May 31st 2025

The supremacy of greater suffering

The supremacy of greater suffering

Following from my post yesterday (The Supremacy Virus. https://syntropic.world/the-supremacy-virus/) supremacy also lives in the dangerous, nasty corners of comparison.

When I am in the surf, I compare myself to other surfers, and often I notice the nasty little bead of supremacy rear her ugly curls.

Even in the corners of comparing victim status. My pain is bigger, deeper, wilder, longer than yours.

My suffering makes me supreme. Subtle. But there it is.

Even worse, do not deny me my right to dominate with my real suffering because I want to feel superior to you, a desire triggered by a wound of erasure. A real wound. We must see the wound and know it comes loaded with the ability to inflict the same wound on others. You don’t understand, therefore, I will dismiss you.

This does not deny the truth of suffering or the terrible actions we do to others.

It must be named and seen, in full technicolour, the cruelty we inflict on our fellow humans, Earth and creatures.

But to take the position of greater suffering is the very seed generator that makes the true, oh deeply true, victim, become the perpetrator.

To refuse to listen to another of lesser suffering who is wholeheartedly seeking to comprehend the depth of our suffering, to refuse to find a path that places the struggle of human experience as the connectivity between, is to continue to live in alienation and division. This is not healing. It perpetuates the problem itself.

People like me, who have not experienced minute-by-minute danger and hate, cannot fully comprehend those who have. Yet we can listen. We can wholeheartedly seek to understand. We can seek a future built today that ends the cruelty to all life. We can and will sit with those who have been at the hands of systemic hate for generations, or weeks.

The weave that heals allows collective grace to be present, absent any need for supremacy, showing up in shared humanity.

The field of grace is generated by unification around common values and principles. All life is sacred. We treat each other with respect. We seek first to understand. We act with kindness as a default. We are willing to be wrong, therefore, we refuse fundamentalism. We refuse to exploit or colonise. Syntropic Principles.

We listen to each other. We see. We witness. We create new ways of being that allow for all the gloriousness of our differences to be present.

Urgent work against a backdrop of algorithmically designed hate and violence.

Let us find this path together. This is my prayer.

Photo June 7th 2022, Article written May 31st 2025

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