I was listening to Cornell West,
who described our catastrophic tolerance of disvalues for others,
situations we would never tolerate for ourselves,
disvalues like homelessness and hunger,
but also like random violence,
abuse and neglect,
lack of caring,
as a “conspiracy” of a dominating, oppressive, and competitive culture.

Conspiracy theories make me nervous about the theorist,
but West reassured us that he shares this concern,
yet even with all that concern taken into account,
perhaps this is a conspiracy
in the same sense that cultural and climate evolutions
always appear, in hindsight,
as if genius inspired,
intelligently planned
and spontaneously networked
a magically coincidental outcome.
Positive sometimes,
and sometimes more about this mystery
of tolerating oppressive and suppressive disvalues for others,
with apparent equanimity,
unaware of any cognitive dissonance,
without active antipathy,
or even passive empathy,
the total absence of compassion,
lack of mindfulness,
lack of consciousness;
unconsciousness.

Our own hypocrisy of self v. other values v. tolerable disvalues
are hypnotic conspiracies?
Magical miracles?

Yet, conspiracy or not,
if self-contentment is possible
while hypocritically accepting intolerable losses and suffering,
abuse and neglect, for other:
species,
Earth-plus-atmosphere ecosystem,
nations,
cultures,
neighborhoods,
even other family members,
then we sometimes would choose words like
irrational,
rabid,
irresponsible,
lack of appropriate accountability,
lack of capacity for empathy or bonding,
lack of awareness, consciousness,
hateful,
stupid,
mental disease,
sociopathology,
ecopathology,
a hypocritical living death cuts by a thousand ego-feathered knives.

We work this magically competitive hypocrisy with each other,
on each other,
against each other,
and sometimes with each other–
we call that humor.

I do not feel possessed
when my internal ecological voice
tells me that my monocultural competitive economic environment
is over-invested in undervaluing significant dimensions
of who we naturally and cooperatively (permaculturally) are,
our care-giving and loving,
our tenderness and justice-seeking,
our tendency to side with the underdog and the understory,
our endless fascination with root systems and nutritious blossoms,
seasonal development patterns and the weather,
birdsong and surf sounds,
regular breathing and heart-beat rhythms,
blood flow nutritional capacities,
the consumption and production of nutrients
within any paradigm that might come to mind.

I get it that I live in a culture educating ourselves,
about Darwin’s “evolution is the survival of the fittest cooperative relationships”
by simply omitting the last two words;
cultural hypocrisy miraculously conspired through our sins of omission,
more salient than our grace of cooperative inclusion,
because of collective cognitive dissonance
where we need collective cognitive confluence.

Perhaps a more resonant resolution of consciousness
calls us to slow down and decompose our analysis of deviance
as sometimes negative and sometimes positive
but always some of both.

I struggle to hold a heuristic safe-space for positive deviance.
My cognitive dissonance radar
learns to perceive dissonance itself as having two faces.
In this way
I begin to claim my positive deviant place
in our shared orthodoxy of truth and goodness,
beauty and diverse polycultural integrity,
in our “unitarianism” our synergy (B. Fuller),
our love.
If I am challenged to include you in this shared orthodoxy
(of truth and goodness and beauty and justice, etc.–the “positive values”)
then my sense of ecosystemic balance
is dissonant enough to exclude you
from your rightful place in our radically cooperative eco-space.

I tend to over-react to your negative deviance,
all that nastiness, really?!
because of our culturally collective cognitive dissonance
about your coincidental positive deviance,
OK, so you are loyal to a fault and a good cook,
and the clothes actually do smell and feel better when you do the laundry,
although it is the environmental expense that we actually disagree about,
whether it is significant to our collective future,
or not,
or something in between,
some place that we might actually find
and consensually agree about
and then go on to those other kinds of sensuality,
but I think I have side-railed here.

Perhaps we enjoy solidarity in rooting for the underdog
in empathizing with those who appear
with a magical potential of a positive deviant outcome.
We so hope the underdog might win this round
in part
because we thereby retain a ray of hope
that we too may someday win
with all our undervalued, unsung, underdogged traits,
cooperative preferences,
nurturing instincts,
suffering and struggling with
my over-dog egocentric cultural landscapes,
my environment,
my internally encultured ego (Left-brained) consciousness.

I always cast my ego in the role of underdog,
just as my Right brain casts our permaculturally cooperative eco-consciousness
in the role of Superdog.

This internally chaotic conspiracy of self-doubt
about ego’s capacity to live fully,
integrally,
creatively,
honestly,
compassionately,
with appropriate integrity of self-disclosure,
without the embarrassment of closeted hypocrisy,
dropping our considerable weapons of mutual immunity
and cognitive dissonance,
is also the boundary face of rediscovering our Right-brain’s ecocenter,
our Beloved non-verbal Communication center,
comprehensively conscious,
resonant and resolved,
optimized and polypathically densely nutritious,
only through bicamerally synergetic confluence,
active peace,
love,
integrity of shared meaning and purpose
to the very core of our mutually messianic
mutually mentoring
co-redemptive
ego-and-eco balanced chi-soul.

Interior Landscaped Ego (left)
and Cooperative Exterior Landscaped EcoEarth (right-elder)
DNA/RNA fueled and functional frequencies
coincidentally confluate,
stir
decompose
to regenerate.