This is an amazing time to be alive!
“Yeah, right,” my inner cynic says, “crumbling economy, peak oil, peak everything, melting ice caps, mass extinctions… and you have no idea how you are going to survive in your old age.”
The list goes on and on… all woven together, I remind my cynic within, by the incredible, inescapable fact that we are living in a time when the old is crumbling, which is when there is the greatest opportunity to create something new.
And that IS an amazing time to be alive!
This was the conversation swirling inside me on the first day of this new year, as I stood on a rock ledge jutting out into the ocean. A large remnant of an ancient cliff blocked my direct view of the horizon. From around its edges, I watched the waves coming in, crashing on the rock ledge, sending droplets of seawater in my direction.
Somehow this felt very much like where we as humans stand today. We know an evolution is needed. We know that evolution is being birthed within the crumbling of the old ways of being and doing that for so long have not served us or our earth. We see shapes of what is rising, the many new ways of thinking, feeling, being and doing now being created and embraced by increasing numbers of people. Yet much of what will evolve is still blocked from our view. It is a time of complexities, challenges and deep hope.
***
If you are reading this, you are alive today, and that means you are part of this Great Unraveling/ Great Turning, or whatever name we choose to call it. If you, like me, are middle aged or beyond, we have lived through the apex of a global empire now passed irrevocably into decline.
When exactly that point of turning was passed is the topic of many discussions. I am not sure how important it is to know that precise point. We can see that it happened sometime as we were following our dreams and passions, pursuing careers, raising families, paying mortgages… or however we chose to spend those years of our lives. We know that something big happened on the way down with the economic crisis of 2008, even if the mainstream economic pundits keep assuring us that prosperity is just around the corner.
If you are middle aged or beyond, you may remember how in our parent’s time (the World War II generation) a “blue collar” worker in union auto and steel plants had medical care for his entire family and a modest pension when he retired. Today many of us know we will never retire, and wonder if there will be social security in our old age.
If you are of “The 60’s Generation”, as I am, you may remember that many of us worked our way through college, paying tuition and living expenses by working minimum wage jobs, emerging into the world debt-free. Today’s young adults often leave college many tens of thousands of dollars in debt, with no commensurately well-paying job in sight.
We are experiencing this great crumbling from within, as it is happening. We will not experience it as an academic lecture or experiment (although some may try), with us standing outside of and observing some scientific process. We are each in different locations as it unfolds. One analogy I have heard is that it is like a long, slow train wreck. The people toward the back are still riding along comfortably. They may not have even noticed that something is amiss.
That we experience this Great Crumbling from within is an inescapable and ultimately a very good (if at times painful) thing. Everything on our earth is intricately interwoven. Each thing interacts with a multiplicity of other things that in turn interact with a multiplicity of other things.
So everything we do interacts with a multiplicity of other things. Every thing we do makes a difference. In times of crumbling, of instability and change, when the old way of being and doing can no longer hold itself, can no longer hold us in its grip, there is a greater fluidity, a greater opening. It is in times like these that even small actions can reverberate widely into the future.
And that makes it an amazing time to be alive.
***
Think about all the humans that have ever lived. They lived through times of joy and plenty. They lived through wars, famines, natural disasters. They lived through the rise and crumbling of empires. Yet none of them lived in a time like ours.
We live in a time of crumbling of a global empire – an empire unprecedented in its scope. It is an empire that knitted the human experiment together in ways unimaginable to previous empires whose reach encompassed only part of our earth. We live at the turning-crumbling point of an empire built on a way of thinking-living-being that some say began with the industrial age. Others trace its origins all the way to the beginnings of agriculture, with its concurrent rise of hierarchy, patriarchy and private ownership of land.
There is a vastness of historical sweep to what is happening right now, as we go about grocery shopping or our to-do list. Such times don’t come along every day.
Think about it! Galileo did not get to live in these times. Rilke did not get to live in these times. Jesus Christ and Buddha did not get to live in these times. Yet you and I do get to live in these times, with their long view of history.
