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WHY THIS? WHY NOW?

6/22/2025

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Pegi Eyers

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Looking at the current scene in the USA in a different way, instead of being horrified or terrified of DJT, maybe he is a symptom of a deeper movement or “sea change” in society nobody is really talking about. Perhaps there are so many people with severe PTSD/CPTSD and mental disabilities now, our natural humane tendency or capacity to accept them as they are, to make allowances for them, and to ensure inclusivity for them, has now extended to world leaders.

If we are surrounded by people with psychological disorders in all demographic and socioeconomic groups, including our own families, workplaces, communities and just generally every single space, perhaps it makes sense too, that we would accept and tolerate a person with psychiatric disorders as a world leader.

I am not condoning the idiocy, criminality and damage DJT has done to the USA (and the world), but this recent epiphany is how I continue to try to make sense of the strange phenomena in the USA, that a deranged person is now head of state.

Evidence for claims:

- By its very nature, technocapitalism causes PTSD. Or better said, PTSD is a built-in feature of technocapitalism.

- By its very nature, consumer capitalism causes a wide range of psychological disorders. Or better said, psychological disorders are a built-in feature of consumer capitalism.

- Living in cities causes psychological disorders. Or better said, psychological disorders are a built-in feature of urban environments.

- Having vast wealth causes a wide range of psychological disorders. Or better said, psychological disorders are accumulated in the individual as wealth is accrued.

- Having celebrity status causes a wide range of psychological disorders. Or better said, psychological disorders are accumulated in the individual as the celebrity status increases.

- Most workplaces - especially the military, policing, first responders, emergency room nurses and dentistry - cause a wide range of psychological disorders. Or better said, psychological disorders develop during the extended time that the individual stays in that profession.

- Watching violent content in movies, games and other media, plus being subject to abuse while engaging in social media, all contribute to severe psychological disorders in youth and many adults. In other words, psychological disorders intensify the longer one is exposed to damaging technologies.

Who has not been touched by psychological disorders, in one's self or the ones that surround us? Think of your family, workplace, community, and the wider world. As the great social engineering agendas such as Christianity, colonization, and the post-WWII Empire-building projects have reached their apogee, we are now surrounded by psychological disorders.

And yet, as Gabor Maté and many others have pointed out, the current explosion of psychological disorders in the world are the result of nature (meaning the social environment), not nurture (meaning how children are raised and guided to adulthood). It is the human-created systems of social organization that have to change, before humanity can return to the conditions that enhance a healthy psyche.
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Read more on social justice, ethnocultural recovery, Settler re-landing, rewilding, ancestral connection, sacred land and animism in Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community.
www.stonecirclepress.com
Available from Amazon >here<
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THE GOD COMPLEX

12/9/2024

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Pegi Eyers

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Why is there so much climate denialism, and why do humans refuse to enact the austerity measures or divestments that would save our world?  It’s because the supreme dominance of Christianity (man has dominion over creation) plus the Enlightenment (nature is not to be respected or feared, but is a warehouse of lifeless objects to plunder), coupled with the rapacious goals of capitalism has led modern technocrats to believe that THEY are the gods. Every massive forest removal, resource extraction, mountain blasting, tunneling, river damming, earth paving, agribusiness, gargantuan building project, or giant tower that pierces the sky, represents a level of terraforming only the gods [forces of nature] are capable of performing.  So we humans ARE the new gods.

We alter and control the sacred elements of water, earth, fire and air at our will, we fly in the sky whenever we want, we cross vast continents in a couple of days, we have access to food and objects from all over the world, we control vast networks as leaders or oligarchs, we govern the mini-kingdoms of our own domestic spheres, we are complicit with hierarchies of domination, we oppress our fellow humans because of consumer capitalism, and every single day, we make life-and-death decisions for the rest of Earth Community. We are the grand domesticators of all life, and thanks to science, are also immune to illness and disease.

We live within a bizarre simulacrum that we have created for ourselves – a humancentric civilization in which each and every one of us has immense power at our fingertips. As modelled to us for centuries now by the elite Empire-builders, anything is possible!!! Any innovative idea has the potential to improve our lives!!! Any innovative action allows us to be more serene and in-charge!!! And according to New Age theology, we manifest our own reality!!!
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No wonder we have internalized the belief that WE ARE INVINCIBLE, WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, WE ARE THE GODS. There is no higher power than the human will to succeed, and if domination is the route to success, so be it. In whatever domain we master – whether in spaces of commerce, industry, politics, academia, entertainment spectacle or the domestic sphere – there is no greater force than the will of the human being.

​So if we are indeed gods [or equal, if not superior to, the forces of nature] why in the world would we now, at this late date, and after centuries of being told we are superior, begin to acquiesce to the hurricane, the mudslide, the drought, the heat, the forest fire, the killer snowstorm, the atmospheric river or the bomb-cyclone? There must be some mistake – WE are the natural forces on the planet now, NOT nature herself. We cannot imagine changing our activities to respect some higher power [i.e. nature], as WE ARE THAT HIGHER POWER.

Climate disaster and massive change is only a temporary glitch, as we humans will soon subdue and control those unruly forces as well. Why admit that climate change is something to worry about, when it is WE who have the final say on EVERYTHING? Why admit that we are not in charge, when clearly WE ARE?

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The God Complex is a set of delusions we now carry…………at our peril. 
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Read more on social justice, ethnocultural recovery, Settler re-landing, rewilding, ancestral connections, sacred land and animism in Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community.
Available from Amazon >here<
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The Jackpot Generation

9/22/2024

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By Katrina Onstad  
Reprint from MACLEANS, September 12, 2024

And so it goes.  With all their vast resources, the Boomer generation was unable to find alternatives to capitalism, and in fact, embraced it.  As Empire devolves because of unrestrained capitalism and the “endless growth” paradigm, their children may be the last generation in human history to have such unpreceded unearned wealth and privilege.   PEGI EYERS
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUSTIN POULSEN
What if you woke up one day to discover that millions of people had suddenly won the lottery? Perhaps you’d be happy for these lucky recipients. More likely, you, with your ever-shrinking piece of the pie, would be fuming, even furious, at the injustice of it all. Then again, maybe you’d be one of the winners, quietly exhaling in relief. Finally. Some good news. 

A lottery win happened yesterday, and it’ll happen tomorrow, too. Between now and 2026, an estimated $1 trillion will move from Canadian baby boomers to their heirs, mostly millennials. As older Canadians live longer, even more money will stream down in the coming decades. An Ipsos survey found that among Canadian boomers who are planning to leave 100 percent of their estates to their children, the average inheritance will be about $940,000. 

For most people, this is life-changing wealth, enough to pay off the mortgage, to move the kids from public school to private school, to shift their status from renter to homeowner. Some heirs will receive much more — the kind of Porsche-and-penthouse money that they could never earn in their jobs as teachers, accountants, marketing managers. All of this signals an unprecedented economic shift: the greatest transfer of generational wealth in Canadian history, emerging in the form of mass good fortune bestowed upon the demographically lucky. When all the payouts have been made, Canada could look starkly different. 

As a Gen Xer whose parents were born before the Second World War, I have noticed, with a touch of envy and an eyebrow raised high, that a lot of millennials are really into their parents. Many boomers retooled the family structure to something more emotionally enmeshed, increasing the level of parental involvement with adult children — a lot of texts and check-ins. To me, this generation of adults so entangled with their parents can seem a smidge infantile. Reaching adulthood usually means arriving at self-sufficiency, signalled by emotional and financial independence. But people are staying alive longer, and the child-parent relationship is, too. 

Those tighter familial ties have had economic effects. Baby boomers still hold the most wealth in Canada. Many are “giving while living,” as it’s known, helping their kids secure financial footing with cash gifts and down payments on real estate. And often they’re sitting on their most valuable, ever-increasing assets: their homes. In other words, the approaching tidal wave of boomer deaths will be the final phase in the long project of enmeshment with their kids — a ghostly flotation device from beyond.

An inheritance-based economy sounds like something out of the 19th century. In many Victorian novels, inheritance is destiny, and those without it must scheme or marry (or murder!) to secure a future. Here in the new world, Canada’s 20th century was built on the dream — however fantastical for many — of mobility via meritocracy. Earning one’s destiny is the work-hard-get-ahead foundation of the middle class. But if inheritance determines who succeeds and who doesn’t, the downstream effects for Canada could be devastating. Taxes on primary residences, which are a large portion of Canadian inheritances, don’t exist here. There goes a huge chunk of money from the public purse. 

We find ourselves at the precipice: as the lucky are gaining private wealth, our coffers are running low. Success via inheritance tilts the country toward individualism at a time when the collective is vulnerable. How will Canada get through? Once anathema, serious proposals to increase taxes on wealth are gaining traction, with calls for reform coming from surprising corridors. Something will have to give. If not, the great wealth transfer stands to widen the inequality gap to a gulf, where a person’s success in this country is determined not by hard work or education, but by how rich their parents were.

