In just the latest demonstration of how widespread video and web 2.0 technology is democratizing our media and revealing previously underexposed sides of our culture, much of the country has already seen footage of student Andrew Meyer being held down and tasered by police after rather angrily confronting Senator John Kerry with some controversial questions at a forum and resisting arrest. But more fascinating to me than the event itself have been the strongly emotional responses, both by those defending Meyer and those defending the police, which indicate the extent to which the incident evokes, for many of us, past experiences, defense mechanisms and projections revolving around issues of power, anger and authority. In this post, I discuss my view of this controversial story in the context of our current social state and the possible psychological and developmental roots of the actions of Andrew Meyer and the police, as well as people’s various responses.

Reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn in 1997 first exposed me to the idea that civilization is an inherently unsustainable and unhealthy social structure. But it took further reading of works by Quinn and Derrick Jensen, along with greater experience, to help me increasingly incorporate this understanding into my life. Most recently, Jensen’s work Endgame impacted me with a particularly convincing presentation of civilization’s shortcomings from the concrete and powerful perspective of physical resource dynamics.

In this post, I examine the paramount importance of internalizing the implications of our social structure’s fundamental flaws, the experience of facing the impact of this understanding, why it is to difficult to fully internalize, the variety of ways that people respond to the issue, and how my growing acceptance of it has influenced my life journey. I then discuss the process of finding our optimal roles in the re-emergence of health and sustainability and the invaluable role of community and support as we do so.

Conclusion (Part 8 of 8) Note: This is Part 8 of an eight-part series. You may want to start at Part 1 of the series, Summary and Table of Contents. There are tremendous challenges in our world today. Michael Moore’s films have been some of the most powerful channels through which many of us have […]

Moral Courage: A Required Virtue for Improving Our Society (Part 3 of 8) Note: This is Part 3 of an eight-part series. You may want to start at Part 1 of the series, Summary and Table of Contents.   Psychological Dissonance: The Cost of Keeping Quiet In our society, we have a great number of […]