What will we do with this incredible gift we have been given?
It is the vastness in sweep of this apex-crumbling-turning that allows us to see, in a way previous generations could not, the trajectory of our civilization’s way of being and doing, and its results.
It is this same vastness of sweep that opens an opportunity to deep visioning of the new, as the hold of the old way of being and doing reaches its limits and crumbles around and within us. This vastness of sweep calls for a fundamental change in the way humanity has defined and experienced itself for centuries, perhaps millennia, a change that goes all the way to the core of what it means to be human.
***
Yet the magnitude of this Great Turning stretches even beyond the reach of human history.
Humanity has lived through times of extreme climate change, such as the ice age approximately 20,000 years ago, when ice sheets covered large parts of North America, Europe and Asia. Yet never before have we lived through a time of global climate change created by us and our way of life, by our dominant culture, civilization and its values.
When future generations look back they will remember this as a time of mass extinctions and radical climate change – the repercussions of which we can barely imagine, and with which future generations will live with for millennia.
We will be known as the apex and turning of the time when humanity brought this about by the dominant beliefs of the dominant culture – that hierarchy and dominance were natural and even good, and that the best, and in fact the only way to be in relation to the earth, was to take from it for our immediate gratification, with no regard for the results.
There is a vastness of scope to the new story crying out to be written, as vast as the change now happening to our planet.
In the history of life on our planet, periods of mass extinction were followed by periods of abundant evolutionary growth and explosions of new forms of life.
The extinction of the dinosaurs opened the way for the rise of mammals. In the same way, this global empire based on the belief of man controlling and taking from the earth, the inevitability and even rightness of hierarchy, the idea that (as a bumper sticker I once saw said) “whoever dies with the most things wins)” is now crumbling. This opens the way for a rising of new ideas, new practices, new beliefs, new technologies rooted in and grown from knowing humanity as one group of beings nestled among many other kinds of beings within a living being we call Earth nestled within an even grander living being we call the Universe.
What will we do with this incredible gift we have been given?
***
We live in a time when the stories and mythologies of this great juncture are yet to be written. There are people already beginning the writing and telling of these times. Some of my personal favorites are Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy, Bill Plotkin. There are many, many others, and more joining in all the time. Each of us has a voice in the grand tapestry of this writing and telling.
There is an abundance of visioning now emerging from our collective human imagination. It is a time when much has already been created, is being created, that points the way toward birthing new ways of being and doing in relation to the earth and each other.
In relation to the earth, there is the marvelous flowering of Permaculture, conceived by following nature’s own design, based on the understanding that all things are interrelated and creating systems in which all elements support and feed other elements, within which humans are simply one part of the whole. From this flows new ideas in agriculture and ways to gather what we need for a good life together with this earth, living in reciprocal relationship, finding ways to enrich our earth and other life forms rather than taking from and destroying them.
At the same time there is what may be seen as the emergence of Permaculture principles applied to how we humans live in relation to each other. There is an abundance of approaches to egalitarian, non-hierarchical structures; a reviving of circle traditions; a flowering of new ways of listening, hearing and being with one another; new ways of living, co-creating and building communities together.
Perhaps the over-reaching element of this abundance of new visioning, understanding the depth and breadth of the times we live in, is what is called the re-visioning of what it means to be human. This species leap being called forth requires reaching far back into our history, to ways of feeling and relating to the earth and universe dreamed and intuited by our indigenous ancestors, largely forgotten in the bustle and clamor of our industrial growth society. It requires a reaching back, not to replicate, but to reclaim and weave together with the scientific understandings we have gathered over the past centuries, to birth something new.
All this is not something I thought of. People like Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy, Bill Plotkin and others write about it in ways so eloquent and deep it takes my breath away.
***
If you are alive today, you are living within the vastness in this moment of human and earth time. That means you have something to offer these times and that what you have to give can have much greater impact than if we lived in “normal” times of war and turmoil and natural disaster.
Hold that in your heart, in your breath, in your upturned palm.
