FINDING RIGHT BALANCE

Systemically

This we know…

“We are the earth, through the plants and animals that nourish us.
We are the rains and the oceans that flow through our veins.
We are the breath of the forests of the land, and the plants of the sea.
We are human animals, related to all other life as descendants of the firstborn cell.
We share with these kin a common history, written in our genes.
We share a common present, filled with uncertainty.
And we share a common future, as yet untold…”

THE DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE

EXPLORE

Introducing each of the categories / areas to be explored and discussed…

What Went Wrong

Understanding the Consequences

How Do We Repair?

Understanding the problem

 

What went wrong?

My premise is that we as humans became out of right balance with Mother Earth, and from there out of right balance with everything else (e.g. other humans, and other species). What has inspired me to create this website has been the drive to understand what went wrong and why, and then to move to exploring what we need to do to solve the problem.

I am certainly not the first to “parse” the question in this way. Thich Nhat Hahn, in his book Love Letter to the Earth, 2013, addresses this exact issue, where he says that the most “natural” healthy human state would have been to have remained in attunement with, and in alignment with Mother Earth.

Page 27, “We can all see that Mother Earth is a great bodhisattva. When we see her in this way, with all her many virtues, we will walk more gently on her and treat all her children more gently. We will want to protect her and not harm her or any of the myriad forms of life she has given birth to. We will stop wreaking destruction and violence on Mother Earth. We will resolve the question of what we mistakenly call ‘the environmental problem.’  The Earth is not just the environment. The Earth is us.”
Thich Nhat Hahn has also identified this rupture (between humans and Mother Earth) as being the source of all other ills:
“We’re no longer in touch with ourselves, our family, our ancestors, the Earth, or the wonders of life around us. We have become alienated and feel lonely. This alienation is a kind of illness that has become an epidemic. So many of us feel empty inside and are searching for something to fill the vacuum. We try to fill the void by taking pills or intoxicants or by consuming things. Yet our addiction to consumerism, to buying and consuming things we don’t need, is causing so much stress, so much suffering, both to ourselves and to the Earth. Our craving for fame, wealth, and power is insatiable, and this puts a heavy strain on our own bodies and on the planet.”

We are part of Nature, and our best arrangement would have been to have remained in an “I-Thou” intimate sharing and equally respecting such a balance.

Early pre-industrial communities held these values. Hunters and gatherers held these values. Goddess cultures held these values. But at a certain point in time, as we humans moved toward agrarian communities, we moved toward “owning” the land and “extracting” from the land, rather than retaining an “I-Thou” reciprocal caring relationship to the land.

Indigenous practices around the globe have retained the values of our staying in community, and the value of remaining aligned with the needs of the Earth.

Instead of our doing that, however, there was (among way too many strands of our “being human”) a catastrophic rupture between “Nature” and ourselves.

Once that rupture occurred, additional ruptures followed, as we began “othering” one another in more and more awful ways. We humans “decided” that we got to exploit other living beings, other species, and we “decided” (as articulated in many books including Overcoming Patriarchy by Robert Jensen) that we got to exploit one another.

Men decided they could “own” women and children, hence the beginning of Patriarchy. They decided that they could “use” women and children to enhance their personal gain, prestige, property and power.

Men decided that they could “own” one another and take lands from others, and/or take others from their lands (hence colonialism and slavery). Organized religion and capitalism fostered justification for these acts. Greed and selfishness added fuel to these flames.

Soon there were MANY ruptures, with MANY consequences.

“We can’t wait any longer to restore our relationship with the Earth because right now the Earth and everyone on Earth is in real danger. When a society is overcome by greed and pride, there is violence and unnecessary devastation. When we perpetrate violence toward our own and other species, we are being violent toward ourselves at the same time. When we know how to protect all beings, we will be protecting ourselves. A spiritual revolution is needed if we’re going to confront the environmental challenges that face us.”

 

Thich Nhat Hanh

Understanding the problem

 

What went wrong?

Separation From One Another

“Power-over” Dynamics and “Othering” are at the root of our disfunction. This disconnection has caused / manifested as various symptoms:

Patriarchy

Colonialism

Racism

Misogyny

 

Xenophobia

Classism

or other kinds of economic imbalance

Capitalism

Greed, taking more than our share

Disconnection

lifestyles, technology, and evolution toward less meaningful connection

Understanding the Consequences

 

Disconnection from Mother Earth

The Climate Crisis

 

Depletion of Earth’s Resources

Pollution

Pouring of pollution into the air, rivers, oceans

Destruction

Melting icecaps, droughts, fires, famine

How Do We Repair?

About

 

Finding Right Balance

My premise is that we first need to be coming from a place of personal “Right Balance,” with more accurate self-appraisal within ourselves, that we next need to develop the interpersonal skills needed to meet the Other with fairness and equal respect, mutuality and reciprocity, and that only with those skills in place can we bring our minds and hearts to bear on the issues facing us with regard to overall “Right Balance” systemically. The website is divided into three areas of “Right Balance”...

