How can we reweave the fabric of humanity to create a world where everyone's deepest needs are met? How do we even know what our deepest needs are - for security (physical and emotional), freedom, connection and meaning? In part 1 of 2, Miki Kashtan gives us answers - and a vision of the future.
Practical visionary Miki Kashtan has devoted her life to the exploration and practice of non violent communication: to finding ways in which choice can become a central part of human existence: the capacity to set aside the patriarchal wounds of separation, scarcity and powerlessness and to choose instead, connection, flow and the ability to meet the needs of the whole of the web of life. In this two-part podcast, she lays out the baselines of choice, of the ways we can think and feel and be beyond the confines of our patriarchal system, ahead of part 2, where we explore the futures we could reach if we all committed to choice and change.
Miki Kashtan website:
https://mikikashtan.org
Books:
Article on the disempowerment of our ancestors:
https://thefearlessheart.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/From-Obedience-and-Shame-to-Freedom-and-Belonging.pdf(relevant detail here: In Goettner-Abendroth’s account, on the other hand, it’s specific events that change the experience and result in different choices leading to different actions. In other words, it’s stress and trauma on a large scale that interfere with the spontaneous unfolding of trusting relationships and love. The scale has to be large enough to overwhelm the capacity of a group or culture to metabolize stressful events within its finite resources and resilience. In the case of the “Kurgan” culture that Gimbutas identified, the possible causes could be the flooding of the black sea
[1] and/or the desertification of large swaths of land on which many groups depended for their survival. Both of these events pushed large numbers and groups of people outside the bounds of their previous modes of subsistence, thereby creating both trauma and a clash between survival and their manner of living.
[2]
It is almost impossible, I believe, for our modern minds to grasp the calamity of what these waves of invasions from the Kurgans westward signified, because we no longer have the lived sensibility of what it’s like to live in a peaceful, life-loving, egalitarian culture in unity with nature and each other. I continue to contemplate this description of it and to extrapolate to the present to be able to grasp the loss and begin to mourn it, on behalf of all of humanity:
“when [the Kurgans’] barrow-type graves appeared in Europe for the first time (primarily containing males with weapons), nearly 700 major habitation sites, representing a rich fabric of cultural and technological developments, disintegrated after flourishing undisturbed for many hundreds of years.” (Marler 179)
[1] See Ryan et al, “An Abrupt Drowning of the Black Sea Shelf”,
Marine Geology, 138 (1997) 119-126, where evidence is provided of a major, cataclysmic flooding of the Black Sea, which is now believed to be the source of mythological accounts such as that of Noah’s ark in the bible (not the only one in the region).
[2] See
The Rule of Mars for several overlapping accounts of these events.)
What is Accidental Gods - The Thrutopian Podcast?
Another World IS still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose - and now it's collapsing around us. So how do we co-create a Thrutopian future that we'd all be proud to leave as our legacy?
What stories can we weave of possibility? Of transformation? What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?
What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that really matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves, between ourselves and each other, between ourselves and the Web of Life - so that we can reclaim our birthright as self-conscious nodes in the web of life?
We can do this. Some of us already are. Every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being, courageous pathfinders who are exploring the emergent edge of inter-becoming.
As a species, we have all the answers, we just haven't yet crafted all the new stories and woven them into a future that works. We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.
Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.
Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
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