Are we here to power down the systems?
Happy Sunday, Soothers. According to my stats, one of the most popular essays I wrote last year was this:
Small is the skill we'll need for the future
In that essay, I posited: "The people who are going to be able to adjust more easily for the shifts that are coming in the future aren't necessarily the ones with a Tesla, more money, huge savings accounts, or 100k followers on social media (though let's be real, the money will always help). It's the folks who are learning principles of sufficiency and resiliency, self-worth as an inherent right no matter your status, community building, knowing how to work with the land and nature, non-attachment, being able to hold outcomes lightly, regulate emotions and nervous systems, and generally be resourceful, present, and able to see the enoughness in every moment. Small skills."
And today I want to attempt to deepen this thinking and posit some new ways of thinking, and question existing assumptions.
In fact, to posit this: If you are a sensitive person, empath, neurodivergent, or overall kind, thoughtful, reflective person...
...or are somebody who up until now has perhaps felt great shame about their inability to go faster, do harder, earn tons more money, and advance all the way to the top....
...or are somebody who struggles with chronic pain, or body shame, or feeling like in any way your body isn't up to the task of doing what it "should" be able to do, like you just need so much more rest and softness...
...if you feel you've 'failed' or are 'failing' at any aspect of traditional society — marriage, having kids, living a more nuclear, "successful" life, it just all seems too stressful and complicated and weirdly hierarchical...
...if you often wish you could not work at all, or if you could have a simpler life, or run a simpler business, and not feel you had to strive and hustle to keep up, and scale, scale, scale...
...if you've berated yourself frequently for being too sensitive, too needy, too slow, too dreamy...
What I want you to consider is perhaps NOT that you are inadequate, a failure, or can't handle "normal" life today, or aren't destined to be stereotypically "successful"...
But in fact, that the reason you are here on earth could be to help us power down the systems.
The big systems. The systems that have failed us. The systems that have promised us growth, contentment, material success, if only we could keep up. If only we could scale, and grow, and accumulate, and work harder, and be better.
To power down the big systems, and simultaneously start helping build small systems.
I'm talking big systems as big as capitalism, patriarchy, our government, modern healthcare, the traditional 9-5 and modern workforce, housing, and more.
They don't work. It's as plain as pie and they're all leading us to teetering off a dangerous cliff as well as ruining our planet.
Did they ever work? Doubtful, maybe for some, but overall, we were sold a convincing and seductive story.
So what if you, as a sensitive, thoughtful and empathetic person, weren't in fact a failure because it burned you out to try to succeed under these systems? Because you couldn't ultimately hack it?
What if it is a measure of success to SUCK at these systems? Because actually, you are here to help END these systems, and figure out new ways to redefine success, then begin to live and model it for others? To create new, small systems?
What if you are here to actually figure out how to do the OPPOSITE of what these systems are telling us we need to do?
A lot of us wrestle with the question: "How can we be more successful and effective, for ourselves, and collectively, WITHIN the confines of existing systems?"
And today I want us to start asking, even if it's just in a whisper, "What would it look like to leave these systems completely, and imagine totally new ways?"
Here are a few hypothetical examples... And yes, I'm aware that a response to these would be, "MUST BE NICE to actually think about that, but that requires a ton of privilege, and nobody could actually do that." And I understand. The big systems are so thorough and unrelenting, by design, that it takes a ton of courage, creativity and, yes, massive privilege to think about how to break out of them, but I think we must at least start having these discussions and thinking of and imagining new possibilities, little by little, wherever we can.
So in the spirit of powering down systems, some questions for us to chew on...
What if the goal weren't to earn more money, but to learn how to live meaningfully with much less? What if, instead of focusing on the next promotion, haggling for a raise, or feeling like we needed to earn more and more and more, a feeling which might never end, we instead divested our self-worth from our salary, got ruthless about our addiction to consumerism and material goods, sold what we could, downsized, and chose practical ways to live more simply? What if the goal here was to actually figure out the LOWEST amount of money we could live with, annually?
What if the goal weren't to have fat retirement accounts, but to envision an entirely new model for retirement? Listening to this podcast with Nicole Antoinette and Erin Axelrod about re-imagining retirement absolutely blew my mind. Axelrod via The Next Egg asks that we question every single assumption we have about modern-day retirement, including these 5 basic assumptions that most of us hold: 1. People should have 401(k)s and IRAs. 2. Our money should be invested to grow. 3. Everyone can save for retirement. 4. Individual accumulation will keep us safe. 5. Retirement is normal. To read more about these assumptions and start thinking about how you can question them, you can read more from the Next Egg here on what they call these "unsafe assumptions." There's also more here in a lengthy article on how 'retirement plans are deadly traps.' I know this is wild to think about, because we've been taught our whole life the good and "responsible" thing to do is save as much as possible for retirement via these vehicles, but remember, we're here today, to think about powering down these systems, and this is a fascinating and interesting one to think about and really question the foundation of. What if the goal here was to divest from retirement, figure out community models of sharing, create more responsible eldership and eldercare, reintroduce respect and ritual around death as a natural process, not to be feared and ever-staved-off, and re-learn to connect with the earth and its abundance to support us as we age?