The ability to achieve more than one’s parents, financially and socially, is known in economic and sociological circles as “intergenerational mobility.” Historically, Canadians are among the best in the world at this social-ladder-climbing — better than Americans even, who act like they invented the concept. The levers that have historically made the Canadian Dream accessible were the robust public policies that set us apart from our bootstrappy neighbours: access to affordable higher education, public health care, a social safety net to catch us when we missed a rung and tumbled. Canadians have long subscribed to a set of beliefs about what it takes to succeed, at the top of which are hard work and ambition. With those tools, the thinking goes, anyone can make it. 

Millennial Canadians are unconvinced. In multiple surveys, they say they don’t believe that they’ll do better than their parents. They’re gripped by a feeling that’s been labelled the “vibecession”: even as the economy corrects itself, even as interest rates drop, it seems impossible to kick-start your mobility. It’s not a fake feeling. Earnings don’t go as far today as they did a generation ago and, overall, a millennial’s net worth by midlife is now much smaller than their parents’ was. With nowhere else to look, millennials are hitching their dreams to a down-the-road infusion. According to one survey for investment advisers Edward Jones, more than half of younger Canadians say they need an inheritance or windfall to reach their financial goals.

The ongoing wealth transfer is playing out against a background of severe income inequality. In the past two years, inflation and high interest rates have whittled down the finances of the poorest 40 percent of the population, while the richest 20 percent are pulling further ahead; today, the top one percent in Canada controls a quarter of the country’s wealth. Because families with higher net worth are more likely to pass down substantial assets, like property, investments or businesses, the wealth transfer stands to perpetuate existing inequalities. Inheritance means that wealth, already concentrated among fewer families, stays there. Miles Corak is a Canadian economist and professor of economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York who studies intergenerational mobility. “When wealth gets passed on to the next generation, it inherently rubs against our sense of fairness. After all, what did you do to be born into a rich family?” asks Corak. “And so some Canadians might begin to wonder about the degree to which equality of opportunity really exists.”

Of course, societies have been shaped by familial inheritance for millennia. In the medieval era, landownership kept power concentrated in the nobility while their soil-tilling serfs could only rent the land they worked. Skip ahead a few hundred slightly more egalitarian years, and many sacrificial, quiet savers of the mid-century’s Silent Generation also left inheritances to their boomer kids. What’s different about today’s handover is scale: so many boomers, and so much wealth, largely bound to real estate. Over nine million boomers were born in Canada between 1946 and 1964. They became the beneficiaries of postwar prosperity at a time when jobs were handed out like Costco samples and good public schools and affordable post-secondary education were a given. “Defined benefit” pension plans — the ones that promise a regular income upon retirement — were a normal expectation, even in the private sector. And then there was the principal residence exemption: a federal policy enacted in 1972 that made principal residences exempt from capital gains tax, meaning homes would never be taxed no matter how much value they gained over time. This built, in essence, a tax shelter for homeowners that’s lasted half a century. The PRE implicitly encouraged homeownership not for the sake of having a place to live, but as a way to get rich. 
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In contrast, millennials spent their formative years bouncing from one global crisis to another. The oldest came of age in the shadow of 9/11. The youngest were on the cusp of adolescence when the global economy crashed in 2008. Over the course of their lives, the cost of post-secondary education, especially graduate programs, skyrocketed. Post-collegiate life began on the back foot: the average student debt at graduation is now around $30,000. Millennials face a crippling debt-to-disposable-income ratio, reaching 265 percent in 2024. Those defined benefit pension plans that their parents enjoyed are retro now: in 1990, about 90 per cent of pension plan members in the private sector were in defined benefit plans. By 2009, the number had dropped to 56 percent. 
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But the most generation-defining source of anxiety for those between 30 and 45 is housing. More millennials rent than ever before, fighting against record-low vacancy rates and record-high average monthly costs. The boomers’ tight grip on property is a key piece of our inequality crisis. As of 2019, homeowners born between 1955 and 1964 now have an average net worth of $1.4 million — seven times that of non-homeowners born during the same period. Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, points to this as evidence of a new reality in Canada. “Wages don’t buy houses. Houses buy more houses,” he says. When homes are kept off the market longer, or passed down within a family the way good china used to be, there are fewer opportunities for anyone without a link to a boomer to get in. Statistics Canada reports that the likelihood of a person born in the ’90s owning a home is greater if their parents did. If your parents never owned a house, you are, for want of a better word, screwed. 
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUSTIN POULSEN
We’re not good at talking about money, but we’re even worse at talking about death. So the topic of inheritance, that bitter cocktail of the two, is squirm-inducing. Shannon Lee Simmons is a certified financial planner who runs her own consultancy in Toronto. When inheritance comes up in meetings with her millennial clients, she notices a pattern. “I hear the same joke over and over. ‘So one day, when my parents die, I’ll be a millionaire. But how am I going to pay my bills in the meantime?’ ”

In her practice, Moira Somers, a psychologist and family wealth consultant in Winnipeg, is constantly fighting through the secrecy around estate planning with her clients. Reasons vary: general discomfort around any money talk at all. Denial of death. The parents’ fear that kids who know an inheritance is coming will stop striving. Or perhaps the will favours one child over another, so the parents don’t want to trigger a domestic storm. “They’ll say: ‘They’ll find out when I’m dead,’ ” Somers explains. She discourages the big-reveal approach and pushes for a dialogue among the living, where the financial picture gets clear enough for inheritors to see what their futures might look like. Making this happen is an uphill battle. A survey by IG Wealth found that only one-fifth of Canadians have had detailed discussions with the beneficiaries of their estate or executors of their will. “People don’t want to talk about it,” says Simmons. “It’s too painful. Inheritance comes at an emotional cost, and every dollar is steeped in it.”

Those conversations, however weird, can be a pre-emptive strike against later disappointments. One of Simmons’ clients came in to review her retirement strategy. She told Simmons that her parents had a multi-million-dollar house in Oakville, Ontario, and she was counting on the money from its sale. But when her parents died, it turned out they had reverse-mortgaged the house to the gills, and there was very little money left. Another adviser worked with a client in her 20s who wanted advice about how to responsibly manage the $400,000 her deceased grandparents had left her. But then the assets were valued and taxes were paid — and the inheritance was a lot smaller than she expected. That $400,000 is expected to shake out closer to $100,000. Simmons tells her clients never to count on an inheritance unless there’s been a full, transparent conversation with all parties. “You don’t want to be the grasshopper who sang all summer,” she says. 
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What this generation will do with all this money is a question mark. Surveys reveal that millennials are quite financially literate, if suspicious of traditional financial institutions, and drawn to DIY investing. But wealth, in the framing of the American financial consultant James Grubman, is a new country. People from a different class may not feel comfortable in this alien land of the wealthy, and a surprising number of heirs, consciously or unconsciously, lose their inheritances, letting in scammers, making bad investments. Somers had a client whose parents left them a significant sum of money. But the client was not comfortable suddenly catapulting up the socioeconomic ladder. Very quickly, they made rash investments at an Olympic pace, as if outrunning the money. Within four years, they’d returned to their initial net worth.

Some advisers I spoke to admitted to untangling clients who were getting their investment tips from TikTok and crypto ads. One planner helped a parent in their 70s transfer $200,000 to a millennial child as a kind of teaser — a trial run for the real inheritance that would happen when they died. The recipient made a run of withdrawals, offering vague reasons. The adviser assumed something nefarious was afoot — a dodgy investment, maybe an online scam? As the money dwindled, the parent realized a trust would have been a better idea. Because they had simply gifted the money, it became the beneficiary’s to fritter away. 

No one brags about inheritance. It’s a little embarrassing, strange, at odds with those foundational myths of productivity and self-reliance. Among new heirs, Shannon Lee Simmons observes a fair amount of anxiety. Spending an inheritance is a final obligation to one’s parents, spring-loaded with pressure to do it right or risk betrayal of the dead. “The fear of squandering is deep. When I read my intake forms for people who have inherited money, the word ‘squander’ is very, very, very prevalent.”

I spoke to one 35-year-old millennial, who I’ll call Chris. As he made his way to adulthood, his family provided many boosts up the ladder toward financial security. His grandparents had set aside money to pay for post-secondary education, so he didn’t accrue student debt. After he graduated, his parents helped him with a down payment on a condo in a suburb of Vancouver, which he bought in 2015 for about $200,000. But he’s still stressed about money. “I feel so broke all the time. That’s crazy, I know it, and I have guilt because I know it’s a very privileged position to be in,” he says. 

Years from now, that privilege will be even further cemented through an inheritance that will be cleanly split between him and his brother. His parents are retired from their government jobs, with over $2 million in savings, accrued from his mom’s chronic thriftiness but also sizable inheritances from their own parents (luck begets luck). That $2-million-plus cushion doesn’t include excellent government pensions or the house, which Chris’s parents purchased for around $188,000 in the mid-’80s but is now worth about $1.7 million. I know this because I spoke to his parents and they told me. But Chris said he doesn’t know how much money is coming his way. “There’s some section of my brain that’s like, I know it’s there. I know it’s going to be substantial. My brother and I are probably both going to inherit seven figures. I worry that I’ll get lazy or just rely on all that’s coming,” he says.

