Dissonance We Created

Bow River

Ian Lungold used the analogy of a light bulb. To paraphrase: back in the 1700s, most people had a good idea where all the basics they needed for life came from and how they came to be. If a chair broke, they fixed it or made a new one from the supplies within walking distance of their home.

Today, if a light bulb burns out, you cannot make a new one. You don’t know how and you don’t have the materials or the tools. Our homes and our lives consist mainly of items we rely on every day to maintain our lifestyle and yet have no idea how to produce ourselves.

This inability to maintain our comfort level through our own industry creates a white noise stress in our lives that manifests in our behavior in ways we cannot clearly tie to anything.

Personally, this is the best explanation I’ve ever heard about that underlying feeling that we are not in control of our lives in any substantial way. Set aside for moment the spiritual fact that our lives serve purposes we may not be aware of and let’s talk about what we commonly call reality.

First, from the coffee that wakes us to the bed that receives us at the end of the day, most individuals either cannot or do not produce for themselves. I don’t care what you’re good at; you are not good at creating everything you use in your life.

Over time, many humans have switched from creating their own necessities to making money to buy those necessities. On the one hand, it’s a simple thing; don’t let yourself run out of spare light bulbs. On the other hand, someone decides we need to know the impact of our light bulb dependency on the planet or poor people on the other side of the world and suddenly it’s not simple any more. We have a moral obligation to change our light bulb habits.

Enter dissonance; defined on Wikipedia  this way, “In a state of dissonance, people may sometimes feel "disequilibrium": frustration, hunger, dread, guilt, anger, embarrassment, anxiety, etc.” 

I believe dissonance is so prevalent in our society today that we have created Poster Children/Whipping Blocks for issues that are so complex the average person cannot know all the facts, pros and cons or history about them. We really don’t know how satisfying key personal needs slipped out of our control.

Monsanto has become the evil empire responsible for all food corruption in our lives. Monsanto is the favorite poster child/whipping block for every poor choice a North American makes about what they put in their mouth. Forget the fact that Monsanto is only one company that produces agricultural chemicals and seeds; they are the problem. We hold up the Monsanto poster child/whipping block image as the evil that kills humans with food.

The oil and gas industry takes the brunt of every environmental wrong humans do to the planet. Big Oil (at least an acknowledgement that there is more than one company) is killing all of us. Its poster child/whipping block image is the evil that kills the planet.

At least in the culture where I live, these poster children/ whipping blocks make it possible for ordinary citizens to both grasp some of the challenges we face and ignore personal responsibility for solutions. Ironically, it is by passing off personal responsibilites that we created this situation. I do not grow my own food.

What makes me uncomfortable with this state of affairs is that it simplifies the problems too much. It is not solely Monsanto’s fault that our food system no longer focuses on nourishing human bodies. Nor is it solely Big Oil’s fault that humans are ripping apart the planet for our energy and other needs/wants.

I once had a Board Member tell me, “We don’t talk to the public about this because they’re too stupid to understand it.” The public is not stupid; the public is overwhelmed.
I contend that the answer to many of today’s First World problems lies in figuring out how to make change happen through rebuilding trust in communication.

I certainly don’t know what to believe any more regarding some key aspects of my health, financial well-being and community engagement. And that, my friends, causes much dissonance.

My Non-Profit Rant

In every Alberta community, the work of non-profit boards creates quality of life for Albertans. They are the groups that support local environmental initiatives, local children's sports, local fire protection, emergency medial

assistance, community center management and citizen activity programs for all ages.

They hold suppers, golf tournaments, bottle drives and as many other fund raising activities as they can to put a little money into the coffer to improve the services they offer local communities.

When you consider how vital many of these tasks are, it surprises me that they receive very little support from our governments. Some get annual basic funding, but many are simply a group of local citizens trying to address a need they see in the community and they get very little support of any kind from anyone.

Over the years (which is a much higher number than I’m going to mention here), I’ve worked on, with and for non-profit boards in Alberta. The challenge I see in that is that every single non-profit board, including school districts and municipalities, struggles to do its job because of time and money constraints. If you are surprised to see municipalities and school boards in there to talk to a rural council member or school trustee about budgets.

I will admit that at least those organizations get core funding from the province to keep the lights on and have someone around to answer a phone. This is a luxury most Alberta non-profits would love to have.

