Seen as she is clearly speaking from a zen-budhist style perspective; dissolution of objects judgements and defined relationships = nirvana, it suggests that you have a wider disagreement too.

Recognizing that spark, belongs to a more advanced level of teaching, in my opinion.

Most people, including those of the “new age” culture, don’t understand, viscerally, enough about the value of family (not abstractly, but in a real, enacted sense) and land. I believe the “oneness” myth has made this even more difficult.

One must feel one’s distinctness, and fiercely guard it, before learning of our wholeness together.

The bolo’bolo you describe sounds like the indigenous human world, where civilization has not yet scoured it out. “We are all one” requires the use of a religious verb, a civilized verb, known as the “to be” verb.

You say a very different thing when you say “we all belong to one body”, than “we are all one”.

Thanks for commenting.

yrs,
Willem

I see a contradiction between saying that there is a “ineffable spark that enflames life” and saying that we are not all one, but this may be a matter of how one defines “we” and “are”. Shouldn’t we recognize that spark in others and, recognizing that commonality, show compassion?

However, we do need strong cultures to remain healthy and sane, and bland national cultures do no satisfy this. Subcultures provide many of benefits of a tribe except they are usually part-time cultures that we don’t take with us to work or when we return home.

I’m a fan of P.M.’s anarchist utopia “bolo’bolo”. It describes a world of millions of tribal-sized communities, each with their own culture, independent of the cultures of neighboring communities. There is a basic minimal ethos, though: ground rules for inter-community relationships and recognition of a few basic human rights — ultimately based on the principle that there is ultimately one single ibu (= person) inhabiting billions of bodies. We are all one.

I certainly don’t think that “believing we are one has killed our souls as fierce, diverse, beautiful peoples” which you seem to equate with “[annihilating] our diversity through all-consuming nationalities and hyper-evangelizing religions [which have] smothered our wildness”.

But those things are hardly expressions of oneness. Nationality pits an “us” against “them”, and evangelizing religions draw a sharp line around those that buy into the chosen myth and the others who don’t.

You go on to describe situations that require an other, such as hosts & guests, villages & out-of-towners, but this is not the context in which we are one. This is the “realm of the relative,” home of relative truths; Oneness in a truth only in the absolute sense.

Oneness is a non-dual truth which contains dualism, as the Tao contains Yin and Yang. When you can say “both/and” rathe than “either/or”, when you can hold both the “host and the guest” and the One, when these two can have conversation, that’s when things get really interesting.

I suspect you’ll find more fruitful and practical ideas around the importance of strong tribal and ethnic identities in Spiral Dynamics (Beck & Cowan) and some of the integral theory works that reference SD. An example I saw was the Netherlands, which doesn’t have a strong national/ethnic identity which leaves the country SO open and tolerant that it puts itself at risk of tolerating the intolerable… I believe the example given was around trouble with the rising Muslim population there (your “welcoming strangers in our homes, into our villages, who don’t belong to our people”).

Also, you’ll find a beautiful explication of how the belief that we are NOT One but separate, discrete, Cartesian individuals is really the driving and destructive force behind our cultural mythos today in Charles Eisenstein’s Ascent of Humanity. The full text is online at http://ascentofhumanity.com/ or you can purchase the book in regular form.

So, diametric to what you assert, I say that any true understanding of Oneness that manages to spread is 1) a force for good and 2) not contradictory to the need for individual identity and diversity. How could it be One and not contain multitudes? Don’t mistake it for its opposite.

Funny too how many of the radical subculture have the “one-humanity-meme” going. Yet all these subcultures resemble what you’re writing about here much more, then a global superstate consciousness. Maybe i just comes naturally…

Coleus-

If I understand you right, that you mean the history of civilization equates with the history of humanity, then I disagree with you from the middle of your first sentence.

Using a survey of civilization’s history (which is indeed commonly rendered as a timeline punctuated by genocide, ethnic strife, and the expansion of empire), as my only guide, would indeed give me pause about thinking in this way.

However, I do not equate the history of civilization with that of humanity. Humanity, before civilization (and where civilization has not snuffed out its diversity), demonstrates an admirable ability to maintain vibrant and beautiful life in a web of fiercely differing identities.

Empire and civilization, by definition, means an ever increasing identification at larger and larger scales: first family - village - land, then alliance of villages and region, then city-state and countryside, then nation-state and territory, then empire and colonies.

I’m offering up another direction, collapsing back to a more human and sane scale: directly from empire down to family, village, and land.

If the results of such a journey worries you, I can only say I have far more faith (born of experience) in the ability of one fierce individual human being to respect another, than in the relationship between two corporations, cities, empires, and so on.

Sorry I didn’t reply. My computer… how shall I put it… Collapsed! Hah!

What I mean to say is, is that, collapse or no, we as humans have a terrible history of racism, bigotry, and prejudice along ethnic lines. Retreating to culturally insular groups and building differences up over emphasizing our common humanity, is a recipe for suspicion, distrust, and aggression against. Back to “Them” VS “Us.” It doesn’t take an industrialized society to engage in race wars (look at the history of pre-Colombian Mesoamerica!).

I’m not saying your idea is itself prejudiced or anything like that! I’m just worried that such a situation could, possibly, lead to a resurgence of ignorance-fueled hatred of ‘the other.’

Best pipe-dream I could think of would be if we were all bands of nomads that traveled the entire world. Hunting and gathering in close-knit small groups, but still communicating significantly over cultural lines… But even in a rewilding sense, THAT is fetched.

I just finished a weekend workshop on facilitating “restorative circles”. For restorative circles to really work, a system needs to be set up within a community so that everyone in the community has access. But I find it hard defining the community. This really helps!

Thank you Willem!

CordieB: Absolutely; the discernment to embrace each other’s differences without sacrificing our losing our own sense of self.

Fen: I do think the attempt to connect with “humanity” rather than a single warm-blooded person starts a lot of our social problems.

Sara: Exactly! Diversity indicates wealth, health, wholeness.

Bill: Hey, if you write the hollywood stories, you certainly can call them yours; just don’t expect me to anymore. I love your hub story - exactly! Each their own hub.

Wild Girl: …and you must have known I’d have prepared myself for it, to wit:
http://www.mythic-cartography.org/2009/06/02/i-do-not-agree-to-disagree/

Please allow me to suggest that you may disagree because you don’t fully understand my point. You may actually understand it quite well; but if you respond more expansively by telling your own story about identity, or perhaps asking me a question whether I indeed mean what you think I mean, we can discover where things sit.

In any case, happily your disagreement doesn’t extend to revulsion, as I’ve gotten in the past when I’ve proposed this to folks.