Structural Illness, Structural Healing
Injustice, pollution and greed are not separable from how we're embodied. The shapes we inhabit shape us, and we them, in a continuous conversation between form and being. Beyond our political and economic systems, the architecture of our homes and cities, our schedules and our bodies, reveal what our culture values most, who and what it disdains and what it refuses to address. This includes the architecture of our minds. We speak with the voices of excess. Plastic whispers through us. When did we resign ourselves to obfuscation? How did disconnection seduce us?
In the ways we construct our cities, especially highways and public housing, barriers to equality are literally concrete. And it's not just equality that is endangered by the shape of things. A recent article in the Guardian argues that skyscrapers are obelisks of misogyny, 'upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky'. For women, every inch of the high-rise experience poses a potential threat to safety, from the parking garage to the elevator, and the office cubicles beyond. In general, enclosed buildings and their immediate environs are no place for the vulnerable. Danger is built in. Grenfell Tower comes to mind. And, during pandemic lockdowns, domestic violence and child abuse have skyrocketed. Of course, it's not just skyscrapers that pose a threat: as women, we have to think twice about hiking, camping, and traveling alone. We've even learned to clutch our keys like brass knuckles when walking somewhere at night.
By design and choice of materials, public schools are soulless. The hard surfaces of regimentation are constant reminders to conform. And, for the increasing number of children who are autistic, dyslexic, abused, or simply sensitive, every wall and corridor can feel like an attack. In the third grade, I transferred from a progressive, private school run by a group of parents, to the public school down the street. Overnight, I went from running barefoot on grass to skinning my knees on asphalt; from wearing shorts and a T-shirt to a mandatory below-the-knee dress; from gathering in circles to standing in straight lines. I remember one recess spent huddling with my friend, Roger, on a hard, wooden bench, leaning against the chain link fence, our ears pressed to a tiny transistor radio, listening to President Kennedy as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. After that came the 'drop drills', where we practiced diving beneath our desks in case of nuclear war, as if collective delusion and melted Formica could save us.
The great architect and teacher, Christopher Alexander, said, Without common land no social system can survive. Common land in this context is distinct from parks, playgrounds and other public facilities. By common land, he means areas for people to gather, accessible to all, where children can safely play; spaces that encourage people going about their daily lives to be in regular, fluid connection with each other in ways unique to their community. And enough land must be common, he warns, so that private land doesn't dominate it psychologically. That translates to twenty-five percent of the total land in a neighborhood cluster of houses.
In pre-colonial times, the commons were open spaces that served as a buffer between human settlements and the wild. These spaces were owned and tended by the entire community because everyone depended on them for hunting, fodder and foraging. Sacred trees and protected animals flourished there. The commons were essential to the health of both human and other-than-human communities. Ecologically, these edge zones significantly increase agricultural productivity because higher diversity of insects and birds improves pollination. The 'green manure' used for mulching prevents erosion and stabilizes rainfall as well as microbial life. Alas, European colonizers held private property as a sacred indicator of civilized progress, and the vast commons of India, Africa, and the Americas were privatized, decimating natural systems as millions of people were pushed into servitude and poverty.
As Earth seeks to heal Herself, we are being invited to cooperate, though the terms of participation can be harsh. Over the past few months, I have joined in meditative journeys with five other women, in which we have gotten explicit messages from Covid-19. In our first journey, the virus informed us that it isn't an individual but a community - a collective being in a continuously moving exchange of balancing and rebalancing. It told us that it's not here to kill us but to clear us, to wake us up, and instructed us to stop thinking that we know, stop looking for quick answers. It asked us to listen, instead, to the cries of the world - to 'bear them and be them'. To learn to see from another perspective, and through the eyes of all the animals. To 'wait the waiting.' It said that this is the time to face the grief of living outside of right relationship. The outcome of what's happening now depends on what we do with this opportunity. When we remember how connected we are, we will heal.
For decades, heart disease and cancer have been the leading causes of death in the United States. Our hearts are broken. Our bodies are being devoured from within. But safety cannot be created at the end of a gun. Walls cannot protect us from a poisoned environment. The antidote to personal terror is the recognition of common jeopardy. The gift of common jeopardy is the possibility of mutual protection. Mutual protection begins with a sense of belonging and the willingness to become hospitable to love.
