The Yin-Yang of Life

Where do we find love? Where do we bestow our love? Where are the places of beauty? These questions, in their essence, have the same answer: In the places, inner and outer, where we open our heart to see more fully, and feel grateful for, what is directly in front of our eyes. Yet, such places can remain overlooked, unseen and, therefore, unknown. I recall a poignant quote by Andre Kertesz, a 20th-century photographer, who once said: “The eyes are blind when the heart does not see.”

Such words would resonate in the heart of Piero Ferrucci, psychotherapist, philosopher and author of several inspiring books, which include Beauty and the Soul (2009). This book’s subtitle reads: The Extraordinary Power of Everyday Beauty to Heal Your Life. Here Ferrucci expounds upon the power within each and every one of us to awaken our consciousness to become more fully who we can be.

Among the marvellous qualities of Beauty and the Soul is Ferrucci’s down-to-earth, anecdotal style, through which he relates touching stories of the transformative moments in the lives of a diverse range of individuals, as well as in his own life.

These accounts are alongside several mentions of scientific, medical and educational studies that now provide empirical proof on the potentialities of human consciousness that have been manifested since almost the beginning of time – well, at least, approximately 1.8 million years ago.

Ferrucci cites the research of Steven Mithen, author of The Singing Neanderthals, in which the study of anatomy, neurology and archeological findings concludes, as Ferrucci sums up: “We are musical organisms, we are born with rhythm and melody in our DNA. Music, song, and dance have been essential in our bonding in groups and this social competence has given great advantage to our capacity to survive” [Ferrucci, 2009, p. 180].

As Ferrucci tells us, Mithen’s most recent theories of cognitive archaeology deepen the evidence that artistic expression always has been an essential aspect for human survival. It resides in the evolved relationship so long ago between three abilities: (1) producing a mental image and wanting to represent it in concrete form; (2) understanding the meaning of that image; and (3) being eager to share it with others. The confluence of these three abilities signified “a huge leap in our evolution. To be creative means to be fully human” [p. 100].

Ferrucci also cites ethnologist Ellen Dissanayake, who ascribes our aesthetic sensibility to our longing for mutuality: “According to Dissanayate, mutuality is one of the four basic psychobiological needs that generate our need for art. The other needs are: the sense of belonging to a group, the need to understand and create meaning, the need to make artifacts with our hands and thus to show our competence” [p. 179].

Beauty and the Soul is a book that touches the human soul, in bequeathing hope and possibility in how the human family can heal itself, and learn how to get along as a planetary family in relationship with everyone and everything that we cherish on our planetary home. That is why I first emphasize the universal experiences that Ferrucci describes in his book, as a loving gift to humanity, to show us what we hold in common.

What particularly resonates deeply in my own soul, as a writer, is the way in which Ferrucci presents the beauty of literature, embodied in age-old storytelling:

“This, too, is a universal passion, which started with the discovery and management of fire and the development of language… All people of the Earth, even those apparently most primitive, tell and listen to stories… This activity has had a huge advantage for the development of our mind and personality: It trains us to understand others and put ourselves in their shoes, to think up different ways of facing a situation, and to explain the world around us. There could be no better exercise for our brain… Here, too, we see how the search for and creation of beauty are part of our being, a primary survival tool” [p. 182].

I share the above passages of Ferrucci’s book, a book important in so many ways, in the hope that many school teachers read my blog post – then read Beauty and the Soul – and parents as well, who are concerned about the type and quality of schooling that is shaping the lives of your children. Too often, the arts are considered trivial and the first curricula to be cut when budgets are limited – a perennial excuse to cut the arts.

On that educational note, by the way, Ferrucci, bless him, cites a few studies, such as a study in the United States that indicates that where schools included 20 to 30 per cent art appreciation and expression, the academic results were much better in all subjects.

He also cites the work of Dee Dickinson of New Horizons for Learning, on the importance of the arts to break through ethnic and social barriers: “They [the arts] are symbolic systems as important as letters and numbers. They integrate body, mind, and spirit and offer students the chance to express themselves. They facilitate `peak and flow experiences’; that is, expansion of consciousness. They stimulate the motivation to learn. They develop both independence and collaboration, and thus improve socialization. They exercise intellectual abilities, such as analysis, synthesis and problem-solving” [p. 199].