Sudden wealth can also isolate people from their peers. Inheritance stands to breed bitterness, striking at a sense of injustice — hostility and envy are not the building blocks of a healthy society. Some advisers told me about clients who inherited a windfall in their 40s and decided to stop working entirely. The promised ladder — work hard, move up — will get even further out of reach unless there’s a shift, a reassurance that the promise is not broken, evidenced by policies that even the playing field. It’s all a recipe for misery, personally and nationally. 

This situation is decades in the making, according to Generation Squeeze, a think tank out of Vancouver that advocates for intergenerational fairness. “The wealth the boomers have is part of an intergenerational tension,” says Paul Kershaw, founder of Generation Squeeze and a professor of public policy at the University of British Columbia. “But for the quarter of Canadians who don’t have that attachment to a boomer, and for the others who are attached to a boomer who doesn’t have a lot of housing wealth, the moment the others start passing it on to their kids, it’s going to fuel intra-generational tensions.”
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUSTIN POULSEN
Inheritance doesn’t always require death. Many parents are giving with a warm hand, not a cold one, as one wealth adviser put it to me, succinctly and creepily. The Bank of Mom and Dad is both a punchline and a reality. According to Statistics Canada, one in six homes across Canada owned by people born in the 1990s is co-owned with their parents. Nearly a third of first-time Canadian homebuyers cover their down payment with money from parents or relatives. This holds especially true in pricier urban centres, like Toronto and Vancouver, but smaller cities like Guelph and Hamilton aren’t far behind. And the amounts have increased too, rising 73 percent from 2019 to hit a national average of $115,000 in 2023. Where housing is most expensive, the handouts are the highest, with Ontario and B.C. parents giving the most: $128,000 and $204,000, respectively. Sometimes the kid has the income to qualify for a mortgage but doesn’t have the down payment, and the parents will cover that. The reverse can also happen, when the parents will have to co-sign because the kid might have a down payment but can’t qualify for the mortgage at higher interest rates. 
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This kind of boost is no longer just for Succession-type families. “When I started in this field, the idea of living inheritance was only for the super-elite,” says financial adviser Shannon Lee Simmons. Before opening her own financial consultancy, she worked with many high-net-worth families at a major firm. “They wouldn’t even call it an early inheritance. It was just rich people helping their kids be rich. Now a lot of retirement planning that I do with my middle-class boomer clients is like, How much can I give my children now without being in trouble myself? Because they’re anxious that their children will never be able to own a home.”

Sometimes these gifts come with strings. An adviser described one couple who set up a trust for their kid with the promise of buying them a house upon graduation from university. The catch: it had to be in the same neighbourhood as the parents. Another set of parents is supporting their child at every stage of the property ladder. After paying for their daughter’s $75,000 wedding, they’ve purchased a condo for the couple, with plans to upgrade them to a house in the ritzy neighbourhood of Kitsilano in Vancouver once they have a few kids. (The younger couple, it should be noted, are doctors.)

I’ve wondered about the disconnect between the mind-blowing housing prices in my downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Trinity Bellwoods and these hip millennials moving in with spiritually fulfilling but low-paying creative-class careers. I’ve watched, over the past decade, as Teslas and Jaguar SUVs have crept onto our block, which, when we arrived in the early 2000s (lucky, lucky), was known for sex workers and karaoke-bar shootings.  I observe — snoopily — these millennials setting up in $2-million houses and I wonder: how can an illustrator and novelist possibly afford that three-storey Edwardian? A potter is undertaking that solarium reno? 

I call this status fog: how hard it is to know where anyone stands financially, or to recognize what real achievement looks like, when invisible wealth is altering one’s place in society. The markers of a comfortable middle-class life — being able to afford a family vacation or buy a home — appear to exist, but do they actually? It sounds like a tree-falls-in-the-forest-type koan: if the family lounging poolside on their vacay couldn’t pay to be there themselves, is there even a middle class? 

I spoke to a woman I’ll call Jane, who is 40 and lives in a family-friendly, pricey central Toronto neighbourhood with her school-age kid and husband. Her family rent an apartment, and homeownership isn’t in the cards for them. All around her, she sees parents financially boosting their kids. “It’s not a transfer,” she says. “It’s a trickle.” She’s noticed that, on playgrounds and at the office, most people aren’t overt about the parental subsidies that are floating their lifestyles, but some do talk, if in hushed tones. Down payments. Daycare. Summer camp. Family vacations. Parents are footing the bill. A friend of hers lost her grandparents recently and, soon after, made a down payment on her first house. Everyone is going to “the cottage,” but everyone knows what that means. “No one actually owns a cottage. It’s Mom and Dad’s cottage,” says Jane. “You go into nice neighbourhoods, and it’s like, ‘Sorry, what do you do? How do you own this house?’ And then slowly it comes out: ‘Oh, you’re the son or daughter of... right. Okay. Yeah, that makes a little bit more sense.’ ”

Living inheritance is also creating many opportunities for intergenerational households, where parents and their grown kids and grandkids all co-habitate or live nearby. Certainly, this is nothing new — Canadian newcomers and Indigenous people are the groups most likely to live multigenerationally. But for Canadians wedded to the postwar script of the single-family home, it may be an unexpected swerve. Managing chores with Mom and Dad at 40 might not have been in the master plan, but consider the upsides. Living together might break the loneliness epidemic. Perhaps it strengthens those much-frayed communal and community ties.

Heather Bell and her husband are one couple whose housing solution came in the form of co-ownership. They contemplated starting a family a decade ago. Newly married with well-paying jobs, they still didn’t have the means for a down payment on a house and were living in a two-bedroom Vancouver rental. “If you’re going to live in the city, you have to be comfortable with people leaving. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen. Our friend groups have moved out.” The ones that stayed? “They typically have family support.”

Bell’s father had bought a big Arts and Crafts home in the desirable neighbourhood of Riley Park in 2006 for $780,000. As the years passed and the market blew up, Bell’s stepmother pitched an unorthodox plan. They would rip down the house and build a duplex where Bell and her family would live in one unit, her parents and grandmother in another. Bell’s sister would reside in a new laneway house. On top of a mortgage, each family member covers monthly maintenance fees and taxes.

The gift was what Bell’s father calls “the dirt”: the land that they would build on. The property will likely be worth $4 million when they sell it. It was, in essence, a down payment — one that will continue to appreciate, with the likelihood of a big cash-out down the road. “Without it, we would not be living in this neighbourhood. We would have left the city, or we’d be in a two-bedroom condo with two kids, just making do.”

When Bell moved in, she was worried the neighbourhood would be a desert for families: what young parents could possibly afford to live there? But instead, there are lots of kids and big block parties. Those people got there the same way she did. On her block alone, she knows of several other intergenerational living situations and laneway houses, most of which, she presumes, are financed to some degree by parents. 
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUSTIN POULSEN
A perfect storm is brewing in Canada. Before the boomers die and pass their wealth down to their heirs, they’re going to get old, and that’s going to cost Canada a lot of money. Because of that, the country stands to become poorer over the next decades — at the same time as millions of private individuals are getting richer from the wealth transfer. The problem, again, is demographics. In the ’70s, governments could pay for medical care for older people because there were so many working boomers—seven for every retiree. But today, there are only three workers to pay for every retiree. 

Though provinces may levy probate or administrative costs to the estate of the deceased, and capital gains tax may apply, Canada is the only G7 country without an inheritance tax. Six U.S. states gather inheritance taxes. Most EU countries have some form of one. In the U.K., any estate valued above £325,000 is taxed at a rate of 40 percent — one of the highest in Europe. Just like here, housing values have gone wild in the U.K., and the revenues drawn from inheritance taxes have been steadily increasing, too: they came to approximately £5.3 billion between April and December of 2022.

In a 2021 Abacus poll, 88 percent of Canadians supported a wealth tax. One of the calls is coming from inside the building: a national group of wealthy young Canadians called Resource Movement has been advocating for tax justice that would directly affect their own inheritances. Most of their members, about 200 across Canada, are in the top 20 percent of wealth holders; some are in the top one percent. 

Resource Movement proposes a progressive inheritance tax targeting the top 10 percent of estates, increasing to a marginal rate of 55 percent on estates over $7.5 million. But a more radical approach has been put forward by French economist Thomas Piketty, whose book Capital in the Twenty-First Century sold over two million copies. Piketty proposes “inheritance for all,” where every citizen receives a minimal inheritance, paid out at 25 years of age. This would be financed by a mix of progressive wealth and inheritance taxes, aimed squarely at stripping away some of the generational privilege of the “rentiers” — families who live on investment income like property. 

Nicolas Chevalier’s mother and stepfather built a successful construction business outside of Montreal. Chevalier, who’s now 42 and uses they/them pronouns, worked construction and did a degree in environmental science. When their mother and stepfather died, the inheritance from the sale of their house thrust Chevalier into a new economic bracket. They noticed that, as a construction worker, a big portion of their paycheque went to taxes and dues. They thought about this when their parents’ house was sold and the taxes were nominal. “Most of my current wealth comes from inheritance rather than income, and yet my income was taxed way higher than my wealth,” Chevalier says. “It’s weird that a person like me would have this much wealth. It doesn’t align with the values I have.” 

