help me make sense of things and I'm glad they're of value to my readers.