What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

John Heywood

I used this quote above (attributed to Heywood but echoing “Jeremiah 5:21,” which designates some small portion of copy from a book that the religious group “the Christians” refer to as “the Bible.”) in the “front matter” of my first novel, All of the Above. It’s a quote that shows up later in the book, spoken by one of the characters. And the phrase “none so blind” has been my working title for the series as a whole, as in: All of the Above, Book One of the None So Blind series, soon to be a major motion picture. (That last bit is one of those thoughts-create-reality experiments…)

I didn’t use that series title anywhere on the book’s cover, though there is a note in the back, just after the story ends, that explains that All of the Above is the first book in a series of three. One reason for not using it on the cover, or elsewhere in the marketing copy, is that, with only a first book, there really isn’t a series yet, just an intention, and that it might be misrepresentative to advertise it as such. I could, after all, simply drop the whole thing and move onto something else. Such things have happened before.

But another reason to not use that title is that Sally had misgivings about it. Sally’s a compassionate sort, you see, and shies away from making unbalanced judgments about people whenever possible. To her, Heywood’s quote judges people’s “not seeing” as a matter of will, and fails to take into account the situation into which they were born and raised that would have them “not see” something.

Okay. I get that. Sure. There’s a great deal of judgment in the world. And most days, at least when viewing the larger society through the various media, it feels like there’s much less compassion. Doomers™, perhaps, are especially prone to playing the “you just don’t get it” card, speaking of “the masses” as “sheeple,” battling “denialists,” and thinking we live in the “age of stupid.” I often find a certain condescending, contemptuous tone amongst those who can more clearly see the present global predicament toward those who don’t.

I’ve indulged in that tone myself from time to time. But mostly I remember my own long decades spent living right inside the dominant paradigm, even if I had scootched over to the edge as much as was possible. Unable to forget my own journey, it has always made sense to me to balance my frustration and judgment with understanding and compassion, and I relax when I see other Doomers do that. Sure. We’re most of us™ having trouble seeing some seemingly obvious things. But there are really good emotional-psychological-cultural-spiritual reasons for that. I know how long it took me to claw my way out of that set of assumptions, beliefs, expectations and values. It’s not been easy. I get why most people never seem to get around to it.

But to me, the quote doesn’t really judge all “not seeing” as willful so much as point out that, on the continuum of people’s ability to “see” our current collective predicament, the blindest ones are those who are in some sense choosing not to see. And I think it’s those who fall closer to the willful end who are actually in that thing we call Denial™. Not knowing is not the same as denial, I think. Being mis- or poorly-informed is not denial. And I know for myself that my journey included a great deal of both “not knowing” and being “misinformed.”

But denial is different. To my mind, you cannot deny something without first seeing, sensing, or knowing it. Denial includes a “turning away,” which feels more active and willful than the more passive “not knowing” or “being misinformed.” And because the “not seeing” is active, it feels much more difficult to “break on through” to clarity and knowing. It’s the blindest form of “not seeing,” as Heywood says.

Now we can consider that this active “turning away” is completely understandable, and that it may rarely be conscious. And if it’s not conscious, we can wonder if it’s really willful at all. Sure. Good thing to wonder about. But I find that neither the victim story nor the perpetrator story captures the full reality of my experience, and that I must take on and balance both in order to understand my own journey. While I can lay claim to not knowing and being misinformed, I must also state that, at some point, my victim’s claim of “I didn’t know” became more and more indefensible. Facts and figures pounded on my wall of “not seeing,” and vague rumblings touched my heart and filled me with fear. As a highly sensitive soul living in a well-attuned physical body, there were deep parts of me that “knew” long before my rational mind could accept what I knew. It took active energy, will, to not let fully into my consciousness what my body and soul already knew. And, as I was not consciously choosing to not know what I knew, it took further energy to hide my own denial from myself. Which is why I’ve felt so much relief from opening up fully to the world situation. Denial had sapped me of my strength.

At this point, given the “information society” in which we live, and given the ramping up of the severity of our various Problems™, the vast majority of civilized humans probably now stand, poised like surfers, somewhere on the middle of that continuum of “seeing,” with at least one foot firmly settled on the “willful” end of the board, just as I stood for so long. Though there’s still a great deal of misinformation out there, there are likely very few who can honestly claim that they have not sensed or heard about the present global predicament, and the tsunami of Earth changes and societal changes now headed in their direction. To me, it’s perfectly understandable that it should be this way, as the present predicament spells the end of our current way of life, and perhaps the end of most of life itself (making it, therefore, Disturbing™ and Frightening™ for most), and this “turning away” may be rooted primarily in an assessment, perhaps quite reasonable, that there’s really nothing much most people can do about this predicament in any event, a possibility that was movingly illustrated in this scene from Deep Impact in which the young reporter stands on the beach in the arms of her father as the wave approaches:

