Charles Eisenstein essay on Race & COVID

[tuckerwphotography]

New essay from Eisenstein about "whiteness," cultural superiority, and integrating stage Purple Indigenous traditional medicine with stage Orange/Green modernity. Thoughts on his essay?

https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-banquet-of-whiteness/

From my POV, America’s white-dominate culture has been in the steady process of integrating aspects of Indigenous wisdom over the past few decades. From the many types of Yoga now available in nearly every town in America, to meditation being taught in inner-city public schools, to acupuncture and herbal medicine practices popping up everywhere. I recently saw a Nigerian Healer/Shaman in LA. I just started RASA energy transmissions. Last summer I was seeing an Ayurvedic Indian doctor. I’ve been on vision quests and grief ceremonies that all have strong roots in Indigenous wisdom. 

Framing this in the Spiral Dynamics model, the issue I see is that most of the country is still in stages Blue and Orange, which means only a small (but ever increasing) population of the country is even ideologically open to these practices (stage Green and above). The gripe many Indigenous / people of color have with integrating "sacred wisdom" is that it gets easily sucked into our modern stage Orange economy, turning everything into a profits game. Which is why Eisenstein's call to restructure the entire economic/healthcare/educational systems seems inevitable and imperative. While this is a massive shift that will likely take generations of work (maybe?), perhaps one thing white people can do is to support the small but growing number of “alternative” approaches to medicine and normalize it amongst our friends and family, so that one day it’s no longer “alternative” rather “integrative.” This cultural shift seems equally as imperative as the systems shift and perhaps is even a prerequisite to the systems changes. 

How to prevent white-dominate culture from not whitewashing the rest of the planet seems harder to control to some degree as corporations seeking profit and church groups seeking converts are somewhat out of the hands of the average person. And there's the conundrum of what to do when those who have been left out of the march towards modernity reach stage Orange and seek a piece of the pie. Is there a way to reform stage Orange systems into a more Green-centric incentive structure so that the impacts of "progress" are less destructive on those coming up from Blue? Thoughts?

[soos_mite_ah]

I wouldn't say most of the country is in blue and orange, thought I would say that there is a large chunk. There is a lot of people moving into green especially when it comes to women, minorities, and young people because we have to learn how to deal with diversity more and more.

There is a demographic shift happening in the U.S. and it is predicted that white people will no longer be the majority by 2030 or so. Because of that, a lot of white people (especially the old ones who still think of the 1950s as the good ol days) are getting triggered because of racism and nationalism and that's why you see so much of an ego backlash in politics today with people like Trump stroking the fires. This is common with demographic shifts and influxes of immigrants. A similar thing also happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s where white people in the U.S. discriminated against Irish and Italian citizens. It seems really silly now and I wouldn't be surprised if that's how we view Hispanic people or Asian people in a 100 or so years. This will die down eventually. 

Also after 2008, a lot of young people began being very critical with capitalism. The green leaning portion of this group (which is most) is open to alternatives such as socialism and Bernie Sanders but the blue leaning portion of this group instead puts the blame on minorities which is why there is still a sizable amount of young people you support Trump. Young people are also historically much more nonreligious compared to older generations. There is a consistent decline over the years. 

But the real challenge is dealing with the corporations I'd say. 

[tuckerwphotography]

@soos_mite_ah Totally! It's all shifting and just a matter of time. And the shift seems to be accelerating rather quickly. My guestimation (based off absolutely nothing) of America's place in the spiral is below. I wonder if this lines up with reality...   

3% Yellow+

5% Green/Yellow

15% Green

20% Orange/Green

20% Orange

15% Orange/Blue

15% Blue

7% Blue/Red

 

[soos_mite_ah]

@tuckerwphotography Yeah those look like a very rough estimate. I wouldn't be surprised if you were close. 

But then again, there can also be large differences in regions (west/east cost vs middle america, rural vs. suburbs vs. urban, north vs. south) as well in different socioeconomic groups (POC vs. white people, rich vs poor etc.). There isn't this even distribution when it comes to percentages. 

The U.S. has a wide range and if you're into spiral dynamics, I'd argue that it's the perfect place to sink your teeth into. There are so many different types of people here.  

[tuckerwphotography]

@soos_mite_ah In my family alone we almost span the entire spiral hahaha.

[Gidiot]

I believe leo has stated most of the country is solid orange with blue and green mixed in, there are an extremely low amount of yellow and turquoise people, but certainly the trend is going to towards green. I’d say we’d be lucky to get to solid green in my lifetime(I’m 25). 
 

there is a certain wisdom to purple that gets overlooked until green but there are also many problems with purple. 
 

I think alternative medicine is growing although I don’t have any facts, maybe a stupid think I observe is way more people have salt lamps which are somewhat alternative medicine because of the vibrations the crystals give out. 
 

meditation is also exploding and hopefully it gets added to schools in the western world soon, I would love a mindfulness class in all universities and school.  That is the baby steps, will check out the article thanks.

[Preety_India]

 

Eisenstein should be enough. 

(Purple doesn't integrate very well with a stubborn blue.) 

Orange is too attractive to people to put up with green.