Breaking The Cycle, reclaiming our humanity
From a film Breaking the Cycle
The moving and inspirational six-minute film shown below illustrates our capacity for breaking our current Cycle of Competitive Detachment and returning to the pattern of 95% of our human history: a healthy, peaceful Cycle of Cooperative Companionship.
Breaking the Cycle is based on the multi-award-winning book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, by Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. Darcia emerged in the top two percent of scientists worldwide in a 2020 analysis.
Breaking the Cycle contrasts the two basic ways societies can function: the optimal approach, which most human societies through time have followed, is the Cycle of Cooperative Companionship where children’s basic needs are met; they grow into well-functioning, cooperative community members (from neurobiology and on up); and as healthy adults, they maintain the cooperative system.
Currently in industrialised societies the opposite pattern is in place: children’s basic needs are not met, ill-being and dysregulation ensue, creating adults who are detached and distracted and keep this Cycle of Competitive Detachment going.
“Humans are so immature at birth that to develop in a healthy manner, reaching their full potential, they need to experience humanity’s evolved nest,” states Darcia Narvaez. “This helps structure well-functioning brain and body systems like the stress response, immune system and many other systems, preparing the individual for cooperative behavior and compassionate morality, including with the rest of the natural world. With a degraded evolved nest, the individual will have one or more areas of dysregulation, undermining sociality and morality. The evolved nest is an intergenerational, communal responsibility that industrialized societies have largely forgotten.”
“Many people believe the tale that humans have made great progress and that there is no other option than this dehumanizing, anti-life, planet-destroying culture. In the short film, Breaking the Cycle, we show other options. We help people understand that life does not have to be the way industrialized societies have set it up.”
Viewers of the Breaking the Cycle short film are welcome to host public screenings of the film with the Breaking the Cycle Film Discussion and Resource Guide on the website, www.BreakingtheCycleFilm.org.
Watch the 6 min film:
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From a film Breaking the Cycle, 28/07/2021