The Pain of Consciousness

Joanna Macy: Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World

Below is a short excerpt from this book.

"From news reports and life around us, we are bombarded with signals of distress--of job layoffs and homeless families, of nearby toxic wastes and distant famines, of arms sales and wars and preparation for wars. These stir within us feelings of fear, anger, and sorrow, even though we may never express them to others. By virtue of our humanity we share these deep responses. To be conscious in our world today is to be aware of vast suffering and unprecedented peril...

That pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world. It is not only natural, it is an absolutely necessary component of our collective healing. As in all organisms, pain has a purpose: it is a warning signal, designed to trigger remedial action.

The problem, therefore, lies not with our pain for the world, but in our repression of it. Our efforts to dodge or dull it surrender us to futility--or in systems' terms cut the feedback loop and block effective response."


It seems to me that Macy is explaining how commonly we recognize that there are serious problems in our rapidly globalizing world, but we don't want to experience the pain long enough, we don't trust in a grace of life enough, so that actual solutions or improvements could be made.

Perhaps in the shining light of a grace-filled God some of the problems that we recognize at least subconsciously could be addressed with faithful, collaborative, and passionate actions that proclaim the truth and dignity of all life and all people. Might this even be what a Just and Loving God calls for?