Dear friends,
When two men in their eighties with 160 years of combined experience speak about the fragility of democracy, perhaps we should listen.
My conversation with Dr. Jed Diamond—author of 17 books, in the same men's group for 46 years—took an unexpected turn when he shared a poem that left an entire conference hall in tears 32 years ago.
But first, his warning: In May 2016, six months before anyone took Donald Trump seriously, Jed predicted Trump would become president. He saw disconnected young men following the same pattern that precedes every authoritarian takeover: isolation, economic desperation, and hunger for someone to blame.
"We could lose our democracy in less than a year,"
Jed told me, comparing our moment to how quickly Hitler transformed Germany. "The scapegoating has already begun—first the immigrants, then others." Then he shared Clarissa Pinkola Estés' poem "Father Earth":
"There is a two million year old man no one knows... He has laid upon his two million year old lover all this time, protecting her with his old back, with his old scarred back."
The poem reminds us that our current crisis spans just 6,000 years in a 2-million-year human story. Domination culture is the aberration, not our destiny.
Every morning for five years, Jed walks the same neighborhood route. People know him. They check on him. When he organized community walks, 300 people showed up. The footprints are still painted on the streets.
His Zen community in San Francisco had a practice: whenever gunshots rang out, someone would call "I'm coming!" and they'd flood the streets with peaceful presence. Now his town has people ready to witness if ICE agents come for neighbors.
"Connection and community," he said. "That's our only real defense."
Sometimes the most powerful intervention isn't a new system or supplement. Sometimes it's just being kind—starting with being kind enough to yourself to remove the things that make failure inevitable.
At 86, I'm beginning to understand. Not connection as a nice idea, but as survival strategy. Not community as social nicety, but as the force that has outlasted every tyrant in history.
Golden light,
Dr. Richard L. Miller
Links & Resources:
Jed Diamond’s Website: MenAlive.com
Jed Diamond’s Books
LinkedIn: Jed Diamond
Facebook: Jed Diamond
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My Other Books:
Psychedelic Medicine at the End of Life: Dying Without Fear (release date: November 5)
Freeing Sexuality: Psychologists, Consent Teachers, Polyamory Experts, and Sex Workers Speak Out
Psychedelic Wisdom: The Astonishing Rewards of Mind-Altering Substances
Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca
Integral Psychedelic Therapy (co-edited with Jason A. Butler & Genesee Herzberg)
