April 21 2011 , Dante :
I meet some other young people from Brussels or Belgium who,
in some cases, like me,
have access to a very rich opening to various realities,
either through direct experience or through
parents from two or more different cultural backgrounds,
and/or parents who themselves have inherited from a rich cultural experience and world view.
In some cases also, their families exploded, with parts of their family all over the world,
and in some cases also, their parents separated.
Often very intuitive and artistic friends, who have a great sense of empathy and a lot of love to receive and give.
When compared with other interpretations of “individualism” I read on the net,
I could say that we seem to be “very individualistic” persons,
yet when I mention “individualism” to certain friends sharing such characteristics, there seems to be some kind of rejection of it.
Perhaps I can understand such rejection of the concept of individualism by some ( collaborative ) individualist friends who seem to share some contexts in which I evolved in too :
there seems to be a sense of longing for re-building, of convergence, where love can be.
“individualist” does not feel like a place of love, in a context where all pieces of, at least my life, seem to be scattered around the whole world. People I shared pieces of experience of life with are scattered around the world, and there is no place of return to converge and feel safe , feel one can care for, feel one can be cared of,
except for “the entire world”, which are not easy to experience in a shared way,
except when one can find access to openings for spaces of shared reality in other persons.
In the case of some of my friends, even the remains of nuclearized nuclear families do not enable a return,
as self-actualization lead to finding oneself, which apparently often seems to threaten the old memes remaining within , in some cases, the accumulated and often unconscious scars within family members in addition to socio-cultural patterns of society imposed on us through their own fears to requestion their own security and sense of meaning.
In some cases also, when building on my own experience, increased monetization and speculation on scarce resources such as housing has made it difficult to build up any prospect or even hope to engage into a space of security within the urban space I grew up in,
as it requires to give up on aspects of self actualization or selfless actualization,
conforming to dominant memes and norms which have power over activity which can be monetarily supported,
an approach in which my deconstructed, intuitive ,aspects – and possibly that of some other friends –
do not , or do not want to conform to,
by sense of lack of meaning, and lack of love.
What alternative is there for us ?
I sense in me, and in some of such individuals,
a huge strength, built through experience , empathy and sensibility,
yet in some cases, such as with me, also a great pain and feeling of lack of loving environment.
One of my friends told me yesterday that she wants an apple tree.
She is ok with the fact that this apple may not at first have a lot of apples, but she wants to take care of it, so that it can become a beautiful apple tree, an apple tree that enables her to give away a lot of apples.
She is tired of chasing after apples… even though they may be beautiful apples.
And I understand the image she is giving.
I try to find roots in shared feelings.
Paradoxically, finding roots in shared feelings may lead to greater empathy of persons between each other,
while “nationalistic or patriotic” roots may have lead to wars…
Feelings and creativity , and a sense of finding spaces where there is love to build on and build with,
with an often broad systemic understanding of various deconstructed elements,
somehow can lead us to create our own realities,
for me, potentially in some festivalist approach.
Yet the moments of festivalism are all too often restricted into temporary autonomous zones,
and , for me at least, a lot of time seems to be spent on converging pieces of the puzzle and synchronize them into TAZ.
Hence the potential creation of new spaces – totally new spaces, such as ecovillages, or “Leipzig Projects”
http://sharewiki.org/en/Leipzig_project
yet – until it is built up, it still feels like a cold place… and somehow, the ones I can share a sense of identity are… the ones that , like me, experience this deconstructed world, and multiplicity within oneself.
A connection beyond some material connections – a spiritual connection, through feeling, joy, pain.