Chevalier admits that in the wake of those losses, there was an upside to inheritance: they immediately paid off thousands in student loans. They could afford to take time off to grieve. Then they took a few pieces of furniture, as reminders of their mom, and moved into a rental apartment in Montreal’s NDG neighbourhood. The money made Chevalier anxious, a little guilty. “Money is trouble,” they say. 

So Chevalier joined the Montreal chapter of Resource Movement. The group meets regularly, often over Zoom. Members share their money stories to air the truth about their good fortune — maybe assuaging some of that guilt. Then they strategize, directly funding some social-justice groups and, beyond cheque-cutting, advocating for tax reform. On top of their support for an inheritance tax, they echo the NDP proposal for a one percent wealth tax on fortunes over $20 million. The group approves of the new capital gains inclusion rate, which taxes two-thirds of net capital gains over $250,000, not including primary residences. It’s estimated to generate $19.3 billion that can, says Chevalier, go toward programs that may slightly close the inequality gap — health care, childcare and, of course, housing. 

One of Resource Movement’s big concerns is the ongoing boomer-millennial wealth transfer. “It’s a big risk. Unlocking this transfer of wealth means money just goes to an even smaller pool of people, and the cycle goes on,” says Chevalier. A return to a concentration of power among a land-owning elite doesn’t sound exactly forward-thinking, nor does it help address Canada’s looming productivity crisis. The OECD says that Canada is going to lag behind the developed world’s productivity growth for the next 30 years. Once success is divorced from output, becoming purely a function of arbitrary family input, why innovate at all? How much can-do spirit can anyone muster when it’s clear that the system is rigged? A have vs. have-not society is the soil of anger, divisiveness — if not defeat, then hate. 

When I spoke to Chris, the young Vancouverite who stands to inherit a hefty sum from his parents, I asked him if he thought the trillion-dollar transfer was going to change the circumstances of his generation. He said he could see a future where those with low incomes would get pushed further down the ladder, and those with money would move up even higher. “We lived in that middle range,” he says. “I wonder who will be there.”

KATRINA ONSTAD
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REPRINT - link to online article >HERE<

Meta has blocked Canadian news sharing on all platforms. Facebook and Instagram users are unable to view or share links to any news site.
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community" an award-winning book that explores strategies for uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, nature spirituality,, the ancestral arts, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community. 
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​Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. ​    ​
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Breaking Free

4/6/2024

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PEGI EYERS

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How desperately unhappy were you, before you returned to (or turned to) nature? I don’t think this subject is talked about enough. I am fairly certain most of us did not turn to rewilding, ecospirituality, anarcho-primitivism or nature immersion because it was a “trendy” thing to do. I was miserable and unconnected when I lived in the city, and all that disappeared when I finally arrived in a place that had immense access to forests, rivers, lakes and wild places.

My family were very urban – not overt nature-lovers – and in my late teens I made my escape to live in a log cabin in the rugged back country of British Columbia. With no electricity or running water, and the wildlife, elements, and canopy of stars at night for company, I was incredibly fortunate to have five whole years of earth-connected living. My experiences in the mountains became the foundation for all that followed, as I was regrettably drawn back to the bright lights of the city.  After 15 years or so of corporate life, I still appeared bright and capable on the outside, but I was dysfunctional and depressed, and a heavy drinker.
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One particular evening I was so unhappy I just started to draw for some reason, and on the right side of the page appeared a bird in a cage, and on the left side of the page was a bird flying free. It was my subconscious or soul, telling me on some deep level to get the hell out of the city. So I did, and I never looked back. In retrospect, I now know that I was suffering from soul loss, and months and years spent wandering in the wild, plus earthing on the banks of the Otonabee River, healed that ennui. I honestly don’t know how people can live happy and productive lives in the city, cut off from the real and living green world. What is your story?
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising:
Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community"
an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural
competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. 
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A Bill of Rights for Humans Who Are Destroying the World

1/1/2024

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PEGI EYERS

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A Bill of Rights for Humans Who Are Destroying the World

[1] The right to a high-mobility, high-tech lifestyle with modern conveniences and non-stop experience, with the expectation that the generations to follow will receive the same benefits.

[2]  The right to drive a car, take a bus, or ride a plane anywhere and anytime, without worrying that the technology of oil and gas is killing the planet.  The right to refuse a hybrid car because it is too expensive. The right to refuse other technologies such as a cooking oil engine because it is too much hassle.

[3] The right to convenience in everything. The right to turn on the lights anytime and anywhere. The right to be warm when it is cold outside and cold when it is warm outside. The right to control the environment. 

[4] The right to participate in the capitalist economy without complaint. The right to a job that is primarily about status and making more money, than those below us on the hierarchy of class privilege. The right to have a job that becomes our main identity.  The right to take pride in the fact that we have given up our sovereignty to be part of something grander – that is, making money and acquiring status, as well as lovely homes, gorgeous furnishings and appliances, luxury vehicles, extensive wardrobes, deluxe food, art collections, body care and multiple trips and vacations.

[5]  The right to turn on a tap and have running water – hot or cold – at any time, anywhere.  In public washrooms, the right to use paper towels that are manufactured from trees on a deforested planet.

[6] The right to décor. The right to repeatedly change our carpets, drapes, paint colours, wall treatments and furniture whenever we want.

[7]  The right to drive on smooth pavement, and the right to walk on smooth floor surfaces and pavement at all times.

[8] The right to entertainment. We are entitled to view the constant parade of new shows, movies, concerts and other products of the entertainment industry without considering our own creativity, or why we need to be endlessly stimulated and distracted.

[9]  The right to an endless array of consumer goods in limitless permutations. Instead of a limited supply there are millions of dress styles to chose from.  Instead of a few variations, there are millions of jewellery designs to choose from.  Ad nauseum, without a care for the long-term costs of manufacture, or the futility of being a laborer in the consumer goods sector. 
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[10] The right to collect and hoard boatloads of “stuff” as a bulwark against future lack or shortage.  We are not sure if the massive collecting of objects makes us better people, but the endorphin rush is worth it.

[11] The right for artists, designers and engineers to keep creating more and more elaborate and innovative toys, games, music, books, self-care products, cosmetics, baby care, furniture, fabrics, fashion, self-adornment, jewellery, art, décor, fake flowers, robotic technology and vehicles ad nauseum, even while the ecosystem of the Earth are on the edge of collapse.  In the name of good design (and innumerable “special interests”) we have the right to add to the burden, instead of austerity or reducing the impact of our carbon footprint.  “We are the champions of the world,” and we need to surround ourselves with the expressions of that dynamic.
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[12]  The right to take family wealth or inheritance, derived from mining, forestry, or other extraction industries, and the products or services related to that destruction, and pretend our business, entrepreneurship, or healthcare practice is “different and special” because it is based on a “sustainable or alternative worldview.”  The right to continue building our business with all the benefits of techno-capitalism, and to infuse our leisure time with the wealth derived from resource extraction.  We have the right to NEVER question this hypocrisy, or our ongoing complicity with Empire.

[13] The right to pharmaceutical drugs.  We cannot imagine a world beyond civilization because our prescriptions would not get filled.  Our illnesses depend on the continuance of pharmacy outlets within a capitalist system, and subsidized or for-profit healthcare.

[14] The right to demand plastic for countless objects and purposes. The right to manufacture more, even when we know that the oceans are clogged with plastics that are killing marine life, as there is no disposable, decomposable, or sustainable final resting place for plastic.

[15]  The right to consider the trees that surround our dwellings as annoyances instead of living beings.  We have the right to cut them down, or alter or destroy any part of nature that doesn’t suit us, because nature is just a collection of lifeless objects put there for our disposal.

[16]  The right to witness the deliberate destruction of nature, and not care one iota. We have interests and obsessions that are far more important than the living green world.

[17]  The right to witness the deliberate destruction of nature - the true axis mundi for soul and the location for magic in our world – and then stupidly believe that those same qualities, existent in nature for millennia, can somehow be conjured up by human beings.  

[18] The right to believe our society is simply “expansionist” instead of murderous. And the right to remain silent, even when we become aware that techno-capitalism is a death culture.

[19]  The right to belong to the most successful cult in human history. The right to allow techno-capitalism to manipulate us with various tactics and coercive techniques of control. The right to be indoctrinated into a cult that is designed to advance the goals of a wealthy elite, to the detriment of Earth Community.

[20]   And finally, the right to wake up from mass delusions.

