It is scary to look around at everything that is happening in the world at the moment. In the face of so many tragic and scary circumstances, it can be hard not to lose hope and feel powerless. However, I believe that there is something we can do, something we can work on in various ways ourselves to bring about change. It will not change everything overnight and it is simple, but not easy, but I do believe it is effective. It boils down to the Dutch saying ‘Verbeter de wereld, begin bij jezelf’ (Improve the world, start with yourself), but not in a finger-wagging way.
I first mentioned this about a year ago in the blog ‘Discovering the Road to Peace’ (HERE). At that time, what I wrote came from only a vague sense I was trying to capture into words. Since then, the thoughts (and my knowledge) around this have crystallised into something much more concrete. It all centres around the impact of trauma, and the trauma responses elicited by it, as outlined by the ‘trauma wall model’, which you can find on the home page.
As I mentioned in last year’s blog, war, oppression, exploitation, rejection of ‘other’ and of change are all rooted in trauma. They are the manifestation of defence and coping mechanisms that were once necessary for physical or psychological survival, but have stuck around past their usefulness and gotten out of hand, because the trauma was never addressed or resolved.
When I recently read The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate, the insight of how this works and what this means deepened for me. Mate says that, particularly initially in childhood, the mind is shaped by the world, and later the world is shaped by the mind because adults create systems and norms that align with the way they view the world – in a way creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. This view, which I think is largely accurate, provides an enormous potential for hope. It provides us with a lot of agency in shaping a new world, if we stay conscious of this premise and do not relinquish our agency to effect change.
What I found interesting is that The Myth of Normal outlines the evidence and basis for the points I am trying to make, but, in my opinion, it seems to stop just short of the last step in the reasoning. This provides me with a great opportunity to use the research from Mate’s book to build on towards the next level in the book I was already working on. The way he describes the toxicity of our current societal models also suddenly made me see how these models and systems themselves are coping mechanisms, designed to help us escape or avoid having to confront what we carry inside us.
I am very grateful to include this resource in my work. I will work all of this out much further in my book. However, in short: Changing cultures and societal norms top down is extremely hard, almost impossible, but by creating a tipping point of people resolving trauma, the change will gradually happen organically. This is because when the majority of minds are no longer looking to shape the world through a trauma response with the function of supporting escapism, they will start to move away from the current systems and build up a world that supports connection, authenticity and living, for all.
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