What's the Best that can Happen?

a question for our personal lives and the geopolitical moment

My daughter Cassandra has a new question: what’s the best that can happen? This is her response when I have a decision to make, and it’s revolutionized my life. Instead of “hoping for the best but preparing for the worst,” I imagine how events could play out that would be of amazing benefit to everyone involved. This is distinct from wishful thinking, I believe, because it isn’t a superstition. It’s an acknowledgement of having no control over outcomes but seeing the best way things could go, and doing your part, should the universe contrive to make that happen—or something better.

And 2.5 years after this video, look at the meme I found!

I believe this question also applies, not just on the personal level, but on the global. Those of you watching or reading this know how rare we are who grapple with understanding the insanely complex interconnections of power, money and violence—in history and at present—that have built the world we live in. I don’t think there’s ever been a more carefully orchestrated coup than is happening during our moment on earth to take over the world and the minds and bodies of everyone in it. And in response is a deafening lack of public outcry, except for those calling for more censorship. No one, or precious few, are even trying to stop this.

And yet, when I wake up, I find myself suffused with a sense of wellbeing, an abiding contentment that things are in motion and they’re not going to stay the same. As someone who lives in the belly of the beast, in the US, I am weary of my helplessness. Over my 65 years, I’ve tried activism, charity, writing, speaking, community groups, youth involvement, education, international coalitions, all to no avail. But that’s not looking at the best that can happen. If I give myself more benefit of the doubt, every one of those actions was exactly what got me where I am today, in the right place at the right time to do my part. And there’s no question that the right time is coming.

So today I’m going to share some of the things that give me joy and help me imagine the best that can come of this. I hope they do the same for you. My commentary on these excerpts is in the video.

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Love Bombs from Rob Brezsny's You Have Always Been in Love
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Be my ruckus, my perfect non-sequitur. Be my circuit-breaker, my lengthening shadows at dusk, my nest of pine needles, my second-story window. Be my if-you-stare-long-enough-you’ll-see. Be my subatomic particle.
Be my backbeat, my key of C minor, my surly apostle, my scandalous reparté, my maximum payload. Be my simmering, seething, flickering, radiating, shimmering, and undulating.
—Andrew Varnon

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Intro quote from David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything

This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the Kairos—the right time—for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols.
—C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self (1958)

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Excerpt from Wendall Berry: This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems

Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.
 ...
This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
and how to be here with them. By this knowledge
make the sense you need to make. By it stand
in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
... 
Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
from the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
by which it speaks for itself and no other.

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Caitlin Johnstone: We’re Just a Confused Species in an Awkward Transition Phase

We have the ability to ask questions, but lack the wisdom to deeply question our own true nature and whether the world is really as it seems.

The ability to write vast tomes of philosophy that contain not one line telling us how to be content on the planet we were born on.

The ability to construct entire belief systems that are completely useless for learning to live in harmony with what is.

The ability to discover spirituality only to use it for vapid escapism and tyrannical psychological domination.

The ability to research human psychology only to use it to convince people to buy junk they don't need and support wars they don't want and vote for politicians they don't like. …

The ability to invent something as transcendental as music only to popularize songs about owning stuff and getting money.

The ability to technologically link billions of minds on the internet only to spend all our time arguing about nonsense. …

The ability to intimately appreciate beauty and mystery with a profound depth and complexity only to spend our entire lives frantically doing anything but that.

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Other videos referred to in this one: What Is The Matter? on Iain McGilchrist

Responding to Russell Brand's interview of Iain McGilchrist, I discuss time & space, brain hemispheres, love & hate, knowing & not knowing, New Age annoyance, and child prophets. I use a Crow Tarot deck to illustrate infinity and make my pitch for why the crow should represent the Wholly Spirit. Why should doves have all the fun?

Interdependence vs. Interbeing on Sebastian Junger

Wearing my Halloween cheetah spots, I respond to Russell Brand's interview of Sebastian on "Our Individuality vs. Our Need for One Another" and go one step further from interdependence to interbeing. I ask whether Christianity and democracy were both designed to serve the empire, and if all hierarchy is patriarchy. To design political, economic and spiritual systems that serve the feminine, I consult a tentacled alien from Octavia Butler's book, Lilith's Brood.