Today, I am a white man engaging with the thoughts of other white men. These thoughts are biased and limited, rooted in a privileged perspective. I also validate my own humanity and process in its limitations and desire to grow. I gently acknowledge the inexpressible cost of the stolen land on which I live and work, as well as the advantage afforded to me which has come at the cost of abuse of the disenfranchised.
I am listening, I am changing, slowly. I am afraid, too. I feel the fear and fragility within my system of beliefs which keep me unmoved. I consider foremost my beliefs about money, connectedness, community, energetic currency. The primal fear of "what will I do if I do not have money or a source of money? What if I cannot pay for healthcare? I will surely suffer and die at the whim of the universe. I must have more, I must earn more, to be more safe."
Safety at what cost? And am I really more safe? What riches and wealth do I loose by this fear-centered system of beliefs? I am disrupting, dismantling these silent assumptions, I am unpacking my proverbial desk drawers on the floor and re-packing my drawers, holding empty underutilized space empty. This process is slower than I'd like. I wince at the unconscious bias which evades me even within these paragraphs.
Still I march on, I speak, I listen.
Change can feel hard
like being hit by a car. My mother was diagnosed with cancer in September of
2020, she died in October of 2020. She died an uncomfortable but otherwise
privileged death of a white woman with cancer. She is dead in that human way.
And change can be gentle
like crossing the street. Yeah, crossing the street can be scary and dangerous,
but you look both ways and watch the lights, and you find the right time to
cross. I have been making lots of little changes in my priorities after her
passing. Death is such an illuminating fact of life.
I am learning I spend a LOT
of energy making a strong poker face. Learning songs and dance to divert and
redirect potential conflict. People seem to "misread" me because they
are reading what I am putting off. I am angry that I am being misread and I am
afraid to offer my actual pages to be read. I have been carefully masking and
spinning and hiding to feel safe in a world which does not speak my language, a
world which I did not yet understand how to articulate my heart. The whole
world is a foreign place in the eyes of a child.
So then I have grown up
and I understand the world better, and I understand myself better. Now that I
know the words for what I want, now that I understand how to express myself, I
learn that I am AFRAID to express myself freely. For good reasons, valid reasons.
I am ASHAMED to have expressed myself so carefully before, I now live in an
environment which IS safe, and my nervous system, my beliefs, my agreements,
press down so hard against my free and sovereign self to stay in line and
"behave", "be a team player," and "just get along
easy."
But I want to be seen! I
am afraid to be seen.
These tectonic forces
are the bedrock of this essay: impatience for my desire to change up against my
resistance to change.
---
In shedding beliefs
which used to be a source of security and now feel more confining, I have
been thinking a lot about money as I pay off my student debt.
"Every dollar is a
vote."
My money reflects my
values, my desires, my attention. Earning, saving, spending, investing,
donating. What IS money? What does it represent? What am I willing to do to GET
it? What am I willing to give it up FOR?
I have been holding
money, particularly the money in my paycheck, foremost as a measure of
competency, worthiness, the longer I practice in my profession the more
valuable I am. The more money I make, then, the more money I spend to SHOW I'm
making more money. But I also need to be careful and spend it right.
Opportunity cost eats away at my wealth at every turn. The more money I have,
the "smarter" I've invested it or saved it, the more
"responsible" of an adult I am.
Yet even with all the
fears of the belief system I carry with me about money, I recognize my safety
and insatiable desire for status and money and security as an oppressive actor
within the world.
Every morning, I have been reading Charles Eisenstein's book Sacred
Economics. I have found hopefulness and guidance beyond the realms of the
zeitgeist of what money is and how it works.
"As people become
aware that merely living in society means contributing to the evils of the
world, they often go through a phase of desiring to find a completely isolated
and self-sufficient intentional community— but what good does that do, while
Rome burns?" (Eisenstein)
Even if I DID create a
small system which is self-sufficient and works well, I still have the whole
WORLD to contend with! What is money, I ask, again, in the face of its
oppressive and patterned beliefs within myself? What is it, in essence? Is
money just Energy? Neither created nor destroyed? Certainly, money is created,
and so it is not raw energy on its own, but it must carry with it a compelling force
just as Belief does.
