Animists on personal responsibility

[BigBen]

In the future we are going to need new ways of thinking.  If humans are going to be successful it's because we will do it together... right?  How many here think they will be successful outside some sort of community?  Other posts seem to be asking similar questions about just such a community.  Everyone is interested in how the future might work and what it might look like and, further, what will make it different so we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.  Yet we are all frustrated that its not here, fearful of how the transition will play out.  We, by that I mean I, am mostly interested in what I can DO NOW to help affect the change we, the community, need to be successful so that me and my family might be successful.  To that end this forum has been an immensely valuable resource, yet I find that my actions don't match my inspiration. Why?

 I find that my 40 hours stuck behind my computer offers me the inspiration that I can find in others writing, but affords me little time to be with my family and accomplish much towards my goals.  My weekends have to be fought for and won from others who plot and plan numerous events that obligate me in some way to the social structure.  I can't fore go my 40 hours because I'm tied to the economic structure, which only indirectly benefits my family.  My normalcy is driving me nuts.  Where's the ME in my life?

This obligation I have to these systems seems to trap me from doing things of real value.  And how I decide to do things on daily basis is conflicting with what I know and feel is coming in the future.  My personal internal conflict and struggle is boiling over.  If this seems like my plea it's because it is.  I share it with you here because I feel that there must be lots of people feeling this same way.  The blog post I’m attaching made me think about this for a long while.

http://tobyspeople.com/ideas/personal-responsibility

Also see the other articles along side it from Energy Bulletin:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49735

Mr Godesky suggests that instead of being an individual we could consider ourselves as a “dividual”, which I would paraphrase as meaning we are the sum of our relationships with everything around us rather than a being that projects itself unto everything around us (that’s the animist part).  He points to an example of a Native American who suffers from alcoholism and whose mother consistently blames the provider of the alcohol, or even the alcohol itself, rather than her own son (that’s the personal Responsibility part).  Then comes the personal introspection part, you’ll have to read it.

So for all who desire a revolution to attain the new way of doing things, let us each have a revolution of self first so that we might see all possibilities free of what we know or consider possible and impossible.  With enough people simply refusing to live in the old paradigm and beginning a new one, could a critical mass of people be reached so that the new paradigm simply over took the old one while the old one fumbles with ways to perpetuate itself?  And perhaps more importantly am I courageous enough to live this way?

I love this forum for its diversity of opinion and the diversity of backgrounds delivering the opinions.  Lately I see how much seemingly opposed personality types and opposed ideas seem to sort of come together in my mind.  And when I stumble in to a heated discussion/thread I don’t find myself trying to align with one particular point of view but rather think about how similar motivations have caused differing views.  You know, something about being “hippie dippy” and a “gun nut”;  “conservative" in my nostalgia for ways and means lost to history and “liberal” in my hopes for the future, but totally fucking lost in how to live right now.  But I just have to believe that I can live like a human rather than cope like a consumer/plebe.

It's like a movie that leaves you all warm and fuzzy on the inside.  I watch; I feel great/inspired; then I step outside and become depressed because I know this is not going to lead to any significant action.  Did that movie just suck my life from me? am I more happy to watch others experiences(though only acted) than I am to live my own? 

Well that was bit chaotic... anyone care to commiserate? or share their ideas on personal responsibility?

[Hendrek]

I'm surprised no one commented on this thread!  I just found it randomly from a search... so I think I'll revive it.

We're all trapped within the system in some way, many of us nearly completely, no matter how much we deplore it.  Others have taken many steps to get out of it, but even they are fooling themselves if they think they really are out of it altogether.  As Daniel Quinn says: we're all captives in this culture.  Until and unless it disintegrates, captives we'll remain. 

With enough people simply refusing to live in the old paradigm and beginning a new one, could a critical mass of people be reached so that the new paradigm simply over took the old one while the old one fumbles with ways to perpetuate itself?

The 100th monkey, as Mike Ruppert just put it in his film [an interesting story, that I wish he had expanded on... if that actually happened, I'd be curious to know exactly why that number].  I think most social change does occur only after a critical mass of people and ideas come together in support of it.  The question I think isn't whether it will happen, but whether it will happen in time.  Myself, I expect that it will only happen out of sheer necessity, and in this case, necessity is no longer the mother of useful invention, but instead the mother of "too late".  We needed proactivity not reactivity. 

Even though we're all captives on the whole, there is a certain amount of personal responsibility in the mix.  We don't have to be captives 100%.  There are steps to take, things to do, things to learn and teach to others which can allow us to at least *realize* that we're captives and to see the prison bars for what they are, even if we cannot quite break free from them entirely.  By doing so, perhaps we'll be the 99th monkey that teaches the 100th?