A bit of a wordy title, but seriously, after listening to the talk, do you get where I’m coming from? As promised, below are all the videos and books I mentioned. If I forgot any, please let me know!
I’m not saying selfishness and cruelty don’t exist - of course they do. But are they truly the dominant forces in human nature? Enough to dilute the vast majority of people who would step up, help, and act with decency? The data doesn’t back the idea that humans turn savage in crisis - but if we believe that, we will act accordingly and it means we will be the savages we fear.
One of the reasons I talk so much about the goodness and decency of people is because we’re at a point where we have to work together. And we won’t do that if we fear, judge and blame each other. I don’t say this as a matter of value or morality, but in the context of self-preservation.
First of all, as mentioned at the start and the whole inspiration for this talk:
‘Essentia Foundation’ always fertiliser for my brain!
🎥‘Bioelectric Fields: A Paradigm Shift In Biology | Prof. Michael Levin’
🎥 ‘Nature's Hidden Intelligence: Morphic Fields | Rupert Sheldrake PhD’
If you want to explore further seeing individuals and collectives and not just the awful outcomes, here are some places to start your exploration.
🎥 Short Video: ‘Who We Really Are... When Everything Goes Wrong’ - Like Stories Of Old
This short film explores how humans actually respond to crisis - a reminder that in disaster, people don’t just turn on each other. Often, they do the opposite. How the media and 'Elite Panic' have us fearing each other and that could be a critical miscalculation in a crisis situation.
📖 Book: ‘A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster’ - Rebecca Solnit
This is the book referenced in the above short video. I have often said that if I had to choose one book for the whole world to read, this would probably be my pick. Solnit examines major disasters—from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to Hurricane Katrina—and reveals how, time and again, people come together in ways that contradict the fear-based narratives we’re so often told.
🎞 Documentary: ‘HyperNormalisation’ - Adam Curtis
A deep dive into how we ended up in a post-truth world, where complex realities are oversimplified, and we are left feeling powerless to change things. It starts in 1975 with the fiscal crisis in New York City and the idea that financial systems could run society and ends with the destabilisation of the West's psyche which leads to the vote for Brexit and the popularity of Donald Trump. There is a copy on YouTube which I have linked above - it wouldn’t let me embed it like the others as it is age restricted.
"We live in a world
where the powerful
deceive us
We know they lie
they know
we know
they lie
they don't care
we say we care
but we do nothing
and nother ever changes
it's normal
Welcome to
the post-truth world.
HyperNormalisation
How we got to where we are now."
(From the trailer of ‘HyperNormalisation’)
I’ll be posting more on all these themes using astrological and archetypal language, expanding on the dynamics of individualism, collectivism, and responsibility through those lenses. But I don’t want this to become an exercise in mental gymnastics—endlessly theorising without ever grounding it in lived reality. It’s easy to sit back and admire the complexity of these ideas, to get caught up in intellectual posturing, but that’s not the point. The real challenge is applying this understanding in everyday life, in how we relate to others, how we make choices, and how we move through the world. Otherwise, it’s just another distraction from actually engaging with what needs to change.
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