Finding something sacred outside of ourselves
Unchecked capitalism has this way of taking in even the best intentioned of movements and spitting them out into something placid:
- Ancient religious teachings in the form of yoga became mass commercialized products, where spending more for a well-decorated environment directly translate to marketed “well-being”
- Movements to hold businesses accountable to protect the planet become a branding opportunity for companies with a fundamentally unsustainable business model
- And as big pharma & big business try to cash in on a naturally-growing, free plant-medicine psilocybin, psychedelics are at the same risk of what already happened with legal marijuana
It can feel like nothing is sacred.
That is the issue: a growing lack of reverence for something bigger than ourselves. A precipitous decline in the sacred.
While self-care acts were historically a part of human health for millennia before the modern medicine system developed, the self-care movement of today–from yoga to nutrition–was popularized by black communities in America as a way to develop resiliency for the civil rights and liberation movements (TeenVogue, International Self-Care Foundation).
That is, there was a clear thread between one’s own wellness and the wellness of the community at large. It was about developing resiliency to be present enough to show up for the larger community.
Over time, mainstream culture has misidentified the external for the internal, treating the outside environment as something to be consumed, rather than cared for.
Focusing only on the self in self-care is like trying to fill an infinite well. The self becomes what we worship, and we lose the sacred.
As renowned writer David Foster Wallace once said,
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. — “This is Water”
What’s Next for Self-Care
The most powerful statement we can make is to reclaim self-care as a free act, and the benefactors as other people.
Self-care has the potential to move mountains when we make it sacred and not commercial.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of self-care as a commercialized act. It can seem like merely existing requires us to buy buy buy.
Is it any wonder we see consumption hawked as a growing antidote to our collective unwellness? (“Can Shopping Improve Customer Wellbeing?” Quinine Design)
This is where self-indulgence gets confused for self-care.
Self-care as a Sacred Act
Self-care as the sacred challenges us to ask, but what if this hyper-consumerist society is at the root of so much mental unwellness?
In hyper-consumerist societies our every relationship is mediated via transaction. That makes co-opting the self-care movement the perfect business proposition, when your very product continues to create the need for its use.
It’s the same reason we ought to be suspect of a giant tech corporation promoting a complete disengagement from our bodies and movement into a hyper-advertised digital sphere as the “solution” for connection.
“[The metaverse is] really this kind of very magical sensation, and it’s extremely human and in a lot of ways it’s like the Holy Grail of the types of social experiences that a lot of people at Meta have wanted to build for a long time.”
“I think [Meta] care[s] more about the way people connect (than other companies)… if we succeed in this it will be because we care more about that problem, and build even more deeply than all the other folks”
- Mark Zuckerberg (Austin American Statesman)
Are these quotes from an Onion article?
How could someone be suggesting more of the same technologies that have led to feelings of isolation, insecurity, and general unwellness?
Editor Stephen Moore expands on the backwardness with the “metaverse” as a solution to our ‘connection’ problem in this Medium article:
“There was also the troublesome irony behind the purpose of the technology. Zuckerberg continually describes the Metaverse as a tool to connect with people. While there will be some interesting uses for the technologies, the bottom line is that this is another step away from physical interaction with people. A Metaverse world is potentially dangerous to society, breeding depression, addiction and mental health issues. But never mind all that — you can buy cool shit that you can’t afford in real life! (In fairness, you might not be able to afford it online either.)”
So, if we can’t rely on large corporations for our self-care needs –though maybe for self-indulgence–, and it’s probably counter-productive to do so, what’s next?
Rekindling the Sacred
So what does sacred self-care look like? Through simple practices, self-care can re-own it’s powerful roots, before it was corrupted by mass commercialization and consumption.
- Self-care can involve skill-sharing, where a community teaches each other wellness practices as trade.
- It can mean setting personal boundaries, for example, taking time away from work without checking in,
- or starting a small garden and sharing the literal fruits with your neighbors.
- It can be journaling each morning, or touching your bare feet to the grass at sunset, finding reverence in a forest, or soothing in a cup of tea.
As for now, most of us need some form of money, so circulating that back into the community isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
But to say that self-care is free is to re-own our ability to make ourselves well, if we do so for and by each other.
