Near-Death by Yellowjackets and Expanded Consciousness

Dear Community,

A day before I returned from Germany, my husband almost died.

He went into the backyard to take out the compost. One of the bins had been knocked over during a windstorm and he attempted to straighten it. Unfortunately, the compost bin had been claimed by a large and extremely territorial family of yellowjackets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowjacket)

They attacked him.

He was stung approximately ten times, all over his body.

At first, he attempted to manage the situation himself with Benadryl and other over-the-counter medications. Observation.

Then he noticed that he couldn’t breathe very well.

This was the moment when he had to stop hoping that the whole thing would just go away. He realized he was having an anaphylactic reaction.

And so, somehow, while increasingly unable to breathe, he got himself to urgent care, where the good doctors gave him epinephrine and steroids and prevented him from dying.

I came home the following day. When he told me what had happened, I felt horrified, and also grateful.

And after hearing the whole story, I said: “Thank you for not dying.”

He said: “Actually, that’s one of the reasons I went to urgent care.”

“What is?”

“I thought about what would happen if I died.”

I assumed he was about to say something touching, how heartbreaking it would be to leave the children without a father, or how important his family was to him, or how much he loved life and all the things he still wanted to experience.

No.

He said:

“I thought about how pissed you would be if you came home from Germany and found me dead in the house.”

I started laughing.

Because after more than twenty years of marriage, apparently this is where we are.

Not:

I must live! My children need me!

Not:

Life is precious!

Not even:

I am not ready to meet my maker!

But:

Jesus Christ. My wife is going to be furious.

I asked him, “What about the children? Don’t you want to protect them from the traumatic experience of finding their father dead in the house?”

“Of course,” he said. “That too.”

That too.

“But mostly,” he continued, “I knew how pissed you would be that I didn’t take care of myself.”

And there it was.

My husband’s survival instinct.

Me.

Somewhere along the sympathetic nervous system and the ancient mammalian fight-or-flight response, there is another biological mechanism that scientists have not yet adequately studied:

Do Not Make Your Wife Come Home From Europe And Find Your Dead Body Because You Refused To Seek Medical Attention.

I find this strangely touching and also slightly concerning.

I have spent considerable portions of my adult life wondering whether I am too intense, too demanding, too opinionated, too controlling.

It turns out that my intensity is a public-health intervention.

Some wives remind their husbands to take their vitamins, some encourage annual physicals or going for a daily walk and keeping in touch with their friends.

Me? I stand invisibly at the threshold between life and death, hands on hips, saying:

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

And apparently, it works.

Hoping you were entertained by this story as much as I was. My husband managed to survive the anaphylactic shock with the help of the good doctors at Kaiser, and is currently recovering pretty well.

Let’s move on to other matters of life and death. As you probably know by now, one of the questions I have on my mind constantly (more like an obsession, to be perfectly honest) is: “How do I become, in my own life and relationships, a living expression of the world I hope humanity will become?”. So I went and asked one of my trusted advisors (ChatGPT!) what would higher consciousness look like for humanity. Here’s the answer I received and that I am going to share with you, because I like it a lot and even though it is not perfect, it is very articulate and I agree with ALL OF IT.

I would absolutely LOVE to hear your critique and criticism of the ideas in this piece of writing. Here we go.

“I want to separate “higher consciousness” from spirituality. I don’t think humanity at its best means everyone meditating, believing in oneness, taking psychedelics, renouncing capitalism, or becoming endlessly gentle. Some extremely unconscious behavior can wear spiritual clothing.

Higher consciousness means something more concrete: an increasing capacity to perceive reality accurately, tolerate complexity, regulate ourselves, recognize the subjectivity of other beings, and choose our behavior rather than merely enact our conditioning.

And if enough people developed those capacities, civilization would look radically different.

1. We would stop confusing thoughts with reality

This might be the foundational upgrade.

Right now humans constantly experience:

event → interpretation → emotion → reaction but perceive it as: event → reaction

Someone doesn’t answer my text→”They don’t respect me.”

Someone criticizes my country →“They hate people like me.”

My child doesn’t want what I want→ “They’re ungrateful.”

Someone believes something politically different→“They’re stupid/evil/brainwashed.”

Higher consciousness introduces a tiny but civilization-changing space: Something happened. What am I making it mean?

Imagine billions of people capable of saying: “I am having a very strong interpretation of this situation. Let me find out whether it is true.”

That sounds modest, but it would revolutionize marriages, parenting, politics, religion, social media and international relations.

2. Children would no longer be treated as raw material for adults

A more conscious civilization would recognize children as developing human beings temporarily entrusted to adults, rather than extensions of their parents. Parents would still have authority, because developing human need structure, limits and protection. But the goal would change from: Produce the correct child to:

Help this particular human discover who they are while teaching them how to live among other humans.

