The symmetry of personal and planetary burnout

Observing parallels

• I’ve been thinking a fair bit recently about the interconnection between how my western culture shows up at an individual and collective level. Which through my (at time of writing) current feelings of complete burnout, have become very experiential rather than just conceptual.
• A light-bulb flickered earlier this week, during a call with my learning marathon group I felt so struck by the similarities between problems individuals were facing in their inquiries (breaking free from our cultural norms), and the actual collective problems being targeted (resulting from our cultural norms). Where on both sides (problem & problem solver) egotistical feelings were leading paths astray, the incapacitated-fast paced nature of people’s lives left no time for presence or thoughtfulness and feelings of individualised ‘not-enough-ism’ was leading to breakdown.
• Observing these parallels made me question my own situation. Struggling in a burnt-out shell, having taken on too much solo for too long, assuming constant growth in output, ignorant to the concept of limits [multiplied by a few weeks in a eghochamber]. Phenomena which could equally apply to our industrial growth society at the centre of our existential crises.

Where has this come from?

• Many have made it their life’s work to understand where our emerging-current crises stem. I’m early in my journey of understanding, but the works of Arne Naess, Gregory Bateson, Aldo Leopold, Joanna Macy and Wendell Berry have been personally significant to my start.
• My first encounter with this deeper inquiry was through Daniel Christian Wahl’s Designing Regenerative Cultures, in which he argues how the ‘multiple crises we [as humanity] are facing are symptoms of our pathological habit of understanding and experiencing ourselves as separate from nature, from each other and from the community of life.’
• A ‘story of separation’ pervasively weaved into our current (western) being, driven by the Cartesian tradition of science separating subject and object, mind and matter, humanity and nature.
• Essentially I have been operating like a machine, seeing myself as separate from nature. Shockingly, living like a machine has led to ill-health.
• This quote from Einstein feels very relevant: “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”.

Where now?

• My recent experiences speak strongly to how embedded the challenges are, interwoven into our worldviews, value systems and mindsets. Thus, in turn how important and vital the transformation of the self is within our societal transition towards a safespace for collective life.
• As Paul Hawken writes in Regeneration ‘The most complex, radical climate technologies on earth are the human heart, head and mind, not solar panels’
• The core premise of my learning marathon journey myself is to become more like ‘crew’. I wrote down a few conceptual differences in the last bit of writing [https://stantownsend.medium.com/becoming-crew-an-intro-53ff70bc483], but didn’t touch on who is acting like crew now.
• The answer is all arounds us, in the more than/non human natural world around us, from the beers to the trees. Who’s guiding principles have provided systemic resilience and health for billions of years.
• I don’t have the answers, but I do have a deep sense that nature’s wisdom and principles have much to teach us, between mental breakout to environmental overshoot.
• Look forwards to sharing this experiment.