The Abyss Stares Back
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
We live in a world of monsters right now.
I don’t use this term to refer to people or players, although – lets be real – some could fit the criteria.
Rather, I use it to represent rather the deeper monsters that shape our shared world.
The stories of control, fear, extraction, violence, domination and scarcity that shape the worldview – and actions – of so much right now. The narratives that determine what we believe is possible, who belongs, and what things (or people) are worth. And of course - the systems that give these narratives form and longevity.
Now, I’m not here to argue for or against Nietzsche’s philosophies – honestly, I don’t know enough in this realm. But the provocation of the abyss stares back is an interesting one… or as I understand it, what we stare at long enough, we risk becoming (or in losing meaning, we risk becoming).
And I think this is one of the most important questions facing those of us who care about the world right now: how do we work to dismantle, repair or heal the monsters of our world, without continuing to carry or replicate them inside us?
It is a question about who we are both being and becoming as we do this work.
Because no matter how much we bring sophisticated analysis or robust values or real skill and commitment to the work… it’s still entirely possible that we end up replicating the stories we are trying to change.
I’ve seen it in grassroots organising, where belonging unconsciously becomes based on output and who’s working most/hardest (extraction), or where cycles of reactionary organising cause people & movements to lose their spark and imagination for the sake of speed.
I’ve also seen it in leaders and organisations who’ve had really good intentions to do things differently; to not create cultures of power imbalance or exhaustion or conflict, but have found themselves with anyway.
And in politics! Gosh can you see it in politics (which, to be fair, the adage is true: it’s one thing to win, another to govern - and governing within the world as it is to bring forth the world as it could be is unbelievably hard). But we’ve all seen parties with solid values and foundations slowly inhabit the opposite of what they intended to be.
And at this point you might be saying Laura, but exhaustion and conflict and the slow death of imagination - that’s not what we’re working to change! I mean, we don’t want them - they impact our ability to do the work - but they’re not “the same”. We’re working against neoliberalism, or fascism, or those people over there, or racism or the injustice experienced by refugees or Indigenous peoples or trans people. We’re working for climate action! Against real monsters! I’m not becoming the fascist or bigot, and our organisation isn’t Amazon!
Ah, yes.
But this is what I meant by monsters and the abyss.
The problem is never just a problem of a person or individual or even company (although, just 57 companies are linked to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since 2016 and this is worth remembering - because they benefit from toxic systems and work hard to keep it that way).
All of these are just products of the system. And the system is just a product of a world view or story.
And that story lives in all of us, and it manifests in countless different ways.
It’s the same concept that applies when we think of Audre Lorde’s famous wisdom; “For the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
So the question becomes, where and how do we begin to put down these tools - not just as individuals, but as collectives? Where and how do we stay with reality – ensuring we look squarely at the abyss – but while also allowing the seeds of something more just, move loving, more regenerative to be planted in our own bodies and work?
Well, let me start by saying this: You are not a separate individual whose choices touch only your own life. You are part of a wider tapestry, and the stories of monsters enter through threads of that tapestry - through culture, institutions, the inherited assumptions we take at face value. Which means the inverse is also true: the work you do to uproot these stories in yourself ripples outward too. The inner work is not a detour from the collective work. It is part of how the collective work moves.
So this is both a personal matter and a collective one. And it requires, as its starting foundation anyway, a process I call Getting Free.
Getting Free isn’t sexy, and it isn’t always comfortable.
It’s the work of learning the monsters – seeing the monsters – and the ways they live within us. Of reading the stories of scarcity, domination, urgency and more - the way they live in our bodies, our strategies, our ways of relating to one another – and doing the deep work of uprooting it, and planting something else in their place.
Learning the story is always the first step here. We need to see it before we can work with it. But once we do, there are a few questions you can ask to help you start the work of Getting Free:
Where does the story live in your body? Urgency, scarcity, domination – they often have a weight, texture, colour, shape, sensation.
How and who do these stories benefit? Consider all possible answers to this question – people, power structures, ideas, narratives etc. Consider the ways perhaps you’ve benefitted from this story… there is no shame or judgement in these questions, only inquiry.
What consequences may this story have had in your life and relationships? What’s been the cost of it? Where and how has it played out in conflict or difficulty or pain?
What consequences may you face in uprooting this story? There can be real losses you may face in this work - approval, certainty, an identity built around a particular way of operating.
What would feel or be liberatory now? What would feel expansive?
And then - a necessary and important step: find your people who are willing to sit with the question together: what would it look like to operate from a radically different story?
Our blind spots tend to stay hidden from us precisely because we are inside them – it’s why I believe that inner work can be done alone, but also is best done in relationship and community.
And importantly: these stories were written collectively, carried in shared soil for generations, and rewriting them asks something collective of us as well.
Now, has any of this touched on what Nietzsche meant when talking about the abyss and monsters? Honestly, I don’t know - maybe someone who has read more of his work than me can comment to that. But that wasn’t the point.
The point is this: what we work against we risk becoming. How can we instead allow our bodies - individual and collective - to be seeds of something more beautiful and just?
And Getting Free is just the beginning of the journey. It’s not the whole road or the whole work. But it’s where we must begin in order to do the deeper work this time asks of us.