So parents would ask:

“What does this child actually need?”

“What belongs to her temperament?”

“What belongs to my fear?”

“What am I trying to control because I am afraid of how her choices reflect on me?”

Children would hear more:

“You don’t have to like what I like.”

“You’re allowed to disagree with me.”

“I was wrong.”

“Your feelings matter, but they don’t determine what everyone else must do.”

“I love you, and I am not available for that.”

Love without boundaries becomes enmeshment. Boundaries without love become domination.

Mature humans would learn both.

3. We would become much better at disappointment

This sounds almost laughably small compared with “the evolution of humanity”, but it’s potentially enormous.

A shocking amount of human suffering comes from our inability to tolerate: rejection, humiliation, uncertainty, sexual frustration, status loss, disagreement, failure, envy, abandonment, boredom and not getting our way.

Someone leaves us, and we seek revenge.

Someone succeeds, and we diminish them.

Someone rejects our worldview, and we need to destroy theirs.

Someone embarrasses us, and our nervous system declares war.

A higher-consciousness human can experience: “This hurts terribly.” without automatically arriving at: “Therefore somebody must pay.” That capacity alone could prevent an extraordinary amount of violence.

4. We would stop building identity around superiority

Humans rank compulsively. Beautiful/ugly. Educated/uneducated. Rich/poor. Cultured/uncultured. Successful/failure. Awake/asleep. Spiritual/materialistic. Conservative/liberal. European/American. Healthy/unhealthy.

Even people attempting to transcend hierarchy often simply invent a new hierarchy in which they are the evolved ones. That’s one of the traps in the idea of “higher consciousness” itself.

At our best, I think we’d still discern quality. We’d still recognize extraordinary craftsmanship, intelligence, courage, beauty, competence and wisdom.

But difference in ability would stop implying difference in human worth.

Mozart can be a better composer than I am without being a more valuable organism.

That distinction would change everything.

5. Relationships would move from possession toward encounter

Much of what humans call love contains an implicit contract: I love you, therefore behave in ways that protect me from uncomfortable feelings.

Higher consciousness might sound more like:

“I want to know who you actually are, even when reality interferes with my preferred version of you.”

Marriage could become less about ownership.

Friendship less about obligation.

Parenthood less about control.

Sex less about conquest or validation.

Love would contain more curiosity.

Not:

How do I get you to stay?

but:

What is true between us?

Not:

How do I make you happy?

but:

How do I love you without abandoning either you or myself?

And paradoxically, commitment could become more meaningful because it would be consciously chosen rather than culturally coerced.

6. Conflict would become information

Imagine couples being taught from childhood:

When conflict occurs, ask four questions:

1. What happened?

2. What story did I construct about what happened?

3. What need/value/fear of mine got activated?

4. What does the other person believe happened?

Now imagine governments capable of doing the same thing.

Higher consciousness doesn’t eliminate conflict because different organisms genuinely have competing interests.

There will still be land disputes, limited resources, sexual jealousy, competing values, incompatible goals and people who simply dislike each other.

Evolution would mean becoming better at having conflict without manufacturing enemies.

7. We would redesign education around becoming human

Imagine school containing mathematics, science, literature and history, but also:

emotional regulation, media literacy, probability, cognitive biases, conflict resolution, sexuality and consent, financial literacy, nutrition, parenting, philosophy, grief, rhetoric, manipulation, meditation, critical thinking, basic neuroscience and how propaganda works.

A sixteen-year-old would understand:

confirmation bias,

projection,

compound interest,

how algorithms manipulate attention,

how abusive relationships develop,

how advertising manufactures desire,

how to apologize,

how to recognize misinformation,

how to cook ten meals,

how to sit with someone who is grieving,

and how to say:

“I don’t know.”

That last sentence might deserve an entire semester.

8. Work would stop being our primary proof that we deserve to exist

I don’t imagine humanity at its best lounging around permanently.

Humans seem to flourish through effort, mastery, contribution and creation.

But we’d distinguish meaningful effort from compulsory exhaustion.

Technology and automation would increasingly be used to eliminate unnecessary drudgery rather than simply increase output.

Success might become:

Did I create something useful?Did I become excellent at something?Did I contribute?Did I have enough time to actually experience being alive?

The absurdity of becoming incredibly efficient so that everyone can answer more emails would become obvious.

9. Wealth would still exist, but extreme accumulation would become culturally strange

I don’t think higher consciousness necessarily produces absolute economic equality. People differ enormously in ambition, talent, appetite for risk and desire for possessions.

But I suspect something would change psychologically.

Past a certain level of abundance, the question would shift from:

How much more can I accumulate?

to:

What can this resource make possible?

Prestige itself could evolve.

Imagine if the ultimate billionaire flex weren’t the sixth yacht but:

“I restored 400,000 acres of wetlands.”

