Crying into the \cracks\
On elections, grief, and organic consciousness
A new ingredient has been added to the soup
A few days before the election, I started a letter to my friends which I still haven’t sent. It began like this:
“We are stuck with the same ingredients in our national and global soup with either political outcome – climate change and ecosystem destruction, militarism, white supremacy, and profound inequality are with us regardless of whether a blue politician or a red politician sits in the White House.”
I am uniquely horrified by the emergent fascism that is set to take office. I am scared for those who are most vulnerable – undocumented siblings, sisters whose bodily autonomy is under threat, and ecosystems whose scant legal protections may be entirely erased. This election feels like an accelerant to a planetary process that is unfolding in ways that are beyond anyone’s control.
In the rare moments I can tolerate the fear that comes with staring it directly in the face, the capitalist system of White Modernity seems to me a machine consciousness that is driven by blind worship of the god of profit, organizing humans to become what Nate Hagens calls a “cybernetic superorganism” that continuously converts the biosphere into energy and materials, spitting out waste at the expense of organic life.
As Chris Hedges points out, this election was about despair. He aptly notes:
“Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay. He expresses a childish yearning to be an omnipotent god. This yearning resonates with Americans who feel they have been treated like human refuse. But the impossibility of being a god, as Ernest Becker writes, leads to its dark alternative -- destroying like a god. This self-immolation is what comes next.”
So where does this leave us?
I was at a music festival with some friends the week before the election and as my consciousness expanded and contracted throughout the weekend, I found the courage to confide my despair in my friend Rachel. Rachel is a landscape ecosystem designer who focuses on native plants and she told me about the great comfort and wisdom she draws from her relationship to these older cousins of ours. They are her higher power.
If we are in a war between this self-terminating machine consciousness and the organic consciousness of Mother Earth, there is no question who will win out. Mushrooms, plants, bacteria, viruses, and likely some of our animal cousins will adapt, evolve, and multiply. On time scales that I struggle to comprehend, they will metabolize plastic, filter atmospheric carbon, and start the cycle of explosive biodiversity again.
Do I think humans are doomed?
Frankly, I have no idea. It feels as though a cataclysm is underway and there is no way to intuit how accelerants like artificial intelligence, emergent fascism, and geopolitical conflict add exponential effects to the unfolding metacrisis.
It gives me great comfort that the speed or totality of this unraveling changes nothing about how I want to live my life.
In touching the depths of my fear, sorrow, emptiness, and anger in a communal grief ritual known as a Truth Mandala, I feel more and more that love is the animating force of my life. The wisdom of this practice, designed by Joanna Macy, is that we may find the “tantric flip” of our grief by letting our pain for the world flow. By allowing ourselves to feel and express our fear, we find untapped reserves of courage. Likewise we find the depths of our love by feeling the depths of our sorrow. Our anger stems from our passion for justice, and emptiness is the mother of possibility.
Learning how to grieve can put us back in touch with our own connection to the organic consciousness that harmonizes life and creates a higher order. Organic consciousness emerges within and around \cracks\.
What emerges from \cracks\?
Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé defines \cracks\ as “monstrous eruptions that represent hidden tendencies running beneath the surface of civilizing and colonizing ethics. Cracks disrupt, innervate, and challenge established colonial fields,” unsettling the rigid structures that seek to control or homogenize.
When Hurricane Helene swept through my home in Western North Carolina, I saw glimpses of what it means to be visited by a crack. Gently flowing streams and creeks in steep valleys and hollers turned into roaring rivers, sweeping houses off their foundations, picking up cars, propane tanks, trash, and trees. Flood waters and mudslides took lives. Fallen trees and “earth moving events” – as the insurance companies like to call them so as to avoid covering the costs of their impact – covered roads and destroyed homes.
And yet, responding to this crack, the collective consciousness in our community largely reverted to a more organic, cooperative resonance. “Humans are like ants,” said my friend Kyle as we stared into a fire and recounted what we learned from the deluge. Nurses rode into cutoff communities on horseback, volunteer crews swarmed to make essential repairs, and keeping people fed and sheltered became a shared mission among neighbors.
The machine consciousness also responds to \cracks\. The powerful non-profit cleans mud from the basements of the wealthy, adding their names to their donor rolls. Speculators descend with their lowball cash offers on the valleys where property damage has concentrated. The conspiracy theory industrial complex converts fear into attention into dollars.
So what happens next?
Globally, your guess is as good as mine.
Personally, I’m saying goodbye to my tech career on December 4th. I’ve been so blessed with personal prosperity and beautiful coworkers over the past seven years but it doesn’t feed my soul’s longings.
I have a lot of questions about how to be in the world that I’m going to explore with other people who are also answering a call to organic consciousness and a life animated by love. I’m excited to seek and nurture community locally and globally as I find my way through the coming months.
Further reading and listening:
An Introduction to the Metacrisis – Daniel Schmachtenberger (The Consilience Project)
The World is in Crisis – Rachel Donald (Planet Critical)
The God of White Modernity is Tired — Báyò Akómoláfé
Dimensions of the Great Turning – Joanna Macy (The Work that Reconnects)
Truth Mandala – Joanna Macy (The Work that Reconnects)
On Doors and \cracks\ – Báyò Akómoláfé
A Crisis of Mastery – Báyò Akómoláfé in conversation with Rachel Donald (Planet Critical)
Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos – Jem Bendell and Rupert Read
At Work in the Ruins – Dougald Hine
The Politics of Cultural Despair – Chris Hedges
Somebody’s Gonna Win – Nate Hagens (The Great Simplification)