It’s the end of the world as we know it

Death of the familiar

I began this piece flying over Uluru en route to Asia last year and finishing it on the same flight again today. The biggest news story coming out of Australia at the time was about the Indigenous referendum. The big news stories in the US at the time involved abortion bans and Donald Trump indictment. There was, of course, the Russia-Ukraine war, fires in Greece, a cease fire between Gaza and Israel, Musk was still pissed that Substack launched Notes, and all the wonderful things occurring that never make it onto our news feed. Our newsfeed has changed dramatically since then, with certain topics (ie. sex and gender, Israel-Gaza, Pro-Palestine protests, woke/anti-woke combat) dominating conversations. The story I’m about to tell resurfaced just before this trip because of the unrest and the desire for stability that I see and feel. Something familiar is dying, and I think many of us are feeling and trying to resist it. I’m going to describe what I see unfolding and the opportunities that lay ahead.

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There is a Jewish legend (aggadah) involving four Rabbis from the first century who went into the orchard of knowledge (pardes) for a period of time before one emerged enlightened and the others...not so much. One died, another lost his faith and the last one lost his mind.

I have heard several interpretations of this story throughout the years, often told as a cautionary tale of what can happen to you if try to reach God without humility and reverence. Going into a meditative state using practices intended to invite Divine grace and spiritual sight without cultivating the virtues necessary to be in Divine presence, or with the intention to acquire supernatural and psychic powers without ego refinement is going to have dreadful consequences for that person. Or so I was told.

There are many angles and frames that can be applied to interpret a story or a situation. A common frame is the Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer dynamic also known as Karpman’s Drama Triangle. If you can spot the threat, you can also see who the victim is that needs you to save them. This is also the oppressed-oppressor binary that does not work toward peaceful resolution and is effective at fomenting conflict.

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

Hebrew is full of tricks and games. Words are not only words. They have vibrations and numerical value (gematria) whose value link to other similar valued words to tell a story. They have symbolism and can be used as meditative tools. Pardes, the word for the orchard of knowledge which is a metaphor for Divine secrets or knowledge derived from deep Torah study, is also an acronym for the four levels of interpreting sacred texts: literal, allegorical, moral and mystical.

Back to the Rabbis - there’s more going on than the literal interpretation of the story.

The four Rabbis can be seen as psychological stages of a paradigm shift. Anyone seeking truth will become each of these Rabbis during their own process of growth. The process begins as you expose yourself to an unfamiliar environment where you encounter new information or an experience that challenges your current worldview, even if the experience was exciting initially. As this new experience/knowledge/info starts to sink in, you will experience the destabilisng effect of beliefs disrupted while trying to integrate this new information into your current understanding of reality.

The Rabbi who lost his faith

A common reaction to this experience is feeling betrayed. When you discover that an authority you trusted lied, deceived and misled you, it’s understandable that you would stop trusting that authority. Whether the authority is a political figure, science, the health system, a political system, feminism, an ideology, a friend or God, feeling betrayed can contribute to a loss of faith. One can argue that the Rabbi’s faith was not steadfast to begin with and he failed this test. Losing his faith in that authority creates a new dilemma about what he can still believe. Who is the Rabbi that no longer has faith in God or the authorities he trusted? Does he decide to put his faith in something that can’t betray him to guard against future disappointment, or does he find a new God-like authority that is more reliable than the former one? It’s not surprising when the ex-Rabbi becomes a vocal heretic who builds his new congregation of other demoralised individuals in service to a safer authority. Their mission? To expose and eliminate the false god so that it can never cause harm again.

The Rabbi who lost his mind

The next stage is represented by the Rabbi who went mad. The unravelling of his worldview has him questioning everything that he believed was true and permanent. Like the government is trustworthy, humans are ultimately good, or trust the science. He fluctuates between questioning, doubt, denial, flashes of insight, apathy, inspiration and nihilism. He no longer knows who he is or his purpose and no truth or fact is off limits for scrutiny or reinterpretation. This questioning leads him down multiple rabbit holes, befriending the communities that dug them, alienating himself from his current loved ones who don’t see eye to eye. He feels disgust about having been so blind and foolish, projecting onto everyone and everything that reminds him of who he was. He’s suspended in the abyss between his old and new paradigm, feeling completely crazy, until he begins to adopt ideas and beliefs from the ‘we did our research’ community that aligns with his new, superior thinking. His madness coupled with the grief of lost identity turns into extremism, prepared to sacrifice himself for his new cause.