Heywood’s quote, then, just feels to me like an accurate statement of what’s so, and the “new” thing here might be that one can question one’s acculturated judgement that willful Denial™ is Bad™. This is the assumption that would make Heywood’s observation “judgmental,” after all, and, as everyone knows, judgmental is a Bad™ thing to be. Denial may be a perfectly reasonable way for many to surf the coming storms. It just might be difficult to ponder that possibility inside of the belief that Collapse™ is Bad™ and that there is Something We Can Do to Stop It™. Maybe Collapse is not Bad™, maybe there isn’t much we can Do™ (apart from aligning with what is already happening), maybe both beliefs to the contrary stand in the way of something important, and maybe Denial™ does have an important role to play right now. I can tout the spiritual benefits of facing fully into the shitstorm, but all I really know is that that’s the path that works for me. As much as it confronts my reactive ego to say so, others may be operating out of very different, and possibly useful, wisdom. Denialists™ in every field (including some now asking for your vote) may be “leading the charge” to “hit bottom.” Active, willful blindness may actually help civilized humans achieve more quickly what it is they most seem to want, which is to unravel the present society in which they feel trapped, lost, and miserable. And ending that system as quickly as is possible may be Life’s only real hope.

I do not know this to be True™. I am simply open to considering the possibility. It certainly feels like a high-risk strategy. But in this time of seemingly Insoluble Problems™, we may have little choice in the matter, at least if we are entertaining any hope of continuing on in the physical realm.

If denial will help us stop this crazy machine, then here’s to it.

Surf’s up.

Addendum: When I started this piece, all I really knew was that I wanted to take on that John Heywood quote. I didn’t know where my musings would take me. And I didn’t realize, until the next morning, that those musings would help me break through a stuck place in my current writing, which is Rumi’s Field, the sequel to All of the Above. Wonderful, how everything connects with everything else…

Here, in no particular order, are seventeen resources that sit within easy reach on the shelf in my laboratory. They serve as foundations to my current working, playing, thinking, feeling, and being here on Planet Earth. These works inspire me, inform me, shape me, calm me, guide me, challenge me, and teach me. If we’ve largely “lost our elders” in the dominant mainstream culture, these works, and the hearts and minds that created them, serve as elders in my life. These are all works to which I have returned more than once, and to which I expect to return again in the future.

Ishmael and The Story of B (and other works) by Daniel Quinn: It should come as little surprise that these come first to my mind. I’ve certainly spoken about their importance to me many times before. Quinn’s insights have been essential in my own work of learning to notice and call into question the deep, seemingly invisible cultural stories, beliefs, assumptions, and expectations which shape our lives, both personally and collectively. With Quinn, I mastered my ability to hear the whispered urgings of “Mother Culture.” Having heard her voice, I cannot unhear it. That has changed everything.

What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte: This audio presentation, done for Tami Simon’s SoundsTrue, moves me deeply. Whyte, an English poet now living in the Pacific Northwest, with his marvelous voice, his fierce yet gentle tone, his deep wisdom and enchanting words, feels like every elder I’ve ever wanted all rolled into one. This presentation works for me just as the title says: as a guide for living for those who have Awakened™. To me, his thoughts and words and images and stories form a method of divination, like an audio Tarot, a spoken I Ching. Dip into any place in this almost six hours of magic and I find something that fits right into the questions and challenges of my day.

Ultimate Flexibility, an interview with Adyashanti by Tami Simon: Thinking of David Whyte naturally brings me to this podcast, and for similar reasons. Though my own spirituality does not fall into any neat containers, any particular tradition, I find that what Adyashanti says here resonates with me very deeply. And like David Whyte’s work, it serves, for me, as a “how to” for navigating the emotional-psychological-spiritual terrain of this present unraveling/transforming world into which I was born.

Communion (and other works) by Whitley Strieber: This is the book that brought me back into an adult relationship with one of my childhood loves: the UFO phenomenon. Strieber adds a moving and poetic “human face” to the experience while managing to do one of the most important things (in my opinion) we civilized humans need to learn to do: he holds the questions and does not collapse into firm belief. While I consider the UFO phenomenon both Real™ and extremely Important™, I lose interest when any particular researcher or analyst tries to explain “what it all means” or “what is really going on,” as if they have the real, correct, true answer. The phenomenon seems intent on confounding us, and on confounding the overarching materialist paradigm into which most of us were born and raised. For that reason, I consider this topic directly related to the whole Doom™ thang, to which I give so much focus.

