OF COLLECTIVE GRIEF & THE OBSERVER EFFECT

When our world becomes a graveyard for children

I am taking some time off from sharing my essays from Greenland (they will all appear in good time, promise!) because I feel the urge to write about a contemporary issue instead.

In the English language survivor’s guilt is a term for the condition of persistent mental and emotional stress experienced by someone who has survived an incident or traumatic event in which others died. In the current version of the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders used by psychiatrists and clinicians) it is classified as a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.

In German we find the word Weltschmerz. It literally means world pain. It was coined in the Romantic period, where it referred to an individual’s sense that reality can never meet the expectations of what the human mind conjures up. Today it has the connotation of an acute sense of suffering, tuning into all the suffering in our world (perhaps even of Mother Earth herself?)

In this essay I am using it more literally, as a word for the world pain we all witness every day again, in our screen-based world, where a 24/7 global feed of traumatic news is always running like a collective drip feed into our veins. (I invite German readers to set me straight on the exact meaning of Weltschmerz, in the comments!)

This week the United Nations secretary-general called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, as he warned that the bombarded Gaza Strip was becoming a “graveyard for children”, as he also criticized “indiscriminate” firing of rockets into Israel. Source

UNICEF estimates that around 1,500 children have died or gone missing while attempting the Central Mediterranean Sea crossing (since 2018). Source

In my first book, Natural Born Shamans, I wrote a (long) list of all the issues that violate the human rights of children in spectacular ways. Did you know that children are commonly used as human shields in war? The same book has several chapters dedicated to exploring the “mythology” (as in the underlying archetypal forces and blueprints, wired deeply into the human soul) of “Othering”, fear and conflict.

Right now the eyes of the world are focused on Gaza, but of course the war in Ukraine continues. All over the world children are trapped in zones of armed conflict, where parents are trying to be good and protective parents under impossible circumstances. Elsewhere parents are actively trying to bring their children to safety in a place where they will have a future (think of the overwhelming number of boat refugees arriving on the shores of Europe).

Many street children in our world have no parents or guardians at all and resort to hiring out their bodies for sex, just to stay alive. I am talking about children as young as six or seven years old. They have no rights, no guardians and are subjected to unspeakable things. Criminals and Paedophiles rule those shadowlands. Harrowing Documentary from Pakistan

The question I am asking in today’s essay is: Where do we go with this? Aren’t we all suffering from (a degree of ) survivor’s guilt right now? Isn’t our world a world buckling under the weight of collective grief (and in this I include many centuries worth of unresolved ancestral grief)?

And if I am right about this, how do we life with Grief as our sacred companion without allowing grief to paralyze us, or give up altogether? Because, isn’t that the worst thing of all, if human beings give up on humanity and dreams of world peace altogether?

When my father died (in 2009) an otherworld lady dressed in grey became my companion for about three months. She would watch over me and encourage me to write poems about grief, put words to what I was experiencing.

When my mother died (in August 2022) the Lady in Grey did not return, but I heard mysterious choirs singing day and night. They sang entire symphonies and requiems, but none known to the earthly world of music. Until today this music remains beyond my description and grasp, though I harbor the ambition to seriously study music (once I retire or work considerable less hours) in an attempt to recreate it. I call it the Music of the Spheres but I still think that those (celestial, ancestral) voices were the Choirs of the Dead singing my mother home.

Title of this painting: Black Henbane - The Choirs of the Dead

Over the years I have often wondered whether Plato's Music of the Spheres was really the celestial song of the Ancestors singing us home, so we will know the way when our day comes. The title of the painting appearing just above was taken from a lecture by Cody Dickerson.

As a person with (mild) synaesthesia (the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body) , I often hear a mysterious music. I often "hear colours" too, I will "perceive visual patterns as music" or I perceive walking into an ornate building as a orchestra that starts playing. Oh and days of the week and smells have colours, did you know that?! For me the physical appearance of things is not very fixed, and I find consolation in that. I have had dreams where my own consciousness continues as cello music after my death.

But what are we to do about the Graveyard for Children that is Gaza (and many other places)? Is it grandiose to think we can do much at all? Does that mean we give up and enjoy our own lives in relative safety?

We can speak prayers. We can write poems and songs about grief. We can shed sacred tears and water fragile new beginnings with them. We can make paintings and plant memorial gardens or trees. We can honor their indomitable spirit. We can continue to tell some of their stories (if we know them).

People trained in spirit work (shamanic work) can do psycho pomp work or engage in dream travel/soul travel to troubled places and give a hand (in whichever we our helping spirits guide us).

Last but not least I would like to remind readers (as I often remind my students) that bearing witness is a very powerful act. In physics we find an extremely powerful dynamic called The Observer Effect. It has been demonstrated beyond doubt that the very act of observation has has an impact on the behavior of the particles being observed. In plain English: the very fact that there is an observer changes the outcome of an event or experiment.

This is important information! We experience collective grief but we also hold the Collective Power of Witnessing. The fact that we choose not to look away, has an impact on the situation. The impact of one individual might be tiny, but the impact of a large collective (say the population of many countries) could (hopefully) accumulate into a more significant force.

The last thing I will say, for today, is that for this reason we need to harness our imagination (the subject of my third non-fiction book) and reflect deeply on the thoughts we send to trouble spots and suffering people. Please do not see them as victims, see them as vibrant individuals with an indomitable spirit! Visualize good outcomes, aid and high quality resources (not more pain, death and destruction).

If the subject of grief interests you, I taught an online class on Nordic Grief Rituals in March 2023. This class remains available as a recording in a bundle of two related classes in my online school (Pregnant Hag Teachings).

May you find magic and beauty in your day! May you be cherished and held by others in our turbulent world! May you harness your imagination and make a difference…

”We live in a grief-phobic and death-denying society” 

(Author and psychotherapist Francis Weller)

Imelda, London, 7 November 2023