As our circle of care, compassion and concern expands, it still leaves someone and some things outside. There is still an Us and Them. Until there isn't.

So even at worldcentric, there is brutality, just because someone and some things are left out of those we see as We and Us.

Brutality at worldcentric

Specifically, there is still the brutality against non-human species, treated as slaves, imprisoned just for being non-human, killed at will, some of them even subject to the equivalent of genocide. And there is the brutality against future generations, making decisions today which will seriously affect them for generations to come, through poisoning the air, water and soil, through destroying ecosystems they are dependent on for their survival and quality of life, through setting in motion massive changes in the global climate, through leaving them to deal with the most toxic substances imaginable (from nuclear reactors and other industries) for thousands and thousands of generations.

This brutality is not resolved until planetcentric, where the circle of "us" includes all species, ecosystems, the Earth as a whole, and past and future generations.

Even here, there is a brutality (which seems very subtle from ethno and worldcentric levels) where only life is seen as we and us, and the rest is left out. This form of brutality is not resolved until Kosmocentric, where all is recognized as Spirit, as awake empty form.

As Spirit beyond and embracing all polarities, including that of nonliving and living, life and death, form and formless, seeing and seen.

Not subtle when seen from the next spiral out

For those at worldcentric, the brutality at ethnocentric, which includes sexism, racisms, homophobia, islamophobia and so on, is obvious and coarse.

For those at planetcentric, the brutality at worldcentric, which includes speciesism and lack of concern for future generations, is obvious and coarse.

And for those at Kosmocentric, the brutality at planetcentric, leaving out Spirit as awake emptiness and form, as seeing and seen, is obvious and coarse.

(For me, I see that the blindness of worldcentric is especially striking to me, especially as it plays itself out in public discourse, politics and the media. The blindness at ethnocentric is of course also pretty obvious, but here the majority of the western world agrees, at least in principle. And the brutality at planetcentric is also pretty obvious, but I don't expect many to see this one, yet.)

Resolved in one way, not another

Saying that the brutality at one level of centricity is resolved at the next is true in one way, and not in another.

The systematic brutality is resolved. We are no longer blind to it, we have to acknowledge it, we are motivated to find a more real resolution to it.

At the same time, living it is a process. Our motivation and view may be of the Earth and all its parts as Us, but finding real-life choices that takes that into account is messy and deepens over time.

It changes with what options are available to us in the moment, what information and knowledge we have, and it changes with changing circumstances. It is in flux, just as anything in the world of form is flux.

Labels: kosmocentric, planetcentric, worldcentric