What we’re doing isn’t working.
As a twelve year veteran teacher, I have manned the life rafts of public education, desperately pulling more drowning children out of the river year after year. Since Covid, our life rafts have been overtaxed with many sinking to the depths of despair. As Desmond Tutu has taught us “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.” This is my attempt, my unpacking of the rise and fall of our village. In hopes that we can start a conversation to cultivate a modern, intentional, and balanced one for our future.
1. The Village is Born
All villages begin with the same purpose: safety and survival. We are social creatures, we need other humans to survive. Brene Brown’s research tells us that “ we are wired for connection. It's in our biology. From the time we are born, we need connection to thrive emotionally, physically, spiritually, and intellectually.”
2. Values
But with the privilege of consciousness comes the responsibility of choice. Our ancestors leaned into chosen values in order to lead their village to safety and prosperity.
Values are often identified as masculine or feminine energies. Masculine energy includes elements such as strength, protection, tenacity, and ambition. Whereas feminine energy includes characteristics such as intuition, empathy, creativity, and compassion. Please note, the phrases feminine and masculine do not imply that the associated qualities are only reserved for that gender. Illustrated by the yin yang symbol, harmony occurs when the energies are balanced, in both individuals and villages. When these energies are out of balance or weigh heavily in one direction, toxicity brews.
3. Overdosing on Masculine Energies
As western villages expanded into cities, kingdoms, and empires, the relentless pursuit for more wealth, power, and resources elevated masculine energies and devalued feminine ones. Masculine values such as leadership, structure, and logic dominate and oppress feminine values such as timeless wisdom and interconnection with the Earth and its beings. The eternally hungry and viciously greedy Wendigo is born, poisoning village wells with a deep seated belief in scarcity. We anxiously proclaim that there is never enough of anything- Never enough food, resources, love, money, time, wellbeing, peace, or safety.
While we clamor for more, competitively hoarding our precious resources like a ravenous Gollum, we settle deep into the othering. We build fences around our properties and walls between our empires convinced that “those” people will pillage and plunder our village if we lower our guard. “They” are not like us, with their different language, clothes, skin color, ethnicity, traditions, beliefs, identities, and orientations. And if they are not the same, they are others, and therefore enemies.
Feminine energies including intuition, compassion, and connection are misconstrued as weaknesses that leave the village vulnerable to attack. They are discarded, along with the villagers who embrace these values, firmly stationed at the bottom of the rigid hierarchy. Toxic doses of masculine values are frequently imbibed in patriarchal societies. The imbalance wields the weapon of oppression to ensure dominant men maintain their power and wealth. Symptoms of masculine energy overdose show up as racism, white supremacy, persecution of diversity, exploitative capitalism, abuse of spirituality to enforce conformity, rigid gender norms, and any kind of discrimination. In the most toxic villages, the safety and wellbeing of people is no longer the priority. Increasing wealth and power becomes the primary objective to feed the Wendigo’s insatiable appetite.
4. The American Village
The American village is not immune to this toxic imbalance of energies. Quite frankly, it is birthed from the Wendigo and is no stranger to its exhaustive feeding frenzy.
The pandemic of 2020 highlighted the holes negligently burned into the fabric of the American village. While we command one of the most powerful armies in the world, our people are drowning in poverty. While American companies are braggadocios about record profits, our people are wrestling with rampant inflation and a housing crisis. While America boasts the largest GDP in the world, our people scavenge food deserts that are lacking in nutrition but leaking plastic.
The social protections offered by other western nations are withheld from Wendigo’s village. In the name of capitalism, we do not have universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, childcare subsidies, or free higher education. We have crumbling infrastructure and underfunded public education that often serves as the primary resource for education, food, transportation, therapy, and even healthcare in impoverished communities. Underfunded and villainized schools and staff simply cannot meet all of the physical, academic, social, and emotional needs of our rapidly declining village.
To make ends meet, we take on multiple jobs, build side hustles, and become boss babes. Our schedule demands constant movement because time is money. And when we are finished with our relentless day, we collapse into screens for escape and relief. Thirty second hits of dopamine numb our anxieties and render us motionless, which we confuse for rest and connection. The result is an anxious hamster wheel of gluttonous consumption, endless exhaustion, and debilitating loneliness. We are broke, tired, hungry, overstimulated, burned out, and miserable. And so are our children.
Photo Credit: Sarah Mason
5. Burn and Rebuild
Like medieval peasants who survived the plague, we stand at the precipice of opportunity. Amelioration is at our fingertips if only we dare to dream and consciously rebuild a life and community that serves our needs.
I call upon us to let the old, ineffective, toxic village burn. Let the flames hunt and devour the Wendigo that has hunted us for millennia. As we watch the embers of patriarchy, white supremacy, and exploitative capitalism burn, I invite us to collectively envision a modern village that serves our common values and embraces our diverse knowledge, interconnectedness, globalization, and technology.
Allow me to offer some visionary suggestions: I want to see a village focused on thriving, not surviving. On cooperation, not competition. A village that blends modern technology with indigenous wisdom. Harmony. Balance. Intention.
A local non-profit called One Year To Empowerment embodies this reborn village. They gather girls from our community weekly for an entire year to participate in a myriad of activities that promote self care, creativity, self sufficiency, continuing education, joy, and community service. They double down on the magic by rallying community organizations and businesses around the girls. One Year to Empowerment creates a modern, supportive, and diverse village for our girls. They also continue to serve as agents of connection and progress in our community even after the girls graduate from the program.
And now I pass the torch to you, my compassionate readers. What values would you like to see elevated in our new village? And if you can, suggest organizations or ideas that will help us actively employ these values.