We are the ones gifted with this long vision of the human endeavor on this planet we call earth, within this galaxy we call the Milky Way, within this grand mysterious living being we call the Universe.
I am awed and humbled by the fact that I am alive today.
We live in a time when each of our voices and visions are vitally needed for earth’s and humanity’s future. It is a time when the question is not so much how we survive the demise of what has been, as how we each contribute to what is new and arising. Rooting ourselves in what we bring to these times and share with the future is much more than a way to anchor ourselves through the storms of this great crumbling.
As you read this, you may already have an understanding of your gifts and how you bring them to this world, your role in the grand drama of our times, your note in our shared Earthsong. You may be gathering clues and listening to your intuition. You may feel it like a treasure hunt, the echo of a sound reverberating in your heart, or the leaping of a gladness within. You may be in one of those moments in your life when who you are and what you give expands, shifts, or changes directions. You may be just beginning to ask this question.
Wherever you are, it is a magic moment in the vastness of time.
We are all dancing on history’s edge, weaving the new story with our words and songs, dreams, and visions.
This IS an amazing time to be alive!
Dianne Monroe weaves her dreams and visions in Sebastopol, California. She is an Expressive Arts Facilitator, writer, and photographer offering workshops and personal mentoring for personal evolution and transformation, supporting people in the discovery and deep understanding of their voice and place in this world and these times. (In some situations she can work by phone or Skype)
Contact her (dianne@diannemonroe.com) or visit her (www.diannemonroe.com)
Really appreciated the perspective that as a species we cannot replicate simply the old ways, but reimagine and re-member in proper context our way forward.
With all the 2012 projections of cataclysm, either internally or externally, I enjoyed a message that validated our place on this Earth now as we learn to sing a new note.
You said “none of them have lived in a time like ours.” This is patently untrue. Several societies have collapsed in the past in horrific ways. One example is Archeological evidence indicates that when the Anasazi culture collapsed the ended up hunting each other for food (ref: Collapse by Jared Diamond). Most famines in history included cannibalism.
As far as learning new ways to live many people will have to be very creative in evading the gangs of disgruntled young men for whom there have been no meaningful roles emerging from their basements after a steady diet of violent video games and violent pornography angry, hungry and horny. Indeed the few survivors will have to be extremely innovative learning how to live on an planet of weeds overheated by global warming.
Sure, many groups of humans have lived through horrible circumstances like wars and natural disasters but none of them have dropped the ball as badly as we have. We will be responsible for the destruction of a planetary ecosystem. It astonishes me you can declare “a time of mass extinctions and radical climate change” somehow a good thing.
To think that hierarchy and dominance are going to disappear just because we have had a catastrophe is simple-minded: ALL primates live in cultures of hierarchy and dominance; it is in our genes and no amount of hortatory rhetoric or wishful thinking is going to change that. If rhetoric and wishes could change things then we would have established Utopia back with Lao Tzu or Jayzus – hierarchy and dominance and all the horror which comes that has been with us always. Any Partnership Paradise which never existed in the past and which will not exist in the future is a wishful thinking fantasy.
Sure the extinction of the dinosaurs opened the way for mammals and flowering plants but I can’t imagine the dinosaurs were too happy about being extinguished. Our extinction will open up the way for a planet of weeds occupied by insects, weeds and rodents – good on us and that is the best case.
So what about Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy, Bill Plotkin writing our new stories and myths; many, many visionaries, seers and prophets in the past extorted us to higher levels of humanity and exactly here – killing a planet and ready to wipe out most species including our own – is where we have arrived.
And permaculture ain’t gonna help a thing when it gets too hot for plants to germinate let alone flower. It only takes two degrees Celsius for plants to stop developing and we are almost there.