Some of Ferrucci’s observations, in fact, speak to and challenge the disconnectedness in Western culture, in its approach to socialization processes, and the commercialization of beauty, that places so many obstacles along our life path to experience beauty in its natural life-giving essence. Experiencing authentic beauty is not based on money.

He presents a marvellous yin-yang approach to the profound attachment that the human species has to physical beauty. In other words, there is a positive aspect, biologically based, yet also the shadow side in regard to how we have become so preoccupied with outer beauty, today culturally-based.

Ferrucci addresses the phenomena of beauty through the range of experiences that we have in everyday life, from the ways, and reasons why, we respond to natural and cultural environments to the processes of each person’s unconscious or inner ways of knowing, such as emotions and intuition.

Eco-psychology, for example, speaks to our innate “ecological unconscious”: “Deep down, we feel separated from a wisdom and a beauty which we cannot afford to lose, in fact, from the source of life” [p. 111]. Ferrucci points out the negative impact on our psyche from urban noise pollution to obsessions about acquiring material goods in a consumer-driven society.

Many anecdotes within Beauty and the Soul are deeply moving in relating the ways beauty is available to us so freely, from when we awaken to our own capacity to discover it to when opportunities are given. Beauty has profound healing qualities in our personal lives. We can find beauty everywhere and in unexpected places.

Ferrucci relates diverse examples of the healing power of beauty, through the arts and otherwise, in conventional and alternative healing environments. He identifies, for example, the Natural Growth Project in the United Kingdom, devoted to treating torture victims through processes of rehabilitation such as gardening and other creative forms of self-expression, supported by organic gardeners and psychotherapists.

One of my favourite anecdotes is the story about Luciano, who experiences profound pleasure in restoring old and discarded objects to their original beauty. This act, for Luciano, is not only invested in the outcome yet, moreover, in the nurturing process to regenerate and show reverence, especially for hand-crafted items. Another, symbolic level of meaning for him, during his pursuit to restore an old pair of skiis, was his hope for the recovery by his father from a long term illness.

That brings us to another significant level of beauty on which Ferrucci elaborates – inner beauty. In other words, how much do we give power to the external conforming pressures of society that sometimes shape shift us away from who we really are? Why is it important to figure out how to toss away the social mask and reveal our true Self?

Indeed, awakening our capacity to give, and receive, love very much is influenced by the various ways in which we can see beauty in the world around us and the people who inhabit it. The key is our willingness to open our heart to do so.

The inherent beauty of this book, in summary, is that Ferrucci emphasizes where we can discover and replenish our inner wholeness and the connection with our soul, while he also presents the folly of today’s world that is so sadly out-of-balance.

Piero Ferrucci’s shared wisdom facilitates a pathway for us to find our way home again, home to our soul and what really matters.

One final note, I was honoured to spend time with Piero Ferrucci in 2005, near Florence, Italy, during research for my documentary film on his mentor Roberto Assagioli. Although the commercial media has no interest to support such a film, I pray, and persevere to write, research and produce Assagioli’s life story at a future time, for a growing public who seeks understanding to create a more hopeful life.

We are said to be living in the era of a knowledge-based society, at least in the developed world, and coming soon to you (if not already arrived) in the developing world. “Knowledge-based” sounds so enlightened, doesn’t it, as if we all inclusively are embraced by the promise of a higher level of consciousness. But, hold on a minute.

What does `knowledge-based’ really mean? Who is included, who is not, and who actually benefits? Once you examine the rationale behind this concept, is it an illusion or, conversely, even a vision we really want to support?

For I raise yet another question. If society is becoming so brilliant, why are so many people out of work, from all generations and across multiple sectors? Government spokespeople, meanwhile, gloss over this widespread reality and persist in reassuring us that the economy will improve.

