Let’s be Abnormal

ARC25 SIGHTLINES | Anthology of Reflexive Contributors

A stunning silence

“This decade matters.” I wrote this in You Matter More Than You Think, emphasising the importance of immediate and short-term actions for the long-term health of people and the planet.

But today, I find myself shaking my head: No, no, no—we do not have a decade. This moment is what matters.

Moment by moment, the bad news comes at us. The U.S. regime’s policies and practices provoke anxiety, sorrow, anger, despair, and exhaustion. They are shattering so much, so fast, for so many.

I recently reflected on the influence of James Hansen’s landmark 1988 Senate testimony on climate change. Days later, I read that the U.S. government plans to terminate the lease for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where Dr. Hansen worked. Researchers are being displaced in the name of “efficiency.” As Inside Climate News wrote, “It’s a tough time to be a climate scientist.”

It’s the silence that is stunning. A recent article in the Guardian reports on a study concluding that sea-level rise will cause massive inland migration—even if the global temperature increase remains below 1.5°C.  Maybe it falls flat because we’ve known these risks for years. It’s old news. Or maybe nobody wants to imagine future dystopias when they’re already right in front of us. In fact, we are bombing, burning, breaking, and blasting people, places, and things, as if life does not matter.

Another Guardian article describes the surreal tension between today’s dysfunctions and the routines we maintain. This “hypernormal” state describes a strange reality where we know things are wrong but feel powerless to change them. In a world of chaos, confusion, and cruelty, we act as if we don’t matter.

Responding to this critical moment in history means that we have to show up and do what is necessary to generate transformative change for an equitable and thriving world. We need to activate bright minds, big hearts, and a deep commitment to patterning a possible future that exists only in our imagination.

Disruptive patterns in the climate system are becoming more normal, and so are the destructive patterns in many societies. Hurt people hurt others. Toxic people create toxic environments. And it’s not just people who suffer—nature feels it too.

An ice-cold heart feels nothing when glaciers melt, sea levels rise, and species vanish, or when lives are lost and livelihoods are destroyed. Climate disruptions, climate extremes, and climate breakdown mean little when people, places, and nature are considered expendable.

These are not healthy patterns. We can do better than this. It’s time to pattern an abnormal future.

I’m going to remind myself how to be abnormal—and then practice it. After all, when it comes to quantum social change, we matter in every moment. To be aware of this—and to think and act responsibly, moment by moment—takes a lot of practice.

Dr. Monica Sharma and Dr. Dan Siegel are two mentors and friends who have influenced my thoughts about the practice of quantum social change. Both are experts on shifting patterns based on our inherent oneness.

Back in 2008, I came across Monica’s article, Personal to Planetary Transformations. She argued that we’re failing to respond to today’s crises because:

• We don’t recognise or act on generative patterns.
• We keep spirituality private instead of embracing secular, sacred, and strategic action.
• We disconnect our action from our wisdom.

Instead, she urges us to recognise and act from our shared oneness, and let that be the foundation for scaling transformative change.

Around the same time, I discovered Dr. Dan Siegel’s book, The Mindful Brain. Focusing on the “profound plasticity of the human brain,” Dan shows that we have the potential to change our minds throughout our lives. His core message is that we have a choice: “We have the possibility of creating a world of compassion and well-being and we have the capacity for mindless violence and destruction.”

As the mindful brain develops and becomes more integrated, we start to see ourselves and our place in the world in a different way. As Dan writes, “We share a core humanity beneath all of the chatter of the mind. Underneath our thoughts and feelings, prejudices and beliefs, there rests a grounded self that is a part of a larger whole.”

Monica Sharma’s work stresses the importance of universal values that are grounded in our oneness as a basis for generating fractals of change. Universal values apply to everyone and everything, regardless of their profile or personality. These include equity, dignity, compassion, integrity— and oneness.

Dan Siegel reminds us that our personalities filter how we see the world. Our personality patterns can limit our actions and shrink what we perceive to be possible. Yet we can also open our minds and act from what he calls the plane of possibility—a quantum field of potential.

Working with universal values and our inner capacities, we can generate self-similar patterns that replicate across scales—like fractals of change. In a world of fragmentation, polarisation, and devastation, we need to meet the moment in a radically different way.

To meet this moment, we need to show up with courage and integrity to respond to existential threats to social, environmental, and human rights. This means working alone and together to be as abnormal as possible. And to be proud of this!

What I’ve learned through working with Monica Sharma and Dan Siegel is that 1) there are skills, tools, and practices for developing transformative potentials; and 2) there are many people who are willing to step out of a hypernormal mindset to explore quantum social change for a thriving world.

Showing up in a world that right now feels anything but secure is challenging, and there are real dangers involved. That is why we need each other. In a recent workshop, Dan Siegel drew an analogy to the quaking aspen tree colony in Utah called Pando. This grove is made up of 48,000 individual trees that are connected with one ball of roots. It is the largest and one of the oldest organisms in the world. We are like Pando—both individual and interconnected. One vast organism.

We will face resistance for being abnormal. So we need abnormal ways of resisting. In a quantum universe, it has to be a resistance that is based on our inherent oneness, and a resistance that recognises and respects the connection with all life.

I’ll end this with something my brother wrote to me a couple of months ago, when we were discussing how to resist the current onslaught of cruel and destructive policies. Inspired by Taoist teachings and Lao Tzu’s reflections on water and resilience, he reminded me that resistance is rooted in interconnection and transformation.

We need to develop a resistance that is like water, powerful and yet able to instantly become invisible. Like a fungus mycelium, we need to develop a network that can’t be destroyed by picking individual mushrooms. We need to be like the roots that sustain life even through catastrophic fires, springing back up when the last generation gets burned. — Kenneth O’Brien