I very much appreciate Orlov’s analysis and I want to offer a couple of additional perspectives that occurred to me as I thought about it. First, he is incredibly clear and thoughtful about the economic, political and social conditions, but does not factor in the impending torrent of wild fluctuations in weather and climate. To me those forces, as well as global fossil fuel shortages, are likely to hasten the movement through the stages he describes, to accelerate the process. It’s rather sobering to consider crop failures, serious interruptions or losses of basic fuel imports, and likely power grid disruptions from weather events, in additon to the economic and financial failures already in motion.

The other issue that occurs to me is that Orlov doesn’t point to any ultimate “good” to come of collapse, either for humans or for the non-human world. The tone of his article suggests only a sense of failure, that we have “fucked up,” collectively, and that there’s not much to feel but a kind of stupidity and despair, as well as, of course, alarm. It brings to my mind the image of a teenager who stumbles out of a police car, having totaled the family car, seriously injured his girlfriend now in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, with six too many beers already vomited into the ditch, and muddy clothes torn, on a rainy night. He’s scraped up but still able to shamefully stagger into the house, aware that there is no way to avoid the horror and wrath of critical parents. There’s no suggestion of greater meaning inherent in this image, nor is there a larger context from which to view the scene. The kid fucked up and it’s a big mess. It is easy to see this culture in those terms. Collectively, we, the people of civilization, have fucked up and it IS indeed a big mess. Despite the contributions of Mozart, Einstein, and countless other human luminaries, as a whole we’ve brought the planet into a global mass extinction event that has the potential to rival the end Permian extinction, when more than 90% of all species were lost. It’s that bad.

Still, I see it in a larger context. I see the collapse as a piece of the story of the human, a real live myth, a very big and very profound story. I see this time and these events in ways that I imagine Gaia or Mother Earth may see them. What all of this represents is a vitally necessary process of cleansing and balancing. At it’s best, what we are involved in, and witness to, is a spiritual initiation rite of the highest order for an adolescent species in sore need of such an initiation. The stakes are extremely high, as well they should be. It’s hard, sobering, and at times shameful to look at our drunken, disconnected, destructive behavior. But I sense that we are in the hands of Elders, the forces of Life, our ancestors, or even maybe just simply the laws of biology, evolution, and physics, but certainly powers older and greater than the inflated collective, civilized human ego in the midst of this wild and unrestrained adolescence brought about by the fossil fuel age. If we, some of us anyway, are willing to stay the course of this initiation, we may make it through to adulthood and beyond. Or not. But if we do not then the species was not up to the task. We won’t get to become a mature species. The process of incorporating big brains and opposable thumbs into a carbon based world will have to begin again. It will be a tragic loss. But at any rate it’s a good and meaningful story to be a character in. Better this than “Leave It To Beaver.”

While Orlov doesn’t touch on the profound mythos here, I still heartily recommend reading the whole article. His new book is likely even better. Here is a brief excerpt, where Orlov describes the stages:

Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed to resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.

Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost. As local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity” (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes “May you die today so that I die tomorrow” (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.

The word “collapse” implies for most people something highly negative. No doubt it is important to be sober about the level of shock and suffering that will be entailed in this process. But it is also important, in order to be able to imagine any light at the end of the tunnel, to play with other language that could also describe the process we find ourselves in.

For example, it feels very different to say: “We are on the brink of the radical simplification of human society on the planet.” Joseph Tainter, author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, describes collapse as a reduction in the scope and complexity of a society. We’re going to find ourselves with far less complex systems due to less availability of fossil energy to support those complex systems, but also due to greater stresses on basic systems of food production, shelter, heating, water availability, etc. These stresses will be result from climate change and ecological overshoot, by which we’ve seriously damaged the life support systems, the ecosystems, of our local landbases.

The word collapse calls up images of horror. And that’s not inappropriate. But images of collapse inspire no visions of ultimate benefit. On the other hand the term radical simplification could sound a different chime for people exhausted from the current wage slave system, where the many work ever harder to stuff the ever more soft and opulent feather beds of the few elite. Radical simplification of life, if people would slow down enough to contemplate it, could actually feel like a breath of non-polluted air. Too many people, most people I would venture to say, and even those with currently stable incomes, are incredibly lonely. They sit in quiet despair in front of their television sets or walk the malls with iPods stopping their ears, or drink beers and soullessly cheer at yet another sporting event, forever in frantic search of more distraction. For most, collapse will be, alternatively, either a shock or, if it proceeds slowly, just a heightened erosion of already degraded and meaningless lives. The coming transition will not be pretty for the bewildered herd. But for visionaries and cultural creatives collapse, or radical simplification, likely calls up what may seem to be paradoxical feelings of relief and even empowerment. I’ve heard more than one friend recently exclaim, “Bring it on. I’m sick of this shit.”

