Lets be human

Lets be human.

"For this society to function it is necessary to separate the soul from the body...because we wouldn't treat people the way we do if they had souls."

Gabor Mate
 

Fans of Bill Hicks will be familiar with his thoughts on marketing and advertising. One of his more famous live performances begins, "If anyone here is in marketing or advertising....kill yourself". If you don't mind "expressive" language its worth a couple of minutes of your time to here him conclude "quit putting a dollar sign on every $%*&* thing on this planet".

This sketch came to mind after listening to an amazing conversation between Russell Brand and renowned expert on addiction, Gabor Mate. If you can't spare two minutes to listen to Bill Hicks please do yourself a favour and find an hour and a half to listen to the Russel Brand podcast Under the Skin.

Then listen to it again.

It is so clear in its observation and diagnosis of the human condition and our resultant society that it comes across as obvious. All truths seem obvious when pointed out and this one is no different. At some level we have all ignored a pain hiding in plain sight, and our addictive behaviours are simply attempts to escape that pain.

Mate asserts that we are all addicted to something and explains that the pain we are trying to escape is what keeps us from our humanity. At first the message can sound disheartening, but the honesty, humility and compassion in Mate's delivery presents a hugely optimistic view.

In short addicts are simply trying to feel human which implies that feel human is an exalted state, a message in direct contradiction to that presented by the media, the church and most governing authorities. The controlling narrative is that humans are bad and dangerous and so we need governments and churches to protect ourselves from ourselves.

Our constant searching and yearning is for our essential selves, our humanness. Anything less leaves us feeling broken, separated, fearful, searching and as Bill Hicks' indignation suggests, vulnerable. Vulnerable to marketing, vulnerable to religion, vulnerable to ideology, vulnerable to other.

So where did our humanity go?

The answer Gabor Mate presents is that trauma robs us of our humanity. The roots of our trauma lie in childhood. Specifically not receiving the love we needed or deserved, often from parents acting out their own trauma. This is not an attack on our parents or lineage. Blame and victim-hood are themselves behaviours expressing from trauma.

Our addictions, behaviours and even our personalities are survival responses to childhood trauma. They are adaptations and strategies designed to "earn" the vitality, connection, or love we intuitively know to be lacking. Some survival behaviours are obnoxious whilst others are charming but any behaviours emerging from pain are seldom authentic.

As an example, Trump's obnoxious character and Obama's appealing charm are both expressions of trauma, equally lacking in authenticity. The recent US election was a contest between two traumatised (Clinton and Trump) people fighting to govern a traumatised world.

Trump is offensive to many not solely because of his policies (which are essentially no different to the Democrats), but because his in your face dysfunction reveals something about our society. Trump reflects the fact that we have constructed a society that depends upon and even rewards trauma. We are constantly bombarded with advertising, marketing and news which activates the resonance of trauma with one hand and promises relief with the other. In short our economic and social structure is built on abuse, which is why the language in Bill Hicks's sketch is so ironically appropriate.

This is what Krishnamurti was explaining with his quote..."it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society".

Why is this optimistic?

The reason I felt so optimistic having listened to this interview is that it acknowledges the human state with a reverence which makes all of our attempts to return to it understandable, laudable even. Rather than taking the programmed assumptions around human nature as fundamentally bad, it explains why "bad" things happen.

The opportunity is to stop hating Trump or Clinton and start acknowledging and dealing with our own trauma. There is increasing awareness that something is wrong and that awareness is the first step to the dissolution of our individual trauma. The more people with the courage to accept responsibility and feel the feelings they could not process in childhood the faster society will shift.

Next week I will write about the power of Michael Brown's Presence Process, which in my experience provides an effective way to address the trauma which Gabor Mate so compassionately describes.

Lets all be human.

Go easy, tread lightly, stay free,

Bill