The Culture of Make Believe (and other works) by Derrick Jensen: If Daniel Quinn has served, for me, as the voice of the “elder” or “wizard,” Derrick Jensen has served as the voice of the “warrior.” I have found both roles to be very important, and do not consider them mutually exclusive. One can be both, I think, and the “warrior” and “wizard” archetypes have both always inspired me. Jensen’s keen mastery of cultural stories, beliefs, and assumptions compliments Quinn’s, rooting out some of the whisperings of the culture that Quinn did not. And his love for the living world is palpable to me. His earlier works were essential for my own path toward mastery, and resonate still within me, as though Jensen hit the gong of my soul with a soft, firm mallet and set it ringing forever.

UFOs and the National Security State, Volumes 1 and 2 by Richard Dolan: Were I to recommend books about the modern UFO phenomenon, I would recommend Dolan’s amazing histories as essential reading. While my own thinking and speculation about the Reality™ of the phenomenon may sometimes get way “fringier” (I can’t believe spell check is letting that one go by without comment…) than his, Dolan’s approach has been very helpful for me, primarily because he focuses so much on the human (government, military, scientific, etc.) response to the phenomenon and attempts to “peer behind the curtain.” Trying to think and feel my way into the hearts, minds, goals, and motivations of the hidden control levels is something I love to do. I also find Dolan to be a clear and entertaining speaker. I just like the guy. That’s a nice feeling.

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot: I’ve probably read this book five times now, once out loud to Sally. That’s saying a great deal for somebody with as extensive a “to be read” list as I have. For me, it’s a “wow!” book. It takes pretty much every single topic that interests me and rolls them all together into a big, fun, intriguing ball of everythingness. Love it… a possible TOE (theory of everything) with clear scientific roots and spiritual branches. And once I learned to see the Universe in holographic terms, it has opened me to fun and intriguing new realms of thinking. To me, all that “peak oil, climate change, mass extinction, and population overshoot” stuff is not only about questioning such assumptions as “perpetual growth,” “human exceptionalism,” or “ruling the Earth.” It’s also about challenging the scientific/materialist paradigm that sits underneath our current collective predicament. This book does that.

Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural (and other works) by Graham Hancock: As may be obvious by now, I follow other guides besides just the “rational, scientific reasoning” I was taught to use as a member of the dominant culture. I follow intuition. I follow my excitement. I follow signs and portents and synchronicities. And I read the reviews on Amazon. In Hancock’s case, I must say, I never smile as much, and my heart never beats quite as excitedly, as when I’m in the middle of one of his analyses of our deep human past and our collective human situation. So many fear to wade into the “fringe” pool because it looks to them chock full of shouting, giggling nutballs tossing around beach-balls filled with groundless speculation, hopeful salvation fantasies, and unexamined filters and beliefs. You may find Hancock in that pool, but he’s up to something very different, I think. Speculative? Sure. Challenging? Yep. Rejected by mainstream historians and scientists? Largely. But Hancock does not feel like a giggling nutball. My discernment meter tells me that he’s a clear thinker who’s onto something important.

The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (and other works) by Richard Heinberg: I got the environment piece way earlier than I got the oil piece. My friend Tom tried to give it to me a couple of years before I was ready for it. Sally handed me Thom Hartmann’s The Last Hours of Ancient Sunshine, and Matt Savinar surely scared the bejesus out of me, but it was Heinberg’s book that sealed the deal. That may be largely due to Heinberg’s confident, calm voice. Sure, he says, this might be frightening. There are big changes coming. But let’s just sit together, take a breath, and think about how we might wish to respond. I can still feel astonished that the basic concepts of “peak oil” are still as up for question in the mainstream mind as they are. But then I have to be astonished at my astonishment.

F#A#∞ by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, American Woman by The Guess Who, Nantucket Sleighride by Mountain, The Power and the Glory by Gentle Giant, Remain in Light by Talking Heads, Ænima by Tool, and Version 2.0 by Garbage: Where would I be without music? I would be locked in a padded cell, my arms constrained, with a dab of spittle hanging from my chin. Music saved my sanity and my soul when I was a kid. It saves me still today. Okay, so maybe Sally would be enough to keep me out of the padded cell, but really, without music? Why would I want to even be here? As I continue to stare at the world situation, there are just some days when I need a reason to love my fellow humans. Music always brings me back to that. Always. There are thousands of other titles I could insert above. These are today’s.

