PILLARS OF PROGRESS: HONESTY

PARADIGMS AND PROGRESS
PILLARS OF PROGRESS: HONESTY

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
- Thomas Jefferson

Without honesty we are nothing. Without honesty, we will not solve the current environmental crisis or any other crisis. Our primary crisis is moral, psychological, emotional, internal – or in a word, spiritual. Too many of us are still honestly terrified of the word “spiritual” and even more terrified of confronting the spiritual dimension of our existence; our obsession with secularism, reason, science and other hallmarks of a materialistic approach to life have made us blind to the broader and deeper mysteries within and around us, blind to the very essence of which we are made, of life.  But things are changing: Science, art, language, mysticism, religion, spirituality, ecology, technology are once again converging, and we have in fact already entered the beginnings of a new renaissance, this time on a massive and almost global scale, an unprecedented renaiassance in depth and scope. Not only can we rethink the very foundations of our political, economic, social, cultural, and religious structures: ¡we must!  And we must do so from a place of absolute and radical honesty. There is no other way to save our skins and the skin of our earth.

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Let us take a hard look at ourselves. Across the world we are becoming more urban, unhealthier, and fatter, disgustingly fatter. We are, in effect, stuffing ourselves blind, blocking our highly sensitive internal and external organs with food, soda, sugar, spices, data, “news”, and all kinds of noxious substances that are desensitizing us and eliminating our capacity to be sincere, transparent, and honest with ourselves and with others.

We cannot and will not reduce carbon dioxide and “save” our planet from our imbecility if we do not reform ourselves internally, if we do not, most literally, come to our senses. We are so intoxicated with hubris, power, craving, hunger, emptiness, sadness, and other emotionally, mentally, and volitonally (in a word, spiritually) malignant states that we have become completely blind to the massive devastation all around us and which almost of all of us, if not each and everyone of us, is to some extent responsible for.

¿Really? Yes, really. Every time we are in a car or plane that consummes oil and gas, every time we use a plastic container or bag, every time we open our mouths to consume food, even if it is only vegetables and fruit, we are directly or indirectly connected to a global network of people, processes, machines, and inputs that in one way or another are at some point in the chain contributing to deforestation, pollution, industrialization, and consumerism in an unconscious and destructive manner. It is true that some people, ever more thankfully, are truly beginning to wake up and to realize the connection between each one of our acts, even the simplest ones, and the massive machinery of devastation that we human beings have become the very heart of. But most of us are still far too unconscious, far too disconnected, and far too intoxicated, literally, with sugar, soda, contaminated air and water, magnetically charged airwaves, bad breathing, low self esteem, and so much more as to even be able to begin to notice how profoundly dishonest we currently are and how profoundly dishonest we have become. 

We are so tied up in our gadgets, so stuffed up with tasty food, so caught up in our pursuit of purchasing and holding on to comfortable and pleasing homes and furniture, so obssessed with avoiding unpleasant temperatures, unpleasant people, and unpleasant situations – so caught up in serving our ego and our selfish, personal comfort, pursuits, and survival – that we have lost the critical capacity to be profoundly and radically honest with ourselves.

For far too many of us have become living lies, and as a whole, we are becoming homo lugens, the lying species. We have become incapable of even realizing that we have become incapable of living honesty due to many factors – among others, due to the absence in our lives of simple and fresh food and pure fresh water straight from the ground to nurture and finetune our senses and of sincere and loving family and friends to challenge our daily inconsistencies, insensitivities, fallacies, and hypocrycies. In our effort to overcome, defeat, and escape nature, we have completely forgotten what it feels like to walk in the rain, to work on the earth, to feel the heat of the sun on our skin, to walk barefoot on the earth, in the mud, through the fields.

We have become so insensible, so unsensitive, so unfeeling and unkind that we have, naturally, become dishonest, prodoundly dishonest: Dishonest with what we eat and how we eat, dishonest with how we care for our own bodies, dishonest with what we put into our heads every time we switch on a gadget to try and push away the insistent buzz that comes from deep inside of us calling us desperately to return to moderation, peace, clarity, wisdom, and sanity.

We are so desperate to drown our minds with in content and noise, if need be, with more and more sensual, sexual, horrid, disturbing, even violent news and “entertainment”. We watch with fascination how we slaughter one another in this or that part of the world, how we mass-produce and mass-murder other living beings for our own consumption and sanitize, through mass media and mass marketing, the imagery to make the cadavers of tens of millions of animals, slaughtered daily, palatable and kosher for our tongues and stomachs, for our brains and our hearts which deep down know just how profoundly violent, cruel, primitive, and barbaric we are being towards ourselves, one another, and towards all other living beings which are also part of one creation, one life, one world.

We have become so profoundly dishonest with ourselves, with one another, and with other living beings that we have to consume more and more sugar, more and more soda and fatty foods and gas and oil and corn and soy and disturbing and disgusting music, movies, news, and other content --- the more blood and gore the better – in order to cover up just how terribly disgusting we feel and just how radically disgusted we are with ourselves and with one another. ¡Of course we have to! ¿How else would we ever be able to confront ourselves, to look ourselves in the mirror each morning, to get back out of bed, into the car, and into the office (or factory or whatever) if we were not capable of blocking just how truly terrible we feel about the way we are living, killing or contributing to the killing (yes we all are, even if only indirectly), consuming, exploiting, tearing the earth and the fabric of life to pieces in front of our own eyes!

Businessmen and congressmen (and women too), politicians, executives, leaders, intellectuals, and common citizens -- far too many of you, far too many of us, are so caught up in lying to ourselves, lying to one another, in massaging, manipulating, and marketing false truths to one another, that we have completely lost sight of what is simple, basic, true, and real. We no longer breathe right. We no longer cry and laugh, sing and dance, walk and celebrate life as our ancestors have for tens of thousands of years: We are too busy stuffing our brains and bodies with all kinds of anti-depressants, sleeping pills and pills to reduce stress, pain, and headaches to avoid the need to be radically honest with ourselves. 

And truly, truly, we are ignoring the simplest truths, the most basic facts, necesarry for our own survival. We are forgetting, or have completely forgotten, the most basic spiritual and religious precepts: To love ourselves and to love one another, truly and fully. To see and protect and uphold all of life, including our own lives, as sacred. To truly be the change we wish to see in this world, demanding changes first and above all from our own selves, and only than, engaging loving and passionately with our loved ones, and from their on outward till we reach the most remote corporate executive, politician, preacher, rabbi or cleric to demand of them too, that they too, return to fundamental, radical honesty in order to truly save the world. Only by saving ourselves can we truly save our planet. It is time to wake up, truly. It is time to recover our capacity to be honest and to treasure profound, radical honesty as a fundamental virtue and characteristic of life itself, a virtue without which science, art, culture, health, education, governance, and any other impulse or endeavour to survive, thrive, and grow in a healthy, ethical, and sustainable manner is virtually impossible. Let’s be honest. Let’s wake up. For real.

Cochabamba, April 21, 2015