Dealing with the bigger picture

Off Trump, on to saving humanity

Life sometimes seems like a cartoon. How could humans be destructive to humanity? As we go to grocery stores and restaurants, creatures just like us are bombing each other – in our faces on TV. I am continually wondering how this can be my real human life.

Mostly conflict and violence isn’t new, but we are evolving, as in getting more freedoms all the time – for blacks, for women, for gay people. But what is new, on any very large scale, is that now, in the violence department, it’s us against us -- even worse than the Civil War in that this endangers the foundation our country rests on.

On the sane side, we are scratching our heads. How this can be should be the question we grapple with. We deal with issues and problems and threats, but we need to be taking a deeper dive to do more than moving those deck chairs.

Some of the best non-fiction writing these days is castigations of Trump. I’ll think I’ve read the definitive exposé and then I read a better one. But, by my lights, it’s time to move on. That market is saturated. Now, let’s deal with this historic make or break moment in history so that we go in the make direction. It’s the big picture that includes causality that we need. Where is anti-human behavior coming from?  

I hope the Essay Contest I put out last week gets our good writers to think inspirational thoughts. We could use some prompts for helping this hurting world. I’m encouraged by some thoughtful submissions already, and bookings I’ve gotten on podcasts and a Zoom guesting. I am so happy to report a thrilled reaction I’ve gotten -- a lovely surprise -- and welcome to new subscribers this brought in.

I don’t get excited about many people who are dealing with the bigger picture, but I resonate with Alexander Beiner, who calls his Substack The Bigger Picture. This is an excerpt from The Naked Potential of 2024: Democracy, Chaos and Creativity / Reflections on the year. How could you not read all of it after you see the picture he used?

Many people have the sense that the ruling class is increasingly disconnected, authoritarian, extractive and unjust. Molochian forces rule almost every aspect of our lives, and the people want change.

That change can come through grifter politicians, or it can come from somewhere far deeper and more generative.

Despite our increasingly fractured politics, there is always a regenerative hope just under the surface of things. The transcendent balm of the sacred hides in the cracks of even the most rigid authoritarian regimes. The human soul and its wild, fecund desires will always break through our attempts to control it. Trying to guide culture, police language, and demand ‘correct thought’ can only last for so long, because it’s an attempt to push against reality itself.

Culture is an emergent process, and the human experience is complex and contradictory, full of dissenting voices and clashing ideas. Trying to make it anything else is like trying to hold back the tide with our bare hands; the creative energy of who we are will burst through and make itself felt. I draw a lot of hope from this.

Many of us sense, as we stare into our phones at mounting horror in Gaza and read stats about our heating world, that there must be another way. For all the increasing commodification and centralization of power, millions of us are seeking something new. We sense that we can be more to one another than atomised fellow consumers. That the world can be more than a dead machine to be picked apart and understood.

As 2024 unfolds, my mission remains to try and bring more aliveness to the social imaginary, and learn from others doing the same. We need to draw on everything we have to find a way out of the mess we’re building. Our deepest moments of shared humanity, our most robust science, and our wildest mysticism. We need to uncover the unusual, the non-ordinary, the mysterious to see the world anew. To connect with the grounded, the sensible and the bureaucratic to get things done.

Above all, we need to bring an aliveness back into a social reality that has become increasingly lost and empty. I’ve been feeling this for months; a desire for cultural growth, for artistic chaos, for novelty and richness to penetrate the stale madness of consumer culture.

This is a mind I enjoy seeing into. Some of that came from reading his very good book, called, guess what, The Bigger Picture. He’s a daring adventurer reporting on a multiple-session study with 40-minute continuing dosing of DMT. Fyi, the usual is a 10-minute change-your-life blast once in a lifetime. Trust this man. He has been there, and he is educated so he’s a fine messenger. His subtitle is How Psychedelics Can Help Us Make Sense of the World. They certainly helped me!

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