The right to reject the internalized beliefs and values we have adopted from Empire, and to heal the trauma and PTSD we are carrying from organizational control. Deconstructing and uncolonizing starts with the self, followed by collaboration in community.  >Decolonizing the Psyche<   The rewilding and ancestral skills movement hold the keys to rejecting Empire.
>Rewild.com< 

From the rewild.com website:
Rewilding means restoring ancestral ways of living that create greater health and well-being for humans and the ecosystems that we belong to. Many things lead people to rewilding — concern over ecological collapse or economic uncertainty, health problems, a nagging sense of something missing in life, or a desire to “save the world” — but from those starting points we come together in a desire to rewild our homes, our communities, and ourselves. Rewilding learns from the examples of Indigenous people past and present provided by anthropology, archaeology, and ethnobiology. It means returning to our senses, returning to ourselves, and coming home to the world we never stopped belonging to.
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"Real Gold" by Eduardo-Paolozzi (1949)
​Reject Empire / Uncolonize
To provide all humans on Earth with access to modern conveniences and amenities, civilization has converted pristine ecosystems into wastelands. By some massive miscalculation, stupidity or arrogance, Empire-building has destroyed our own life support systems. Now, the health of our entire Earth Community, including human beings, is being eroded by poisoned water, poisoned air, massive smoke inhalation and deadly heat. And is this insane trade-off, the legacy we are leaving behind?
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​Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community and resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon
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LET GO NOW

12/9/2023

0 Comments

 

A set of beautiful reminders, on choosing detachment over co-dependency~!

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Art by Douglas Girard
Detachment is simply watching the events that are unfolding around you, getting involved only when your journey is part of the experience.

Detachment promises quiet contentment.

Detachment is making no one a project.

Detachment means taking no hostages.

Detachment means giving up outcomes.

Detachment is understanding that we are never the cause of someone’s else’s actions.

Detachment is getting over “it,” whatever “it” is.

Detachment frees up our time.

To detach is not unloving. It’s giving space to our loved ones to grow. It’s the kindest gift we can give a friend. It’s the kindest gift we can give to ourselves.

Detachment simplifies our life.

Detachment is an acquired habit.

Detachment means freedom from obsession.

Detachment is knowing that what others do, is not a reflection on you.

Detachment is not making a big deal of situations, even complicated ones.

Detachment empowers us.

Detachment frees us from over-reaction.

Detachment may mean doing nothing.

Detachment may be remaining quiet.

Detachment is not acquiescence.

Keeping life simple is one of the hallmarks of detachment. A sense of empowerment is a guarantee when we detach.

Detachment is disengagement, nothing more.

Detachment means not letting the behavior of others cause you to suffer.

Detachment can be triggered by the reminder “don’t go there.”

Detachment is not letting someone else’s past determine your present.

Detachment relies on the “little willingness” to surrender.

Detachment is noticing people without judgement.

Detachment is freedom from chaos.

Detachment is “moving away” from a conversation that begins to irritate.

Detachment is knowing that the mind can change, if what you say to the mind changes.

Detachment is letting decisions that need to be made by others be only theirs.

Choice is a wonderful thing. Choosing wisely is even better. A wise choice, often, is to do nothing.

Detachment is “keeping it simple” – staying out of situations that don’t directly involve you.

Detachment is having your life be about you, not other people.

Detachment is living in our adult observer role.

Detachment is not being dependent on others for good feelings.

Detachment is taking responsibility for your own life.

Detachment means not being a victim anymore.

Detachment is living one’s own life, while letting friends and family live as they choose.

Detachment is never letting someone else control how we think, feel, or behave.

Detachment is letting go of fear over other’s behavior.
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Detachment is freedom from relying on others to complete our lives.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
Let the chaos that others create be theirs to resolve. It’s OK to leave a room or conversation if the tension is rising. Let’s not let anyone else determine how we feel. The past is gone. Don’t try to resurrect it. Detachment, when fully expressed, promises peacefulness.

Detachment is a gift that we receive from our relationships well-lived.

Detachment is knowing that others’ criticisms are about them.

Detachment is not letting the mood swings of others determine your own mood.

Detachment is practicing the awareness that changing our thoughts can produce changed feelings.

Detachment is knowing that happiness is the byproduct of how we live our lives, not how others are living theirs.

Detachment is not needing attention from others to feel OK.

Detachment is being able to care deeply about a situation or another person from an objective point of view.

Detachment is not creating or preventing a crisis when it is clearly not our business to be involved.

Detachment is letting others have their own opinions.

Detachment is being able to let others journey, wherever they need to go.

Detachment is no longer succumbing to the suggestions of others, when they are not right for us.

Detachment is being able to walk away from situations that are not helpful to us.

Detachment is knowing what is not your business.

Detachment is letting others take care of their own affairs.

Attachment to people deadlocks our growth.

Detachment can be as simple as breathing and walking away.

Detachment means giving up “hostages.”

Detachment is letting the outcome of another’s behavior be his or her problem.

Detachment is doing the “next right thing” without focusing on the outcome.

Detachment is realizing that our lives are not dependent on what others are doing.

Detachment is showing by example, not words, how our lives can change.

Detachment is looking at life from a distance.

Being a living example of detachment is being a great teacher.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
Doing the next right thing is not a mystery. Ever. Give up seeking to be the center of someone else’s life. Now! To stand apart from our friend does not mean that we aren’t joined in love.

Detachment is knowing that you are not the center of anyone else’s life.

Detachment means following your own heart’s desire.

Detachment is relinquishing the role of being someone else’s Higher Power.

Detachment is not being diminished by the behavior of others.

Detachment is keeping your feelings separate from what others are doing.

Detachment is taking responsibility for your feelings.

Detachment means no long harboring thoughts of “attachment.”

Detachment is no longer being unfairly treated.

Detachment is keeping your feelings separate from what others are saying and doing.

Detachment means no long adjusting our lives to the whims of others.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
Your life is never, ever dependent on what someone else is doing. This is a good thing! Letting the whims of others control you means you will live a very uncertain, generally troubled life. Do you want that? Being solely responsible for how you feel is an adjustment at first, perhaps, but then it’s empowering.

Detachment from others can be nurtured by strengthening our attachment to our personal hopes and dreams.

Detachment is not interfering with what another person should do.

Detachment is refusing to let our interactions define us.

Detachment means no longer needing to be in charge of anything, not even our own lives.

Detachment is not disinterest, but that might be the first step.

Detachment means no longer leading other’s lives.

Detachment is respecting the boundaries between yourself and others.

Detachment is freedom from the desire to get someone back.

Detachment is the freedom to not be angry or sad.

Detachment is giving up control, even the thought of it!

PAUSE AND REFLECT
Backing away from an invitation to get involved in the affairs of someone else is smart. What someone else is doing or how they treat us has nothing to do with who we are. Witnessing for others may well be the kindest gift we can offer. That act frees us from any form of interference. Get over getting someone back! Now. We will never find peace unless we do.

Detachment is not letting anyone else decide how you feel.

Detachment is freedom from saying “I told you so.”

Detachment is being able to put yourself at the top of the list of “who needs care.”

Detachment is letting our friends have whatever kind of day they chose to have.

Detachment means acknowledging and even celebrating another’s unique journey.

Detachment is no longer “dancing” around someone else’s life.

Detachment is no longer needing to assuage anyone else’s anger.

Detachment is being able to claim our own identities.

Detachment is accepting what we cannot change, and changing only what we can.

Detachment is not taking anyone else’s behavior personally.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
Caring for ourselves, rather than others, is not being selfish. Giving up control over someone else takes more than just wishing it. Much more. Everyone’s journey is unique to them. When we interfere we delay their process. Letting someone else be angry is a sign of growth and freedom.
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Detachment is no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Detachment is letting things rest.

Detachment is being able to move our minds away from the unhealthy places they want to go.

Detachment is being able to stop our minds in mid-thought when the thoughts are not beneficial.

Detachment is no longer living in the tumultuous spaces of other people’s minds.

Detachment doesn’t mean separation from our loved ones. It means acceptance of who and what they are.

Detachment is a gift to one and all.

Detachment never means being rude or dismissive.

Detachment is a growth opportunity that we can claim every day of our lives.

Detachment is not to be confused with disloyalty.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
What a relief it is to let things be as they are. Our minds only go where we give them permission to go. Accepting others as they are feels like a holiday. The practice of detaching does not mean being rude. We can still be loyal to our friends and loved ones and detach from them.

Detachment is one of the most loving of all our actions.

Detachment empowers.

Detachment offers us freedom from blame.

Detachment is like a breath of fresh air.

Unless we practice detachment we will find ourselves reacting many times a day.

When we practice detachment, we serve as great teachers to others.

The most loving thing we can do is let another person be free: that’s detachment.

Let go of the opinions of others. Let go of the effect of your behavior on others. Let go of the outcome of your actions and the many situations concerning you and your loved ones.

Detachment is practiced moment by moment.

Accountability, ours and others, is the hallmark of detachment.

Detachment is the way to cultivate peace, one moment at a time.

Those who are hardest to detach from, are our best teachers.

Detaching from others is one of the most rewarding and revealing changes we can ever make.

Making the decision to detach from a loved one may well be the most important, as well as the kindest, gift we can give ourselves. Ever.

Detachment is a swift and sure way of expressing unconditional love.

Learning to detach is a process. It moves faster for some than for others. But the pace is not important.

Detachment is a tool that can be practiced with, and by everyone.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
One moment at a time – that’s all we have. And that’s all the time we need to detach. Being accountable for ourselves only, is the best assurance of living detachment. Learning to detach from our most difficult companions pays huge dividends. Detachment may not look like unconditional love, but it is. Making someone a hostage makes us a hostage too.
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​Detaching from our companions does not mean discounting them, dismissing them, or rejecting them. Keeping it simple helps us detach from others.
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Detachment is how we release ourselves from responsibility for others.