INTRAPERSONALLY

Finding right balance within oneself is a matter of our tuning into, acknowledging, healing, and relating to the many various aspects of ourselves...

Interpersonally

Relates to how individuals in a dyad connect with one another, attune to one another, and care about the well-being of both dyad members to honor the common good.

Systemically

How do we create systems and societies that bring us back into harmony with humanity as a whole, and with nature itself?

About

 

This Website

The goal of this website is to offer a platform for discussion and interchange of ideas regarding the compelling issues facing our present time in history. We have curated and contributed to articles, books, reviews of articles, videos, podcasts, and other resources with the hope that it will start the conversation, and invite others to add and participate in the discussion. My hope is that in some small way, this website and the community that will grow around it, can use this platform to address questions such as what do we as humans need to do, need to learn, and what can we open our minds and our hearts to – that can allow us as a species to heal enough to NOT become extinct, and to NOT destroy the planet and the other species.

How do we understand the problem?

What went wrong?

And why?

Whose wisdom can we draw from?

“Where” do we need to listen, who do we need to listen to? What “organs” of our own heart and our own experience do we need to listen to – in order to get different guidance, so as to move forward in a better way? 

What needs to be (in Joanna Macy’s terms) “The Great Turning”?

What does such change entail, and how can we get there?

How can humans’ minds and hearts become open to doing so?

“It seems (to me) that we have done a lot of harm thus far, to the planet, to the resources that were held in Mother Earth, to other species, and if we do not MAJORLY turn our beliefs and our behaviors around, life as we have known it will be over.”

Deborah Brenner-Liss

About

The Founder

DEBORAH BRENNER LISS, PhD

I am a clinical psychologist, in private practice for over 40 years, and while my primary focus for much of my career has been on individual, family or couple relationships, the current climate crisis has asked of me a larger overview.

The motivation for this platform comes from asking myself the question – in the midst of the climate crisis, political crisis and moral crisis of our times – what would it take for humans to change sufficiently that we can accomplish what Joanna Macy called the “Great Turning”?

What is wrong with the human condition that we have so ignored the well-being of all, that we have come to be run by power-over dynamics and “Othering,” that we have harmed Mother Earth, other species and our fellow humans?

And what can be done to change the ways that we think and act, so as to turn toward a healthier way of being in the world?

The way I conceptualize it, our having ruptured the I-Thou relationship between ourselves and Mother Earth, between ourselves and one another, between ourselves and other species – has fractured our world in a way that imperils us all.

It seems (to me) that we have done a lot of harm thus far, to the planet, to the resources that were held in Mother Earth, to other species, and if we do not MAJORLY turn our beliefs and our behaviors around, life as we have known it will be over.  The climate crisis scientists give predictions for how that will happen, unless we can profoundly change our habits, and come into more right alignment with Mother Earth and our fellow species…

Finding right balance within oneself is a matter of our tuning in to various aspects of our lives, and “listening” with all our senses, to what feels right energetically, what feels right personally, interpersonally, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually…

My premise is that we first need to be coming from a place of personal “Right Balance,” with more accurate self-appraisal within ourselves, that we next need to develop the interpersonal “Right Balance” skills needed to meet the Other with fairness and equal respect, mutuality and reciprocity, and that only with those skills in place can we perhaps bring our minds and hearts to bear on the issues facing us with regard to “Right Balance” systemically.

I have assembled bodies of thought, articles, webinars, podcasts, and an assembling of references to like-minded people – so that those of us passionately invested in this compelling quest can have others to discover with, discuss with, and explore with what needs to be done. I welcome and invite additional resources, comments, and suggestions from the global community…

I invite you to explore the blog, sign up for our newsletter, check out our existing resources, and join the conversation!

Ultimately I hope to have many moderators, many blog posts, and many contributors to this “think tank” project…

Contact Me

Address: 3195 California Street, Suite #E, San Francisco CA, 94115
Phone: 415-608-6307
Email: AptedSF@aol.com

Resources + Reading

From the Blog

Explore a few of the recent posts and join the conversation…
The David Suzuki Foundation

The David Suzuki Foundation

The David Suzuki Foundation, founded in 1990, (https://davidsuzuki.org/) has as its guiding principles:

One nature. We are nature. All people, and all species.

We are interconnected with nature, and with each other.

What we do to the planet and its living creatures, we do to ourselves.

Stay connected

Featured Resource

A New Earth

by Eckhart Tolle

Add a brief description here..

Separation from Other Species

Endangered Species

Exploitative Food Production Methods

Man’s “Dominance” Over Other Species

From the Blog

Explore a few of the recent posts and join the conversation…
The David Suzuki Foundation

The David Suzuki Foundation

The David Suzuki Foundation, founded in 1990, (https://davidsuzuki.org/) has as its guiding principles:

One nature. We are nature. All people, and all species.

We are interconnected with nature, and with each other.

What we do to the planet and its living creatures, we do to ourselves.

Stay connected

Resources

Explore a few of the recent posts and join the conversation…