Today’s society – more globalized than sovereign in many nation states – is characterized as `post-industrial’ and `knowledge-based,’ in theory to include highly educated professionals. Before I address that illusion, let me point out that `knowledge workers’ are identified as belonging to the “quaternary sector” of economy. That sector, apparently, overlaps with the “tertiary” and (sometimes included, but often not) the “quinary” sector.

But, let us reflect. Canada (and how many other nation states?) continue to be deeply invested in the “primary sector,” which traditionally includes: agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining – most particularly mining these days. That raises another question: How does the onslaught by extractive industries jive with a knowledge-based society? The answer resides in the purpose of all economic sectors – monetary gain. The perennial ethical concern, of course, is gain for whom and at what human and environmental costs?

Read the title on the cover of Maclean’s current edition: “OIL SANDS CRISIS: How we are BLOWING the biggest money-making opportunity in our history.” Inside, the reporter plaintively describes through four pages of woe that “the most valuable resource in our history” is being obstructed from its economic aspirations [to benefit whom precisely?] by “the green lobby” and “dozens of First Nations groups [to which I say, God bless them every one]. Don’t you love the corporate media diminishing the wisdom in these opponents’ shared concerns about elevated greenhouse gas emissions, and more!?

Canada’s national economic identity, by the way, since Confederation in 1867, is the definitive “hewers of wood, drawers of water.” In other words, Canada’s foremost dependence economically always has resided in the extraction of our country’s natural resources. One wag, in the Financial Post not long ago, questioned this continuing reality in an article titled “Hewers of wood, drawers of subsidy.”

The acceleration of these traditional activities in the past half century has resulted in the clear cutting of formerly pristine natural environments and the contamination of major waterways by the dumping of uranium tailings, run-off from agricultural pesticides and fertilizers, and I could go on.

By the way, I speak of Canada, because this is my homeland. I encourage you, however, to translate what I present here about economic sectors – and the next great economic hope residing in a `knowledge-based’ society – and explore how various economic sectors function in your nation. Also, ask yourself what needs to be challenged, and transformed, to truly raise humanity to a higher level of consciousness, to create a society where no one goes hungry and the planet’s life support system is protected, nurtured and restored.

Meanwhile, back at the homestead, I diligently researched a four-sector economic model and what types of workers are included in the knowledge-based economic vision. Doing so offered the framework to structure my argument here about illusion and reality.

Why do so many economists and politicians have their heads in the sand, very specifically, the oil sands, when much has been publicized about the government’s investments in recent years to bring us up-to-speed into the digital age? In other words, is Canada authentically moving its focus forward, from primary economic activities to quaternary and, as well, finally recognizing the often omitted “quinary sector”?

My research indicates that quaternary and quinary sectors are not always described in the same way. First, here are excerpts from the eHow website about the sector model:

“Fisher and Clark [economic theorists] stated that workers in pre-industrialized societies were predominantly involved in the primary sector, particularly in agriculture. As industrialization occurs in a society, employment becomes concentrated in the manufacturing or secondary sector. In a post-industrial society, manufacturing becomes less important, and the service sector or tertiary sector gains prominence.”

“Later theorists, such as Paul Hatt and Nelson Foote, included quaternary and quinary sectors to the economic model. These theorists felt the service or tertiary sector was overly large and should be divided up. The quaternary sector refers to intellectual- or information-related positions, so its activities include healthcare, education, government, and information technology. The quinary sector refers to top-level executives in any part of the service sector, including CEOs, high-level government officials, and education and healthcare administrators.”

The above-identified stages of economic development are self-explanatory in regard to why these various economic sectors have value to the corporate and government power holders. The sector evolution, however, brings no comfort to the millions of people who have lost jobs around the world because of the outcomes of these economic transitions. And what does the future hold for the human family, unless we reframe how this above model is unfolding globally?

Agriculture is vitally important, as are entire ecosystems and clean water to provide us with life-giving sustenance. Believe it or not, a locally-based environmental researcher has informed me that where I live – in an agricultural region – food security no longer exists. The reason is, both agribusinesses and also a growing number of destitute smaller farmers now are growing cash crops rather than food for human consumption. What will families everywhere do, given a potentially looming food crisis?