What I write is not pessimism. In fact research show pessimistic and depressed people have a sharply accurate perception of the reality of the now and the course of the future and the same research show optimists generally have their heads in clouds of pink cotton candy when it comes to a realistic appraisal of the actual reality and developing and applying practical, provisional strategies. No I do not write pessimistically, I write realistically. But I am a Cassandra. Rather let us have faith in the fantasies of noble human nature, technology and modern mythology. Save your fantasies for the people fighting in the street over the carcass of a feral dog in order to feed their families. Save it for the women being hunted with dogs by rape gangs of angry, disenfranchised young men. Save it for the coastal peoples being flooded by rising sea levels and being poisoned by the Hydrogen Sulfide being released by the dieing Ocean. Save it for the brown people in Iraq and Afghanistan who are being slaughtered as we speak for their oil and minerals. Oh why, oh why do I read this newage sewage. Best of luck … you will need it.
Garrett,
I have to say whoa, slow down, take a deep breath, and let’s clarify some things. First, as a former professor of history, I too have to say that no one has lived in a time like ours because every era of history is unique. No one else has lived in a time like the hunter-gatherers. Their time was unique, and we didn’t experience it. Our time is uniquely horrible and uniquely filled with opportunity, but it is unique.
I believe what Dianne is trying to say is that OVER TIME, hierarchy will be found to be not very useful as more efficient and compassionate ways of living evolve OUT OF THE SUFFERING THAT COLLAPSE ENGENDERS. In several places in the article, you seem to make huge generalizations about how people will live. But collapse is going to happen over a very long period of time. During that time, there will be pockets of violent, hierarchical, brutal, perhaps even cannibalistic people who have learned nothing from collapse except to try to survive physically. There are also likely to be many pockets of people who evolve, OVER TIME, to living cooperatively and create new forms of economics, etc.
Your perspective feels very narrow and time-limited to me. You are insisting that we will devolve to a Mad Max scenario and remain there. You have absolutely no concept of any other possibility. That is just as pathetic as the pollyanna perspective you say Dianne writes from. Look, collapse is the very worst thing that can happen to humanity and the very best thing at the same time. It is going to be just as horrific as you insist and just as filled with possibility as Dianne insists. The work I have dedicated my life to until my last breath is the work of holding BOTH/AND rather than attempting to live from either/or which is precisely the perspective of industrial civilization. Dianne’s article conveys BOTH/AND: Absolute horror and absolute possibility.
By the way, her perspective is not New Age. A New Age perspective holds that suffering is only an illusion and is not real. I don’t hear that from Dianne. It says that “everything is in divine order.” I don’t hear that from Dianne. It says that if we just think pretty thoughts, everything will be peachy. Again, I don’t hear that from her at all.
As much as you detest the idea of reading her article again, I challenge you to do just that, and this time, PAY ATTENTION to what she’s really saying. If it pisses you off and pushes your buttons that much next time, then it’s time to do some deep inner work on why that is so.
Carolyn
Unfortunately, I’m with Garrett. There is no reason to think collapse will be slow, or lumpy. I say this because it’s quite clear to me, and it’s based on hard science, that the ecosystems and food chains are in dramatic dieback. Evolution has created an incredibly complex (and exquisitely beautiful) web of interdependent species which unfortunately is more like a house of cards than not.
If you yank out one card – say, the pattern of precipitation, or a top predator – the entire house will fall down in the blink of a geologic eye. Take this story about Pacific mammals, for instance: http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2009/07/graph-of-day-sequential-collapse-of.html
just glance at the chart. That is not a slow, lumpy collapse, and ours won’t be either. And that’s without even considering thermonuclear war, just the gangs that Garrett refers to which, as the mother of three daughters, I worry about even more than pandemic disease.
Personally on my blog I am documenting the largely ignored death of trees, which is a direct result of air pollution. Forests are in dieback all over the world, which is going to exacerbate climate change, and play havoc with rainfall and agriculture, not to mention of course the loss of habitat and source of food for many species, which will quickly become extinct.