The Importance of Human Beings by Terence McKenna: Though I have a used copy of McKenna’s Archaic Revival in a stack on my desk, I have yet to read it. I’m sure I will one day, but I find McKenna’s audio so compelling that I fear I may not like him as much in written form. I’m not sure which planet McKenna comes from, but it must be near my own. The man makes me laugh. He makes my eyes grow wide in wonder. He challenges me and pisses me off and loses me and holds my attention. And he gives me pieces I get nowhere else. This particular speech is one to which I’ve returned numerous times. It challenges what I see as the over-reactionary Doomer™ judgments regarding human exceptionalism, and the Scientific™ judgments regarding directionality in the Universe. Opening up these topics for dialogue is just the sort of thing I love to do in my lab.

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (and other works) by Stephen Jay Gould: I pretty much read everything Gould wrote in my teen and early adult years. His popular books on evolutionary theory, punctuated equilibrium, and the history of science excited and informed me. One might think that Gould’s general insistence that evolution has no inherent drive toward long-term progress, no particular directionality beyond that of diversity, stands in direct opposition to McKenna’s address above. One might be right. I, for one, love paradox, and any chance I can find to hold seeming opposites together at the same time. To my mind, one must take such crazy steps, if one wishes to stumble into a new paradigm.

12 Monkeys by Terry Gilliam, 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, Amadeus by Miloš Forman, The Big Lebowski by the Coen Brothers, Dead Man Walking by Tim Robbins, Fight Club by David Fincher, and Harold and Maude by Hal Ashby: (Yes, I know it is unfair to single out directors like this. Deal.) As with music choices, I could have named a thousand films. These are just a few that jumped out. Also as with music, films have helped keep me sane and in touch with something good at the times I’ve really needed those things. And, since the artists and creators behind both music and films are often struggling with the same questions about life, the universe, and everything with which I tend to wrestle, they’ve given me valuable signposts, images, words, and metaphors to use on my own journey. My lifelong love of films, books, and music also makes me a competitive player at Trivial Pursuit.

Journeys Out of the Body (and other works) by Robert Monroe: I’ve read books about this since I was in high school - books on Near Death Experiences, Past Lives, Reincarnation, Remote Viewing, Shamanic Journeys, Psychedelic Trips, and Out of Body Experiences. (Look at all of the CAPITAL LETTERS!) There’s something obvious, exciting, and yet mysterious about the notion that our consciousness, whatever that is, is not strictly tied to our bodies, whatever those are. Though I’ve yet to really experience much of this myself (I’ve “dabbled” enough to get a few, vague “hits.”) I’ve read reports of studies that leave me fairly convinced that there’s something to it, even as I refuse to collapse into firm belief. Monroe stands out in my mind as a pioneer in the field. His books are great fun.

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (and other works) by Richard Bach: There’s something about Bach’s writing that always stirs my heart and gifts me with tears. His simple stories are gentle yet firm, intensely grounded yet reaching toward the stars, and portray the very teachers and elders and seekers and visionaries I long to meet in my Real™ life. Like some of Quinn’s novels, Illusions feels like it was written directly to and for me. And there are so many pithy quotes to use, so many concise spiritual equations to hold in my heart and mind. I love quotes and equations.

Cosmos by Carl Sagan: Along with Stephen Jay Gould I was reading every book by Carl Sagan that I could get my hands on. While Gould took me into deep-time, Sagan took me into deep-space, from the Cosmos to the inner quantum. (Yes, I know, both of these gentlemen wandered further afield that I’m indicating here…) I remember watching the PBS series based on this book (or was it the other way around?) and feeling such soaring wonder about, love for, and connection with the physical Universe into which I was born. Seeing ol’ Carl resurrected by the Symphony of Science folks brought that all back to me.

Slapstick or Lonesome No More! (and other works) by Kurt Vonnegut. I could have named a slew of other Vonnegut novels – Cat’s Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse Five, Galapagos – and I could have named a passel of other writers – Larry Niven, Stephen Donaldson, Frank Herbert, Tom Robbins, Orson Scott Card, Russell Hoban - but for reasons known only to my dentist, Slapstick stands out this morning as the book to highlight. There’s always been something about this strange, post-apocalyptic tale of freaks and Presidents and variable gravity and creative genius that has resonated with my own life experience. Vonnegut always moves me with his fierce humanity, his astonishment, his wry assessment of our collective predicament, and his hopeless insistence on the basic goodness of people, even in the face of so much seeming evidence to the contrary. Like music and films, there are many novels which serve me simply by reminding me that there is good in the world. That, too, is true. As true as all the Doom™, all the horror, all the injustice, all the pain, all the destruction, all the insanity. I need those reminders.

