Reflections: Our salt-water and fresh-water natures

Traveling through the various landscapes of Venezuela from the Andes to the Amazon, the Grand Sabana to the Caribbean sea, it is amazing to see the diversity of plants, birds, animals and people of all ethnic and racial groups. Indigenous people, immigrants and generations who came here for something better. But what is better for them? Are they better now? It is a question each of us could ask — we have dreams but what becomes of them?

Venezuela bears the glories and scars of a former colonial country, and though it has been two hundred years, it continues to have a lasting imprint on our natures, the country and the individual and collective psyche. We share Spanish as a common language because of our history, but our country has an uncommon diversity of experience tied to our past, ethnic heritage and family history. In many ways, the land shapes our psyche. What lies below these diverse landscapes, below the surface - individually and collectively?

Venezuela is a modern country with great oil and mineral reserves that are a blessing and a curse. Below the natural landscape we drill. This drilling fuels a transformation and thirst for more and better technology changing the natural landscape and the psyche (our inner nature) of the country. In our haste to pursue modernity, money, more technology and things, our culture is fast losing its ties to the land, we are increasingly distant from nature, our communities and ourselves—the external landscape suggests a troubled inner nature.

We continue to pursue technology, mineral exploration, strip mining, oil drilling and other ways of exploiting our resources, believing it makes our lives better. Yet economically it is increasing the distance between rich and poor and driving much of our population from the land to the city in search of riches and a better life. Certain groups prosper at the expense of others—the less fortunate, nature, the ecosystem and even our inner nature. I find myself asking philosophical, ethical, religious and moral questions about what is and has become of our once careful appreciation for the panorama of nature.

The Guacamayo Parrot, a member of the Venesualia fauna family.

Have we undermined our own dreams and values in the process? Have we become short-sighted and as a result are left with misaligned priorities? Once the land shaped our psyche; now our psyche is trying to shape the land and the world around us.

We now want immediate results. In our haste to allay this immediate thirst, we choose to drink the salt water of economic prosperity because it is wet, believing that it will quench our thirst. It does not. We need fresh pure water, something that slakes the deeper yearning of our soul. There are reasons why open spaces, mountains, lakes, rivers, oceans and city parks are places of refuge — they provide respite, alleviating the unending  inner thirst, that gnawing at our inner nature.It is our soul seeking solace, our inner nature seeking communion with in the great outdoors.

Our governments at the behest of many global business leaders are continually committing corporate arson on the land and in our countries. They set fire and destroy social institutions and safety nets for the less fortunate, and pillage the land, all for the benefit of a favored few. Then the politicians rescue us with governmental, corporate and multinational social projects to repair what they destroyed—taking full credit. They create a problem and then we reward them for repairing that problem.
They are simultaneously the arsonist, the fire department and the hero.

Teresa Sosa Vegas is currently a Life Coach and professor of the Graduate School of Political Science, Simon Bolivar University, USB, Caracas, Venezuela.

Many of us see them only as heroes. We condone this behavior by our silence. Why do we not recognize this? We do not see. Thousands of volunteers go around the globe on missionary quests to save the world, a sort of mystical salvation of an abstract idea. What is actually being called for is a transformative quest, a quest that begins with our outer natures, for only that allows us to be stewards of change in the outside world.

What is present at the global, civilizational and corporate level has its beginning with the individual; in the Don Quixote quest to cure and heal ourselves from dis-ease and illnesses that to some extent are created by our own thoughts, actions and beliefs. Our illnesses and problems are manifestations of the collective beliefs and attitudes of the civilization, cultures and societies in which we live. We are often outside the body, wondering why the world does not live up to our expectations. The change begins with aligning our inner natures, our bodies, our social interactions and beliefs.

Natural Resources
Many today view nature as a disposable rather than a renewable resource. We cut down rainforests for cattle ranching or sheep farming or to build roads—none may be inherently wrong, as long as we fully understand what we lose in the process. Our personal natures reflect society’s desire for growth and for things now.

In Venezuela, our values and expectations are changing with the discovery and drilling for oil and minerals—we are richer as a nation but are we not poorer as a people? We can yearn for the mythical golden past where everyone had values and principles, and cultivated virtues such as simplicity, tolerance, gratitude and cooperation—when the relationship with nature and the group was in balance. We can cite the rituals performed to thank the ancestors for what they had done and to be responsible for what was necessary to sustain future generations. There are the myths and stories told by grandparents or ancestors about the family and the community. The question to us, today, is what is our story? What are our values? How do our actions reflect those values and virtues?  What are we as individuals, families, groups, communities and societies doing now?

