Shall we quit being tedious overlords of the universe and find our sanity?

Chapter 18: Confronting arrogance, being humbled

Here, another way to build islands of sanity - get humble.

If you’re new to this Book Serialisation journey, where I publish a chapter of my book about collapsing systems each week here on Substack? You can start at the beginning and navigate around using this Table of Contents if you like. The audio version is at the bottom and available only to subscribers. Ditto the conversation in the comments section where we workshop things together.

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HUMBLE

“The local embodiment of a consciousness grown to self-awareness,

we are star stuff pondering the stars.”

- Carl Sagan

*

When I was 34 I disappeared. I could no longer see myself in the bedroom mirror that I’d been staring into, sideways, from the floor where I’d been lying in a twisted foetal position for three days. I had been in a dangerously suicidal ideating spot and was ready to step off. I had been unwell for a year, unable to work or walk. As I wrote in First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, “All the things that propped me up and defined ‘me’ had disappeared - my job, my athletic physique, my robust, healthy appearance, my energy…my life savings. Gone.” And now I could not find a point to it all. I’d tried every angle, every strategic route. None lead me out.

And so on this particular morning, I disappeared from view. I’m sure there is some neurological term for not being able to physically see yourself in a reflection; it’s not occurred to me to find it. The cognitive disruption, however, changed my life. It was enough to lift me up and out, and onto a new plateau of awareness. On this new plateau, I didn’t matter. I was mere star dust, per Carl Sagan. I was no more significant in the context of Almighty Life than the shard of sunlight hitting the carpet in front of me, than the neighbour’s dog I could hear scuffling outside, than a day, than a thought. And the most wonderful realisation flooded in:

I (evidently) chose the latter route. I chose to fully embrace my “not mattering” and to join life where it is at.¹

There is, in fact, a neurological term for this particular experience; we touched on it earlier. It’s called cognitive insignificance and it happens when something very, very big whacks things into perspective such that our ego, our “little i”, disappears, or gets a healthy downgrading. Viewing the Earth from outer space as a pale blue dot for the first time can do it. Illness, death, giving birth and chronic insomnia can too.

So can awakening to collapse.

And really it must.

*

Another word for it is humility.

*

Supreme human arrogance - the belief that we are masters of the universe, that we are entitled (destined) to overlord over all other living beings in pursuit of our deranged, narcissistic ends - has imperilled us and most other species on the planet. And a huge part of our current journey is going to have to entail sitting with the realisation we are simply not as great as we thought we were.

Indeed, you might go as far to say we fucked up. Like, we royally fucked up.

I mean, who did we think we were, attempting to compete with the omnipotent, divine flow of Life? We never stood a chance. We must sit with this. We must descend (collapse) into a radical humility to find our sanity again. Humility is not a hatred of, or complete disappointment in, humanity. It’s simply seeing ourselves squarely.

*

Alan Lightman writes in The Accidental Universe

“Right this minute

across time zones and opinions

people are

making plans

making meals

making promises and poems

while,

at the center of our galaxy

a black hole with the mass of

four billion suns

screams its open-mouth kiss

of oblivion...”

*

So, yes, this is the work of all the Islands of Sanity builders here. To deal with the squared-up truth of things. When we do, things can be handled better, with a proper, helpful perspective. And we can, yes, sit with the “certainty that something makes sense”².