Heroes Not Zombies

Marc Halévy says in his “Petit traité du sens de la vie” that a human being is not “un animal social. Par contre, il est un animal communautaire”. What he means by that is that we are social in a very particular kind of way. We create important and significant bonds between other human beings. That’s how we live….each one of us with our own unique world constructed from our own unique set of relationships with significant others. I’ve read various estimates of the maximum size of such functioning groups – from 50 to 150. Certainly several thousand twitter followers, or facebook friends don’t represent these kinds of real life relationship groups.

He goes on to say that our “communitarian human” is undermined by the “mass society human”. We have societies based on nation states which deal with whole populations as if they are a single mass. In this mass, not only is the individual lost, but so is the individual’s human world of relationships (each of which, remember, is unique in its own right)

I think this takes the understanding of uniqueness, and what it is to be human, to a different level.

Lewis Hyde, in the superb, “The Gift”, deals with this issue from the perspective of the ego…

I find it useful to think of the ego complex as a thing that keeps expanding, not as something to be overcome or done away with. An ego has formed and hardened by the time most of us reach adolescence, but it is small, an ego-of-one. Then, if we fall in love, for example, the constellation of identity expands and the ego-of-one becomes an ego-of-two. The young lover, often to his own amazement, finds himself saying ‘we’ instead of ‘me.’ Each of us identifies with a wider and wider community as we mature, coming eventually to think and act with a group-ego (or, in most of these gift stories, a tribal ego), which speaks with the ‘we’ of kings and wise old people. Of course the larger it becomes, the less it feels like what we usually mean by ego. Not entirely, though: whether an adolescent is thinking of himself or a nation of itself, it still feels like egotism to anyone who is not included. There is still a boundary.

He goes on to argue that the relaxation of that boundary is where we begin to experience the connectedness of everything….begin to lose that sense of duality and separateness from the other.

I think this is helpful. The truth is it isn’t easy to feel that ALL human being are your fellow men and women. But you DO live every day with a number of relationships which are fundamental to the creation of your world. I don’t think this means we should restrict our interest and our compassion to those outside of our personal community but if we approach these relationships from a positive perspective, and understand that every single human being cannot be understood in isolation but only in the context of their own unique web of relationships, then we might find an increase in both love and understanding.

Just a thought…..

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Did you ever wonder why March is called March?

It’s named after Mars, the God of War….the idea of war which brings peace and stability. He was also an agricultural guardian. Wikipedia describes his essential nature as follows –

Virility as a kind of life force (vis) or virtue (virtus) is an essential characteristic of Mars. As an agricultural guardian, he directs his energies toward creating conditions that allow crops to grow, which may include warding off hostile forces of nature. As an embodiment of masculine aggression, he is the force that drives wars – but ideally, war that delivers a secure peace.

(also in that wikipedia entry is a surprisingly large list of different Celtic gods associated with Mars!)

In my 12 monthly themes, March is the month of strength and assertiveness. It’s interesting that March comes immediately after February, which is the month of Love. One of the key myths surrounding Mars is the story Mars and Venus……and interesting coupling of love and war!

Most of my life, I’ve lived in the presence of a castle (Apart from 4 years in Ayrshire, I’ve lived in either Stirling or Edinburgh), and these ancient castles embody for me the quality of Mars – there is something strong, constant, assertive and stable about them, especially as both Stirling and Edinburgh castles are built high on rocky outcrops.

I’m always keen to consider the positive aspects around me, and as I think of Mars, I think of strength and assertiveness. We need clear boundaries. We need to be able to say “no” when it is appropriate, and we need the strength which gives us both healthy defences and the resilience we need to stay well.

So, here’s my focus for this month. How do you build the strength of your vital force so you can be resilient, healthy and flourishing?

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I don’t know how this works. Seriously. I don’t. You could claim it’s about coincidence but when it happens it seems much more significant that a random juxtaposition of events.

Here’s what’s happened. First off, I’m writing a weekly series of blog posts entitled “The A to Z of Becoming” where I’m writing about one verb each Sunday. This week I reached “H” so wrote about HOPE.

Secondly, I’ve subscribed to a bimonthly magazine called “Resurgence” for many, many years, and the March/April issue arrived the day before yesterday. I popped it in my bag to read on the train on the way to work on Monday morning.

So, imagine my surprise when I opened “Resurgence” at a seemingly random place and saw the article “Seeing with New Eyes” by Chris Johnstone. Right in the middle of the page, in a large “pull quote” is

Active Hope is a practice, like t’ai chi or gardening.

“Active Hope”?

Johnstone says there are two meanings of hope (and I didn’t think of that when I wrote my post on Sunday) – the first referring to “hopefulness, where our preferred outcome seems reasonably likely”, and the second refers to desire. I like that. Makes sense to me. The first meaning precipitates us into hopelessness where our preferred outcome seems highly unlikely, but the second can set us off in pursuit of our goal.

Then, what about this for a heroes not zombies idea……..?

Passive hope involves waiting for external agencies to create the future we desire. Active Hope is about becoming active participants in the story of bringing about what we hope for.

Active Hope – the deliberate choice to move in the direction of how we want to change.

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This week, I’m reflecting on the place of hope in life.
This little Haiku by Edith Shiffert seemed very appropriate and seeing snowdrops bursting out all around at the moment brought these lines back to my mind.

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