Our planet is our mutual home that sustains life. We cannot expect to continue destroying it without destroying ourselves. The time has come for us to stand united in the knowledge that we are born from the same soil and reclaim our shared humanity.
Each of us has it within ourselves to create the life we choose. However, we can’t ignore the enabling and disabling circumstances around us if we are truly interested in humanity’s liberation. Every person has the same basic mechanism: body, mind, and emotions. Our vehicle for expression is subject only to the laws of nature, and our application of spiritual principles will determine the quality and tone of our experience.
Although it may be true that we ultimately create our reality, this commonly pedaled new age trope is reductionist at best if it fails to consider the other 8.1 billion odd inhabitants of this planet whose realities intersect with and influence our own.
So how do we navigate this consensual shared reality in ways which honour our values?
Language shapes culture. The coloniser’s language of individualism has, in part, advanced the agenda of disconnecting humanity from itself. We have come to accept the oppressive yoke of global capitalism as human nature and rush to the defense of abhorrent behaviour under the guise that it is human nature after all.
We speak of oppression in terms of ‘they’ and ‘them’ though we have internalised these narratives passed down through generations of violence and abuse. We call them generational curses as if inflicted upon us by some external force. Truth be told, it is the perpetuation of violence in our thoughts and deeds through traditions and rituals that we allow the ‘they’ and ‘them’ to continue their murderous rampage meted out by zealots.
Those who set up these systems of oppression eons ago have long since left the planet. Their bloodlines continue hoarding the wealth amassed at the expense of those who internalised notions of power and domination, master and servant: false binaries intended only to bring us to our knees. The door is open, but we remain caged.
We are quick to point fingers and cast blame, but that doesn’t solve the problem. Those who created the global systems of enslavement knew full well that there would come a day when we would not be able to distinguish where we ended and where our psychological shackles began.
Now, a handful of billionaires dictate the path forward that serves naught but their interests as we blindly and unquestioningly maintain the status quo. Critical reasoning and compassion are perhaps our best tools to dismantle our mental prisons and prevent future generations from suffering our same fate.
We can start by reclaiming the narrative. We can use words that create not destroy. We can refuse to be complicit in our dehumanisation. We can say no.