Perfecting detachment is a life-long journey, but prayer will help.

Detachment from others doesn’t preclude joining with them in a healthy way on occasion.

Silence can be golden, and detachment is the method.

Detachment is most likely a learned trait.

Asking a friend to witness our practice of detachment is an interesting and worthwhile opportunity for both parties.

Detachment is not a “one-time only” solution.

There is no timeline in learning how to detach. We have all the time we need. But the more quickly we begin the practice, the more peaceful our lives will be. Progress, not perfection, is the outcome we should seek. Dismissing or discounting someone is definitely not detachment. Praying for the willingness to let others have their own journeys is the first step to letting go of them. When in doubt about how to respond in any situation, choose silence for 60 seconds at least.

Detachment is only of many choices.

Detachment, when practiced honestly, doesn’t allow criticism.

Detachment first requires a new way of thinking.

Detachment implies giving up control.

Fear may keep us from detaching.

Unconditional love can be packaged in many ways. Detachment may not seem like one of them, but it is.

Saying “I can choose peace instead of this,” is one way of embracing detachment.

Not reacting to others is a demonstration of detachment.

Detachment does not mean disavowal of others.

Detachment from others is the opposite of being obsessed.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
Detachment is a choice.  Unconditional love is a choice. Giving up control is a choice. Being afraid is a choice. Choosing to be peaceful is a choice. Choosing to act, rather than react, is a choice. Trusting our companions to live their own lives is a choice. 

Detachment reduces tension immediately.

Detaching from our family members allows them to grow in ways unique to them.

Detachment encourages everyone to be more responsible.

Our willingness to detach from our loved ones demonstrates to them that we trust them.

Detachment might first begin with a vision of doing it successfully.

Surrendering control is another way to think of detachment.

The freedom to live our lives can’t be accomplished unless we detach ourselves from the lives of others.

Detachment is a loving choice, one of many.

Maintaining healthy boundaries is key to healthy relationships, knowing when to detach is crucial to the process.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
The power of the imagination can’t be overstated. Visualize yourself being lovingly detached first.

There is no race to the finish line.

We are all works in progress.

Your assignments cannot be fulfilled if your attention is on someone else, rather than the work you are here to perform.

Detachment will require major changes for some, minor changes for other.

Detaching from the chaos around us by seeking the silence within, creates healing in us and in others too, in time.

The most effective way of keeping our focus where it belongs is detaching from others.

If we fail to detach from a person who is always in turmoil, we are likely to blame them for our unhappiness.

Every moment provides a chance for us to make a healthy choice, period.  Detachment is one of the healthiest of all.

Prayer is effective when honing the detachment skill
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Watching others will reveal to us many who practice detachment.

Detaching from the struggles of our loved ones does not preclude witnessing their humanity.

Detachment might be interpreted as, “I accept you as you are.”

PAUSE AND REFLECT
Praying for willingness in every attempt to change our behavior is the first and most important step. Blaming others for our unhappiness is so tempting. We keep our focus where it belongs. There is little doubt about where that is. When the chaos calls, leave. Seeking the silence of our inner space is the solution when others are trying to entrap us in their madness.

The commitment to detachment prevents the compulsion to react.

Are you choosing to detach when the opportunity presents itself today?

There is a subtle distinction between joining with those on our journey, and detaching from them when we need to.

There is one sure way to experience peace: detach from the upheavals of others.

The act of detachment precludes criticism.

Fear propels us to attach ourselves to others.

Do we want freedom to grow, or a life that’s small?  How we relate to others determines this.

Making the decision to change how we think can open the door to the practice of detachment.

Appreciating the gift and the power of detachment is certain to lead us to a simpler life.

Detaching from the chaos of other’s lives, may not look like love, but it is.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
Everyday is rife with choices. Let’s be careful regarding those that we make. We are the thinkers, the creators, of our thoughts. Thoughts don’t mysteriously appear in our minds.  We change them if we are not feeling peaceful. The chaos that others choose to experience doesn’t have to garner our attention. Unconditional love has many expressions. Detachment is one of them. We cling to people when we are afraid.  Seek the Great Mystery instead, in those moments.

Detaching from our friends spurs some of them on to be more responsible.

A sure indication that we have not embraced detachment is when our focus is too much on someone else.

Detachment doesn’t have to mean disinterest.

Accepting detachment as a loving act seems strange to some. Surrendering your control over life, your own life and the lives of others, is a great demonstration of detachment.

Our willingness to detach from others is enhanced if we develop trust in a higher power.

Dreams can help us in our development of any skill. Detachment is one of them. 

Making the commitment to detach from our loved ones (and all others too) is a big change for many of us.

Being willing to practice the art of detachment is what promises us the freedom to grow.

Embracing silence in the face of turmoil is an act of detachment.

Sharing a path in life doesn’t mean stepping on each other’s toes.

The recognition of another person’s need for space helps us to develop our own commitment to the healing value of detachment.

Sometimes we resist detaching from the problems of others because reacting feels so good.

If we want freedom from our addiction to controlling others, prayer is the solution, and detachment is the result.

The art of detachment is best learned by watching our teachers.

There is no time but now. Do we want to peacefully enjoy it? Being willing to detach from chaos is the way.

Detachment may seem antithetical to the spiritual principle of joining.  It’s not.

To detach means giving up our fear about another’s journey.

PAUSE AND REFLECT
No one becomes an expert at detachment overnight. I hope the 200 essays in this small book, which focus again and again on a few simple ideas, presented from varying perspectives, will strengthen your resolve at making detachment a priority.  The good news is that we literally have the rest of our lives to practice the behaviors that will allow us to live and let live. Many people I have come to cherish on my 35-year journey consider detachment an art, which gives me hope everyday that my progress is perfect as is, and that I will arrive at my destination at the right time.
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Most of us were not raised by parents who were good examples of how detachment should look. Like us, they struggled to make life work out to fit their preconceptions. And they lived with more chaos than peace. Perhaps their attempts to control us ultimately brought us here. If so, let’s consider that a blessing to be grateful for. Look at the joys we are discovering.

We are becoming quite practiced at using tools that will give us peace and hope and a quiet sense of wellbeing.

We are learning to envision who we want to be, and how we want to behave, which better prepares us for the changes we are making.

We are learning to witness to for our fellow travellers, rather than giving them unwanted suggestions.

We are learning to be responsible for ourselves only, and we are becoming very adept at letting others take responsibility for themselves.

We are learning to treasure silence, knowing that our answers reside there.

We are learning the value of surrendering our need to control anyone and any situation, thus relieving ourselves of a huge and exhausting burden.

We have learned the difference between unconditional love and control, and we are becoming quite practiced at backing off, allowing others and ourselves to be free.

We have learned how attachment differs from detachment and why one feels good and the other imprisons us.

Not letting the behavior of others control us, define us, or determine how we feel is a gift of epic proportions, a realization that changes every other of our lives.

We have learned the value of prayer in changing everything about us and how we perceive the world around us. Nothing remains the same when we apply the principle of prayer.
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We have learned that everyone that has crossed, is crossing, or is yet to cross our path has been called to us for the lessons that we must share. For this we can be grateful and relieved.  No one is on our path uninvited. 

LET GO NOW: Embracing Detachment by Karen Casey
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon
0 Comments

Recognizing Abuse

1/10/2023

0 Comments

 

"Normalizing Abuse: A Commentary on the Culture of Pervasive Abuse" by Karen Tate

All forms of abuse are rampant in our society, and stem from the origins of techno-capitalism that abused both human beings and the land.  Contributors to Karen Tate's Normalizing Abuse were asked to provide short "rants" or descriptions of the abuse they have experienced on their life journey.  This is my story.  - PEGI EYERS

For centuries the patriarchal agenda has oppressed women, and monotheistic religions have invisibilized and co-opted women’s sacred mysteries in earth magic, healing, birth and communal child-raising. Over time the Euro-patriarchal ruling elites built Empire by converting nature into “lifeless resources,” and during the Enlightenment era fabricated “race theory” to include BIPOC in the same hegemony of oppression and control. For millennia white women were the passive and suffering victims of Empire, but we have also been the “supporting cast” who internalized the values of the patriarchy and were complicit with the colonial directive. Due to the “patriarch within” or “internalized oppression” (take your pick) it has been my life experience that women can be the oppressors of other women.  
 
In a society built on a foundation of patriarchal control and intersectional oppressions, intergenerational trauma and PTSD are the norm.  But strange to say, when looking back I faced more direct abuse from women than from men in my personal sphere. During the difficult puberty years I was bullied by a gang of other young girls, and at one point their well-placed kicks broke my baby finger. As a child and especially as a teenager, the women in my family were constantly telling me to “shut up” and “tone it down,” as “my opinion didn’t matter.” As a young wandering hippie, the women I encountered would listen and share to a certain extent, but most offered no real sisterhood or support in a world desperate for security and social capital. When I worked for a well-known fashion designer in my late 20's, I was reminded on a daily basis that I didn’t “stack up” in terms of wealth, status or privilege, and there were so many abusive ad hominem attacks, I had to quit the job for my own self-preservation. 

