The Need for a Unity Undergound

Separation, togetherness, and creating a more a more beautiful world

Are we together?

Or are we apart?

The contrasts of this dilemma have fascinated me.

The world we live in is inextricably connected and distantly isolated. It is both beautiful and harsh, and often it’s a stirring blend of both that appears to make the most enticing and impactful art.

No, not this art, which is titled: “What the fuck does it all mean?”

Despite the harsh realities of geo-politics, war, and late stage capitalism, I believe in my heart that a more beautiful and connected world is possible.

I see flickers of it in my communities. In fleeting moments of deep connection with people I love. I witness it emerging in the subtle spaces between us, out on the edges where the personal and interpersonal work meet and tesselate into culture.

I made this Substack to be codex of my voyages in uncovering the tools necessary for a ‘more beautiful world’. A place to explore the frontiers of personal and interpersonal growth, authentic connection, sustainable communities, and the ‘relational technologies’ that I hope we may use to create them.

If we’re going to create meaningful, lasting change, it’s going to take a village. And to make a village, we’re going to have to do this together.

I. Togetherness

If you were given the option to live in a spectacular paradise in complete isolation, or live in a failing dystopia among a thriving community, which would you choose?

Despite the bells and whistles, the ‘last human in paradise’ option has the flair of a ‘Castaway’ nightmare… What good would all the coconuts and pristine beaches in the world be without someone (or a tribe) to share them with? But our human impulses for connection go without saying.

Deep in our primordial stardust is coded our desire to be together. Humans are pack animals: a species of interdependent beings that rely on co-operation, risk insanity in extreme isolation and experience our greatest pleasures in communion.

But even beyond our genetic codings for communion there is a trancendental aspect to our togetherness. Through the ages monks, mystics, witches, taoists, tantrikas, artists and psychonauts have stumbled upon the mystical experience of ego dissolution, where the barriers between self and other break down to reveal that we are all parts of the same whole.

My own experience of this phenomena sounds cliche at best. “Everything is Everything,” I had said, wide-eyed with sincerity at age 18, as I witnessed my conception of self evaporate while tripping on a heavy concoction of mushroom tea.

Yet despite the woo-ness of my experience, it actually led me to abandon the theism of my upbringing and gave shape to a deeper truth about unity and separation that left my perception of self changed forever:

We’re not really separate at all.

We’re just different animations of the same billion year old carbon.

Looking back at each other.

Searching each other’s eyes.

Hoping to witness ourselves as Unity once more.

… or something like that. Plus or minus the poeticism.

II. Separation

If we are ever lucky enough to glimpse those heights of realisation - in creative flow, sacred union, meditative practice or drug-induced exstasis - we often have a hard time holding onto them for very long.

We return to the material, and the material ways return to us.

We live in a society of individual status and success. We compete, we win, we lose. We scramble to make our little stash so we can buy nice things and impress those we want to impress and feel a little better about ourselves.

Whether conscious of it or not we engage in a game that creates the society we live in, and the deepening separation of hyper-individualism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It may be leading the privileged of us towards greater comfort and leisure (did someone say isolation in paradise?) but at the cost of each other, our communities and our planet.

By outsourcing labour, debt, pollution, and ecological devastation - we in the many privileged enclaves of the West have succeeded at dumping enough of our collective suffering onto others while siphoning off enough of the global cream to convince ourselves that perhaps the world may be as beautiful as we hope it is.

We live in beautiful houses in beautiful places and share our lives with beautiful people…

But if we’re honest we know that the world we’ve created is still far from the more beautiful world we’d like it to be. Winning the game of material success is only a temporary distraction - a flimsy bandaid on our wounded sense of collective meaning.

It is our ability to optimise for ourselves at the expense of other (read: separation) that is ultimately causing the ecological and existential mess we are currently in.

We are where we are because we are embroiled in ritual separation from unity.

So how (TF) can we learn to ‘be together’?

III. Unity

To create the conditions for a more beautiful world to emerge it’s going to take more than clever legislation or dismantling the existing structures.

It is ultimately going to take a new way of -being-.

It is said that “The Revolution with not be televised”

But I think “The Revolution” will not really be a revolution.

It will be a Becoming. (And it still won’t be televised!)

We are on the initial arc of that becoming, and creating a more beautiful world starts right here and now with us.

We need to find new ways to replace the old. Ways that allow us to harness the strengths of our collaboration rather than the exploits of our competition. Ways that allow us to flourish together without tearing each other apart. To embrace our collective togetherness and move past the tribalism that keeps us divided and unable to move forward.

And we need to embody these new ways of being at the individual, relational and community level.

To live like this - to go against the grain and experiment on the fringe of culture - is fucking radical.

That is why this substack is called Unity Underground.

A place where the hopeful gather to carve a new path for a better world.

Unity Underground is where I’ll write about my personal discoveries as I seek to learn, experiment and pass on as much as I can.

It’s my small way of contributing to the more beautiful world that I hope we someday realise.

And perhaps, if we succeed, the healed communities we create will go on to heal the world.

Until then, thanks for reading,

See you out there, in the underground.

About the author:

Daniel Pinkerton is a writer, musician and community event organiser. Between the necessities of carving out a living he likes to facilitate connective events and explore the realms of creativity and inter-connection through songwriting, group improvisation, and authentic relating. He’s currently taking a hiatus from facilitating to focus on writing while he heals from hyperacusis.