Reminiscent of the muscle contraction caused by electrical stimulation and the ensuing tightening of one's grip around exposed wire, we tend to fixate on life-giving and life-sustaining systems and processes, which can range anywhere from habits and preferences, to traditions, commitments, institutions, and even empires.
One's consciousness can really seize upon a given commitment and continuously pursue it through all kinds of minor disruptions, reorganizing one's life and resources to maintain that commitment, so long as the disruptions aren't traumatic enough. For example, families getting together for the holidays every year amidst interpersonal conflict and intergenerational trauma, money troubles, cars breaking down, personal injuries and illnesses, and so on.
Not only are many of these fixations beneficial for those interested in the stability and continuity they can confer, they're often incredibly compelling, even when - and perhaps sometimes because - they are actively harmful and destructive to those left out of their sphere of protection.
"Life-giving and life-sustaining for whom?" is one of the questions that can threaten a given fixation. It is oftentimes the really large disruptive events that change what people think is possible, events which are substantial enough to dislodge people from their daily living patterns and commitments. For example, one of the less tangible - but no less consequential - things that the Covid pandemic did - and continues to do - was soften up the constitution of the body politic, and change what people thought was possible or usual.
It took the presence of a dangerous virus to temporarily and structurally change the daily living conditions of a lot of working people, who finding themselves in new living and working structures - however temporary it might have been - experienced the change of consciousness that a large living disruption affords, which caused them to re-evaluate their priorities, values, and preferences for living and working.
And the more catastrophes you encourage by maintaining a present destructive course, the more radicals you create who will eventually do the moving and changing for you.