What does the energy of
Money mean in terms of white supremacy or maleness? With such power, what is
the responsibility of my white-bodied, cis-gendered, assigned-male-at-birth
privilege? I have been crafting, refining, pondering, and processing these
questions and have formed some thoughts which I have not articulated until
Eisenstein rings the bell for me:
"Money has facilitated the development of a
metahuman organism of seven billion cells, the collective body of the human
species. It is like a signaling molecule, coordinating the contributions of
individuals and organizations toward purposes that no smaller grouping could
ever achieve. All the needs that money has created or transferred from the
personal to the standard and generic have been part of this organismic
development” (Eisenstein, Sacred Economics, Chapter 5)
Signaling molecule, ahh.
But if money is simply an organizing force, why do I feel it is EVIL? Why do I
resist and resent billionaires and how can I hold both fear and ideas scarcity
within myself while also harboring such self-resentment against these qualities
of my belief system?
"The true culprit,
the true puppet-master that manipulates our elites from behind the scenes, is
the money system itself: a credit-based, interest-driven system that arises
from the ancient, rising tide of separation; that generates competition,
polarization, and greed; that compels endless exponential growth; and, most
importantly, that is coming to an end in our time as the fuel for that growth—
social, natural, and spiritual capital— runs out." (Eisenstein)
THIS! "A
credit-based, interest-driven system that arises from the ancient, rising tide
of separation." This is my enemy. I do not have to be angry or resentful
of this system as inherently evil. Money as it stands now, the market forces
and so on, have acted as a growth hormone and they have reached the limits of
balance. Nature is pushing back just in the gentlest bit, and so the
assumptions which this system was originally founded on have changed, so I must
attune old beliefs to new truths.
Making change feels
heavy, particularly as I engage with my own stubborn subconscious beliefs,
nevermind the beliefs of those around me. I am overwhelmed by all there is to
do, or anxious to pick the right priorities, or afraid to be too still and
judged as complacent or complicit. There are so many good causes to turn my
money towards, and yet I still do not trust them. I consider my own self and
how unsatisfying it feels to throw $100 at some charity. Where will that money
even go? Am I just giving it away to feel less guilt or am I actually
contributing toward the solution?
Is my paycheck coming
from the profit made from CAUSING all these world problems? What is it to take
$100 out of my paycheck to offer penance and pity to those who I will never
meet? To those who suffer outside my earshot?
I turn my curiosity to
emotional sources of energy: gratitude and grief.
In the death of my
mother I have felt the impressive emotional force of grief within my system. It
completely disrupts my relationship with the world around me, just as growing
older has (27 is certainly not the same as 37, but it is also NOT 17). New
limits and capcaities come with it new expectations, which of course rewire my
values and priorities. Both grief's interruptive force, as well as its
generative and love-centered inspiration. To make space for grief in a society
which views the unpredictability of grief as a nuisance to the rhythm of the
schedule.
"Stuff it down!
Compose yourself, you are a professional!"
These are the words of
the feelings within me. No, I will make space for my grief as I imagine I would
for a child. I honor it, as it is tied inseparably from mother-love, a powerful
force all its own. I turn next to gratitude
"Gratitude is the
knowledge of having received and the desire to give in turn." (Eisenstein)
This one strikes me
true. I understand the worth of gratitude within myself. I recognize the
energetics of a DESIRE to give and the selfish pleasure which arises from
offering what I do not need for myself. This tension within a system of both
needing to have and needing to be rid of forms the rhythm and frequency on
which community is built.
