From: Bill Ellis, Coalition for Self-Learning, Rangeley, ME
Remote User:
Date: 26 March 2001
To me your analysis of depression (issue #14) is basically sound. The central illness of today's work places, schools, families, and communities is psychological depression. But it seems to me this is only a symptom resulting from a more fundamental cause, that of the "Dominator Paradigm" (to use Riane Eisler's analysis).
The Dominator Paradigm is the worldview on which our EuroAmerican culture is uniquely based. It runs:
-- from the Jewish creation myth of Adam and Eve that proclaimed the Earth was made to be dominated by man;
-- through Greek philosophy based on the tenet that "Man is the measure of all things";
-- on to the 1,000 year rule of the Medieval Church that burned 1,000,000 pagans at the stake for believing that man and his Earth were not the center of the universe;
-- on to the Age of Colonization which, with the flag (nationalism), the Cross (religion), and the gun (technology), overwhelmed every other worldview;
-- on to Adam Smith who proclaimed that "self-interest" would lead to the best of all possible worlds; and, finally,
-- on to the present day.
The Dominator Paradigm produces value systems, lifestyles, and institutions based on self-interest, competition, survival-of-the-fittest, and materialism. The single emphasis on competitive individualism leaves each person separate and alone struggling to survive in an unfriendly world of each against each. NO ONE SHOULD BE SURPRISED THAT THIS IS A WORLD CHARACTERIZED BY PSYCHOLOGICAL DEPRESSION.
The good news is that, even without completely understanding it, society is waking up to this reality.
In some measure the waking is due to the emerging scientific understanding that the Dominator Paradigm is false. Various chaos, complexity, and "Gaian" theories are revealing that the universe is evolving as a whole in which everything is dependent on everyone else. The Cosmos is "holonistic," a network of networks within networks. The whole -- and all of its parts -- evolves in harmony.
The new social paradigm described in the paragraph above may be called the "Gaian Paradigm." It implies that "belonging" is the most basic human need.
Belonging means not only being part of the evolving cosmos, but being responsible for and to Gaia (the physical Earth and all its living parts). Belonging is the protovalue of caring and being cared for.
Belonging means responsibility -- not only for ourselves but for all that is, including all other people. It is our responsibility to develop not only our own individual skills, knowledge, and potentials, but to help every other person develop theirs. Moreover, our individual well-being is dependent on the well-being of our home, the Earth, and all other life forms, including our neighbors.
Psychological depression is, as you say, "the Blue Plague" of our time. But just as it becomes its most virulent, its diagnosis and cure are at hand.
EVERY ONE of our social institutions -- family, community, work, and school -- can be redesigned with our new understanding of social evolution. We can create a world in which each person is, and feels, recognized and important as part of the cosmos, particularly by the people of her or his community.