Western Civ
The Long Goodbye
“That might be a good idea” is still a great line about Western Civilization even if Gandhi probably didn’t say it. It makes fun of colonial pretense and high mindedness, almost always a crowd pleaser these days.
The 2024 version of Western Civilization espouses principles even more ludicrous and detached from reality than the project Gandhi interacted with a hundred years ago in South Africa and later in India. The more important difference is that now we see even the principles suck.
Western Civ still has its prominent apologists, but it’s viewed by increasing numbers of people who wouldn’t agree on anything else as the malign force behind most of what ails us. Unlike Gandhi’s apocryphal claim would suggest, it’s core ideals have been implemented, with disastrous results. Seeing nature as a ‘resource’ and developing organizational forms that treat people as ‘human resources’ has not worked out well.
There is an accepted format now for Western Civ bashing. First, the critique must acknowledge the wonderful contributions made because of or despite the detached, individualized mindset — from Beethoven to The Beatles. That said — it can then be pointed out that moral decline, social decay and destruction on an epic scale is the price we’ve paid for some great music.
The rise of trauma as a way to see the world has run in parallel with the decline of Western Civilization. They come together in the view that the West is built on trauma, on physical and emotional assaults to people and the world itself that are large and small, periodic and on-going.
Indigenous views and practices are set in contrast to Western Civ. Indigenous cultures everywhere emphasize flow and connection, not fixed structures and boundaries. In the effort to understand Matter and how the material world is composed, Quantum Field theory comes closer to indigenous mythology than Science’s objective truth.
The shell is cracking from the inside. I can sense it and lots of other people can too. Now what?
Now what can we do to help avoid the most disastrous consequences of extreme weather and rising oceans around the earth? Now what can we do to help avoid armed confrontation between the U.S. Alliance and China, which will never submit to the Alliance membership terms? What can we do to help us all see we are crew members on the only ship available to sustain life at this time?
I’m reading a big book called, “The Matter with Things.” It’s giving me a better view of the big wave of change we’re all being swept up in. I’m also watching the author’s videos that accompany each chapter, on Youtube. I log them as I watch to make sure I don’t drift into some passive mind bath. Then I look back over the times and the notes and I produce a few brief clips that could introduce the ideas in each chapter to someone who hasn’t read it or watched the full video.
By the time I had good discussion-starter clips for the first few chapters, I knew the material pretty well, or at least I knew my reaction to the material pretty well. I also had just what I needed to bring people together and find out how other folks would react.
I picked a time, wrote some ‘Points to Ponder’ to follow each short video, and set up a large screen. I called it a Book Club, spread the word a little on a Discord server and launched it without knowing if anyone would even show up. Ten people did, perfect for this kind of event I think. They didn’t have to read ‘The Matter with Things,’ they could just react to the video. Everyone did. Everyone had something to say.
When it was over and I was checking my in-box, I noticed a Conference at the California Institute for Integral Studies a few days ahead centered on “The Matter with Things.” It had an online option. I registered.
The Book Club I led was a VR Book Club, not online. We met on a social VR app called, ‘EngageXR,’ where people who are anywhere can be in a place together — in this case, for a small group discussion. I’m a high-energy professor who prepares and knows how to get everyone involved.
I’ve been active in VR for almost ten years. I’m active because for me it is an excellent medium for playing and relaxing with other people and for talking about things not usually talked about. Death, for example. My friend Ryan Astheimer and I have hosted a weekly event for four years with no agenda other than mortality and what people say about it.
I’ve been active online for almost thirty years. I was active commecially once and I’m active now because for me it’s an excellent medium for certain aspects of teaching and learning. I have led webinars and I have quietly listened to others lead webinars.
I quietly listened to Iain McGilchrist open the conference on a Friday evening. He told a short version of his story, addressed to an audience that already knew the long one. People were there in the room to be there in the room with him. I was online to see what his short version would be and how others would relate it to their ideas.
On Saturday, people shaped by careers in deep space plasma or developmental biology added layers to his idea of a living, moving world the right hemisphere encounters, just like people shaped by careers in poetry and fiction. There was a theologian and a quantum theorist.
The theologian brought up trauma as a source and an instrument of the left hemisphere dominance that characterizes Western Civilization. No one argued, but no one was there to represent the status quo. At best, we can frame this agonizing transition as a rite of passage, like a baby passing through the birth canal. We are all part of what’s being born. We can’t be widwives facilitating someone else’s process. We have to be doulas from within.
In the ‘Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,’ a wise Priest whispers to the dead person the answer we are looking for now. What to do just before becoming something else? The Priest whispers, ‘what looks so frightening isn’t what it looks like at all. It’s the opposite.’
How do we pass through and beyond trauma? We do it together. We create right-sized groups for saying what we need to say without making things worse. We can do this for each other. We are the only ones who can.
At an open Q&A toward the end of the online conference, a hospice nurse spoke about seeing acceptance lead to less suffering, even appreciation that the time was right. I broke out crying, sitting by myself connected to the ideas and energy through my laptop. She kept speaking. I kept sobbing.
Small groups for us to be human and vulnerable in, even about dying. That’s what I do. It might not be the meaning of life, but it helps put meaning in mine.
When we gather in safe places with others, we slowly begin to develop new dispositions. We might start listening more instead of planning our remarks. We might pause for a second before reacting the way we always do. We might meet people and situations that come up as they are instead of the way we wanted them to be.
Being in the same physical location was people’s only real option for connecting throughout most of human history. When we are together that way, we still send our important messages using media — the medium of our body movements, of our inflections, of the clothing we wear, and of course language itself.
For me, spatial media has helped new dispositions grow. I don’t categorize people or make split second unconscious assessments about them because I know I am viewing an avatar. People do get very attached to their avatars and to their friends’ avatars, but in VR, everyone knows the avatar is only a representation and does not define us.
New dispositions can gradually become default behaviors across the board — online and in the material world. They are trending that way for me. I’m taking my small groups where I can find them, using whatever I need to extend my reach. I’m 75 and I’m still growing into myself. Still being born while something much bigger is being forced into being, the consequences of Western Civilization. At the same time, I feel complete enough and I’m ready to leave the show and die.
Just not today. Today I still need to publish my 300th piece on Medium. Today it’s still not clear which way the arc of history bends if it bends at all. Today I still need to host the second of our weekly small group discussions on, ‘The Matter with Things.‘”’
Tom Nickel writes about new media technologies and other topics he has little if any standing to write about. His work has not appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker Magazine, The New Republic, the New England Journal of Medicine, or anything New at all. But this really is his 300th piece on Medium.
Tom holds a Black Belt in Learning and is active in both physical and extended realities (XR). He also writes some, more here. You can join a small but growing number of people like you who subscribe to his little gumballs of text for free on Sub-Stack.