"The community of the future will arise from the needs that money
inherently cannot meet." (Eisenstein)"
"Community is woven
from gifts." (Eisenstein)
"To be in community
is to be in personal, interdependent relationship, and it comes with a price:
our illusion of independence, our freedom from obligation. You can’t have it
both ways. If you want community, you must be willing to be obligated,
dependent, tied, attached. You will give and receive gifts that you cannot just
buy somewhere. You will not be able to easily find another source. You need
each other." (Eisenstein, Sacred Economics, Chapter 22)
Now instead of
considering how to SPEND my money "responsibly" (either to make more
money or increase my pleasure or standard of living), I consider my NETWORK, my
capital C, Community.
I consider my wealth, my
energy, my legacy in these terms:
- My attention (my time, my schedule)
- My liquid assets (the balance on my bank account, my
investments, my debts)
Expanding my
"wealth" to be UNDERNEATH the term of my Gifts, I ask myself what to
do. What do I do now that I have identified this value of community, who do I
turn to? How do I recognize the kind of community I desire to create while I
also hold within me such fear of the intimacy of the kind of community I desire
to be a part of? What do I do so the energy I release falls down in the shape
of the values of my heart?
Enter the term
"Sacred Investing".
"[Investing] means
to clothe, as in to take naked money and put it into new vestments, something
material, something real in the physical or social realm. Money is naked human
potential — creative energy that has not yet been “clothed” with material or
social constructions." (Eisenstein, Sacred Economics)
So now I consider all I
have to give. My gifts: my money, my attention, my privilege, my schedule, my
connections, my reputation. I hold, in particular, my unclothed money at the
forefront of this purpose-seeking question:
"If you are an
investor, it is time to shift your focus entirely to the creation of connections,
the generation of gratitude, and the reclamation and protection of the
commonwealth.” (Eisenstein, Sacred Economics, Chapter 20).
A new intention, a new
mission statement to start considering in all my vast considerations of
shifting my belief systems toward community connection and interconnectedness,
interdependency, all of course at the pace which suits me, the heir to the
privilege of white men.
Now that I know better,
how do I shepherd my gifts (my time, my energy, my unclothed money, my attention)
towards "connections, generation of gratitude, and reclamation and
protection of the commonwealth" when I look into my pocketbook and
schedule for answers. I am noticing this new language in my pockets to guide my
thoughts and crafting of new intentions for my life formed in the wake of my
mother's death.
So I look both ways as I
cross the street. My change from primarily holding and spending money to
positive-interest accumulation toward facilitating the construction of social
giving structures which operate in terms of the protected Commonwealth.
Where can I expand the
protections? Where can I shepherd dollar-currency into the ineffable qualities
and wealth of The Commons?
Today I do not have
answers, but a new hefty set of questions which feel proportional to what I
have to offer and where my growth edge is. I offer you my questions and process
earnestly for those who are looking for a new story of the world. And with
that, I take my leave this evening, and wish you well as we turn towards spring
of 2021.
In Truth,
Riley
For those who are
searching, I offer this list of my most recent inspirations and channels I've
been tuned into in this growth:
---
THERE IS ANOTHER WAY OF RELATING TO THE EARTH
AND EACHOTHER THROUGH ECONOMY WITHOUT VIOLENTLY TOPPLING OUR CURRENT SYSTEM.
"Sacred Economics" by Charles
Eisenstein
https://sacred-economics.com/
THERE IS A GROUP OF PEOPLE LOOKING FOR NEW WAYS
TO THINK ABOUT ONLINE SPACES.
"New-Public" by Civic Signals
https://newpublic.org/
THERE IS A PATHWAY FOR COMMUNICATION IN TENSELY
POLARIZED SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS.
"Non-Violent Communication" Marshall
Rosenburg, PhD
https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/product/nonviolent-communication-a-language-of-life-3rd-edition/
A FRAMEWORK FOR REVEALING UNACKNOWLEDGED
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ELEMENTS OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS
"Systemic Constellations" Collective
Transitions
https://www.collectivetransitions.com/what-is-ct
GRIEF AS A CENTRAL FORCE FOR REBALANCE
"Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate
Revolution" Peter Kalmus
THERE'S OTHER SYSTEMS OF VOTING BEING RESEARCHED
AND PRACTICED IN THE US.
STAR Voting
https://www.starvoting.us/