Joseph Tainter suggests that the fall of the Roman Empire was not, except for the elite, a step back. According to Wikipedia,

We often assume that the collapse of the Roman Empire was a catastrophe for everyone involved. Tainter points out that it can be seen as a very rational preference of individuals at the time, many of whom were actually better off (all but the elite, presumably). Archeological evidence from human bones indicates that average nutrition actually improved after the collapse in many parts of the former Roman Empire. Average individuals may have benefited because they no longer had to invest in the burdensome complexity of empire.

While mainstream culture, and it’s majority, have no realistic idea what’s brewing, there are many movements towards simplification already sprouting, perhaps from an intuitive sense, amongst the sensitive and creative, that the current system is in free-fall and about to go splat on hard pavement. Local food, local, cooperative business, the growing co-housing and communities movements, and small but aware groups now gather to educate their neighbors about the impending crises, as is evidenced in the “relocalization movement” typified by national groups like the Post Carbon Institute, The Community Solutions, and more local groups like Boulder Going Local.

The relocalization movement, already seeded in many minds, if not in huge numbers of actual locations yet, will grow best and fastest from the composted detritus and decay of the fossil fueled consumer culture. Orlov suggests that decay has already begun and will culminate in Stages 3 and 4, hopefully avoiding Stage 5. While I don’t relish the suffering that all of this will entail, I do welcome the open and more fertile ground that will open up as we move away from the current dominant culture and paradigm. The decay of large systems of control and domination will foster the possibility of reconnection to place, to non-human life, and to one another in families and small communities, like we have not seen for generations, perhaps centuries. We have the opportunity to become members of local communities grounded in the reality of the planet.

I don’t have a sense that Orlov holds any such sentiment. I use the word sentiment in it’s highest sense: the thought that it is necessary for us as a species to pass through terribly trying physical times and rigorous spiritual exercise is one based on pure sentiment. I possess a basic and enduring love for the capacities we have as human beings: our abilities to love deeply, to care immensely, and to be consciously, intimately and passionately connected to all of life.

I very much appreciate Orlov for giving us a likely map to the unwinding because it reinforces for my rational self what my heart has intuitively come to: it’s time to get out of highly populated areas, to find a small, remote town or village where there is the possibility of coming together to provide for the essentials locally, apart from the larger systems that are about to crumble.

As I read Orlov’s analysis I felt ever more convinced of the dangers of dependence on the larger structures for one’s basic needs. But I could also see that there clearly resides the possibility, and even likelihood, that for some of us who are aware and making rapid preparation, that collapse, necessary radical simplification, is likely to foster the growth of innumerable small bastions of sanity, deep humanity and growing spirituality. In those places we will work with great purpose toward the regeneration of natural systems and the evolution of loving connection across species, generations, races and sexes.

If we wake up now, see the handwriting on the wall of this prison and walk away from it, we can sit together in circle with one another, and with the whole community of our landbase, to weather the huge storms that will rage around us. And as the storms abate, those of us who have done our work, our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical work, with the help of greater forces, will have the opportunity to make amends, to work to offer deep reparation for the harm we have collectively caused. With grace, we, and our descendants, will also have the chance to water and care for the seed of re-member-ing our deeper ancestral selves, our ancient legacy of consciousness, that honored life in all it’s forms. What a Way to Go.

Share This

Significant climate tipping points have been passed.

I opened the email to find an article about the most recent “comments and projections” by James Hansen.  Hansen, you may know, is perhaps the most famous NASA climate change scientist.  He’s the man who testified before Congress twenty years ago that the planet was warming and that people were the source of that warming.  He’s the man who was pressured by senior officials at NASA, at the behest of the current administration, to tone down his reports about the impacts of climate change.  Thankfully he seems to have resisted that pressure.

I read the article and then I read a related article by Bill McKibben.  Hansen says, and McKibben underscores, that there is a critical maximum number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to heed to prevent climatic catastrophe.  That number, he says, is between 300 and 350.

In earlier years of climate change awareness experts were shooting for limits of 450 to 550 ppm, with the hope that those were realistic limits we could manage. But now Hansen is saying the number is much lower, between 300 and 350, if we want to avert catastrophe. Things are melting and weather patterns are changing much faster than anyone has predicted. So we need to get even more serious about reducing the carbon in our atmosphere. Three hundred fifty is the number, the number everyone should know, says McKibben in the Washington Post. While nothing is sure, McKibben says, “at least we are honing in on the right number.”

So, now, we are looking at the right number. That’s good. We’re on the right track. Can you guess how many ppm of CO2 are in the atmosphere now? Slightly below 350? Slightly above?

We’re at 383 parts per million and counting, well past the number Hansen suggests is critical. We are past it by a lot. We were at 325 parts per million in 1970! Um, I don’t think we can just suck all that carbon back out, ask billions of people not to have been born, tear down all of those new suburban developments, return to non-fossil-based agriculture, and innocently pretend it’s thirty years ago.

