Check Yer Balance — Mickey Z.

Mickey Z. — World News Trust

December 8, 2021

Balance: A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements

The time period was early in the year 2000. I was walking through Manhattan with three friends on our way to meet a fifth member of our party. This was well before cell phones became so completely pervasive. Even so, I was still the only one in our group without such a device. I sarcastically commented on this and was prompted mocked as a Luddite. Then it was on to the essential business of figuring out how to meet up with friend #5.

Out came a cell phone. A call was placed to another cell phone. A meeting place was agreed upon and we were on our way. Friend #1 hung up his phone and turned to me, declaring that this was “one of those times” when a cell phone was indispensable. To which I replied:

“If we didn’t have access to your cell phone or any cell phones at all, we would’ve been simply been more creative in order to come up with a plan that would’ve gotten all of us together without a major hassle. Just like humans have always done. Instead, the phone made us lazy because we knew we could just wing it. Instead of problem-solving, we opted for reliance on consumer electronics.”

In our “modern” society, we no longer have to learn how to spell or remember phone numbers or do math in our heads or memorize directions or even walk up a single flight of stairs. Thanks to the marvels of industrial civilization, we happily delegate such tedious tasks to technology so we can have time to focus on the truly important stuff, like… um… well… uh… removing 90 percent of the large fish from the ocean, perhaps?

Harmony: Agreement in feeling or opinion

We each possess physiology that evolved to negotiate the Stone Age. Unfortunately, we live in the Digital Age. There’s the rub. We are urban cavemen — overmatched in our daily battle to navigate an artificial reality because we have lost contact with our instincts.

“Pediatricians nowadays see fewer kids with broken bones from climbing trees and more children with longer-lasting repetitive-stress injuries, which are related to playing video games and typing at keyboards,” writes Sally Deneen at The Daily Green. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, calls this “nature deficit disorder.” As a fourth-grader quoted in Louv’s book explains: “I like to play indoors better because that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” 

Nature deficit disorder is obviously not a medical term. It’s more of a social trend — a trend that manifests in factoids like this: American children between the ages of 8 to 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day indoors using computers, video games, television, and smartphones.

The payoff for all this spectatorship is a lifestyle based on imitation, competition, materialism, self-delusion, and subservience to power.

• The dominant culture keeps us inactive while our biology desires movement. 
• The dominant culture sells us junk food while our bodies crave nutrients. 
• The dominant culture denies our biology and puts us out of balance with nature.
• The dominant culture trains us to be obedient while our minds yearn for freedom. 
• The dominant culture teaches conformity while our souls demand individuality. 

Among many others things, it can be posited that we did not evolve to experience artificial light after sundown; eat processed, refined, and GM food products; ingest chemicals and pharmaceuticals, drive cars; travel in an airplane across time zones; become obese; remain sedentary; usurp our immune system with vaccines; exist on a man-made time schedule; be surrounded by copious human-induced electromagnetic radiation; climb giant mountains; travel to space or underwater; give birth lying down; live in a world devoid of topsoil and nutrient-rich food; smoke cigarettes; be exposed to pesticides; use cosmetics; exist without community; or manage the high level of stress and noise that is synonymous with our so-called progress.

Koyaanisqatsi… this is what the Kogi Indians of Colombia call “life out of balance.” It is what we have created as our dominant culture. So much so that the elusive Kogi people have issued multiple warnings to us, their Younger Brothers.

Symbiosis: A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence

Life on Earth is out of balance. Corporations, politicians, judges, cops, "activists," and soldiers can’t fix this. In fact, most of them can’t even perceive the imbalance. Most of them believe they are happy with the status quo. In other words, the change has to come from somewhere else. The change will come from somewhere else, of that we can be sure. Details of the outcome, however, are far less certain.

The aforementioned Kogi have no written language. In part, this is to assure they remember. They talk, they pass down stories, and they remember. “The Kogi attach great importance to memory,” explain the editors of Ode Magazine. “The memory of events with which the community has been confronted, the memory of social regulations within the group, and so forth. ‘Memory,’ they say, ‘is like eyes which were made to see. If they close, everything becomes darkness.’ For them, this memory cannot be written down, it must be spoken, passed down by members of the group. In writing, memories are separated from the people and lose their effectiveness.”

So, I ask: what memories are you creating and what are you doing to ensure there will be someone left to appreciate and remember them? If change is what you seek, speak it into existence. Also, find like-minded souls and work that change into existence.

Synergy: Cooperative interaction among groups

Mickey Z. is the creator of a podcast called Post-Woke. You can subscribe here. He is also the founder of Helping Homeless Women - NYC, offering direct relief to women on New York City streets. To help him grow this project, CLICK HERE and donate right now.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of World News Trust.)