I note, upon looking over my list, that, with the exception of Shirley Manson, Tina Weymouth, and Sophie Trudeau (who play in some of the bands named above) and Tami Simon (as an interviewer) my list seems to be constructed entirely out of white men. Rather than go back and toss Chellis Glendinning, Vine Deloria, or Malidoma Some into the mix in an attempt to “correct” this, I think I will just leave it as is, noting it with interest as just the sort of thing I like to look at in my lab.

Onward…

A review of What is Sustainable by Richard Adrian Reese

Richard Reese is trying to cut away your hope. But don’t worry: he’s only after your false hope. Your true hope, your animal sense of the real possibilities before us, cannot be taken away, even by a surgeon as powerful as Reese. And the nice thing about having one’s false hopes excised, I’ve found, after the pain of loss has subsided, is that the real hope gets more clear, and a new sense of freedom and sanity can arise that more than makes up for the loss. My primary felt experience while reading Reese’s book was that of relief.

It is important that the younger generations understand that these times of sickness are not normal, and do not resemble our ancient path… For almost all of human history, successful cultures were the norm.

If you have to have surgery, it’s nice to find a good surgeon. One with a kind manner and gentle touch. One who seems able to connect with you on a human level. One who understands not just the mechanics of cutting and sewing, but the mysteries of trauma and pain and fear and healing. Richard Reese is such a person. He’s funny, smart, wise, confident, simple, clear, honest, and willing to risk challenging you in the service of truth and healing. Like the eponymous teacher gorilla in Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, Richard Reese is a powerful presence in his book, an emissary from some other time or place or culture, perhaps, or a wizard living in a hut on the village’s edge. He doesn’t feel like your average acculturated civilized human being. He feels more animal, more grounded, more real. He has mastered the ability to see through the cultural surfaces and right to the roots. And because of that, his skill with the scalpel is sure and swift, and the pain is minimal.

Collapse is already in its early stages, and nothing can stop it… We can’t wish away reality. The avalanche has started, and it will do what it wants to and stop when it’s done. So, pay attention, be flexible, and think clearly… We must accept the cards we were dealt, and play them to the best of our ability.

If we can imagine a genuinely healthy destination, and move in that direction, we’ll waste less time wandering aimlessly, or desperately clinging to sinking ships… Maybe the first step is ripping off our blinders and taking a cold, hard look at our poisonous way of life.

And Reese has more than five minutes to give you in his office. He’ll tell you about his own journey out of the dominant mainstream culture and his years in the relative wilds of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula living more gently on the Earth. He’ll tell you about his ancestors and their journeys through the vast cultural and planetary changes of the past few centuries. He’ll regale you with stories of the people he’s met and the gifts they’ve given him, and he’ll include the tree people, the rock people, the animal people, and the Good People, in his stories. He’ll tell you what he’s learned about our collective predicament on Earth, about how we got here, about what may have happened to set us on our path to seeming catastrophe. And he’ll invite you, at every point, to consider your own life. He knows that surgery is only a part of healing. He knows that love and connection and sharing and listening are essential as well.

When times change and a culture no longer works, people have a tendency to cling to their old culture even harder…. We are furiously using the magic of our failed culture (science and technology) in an attempt to continue growing forever on a finite planet.

But, as the fossil fuel era fades, we can be certain that the unfolding collapse is going to radically alter our worldview… The alternation process is going to be bottom-up, and happening everywhere. All changes will be born and nurtured in the hearts of ordinary individual people.

Reese is a specialist. His expertise lies in cutting away the diseased beliefs and unbalanced assumptions of those born and raised in the culture of civilization, the history of which he describes as “essentially a story about controlling and exploiting large herds of submissive humans.” Following ecologist John Livingston, Reese sees humanity as an unstable, “overspecialized” species, whose reliance on acquired, accumulated knowledge can be both a blessing and a curse. In civilization’s case, humans made “a radical shift from the past” with the adoption of domestication of plants and animals:

The birth of domestication led to a great rift in human history. On one side of this rift was Fairyland, where all of the wild ones lived together in a relatively balanced and elegant manner. On the other side was slave country – civilization – where domesticated plants and animals were controlled and exploited by humans who fancied themselves to be masters and owners.

Farming, herding, fishing, logging, metallurgy, energy, ballistic weapons; Reese examines these basic “mining” and “slaveholding” behaviors of civilized peoples and traces how they served as the engine for both population growth and environmental destruction. He examines a wide array of food-growing methods and finds only a few that have the potential to be sustainable, and none that can be sustained in any system that insists on growth. And he challenges us to consider that much of what we now think of as sustainable really isn’t, and that even “old-fashioned low-tech organic agriculture was ecologically devastating”:

The civilizations of the ancient world were typically destroyed by a combination of intensive logging, over-grazing, organic farming, and perpetual growth. Their organic farming practices would likely fall within the sphere of what is today wishfully referred to as sustainable agriculture – organic manure fertilizers, no machines, no herbicides, no pesticides, no gene-spliced seeds.