Manufacturing is said above to “become less important” in a post-industrial society. Tell that to the thousands, probably millions, of North American workers who have lost their jobs to the developing world, where workers there too often are financially exploited and grossly mistreated in other ways. Again, in my rural region I continually witness what is playing out across the continent – more and more people in small towns losing retail and manufacturing jobs in stores and companies now closed down.

The tertiary sector (and aspects of the quaternary) basically includes service industries, a reality that began to develop visibly in the 1950s. Since then, the `service sector’ has grown immensely to have a major impact on present-day society, what late sociologist Daniel Bell forecast in his 1973 book, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society.

A Wikipedia (Wiki) page describes the “Quaternary sector” as “a knowledge-based part of the economy which typically includes services such as information sharing, information technology, consultation, education, research and development, financial planning, and other knowledge-based services…media, culture and government.”

The eHow website characterizes the “quinary sector” primarily in reference to “top-level executives.” A Wiki page about the Fisher-Clark “Three Sector Hypothesis,” distinguishes the quinary sector as “non-profit,” and on a Wiki “Quinary sector” page includes: health, culture, and research. A 1987 paper prepared for the U.S. Federal Reserve Board identifies in the quinary sector: medical care, education, research, recreation (including the arts).

Again, the theoretical inclusion of these work categories bring no comfort, in Ontario where I live for example, to recently graduated teachers who cannot find jobs, because of major government cutbacks at both the federal and provincial levels to educational institutions. Similar cuts also have happened nationally across the multi-faceted cultural arts sector since 2007/2008.

A further unhappy economic fact is the huge loss of major endowments from the private sector, a loss triggered by the 2008 economic downturn, that has had a serious negative impact on the budgets of universities and colleges across North America and elsewhere.

If higher education holds the key to a knowledge-based society, why are so many post-secondary graduates (of all ages) standing outside a closed door, unemployed?

The above insights bring us full circle to my opening questions: What is a `knowledge-based’ society? What are the types of workers included? And who actually is getting jobs instead of losing them? A summary of the 2008 book Knowledge Workers in the Information Society specifies `knowledge workers’ as: “journalists, broadcasters, librarians, filmmakers and animators, government workers, and employees in the telecommunications and high tech sectors.” The summary adds: “Technological change has become relentless.” No kidding.

Without adeptness in digital tools, employment today is too often beyond reach for many well-educated, experienced professionals – including me – regardless of deep and expansive knowledge, acquired through years of study and practice, in fields pertinent to addressing the social and environmental challenges of our time.

Despite my engagement in ongoing professional development in my own ever-evolving creative professions, and a willingness to be on a continual digital learning curve, the emphasis on a technological skill set that appears on most job requirements far outweighs the value given to knowledge “content.”

Our societal transition, at least in this early “post-industrial” phase, gives much more monetary value to technology and the technology creators of communication “tools” to facilitate production than to the facilitators and producers of knowledge “content” such as educators and creative professionals.

When can we fix that imbalance in regard to whom and what we choose to value?

Again, among`knowledge workers’ it appears that many more are losing jobs than gaining jobs. More recently, for example, an increasing number of government workers also are losing their jobs.

However, even prior to the 2008 economic downturn, many creative professionals no longer could earn a living once the digital world fuelled the misguided assumption of content users that all online information is free. That assumption needs to change.

To sum up, the further major contradiction of a `knowledge-based’ society, that is supposed to include highly educated professionals, in fact is the marginalization, and disregard for the social, intellectual and cultural value of several of these groups of `knowledge workers.’

Can we co-create a more inclusive vision of a knowledge-based society, the vision embraced in celebratory terms such as “the cultural creatives,” “creative class,” and “creative industries”? Such terms were coined by cutting edge (and controversial) thinkers such as American urban studies theorist Richard Florida. He currently is Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, at the University of Toronto.

In another blog post at a future time, I will address the “cultural creative” angle of a knowledge-based society, from my lifelong insider perspective.

We are a world in transition, after all. If you need a boost to believe in a hopeful future, reflect upon what caring people everywhere are doing towards that pursuit. I invite you, for example, to see my September 2012 post, “Blessed Unrest Heralds an Unnamed Global Movement.”

