Social Unrest and the Work

When the World Falls Apart, Pay Attention:

I. A cosmic prank
Reality, said Gurdjieff, is an exquisite joke—most of us are asleep, dreaming with our eyes open, and occasionally someone hurls a pie at the face of our felicitous illusions. And what better pie than social unrest? Let us begin with a paradox: turmoil is a ladder, and sometimes the ladder is set on fire. But it still gets us upward, if we climb with conscious attention.

II. The Work in the furnace of chaos
Ouspensky recounts that in In Search of the Miraculous, as “revolution and war are moving close; all around the madness of mankind is becoming more and more apparent,” he emphasizes that the only way to understand cosmic laws is “to observe them in himself, and this through the special forms of the work which are rapidly developing in the group”
Implicit here is a recognition that when external reality fragments—when society shatters in riot or upheaval—it becomes easier to spot the fracturing within.

The universe is poking the slumbering Work with its razor-sharp fragments. The noise of dissent, the clamor of the streets, are not enemies of the Work—they’re its percussion section.

III. Effort, Intentional Suffering, and group vibration
We turn to the Fourth Way teachings for context—Gurdjieff emphasized conscious labour and intentional suffering as the bedrock of transformation. “Conscious labour is an action… present to what is being done… and intentional suffering is the act of struggling against automatism... In Beelzebub’s Tales he states that ‘the greatest “intentional suffering” can be obtained in our presences by compelling ourselves to endure the displeasing manifestations of others toward ourselves…”

Imagine a group sitting in the Eye of the Storm—arguing, resisting, getting upset. In that friction, the Work reveals itself. The dissonance becomes the tuning fork for self‑observation. Social unrest isn’t a distraction—it’s the ember that scorches the veil of sleep.

IV. The “bone buried deep” and the necessity of effort
In Beelzebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff purposefully constructed his prose to be labyrinthine, stating that he would “bury the bone so deep that the dogs have to scratch for it”.

In the grand allegory, layers of obfuscation are not obstacles—they are the Work in material form. Social unrest, then, is a similar kind of deliberate complexity: a challenge to be met, not avoided.

If life were a soporific lullaby, no one would be coaxed awake. But when the ground shakes—cultural norms detonate—our receptors awaken. The bone rattles, and the dogs (us) start digging.

V. Truth, study, and the communal furnace
Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff: “To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; and one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to be able to speak the truth… the wish alone is not enough… to speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself.”

Social unrest forces us to confront lies—not the easy ones that politicians propagate, but the personal ones inside the mirror. We cannot hide behind polite acquiescence when crowds roar. The Work, especially within groups, thrives when it's stripped of pretense, when its members must stare at their own reflections in the glass shards of upheaval.

VI. The Playful Cosmic Joke
Cosmic irony loves a riot. The Work wants drama—in the absurdity of the fray, we find opportunity. The group is neither safe nor still; it is a pressure cooker. Let the pressure build. Let social unrest be the tuning of the cosmic dial that clears frequency.

In Beelzebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff embeds layers of allegory—beings, satellites, Kundabuffer, cosmic law—yet beneath it all is the point: evolutionary jolts break ossified thought. Likewise, group work amidst external unrest cracks open the door to awakening.

VII. Conclusion: Unrest as essential ferment
So: if the Work in group form is an alchemical brew, social unrest is the yeast. The bubbles—self-remembering, observation, intentional suffering—will not rise without it. Ouspensky's moment of “madness of mankind” surrounding his group wasn’t coincidence—it was the crucible of awakening.

When daylight fractures, we see the divisions within us; when society reels, the Work is no longer abstract—it is urgent.

Let us then salute the riot, not as nihilistic chaos, but as the cosmic slap that enlivens consciousness. For as Gurdjieff’s deeply buried truths demand, the deepest work comes not from comfort—but from the soul-chilling hum of a world in vertigo.