Back to Earth

Where does one look to for solace, for insight, for some sense of meaning in times that defy common sense? For me, music, poetry, teaching, walks in the park—and mythology. Discovering Joseph Campbell in the late 1980’s was a turning point in my intellectual life, intellectual insight married to soul. I still turn to some myths from all times and all cultures that astoundingly, speak to today’s news, carrying truths far beyond any particular time and place. 

 

With some friends at dinner last night, one was talking about a recent article about our rapidly careening out of control technologies. Titled An Age of Extinction Is Coming by Rous Douthat, it gives us dire warning about how the technologies we’ve given our souls to in some Faustian bargain are slowly eliminating everything that is truly valuable in this life. Friendship, romance, family life, art, literature, culture and more. Well, yes, I’ve been saying the same for a long time and it has only gotten worse. But still in my world, I see kids still delighting in making elemental music with their own body and voice, navigating through instruments made from wood, metal, skin and string both playing elemental music and creating their own. I see them still capable of working well with other kids, asking good questions, following their curiosity to answers that lead them to the next question. And the adults I teach in workshops also. Of course, I also see the toxins in the electronic air we breathe affecting us all in concerning ways. But like the call to American citizens to grow their Souls larger in the face of diminishing freedoms, so does the call to humans everywhere ask us to step up and claim what is truly valuable in the face of its erosion and possible disappearance.

So the myth that rose up for me was the old Greek one of a wrestling match. 

Antaeus is the child of Gaia, the Goddess of the Earth. He wrestles with Hercules and every time he is thrown to the ground, he rises up stronger. That contact with his mother the earth, with the very ground of his being, is what gives him strength and courage. But Hercules figures out what’s happening and lifts up Antaeus, spinning him around in the air and ultimately crushing him in a bear hug. 

 

Well, there it is. When we exchange our three-dimensional physical contact with Mother Earth for the virtual cyberspace that has us in its bear hug, we grow weaker. All the tastes and textures and smells and touches of our world are narrowed and reduced to the two-dimensional screens. To slip towards another myth, they are the bewitching Sirens calling us to our doom and we’re forgetting to tie ourselves and the children to the mast. 

 

So whether it be music, dance, poetry, art, literature, deep friendship, beautiful romance and of course, time out in the world in company with birds and bugs and flowers and trees, we all would do well to remember that ground of our being and spread out the picnic blanket. Often. Screens are designed for addiction, tapping into our ancient survival brain that reacts to loud noises, bright lights, excessive movement and those damn IT developers who know exactly what they’re doing sleep in their fancy houses oblivious to the way they’re sucking the soul out of our lives. The only antidote is when we train ourselves to appreciate the slow, the sublime, the splendid simplicity of that things that feed our genuine deep hungers and thirsts. 

 

So beware of Hercules and the Sirens and let’s refuse the mass lemming drive over the cliffs to our demise. Consciously walk the path down to the beach instead. Without our phones.