It is important to comprehend the notion that, wherever it was attempted, wood-fired industrial civilization promptly created massive environmental destruction – it was absolutely, completely, and ridiculously unsustainable. European ecosystems were already devastated by 1800, when the industrial revolution officially began. Thus, when we contemplate creating a healthy and sustainable way of life, far more is needed than simply turning back the clock 200 years.

He suggests that we might learn to live without farming altogether:

Here’s the bottom line – horticulture, agriculture, aquaculture, and animal enslavement are completely unnecessary if the number of mouths is kept low. If we achieve this, then it’s possible to free ourselves by hunting, fishing, and foraging – a way of life that is much gentler on the ecosystem, much less work, and much healthier. Farming is spiritually dangerous, because it involves manipulating, confining, and dominating other humans and other species – an unwholesome relationship… It is important to remember that agriculture did not exist for most of human history.

He does not shy away from the issue of population:

What is a sustainable population? It depends… There were two billion people in 1925, and it was anything but a sustainable utopia. The experts know this. But if they gave us realistic numbers, they would immediately be sent to a lunatic asylum, and their professional careers would be over. This brings to mind an old Yugoslav proverb: “Speak the truth. Then run.”

The downsizing will be automatic, and impossible for us to prevent… With fewer people, and fewer machines, the destruction of the planet will be reduced.

And he does not shy away from our chances:

Realistically, cleansing our consumer worldview of dysfunctional beliefs, in a planned, orderly, and efficient manner – radically altering the thinking of billions of human minds, instilling a profound sense of reverence and respect for the Earth, eliminating materialism and self-centeredness – is an absolutely ridiculous idea.

But like all good healers, Richard Reese is not content with simply cutting away diseased tissue. He has poetry and possibility with which to sew you back up, and healing balms of connection and story to soothe the pain. He sits at your bedside with grand stories to tell, stories that go right to the heart:

“The good news here,” he says in a soft, sure voice, “is that we are not dim-witted and helpless prisoners of our history… In theory, we have the power to break free from the trends of our history. Overspecialization in learning and thinking provides us with an unusual wild card. Our mighty brains give us the ability to foresee problems, to analyze our mistakes, to alter our patterns of thinking and behavior. In theory, we aren’t doomed to continue repeating our mistakes. Self-destruction is not our only option. Will we play our wild card? I remain a dreamer and romantic, despite the huge odds. I see no harm in trying. We have nothing to lose.”

“The legends of the fairies,” he says with a tone of awe, “remind us of our old ancestral heritage, when people were wild, free, and happy. … But the newcomers – the farmers, loggers, and miners – drove the Good People away…. We could imagine that the Earth Crisis is the fairies’ revenge. They have summoned all of their magic, and have cast a spell that laid a powerful curse on us. A thousand disasters are circling over our heads. Our silly clever tricks no longer work. We’ll pay a dear price for the injuries we’ve caused Fairyland. It is right and fair that justice will be done. Hopefully we’ll learn and remember and heal. I think we will. A sustainable future with humans in it is not impossible.”

“At core, we long for freedom,” he continues, “a life without clocks or jobs, cars or cities, master or slaves – a life of love, hope, and celebration. And the rivers dream of freedom, the day when the last dam falls apart. And the forests dream of freedom, the day when the cutting stops. Everything everywhere wants to be free, and freedom day is coming. The cruel old master is sick and feeble, and his days are growing short. In the other world, the spirits of our wild ancestors are filled with joy. The Earth shall be free once more, and forever.”

“Our cages are not locked,” he whispers.

Look at Reese’s picture on his website, the kindly, gnomish face. Notice that there is no question mark at the end of his title. We are hearing the true heart and soul of someone who has found his own freedom apart from the “spectacularly destructive” culture in which he was born, one who can speak for the oaks and the coyotes and the bees because he can speak with them, one who brings us messages from the ancestors in his dreams. The surgeon’s mask falls away. He’s a Pequot elder in the woods, beckoning to us to leave our tidy village and join him. He’s one of the Fairy folk, tempting us with music to join his strange adventures. He’s a great bear, stopping to look over his shoulder as he heads back into the woods, heading toward a life we ache to know. We might do well to follow him. And we might do well to consider his words:

Here’s the bottom line: it’s too late for a smooth, intelligent, carefully planned, and painless transition to a sustainable future. But it’s never too late to wake up and get real. It’s never too late to learn and grow. It’s never too late to behave more intelligently. It’s never too late to nurture a sense of reverence and respect for the living Earth, and the generations yet-to-be-born of every species.

