how to save the world

Last weekend in Montréal I piloted a new session entitled Seven Generations from Now: A Collective Improv. The invitation  for the event was as follows:

Welcome, friend! Sit with me in this circle around the campfire, in these early days of the 23rd century CE. (You are your own great-great-great-great-great grandchild.) The two-century Long Emergency has finally wound down. There are only about 150 million humans left now, they tell us, and much of our planet is too hot to be inhabitable. The weather’s still wild but at least we managed to get all the nukes decommissioned. We live a much simpler, relocalized, neo-tribal life now, with the only real technology scavenged for essential medical and shelter purposes. But life is good, here on the banks of this ancient river. So, tell me, friend, how are you doing and what brings you joy these days?

Nancy White did a wonderful job of graphic recording the event (see above; click here to see a larger version), and local artist Elissa Baltzer did tribal face painting for the participants (see her amazing work on Flemming Funch, below).

The idea of the event was to find a way to move past the dread and grief and shame of civilization’s collapse, and to imagine together how much better life might be for our descendants after civilization is gone and forgotten. Choosing seven generations (200 years) is taking a bit of poetic licence, since civilization took seventy generations to ruin our planet, and it will likely take that long to recover fully from it. And human population in two millennia is likely to be much less than 150 million, for all kinds of complex reasons. But you get the idea.

The Seven Generations meme comes from some First Nations beliefs that it is our responsibility to ensure the world we leave our descendants seven generations from now is (at least) as healthy as the one we live in ourselves. Joanna Macy does an exercise in which half of the participants speak with their descendants seven generations from now, as part of her grief and despair training for those who see civilization’s collapse as inevitable. But its principal purpose is to seek solace in forgiveness. My intent is instead to help us move past our addiction to civilization by seeing that what our descendants will inherit after its demise will be wondrous, magical, much better than the crumbling, sick, overcrowded world we’re struggling with.

Unfortunately, quite a few of the participants couldn’t get into it. Some couldn’t get past thinking about how we would get there or what collapse was like, instead of leaving it behind. Others just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, or didn’t believe that collapse would occur at all, or at least was inevitable (although there were 12 attendees at the session from the Dealing With Collapse facebook group, most of them are still making their minds up about if and/or how collapse will unfold). One of the participants, Juan Carlos Londono (who also, incidentally, has spearheaded a French language translation of Group Works), jumped into the fray in true improv fashion and brilliantly modelled what an imaginative improv collaboration looks like, making up new 23rd century words and inventing a whole social texture for the brave new culture. By then we were near the end of our time, so while it was a wonderful practice and learning experience for me, it was likely less than satisfactory for the struggling participants. I thank them for their bravery and patience!

I still think the idea has merit, and I intend to keep trying it. I am confident that, had I tried this out on my Dark Mountain colleagues in Totnes last year, it would have been quite amazing (they tend to be full-blown collapsniks, and as artists have the improv gene in them as well).

Here’s what I will do differently next time:

1. Learn more about improv by actually taking a course in it. There’s a major Applied Improv Network conference in Montréal in September. And a Core course curriculum offered frequently in Vancouver.
2. Hand pick a few people with both improv skills and a knowledge of what the future likely holds for us, and try it with them first. Even if we have to do it by Skype. I’m becoming very aware that good writers are not necessarily good conversationalists, and vice versa (more about that in my next post).
3. Set the lofty goal of using the improv experiences as the raw material for a play set seven (or seventy) generations in the future, perhaps co-written with my fellow actors. Perhaps not written at all — just performed in the nature of the griots and minstrels of pre-Gutenberg times.

I think we need this. We need to think about the future with joy and not just dread. We need to imagine a life better than is even possible today, for our own good and for our descendants. This might be a start.

Once a year I try to travel outside my circle of comfort, both intellectually and geographically. Last year I spent nearly a week with Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth, the genii of Dark Mountain, and met up at the same time with Ben Brangwyn, Rob Hopkins and some of their powerful team in the Transition Network in Totnes UK. Both meetings were delightful despite my unwarranted apprehensions and the fact I don’t travel well.

