Momentous
Change
“Our
conception of reality has shifted from top-down chains of authority supported
by technical expertise and mechanical organizations toward living systems of
interrelationship and interdependency knit together in a web of life.”
Diana
Butler Bass (Grounded, p.153; Harper One, 2015; quoted concept of Fritjof Capra,
Web of Life, Anchor, New York, 1997)
For
centuries, scientists believed that the brain was the single driving force of
the body, and certainly, it plays a massively important role. It has been
revered as the crowning achievement of both human development and human
superiority. We thought the brain controlled everything—until we began to better
understand the details of human anatomy and physiology. Now we know that the
heart has its own “brain” in the form of nodes that control the rhythm, and
that fascia, which encapsulates everything in the body, is crystalline in
structure and functions as a sort of cosmic communication system allowing cells
to communicate directly with other cells.
Along the way we learned
that all the cells in our bodies, especially brain cells, are powered by tiny organelles
called mitochondria, and that they were once a species unto themselves. In the
mud of our primordial past, one larger cell, no doubt a bacterium, engulfed a mitochondrion,
and obtained enough energy to enable cell reproduction that over eons led to
complex organisms, including us. (Gives new meaning to “from dust you came and
to dust you shall return, doesn’t it?) We
now have a symbiotic relationship with mitochondria.
We know as well that
individual structures in the human body join with other structures and form
systems—limbic, nervous, circulatory, digestive—to name just a few. They
communicate chemically and regulate all the functions of the body. They equate
with what Diana Butler Bass called “interrelationship and interdependency knit
together.” We are living systems which
require other living systems to survive. For all our cowboy mentality and
rugged individualism, we are exceptionally dependent beings. Without the other
systems that support us we would not be here.
Just as we are learning
that our existence is interrelated with every other living thing and being, we
are experiencing a “revolution” in societal restructuring. The hierarchical
structure, top-down, of the patriarchy is flattening and becoming more like a
circle where every part has an equal say, and everyone has a purpose in this
web of life. We are discovering that human life is more like a tapestry than a
pyramid. That’s what all the fuss is about; what is fueling a backlash against change. The structures that have always been
static and hierarchical, are changing, and that is causing chaotic and
unsettling responses in us. It feels like we are standing on shifting sand, and
that we may fall into an abyss at any moment. Momentous change does that—it shakes
things up. When the dust settles, we will find our place in the great web. It
will be different, but it will be there, and hopefully, it will be better.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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