a declaration of friendship
on finding a frame fit for the complexity of our world
on facing our conditions
three years ago, as a senior in college, I read the Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanly Robinson and felt my mental model of the world shift.
as the 21st century unfolded with each flip of the page, it finally landed for me that the rest of my life will be defined by a fight to adapt to and heal a deteriorating biosphere - and that our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being are inextricably entangled with the health of all our relations.
for the first time, I sat with the ecological devastation, famine, drought, destruction, and climate migration that will accompany me and my generation's children to our graves, and in that space came questions:
what should I do? what is my responsibility?
what can we make of this cognitive-ecological condition, handed down by the generations who built and maintain the machine of global capitalism and the paradigm of modernity?1
orientation | questions
the best conclusion I came to at the time was regenerating the health of our local ecosystems -- both the physical and our social world. I began exploring a series of questions. outwardly, I asked:
how do we live (and die) well together?
where are the best places of living & learning, and what makes them click?
what are the most effective practices and scales for transformative work?
inwardly, I asked:
what do I truly need in life?
what does it mean to live ethically?
how do I cultivate the confidence that I am sincerely doing all I can, all that i am called to do?
in the past year, asking these questions brought me to a pop-up campus, a 47 year old intentional community, a decentralized learning community in new york city, and to MAPLE - a modern monastery developing a collective that can steer advanced technologies towards caring for all life; blending the rigor of monastic practice with practical responsibility.
the throughline I’ve found so far comes down to a stance, an attitudinal approach, a spiritual practice & way of relating to life itself — that has something to do with metabolism & friendship.
3 ways of viewing the world
In Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliviera, she writes how she once was told there are three ways of imagining society: individualism, collectivism, and metabolism.
whereas the first two views perpetuate a division between the individual and the collective (and tend to reinforce the notion of humans being seperate from nature), “Metabolism evokes nested systems and entities that operate in rhythms and cycles and that are constantly exchanging and processing energy and matter.” (Oliviera, 215)
In other words, viewing the planet (and society) as a metabolism situates us within a living system, one world body composed of countless holonic bodies in direct relationship with each other.
metabolism offers us a lens fit for the complexity of our world — and with greater accuracy of understanding, it allows us to simultaneously focus our attention on the direct relational flows around us while sensing into the health of the whole.
this is where collective agency swells — as people tune into their metabolic role (what am I introducing into the metabolism? what relationships & flows of energy sustain me?) we gain clarity in relationship to our social-ecological needs and our individual capacity.
“In this worldview,” writes Oliviera, “one thing is clear: accumulation leads to scarcity.”
what is held in one place cannot be in another.
hoarding wealth and the accumulation of capital necessarily comes at the depletion of other areas of the greater body. therefore, we may have the responsibility “to keep the flow of reciprocities going in the collective bodies, including relationships with spirits and ancestors, so that metabolic regeneration and abundance can take place” (Oliviera 220).
what does this look like in real life?
generosity & the metabolism of friendship
there’s amazing work going on through Building Solidarity Economies (BSE) at UMass Amherst — an assemblage of teachings and network of learning projects aimed at advancing conditions from which communities can remake their own conditions for life.
this includes community land trusts, mutual aid projects, food & living cooperatives — all kinds of work and care that step outside the logic of capitalism and modernity to support friends and create a life worth living.
from my perspective, one of the simplest and most direct ways to enact transformation through your relations is the act of generosity.
through the lens of metabolism, giving is the greatest wealth — and from my direct experience, it is literally the work of miracles that remake this world.
gifts flow round
consider the flow of reciprocities I got to witness in just one day last week:
I woke up to invitation from my friend Teddy to drive out west, meet their friend, plant some seeds and maybe pick up a few plants. my grandma suggested giving some of my fresh-baked turmeric-rosemary sourdough, so I wrapped up half a loaf and drove over.
they were having breakfast and offered me a mind-blowing treat — pickled magnolia blossoms that they harvested themselves — and I gave them the loaf. instantly, I felt my spirit warmed from the exchange, my body relaxed and full of ease.
later, we met the friend and helped him fill a raised bed with dirt, planting wild cherries, hickorys, and other tree nuts in the soil. after nerding out on plants together, he offered us a number of young trees - hickory, oak, and persimmons, insisting they needed a good home.
like a good friend, Teddy had brought a gift as well and offered fresh-picked nettles and a vial of homemade reishi tincture in return.
gifts flow round.
reciprocity grows.
at the end of the time together, our new friend shocked us all by buying us lunch at a beautiful local bakery, and we sent him home with the leftover treats we shared together.
that ride home, I sat with the warm glow of friendship & fresh bread, the felt sense of vast abundance created by the dance of generosity, the nourishing movement of giving & receiving love.
this is how I want to hold life — how I want to approach all my relations in this world:
with reverence, with gratitude, with curiosity, with playfulness, with compassion — with the sense that we are inextricably linked, composing the same body, here together to make of it what we will — to make a world beautiful, good and whole.
i’m reminded of a passage from the Course of Miracles, which reads:
Giving and receiving are in truth one.
the frame of metabolism helps us dispel the illusion of separation — the very foundation of modernity whose violence and unsustainability has brought our world to a breaking point.
metabolism reveals the functional interdependence and highlights the agency we have to change our conditions through each and every relationship, human and non-human alike.
we are only here for so long — so what are we waiting for?
how does it feel when you give to friends, to strangers, to community?
what happens when you dare to befriend the world?
love, my friend
the first order of business, as I see it now, is to build our understanding of the present physical and pyscho-social conditions — what is the state of our world and collective mind? what are the forces, stories, and ideologies that move us? how, in short, do we relate to life itself in this world?