This year, in less than a fortnight (June 11-14) I will be in Montréal at the Next Edge Festival. It will be great to renew acquaintances with the event organizer (and Next Edge co-founder) Seb Paquet and half a dozen like-minded old friends who are offering sessions at the festival, and to finally meet face-to-face with some of the remarkable thinkers in the (invitation-only) Next Edge: Dealing With Collapse Facebook group whose thoughts and insights I appreciate so much — Sam Rose, Liz McLellan, Flemming Funch and Ben Roberts, among others. My session is titled 7 Generations From Now: A Collective Improv, and the write-up is:

Welcome, friend! Sit with me in this circle around the campfire, in these early days of the 23rd century CE. (You are your own great-great-great-great-great grandchild.) The two-century Long Emergency has finally wound down. There are only about 150 million humans left now, they tell us, and much of our planet is too hot to be inhabitable. The weather’s still wild but at least we managed to get all the nukes decommissioned. We live a much simpler, relocalized, neo-tribal life now, with the only real technology scavenged for essential medical and shelter purposes. But life is good, here on the banks of this ancient Canadian river. So, tell me, friend, how are you doing and what brings you joy these days?

The idea is simply to host and facilitate a conversation, with participants seated in a circle, imagining ourselves as our descendants seven generations hence, after civilization’s collapse. That’s it. Just a conversation. No “save-the-world” presentations, workshops or collaborations. My dear friend Nancy White has agreed to do a graphic recording on the “cave wall” of the session, in paint and chalk, and I’m trying to find some Montréalais who can do some spiffy post-civ face painting for us, so this conversation will have some artistic flair. It’s to be a playshop, not a workshop.

My sense is that the festival, like the lion’s share of the Next Edge Facebook group it draws from, will be full of earnest people urgently pushing new tools, technologies, practices, hackathons, collective consciousness-raising projects and potential ongoing collaborations to make the future better. For the same reason I almost never participate in the main Next Edge Facebook group, the idea of being asked to engage some of these people and explain why I think their ideas are interesting but ultimately aren’t going to survive civilization’s collapse, fills me with apprehension and triggers my “I’m going to be disappointing people” switch. My joyful pessimism is generally seen by many energetic and optimistic people as just pessimism, defeatism, or curmudgeonliness. Although I respect their zeal, I would prefer to spend my time in Montréal with people who understand the futility of world-changing, just being together with them.

I’m hoping that my session will attract principally those people prepared to do just that, and that the people who think their idea is an essential one I have been overlooking, will give it a pass. If that means no one shows up, that would be preferable to me to having to deal with a large circle of people imagining their world-saving visions two centuries hence, and hijacking the opportunity for us to just sit together, in contemplative gratitude, beyond hope, just imagining what a low-tech, low-complexity relocalized post-civilization society might be like — so that instead of dreading the future and grieving what we have precipitated, we can quietly celebrate the end of this ghastly but well-intentioned civilization and the emergence of thousands of diverse, sustainable, joyful human societies living connected with the rest of life on Earth in a way that today we can scarcely imagine.

I suspect my anxieties are overwrought, and that this event will be joyful and gentle and inspiring, and create some lasting new connections. The collection of intentions of attendees that one participant has assembled is encouraging. I’m trying to keep my expectations modest, despite the extraordinary effort the organizing team has put into this epic project, and mostly hover in the corridors of the Centre Vanier connecting, as Gonzo puts it, with “old friends I’ve just met”.

I’ll let you know how it goes. If you’re in Montréal, or can make it then, I’d be pleased to meet up. Already conspiring on a magazine article on group process with Jon Husband.

subdivision in Cathedral City CA, built (as you can see) in the desert; photo by Damon Winter in the NYT

So, here’s the thing:

1. All “growth” in the economy, for at least the past half century, has come from producing and consuming more (mostly oil-based) energy, in total and per capita. All of it. Without finding and burning more and more hydrocarbons at an ever-faster rate all over the globe, there would be no “growth”. The belief that growth comes from “innovation” is simply wrong.
2. The industrial economy is absolutely dependent upon “growth”. All investment markets are based on the presumption that profits will grow at a rate much faster than inflation. No growth, no incentive for investment. Without the presumption of perpetual growth, stock markets would collapse, and with them housing markets, currencies and the rest of the economy. That’s why this economy is so insane.
3. Since the 1980s, it has become all-important for governments to perpetuate the myth that there is and will continue to be “growth”, and that the population as a whole benefits from it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Actual inflation rates, using un-manipulated data, have been hovering near 10% for years, not near-zero as reported. Actual unemployment rates are near 25% even in the most prosperous countries. Actual GDP “growth”, adjusted for real inflation, has therefore been negative for decades. On a per-capita basis, very negative. Highly positive for the 1% mind you, but very negative for everyone else. By loaning ever-increasing amounts of money to people at artificially depressed rates (rather than the double-digit rates called for by real inflation), the average taxpayer has the illusion of becoming more wealthy, since assets are rising (though debts are rising faster). Net worth in real terms for all but the super-rich has been and continues to be in free-fall, and for most is now less than zero.
4. There is no longer any pretence by any government or large organization that the staggering debts they have accumulated will ever be repaid. As debts become due, they are simply rolled over to new debt issues with large new borrowings added on. And the banks create new debt every time they print more money or loan or invest. This can only continue with the assumption of perpetual and accelerating growth, and the assumption that interest rates can be kept far below real inflation rates through the complicity of banks, governments, corporations, media and regulators, indefinitely. Both assumptions are preposterous.
5. So the global economy now teeters on the edge, supported by two massive lies: That the economy is actually growing and can continue to do so forever, despite the finiteness and growing extraction cost of the oil upon which it absolutely and utterly depends; and that the mind-boggling and accelerating levels of debt that have been racked up are sustainable indefinitely — that people (mostly unwitting taxpayers) will continue to loan and invest money in a globally bankrupt economy in the expectation that future generations will somehow come up with some miracle to enable its repayment and some other miracle to enable growth to continue forever. As soon as those holding these debts lose faith that these miracles will inevitably occur, the economy is toast. Stocks, investments, houses and currencies will plummet to near-zero levels, oil-fueled production will grind to a halt, assets will be liquidated to repay debts, trade will evaporate, and the longest and deepest depression in human history will begin. For most it has already begun.

This is why, considering the alternative “first collapse” scenarios of energy/resource exhaustion and runaway climate change, my bet is still on economic collapse as the first domino in the series that will herald the end of our civilization. I would be surprised if it is more than 20 years before this first domino falls. Extreme weather events and climate change will then just add another level of immiseration to an already desperate situation, as it will take out human-built infrastructure and essential resources (food, water, forests, and the means to keep temperatures within human livable limits) far faster than any human effort could hope to recover from, even with a healthy economy. Then we will see a Great Migration of humans, similar to what occurred during the last Ice Age, except instead of a few million people in motion, it will be a few billion.

It is both too early and too late to do much about this at the community level (all bets are off about what political and social systems will survive even early stages of collapse, and where), but a personal program of self-learning, self-healing, appreciation and self-liberation is always and especially timely when we cannot know what we will have to face. The work, as always, begins within.

My friend Bodhi Paul Chefurka writes:

Now That I Know…
I will live the rest of my time here as mindfully and lovingly as I can.
I will never stop learning – about the world, about other people and about myself.
I will strive to be compassionate to all beings – especially to those people who are still asleep.
I will treat all hardships as opportunities.
I will cause as little harm as I can manage.
I will have compassion for myself over any harm I inflict because I cannot avoid it.
I will express gratitude for the incredible good fortune I have experienced simply by being conscious and self-aware at this moment in history.
I will discard all blame, anger, guilt and shame – these emotions are obstacles to growth.
I will forgive us all for being the flawed miracles that we are.

~~~~~

PREPARING FOR CIVILIZATION’S END

poster for a course by Schumacher College

This Is The Way the World Ends: Oxford researchers list the 12 most likely “first dominos” to fall as our civilization falls. They have economic collapse at #8. Close but no cigar. The rest of the list is interesting, with most of the crises on the list actually being consequences of the “3 Es”: economic, energy or ecological collapse. On the other hand, Jordan Greenhall has the order about right. So does Tom Lewis in his renewed alarm over peak oil. Thanks to the NTHELove group for the Oxford link, Jon Husband and others for the link to Jordan’s post, and Tim Bennett for the Tom Lewis link.

Long Past the Point of No Return: Ex-Grist reporter David Roberts, back from hiatus, explains why it’s now impossible to limit average global warming to 2C. Or 4C for that matter. And why climate scientists won’t admit that, in public.

Extinct: Dmitry Orlov weighs in on the probabilities of NTHE (near-term human extinction), and lays out several likely scenarios for civilization’s collapse (but not humanity’s extinction). He also seems to think a Great Migration is in the cards.

Debate: Collapse vs Transition: David Holmgren, Nicole Foss and some less cogent debaters square off in an essential but ultimately unsatisfying debate on whether and/or how to prepare for civilization’s collapse. Thanks to Kari McGregor at SHIFT for the link.

Change They Don’t Believe In: James Kunstler explains why political change is not in the air in the US despite the increasingly desperate situation there:

The American thinking classes are lost in raptures of techno-wishfulness. They can imagine the glory of watching Fast and Furious 7 on a phone in a self-driving electric car, but they can’t imagine rebuilt local economies where citizens get to play both an economic and social role in their communities. They can trumpet the bionic engineering of artificial hamburger meat, but not careful, small-scale farming in which many hands can find work and meaning.

As Night Closes In: John Michael Greer writes about the late William Catton, author of Overshoot and one of the first to warn about industrial civilization’s unsustainability. “When I spoke to him in 2011, he was perfectly aware that his life’s work had done essentially nothing to turn industrial society aside from its rush toward the abyss.”

Megadrought Coming: A NASA/Cornell/Columbia research study shows the intensity and longevity of the current drought in most of the plains and the west of North America. If you live there, you should seriously think about moving. Thanks to Sam Rose for the link. And check out these amazing photos of the folly of urbanization of areas that must import their water.

Ships Going Nowhere: The Baltic Dry Index, showing relative demand for the use of ocean-going cargo vessels, is at its lowest level ever, despite the plunging price of oil. What recession? Thanks to Seb Paquet for the link.

