personal and societal crisis – connections?
So here’s the thing: there is no doubt that I’m currently mildly obsessed with crises. I can’t stop reading about them. Natural disasters. Climate Change. Financial Crisis. Not so big on genocides, but I find the literature around them – especially the pseudo psycho-sociological stuff that digs into why we have so much denial around major atrocities fascinating. And then there are all of the things that say that they are in crisis. Development is in crisis. Human rights have crises. Ebay. The American Republican party (the Democratic party had one back in 2004).Bankers have crisis (they kill themselves) and large numbers of people in Darfur have crises on a regular basis (and don’t tend to kill themselves as much as bankers do – which is in itself an interesting psychological issue.) And then there are the crises that have become chronic. Many children going hungry every day. Many people very depressed. Many species dying out. Much suffering that could be avoided.
What, exactly, is a crisis, anyways? Who defines it? A crisis- for whom? For me? For the bankers? Who benefits when we label something a crisis? Who looses? Why are some things deemed crisis – and other chronic conditions (global hunger) not? And why am I so fascinated by them?
The last question is quite interesting. At least to me.
The answer is not hard to find. I’m sure it has to do with my own experience of myself as being in a crisis. For several years. Not now – now I feel I’m ‘merely’ developing (as if development is separate from crisis). More or less normal fears and concerns. But it wasn’t long ago that my concerns were not precisely normal. Or at least I didn’t think so. And I felt I was in a crisis and it took me quite a lot of flailing about before I moved out of it.
Is there something about how I moved out of it that can help me understand these social crises? Can our personal experience of crises support our social understanding and reaction to crisis? Maybe. It’s worth a shot. that’s one of the great things about crises – you become willing to try new things.
Why did I suddenly think that I was in a crisis? (though I am not sure if I used that word at that time).
The world as I knew it – ‘me’, my identity, was no longer working as I thought it would. Outside manifestations: poor sleeping patterns; strange/regressive eating patterns (usually too much but sometimes nothing at all); minimal to no income; difficulty in finding work; snapping at friends and family; and, when it was really acute, sitting and staring at the wall and doing nothing for long periods of time. Yes, I was depressed. But it was not just depression. Internally, I felt that what I knew worked – my understanding of myself and of god – no longer held up or passed muster.
Eventually, I had to create a new understanding of myself. But before I did that, I had to want a new understanding of myself. and in order to want that, I had to own something – that my life was mine, not someone else’s.
I’m reminded of a friend’s story of a crisis in his life. Among other things, a close friend of his had died.he went to a shrink who prescribed him pills. he said to the shrink, look, people die. i don’t want pills. i want a way of dealing with death and sadness in my life. And he walked out of the therapists’ office. He says now that was a defining moment in his road to recovery – for him, that was owning his own pain and his own life, and actively choosing life- with all its grittiness and pain.
I did something similar, though not in such a clear manner. Mine was slower and very subtle. But eventually, I took ownership of my life in a way I had not done before.
Is that part of the ‘answer’ now? How much do we need to start taking ownership of our life – and of our world?
What would ‘ownership’ look like on a societal level? Well, it might look like people saying that they took responsibility for their leaders. As in, if leaders are not giving people what they need (for example, with climate change negotiations), then those leaders don’t get re-elected. Or if leaders need support from people (for, say, budget reforms, or digging out corruption) then they get that support. It might look like people taking ownership of the banks, and not letting bankers make the rules about finance- which effects the lives of millions of everyday Americans.
How do we create a real ‘ownership society’?
I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect that until we do, until we get our hands dirty with the messiness of politics, it will be hard for us to steer our planet away from crisis and into the relatively more ‘simple’ process of development. Of course – that is also perpetuating a false dichotomy: crisis is an inherent part of development.