Later in life, during my time as an Office Manager in the corporate sector, and then as an Independent Curator in the art world, I became used to other women seeing me as a rival instead of a collaborator. I experienced competition, tone policing, gaslighting, betrayal, ghosting, the denial of achievements, and the taboo (amounting to hatred) toward all women in leadership roles.  And I came to see that the maximum harm came from what women are most skilled at - the passive-aggressive dynamic.
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These kinds of debilitating behaviors and unspoken taboos are still a given in many circles today, but things are finally shifting and changing. Abuse is always painful (especially for sensitives and empaths), but being acutely aware of how I was treated by other women allowed me to identify recurring patterns, and to avoid this toxicity in myself and others. I owe my sanity these days to the many kindred spirit sisters I have met, who have been doing the same transitional work. We debate like adults, agree to disagree, accept difference and still offer support, and continue to step forward into new territory – while still loving each other along the way.  With hands raised in gratitude and hope, here’s to our continued transformation.     PEGI EYERS 
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​Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon
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LEGACY

8/1/2022

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Pegi Eyers

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My personal mythology has come to mean standing on a foundation of ethnoculture, or the specificity of my Scots Gaelic and Anglo ancestors. Where were they from? How, when and why did they come to Turtle Island? I continue to explore these questions, but ambiguities and contradictions continue to arise.

In July of 2022 I travelled to my hometown of Orillia, Ontario and along with other touchstones, lodestones, soul maps and important places, I visited the town cemetery where the oldest and largest mausoleum holds the bones of my ancestors. In the first wave of Settler Colonialism, they arrived in 1832 and founded the town. I don't feel the sting so much of "orphan syndrome" but there was never a huge emphasis in my family on honoring family history, which is troubling and a deep source of grief. We do have a family genealogist who kept the family tree, but most of the important stories I had to find out for myself.

From my positionality today (who I am in 2022) my body [somatically] formed this gesture in front of the tomb, but the actual meaning is far from clear. Yes, on some level I am proud of these people, they are the ones who came before to make me who I am. They are my flesh, blood, bones and DNA, and their struggles and triumphs are also my own. I feel connected, and I own my people. My gesture might be praise, and benediction.

And yet my gesture also feels like a blocking - to keep the antiquated views of my ancestors in the past where they belong. Their white superiority, religious insularity, earth domination, land ownership, and the impulse to re-create their own society on lands that were already inhabited by the civilizations of Indigenous Peoples, are all anathema to my personal beliefs. In fact, the attitudes they carried are the same toxicities that have culminated in the polycrisis we face today of racism, genocide, structural inequality, out-of-control capitalism, and ecocide leading to devastating climate change.

How can I fully embrace my own ancestors, whose worldviews have caused so much harm to people, lands and waters? These are the contradictions that arise (there are more layers) as my relationship to my ancestors continues to deepen, and in some ways, push me farther away.  I honestly don't know if there is a way to resolve this tension.
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uncolonize
INHERITANCE

My ancestors knew
the whirl
of the cyclone
the writhing,
twisting force
the threat
of swirling knots

They knew
how to dwell
in the eye
the arc of stillness

They knew the briny tangles would smooth to billowy ribbons
They knew how to ride them, gliding to another shore.

Sheryl J. Shapiro

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Original Art by Pegi Eyers
Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. ​
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The "Global Civilization" Myth

4/3/2022

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A Critique of the Cosmopolis Project by Pegi Eyers

“In contemporary language, we are citizens of the planet.” 
The Cosmopolis Project

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Humanity, Earth, and Cosmos
www.cosmopolisproject.org/what-is-a-cosmopolis

As citizens of the planet it is probably not a “global civilization” that we need, as the very notion is doomed to failure! Instead, what we really need is to cultivate the respect and tolerance for cultural diversity that has been missing (so far) in human history. For millennia we flourished in diverse networks or collectives separated by geography, yet to this day we still lack the necesssary skills for intercultural learning, or integration for common causes. As a solution, the “cosmopolis” myth is deeply flawed, as it implies homogeneity, a uniform monoculture or some kind of “global order,” which goes against natural law. In reality, it is a great diversity of species, including human variations, that are critical to healthy and thriving populations and ecosystems on our beleaguered planet.

Also, one has to wonder who will be in charge of this universality, and what the default would be for this “global civilization.” Oh wait - it will be dominated by the western world (as usual)~! Unfortunately the Western academics and New Agers who promote  “global civilization” narrative fail to take into account the opinions of thousands of other cultural groups who do not see the world through a Western lens. Ask any Indigenous person who has adapted to a particular bioregion and flourished within the ethnoculture that arose from that particular bioregion if they are interested in a “global civilization.” To earth-emergent societies living within the carrying capacity of the land and within the limits of natural law, the very notion is ludicrous.

Other biased claims are that the “vision of a an ordered cosmos radiant with wholeness, relatedness and beauty,” and the idea of “living nature” have only appeared within the Western tradition. Again, excluding thousands of other cultural groups that have reached the same visionary conclusions, this narrow view must border on white supremacy. And the Western perspectivism employed by the Cosmopolis Project is another failure, with the assumption being that “civilization” is the only correct way for humanity to be living on the planet. As it turns out, the exact same Western science that the Cosmopolis Project applauds, has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, that pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer societies are the most healthy for human life.

In the face of looming climate change and massive collapse, humanity needs to make a serious course-correction, but it is astounding how off-track Western academics can be. The “global civilization fantasy” denies the importance of locally-rooted culture, and ignores and bypasses what is precious and sacred about the specific place and community where one is actually living. Having a focus on the “fulfillment of the cosmic process,” or “a felt sense of the transcendent” only reinforces an abstract, vertical worldview away from, and separate from the Earth, instead of a horizontal vision that would encompass the home landscapes we know and love. Realizing ourselves as “living embodiments of a vast cosmic process” must at the same time be grounded in a revered focus on the terraforms, plants, creatures, cycles, and elements of nature in our own bioregions.
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Art by Sam Brown
​As we move away from the alienation that was imposed on us by the scientific paradigm, we begin to reconnect to the land and the cycles of all life, and to engage in the recovery of our deepest ancestral knowledge. Accessing our own specific pre-colonial heritage(s) allows us to hold the tension between microcosm and macrocosm, and enhances our ability to preserve the distinct ethnographic practices that reflect our “oneness” with our beloved landscape, the places we call home. Honoring the multiplicity that is the human experience, we begin to see that all beings are distinctly separate but forever connected in Earth Community, and in the end, we become empowered to embrace a much-needed Unity in Diversity with the circle of all life.
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​Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. ​
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Power Under Abuse

3/7/2022

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by poplar rose
Reprinted from Hawthorn Heart ~ October 26, 2017

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"The classic gaslighter is a sociopath, calculated and relentless in breaking down their victim's self-confidence, self-esteem, self-trust, and even sense of sanity. This sort of gaslighting is extreme and, one hopes, relatively rare, but I see a much more common, subtle and insidious form of gaslighting all the time in my work and life.  I call it 'shadow gaslighting.'  It's generally understood that we each have an unconscious aspect of self that influences us and drives our behavior.  Beneath conscious awareness, this unconscious self is sometimes called our shadow. Our shadow consists of the parts of our self that we have disowned or denied because they are frightening, disappointing, socially unacceptable, or because they threaten our positive self-image."  Justice Schanfarber "Gaslighting, Shadow and Abuse: How Protecting Our Unconscious Can Sabotage Our Relationships"
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Please keep in mind before you read this........
 
The incredibly complex dynamics explored in this piece often feel impossible, or terrifying to name.  My hope is that a phrase like "power under abuse" (which is similar to, but also distinct from, the concept of lateral violence) will allow us to more easily identify and communicate the abuse we are experiencing and witnessing, and at the same time, I feel cautious offering this kind of shorthand phrase as a tool to talk about abuse. So much of my work is about embracing complexity, and buzz words are so often reductive.
 
So please know - I am trusting you here, dear audience.
 
I am trusting you to hear the carefulness in my words, and I am asking you to hold that carefulness too.
 
Here we go:
 
When thinking about abuse, most people imagine someone holding power over someone else. We envision a masculine person standing over a smaller, quieter feminine person, and often they are yelling or being physically violent. Undoubtedly, this stereotypical kind of abuse is prolific, and yet  power over abuse  is decidedly not the only kind of abuse that exists.
 
Within Hawthorn Heart, my online class for boundary skills and protection magic for femmes, witches and healers, I define abuse as "irreparable harm caused in relationship."
 
By "irreparable harm" I don't mean that healing from abuse is impossible.  Healing from abuse is a kind of death and rebirth. Abuse involves harm that haunts; abuse limits our sense of freedom and safety; and it shapes the terrain of our capacity to love, trust and connect.
 
"Power under abuse" occurs when someone who has less power, behaves abusively towards someone who has more power.
 
