We live in a traumatized world
Generations of unhealed trauma yield traumatizing societies grounded in a traumatized world view.
“In my view, this is a society that traumatizes people by its very nature. And to recognize the impact of trauma is to question the very essence of this particular culture.” — Gabor Maté
Our traumatized and traumatizing culture of hyperproductivity and rigid individualism:
- conflates the value of our doings with the value of our being
- treats us exclusively as individual mono-minds.
- prioritizes competition over community, denying our interdependence
To live in a society which requires a human being who never asked to be born to somehow earn their right to live is on its own traumatic. It creates a baseline level of dissociation — a feeling of separateness from our emotions, from our bodies, from other people, from life, from the Earth. We are all so chronically stressed that the western world considers Mindfulness Meditation relaxing despite the fact that it is effortful.
The sensory overload of information and provoking news stories bombards us constantly until our (Parts) are forced to pull us inward and numb us against them. They work tirelessly to keep us safe, but a suit of armor isolates as much as it protects. When we tune out our inner and outer experience, we by extension tune out other people. This makes authentic connection almost impossible, while forgetting (or never realizing) who we are beneath the armor is almost inevitable.
With air and noise pollution, the constant bombardment of digital and real-world advertising in concrete jungles of identical homes arranged with tight efficiency and insulated from the rest of the world, it’s easy to forget that we even share the Earth with other species, never mind that they outnumber us.
The Integral Guide to Well-Being: Traumatized World, 2024
Under the present brutal and primitive conditions of the planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being.
Robert Anton Wilson