The Ukraine is a mirror of our Global Culture

I am just going to let flow out in a stream of consciousness of what is arising in me presently. This conflict in the Ukraine is letting loose a lot of reactions from a lot of people trying to understand what this conflict means. What is happening in the Ukraine is no surprise. Putin is no surprise. This is the nature of our culture. We are a global culture. A culture of fragmentation and a culture of violence. A culture in which we have destroyed through the acts of colonization every indigenous culture on every continent except Antartica (which had no cultures living on it). We are a culture that splits itself off into different state ideologies that arise all the countries on our planet. Different names with subtle differences in philosophies and policies. All these countries work towards domination at certain levels and towards each other.

Because of the fragmented way in which we are taught to see the world, we rarely take a step back to see that we are simply people who live on a living planet with millions upon millions of other species. Unless we change the way we see oneself and are part in the world, these grave and sickening conflicts will continue.

War, poverty, racism, sexism, environmental destruction, anxiety, emptiness, depression, and sorrow are all connected to the way our global culture lives upon the planet. If we are truly sickened by what we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the Ukraine, if we are sickened by what is happening to our rainforests, if we are sickened by poverty and racism, if we are tired or our own emptiness, then we need to stop, and question the very dysfunction of our global culture’s roots.

Our culture is at war with the world and essentially always has been. Our culture is not outside but within us all collectively. It is the way we have been taught to think. We see ourselves as separate, and because of that fear and ignorance are born.

But, what if we are all interconnected? What if wholeness is the nature of reality, not separation? How would we live? How would we think? How would we see each other and other species? Do we stop war through more war? Does violence create peace? Or do we need to confront conflict in a new way? How would we see education and learning? How would we see oneself? How would we see community?