That’s not to say that these aren’t interesting times to live, especially for those of us on the front of the train. But for every thoughtful, hopeful, reasonable person like Dianne, I’m afraid there are legions more like these (the video will freak you out!) http://thecomingcrisis.blogspot.com/2012/01/church-of-death-where-suicide-couple.html
Garrett Fox,
I appreciate your comments and response as well as Carolyn Baker’s response to yours. All this combined with Dianne Monroe’s article make for a very substantive contemplation of where WE ARE and where I AM relative to this unique point in history. This is the discussion we all need to be having both individually and collectively.
I would add to Carolyn’s response and Dianne’s “defense” by drawing attention to this line of the piece:
“It is a time when the question is not so much how we survive the demise of what has been, as how we each contribute to what is new and arising.”
(I put quotes around “defense” as I feel the whole conversation is fluid and appropriate as we all gain from the discussion)
Keith Rose
One perspective held by many (in some form or other) is that “we” are immortal energy beings who are schooled by becoming serial possessors of animal bodies in the material world (in particular the rapacious Earth primates called humans). The theory is that by suffering and inflicting suffering on others while incarnate we gradually evolve into “better” energy beings to serve some otherworldly purpose.
If one accepts that concept, then yes, perhaps many energy beings might learn from the ghastly mistakes they made while being human on Earth. That is a possibility. Yay for spiritual progress, I guess.
However, as far as the collateral damage for the Earth biosphere, and the unprecedented levels of human misery and degradation likely to result on the material plane, I have to say that I find no fault with Garrett’s perspective. Humans (whether containing souls or not) behaved badly in times of stability and will in general behave even worse during collapse. I see no silver lining in this material world.
For me, this isn’t about any silver lining in collapse. It is about the fact that collapse will be “lumpy” and will play out in different ways in different places. Moreover, there will be places where collapse will lead to great transformation; there will be other places where monstrous human beings will create ghastly scenarios of carnage and obliteration.
Does not face reality – bit like a trip. Sure change, or impending change, could be exciting but the sort of change that eventuates will not be pleasant. I guess it depends on what you find exciting. The article glosses the reality of human history and the underlying human state – the current ‘system’ is unlikely to go unless it collapses in an uncontrolled way and will certainly not migrate in a controlled way to a ‘new state’. Those who have gained ‘lots’ in terms of obscene wealth and power are hardly likely to concede anything to those who have not.
The system within which we live has profound issues that collectively we are unable to comprehend and even attempt to address – the human lifespan is too short for any of use to meaningfully consider the longer term. M.K.Hubbert in his paper – ‘Exponential Growth as a Transient Phenomenon in Human History’, used a ‘systems’ analysis to clearly outline that our current state of resource consumption is truly transient and flagged the need to migrate to a ‘sustainable’ system thirty or so years ago – of course he was ignored. Hubbert’s conclusions stem from fact the global ‘debt system’ operates from a infinite perspective (there is no limit to how much debt finance can be created) whilst the physical world operates within clearly defined finite constraints (laws of physics, etc) in terms of energy creation and use, water, other physical resources, etc, that no amount of technology and innovation can address. Yes sure hunter gathers were ‘unique’ in the sense that they lived within the planet’s systems as Hubbert clearly illustrates in his paper – sustainably. We are unique in the sense that we do not.
Debt finance makes us believe in possibilities that cannot possibly be delivered, given current population growth and expectations and our finite resources – these are in terms of continuous growth, never ending consumption, etc. Our systems, individualised thinking (we are all consumers), selfish cultural mores, etc, are all built around the expectation of immediate gratification – hence the headlong rush in China and India to conspicuous consumption and materialism. In the very short term the wealthy get wealthier but the planets resources are trashed at an ever accelerating pace – not only physical resources but its bio-diversity and bio-sphere which we do not ‘factor’ in as a cost. It makes me chuckle when people say we are destroying the planet. Hardly, that is not the case as the only thing we will destroy is ourselves. In 200 or so million years the planet will have completely renewed its surface and will have wiped all records of our brief existence – we will be a mere flash in the infinite continuum of time.