The ancestors talk to me in my dreams. It saddens them to see how we suffer in the modern world. Their message is simply this: Come home! We miss you! Let the land heal!

Indeed.

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen, My Speech to the Graduates

The thing about that Woody Allen quote is this: because Woody Allen is a comedian, most people read this as “just a joke.” Lemme tellya how bad things are. Things are so bad… But comedy and tragedy often arrive in the same limo, and while this is a joke, for me it’s so much more: an accurate and useful poetic description of our collective predicament. Given the past year’s news about climate chaos, given the ongoing extinction event in which we live, given the culture of civilization’s seeming inability to reduce its population and its jackbootprint, given that culture’s apparent determination to dominate, exploit, control, use, monetize, and rule the world at all costs, we find that human extinction is now, well and truly, on the table as a topic for legitimate discussion. But even if we™ manage to take a different path, we will surely meet despair and utter hopelessness along the way. Either way, it seems, we are in for the mother of all resets.

Woody gets right to the heart of it, I think: we may have a choice we can make. (I add “may” because we do not know whether anything we do at this point will interrupt the great forces already in motion.) To avoid extinction, says Woody, we can choose despair and utter hopelessness, which I will define here as “shutting down the global industrial-agricultural machine, ending our war against the living planet, and feeling the consequences of our actions.” It would mean admitting our failure in the matter of ruling the world. It would mean ceding our imagined “full-spectrum dominance” and entering into some sort of co-creative conversation with that big old goofy world. It would mean surrender, Dorothy (or rindete, as the case may be). This, of course, is rather a difficult sell.

And yet I think he’s exactly right. And since I know that I can survive both despair and utter hopelessness, having already done so, and since I’m less certain that I can survive extinction, I’m voting we choose the path of despair. It’s not like we™ like this system anyways, I would observe. We just think we’re stuck with it.

You may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you’re looking for

Billy Joel, You May Be Right

The thing about making that choice is that, from what I can see, the sooner we make it the better. If we™ shut down the global industrial-agricultural machine, we’re likely going to find out, and rather quickly, just how important the living planet is to us. Yet every day the machine chugs along we have less and less living planet left. If we want to shut it down (and the machine is going down regardless, I think… either we shut it down or, as Brother Maynard sings, “Mom’s comin’ round to put it back the way it ought to be”), then we might as well get it over with, reckon? The longer we wait, the more difficult things will be.

And that’s what makes me a Mitt Romney man. I mean, really, were I voting, he’d be my guy. If the single thing that assures our extinction, and the extinction of most of the life on this planet, is the continued functioning of the global, industrial-agricultural, fossil-fuel-burning machine, and if the way to avoid extinction is to shut down that machine as quickly as we can, then isn’t Romney our best last hope? I kept asking that as I read Matt Taibbi’s piece in Rolling Stone: like… why is it we’re against this guy? Really. Because if we want the American economy dismantled and thrown onto the trash heap of history (hoping that the rest of the global industrial economy will follow suit tout de suite), this Romney dude is the one most qualified for the job, isn’t he? All these other candidates? They’re just trying to prop up the machine in one way or another, trying to make it work better, trying to keep it chugging along. Not Romney. Given his track record, he’s clearly got very different plans.

If the choice really is despair versus extinction, then I say let’s choose despair. Let’s put Mr. Romney in office with a clear mandate to burn down the mission. It sounds insane, perhaps. The cessation of the machine is going to be rather a pain. But the continuation of this machine is going to be even more of a pain, I think. If Woody Allen is right, there’s only one clear choice:

How do I find my powerful voice without falling into either entitled, arrogant, White Guy™ pronouncements about “how things are” or the opposite, a timid, mushy hesitancy? This is the question that has kept me from regular blogging. Without resolving this and finding a powerful but non-dominating voice, I felt I no business writing a blog, and no business inviting you to read it.

I’m ready now. Ready to step into the true voice that now issues from me. Ready to blog. Ready to take this step on the journey and see where it leads me. And ready to invite you to come along.

What will I being doing here? Playing. Playing as this adult human plays. Playing with mindsets and stories, with dogmas and thoughtforms and paradigms. For me, play offers access to the whole of the Cosmos. As Richard Bach said in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, “we are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe.”

Yeah. Like that.

