The latest philosophical fad among comfortable westerners is that all 8 billion-plus of us belong to a particular place rather than to the Earth as a whole. Call it localism run amok.
As a reaction to the chaos of globalization, is localism healing communities and the planet, or contributing to the fragmentation of the Earth and humanity?
To my mind localism is an understandable but counterproductive consequence of the planetary ecological and socio-political crisis.
The scale of the ecological crisis, and the division and darkness in human consciousness that gave rise to it, is overwhelming. So it’s logical that people who still give a damn about the planet would react by trying to narrow their focus, believing that local issues are where our attention should go.
However when the Earth is dying at the hands of man, localism is the wrong prescription. The cliché, “think globally and act locally” has deteriorated into “think locally and act locally.”
Thinking and acting in terms of the parts, under the guise of being specific, can never restore the Earth and humanity to wholeness.
If we diligently see the whole however, we will integrate the parts. But if we limit ourselves to the parts, we cannot see the whole and incorporate the components.
What is the approach that includes both the whole and the parts?
When we look at anything as a whole (which entails listening and observing with a quiet, non-interpretive mind), we realize that the microcosm contains the macrocosm, and inclusive action follows.
Have you noticed that the more people speak of diversity the less of it there is?
Before hyper-capitalist globalization flattened the world, people were “different collections of histories born of particularities of place.”
Now however, people are straining to be different as an endless wave of cultural homogeneity breaks down formerly relatively intact cultures, communities and individuals.
The tragic paradox is that the harder people cling to separate identities of difference, the more like everyone else they are.
Inarguably, local issues require our attention. But when the local is put before the global out of fear of the basic borderlessness and unprecedented scale of the human crisis, the climate crisis and the Sixth Extinction intensify, wars and genocides increase, and brutal immigration policies ensue.
We are deeply conditioned with the idea that our problems originate externally and must be dealt with externally, when in fact they originate internally and must first be understood internally.
That doesn’t mean that we are individually responsible for the socio-economic-political system. It simply means we have to first understand ourselves in order to respond adequately.
This mistake of externalization is understandable evolutionarily, but it has become insupportable psychologically and socially. For tens of thousands of years, long before the dawn of agriculture, anatomically and cognitively modern humans had to be focused outwardly, since the immediate needs for and threats to survival came from nature.
Once humans began to settle down in cities however, internally generated psychological divisions gave rise to organized religions and war, as well as gross disparities of wealth and power.
Why is the modern mind in the habit of putting the part before the whole? Specialization and individualization are the plagues of the modern mind, and have given rise to the violent reaction of authoritarian control.
The third primal pattern serious people need to psychologically overthrow is the identification with particular groups. Tribalism has expanded over the centuries from clans to city-states to empires to nation-states, which are currently trying to become empires again. With economic insecurity and the loss of traditional cultures, there’s a dangerous resurgence of nationalistic tribalism.
Nationalism, whether from hideous leaders such as Donald Trump leading the retrogressive MAGA movement, or murderous leaders like Vladimir Putin with his dream of restoring the Russian Empire, is bringing the world to the brink of another world war.
Many progressives insist, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that human nature is good, and that it is a “myth that humans are, by nature, competitive, selfish, and autonomous.” They insist, “human nature is, by default, empathic, community oriented, generous and cooperative.”
That childish view goes hand in hand with the romanticization of indigenous people in recent years, and the futile attempt to place the indigenous way of life back at the center of humankind’s adaptive pattern.
It ignores two facts. First, all people were once indigenous people. Some were warlike, some peaceful. Most lived, by necessity, in a rough balance with nature, but that didn’t prevent humans from hunting the megafauna into extinction.
Second, despite Secretary of State Rubio’s asinine characterization in Munich recently, colonization was the brutal clash between so-called civilized Europeans, with their “guns, germs and steel,” and the indigenous peoples of North and South America, Africa, Australia and Aotearoa.
We cannot go back to reclaim indigenous wisdom and live according to traditional holistic precepts with respect to the Earth. That’s impossible, since very few intact indigenous groups retain their traditions in more than a ritualistic way. What’s more, tradition itself belongs to history.
People all over the world are feeling overwhelmed by the planetary polycrisis. Though it goes against the grain of current thinking, we have the capacity as human beings to see, feel and respond to the world as it is and as a whole.
Emphasizing the local, particular and immediate contributes to the fragmentation of the Earth and humanity. Precisely because the polycrisis arises from human consciousness, we can address it as a whole and at its root within us.
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The tragic paradox is that the harder people cling to separate identities of difference, the more like everyone else they are.
That childish view goes hand in hand with the romanticization of indigenous people in recent years, and the futile attempt to place the indigenous way of life back at the center of humankind’s adaptive pattern.
Thank you. (Warning: Purposefully-insulting comment ahead.)
I, for one, and tired of seeing fat guys who claim “native” heritage performing their interpretation of “their” dance in public spaces for the supposed purpose of presenting their ancestors’ culture to “everyone else”. And presumably, generating support from gullible progressives.
Meanwhile, they DROVE to the event, don’t dress like that any other time, don’t know how to make a canoe or a basket, own a casino (or benefit from one), speak English, and are looking for ever-increasing “land back” (at the expense of the entire public) that their sporadically-dispersed ancestors didn’t claim to own in the first place, before the Spanish and Mexican governments arrived.
Nor do they attempt to claim Silicon Valley, for example – because they already know what would happen if they tried.
Small minds and hearts cannot help but think small and feel little. Don’t use my proposed insights as a springboard for bigoted views.
👍👍