One Practical Application (Among Many)

Freedom, Interbeing, and the Myth of Separability in America Today

Jun 04, 2025

This week’s post builds on how our brief May 27, 2025 exploration of Interbeing , freedom, and the myth of separability through the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Timothy Snyder, and Vanessa Machado de Oliveira contrast with the apparent beliefs and actions of Donald Trump and the people he accumulates.

The title of Ted Kerasote’s opinion piece in the June 1, 2025 New York Times is: “Will America’s National Parks Survive Trump?” Why ask that question? The answer, of course, is because the dismantling of the federal government in general and the Park Service in particular is putting our parks in grave danger:

“…since January, an estimated 13 percent of [Park Service] staff has departed through pressured buyouts, early retirements and deferred resignations.
“And the outlook… for next year is especially grim. Mr. Trump has proposed hacking the Park Service’s operating budget by roughly 30 percent, which would be catastrophic, and transferring less visited national parks and other Park Service locations to states and tribal governments. Theresa Pierno, the president of the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group, has warned that the system “would be completely decimated” should such cuts be imposed.”1

The Literal Genesis Problem and the Natural World

In Genesis 1:24-31, God told “man” to “rule over” all flora and fauna and to “fill the earth and subdue it.” Literal readings of these verses have made life difficult for various flora, fauna, and the earth itself (“fill the earth” has also challenged non-abstinence forms of birth control).2

Implicit in ruling over sequoias and elephants and filling and subduing the planet is the separation of the rulers, fillers, and subduers from the ruled, filled, and subdued. Bible readers (I am one), and especially literal Bible readers (I am not one) might be led to believe that humans are separate from other living beings and from the earth itself despite ample daily evidence, in ancient and modern times, that we were and are not.

This mistaken embrace of the myth of separability, this denial of Interbeing, this willfully blind addiction to a freedom from the biological, chemical, and physical laws of nature (and more recently from the laws of the Constitution) have rendered the planet a Titanic. Illusorily separate humans have cast themselves (and others) as both the passengers and the iceberg and, for good measure, the dance band as well. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are not in charge of the life boats, try though they may.

Whom do you know who would love to read this!

How Modernity Has Made & Makes It Worse

Modernity has given us powerful tools that interact in and on the physical world—satellites, dental floss, automatic weapons, laser surgeries, digital technologies, snap-back rims, ICBMs, and more—and that emerge through humans with highly developed mathematical, logical, scientific, and linguistic intelligences. Unfortunately these tools are monetized, marketed, and used by humans with less developed ethical and moral intelligences. Think atomic bombs, DDT, social media platforms, OxyContin, plastics, and leaded gasoline. More examples are abundant. Check out the Consilience Project’s paper, “Development in Progress.”3

Gold, Gold Paint, Manicured Lawns, Children, & Nature

Brief notification of authorial bias: I am not attracted to gold as an object or a color. I don’t use chemicals or pay others to use them in order to have a nice looking lawn. I believe children should be considered—to use Bill Plotkin’s language—as “Innocents in the Nest” and “Explorers in the Garden”. I experience Nature not as a resource, but as that of which I am a part and that is a part of me. I have benefitted from “natural resources.” I’m neither bragging nor complaining about any of this, nor suggesting that you agree with me.

One underlying premise of this newsletter and the book from which it emerged is that Donald Trump embodies all nine traits of the collective shadow of the United States. Said differently, if we want to understand much of what we deny about what ails us, we can one-stop shop with his way of being. Said differently he is a poster boy for the disasters of modernity.

Donald Trump adorns his properties and ours (the White House) with gold—the object and the color, he pays more than $2k per month to manicure the lawns at Mar-a-Lago (while ignoring some basic maintenance), he has proposed paving parts of the Rose Garden so that women’s high heels don’t sink into the grass, his interactions with children—including his own—are noticeably uncomfortable, he has called climate change a hoax and now he is threatening the National Parks.4

He lives as though he is free from the natural world and he exhibits no sense of interbeing with it, or with the low- and middle-income folks who vote for him and send him money. This freedom from nature and denial of interbeing emerge through a deep belief in and embrace of the myth of separability.

Unique Ecological Niche

When Plotkin’s Explorers in the Garden complete their tasks and move into early adolescence, they are called, as “Thespians at the Oasis,” to establish secure and authentic social selves, and then, if and when they move into late adolescence as “Wanderers in the Cocoon,” they are called to leave home and explore the mysteries of soul and discover their “unique ecological niche”—such that they “creatively occupy their distinctive ecological niche as a life-enhancing gift to their people and to the greater Earth community.”5 It is possible to live into our unique ecological niche and not know it. It may have something or may not have anything to do with our job or career, but has everything to do with who and how we are. It will inevitably embrace Interbeing and positive freedom, and easily sees through the myth of separability.

Donald Trump is our exemplar of how not to be. He is our bad example. He was not allowed to be an Innocent in the Nest or an Explorer in the Garden, so he did not complete the tasks inherent therein. While he is indeed a thespian, his social self is neither secure nor authentic.

Healing America's Narratives

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