Sometimes this difference in power is real and concrete (for example a feminine person being abusive towards a masculine person). Sometimes this difference in power is tenuous, or falsely constructed (for example, someone lying about or downplaying how much financial privilege they have, in order to manipulate someone into giving them money). Sometimes it feels almost impossible to track the difference in power between the two parties, because they both hold so many different identities, privileges, and complex experiences of oppression (this is where "power under abuse" can be similar to lateral violence).
 
"Power under abuse" dynamics happen when the person who is behaving abusively perpetually identifies as a victim, and as a result of identifying this way, becomes unwilling/unable to take accountability for the harm caused by their actions. At the same time, the person with more power (real, perceived or falsely constructed) often tends to feel incapable of setting boundaries, or asking for accountability because they feel a strong sense of shame or guilt because of their (real/falsely constructed) sense of privilege/power.
 
In coming to understand "power under abuse," it's important to note that trauma perpetuates and enables black and white thinking, and trauma reduces the brain's ability to understand and hold nuance.  When we are traumatized (which we all are to some degree) it becomes harder to track these kind of nuanced power dynamics.  Many of us, when confronted with abuse, find well-worn comfort in labelling one person as the victim, and one person as the oppressor or abuser.  Often we apply these labels based on the identities held by the people who are in conflict. The person with more power is quickly labelled as abusive, and the person with less power is quickly perceived to be a victim. Evidence that runs contrary to this binary label system can lead to extreme anxiety, confusion, and denial that clings to simplicity.

And yet, understanding power in such a one-dimensional way disempowers us all.
 
Before I move on to the list of what "power under abuse" can look like, I want to note that in this piece I am stepping out of my typical voice as an author.  I don't tend to write things like abuse checklists.  More often, I write personal narratives, a genre that lends itself more easily to nuance and complexity than checklists do.
 
I wrote this piece, which employs a checklist, definition and shorthand phrase, because I believe it is desperately needed.
 
It's possible this list will make you feel defensive, and that's OK. This work is confusing and difficult, but it's also necessary and brave.  Take a deep breath, and take care of yourself as you read this. If you notice yourself becoming triggered and activated, set the boundaries you need to feel safe, including disregarding what I have to say, if that's what feels true or needed for you. And please know, my words are imbued with an intention toward healing, not with an intention of enabling abusers.
 
It's important to name that the abuse tactics I'm about to list stem from survival mechanisms that are related to trauma and oppression. Many of these actions have a way they can be executed, where they are healthy and even necessary.  What I am listing here are examples of actions that lead to more harm and more abuse, rather than clearer boundaries, repair or conflict resolution.
 
Here we are called to notice causality, responsibility, intent and impact.
 
I also need to acknowledge that I could not have written this piece alone. This piece is a result of deep personal learning that comes from within my intimate relationships. This piece represents what I've learned from my work witnessing and supporting community to survive and heal through violence. And this work came through support from my counsellor, my partner, my friends, and colleagues (brilliant and generous folks like Tada Hozumi, Rain Crowe and Molly Meehan).
 
I don't claim that this piece is definitive, or applicable to everyone's experience.
 
I am simply attempting to mirror back what I have witnessed in myself and others.  I am offering you what I have learned, in the hope that it will help you better understand your own experience, and encourage you to pursue justice and repair.
 
And with all that in mind....

This is what "power under abuse" can look like:

- Using shame and social justice language to justify entitlement to someone else's time, skills, resources or capacity.

- Telling someone that their basic needs or boundaries (which are distinct from their comfort) are not valid because they hold an identity that is more privileged than yours    

- Pressuring or forcing someone to have sex with you, and then making claims about their politics when they say no, or name that you were sexually violent towards them

- Accusing someone of controlling or abusing you because they are requesting accountability, or transparent conflict resolution with you, for harm you caused or participated in.

- Accusing someone (often publicly) of harming you in ways that did not happen.

- Refusing to absorb or validate reality checks offered by friends and loved ones who witness abuse in your dynamic, and justifying this deflection by stating that abuse "can only exist when power or privilege is held over someone else."

- Refusing to accept support from anyone other than the person you are being abusive towards, and leveraging shame or guilt at their power and privilege to pressure them not to set boundaries with you.

- Denying, erasing or minimizing the support you receive from the person you are being abusive toward, both in private and in front of other people.

- Acting confused or dismissive when the person whose care you have erased or minimized, expresses feeling frustrated or hurt by you (often this is done in front of other people and the person experiencing the abuse is framed as over-reacting or just having an unrelated hard time).

- Accusing someone of abandoning you when they set boundaries or reach limits of capacity to care for you.

- Refusing to set your own boundaries (when it was possible for you to do so) and then making statements like "you made me do this."

- Calling for ostracization or punishment that is not proportionate to the harm done (i.e. "going nuclear" when the situation does not call for this, or simple conflict resolution would have sufficed).

- Constantly accusing other people of being oppressive, while simultaneously being unwilling to unpack your own privilege or examine how you harm or hold power over others.

- Not acknowledging the oppression experienced by the person you are abusing, and/or convincing the person you are abusing that they have more power (in general and specifically over you) than they actually do.

- Refusing to acknowledge care, labour and resources given to you by the person you are in conflict with, and instead characterizing them as only ever having harmed you.

- Refusing to address conflict in a way that honours the integrity and humanity of everyone involved.

- Stealing from the person you are being abusive toward, and either denying you stole, or claiming you have a right to the thing you stole because you are more oppressed than the person you stole from (which may or may not actually be true).

- Accusing someone of triangulating or breaking confidentiality when they seek witnesses or support, to navigate the abusive dynamic they are in with you.

- Claiming to be "getting support" and "calling in witnesses" when you are spreading rumours and triangulating.

- Weaponizing and applying pop psychology terms like "toxic," "narcissist" and "empath" to create a hyper-simplistic narrative of what happened between you and the person you were abusive towards, where you lack an understanding of what these terms were intended to describe.

- Labelling confusion, miscommunication or difference of opinion as gaslighting.  
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"Power under abuse" relies on (often deeply unconscious) gaslighting, that leaves the person who is experiencing the abuse feeling like they are an abusive or oppressive person, when the situation is often not so black and white.
 
People are not born abusive. Abuse results from cycles of trauma, cycles that are often many generations in the making. Abuse originates from maladaptive coping and attachment mechanisms that we learn from our parents, our friends, our lovers, the patriarchy, the deep home wounds of colonization, and from the profound separation and dehumanization of oppression.
 
Yet none of what I just wrote, is meant to excuse abuse.
 
If there is anything you can take away from what I've written here, is this - compassion for trauma does not excuse the need for accountability.
 
Compassion for trauma might make the use of abusive tactics understandable, but it does not make them excusable.
 
When people are experiencing abusive harm, they are allowed to set boundaries with the person who harmed them, even if they hold more power than the person who harmed them.
 
What I crave are more tools and models that teach us how to step into our "right sized power." I want us to be able to name without shame, but not statically inhabit, both our victimhood, and our power and privilege. Being victimized is a tender and powerful state, and while I believe we should offer deep empathy and compassion to ourselves and others when we experience victimization, I don't feel it is fair or just to enable someone to continue enacting abusive patterns, because they have been abused or disempowered themselves.

Enabling or ignoring abuse simply allows abuse to continue. Whereas confronting abuse and (as much as is possible within our capacity) holding everyone involved in abusive dynamics as whole human beings with complex histories, can sometimes allow abuse cycles to be stopped and healed.
 
If you are experiencing a dynamic like this, I highly recommend you seek support from a counsellor or mediator. Restorative justice and community accountability processes can also be instrumental here, for healing from this kind of abuse. Whether you enacted or received it - or both - requires sitting with what happened, and untangling where you have done harm to others and where harm was done to you.
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​This is not easy work, and it is best done in community.

If you want to unpack how "power under abuse" has impacted your life, you can continue your learning through the following resources:
The work of > Justice Schanfarber particularly:
>Is Victim a Dirty Word? Thoughts on Victim-Blaming, Victim Denial, Victim Mentality and what the Victim Archetype can Teach Us
(justiceschanfarber.com)
>Gaslighting by the Unconscious - How our Shadow can Sabotage our
Relationship  (justiceschanfarber.com)
>Toxic Relationship, Toxic partner. Is your Relationship Unhealthy?
(justiceschanfarber.com)

"Healing and Thriving After Abuse" > Kelly-Ann Maddox 
Healing and Thriving After Abuse | YouTube

"The Revolution Starts at Home" > edited by Ching-in Chen, Jai Dulani and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
The Revolution Starts at Home (akpress.org)
​
"Setting Boundaries As a White Ally" > Tada Hozumi 
Setting Boundaries as a White Ally: Why its Important, why its Challenging and how to do it Ethically | Tada Hozumi

"7 ways Social Justice Language Can Become Abusive in Intimate Relationships" > Kai Cheng Thorn
Seven Ways Social Justice Language Can Become Abusive in Intimate Relationships | openDemocracy
 
Episode One, Season 21 of South Park shows Cartman creating a false victim identity, and enacting "power under abuse."

You can access the work of poplar rose here:
poplar rose | The Little Red Tarot Blog
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​This article was reprinted as a public service by Pegi Eyers, author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. ​
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