I'm
not strong on religions that promise to forgive you or grant you
'redemption' for things you've done or failed to do, or will do in the
future. But I am a believer in forgiving yourself. That doesn't absolve you from responsibility
-- no matter what conservative political and religious apologists might
have us believe, it is evident to me that we are all responsible for
everything our species does, and does not do, on this planet, and for
every other creature who is, like us, a part of all life on Earth.
It
is hard for us to reconcile the idea of self-forgiveness with the idea
of such total responsibility. Maybe that's why, at least in moments of
weakness, we look to others for the forgiveness we're unable to grant
ourselves.
For three million years, humans were aware of, and
had an impact on, only the small area they gathered and hunted in,
their home, their community. They were utterly connected to the small
ecosphere in which they lived, which for most of our history did not
change significantly in a lifetime. Their responsibility was personally
and immediately felt, instinctive and visceral.
Now we are part
of a society whose impact is global, and our awareness of the plight of
others, a plight caused directly by our own explosive numbers and our
rapacious consumption and exploitation, is also global, though this
awareness is now indirect. Not only is our new global responsibility so
vast it is almost impossible for us to fathom, we are now so
disconnected from the natural world, so hidden away inside our own
minds, we have to grasp this responsibility intellectually, because we
no longer (most of us) feel it emotionally or instinctively.
There
are two understandable temptations when faced with such a depressing
awareness: One is to tune it out or deny either the damage we have done
or our responsibility for it; the other is to be overwhelmed with guilt
for this responsibility and our personal inaction to remedy it. I have
no advice for those who succumb to the former temptation -- I cannot
understand or condone ignorance, unwillingness to face, or denial of
responsibility.
But for those overwhelmed with feelings of guilt
and helpless fury, self-forgiveness is neither self-deluded nor
irresponsible. It may even be essential to our mental health.
What's the argument for self-forgiveness? Well, John Gray says
'we' are what we are: each a collection of organs that evolved a brain
as a way of optimizing their collective survival and well-being:
We labour under an error. We act
in the belief that we are all of one piece, but we are able to cope
with things only because we are a succession of fragments. We cannot
shake off the sense that we are enduring selves, and yet we know we are not.
James Lovelock has written: Humans on the Earth behave in some ways
like a pathological organism, or like the cells of a tumour or
neoplasm. We have grown in numbers and disturbance to Gaia, to the
point where our presence is perceptively disturbing...the human species
is now so numerous as to constitute a serious planetary malady. Gaia is
suffering from disseminated primatemaia, a plague of people.
A human population of approaching 8 billion can be maintained only by
desolating the Earth. If wild habitat is given over to human
cultivation and habitation, if rainforests can be turned into green
deserts, if genetic engineering enables ever-higher yields to be
extorted from the thinning soils -- then humans will have created for
themselves a new geological era, the Eremozoic, the Era of Solitude, in
which little remains on the Earth but themselves and the prosthetic
environment that keeps them 'alive'.
The mass of mankind is ruled not by its own intermittent moral sensations, still less by self-interest, but by the needs of the moment.
It seems fated to wreck the balance of life on Earth -- and thereby to
be the agent of its own destruction...
Humans use what they know to meet their most urgent needs -- even if
the result is ruin. When times are desperate they act to protect their
offspring, to revenge themselves on enemies, or simply to give vent to
their feelings. These are not flaws that can be remedied. Science
cannot be used to reshape humankind in a more rational mould. The
upshot of scientific inquiry is that humans cannot be other than
irrational.
So
we can forgive ourselves for not trying to remake the entire human race
into something it is not. If the world cannot be saved, then rather
than feeling guilty we should feel free to make the best of the time we
have -- to live a full, joyful life and do what we can do to make the world a little better.
What if we don't know how
to do that? I've received several e-mails from young readers lamenting
the fact that they've 'wasted' much of their lives and don't know what
to do to make a difference, to be 'part of the solution'. But feeling
guilty for not having yet discovered one's Passion or Genius or Purpose
is as fruitless and unwarranted as feeling guilty for not having
transformed humanity into what it isn't and saving the world. Hell, I'm
54 and as I explained the other day,
I haven't yet found what lies at the intersection of What I love, What
I do well and What is needed. So I'm spending my time doing stuff well
that's needed, but which I have no passion for, and doing some stuff
well that I love, but which is mostly underpaid and under-appreciated.
Rather than trying to develop a passion for the former, or 'create' a
need for the latter, I need to search harder for the work that I already love and do well that is already needed. I know it's out there.
So now, I'm forgiving myself again -- for procrastinating on all those actions and projects that I now realize aren't quite
what I'm meant to do. What I won't forgive myself for in the future is
being distracted and wasting time doing things that I don't love, or
don't do well, or which aren't yet clearly needed, or for letting
myself get disheartened and holding back from becoming more wholly human and connected and passionate, and doing all that I can do
to make this world a better place.
This is almost certainly the
last century of this civilization. It has had a pretty long ride --
thirty millennia by some reckonings. What the world needs now are Gaia Care-Takers
-- People who can make our civilization's final decades times of
important learning, each a little better than the last, and as full of
love and joy and rediscovery of our connection with all life on Earth
as each of us can make it. Until we forgive ourselves for understanding
the Big Problems but not finding the non-existent Big Answers, and
forgive ourselves for not being satisfied or truly engaged with work
that we don't love or don't do well or which does not meet an urgent
human need, we cannot become one of those Care-Takers and start doing
this important work.
Boy, you're going to carry that weight, carry that weight a long time...
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make... (Lennon-McCartney)
Fare forward, voyagers. And take care.
Image is the flower of the crabapple, whose essence this South African florist says is a "cleanser, for self-forgiveness and self-acceptance". |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