I’ve long felt like Dr. Felix Hoenikker from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle: ”a pure-research man” who gets to work on “what fascinates them, not on what fascinates other people,” who tries to approach old puzzles “as though they were brand new.” Pure-research, for me, is playful and expansive and ottery. It follows no rules and questions all assumptions. And because I see our present time as one of both unraveling and transformation, as a time of insoluble predicaments and changing paradigms, I feel excited. A “pure-research man” like me can find all sorts of things that fascinate in such a time. I am always and forever interested in something “new.” That’s what What a Way to Go was, really, a two-hour documentary wrapped around this bit of copy: ”If what we want is to stop the destruction of the life of this planet, then what we have been doing has not been working. We will have to do something else.” On a daily basis, I look for that “something else.” It’s what I came here to do. It’s the central conversation of my life.

With what do I wish to play? Lots of things. Societal, economic, and environmental collapse. Limits and growth. Destruction and redemption. Climate, population, oil, and extinction. Spirit, meaning, direction, creation, conversation, love, gratitude, guidance, resistance, shame, guilt, doubt, and submission. Quantum mechanics and torsion physics and the holographic universe. UFOs and ancient civilizations and conspiracies and anomalies on the moons of Mars. The hearts, minds, and souls of the hidden layers of control. Nothing is forbidden in my pure-research laboratory. No questions are out of bounds. No assumptions are sacred. No orthodoxies get a free pass. My laboratory is a danger zone for the dominant culture: abandon all paradigms, ye who enter here. If you’re not up for that, and you try to knock over my Bunsen burners and break my Erlenmeyer flasks, I’ll have to ask you to wait outside, where the magazines are really old.

Some days I’ll play like a filmmaker, other days a sci-fi writer. Some days I’ll play like a monk, or a preacher, or one of those spiritual teachers Tami Simon interviews on Sounds True. Some days I’ll play the sorcerer, the wizard, the shaman living on the edge of the village. Some days I’ll play like a Cassandra or a scold, a crank or curmudgeon. Some days I’ll play with gratitude and love so fierce they split my heart open. Some days I’ll play with grief and rage so sharp I’ll curl up into myself. Some days I’ll be playing for the life of this planet. Some days I’ll be playing for Sally. All days I’ll be playing mostly for myself, playing with a new kind of Self-ish-Ness™ that supports service to the highest good.

I’m trying to burn it all away, you understand? The dominant global culture that has lodged in my body and mind. The crazy. The exile. The separation. The illusions. The blindfolds. The living world shrinks daily and I can’t even figure out how to have relationships with my grown children? What is up with that? I have no idea what to do, most days. No rational idea, anyway. So I’m learning to rely on the sputtering, chugging pulls and proddings from a heart that seems, at times, to have been trodden upon without mercy here on this strange, beautiful rock I currently call “home.” There’s something else besides “thought” that can guide me, I think – call it my joy, my bliss, my what-I-most-deeply-want, my muse, my goad, my work, my calling, my central conversation, my longing. I trust that it’s there. It’s my work, my play, to find it.

I want to burn it away, to stoke up the fire to heat my laboratory. In the slightly-altered words of the great and powerful Mary Oliver in her wonderful poem, “The Journey,” I’m determined to do the only thing I can do, determined to save the only life I can save. That poem resonates deeply. When I get right down to it, what I am doing in my lab is trying to save my own life. Not because I’m a tall, white, American male with a big brain who Deserves™ to be Saved™, whatever the hell either “deserve” or “saved” really mean. But because the thing I’m looking for, the “new,” the “something else,” might be inside of me somewhere, as it might be inside of all of us. As it might be inside of you. If it is in me, then I, for one, feel it worth the effort to try to find it.

I think of that bit from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.”

Unfortunately, before she could tell anyone, the Earth was destroyed by a Vogon Constructor Fleet to make way for an interstellar bypass.

The possibility that one of us might right now be that “girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth” fascinates and excites me. I wonder if it might be me. Or you. Or that woman over there. I wonder if there’s not something essential and grand to be learned from our millennia-long descent into the cold, dark cave of control, domination, separation, and delusion. I wonder if there’s some gold hidden deep in that cave. I wonder if we might grab that gold and get out before the cave collapses on us. And I wonder if, should we learn what there is to be learned, whether we can consider that, in some way, a job well done, even should we plunge ourselves, and a great deal of the rest of the community of life, into the seeming abyss of extinction. Even if we don’t make it back out of the cave. Perhaps our learning would go into the Universe, the Cosmos, the Great Hologram, the Absolute, the All, the One, the Mind of God, even as our bodies, and our civilization, fall into ashes and dust. Perhaps, even when all is lost, not all will be lost.

These are the questions that fascinate me in my lab. I’m seeking redemption for all of this pain and destruction. Redemption for myself. Redemption for the whole of life. Redemption for everything and everyone in between. Somehow. In some way. Before the Vogons get here.

We might conspire in that. That sounds like play to me.

Jump in, otters. Welcome to my lab.