if you’re not saving the world, who is?

as a sensitive and compassionate man, i spent many decades wrestling with how i fit into the toxic competition that defines me-first US culture. there were two voices competing in my head, an inner source of creative inspiration that drove the productivity and enthusiasm, and an outward-facing set of assumptions and expectations that seemed pragmatic in their relentless disappointment with the vulnerability and reality that inspired my creativity.

in a culture where value is defined by winning the approval of “successful” people, being original and anti-authoritarian can feel threatening to folks who have sacrificed many freedoms to achieve some measure of power over others. but it is precisely that outsider originality that can see past the accepted delusions, even in a society that demands its members see the pathology as both natural and in our personal interest. another word for that outside originality is art.

it took years of exploration and experimentation, of meditation and insight, to allow me the inner space to experience myself as outside the governing hypocrisies that drive profits and consumption. my actions throughout my life had been consistently other-focused and compassionate, but the frame i used for evaluating my intentions was the culture’s frame: where the openness and sensitivity necessary to see and communicate the details of reality are rejected as weakness, vulnerability, and self-centeredness. work not done for monetary rewards is considered a hobby, at least that’s what my therapist told me.

as the governing frame in my life slowly transformed from judgment to compassion, i began to see that lifelong creative drive, my calling, whether in music-making, writing, or visual art, was consistently expressing a singular unifying vision: exploring the shame and punishment at the heart of our enslaving culture, exposing its poisonous effect on individuals, families, and the institutions that are supposed to protect them, and digging down to the truth of personal experience to find a freedom outside the self-imprisoning beliefs that support the patriarchy by training individuals to protect the world from the threat they represent. 

exposing the inhumanity of our unexamined foundational beliefs has proven to be the centering focus of my life’s work: freeing human beings from the shame-based bondage instilled by insecure parents and then leveraged by opportunistic leaders in every hierarchical system. again and again i’ve returned to the absurd belief that i was put on this planet to save the world.

well, you don’t have to be special to save the world. you don’t have to be the messiah to work to improve the lives of your fellow humans. it comes down to a simple statement: if you’re not saving the world, who is?