Many say we have no time and are too busy to consider such questions. We are busy doing things we do not value at the expense of that which we say we do value—our inner nature and the land—our external nature. This perception of time is inherently one of destruction—of doing, measuring and being productive. This thirst for success and economic betterment is creating a tension between our inner nature and outer nature.

I remember living in Santa Monica, California, during the 1960s and hearing a song written by Peter Seeger and later sung by many others, including Joan Baez. A line from that song is “Where have All the Flowers Gone, long time passing, long time ago…”; In French,“ Qui peut dire ou vont les fleurs“, and in German “Sag’ mir, wo die Blumen sind”.  Where have the flowers gone, literally, and metaphorically in our individual and collective dreams?

How absurd have we become?  Camus says absurdity emerges from anxiety, which initiates a break with everyday routine activities. One can ask, has the reasonableness of our two natures become irrational? Has the familiar begun to appear strange? This incomprehensible split in our nature, this disconnection leads Kafka to ask, how absurd are we? A good question for us to consider.

We pine over our lost time, resources and the need to “save” nature, as if that is how we create sustainability. It is not. The only way to transform the world is by changing our individual perceptions and beliefs about the differences and commonalities before us—to question our absurdity. We need to tell the story of how these times of crisis are about our individual beliefs as a society, country and civilization. We seem to be caught in a vicious circle of action where the stated values are—growth, economic gain and more things.

Only by challenging these values, these fundamental assumptions, can we ever hope to reconfigure working relationships between growth and diversity, between human values and economic gain. We can get there only by asking deeper, more fundamental questions about values. 

We too easily fall into abstraction when considering the plight of others, ourselves (our inner nature) and nature in general. We inherently speak the language of abstraction, one of the mind, one which focuses on ideas, concepts and economic statistics. As a result, we continually attempt to make nature fit within those mental constructs which reinforce our modern “salt water” values. Where is the language of our inner nature of our heart or body?

The abstract, absurd language of Western society tends to lead to separating the whole into discrete usable pieces. We become proud of our individual human capacities, our ability to develop methodologies, systems and tools, and to invent new visions. Who is asking if they are misdirected, if the chasing of money, power, prosperity and betterment are illusions or mirages? In our comparisons, why are we not asking - better than what? Based on what criteria?

What is it we actually value if we strip away the things, the technology, the career, the grandiosity of saving the planet—what remains for each of us, alone? Only from that place can we make a difference. Questioning what we believe and why we belief in it, is what Socrates called the examined life. Are we living an examined life or are we incapable of seeing in ourselves what we are capable of seeing all around us in nature, society and other cultures.

How does one do that in an environment of political, economic and social chaos, of uncertainty and  confusion, when individuals lack basic public services, are in poverty, have a sense of hopelessness and are living what some might call a meaningless existence. Who has time to wonder then about nature or human potential or expanding consciousness?

In my country there is an ongoing destruction, a once vibrant democracy is being usurped by policies that create increasing anxiety and fear that are manifest in rising levels of poverty, crime, corruption, terrorism, murder, kidnapping, sickness and depression. It is a nation in regression, but people survive and live, they overcome adversity. The family has always been the nucleus, the common ground for developing values here, yet the definition of family and what constitutes family is changing. Family is any place where individuals find serenity, expression, security, affection and caring. It is up to us that in times of destruction and regression, individuals do not find these human needs in terrorist organizations or criminal gangs.

Only in small groups of individuals becoming conscious of their human existence (inner nature) can any of us find the hope, synergy, vitality and courage to work together and make a difference to shift and live in a better, peaceful society (external nature).

Sustainability starts with the body, the person, the community, the society and the civilization. Sustainability occurs between the ears and in the chest—in the heart and the mind. Only then is there an integration of thought, ideas and actions. That recognition is a framework for sustainability for it shifts the current focus on exclusive “doing”, to consider equally the value of “being.” Sustain-ability requires an “ability” to understand and integrate the disparate pieces, along with recognizing the obvious and little known interrelationships between those pieces. It also requires knowing the immediate (salt water) and long-term (fresh water) implications of our actions and decisions.

Change occurs only when we understand that the assumptions and beliefs we have long held are what limit our ability to become sustainable. In that knowledge, that integration of the inner and outer natures, we are free to change the world.