Making sense of things: Progress or collapse?
Arriving at collective healing. A mini-series on the world’s pain. Enjoy!
Enjoying this? Thank you! Feel free to like or restack this post so more people can find it on Substack 🙏
“Killing your darlings” is a term I learned from the writing world since going all in on my book. It’s the idea that within the writing and re-writing process of crafting a book, there are parts that an author will write, and will feel really connected to, but ultimately won’t make it into the final product.
But…. within this wonderful Substack space, my darlings have a place to live on! Yayy!
So that’s what I’ll do, over the next several posts, I’ll share with you a section from the 12th… 13th… version of my drafted manuscript that isn’t in the final draft but that I enjoy.
Welcome to Making sense of things: Navigating tensions of progress and collapse to arrive at collective healing
The series is my own process of making sense of the times we live in, especially as it relates to the world’s pain. Pain that indicates that some things within our society are dying. They may even be in a state of collapse. But pain that also exists at a time when we as a world have accomplished and continue to accomplish some really rad things. There is a tension here between these phenomena—that of progress and of collapse—that I find fascinating.
So I welcome you to join me in exploring this tension by unpacking narratives about progress and collapse to see what they offer. It is a journey that I have been on over the past decade that has brought me to the need for collective healing. A practice in complexity, no doubt. Both the intellectual kind that requires me to take a systemic view and look at things from multiple angles, as well as the emotional kind that stretches my inner world and calls forth certain ways of being to be able to hold what I see.
Please enjoy! And chime in where you’re called.
The state of the world confuses me
The amount of pain that many of us feel from the world these days leads many of us to have a dire outlook on where we stand. We conclude.. well, that we’re fucked. The world is a dumpster fire of a mess and there’s no way to turn it around.
As a feeler, I deeply relate to this outlook. It is my story. But as a social scientist, there are ways this outlook does not totally resonate. It is as if these two parts of me—the feeler and the social scientist—have conflicting views on the state of the world. An internal conflict that leaves me confused.
For the social scientist and development practitioner in me sees that, while there is truly a lot of really important, urgent work that needs to be done in the world, there are also feats of social progress and economic development that we have made as a world, especially in the last 40 years. Economic development that is, undoubtedly, causing serious problems as we surpass environmental edges and exacerbate the haves and have nots. But economic development that has also been helping us meet people’s basic needs better than any other point in history.
For instance, did you know that there are one billion less people in extreme poverty today since 1990. One billion! This means that there are one billion more people that have access to basic human rights like clean drinking water and roads. This is huge. And one of a number of things that we as a global community have achieved like this, especially within the last 30 years. From this lens, at face value, this type of economic development, and the amount of collective strife so many feel, does not add up.
In some ways it does add up though, right? In an overly materialistic world that is focused on growth at the expense of all else, of course society would experience crisis—environmentally, politically, public health-wise—as we push this way of life to its edges. A society that revolves around consumption and comfort, and lacks spiritual purpose and meaning would, of course, breed despondency.
But the overwhelming feeling so many have that the world is falling apart is in such stark contrast to the development progress we have made that there is still something here that feels unanswered. It feels too simple to chock it up to sheer ignorance, either on the side of those who are not aware of the development progress, or on the part of those who blindly sanctify our current model of economic growth.
How is it that we can live at a time when so many more of us have our fundamental needs met relative to not-so-long-ago, and yet so many of us are in such anguish about the state of things? There is a tension within this for me. How do I make sense of the seemingly incongruent phenomena between the amount of economic prosperity our current moment holds (and not just in the wealthiest parts of the world) and the amount of political unrest and social dissatisfaction that also exists?
Is the world actually better off than I think it is? Is my sense of societal breakdown and collective pain misguided in some way? Like, am I just being manipulated by algorithms and puppeteered by politicians into thinking we are fucked?
Or are we actually in a state of decline? Are the building blocks that make up life as I know it in a process of being toppled over? And if so, what does that mean?
