Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on January 21, 2014
Growing Up From The Need To Always Grow
Photo: Lending Memo.
In the Western World, growth is our mantra. Our schools, our religions, our governments, our businesses, all our institutions bombard us with the same message that to be all that we are meant to be means we have to grow.
Growth in and of itself can be a good thing, but unfortunately the growth that can be our doom is material growth, which has limits.
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr, Jossey-Bass, 240 pp, hardcover, $19.95.
So instead of thinking for ourselves – we take these messages literally and we over feed our bodies and become obese; we fill our cities with ever expanding populations, we produce more and more babies filling our planet with people; and to try and meet our never ending demand for more and more stuff, our economies drive us to consume more and more resources. As a result, there is little space left for anything else but the material expansion of the human race.
This pure focus on material growth however leaves most of us feeling empty, lonely, hurt, angry, and numbed. So how did we get this way, why have we forgotten how to think for ourselves?
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, provides a good explanation of why we are stuck in a meaningless pattern of growth. The book points out how healthy cultures value two halves of life, but in our postmodern culture we discourage people from growing up.
So immature
In the first half of life, our external laws, traditions, customs, boundaries, and morality form a container that helps to shape who we will become. They also provide us with the friction we need to move on and develop our own inner guidance systems that lead us beyond these simple, limited guidelines appropriate to the first half of life but that fall apart when applied to our complex world later on.
As we move through life and experience the struggles that life throws at us – our brushes with the law, our failed relationships, and our other failures – we begin to realize that simple rules and regulations, or escapes, do not isolate us from the struggles in life, or the pain they bring us.
It is by embracing these falls – these failures – that we begin to see the limits of first-half-of-life thinking. We learn to live in tension, instead of searching for ways to avoid it. We learn to transition from conditional love based on compliance, into an unconditional love based on connection. Instead of repeating mistakes over and over again, we embrace our mistakes and learn to try new ways.
That is how real growth occurs – not by clinging to old ways, old rules, or old moralities. That is how we move beyond the limits of our egocentric first half of life.
Yet, by now, it might just be that the friction that all this control produces is reaching a point where the resulting heat can melt down these immature structures of hierarchy. And from the ashes we can rise up to reclaim our second half of life – to really grow up.
As Rohr reminds us,
No one can keep you from the second half of your own life except yourself. Nothing can inhibit your second journey except your own lack of courage, patience, and imagination. Your second journey is all yours to walk or to avoid…some falling apart of the first journey is necessary for this to happen, so do not waste a moment of time lamenting poor parenting, lost job, failed relationship, physical handicap, gender identity, economic poverty , or even the tragedy of any kind of abuse. Pain is part of the deal. If you don’t walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it.
This piece originally appeared on Ecological Leadership.
10 Comments on "Growing Up From The Need To Always Grow"
Makati1 on Tue, 21st Jan 2014 1:57 pm
We are condition/indoctrinated from birth that growth is good and wealth is our goal in life. What can you expect?
Ghung on Tue, 21st Jan 2014 3:23 pm
I used to think that humans were inherently programmed for growth; to accumulate stuff, and more people. Then I started contemplating how many pre-civilizational cultures buried their dead with their stuff; even rarities like gold, art objects, and metal weapons. It’s clear that some societies didn’t want other people’s stuff. Maybe they just didn’t want the responsibility of lugging extra stuff around. Maybe there was enough surplus in their environment that they weren’t driven to accumulate surpluses for the sake of having a surplus. Maybe they didn’t see all of this stuff as ‘theirs’ in the first place. Ashes to ashes.
At some point humans became enculturated to accumulate surplus stuff, requiring growth, requiring more surpluses, begetting more growth, requiring more people to sell more stuff to…..
Must’ve been the farmers.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 21st Jan 2014 3:52 pm
No excess energy = no growth. Simple. We have reached that point. We barely have enough energy to maintain the status quo, much less grow. The party is over — the keg is empty — the debilitating hangover is all we have left to look forward to, and its going to be a whopper.
Tom Jablonski on Tue, 21st Jan 2014 5:04 pm
Makati1 – Perhaps that we “grow up” and let go of the indoctrination and start thinking for ourselves.
Ghung – I think it was the emperors and their priests who played a bigger role.
Northwest – I think it will be a wopper as well, but maybe foolishly hope that enough of us will have grown up enough to help ease the wopping.
DC on Tue, 21st Jan 2014 7:55 pm
Endless growth serves corporate wealth and power. Its that simple. People that chase material ‘stuff’ OR have to work like slaves for terrible wages just to make ends meet, dont have the time to participate in communities or even basic democracy. IoW, corporate growth is designed to lead to totalitarian rule-and it has. People chasing ‘stuff’, working 50 years to own a poorly made sawdust and PVC hovel in the ‘burbs’ have no interest in protesting or trying to change the status-quo for the better.
Corporate consumerism is designed to isolate people both from nature, and each other. A job it has done very well. Its also designed to neutralize public opposition to creeping military\corporate police state rule and tactics.
Tom Jablonski on Tue, 21st Jan 2014 9:01 pm
DC, you are correct on who it serves, but as for stuff chasing, it all changes when and if you grow up. At least it is slowly but surely for this suburban former stuff chaser who is beginning to act his age, slowly but surely.
RICHARD RALPH ROEHL on Tue, 21st Jan 2014 10:00 pm
One more time. And posted HERE for the sake of common sense and prescience (two qualities not generally characteristic of human baboonies).
Listen up! Old Coyote Knose that the exponential growth of the global baboony population and the global consumer economy on Planet Over-birth Earth, an exceptionally fragile HOST ORGANISM of FINITE space and FINITE resources, cannot not be sustained much longer.
The bizarre and utterly insane Doctrine of Perpetual Growth in a closed looped system (the Earth) is NOT progress. It is cancer! Full blown cancer… inevitably leading to death and EXTINCTION.
rollin on Tue, 21st Jan 2014 11:09 pm
“Yet, by now, it might just be that the friction that all this control produces is reaching a point where the resulting heat can melt down these immature structures of hierarchy. And from the ashes we can rise up to reclaim our second half of life – to really grow up.”
Should read ” and from the radioactive ashes…”
Makati1 on Wed, 22nd Jan 2014 1:18 am
To all of you that think we will ‘grow up’ as a species before we cause our own extinction have those denial blinders on again. Look around your own home. What do you see? If you are 1st world, 90% of what you see in NOT a necessity. Would you be willing to walk away from all of it and live a frugal life? I bet not. If you said yes, DO IT!
Look at the people walking around you on the street or in the malls. How many of them are plugged into some i-toy? What do you do for relaxation? Turn on the 48 inch TV with theater surround sound, in your air conditioned or well heated home? How old is the car in your driveway? Still making payments? If you said yes to any of the above, you are a typical American and will not give them up without a fight. Are you ‘mature’? Or do you support the insane system that is killing you and your kid’s futures?
Tom Jablonski on Wed, 22nd Jan 2014 4:48 am
Makati1, Being a grown up requires admitting that we cannot force everyone else to grow up, but that does not mean we give up. For me it means continuing to work on myself, despite the very real possibility that in the end you might be right. It also means I do what I can to provide assistance to those who may need a hand to grow up themselves. First half of live thinking is keeping the focus on everybody else and what they are doing wrong, second half of life thinking means I accept responsibility for me and I do the right thing. And despite the appearance that it may never happen, I do believe that everyone has the capability to move into the second half state of being, the same way that I do. The choice is there.