When Debra first suggested that we write about the way creativity is often sparked by chaos, the first thing that came up for me was my memory of Vietnam in 1969, where I first heard the song. “Reflections of My Life,” by the British group Marmalade. Here are the lyrics:
The changing of sunlight to moonlight / Reflections of my life
Oh how they fill my eyes / The greetings of people in trouble
Reflections of my life / Oh how they fill my eyes
Oh my sorrows / Sad tomorrows
Take me back to my own home / Oh my crying (Oh my crying)
Feel I’m dying, dying / Take me back
to my own home / The changing of sunlight to moonlight
Reflections of my life / Oh how they fill my eyes
I’m changing, arranging, / I’m changing,
I’m changing everything / Everything around me
The changing of sunlight to moonlight / Reflections of my life
Oh how they fill my eyes / The world is
a bad place / A bad place
A terrible place to live / Oh but I don’t want to die …
Oh my sorrows / Sad tomorrows
Take me back to my own home / Oh my sorrows
Sad tomorrows / Take me back to my own home
You may not be old enough to remember the music, but it is worth listening while you finish reading the rest of the article:
The Vietnam war years were certainly chaotic, but when that war ended, most of us in the States had the sense that “things” could return to “normal.” That didn’t happen, of course. “Normal” kept changing, and problems hadn’t magically disappeared with the end of the war. Civil and voting rights continued to require attention, and the “war metaphor” was applied to virtually everything needing attention: poverty, drugs, terror, pain, and even the police.
What people seem to forget about war is that no one wins a war. The side that looses the least is declared the winner, in spite of the death and destruction endured in the process. We need a new way. If necessity really is the mother of invention, we definitely need to invent a new way. Debra and I have both been reading books by Barbara Marx Hubbard, a futurist who believes that humanity is on the cusp of an evolutionary leap. We certainly need one.
Individual circumstances not withstanding, it is easy to see that humanity as a whole can’t continue for much longer on its current trajectory. This is why Barbara Marx Hubbard’s idea of “conscious evolution” is so important. We (humans) now know enough to contribute to our own evolution. We—as individuals and as a species—must change if we are to ensure the survival of humanity. Another piece of music addressing this issue is Changes by David Bowie, who told us to “turn and face the strange.”
David Bowie died within a few days of my having thought to use “Changes” in my article for this edition of the Newsletter. And, of course, death is the ultimate “strange.” Until we experience it, we can’t know with any degree of certainty what it is or what to expect. This uncertainty is responsible for the prevalence of religious and spiritual belief.
Barbara Marx Hubbard seems to believe that humans, including those of us currently alive, can evolve quickly enough to skip the process of dying and being reborn in the process to achieve further evolution. I don’t know whether that’s possible—or even desirable—but I am convinced that those of us who are alive now need to be the ones to collectively decide that Earth and all who live on it are worth saving. We are on the verge of a mass extinction, in which most of the species on Earth die. This would be the sixth in our planet’s history.
We are certainly at a critical point in our collective history, and we still have time to decide to make better choices. I suspect it is also true that, as individuals, each of us may be at a critical point in our individual histories. We need to decide how much conflict we desire in our lives. As Debra mentioned in her article this month, we had our share of conflict as we were working to create what we have come to call “Subtle Communication Systems.” Some of our arguments were so awful that we gave them names.
When you want to remember something—whether to cherish it or to avoid repeating it—you give it a name. Old English poets used the expression the leavings of hammers to remind listeners that swords are forged by heating steel and then pounding it into shape with hammers. The process seems to be essentially the same for relationships. I suspect that the same is true for humanity as a whole.
One of my favorite poets, John Keats, said “life is a vale of soul-making” and that “a World of Pains and troubles” is needed “to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul.” At this point, we have perhaps learned enough to engage in conscious evolution.