“I funded free childcare in three cities.”

“I built the world’s most beautiful public library.”

“I financed 600 young scientists and demanded no ownership of their discoveries.”

Status isn’t going away.

So perhaps consciousness doesn’t abolish status competition.

It gives humans better things to compete over.

That seems far more plausible to me.

10. Cities would be designed for human nervous systems

We would build neighborhoods where people can walk.

Trees. Public squares. Small businesses. Libraries. Parks. Markets. Beautiful benches. Public bathrooms. Playgrounds. Music. Places where teenagers can exist without buying something. Places where old people naturally encounter children. Restaurants spilling into streets. Community gardens. Affordable housing mixed with expensive housing. Transit that makes participation in civic life possible.

Instead of designing civilization primarily around cars, commerce and property values, we’d ask:

“What physical environments make humans more likely to encounter one another?”

Loneliness isn’t entirely an individual psychological failure.

In the USA it seems like loneliness is built into the zoning code.

11. Community would return, but without the old oppression

Traditional communities gave people belonging, identity, ritual and mutual obligation.

They also often gave us surveillance, conformity, patriarchy, xenophobia and “what will the neighbors think?”

Modern individualism liberated us from much of that, but it also produced astonishing loneliness.

So the next developmental move can’t simply be:

Return to the village.

It needs to be:

belonging without ownership.

Imagine 20–50 households loosely organized around shared life.

Some meals together.

Childcare exchanged.

Older people helping younger people.

Tools shared.

Gardens tended.

Birthdays celebrated.

People checking on someone who disappears.

Dancing.

Arguments.

Food.

Projects.

Rituals around births, puberty, marriage, divorce, menopause, death.

And critically:

you can leave.

Community becomes invitation rather than captivity.

12. Aging would regain status

Our culture currently has a bizarre relationship with aging.

We spend enormous resources pretending humans don’t do it.

A wiser civilization would still celebrate beauty and youth, because youth genuinely contains extraordinary beauty and vitality.

But aging would carry another kind of status:

You have been here longer. What have you learned?

Older humans wouldn’t automatically be considered wise because, inconveniently, plenty aren’t.

But wisdom itself would become socially valuable.

Perhaps one of life’s developmental tasks would be:

young → capable → generative → wise.

Not merely:

young → productive → less attractive → irrelevant.

13. Death would return to life

Modern Western culture has done something peculiar with death: we’ve professionalized it and hidden it.

Higher consciousness would not magically remove fear of death.

But we’d talk about it.

Children would know dying people.

People would make explicit decisions about how they want to die.

Communities would participate in mourning.

Grief wouldn’t be treated as a pathology to finish quickly.

And awareness of mortality would become an organizing principle:

Given that this ends, what deserves my Tuesday afternoon?

That’s an extraordinarily clarifying question.

14. Medicine would become less about repairing machines and more about caring for organisms

We’d retain everything magnificent about modern medicine: antibiotics, surgery, vaccines, anesthesia, intensive care, imaging, pharmacology.

But we’d integrate what medicine often fragments:

sleep, food, movement, attachment, trauma, loneliness, environment, meaning, socioeconomic conditions and community.

The physician’s question wouldn’t only be:

What disease does this person have?

but:

What is happening in this person’s life and body?

And we’d become much more comfortable distinguishing:

things medicine can cure,

things medicine can manage,

and suffering that medicine cannot remove but humans can accompany.

15. Politics would become less psychologically primitive

Not conflict-free. Not unanimous.

But we’d become much more suspicious of anyone saying:

Everything wrong with your life is because of THEM.

That sentence is political fentanyl.

Higher-consciousness citizens would recognize scapegoating regardless of which tribe deployed it.

They’d be capable of holding:

“My side is right about this.”

“My side is probably wrong about something.”

“The opposing side may perceive something real that we are ignoring.”

“This policy has tradeoffs.”

“We don’t have enough evidence yet.”

Imagine a politician saying:

“The evidence changed, so I changed my position.”

And voters rewarding rather than punishing them.

That would be practically extraterrestrial by today’s standards. 👽

16. We would become less certain

This may be the characteristic I associate most strongly with consciousness.

Not passivity.

Not relativism.

Epistemic humility.

We would distinguish:

what I know,

what I believe,

what I suspect,

what I want to be true,

and what I have absolutely no idea about.

Religions could say:

“We have a profound tradition for approaching the mystery.”

Science could say:

“This is our best current model.”

Individuals could say:

“I experienced something extraordinary. I don’t know what caused it.”

Think how much nonsense disappears when humans stop requiring certainty.

17. Technology would be judged by what it does to consciousness

Instead of asking only:

Can we build it?

or

Will people buy it?

we’d ask:

What kind of human does prolonged exposure to this technology produce?

