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# 2021-10-24 - Integrated Living by Damaris Zehner
Excerpts from Damaris Zehner [1] interview hosted by
Michael Dowd [2].
... the advanced industrial western world, where all of the deepest
needs that we have as people; for health, for exercise, for community
and communion with others, for spiritual growth, for fun; all seem to
be interfered with by the way society is set up.
What I wanted was to live an integrated life. Because of the
industrial and modern world, everything is disconnected. If I go to
work, I am not getting in shape. So if I need to go get in shape,
then I need to earn enough money to get a membership at the gym and
take the time to go to a gym. When I am at the gym I am not hanging
out with my family [and] I am not gardening. All of these things are
disconnected and in conflict. So I did enjoy the two years that I
spent in very primitive circumstances in West Africa, where my
exercise and my shopping were the same thing. I was carrying it home
on my head, which my neighbors thought was very funny. Where my work
was with people. I walked there through dusty roads to get to the
building where I worked, and everything seemed more real. My daily
activities seemed really to have to do with life and survival.
History has been very important to me. ... And then Barbara Tuckman's
book called A Distant Mirror [3]... she wrote it in the 70's and was
focusing on the middle ages during the time of the Hundred Years War
and the coming of the bubonic plague. The reason she wrote it was
during the 70's she faced the idea of the cold war and this was the
most catastrophic thing that she could imagine, and she asked herself
how have people in other times faced the thought of their own
annihilation. So being a historian, she went back and looked at what
people went through during the time of the bubonic plague, which in
some parts of Europe killed up to 75% of a particular town's
population; so apocalypse by any definition, certainly. And I
thought it was neat that one of the things she found was that life
went on. Even while people were doing crazy things and terrible
things were happening, we have records of marriages and sales
contracts that were signed. We have evidence of daily life
continuing. This type of perspective is helpful to me in the sense
that terrible things can happen but the average person lives daily
life even in the midst of terrible things.
I think one of the things that helps me the most is the story of sin:
that the way we are now is not the way we were meant to be.
The word integrity, we use it in two different ways. One is the more
common usage of acting honorably: telling the truth, being who you
seem to be, all of those things; acting with integrity. But it also
is related to the words integral and integrated where all the pieces
fit together and work in harmony with one another. So it expressed
very much what I wanted to explore in the course of my writing.
Nature is preparing an intervention for humankind. ... Now it is time
to change your addiction, to get off these bad habits, to get off of
fossil fuel, the growth mindset, wealth, and imperialism...
I don't like the word doom because too many people go immediately
into an apocalyptic vision... [this] is just a way that people avoid
responsibility and avoid things that they could be doing to make it
better. But, then when I thought a little bit more about the concept
of doom: the word goes back in Old English [and] its original meaning
is judgment. We have it in the modern word, to "deem" something...
So if this is after our judgment, after, whether you want to see it
as God or as The Earth, steps in and slaps us upside the head and
says "Guess what, you can't keep doing this anymore" then I am good
with the term post doom.
There's the refusal of the imagination of the story, and by story I
don't just mean literature, it's philosophy, it's the creative aspect
of science, it's medicine, it's all those things; but as soon as it
becomes a grind and becomes a job [and] you are a cog in a larger
machine [where] you've got a schedule, you've got money to earn; you
lose the human element, there's no soul, there's no sense of past or
future, there's no sense of the beauty of here and now, it's just a
grind.
There is the gift of challenge. We think of happiness nowadays in
modern western culture as having stuff, as luxuries, as comfort, and
yet our suicide rates are exponentially higher than the suicide rates
of people in third world countries who may be facing war and
starvation and everyday want to get up and want to go on living. So
I don't think comfort, luxury, security are really what we're made
for, and I think that there's a level of heroism and happiness even
that arises in difficult circumstances. Nobody wants to be shot at,
nobody wants to starve to death, and I hope nobody does, but
nonetheless we are more truly who we are in those moments than we are
sitting on the couch with a bag of chips watching Netflix. And that
is a gift... getting us back to who we were made to be.
When we had children my husband and I talked about it. We realized
that children are seen as an expensive luxury. What does that do to
somebody's psyche to grow up as someone who cost their parents money?
Now I've got to put you in day care. Now I've got to find a
pre-school. Now I need to buy you a car. Now I need to pay for
college. Phew! Now you're gone! That's a terrible way for somebody
to grow up. They are not integral to their family's life. They are
not a benefit to the world around them. And when people genuinely
can contribute, not just go to a cube farm and get a paycheck, then
they know what they are doing is providing food and shelter and
inspiration to the people around them. Then they'll be happier,
they'll be better.
We may not be able to change the trajectory of climate change, but we
can certainly change our response to it and our adaptation to it. We
might not be able to stop climate change but we could adjust to it a
whole lot better than we are.
It is more fun to spend time with people, to be closely related to
the land, to know your limits and to enjoy your life within them, and
to not be pounded on the treadmill of modern life. I like what John
Michael Greer [4] says: Collapse now and beat the rush; about leading
a simple life, pulling back on our impact on climate change. I don't
want to paint that as suffering in misery. It's going to be more fun
than sitting in front of a computer gaining weight and having high
blood pressure.
[1]
(HTM) Interview with Damaris Zehner
[2]
(HTM) Michael Dowd on postdoom.com
[3]
(TXT) A Distant Mirror @Wikipedia
[4]
(TXT) John Michael Greer, see section Economics and politics
tags: collapse,notes,podcast
# Tags
(DIR) collapse
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