I think I have discovered the single biggest problem facing US culture. And where there is a problem, there is also a huge sub-culture united (unknowingly) to solve it.
If you had asked me what the biggest problem facing the US culture two months ago I would have been hard pressed to come up with one answer. There are so many issues, how to pick just one?
For a while i was thinking scale was the problem. Too many big businesses out there. But recently I realized that I really like working with a large group toward a common large-scale goal. Blaming scale doesn’t really get to the root of the problem.
Then it hit me… the greatest problem facing the US culture isn’t scale, it’s the feeling of disconnection that seems to be inherent in large-scale scenarios. The problem, in other words, is the lack of awareness of the connection that we each have to ourselves, to other people, and to the earth.
So if you think about a large company, the scale of it prevents people from feeling the connection to others. There is an imaginary boundary between us and another human created by the company rules and policy. We’re not actually acting from our own mind. We’re acting from the company rule book in our head. Think about it. I know I’ve felt this with most jobs I’ve had and you can clearly see it with most public facing employees. We don’t make that real connection with others on the job because often we’re not acting from our own awareness of that connection. We’re not empowered to feel, honor, and act on that connection.
The same happens in our lack of connection to nature. Our modern world surrounds us everywhere and so we begin to associate comfort with our tools rather than the natural world that gives us actual life. The buildings, streets, and television – they don’t provide us life. Life comes from the food that comes out of the ground, water, and sex.
And what about ourselves. That internal connection is lost amongst all of this external stimuli. But if you take the moment to shut it all out and let yourself be quiet then you can hear that faint inner voice of true expression and peace. Sometimes you can’t hear it but you can sense it so you track it down as if you’re on a scavenger hunt. Only to find that it moves again like any good living connection. It’s there and it’s waiting for you.
This lack of awareness of our deep connection is all around us. I even feel it in myself when I’m standing in front of a cashier at a bank or grocery store. When did my life get taken over by some rule book?! I see it in corporate process when others aren’t aware how their decisions affect other stakeholders. It’s all around us. We’re all forgetting ourselves all the time!
What encourages me though, is the amount of people who are unknowingly bonded around the new belief structure that we are all connected – to ourselves, to others, and to the earth. And that honoring this connection is worthy of priority. Many of us are saying that large-scale projects can be good, but being involved with them can’t be to the detriment of tapping into our deeply human connections.
If our job feels like a wedge between ourselves and the rest of the world then we don’t want it. If it asks of us to be false in some way to ourselves, to hide that connection to our inner voice, then we don’t want it. If the products of the system hide our impact on the earth or weaken our connection to it then we want to recognize how it does so and by how much. Then we decide whether it’s right for us or not.
And if and when we falter, if and when we forget to honor this deep connection… we will be there to remind each other that connections are the root of real life.