The issue is that we are now facing a period of rapid collapse in resource availability and given the belief that growth is never ending we also have conspired to create massive overshot of population that cannot be sustained as we deplete our resources. Personally I have no desire to live in an overpopulated world. This reality is already resulting in the formation of two ‘power blocks’ (the NATO group led by the thuggish US and a block made up of China, Russia, Iran, etc) impending resource conflicts in terms of access to oil and gas which will soon be extended to conflicts over water supplies in many regions of the world.
All civilisations collapse – we are no different, just bigger, more complex and the collapse may be spectacular. We are also lucky thus far that our ‘civilisation’ has evolved during a period of considerable geological calm. Our experience of eventual collapse is based on the sudden disappearance of many city states and the decline of multiple empires throughout history – caused by corruption, overstretch, war, famine, water loss, natural disasters, or a combination of a number of these.
As Professor Lovelock commented the Earth is now one big Easter Island – an example of a constrained system that was overexploited through non sustainable practices. The system we have now is ‘globalised’ and interconnected and is dependent on the illusion of CHEAP and FINITE energy. Like in the case of Easter Island we will deplete readily accessible resources but we have nowhere to go once they are gone. When the system collapses, as it will, there will be pandemonium as supply chains disconnect and the financial system ceases to exist – in the major cities there is never more than a week’s supply of food and without money no means of exchange. There are not the localised support systems in place, nor are there extensive barter systems in place to take over for the majority of the population to survive.
Exciting, yes. It depends of what you find exciting. I am sure some people will find economic dislocation, financial collapse, famine and nuclear war exciting, but for the vast majority of us it will be truly terrifying as it will be a systemic and globalised period of ‘excitement’. The point is as individuals we are powerless in the face of such change.
You are absolutely NOT powerless in the face of such change. You are powerless to stop the change, but you are not powerless to prepare for it and resiliently respond to it. What I believe Dianne is excited about is the joy we CAN feel as we prepare, as we come together and support each other—and what we might be able to build out of the rubble of collapse for any future descendants, and there will be some. Maybe not many, but some.
Don’t agree – we have divergent frames of reference and philosophies…if world ends up an incinerated and irradiated wreck good luck to you. It may have past you by that all the major powers are still armed to the teeth with very big thermo nuclear bombs.
Furthermore an individual is powerless in the face of mass tyranny and being unable to influence such change is being powerless. Merely responding to an event does not confer one power, or even the right to act (now given the draconian laws past in the US) – George Orwell would not be surprised as to the pickle we have all got ourselves into.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever. (Orwell)
The ‘elites’ (a silly term for those who wield power through influence, position and wealth) are currently using a Hegelian dialectic and through the prism of crisis to justify more ‘State Corporatism’ rather then foster individual liberty and expression.
Good luck to you.
Me Again,
When Carol says “You are absolutely NOT powerless in the face of such change. You are powerless to stop the change, but you are not powerless to prepare for it and resiliently respond to it” I think what she means is we can choose to die, along with a minimum of 96% of the rest of the human species, shreiking in fear, terror and agony in a state of unimaginable horror and degredation or, in that same condition of unimaginable horror and degredation you can die with a smile on your face and joy in your heart something like Victor Frankl versus the poor schlubs in the concentration camps who couldn’t rise above it like he did. Since I have only heard of one Vitor Frankl but I’ve heard of so very, very many Holocaust survivors who were traumatized for the rest of their lives I think one has to be an exceptional person to face gruesome annihilation gleefully.
As for collapse being lumpy, certainly that is true. It will come later and perhaps more gently for us in the wealthy western Empire but come for us it will and ultimately it will be worse: our bloated lazy techno-pampered lifestyles coming crashing down will traumatize us far more fully than the collapse of states and economies currently staggering in some state of collapse already.
As far as the Earth having erased our presence in 200 Million years … no doubt. Unfortunately there is a real chance we can transform the surface of this earth to that of a Venus, hot enough to melt Lead (Pb) on its surface. Life will abide but it will be heat-loving sulfer and methane metabolizing bacteria. Someone mentioned the earth has been through several extinctions before (five major to be exact) but this is the first one caused by the direct actions of one of the species living on the planet.