~~~~~

LIVING BETTER

photo by a Bowen Nature Club member of a heron’s nest, taken last month

The Importance of Tribal Parenting: What differentiates undamaged indigenous cultures from modern industrial civilization culture comes down to one essential thing: how adults parent their children. If we could relearn their way of parenting, we might be much more resilient and much better prepared for crises and collapse, and so would our children. Thanks to Dark Mountain for the link.

The Virtue of Slacking Off: Working too hard creates a “scarcity mindset” that renders us insensitive, over-reactive and dysfunctional, say the authors of a new book, Scarcity. The answer is to add slack to your routine, as hard and counterintuitive as that may be. Thanks to Tree for the link.

Timothy Was Right: The New Yorker explains how psychedelics are returning to respectability as a treatment for many emotional diseases, including Civilization Disease.

Sharing Economy Corner: A pizza place lets you give pizza slices to the homeless.

~~~~~

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AS USUAL

New Yorker cartoon by Jacob Samuel

The Great Natural Supplements Scam: Think you’re using gingko, echinacea, St. John’s wort, saw palmetto, valerian, ginseng, or other herbal supplements to improve your nutritional health? Most likely you’re getting none of these, just cheap fillers, some of them possibly dangerous. Welcome to the world of unregulated “free” markets.

The Police Shooting You Didn’t Hear About: The Fairfax VA police murder of John Geer happened before the current spate and increased awareness of the endemic fear, contempt and violence of our militarized police. It’s the scariest of all.

The Free Speech Crisis: Why self-censorship is more dangerous to democracy and freedoms than imposed censorship.

America’s Subversive War on Arab Peoples and Putin’s Russia: It’s all about money, oil and power, reveals Julian Assange. It has nothing to do with democracy or civil rights. If you don’t believe Julian, you might find Dexter Filkins and Sy Hersh more credible. And the growing xenophobia in Europe isn’t helping matters. Thanks to Sam Rose for the links.

The Decline of Vancouver: Despite its superficial affluence, Vancouver, the city my island is technically a suburb of, is in the late stages of decline. It produces less and less, other than monster homes and extravagant condos. Young people are leaving in droves. Only millionaires can afford to live there. Whole streets of homes are empty, as the city becomes one of the world’s Hedge Cities, where the world’s ultra-rich, many of them criminals, park their money in real estate, convinced that even collapse will be better in Vancouver.

Canada, Where Doctor-Assisted Suicide Is Neither Legal Nor Illegal: “In its unanimous ruling in February, the Supreme Court gave Parliament a year to introduce a new law that heeds the right of consenting adults with a ‘grievous and irremediable’ illness to seek physician aid to end their lives.” The ultra-conservative Harper government has no intention of doing so, of course. In the meantime, everything is in limbo, especially the lives of those terminally or excruciatingly ill. The only hope is that we’ll dump this ghastly government in this fall’s elections, and elect one with compassion. We might even get proportional representation, if we’re smart.

US No Longer a Democracy: Princeton confirms it. Of course, you already knew that.

