Modern western society is primarily characterized by the story of separation – separation from self, from others, and from nature. This separation has proven to be an insidious wound; the pain we seek to numb and the ‘now’ we seek to escape through distraction. Our self-soothing perpetuates systems predicated on our coping – mindless consumerism and the linear material economy that fuels it.

Separation has wreaked havoc on us, on our relationships, and on nature. Among what many call the “metacrisis” or “polycrisis,” we are faced with increasing rates of suicide among young people, a loneliness epidemic, and climate disaster. The stress of separation and the challenge of being human in the 21st century (what sociologists have coined “collective cascading trauma”) has been linked to autoimmune disease and higher rates of cancer. In the United States, the richest country in history, 60% of adults have a chronic disorder such as high blood pressure or diabetes, and over 40% have two or more conditions. Nearly 70% of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two.

The latest research regarding mitochondrial health, chromosomal telomeres, and epigenetics has empirically shown we are “coping ourselves to death.” In our coping, our authentic truth is exiled, buried under layers of callous behaviors and beliefs to the point of extreme disembodiment. In the words of Gabor Mate, these coping behaviors and beliefs “foster a shame-based view of self, distorts our view of the world, and alienates us from the present.”

The wound of separation has long been misdiagnosed and it is now festering. The social contagion of separation (what we often refer to as ‘othering’) is rapidly becoming worse. Polarization and social fragmentation, exacerbated by the loss of community-based collective sensemaking and driven by the greed of neoliberal techno-oligarchs, has ushered unprecedented challenges to civics and democracy, amplifying the faults of capitalism and globalism. The systems designed in a post-world war era are proving insufficient for a world whose population has quadrupled in 75 years – growing from 2.5 billion people in 1951 to over eight billion people in 2023. Our politics and economics are breaking under the strain, seeding fear, anxiety, suspicion, and uncertainty across the half of humanity (4+ billion people) who live in democracies.

Our separation from the wild world has perpetuated an extractive mindset in which nature is a resource rather than an inextricable link in a web of life, something to be broken into parts for our consumption. The human prosperity of the second half of the 20th century has come with tragic and detrimental impacts to animal and plant life around the world, ultimately leading to ecocide, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and carbon-induced global warming. In November 2019, a group of more than 13,000 scientists from 153 countries declared “clearly and unequivocally that the Earth is facing a climate emergency” and that without deep and lasting changes, the world’s people face “untold human suffering.”

What then shall we do? In the face of calamity, the dissonance of our world can be overwhelming. Feelings of hopelessness abound, what hope do we have? While individuality and separation run rampant, our thesis is this – our stories and our systems are inextricably connected. It has become glaringly apparent in recent years that healing our society, our culture, and our planet begins with healing the separation within ourselves. To create new systems we must write new stories. This is our hope and our invitation – to overcome the challenges of social fragmentation, climate catastrophe, and inflammatory disease endemic to industrialized society, we must each recognize and embrace the story of our connectedness. In our healing is the healing of the world.

This is why the Holon Institute exists; to co-create the conditions from which new stories may emerge, to activate the latent potential of human creativity, to illuminate new possibilities so that all life on earth may exist in right relationship to both the parts and the whole of existence. We aspire to be activators of connection in a fractured world and recognize ecological and spiritual renewal. We hope you join us on our journey to cultivate collective becoming – seeing and being seen, healing and integrating – while shaping the emergent future together.

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