My next post will offer solace in focusing on the qualities of the human heart that get us through the tough times, crises and traumas, through our life journey in an era of uncertainty. Know always that our innate human creativity is where possibility resides.

For those investigative journalists who take many types of risks as truth tellers, to inform us about the reality on the ground where it happens, they have my deepest respect and admiration. The focus of the news media is dramatic conflict and, indeed, it is vitally important for all of us to be informed about what befalls the human family and the life support system of this planet. The profound flaw, however, in mainstream journalism is not the journalists, but instead resides within the media corporations.

The foremost agenda of media corporations is to make profits for the corporate owners and the shareholders. That is why, through the past twenty years and more, the media corporations have become larger, gobbling up more and more smaller, independent newspapers and magazines. Moreover, the commercial partnerships with other types of corporations put a damper on certain news stories being published, if the truth interferes with the profits of such partners – including advertisers choosing where to place their ads in competitive markets.

That is why the alternative media is increasingly important, to address the types of stories that fall off the radar of the mainstream media. As well, of course, is the valuable role of “citizen journalists,” whose most important assets are their ability to capture significant images as they happen in the moment, and then communicate them immediately, and globally, through social media.

Whether professionally trained or volunteer, however, the journalistic limitation is that everything comes to us from particular perspectives, even authentic witnesses on the ground, whether the citizen journalist or the subjects whom he or she is interviewing. All media construct reality, and for that reason, media literacy ought to be essential school curricula at different grade levels, to help students at all ages develop critical thinking skills and to encourage citizens, young and old, to search out different points of view from a variety of sources.

Further to the role of the mainstream media, however, is a much more insidious aspect that directly pertains to the above-mentioned “foremost agenda” to make commercial profits. To do so means that the overall content of newspapers and magazines is framed within a vision of the society within which it is published. In the Western world and, more specifically, North America, for example – and for its branch publications in a globalized world – the vision, hence, the news framework, is industrial capitalism.

Here I am spelling it out so plainly, because we, collectively speaking, in the so-called developed world, are so immersed in this reality of industrial capitalism, that many of us can be blind to other realities even as they unfold around us and under our very feet.

We are blinded, basically, by the illusion that industrial capitalism provides our security, even as this economic system persists in feeding off the authentic life support system, namely, other planetary life, while destroying land-based cultures. Industrial capitalism does so for short term profits that benefit the few, while sustainable life for the long-term, that affirms life for the larger human family, is undermined.

This illusion is foisted upon the younger generations by the power-holders of older generations (plus younger, opportunistic individuals), who exist in willful ignorance and/or pathological denial about what we are doing to our home, planet Earth. They resist telling the truth, that the `affluent society’ to which the young have been conditioned to aspire (oblivious to the increasing poor among us) no longer can perpetuate a comfortable way of life into the future, a way of life no longer sustainable.

What most recently got me shaking my head in dismay are two articles published in the print version dated January 21, 2013 edition of Maclean’s, Canada’s National Magazine, whose cover title reads: “THE NEW UNDERCLASS – Why so many smart, educated, ambitious, young people have no future.”

The first article’s sub-heading on its opening page reads: “A GENERATION IN CRISIS.” The overall theme is to characterize post-secondary students who choose university directly out of secondary school as victimized. The reasons are, they cannot find decent paying jobs immediately, in order not just to be self-supporting yet, moreover, buy a house as soon as possible, and look forward to an affluent future.

The second article, written by two professors, chastises the promotional and recruitment strategies of universities for leading applicants and current students up the garden path of uncertain affluence. These professors point out the need for discernment by aspiring students to recognize the pragmatic merits of community colleges as well, in regard to where best their talents can be developed.

Regardless, neither article indicates a whisper that what the current generation of students are seeking to learn, ultimately, will be applied to a radically different society at all levels in the near future.

These young grads, in my view, have been sold a `bill of goods,’ by members of the older generations who are so immersed in material comfort they cannot see the forest for the trees, even as the forest is being clear cut, to use a multi-layered metaphor.