We are a mal-adaptive evolutionary mistake. We are the only species which slaughters, enslaves and exploits its own kind, in massive numbers, for convenience, pleasure and profit. The earth will be a better place without us; unfortunately there is real potential we will take all the other species with us. Since the parameters for complex life such as we are murdering in abundance are so narrow it in not inconceivable this could be the only or at least one of the few planets in the Universe which can support complex life such as has arisen here. In our arrogance and hubris we are destroying a planetary biosphere and my leave only bacteria in our wake. To say this is a time for spiritual growth, a time for tranformation, an “amazing time to be alive” is head-in-the-sand denial possible only by well-educated newage liberals. Just rememder the phrase “unimaginable horror and degredation” and imagine what the unimaginable could be.
I would say “heaven help us” but there will be no help, there will be no angelic or alien benefactors saving us from ourselves. There will only be us and this is terrifying.
I accept that sophisticated denial is a reasonable strategy at any point but I prefer to go to my death in the inevitable carnage, as lumpy as the distribution thereof may be, head high and eyes wide open. It is only an amazing time to be alive insofar as it is a once in a lifetime, nay, once in the lifetime of a PLANET, chance to see the destruction of a biosphere, the rampage of the starving, civil disobedience, cannibalism, violence and the “unimaginable horror and degradation” … if that is what you are into.
Enjoy.
Garett- I must painfully and regretfully concur with your assessment. Oh how I have wanted to believe it to otherwise. I retell the optimistic myths to myself over and over again with the same result. One can not “unknow” information.
Yet I continue to live my life day to day as if it is true that we live in an exiting time and that great potential awaits us somewhere up there. It is a comfortable lie which I tell myself.
Am I the only one who sees titles like this one and feels the urge to bang my head against something made of marble?
Actually, when I saw the “amazing” title I was wishing I could get my hands on some of whatever drug that Dianne is taking. In my real life, I had a questionable mammogram in November, and more than two months later have not done anything about it. I just don’t see the point. In the event that I do have cancer, I would consider that an “amazing” gift. The sooner I get off this ship of fools, the better.
Joy, I completely understand where you are. I am a breast cancer survivor, and I know the dilemma. Personally, I’m glad I chose NOT to get off this ship of fools because I am experiencing more meaning in my life as a result of preparing for collapse than I ever have. Without exception, I hear the same from other people who are preparing and who tell me that as a result, they’ve never felt more alive. I invite you to read my book NAVIGATING THE COMING CHAOS: A HANDBOOK FOR INNER TRANSITION, particularly the chapter on life purpose. For me, emotional and spiritual preparation isn’t just about me; it’s also about all the people, no matter how few, who will survive collapse and will be working to create something a million miles removed from industrial civilization.
If the ONLY outcome of collapse that you can possibly see is death, horror, extinction, and annihilation, then I can understand why you’d like to bang your head against something made of marble. That perspective is every bit as delusional as the fantasy that collapse will never happen or that some magic bullet will be found to prevent it.
Joy, I completely get you. Since 2000 I lost my marriage, my job, my bank accounts, my unemployment, got my mother out of a lawsuit, had two nasty accidents in ten weeks, and did a chapter 7. No income for a year now. And the second shoe is about to drop when Greece officially defaults. I’m supposed to feel good about this? I don’t really see where the hope is. If it wasn’t for my mother and significant other I’d probably shoot myself. If you don’t have money no one will even talk to you; and what good would it do if they did at this point? I’ve been beaten down for so long I just can’t get up anymore.
Thank you Dianne, this is really inspiring reading — not so much a description of where I am now, but definitely of where I’d like to be — more like a call to action.
Reading this piece six years after it was released, with humanitys and the rest of the planets impending doom just around the corner, just brings further sorrow to me. Whatever dream we had of a great awakening or turnaround is now long lost, if it was ever possible. In a few months the arctics methane gun may very well go off in full power. After that calamity, there won´t be any room for rebuilding something new in the old empires ashes. It will simply be ashes