“I don’t have much knowledge yet in grief, so this massive darkness makes me small.”
— Rilke

I am grateful to learn about this new term ‘Open-Individualism’. I see it is somewhat similar to Hindu philosophy’s ‘Tat tvam asi’, which I love.

Might I implore you to start an apprenticeship with grief? I think what this society needs most at this time is people who see the beauty in indigenous ritual processes and actively participate in them in their communities.

“In this culture we display a compulsive avoidance of difficult matters and an obsession with distraction. Because we cannot acknowledge our grief, we’re forced to stay on the surface of life. Poet Kahlil Gibran said, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” We experience little genuine joy in part because we avoid the depths. We are an ascension culture. We love rising, and we fear going down. Consequently we find ways to deny the reality of this rich but difficult territory, and we are thinned psychically. We live in what I call a “flat-line culture,” where the band is narrow in terms of what we let ourselves fully feel. We may cry at a wedding or when we watch a movie, but the full-throated expression of emotion is off-limits.”
— Francis Weller

I learned about having an ‘apprenticeship with grief’ through the work of Francis Weller. He writes:

“I’m not sure how or when I began my apprenticeship with sorrow. I do know that it was my gateway back into the breathing and animate world. It was through the dark waters of grief that I came to touch my unlived life, by at last unleashing tears I had never shed for the losses in my world. Grief led me back into a world that was vivid and radiant. There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive. Through this, I have come to have a lasting faith in grief.

This book is also about restoring the Soul of the World. Bringing soul back to the world means perceiving the world through a deepened imagination, one that is capable of experiencing our intimacy with the surrounding world of finches and dragonflies, creeks and woodlands, neighborhoods and friends. Everything possesses soul. It is our myopia, our one-dimensional attention to things “human,” that leads us to see the world as an object, something to be controlled, manipulated, and consumed. The earth is a revelation, offering itself to us daily in an astonishing array of beauty and suffering. What is required of us is living with a level of openness and vulnerability to the joys and sorrows of the world. Taking in the beauty of the land as well as the great rips and tears in her skin requires a psyche attuned to the living world and one engaged in the ongoing conversation with all things. Soul returns to the world when we attend to the rhythms of nature, when we nourish our friendships with time and attention and in our daily participation with repairing the world. How well we do that will determine the fate of our communities and the planet.”
— Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

I found a great introduction to his work in this podcast: https://charleseisenstein.net/podcasts/new-and-ancient-story...

You write: “To think otherwise is simply naive, and suggests one has had few encounters with true malevolence.” Do you think maybe it is possible that there are experiences or insights where others’ suffering has taken them down roads that you might not have had the opportunity of having been down yet? That is what it sounds like to me, when you write the above.

I understand your point. ’…separating some individuals from the rest of society’ to me sounds like what ‘Nonviolent Communication’ originator Marshall Rosenberg calls ‘the protective use of force’:

“The intention behind the protective use of force is to prevent injury or injustice. The intention behind the punitive use of force is to cause individuals to suffer for their perceived misdeeds. When we grab a child who is running into the street to prevent the child from being injured, we are applying protective force. The punitive use of force, on the other hand, might involve physical or psychological attack, such as spanking the child or saying,

“How could you be so stupid! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

When we exercise the protective use of force, we are focusing on the life or rights we want to protect, without passing judgment on either the person or the behavior. We are not blaming or condemning the child who rushes into the street; our thinking is solely directed toward protecting the child from danger.

The assumption behind the protective use of force is that people behave in ways injurious to themselves and others due to some form of ignorance. The corrective process is therefore one of education, not punishment. Ignorance includes (1) a lack of awareness of the consequences of our actions, (2) an inability to see how our needs may be met without injury to others, (3) the belief that we have the right to punish or hurt others because they “deserve” it, and (4) delusional thinking that involves, for example, hearing a voice that instructs us to kill someone.”

I’m not sure if you’ve seen what goes on in American prisons, but judging from the documentary ‘13th’, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. To me, the Prison–industrial Complex is incredibly inhumane.

Reading both Marshall Rosenberg and Pia Mellody helped me to understand why people can be violent, to try to ask questions instead, and to be less quick to judge others when they are using excessive force.

Marshall Rosenberg starts one of his books with:

“Nonviolent Communication evolved out of an intense interest I had in two questions. First, I wanted to better understand what happens to human beings that leads some of us to behave violently and exploitatively. And second, I wanted to better understand what kind of education serves our attempts to remain compassionate—which I believe is our nature— even when others are behaving violently or exploitatively. The theory that has been around for many centuries says that violence and exploitation happen because people are innately evil, selfish, or violent. But I have seen people who aren’t like that; I have seen many people who enjoy contributing to one another’s well-being. So, I wondered why some people seem to enjoy other people’s suffering, while other people are just the opposite.”

In another he writes:

“My preoccupation with these questions began in childhood, around the summer of 1943, when our family moved to Detroit, Michigan. The second week after we arrived, a race war erupted over an incident at a public park. More than forty people were killed in the next few days. Our neighborhood was situated in the center of the violence, and we spent three days locked in the house.

When the race riot ended and school began, I discovered that a name could be as dangerous as any skin color. When the teacher called my name during attendance, two boys glared at me and hissed, “Are you a kike?” I had never heard the word before and didn’t know some people used it in a derogatory way to refer to Jews. After school, the same two boys were waiting for me: they threw me to the ground and kicked and beat me.”

I would like to express my gratitude to you for this exchange. I enjoyed your responses, and having been able to engage with you.