The older generations include mine, as a boomer. But, with that said, do not paint everyone with the same brush, regardless of which generation is targeted in any discussion. For example, do not believe everything you read about the baby boomers labelled, conversely, either as a generation that sold its soul for money or as aging hippies.

Truth always is more complicated. Some of us pursued a more modest lifestyle on very modest incomes, dedicating our lives to social and environmental justice through various helping and creative arts professions. Sadly, through life, we too often have found ourselves marginalized in persevering to speak to the deeper truths of our time, or dismissed (and stereotyped negatively) as activists whistling in the wind.

In other words, do not believe what you read in the media in reference to stories that stigmatize any generation as a whole. What we need to confront, and try to transform, is human nature, because we as a human species have the possibility to evolve our consciousness.

But, our stubborn, arrogant nature renders too many of us highly resistant to change and willing to recognize what we cannot – and should not even assume to – control, even as events unfold before our eyes. Think increasing climate change and natural disasters.

What we are confronting today is not, categorically, a “generation in crisis,” but what could be characterized as a “society in crisis” or even a “world in crisis.”. But, think about it. Where do those identifiers get us? How often do we buy into the constant bombardment from the popular media about the latest “crisis.”? Do such headlines motivate us to act in a way to make a difference, or do we quickly turn the page or switch the channel, to the next sound bite, preferably to be entertained and avoid having to think or feel deeply?

Fortunately, since I was an adolescent (and younger), I always have had a questioning mind. Even my first serious boyfriend teased me about being a “deep thinker.” However, he actually appreciated that fact. I have felt truly blessed that the most rewarding aspect of my first love experience was the respect in which I was held as a whole person, and the wonderful, serious conversations that we shared together, very differently from most of our more conformist peers. I wish that experience could be so for every adolescent in love.

I remember, and recognize, how young people have brains as well as passionate hearts. For my young adult readers, if you are only now discovering that your high expectations to live affluently – primed by well intentioned, albeit misguided, parents and teachers – yes, feel pissed off. Then, let it go.

If you want to be truly outraged about something, as we all ought to be, read an article published online Sunday, January 20, 2013, in The Independent, titled “Goldman bankers get rich betting on food prices as millions starve.” This article is a brutal reality check on how affluence benefits only the few at dear cost to life itself for the many.

More important, my young readers, is to refocus your energy, and for you to feel fortunate that you have an entire lifetime ahead of you to seek knowledge and gain experience as you prepare yourselves in facing a very different reality – starting now.

Seek out wisdom, both inside the educational institutions and also in all walks of life, among those individuals of all generations who have fuller environmental awareness to address the challenges ahead.

Actively develop your own critical thinking, coherent writing, problem solving and analytical abilities. Moreover, discover your own creative inner strengths and capabilities that are within you, and that you will need to call upon and apply, sooner than later.

Some years ago I heard, correctly or not, that the Chinese character for “crisis” also symbolized “opportunity.” Philosophically, that is a very appropriate way to look at our situation at this historic moment, as a human family.

The environmental consequences from climate change and related short-sighted, self-serving human interference with the natural laws of ecosystems globally also can be characterized as A WORLD IN TRANSITION AND TRANSFORMATION.

That article in The Independent, cited above, illustrates why established financial systems exploiting “crisis” in the most vile, selfish way, must be replaced by differently structured systems in human communities, locally and globally.

Foremost in regard to our future survival is to learn that we, as a human species, live in bio-regions – to recognize that fact as our top priority – rather than limit our identities to categories, political and cultural, that can be divisive as human constructions always are, from nation states to individual municipalities.

Believe me, a bio-region does not function as disconnected units, but as per the natural law of interrelatedness at multiple levels. Our survival is interdependent with all planetary life, because bio-regions, in turn, are interconnected around the planet. The world of Nature can teach us, as students of life, how to heal our disconnectedness.

In that primary recognition, as we work collaboratively together, across generations, across borders, and across cultures, we can create a world worth living in, where we experience what really matters – love, compassion, joy, beauty, and the light of human potential in the great project of our future, the healing of ourselves and a wounded planet.