The Rabbi who lost his life

The third Rabbi represents everything that had been familiar, true and now outdated. He reminds the other Rabbis of the old world that now seems primitive, ignorant and barbaric. The impending death makes the Rabbi want to cling to what is useful and safe, even it means admitting that some of the discarded beliefs are still useful and true. But it's already too late. The process is already in motion and knowing cannot revert to unknowing without torture-driven re-education camp tactics. The Rabbi’s last breaths are filled with fear as his death marks the end of the familiar comfort of predictable ways of life and its authorities. His exit from this world paves the path to the unfamiliar and the unknown.

The Rabbi who became enlightened

If the process didn’t render the Rabbi faithless, insane or dead, the final Rabbi attains enlightenment. This is the reward for passing through the trials and tribulations of the other stages of the process while remaining connected to his faith and principles. The reward is a sense of peace that accompanies clarity of mind. This Rabbi sees the bigger picture of why things are the way they are and what he should no longer do to remain connected to this rare feeling. How wonderful to behold the world and believe that everything just makes sense! The enlightened Rabbi keeps these insights to himself because in his enlightened state, he knows they’re just for him and the others won’t understand. He also believes he’s alone in his awareness and will feel called to start by dripping his ideas publicly to test the waters and see how it’s received. Or, when the peace wears off, he might see an opportunity to serve others by writing and speaking about it, knowing full well that these ideas will challenge people, putting him at risk of being insulted or mobbed. He’s conscious about the process he just went through and that he could catalyse that for others. His ego wants him to nudge others now because they need to know, while a quieter voice within him tells him to wait because he still needs to gain wisdom from living in the new paradigm before he can talk about it. He knows that he has influence and status that carries weight and is conscious about the impact and unintended consequences he might have on others. The war between his narcissistic need for instant gratification, attention and admiration, and the patience required for internal guidance and wisdom wages on.

Humanity as the Rabbis

The world went into shock in 2020 as we collectively, mostly involuntarily entered a retreat without a known time frame or a clearly marked emergency exit. Immobilising people, forcing attention on the approved authorities who controlled our movements was one way of testing individual and population-wide faith in its authorities. We witnessed the best and the worst of humanity, but it’s the worst behaviours – neighbours dobbing in neighbours, mandating medical procedures, excluding non-compliant professionals from their workplaces and incomes, denying harms of experimental vaccines, disagreement and divisiveness, cancelling people with heterodox opinions, disrespectful communication, and so on that violated the social contract and betrayed social trust. How does a population come back from such a rupture when authorities don’t try to repair it and the population is distracted with other crises to try to reconcile with each other?

The West as the dying Rabbi

The Western world is the dying Rabbi.

He’s currently reviewing his life, acknowledging what he’s learned and done well, regrets for poor decisions, unfulfilled fantasies and what he could have done differently to have achieved his desired goals. He’s not dead yet but he’s certainly not going to have a spontaneous remission and bounce back. What’s been done cannot be undone and this process can’t be stopped. As the left and right continue to mirror their authoritarian narcissist mother and father traits respectively, the rest in between are clinging to values and principles believed to be valuable and necessary for the preservation Western greatness. As we all know, we can’t take anything with us to our death. In many traditions, including Judaism, when the soul is liberated from this earthly plane at death, it takes the accrued wisdom and record of all one’s deeds into the afterlife. Our principles, values, beliefs and their gods remain behind.

From my perspective, these gods have played their part in individual development but are not sufficient to guide long term coexistence and flourishing. Democratic societies overly focused on individual development without consistent accountability practices are fragile and tend to evolve into micromanaged, authoritarian regimes no different to how a narcissistic leader slowly gains power and control over others. We are narcissism-prone without additional safeguards to help us remain focused on giving back to our families, communities and each other.

Are we clinging to familiar gods and dysfunctional family archetypes as we collectively undergo this transition through unfamiliar territory into paradigm death because we’re shit scared of an enemy waiting to fill the void? Or are we shit scared of a post-democratic reality inspired by different gods? I’d like to believe that these two paradigms can coexist but it will require a collective desire for coexistence over the cycle of trauma that favours reactive drama and shuns stability.

Which gods do we need to sacrifice to tell a different story?

What do you think?

Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting and supporting these posts,

Nathalie

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I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.

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