Although there are many corporations that offer funds for all kinds of non-profit boards, no one wants to fund office work or space. They want to see trees planted, kids on the ball diamond, off-stream water systems adopted, but they do not want to pay for an organization to have a person that coordinates those activities. That’s where the bake sale comes in handy. However, you have to sell A LOT of cookies to pay someone to manage a watershed stewardship group,  an arts program or a soup kitchen.

This leads to what many call creative financial reporting. This is to me one of the greatest injustices we allow in our society. We take our Community Leaders; the dedicated people who actually care enough to do something and put them in a situation where they have to fudge numbers and exercise intense creative writing skills to cover the costs of projects through the available funding sources that refuse to fund people to do the work.

While I’m on a bit of a rant about funding sources, I took part in an Alberta licensed casino to raise funds for a community. This is where I learned we take our Community Leaders and put them to work for society’s money laundering underbelly to earn money for community projects. There they are, the most caring citizens of our communities, exchanging $5,000 in chips for slimeballs clearly intelligent enough to figure out a money making system better than what Alberta offers its non-profit organizations. I find that very hard to stomach.

In order to be a non-profit organization in Alberta, a group of no less than five people have to get together, create a mandate and vision and apply to the government for Society status. As a registered society, they can apply for whatever grants they think they can get. Many of these folks have no idea of the risks and responsibilities they accept by agreeing to be on a local board.

During my time with the Board Development Program; which is one way Alberta offers support to non-profits, I learned just how huge the risks are that we ask average citizens to take on behalf of a cause they champion. As a board member of a registered society, you accept complete responsibility for the financial functions of that organization. Every penny that comes in and every penny that goes out can be scrutinized through an audit and any shortcomings are the responsibility of the board members.

Board members are also completely responsible for any legal issues related to the registered society. If you hold a picnic and someone chokes, the family can sue the Board as a collective and as individuals. We live in a time where more people look to legal action than ever before. I have often been amazed at the attempts to sue I hear about. Even if the Board wins the case, the legal fees can be a real burden. Generally I find Boards have an “it will never happen to us,” attitude toward this risk and I wish them well with that.

Of course the other aspect of this is that well organized societies spend some of those hard come by grant funds to insure board members, hire accountants and generally ensure risks are minimal for board members – and then fudge numbers. But for many of the small community organizations that need it most, the money is just not there. Maybe that’s why you don’t have a Little League in your neighborhood.

The greatest misfortune I see in all this is the missed opportunities for social benefit caused by lack of non-profit capacity. Our communities miss out on grants no one fills out; activities no one organizes; improvements no one can fund and events no one puts together because the support system for non-profit organizations in the province needs reworking.

Really, isn’t it ironic that we pay taxes, but don’t see our local groups supported by those dollars? Instead they have to engage in morally questionable activities, wait on slimeballs and beg from businesses who are mostly interested in how it will improve community acceptance of their business.

It gets to me!

Thoughts Around Energy

“It’s not that people who have opinions or ideas worth sharing are rare. It is that people who can express themselves confidently and articulately in writing and in speech are rare.”
 C. Lacombe

It’s just possible; I may be stretching myself a little. Here’s where I currently devote time.

I am Farming Smarter’s half-time Communication Director. I am working with Alberta Low Impact Development Partnership as a storyteller and administrative assistant. This is what I’m doing for money.

For professional development, I’ve mandated myself an aggressive track in Toastmasters and remained a member of Bow River Basin Council’s Stakeholder Engagement Committee.

For personal enjoyment, I’ve joined a drum circle and volunteered with TEDxCalgary.

For spiritual development, I signed up for a two-year exploration of personal power through an acknowledged master guide.

These are the things I’ve added to my life on top of the ever-present background of living and loving friends and family. Oh right, and myself… loving myself, honouring my body that I complain about so much but that still carries me through life with far less problems than many other people experience.

Years ago now, I had someone tell me that I have hermit tendencies while also being an extrovert. That sounds contradictory, but I find that the quiet time for reflection facilitates having something to offer when you interact.

I find interaction with people both exhilarating and exhausting. Consider these things people have put forward as facts.

Communication between people is over 90% non-verbal.

Humans have an energy envelope around them (aura).

Artificial light does not provide a full color spectrum of light and this affects the human body in various ways.