What if the goal weren't to spend hours a day trying to navigate health insurance, or staying in a toxic job that's actually making us sick with stress, just so we could retain access to health insurance, but to learn ways of finding our own health and vibrancy outside of that model? This is a hard one to think about, as I know so many of my audience struggles with autoimmune or chronic health conditions, but it's like a deadly chicken-egg situation. I find that many 9-5 jobs are so deeply stressful and toxic, they are often a, if not THE, significant contributor to health issues. Meanwhile, even navigating the health insurance and health system overall can be deeply stressful (while, holding the truth at the same time, there are amazing and helpful practitioners within it) and there's the reality that the modern day American health system is deeply racist and patriarchal. So what do we do with this one? How do we power down this system? For me, the first question to wrangle with was, is my current relationship to and partnership with the health system I have access to ACTUALLY MAKING ME HEALTHIER, more vibrant? And it was painful to admit that it was not. Part of how I began to power down this system for me personally was also just an effect of becoming self-employed; the only health insurance I have access to is marketplace insurance, which is... not good, and has an enormous deductible for a very high monthly price. So I've been forced in ways to learn different systems of healing, mostly ones that are within my control and ability to learn and access. Emotional and trauma processing for health; energy healing and clearing; nervous system regulation; meditation; herbalism; flower essences, microdosing, and other plant medicine; figuring out accessible nutrition that supports what I need; and exploring other systems that have long been derided and mocked by Western medicine. I'm in a 10-month herbalism apprenticeship as well for medical herbalism, so I'll be continuing on this path. I've also saved up money to be able to pay out of pocket for services here and there, as well as done bartering for health services from other healers. What if the goal here was to learn how to be vibrant and healthy without a hierarchical medical system that required us to stay in a harmful job to access it?
What if the goal weren't to own real estate or a house, but to find new models of community living, or detach from the "American Dream" that tells us the only way to build sustainable wealth or have financial success and contentment is to own a home? This is the kind of thinking that inspires "mommunes," van life, buying or renting homes with platonic friends or other families, multi-generational living, and more. I'm lucky and privileged enough to own my own home, but I mean, really... the bank owns it, and will for a long time, so that's a thing, but also, home ownership is NOT for everybody, nor should it be modeled as the pinnacle of success. Also, solitary living has its pluses (introverts unite) but we lose a lot in access to more community living, and you have to wonder the reasoning behind why so many of us are encouraged to leave community living models like families, or shamed if we don't get married and move into a nuclear family model. What if the goal here was to base our living needs on what actually worked for us and our communities, not on accumulation and ownership?
Speaking of which, what if the goal weren't to be in a nuclear family model, but a platonic friendship living model, a commune, a village, multi-generational living or more? Really echo-ing the above here, but we have to deeply question the assumption that the nuclear family is the best model for humans — and, particularly in fact, for women. You can read this article, Want to Disable Capitalism? Abolish the Family, for more thinking along these lines. What if the goal here was to think of what a model of village living looked like for each of us?
And for women, what if the goal weren't to become mothers? We have radically underestimated the critical role that aunts, uncles, healers, elders, bonus aunties, etc, have to play in this society. That's right, I think we need MORE women (and men) NOT having children, in order to help women and families. What if it's not a problem or shameful that you don't have kids or aren't married? What if you're meant to be one of the members who turns into a healer, an elder, a council leader, who is needed in different ways? (Not of course that mothers CAN'T be healers, and elders, and council leaders, too.) What if the goal here was to radically question the assumption that all people should be parents, and instead begin to respect the role of child-free folks in our society, as meaningful contributors who can become even more impactful BECAUSE they don't have children?
I know this one is wild, but what if the goal were not to have a job, or even need to make money? Since we've all grown up under hundreds of years of capitalism and labor exploitation, it's really wild to realize that for most of humanity people didn't actually have jobs or work in the way that we know today. And even when working and toiling for others became a thing, for a really long time it wasn't for as long as 40+-hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Then it's even more brain-busting to suggest that we could one day have a society where we don't need to make money in order to live. This one is truly a stretch for our brains, I admit. I have no idea how we could return to a society where we focused on growing food, bartering, community living and support. But we're here to question assumptions and imagine different futures, so. What if the goal was to create a society where we didn't need traditional jobs or money, and most exchange was done through bartering, services, community support, and abundance created from the stewardship of the land?
A few other questions to think on, if you think you might be here to power down the systems...
How is going slower a talent? How can we model living more by the cycles of the earth, instead of feeling like we're falling behind and failing because we're doing less or going slower than others think we should? How is going slow successful?
How is learning to fix things, or live without them, instead of accumulating money in order to buy new things to replace things, something we can begin to teach ourselves?
What if being excellent at holding and expressing grief or deep emotions was a true talent? What if it was actually YOUR skill? What if your ability to acknowledge, feel, express grief and other difficult emotions actually was helping model and give permission to others something that we've all been taught to repress and deny? What if we stopped shaming people who were really emotional, and celebrated them as people we could learn from?
What if we taught children to create small vegetable and herb gardens, and normalized learning how to grow our own food from the earth at a very young age?
What if we learned to process and feel grief, and not to fear death? This, I think is the biggie that actually underpins almost everything I talked about above, so, another essay, perhaps, for another time...
In short, here is what I want you to consider today:
How is everything you've been ashamed about, or that others have told you you should be ashamed about, or every way you feel you've failed in today's systems...
How is it ACTUALLY a skill for modern times, a tool for learning to power down the failing systems, a talent you might have that we might need to teach and model for others as we shift into a new era of society?
Be brave, and leap into it. We need folks like you figuring these next decades out.
What if you were the one we all needed, just as you are?