Further Reflections on 'Breaking Together'

What do we do now?

“The Sun” by Frans Masareel

Finally finishing Jem Bendell’s Breaking Together, I feel a mixture of relief and sadness. I am relieved that someone else expressed so much of what I believe to be the truth of our situation, while adding some new twists of his own. I want this truth to be more deeply understood and held by many, many people. I believe this would help us to coordinate and act together during the coming shit storm, in a way that hasn’t been possible yet. 

I wish the elite sectors of society (including many of my friends heading out to the Burn next week) would read Breaking Together, because I want them to take more responsibility for our shared situation. In many cases, it may not be an individual’s choice that they happen to be a significant stakeholder in a system that is destroying the world and our children’s future. But when they become aware of this circumstance, they have an opportunity to redirect their energy and resources. 

I particularly want the financial elite or “1%”  to support initiatives focused on systems change — reclaiming the commons, rebuilding social equity — without caring about standard return on investments (ROIs). Bendell mentions some good system change initiatives I had never heard of in the book, including HUMANS  (Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks global cooperative) and Grassroot Economics (a network of Local Exchange Trading Systems). He also discusses how difficult it is for these types of initiatives – which run counter to corporate rule and centralized control –  to get enough funding to scale. Lacking resources, they tend to have rudimentary graphics and clunky UIX, which makes large-scale adoption unlikely if not inconceivable.

Organizations like the Bezos Foundation and Gates Foundation generally don’t support initiatives seeking to directly challenge or undermine the dominant economic paradigm (this is why I find, for instance, the Gates-funded Global Citizen to be fraudulent). That wouldn’t be such a big deal if a handful of billionaires didn’t control so much of the world’s wealth.

My sadness, of course, comes from reckoning (again) with the brutal totality of our planetary train wreck — and knowing that people are still not, for the most part, able to acknowledge or deal with it. If we consider the five stages of grief, most people in our society are still between denial (rejecting or downplaying the impact of the ecological emergency) and the bargaining stage (believing that new technologies will save us). The situation is very daunting. I know. Personally, I feel daunted — as well as insignificant, vulnerable, and expendable when I tune into it. 

When you meditate deeply on the (already fully underway yet still just getting started) collapse of our civilization, this can lead to breakdown or disintegration of the personal ego structure. Bendell finds this positive. Having undergone a number of such disintegrations, I agree with him. As Rilke wrote in the second of The Duino Elegies: 

Does the infinite space we dissolve into, taste of us then?

In Chod practice, from Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, the meditator focuses his attention on rot, decay, impermanence, and death. Of course, this is antithetical to the Neoliberal culture of entrepreneurship (including the spiritual entrepreneurs, neo-shamans, Tantric pleasure guides, and life coaches who pepper my Instagram feed) which focuses on self-improvement, personal empowerment, and what guru-to-the-stars Tony Robbins calls “infinite power,” anticipating the transhumanist promise of indefinite life extension.

One point Bendell repeats often is that recognizing we are here, together, in the ruins of this civilization can make us more grateful for every peaceful moment, every extra bonus day of life we get to participate in this lunatic carnival.