A year ago, I pulled over on the roadside, mid-journey and mid-podcast, to scrawl this quote on the back of a receipt.
“The measure of a wise life is the imprint it leaves on other lives around it”
It seemed to contain the essence I was seeking. My mind returns to that roadside and the soothing tones of Krista Tippet describing our reckoning in the pandemic, lockdowns, and vaccine fights. COVID-19 was the pressing fear then, and I hoped if we got to the other side, we would be wiser.
We don’t seem wiser.
We have been flung from the eye of the pandemic, not into calm where we hoped to be, but into a spinning tornado of climate change, wars, economic downturns, TikTok filters, and artificial intelligence threats. All delivered in ever-shortening sound bites.
I feel the fear too. My individual insecurities and personal dramas pull me to the edge of a shouty media precipice. Survival screams. Do I have to shout back? Do I really have to make reels? Must I find something compelling to say every day? Do I sound interesting (with or without lipstick)? Please, make it stop.
This is the space I occupied last week as I prepared a free seminar for Prosocial World, a collaboration with the Evolution Institute. Cultural evolution shows that cooperative groups can work together and align with the needs of the individual for a better outcome all around.
In this talk, I unfold our stress context and the rising mental health problems, our ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach to treatments, and discuss a way out using a framework called DNA-V. This is based on evolutionary and contextual science and shows how we might release our individual fears by stepping into the collective wisdom of our groups. I walk through a method of opening up to others and discovering our finest capacities.
We can face the brewing storm if we pull together.
Listen in to the recording and build wisdom in your groups.
Best wishes, Louise
Learn with me at www.louisehayes.com.au