~~~~~

FUN AND INSPIRATION

cartoon by Mandor via Michel Dumais

To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This: Fascinating and astonishingly viral meme picked up by the NYT suggests shared intimacy will almost always lead to love. Of course, the meme has already been satirized by the NYT crosstown friends at The New Yorker. Thanks to Tree for the original link.

Waves: Great video, great little vibe by Mr Probz, transcends genres.

Why You’re Still Single (Based On Your Myers-Briggs Personality Type): Absolutely hilarious, and a little bit scary. Thanks to Alexis Pankerson at NTHELove for the link.

The Fire Knife Dance: A highlight for any visitor to Hawaii.

The Whole Point of Every Relationship Is…: Make your guess before you click the link, then check out the 10 ways to make it happen. Thanks to Ryan Rathje for the link.

A Cup of Tea as a Metaphor for Consent: A funny and wise explanation of the meaning of consent.

Mother of Dragons: A hilarious explanation of the perils of modern parenthood by Heather Havrilesky.

When Birds Squawk, Others Species Listen: Bird language, it appears, is understood by just about every species except the supposedly sapient one.

The Girl Who Gets Gifts From Birds: If only we understood birds as well as they understand us. Thanks to Natalie Shell for the link.

Origins Of Mysterious Radio Wave Bursts Discovered: Some things are actually not all that mysterious, with a little common sense investigation. A must-read. Thanks to Seb Paquet for the link.

Toronto’s Terror Tunnel: For two months, Toronto police and citizens were baffled by the discovery of a hidden tunnel leading from woods to an entrance near the PanAm Games tennis facility. Terrorist plots were imagined, as were more silly explanations. Turns out it was built by a couple of guys on a lark, wanting to build themselves a “man-cave” as a sanctuary from the urban tumult above. Police dismantled the tunnel but did not press charges.

Spocking the $5 Bill: Finally — money is actually good for something. Honouring Leonard Nimoy. Or Bill Murray.

Blowing Smoke: A nicotine solution to global warming. From the Onion, of course. Thanks to Seb Paquet for the link.

~~~~~

THOUGHTS FOR THE QUARTER

12 Twigs, an artwork by Chris Kenny (thanks to Seb Paquet for the link)

From a speech by Wendel Berry (thanks to Liz McLellan for the quote):

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

From Helen Macdonald in H is for Hawk:

I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing – not just from the wild, but from people’s everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There’s little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?

And on a related note, from the late Stephen J. Gould in Eight Little Piggies:

We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well — for we will not fight to save what we do not love.

From Jeppe Graugaard, in Transforming Sustainabilities

It appears to me that we have broken open our stories, our ways of telling and interpreting. As a movement in the social imaginary – rather than of people trying to ‘change the world’ – Dark Mountain has opened a door for wildness and untamed otherness to slip back into the lifeworld, offered a way of being which makes it possible to flourish even in the shadow of the enormity. It allows us to embrace and align with our wider relations without requiring us to blow up civilisation in a battle that can never be won.

By retreating to the mountains and reorienting our compass it has become possible to dispel the pull on attention which the enormity exercises on us, to decide to focus our awareness on the dark spots on our maps, on the absences wherefrom new things can grow. Journeying in this range shows that ‘civilisation’ is only one name among many for a pervasive logic which divides the world without anchoring complexity in the greater movement of which we all are part.

At the edge, hearing the faint voices beneath the clamour of engines, it is possible to perceive the soundscape of a world which does not need us to do anything but to listen and to live our questions now.

From Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (thanks to Zack Lehtinen for the quote)

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

My latest article, Beyond Belief, is up at SHIFT magazine as part of its ninth edition. Check out the whole magazine! And if you like what you read, or prefer to read hard copy, please get this issue as a digital download (beautiful magazine layout) or sign up for an annual subscription (6 issues).

I‘m not spiritual. Really.

People often ask me if, in my self-proclaimed state of joyful pessimism and contemplative gratitude, I’ve finally discovered spirituality.

I insist that I have not.

Just about everyone I know who self-identifies as “spiritual” also believes our civilization will somehow be ‘saved’ from collapse (by science or technology, or the market, or wise leadership, or human ingenuity, or by a god or gods, or by a massive human consciousness-raising). What good is a ‘spirit’, after all, if he/she/it can’t save you from perceived disaster?

No thank you, no salvation needed here…

…

Read the whole article at SHIFT.

(image from a Deva Premal fan video, original source uncited)