Now imagine yourself in a crowded room under fluorescent lights – sounds like WalMart actually. Anyway, that would mean over-lapping energy fields, large volumes of non-verbal communication coming at you while your mind and body try to function with key energy spectrum components missing. Sounds exhausting to me and it’s how I feel after going to WalMart – over stimulated and under nourished.

Conversely, if I go for a walk in nature or even to a large public event, I usually feel energized and content.

I’ve been thinking about energy for a few reasons lately along with my usual contemplations around ways our society structures itself and what that means for humans trying to function within it.

We are a long way from living naturally in our urban and our business society. We are disconnected in so many ways from nature and human nature that I question the construct's ability to foster natural human wellness and happiness.

I believe questioning whether we are creating an optimum environment for humans to realize wellness and happiness to be a worthwhile endeavor because that is the goal of most people - to be well and happy. What if the society we’ve constructed is what holds us back?

I would argue that much of what we have in place today for education, vocation and living places actually stunts humanity and drives us insane. Why are we colluding with this state of being?

Why am I? Why are you?

 

Reasons I'm thinking about energy 

1 TEDxCalgary Energy: Full Spectrum

2 Energy of Slaves by Andrew Nikiforuk

“There's a lot more to ogres than people think.”

Shrek is a wise ogre who knows something about layers; a word I can no longer hear in any other way than the one Donkey uses in the onion conversation in the first Shrek movie.

We all have layers and I’ve been working on peeling mine away.

I know people in our society don’t like to talk about fear except in conjunction with words such as conquer, overcome or pushed past. However, I believe we do ourselves a disfavor by ignoring the ever present powerful motivator that fear really is in our lives.

There's a lot more to fear than people think.

My exploration of personal fears began, as one might expect, by being consumed by it for a while and finding myself in need of a way to live with it. It is very difficult to spend long periods of time living in mortal fear. Days, weeks and months went by and still it would rear its ugly head unexpectedly in the course of everyday activity.

I've gained acceptance that fear is part of us. We need it to survive, but we can choose to let it dictate our lives or we can explore, understand and use it.
I found that by understanding my fears they lose any power they might hold over my activities and become part of conscious decision-making.

I've decided that talking about facing fear is not helpful. Fear doesn't give a rat's patootie if you're looking at it or not. But if you look hard enough you can choose to accept or reject its role in your life. Some fears are helpful such as not walking blindly off a cliff. Others simply hold you back such as fear of being alone.

A short while ago, someone posted a Buddha quote on Facebook that mentioned that we have 10,000 fears and 10,000 joys. (When I looked up the quote, I found that Buddha taught that there are 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Yeah internet and FB!)

But the thing that struck me was that there really are 10,000 fears we carry around and allow to limit us and our lives. Some are very basic if you can get to the root i.e. the desire for food, shelter and community. And some are purely First World Fears to borrow a current phrase and distort it a bit.

What I’m finding though is that humans are hard wired to constantly check for scary things nearby. If there are no man-eating tigers or armed hostiles, then the fear becomes more subtle.

As I strip away much of my society’s boundaries for life, I get deeper into and closer/clearer about my motivating fears. My time away last year allowed me to begin peeling away layers of fear, belief, clutchies (things you find hard to "let go" of) and obligations.

At one point, I feared that people would think I simply couldn’t handle life anymore and had given up. But from my perspective, I’m getting close to being free. Many people around me still struggle with primal fears that manifest as mortgages, bad jobs and failing relationships.

Some of the fear-based social norms I’ve let go include fear of not having insurance for that, fear of being poor in my old age, fear of not having a significant other, fear of not being able to take care of myself and fear of being irrelevant.

Some I’m still working on include fear of being considered nuts (although I may have already lost that battle), fear of wasting whatever time I have left and fear that I won’t be able to foster change that helps earth.

 I’m getting out there beyond a lot of First World musts and gaining insight. If you’re interested in letting go of some suffering, I suggest you look for its foundational fear.

I think the sorrows Buddha talks about are founded in our fears. Fear is always about ourselves.

I’m getting lighter these days by digging my way through the 10,000 and I will vouch for the fact that as the fears and sorrows become illuminated the joys shine ever brighter.

Here’s another Facebook internet quote to mull, “We are not just here to keep each other company. We are here to show each other God.” The Divine is light. Shine on my friends.

 

Today's Thought