— On how culture makes us feel lost & alienated and on how to find our true self again. —
2012.
In the 19th century Karl Marx talked about "alienation", which is a separation, "being a stranger to something" and "you're an alien to something" and Marx said there were four alienations in this culture:
[ 1. Alienation from Nature ]
One is "Alienated from Nature". Well, at a conference dedicated to looking at the physical and the natural environment, I don't have to say much to you to show how alienated we are from nature, when we are destroying nature itself.
[ 2. Alienation from other People ]
The second alienation is from other people and that means, we have less contact, we have less intimacy, we have less trust, we have less of a sense of relationship, and that of course - as I have shown you - leads to increase capacity to illness (physical and mental).
[ 3. Alienation from our Work ]
We are alienated from our work. A lot of people no longer do work that is any meaning to them, and that means that - since human beings are productive creatures (we really are created in the image of God) and were meant to create - when we do work that's not creative, that doesn't reflect who we are, that imposes depression, anxiety, a sense of meaninglessness. And when we have a sense of meaninglessness, we will want to substitute that sense of meaninglessness - or that sense of meaning that we've lost - by all kinds of other activities.
And then we're going to hang up on how we look, or how people feel about us, what we can obtain, what we can posess, what successes we can achieve, in other words; all the false substitutes which cannot possibly compensate us for the lack of genuine meaning. And of course what this society does, it sells us a lot of products that substitute for that loss of meaning. In fact much of the economy is based on a loss of meaning in our culture.
[ 4. Alienation from our Self ]
Finally and most iportantly, we become alienated from ourselves. Let me ask you a question here and I'm gonna ask for a show of hands: how many of you had the following experience, that you had a powerful gut feeling about something, you didn't pay attention to it, and you were sorry afterwards. Please put your hands up if you had! OK. I think the eyes have it.
If I asked you the obverse question: How many people had a powerful good feeling, you've ignored it and you were glad about it afterwards; how many of you would not put your hand up. Well, I'm not sure. I'm seeing very few hands up here. Well that is to say, that you know what you're telling me? You're telling me, that at some point in your childhood you got separated from yourself. Because no infant is born without gut feelings. Infants are totally connected to their gut feelings. Have you ever met a two day old, who did not know how to express their gut feelings?
And that means that in this culture something very powerful happens to alienate you from your true self, because the world couldn't stand who you really were, and your parents were too stressed themselves to honour and recognize who you really were, (just as a parent, I did that to my kids without meaning to). And then we become alienated from ourselves, we shut down our gut feelings, and our gut feelings are not luxuries you know. They tell us what is right and what is wrong. They tell us what is dangerous in what is friendly. They tell us what is safe and what is dangerous. And they tell us what is true in what is false.
So when we are alienated from our gut feelings we have no longer the sense of reality nor the sense of truth.
Well, the good news is, the good news is, that human beings can regain their sense of connection to themselves, just as we can regain a sense of connection to our nature and empathy, which is a genuine human quality (is) in us. We are actually wired for empathy. (Even rats are wired for empathy, (like) when you're stressed (like) rats in a laboratory by shocking their feet with electricity, they're more stressed watching other rats being shocked, than when they're shocked themselves, their stress hormone levels are higher.) That's our nature as human beings, contrary to the myth in our culture; that we are seperated, individual, aggressive, competitive creatures.
We're actually wired for empathy, wired for connection, wired for love, wired for compassion.
So really to move forward, all we have to do, all we have to do, - not an easy task, but it's certainly available to us - is to get back to our true nature.
Thank you!