Let’s look at what narratives are in the first place and go from there.
Narratives. What’s up with them? Let’s start here.
The narratives we use to make sense of the world are key to how we show up and relate to what is going on. Making sense of the information we have—both the media and data kind of information, as well as the sensory kind (our feelings, gut sense, intuitive knowing)—is key to how we relate to the world and her pain. The conclusions we draw from this information, and the narratives we form and adopt, impact how we process new information as it comes in, as well as how we show up and respond to what we see.
As a development practitioner and a change maker who runs around in niche circles, I come across a lot of different narratives about the state of the world. Everything from us being on the brink of apocalyptic collapse to us living in a golden age of prosperity, international cooperation, and technology. I’ve been around economists who are convinced that the latest evidence-based approach to development is the end-all-be-all; to the point that they snap back in contempt-filled disgust at anyone who questions it (cough, cough - like yours truly). I’ve been around anarchists who are convinced the system is so direly rotten that they steal from the local bodega in a deluded sense of self-righteousness, “Robin Hood style.” And I’ve been around people so convinced that “the other side” is at fault that they cut ties with loved ones as a way to take action on behalf of what they believe. Thanksgiving dinner with the fam? Hell no. Or if they do go, they go to do battle.
As I look around the world, I am constantly in a process of making sense of what I see. I do so from the lens of being a professional and forever-student of the world and how she works. I do so as a social creature who is embedded within certain social networks and echo chambers that influence what I see. And I do so as a feeler and spiritualist who is attuned to subtle energies below the surface of it all.
Narratives are like a pair of glasses we look through to make sense of things. And in a day and age when so much is shifting at such a rapid pace, many people’s narratives about the world are discombobulated and up for review. Old stories about how the world works and our individual places within it are shifting. What success or health looks like is out the window. How to wield power is having a total make over. It is like our narrative-glasses are in need of new prescriptions! Or a different colored lens, a new frame shape… or maybe something totally different all together (spiritually-annointed, AI-powered contact lenses, maybe?!).
The way we make sense of what we see and feel shapes the way we show up and respond to the world around us. There is a difference between arriving at the conclusion “the world is inherently fucked up” and “there is big work to do in the world.” One, the latter, has the potential to inspire creative social action or shift ways of being. The other, the former, has the potential to lock someone up due to overwhelm; to spawn apathy, hopelessness, and complacency. All of this affects how we relate to the world’s pain. For there is a line between using awareness to inspire action and having too great of an awareness of too many awful, challenging things that it cripples a person from feeling empowered or clear on how to respond. The narratives we form help us skate this line.
Therefore we need narratives, even loosely-threaded ones, that help us dance with the reality of our times in constructive ways. Narratives that help us be of service in whatever way that means to us as a unique individual. We need perspectives, even partially-baked ones, that invite in a new vantage point about the phenomena we see that can help energy slide and glide when it gets stuck; that can breath new life into dank, stagnant space.
Because so many of our cultural narratives within society are up for review, each one of us needs to come up with our own conclusions about what is going on in the world, as well as to come together and co-create new narratives together.
For I am of the belief that the narrative you use to make sense of the world is yours to arrive at, and yours alone. For in this age of mass media, political divisiveness, and urgent calls for social action, we can find ourselves being inundated by voices and perspectives that tell us what and how to think; and the severity of the issues can make it tough to question them. Within this dynamic, the complexity and nuance of the issues get lost. In response to the urgency, and in our own efforts to be good people and to stand up for what is right, we can find ourselves being pushed and pulled by political rhetoric and ideas that we do not even necessarily know if we fully agree with. Or, rather, we have not had the opportunity to figure that out.
So in this spirit, let’s try on different “narrative glasses” to see how they help us make sense of the times we live in and the amount of collective strife and unrest that is in the air. Are we fucked? Are we alright? Are we neither?
Join me for my next piece in the series where I ask myself, “Is the world actually better off than I think?” Stay tuned.