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by Caitlin Johnstone
December 28, 2024
from
CaitlinJohnstone Website
Spanish version
We suffer because we erroneously believe we are separate...
It's why humans suffer as individuals, and
it's why humanity creates so much suffering as a collective.
As individuals we suffer because we create a
psychological self-construct at a young age comprised of memories
and mental stories, and we imbue that psychological self with the
power of belief by identifying with it.
There is nothing in the raw data of our immediate
sensory experience which tells us that,
we're a separate "me" character standing
apart from the rest of the world who must secure its own
interests against those of others, but because we identify with
the psychological self-construct, we believe its stories telling
us that this is the case.
The believed experience of being a tiny "me"
character moving through linear time in an ever-changing world is
one of constant fear, insecurity, lack, deficiency, and
discontentment.
It's a completely false dilemma because we've
never actually experienced separateness except in our own
imaginations, but it feels real because we believe our mental
stories about it.
We generate suffering in much the same way as
a collective.
We imagine ourselves to be separate from
other humans, so we compete against them, and can even be
convinced to fight wars against other groups of them.
We imagine ourselves to be separate from
nature, so we work to dominate and enslave it even when doing so
destroys the biosphere we ourselves depend on for survival.
All our systems for driving human behavior at
mass scale are built around the premise of competition...
Competing against each other for jobs and
wealth.
Competing against rival businesses and
corporations for money.
Competing against other nations for planetary
dominance.
Competing against the non-human organisms of
this planet for profit and security.
These systems of competition give rise to,
inequality, exploitation, poverty, injustice,
oligarchy, violence, war, tyranny, and ecocide...
And it's all based on fictional stories with no
real existence outside our own skulls.
Humanity has the ability to
awaken from the dream of
separation...
Humans have been writing about this for
thousands of years - that's all Buddha was ever talking
about.
This potential has been sleeping within us this
entire time, just waiting for the right moment to become activated.
The fact that
enlightenment is a real thing that humans are very
capable of attaining has massive implications for our species and
the existential hurdles it faces at this point in history.
It's like a Chekhov's gun that's been
sitting there since the opening scene of this play we've been acting
out for millennia, and it is not unreasonable to suspect that the
mounting pressures of our time may cause it to go off before the
final curtain.
If humanity can unlock this latent potential, every single one of
the problems we now face can be very easily resolved.
As soon as we are no longer transfixed by
hallucinations of separation, we'll have the ability to move
from a competition-driven species to a
collaboration-driven one, because we'll no longer be
ruled by fear and insecurity...
The propaganda which tells us,
'to compete and
hate and toil and hoard',
...will no longer find any egoic purchase
within us, and we can shrug off the old systems of control
like a heavy coat on a warm day.
I see a great many reasons to have hope for the future, but one of
the biggest is the fact that,
there's this potential sitting right there
within each of us just waiting to be unlocked.
As our very survival on this planet is becoming
increasingly threatened by the illusion of separation, we may find
ourselves at the point where, to quote
Anais Nin,
"the day came when the risk to remain tight
in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
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