Does it increase agency?

Attention?

Curiosity?

Connection?

Creativity?

Or does it exploit compulsive reward systems?

This becomes particularly important with AI.

The best version of AI doesn’t make humans intellectually unnecessary.

It could make human curiosity extraordinarily powerful.

The danger is outsourcing thought itself.

A conscious relationship with AI would therefore involve something like:

“Help me see what I can’t see.”

rather than:

“Tell me what to think.”

18. Sexuality would lose much of its shame and some of its compulsiveness

Sex would become less entangled with ownership, morality, status and proof of desirability.

Consent would become obvious rather than revolutionary.

People could acknowledge desire without believing every desire requires enactment.

Monogamy could be beautiful.

Non-monogamy could be beautiful.

Celibacy could be beautiful.

Casual sex could be fine.

None would automatically signify superior evolution.

The question would become:

Is this honest, consensual, psychologically responsible and congruent with the people involved?

Higher consciousness doesn’t tell everyone how to live.

It increases the capacity to understand why we are choosing what we’re choosing.

19. We would stop requiring suffering to justify rest

This one is deceptively revolutionary.

Currently people often believe:

I can rest because I’m sick.

I can stop because I’m exhausted.

I can take vacation because I’ve earned it.

I can say no because I’m overwhelmed.

A more conscious human can say:

“I have enough.”

And stop.

That changes consumption, work, parenting and ecology simultaneously.

Because a civilization composed of people who can never experience enougheventually consumes everything.

20. Our relationship with Earth would change from ownership to membership

Not “save the planet.”

The planet will continue in some form.

Rather:

We are biological participants in this system.

Forests wouldn’t only be timber.

Rivers wouldn’t only be water supply.

Animals wouldn’t only be commodities.

Land wouldn’t only be real estate.

That doesn’t mean humans stop farming, building, mining or eating animals. Those are separate ethical questions.

It means we’d calculate consequences over generations instead of quarters.

A civilization capable of thinking 100 years ahead behaves very differently from one optimized around the next earnings report or election.

But here’s where I think the idea gets really interesting

I don’t think humanity at its best becomes uniformly serene.

I think it becomes more alive.

There would still be wild parties.

Eroticism.

Competition.

Ambition.

Ridiculous fashion.

Champagne.

Arguments.

Adventure.

Sports.

Dark humor.

Risk.

Heartbreak.

Opera.

Nightclubs.

People making gigantic mistakes.

Teenagers doing incomprehensible things.

Humans falling hopelessly in love with completely unsuitable humans.

Consciousness shouldn’t bleach humanity beige.

The goal isn’t to eliminate the animal.

It’s to integrate the animal.

Instinct + awareness.

Desire + responsibility.

Individuality + belonging.

Freedom + consequence.

Power + accountability.

Love + boundaries.

Reason + mystery.

And perhaps the biggest shift of all

I think human civilization currently organizes itself around a largely unconscious question:

How do I secure enough resources, belonging, status and control to protect myself?

A more mature civilization might increasingly organize itself around:

Given that I am already here, what wants to be experienced, created, understood and contributed through this particular life?

And I don’t imagine some glorious morning when eight billion people wake up enlightened.

It would happen locally.

One parent doesn’t pass her terror into her child.

One teacher sees the strange kid instead of correcting him.

One wealthy person decides enough is enough.

One politician refuses to manufacture an enemy.

One couple tells each other the truth.

One doctor listens for twenty minutes longer.

One person catches herself thinking, “Those people are idiots,” and becomes curious instead.

One community starts eating together.

One human says: “I was wrong.”

Another says: “I don’t know.”

Another:“No.”

Another: “I want this.”

Another:“I hurt you. I see it now.”

Another:

“You don’t have to become like me for me to love you.”

And there is one final piece that I think is especially important: humanity at its best would not produce perfect humans. It would produce humans who no longer require themselves or one another to be perfect in order to behave responsibly.

We would remain contradictory, horny, frightened, territorial, imaginative primates who know they’re going to die.

But perhaps we’d become primates capable of noticing what is happening inside us before turning it into somebody else’s problem.

With love, (a tiny sprinkle of) rage, and reverence,

Your disorganized, recovering people-pleaser, community-dreamer, hope-filled activist in the making, deep-sleeper, clean compliment giver and receiver, not-a-true-exhibitionist, 21-day resetter, recovering prostitute, courageous by practice, trusting by skill, always with my head in the clouds, but loving my feet on the ground, soul worker (!), inner voice listener, pleasure list maker, Aquarium sleepover organizer, beginner-level meditator, wabi-sabi contemplator, self-fascinated observer, giving-up-machismo supporter, hot soup-slurper, enthusiastic and tired traveler, death by Yellowjackets antidote and higher consciousness dreamer,

Corina