My stomach is tight. So is my chest. I tell myself to remember to breathe. While I still can.

We’re already past the number? Wait, I knew this. I’ve known this for a long time. With my head. But it took that email from Tim. It took Hansen saying it. Now my body is catching up. My gut and chest now register it.

We’re already past the number.

Carbon emissions were greater last year than ever. World population was greater than ever. Consumption was greater than ever. There has been no reversal, nor even significant trend down, in fossil fuel consumption, since An Inconvenient Truth was released in May of 2006.

In fact, according to the Energy Information Administration:

“World oil consumption is expected to rise by 1.6 million bbl/d (barrels per day) in both 2008 and 2009 compared with the estimated 1 million bbl/d increase recorded last year. The larger volume gains expected in 2008 and 2009 compared with 2007 mainly reflect higher consumption expected in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), particularly Europe, where weather factors constrained oil consumption last year.”

I’m letting all this sink in, deeper than ever. It doesn’t feel good but I’m committed to what Scott Peck wrote in The Road Less Traveled is the hallmark of mental health: dedication to the truth.

Then I get stopped. My head starts to feel kind of cottony inside. My stomach gets watery. All of this happens as I contemplate the fact that Hansen and McKibben say it’s not too late. They say: All we have to do is stop using fossil fuels.

McKibben writes:

“Does that mean we’re doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over. Much like the way your body will thin its blood if you give up cheese fries, so the Earth naturally gets rid of some of its CO2 each year. We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage.

That “just,” of course, hides the biggest political and economic task we’ve ever faced: weaning ourselves from coal, gas and oil. The difference between 550 and 350 is that the weaning has to happen now, and everywhere.”

Spinning, I ask myself, “What would that take, now and everywhere?”

It would take closing the highways, now and everywhere. It would take ending industrial agriculture, now and everywhere. It would mean shutting off everyone’s natural gas and oil fueled furnaces, now and everywhere.

I mean…think about it. It would mean stopping about 90% of everything because everything we have and do has fossil fuel energy embedded in it. Forget about building nuclear power plants since they have fossil fuels embedded in their construction, large amounts of it. Forget massive production of solar photovoltaics: the mining of silica has huge amounts of fossil fuels embedded in the process. There are questions about whether hybrid cars take more energy to produce and dispose of than they save. The couch I’m sitting on, this computer, the computer you are staring at. Everything most of us take for granted as part of our daily lives is currently dependent on fossil fuels. When McKibben says “now and everywhere” he’s talking about the shutdown of industrial civilization.

For the sake of the rest of the community of life, all of the endangered other species, all of the threatened ecosystems and life support systems they depend on, I’m okay with that. But who thinks that’s going to happen voluntarily?

My head spins some more.  Part of me seeks retreat into denial.  So I go look for more numbers.

Here are some numbers from the Energy Information Administration Excel spreadsheet for world energy use from 1980 to 2005.

Ponder these:

In 1980 world petroleum use was 63 million barrels a day.
In 2005 world petroleum use was 83.5 million barrels a day.

During the same years, natural gas consumption went from almost 53 trillion cubic feet to almost 104 trillion cubic feet per day.

Coal use went from 5 billion to almost 6.5 billion short tons per day.

I strain to get a picture in my head of how much energy stuff, just the sheer volume of matter, those numbers represent. And I sit with the fact that those are PER DAY numbers. I can’t even imagine what 104 trillion cubic feet of natural gas would look like. Per day. Day after day after day.

But Hansen and McKibben say it’s not too late. All we have to do is stop. Now and everywhere.

I mean, I agree. We have to stop.

But would it be okay if I stop tomorrow? Because I’m not quite ready. I still buy food at the co-op that I still drive to. I still get firewood delivered by a nice guy who still uses gasoline in his chain saw and delivers it in his Ford truck, which also still uses gasoline. I still sort of need my laptop. And the lamp behind my head with the compact fluorescent bulb. I still use that to read by. And to be honest I’ve never grown more than 1% of my own food. My water is pumped to my sink from a couple of hundred feet below ground into a pressured tank. Electricity that comes from a huge power grid, partially powered by coal, is used to run the pump and pressurize the tank so I can just turn on the faucet when I need it.

I’m not quite ready to stop using fossil fuels. Could I wait a day or two while I prepare?

I think the truth, as Daniel Quinn told us when we interviewed him for What A Way To Go, is this: there is a secret plan in place. I t’s a secret plan that we don’t talk about because, well, it’s a secret, and we want to keep the secret. That’s what we’ve been taught to do.

This is the secret plan: we are going to continue on this way until we can’t anymore.

That’s the plan. And that’s what person after person told us when we interviewed them for What A Way To Go. We asked everyone we talked to, “What’s it going to take for people to change?” And what person after person said was, “It’s going to take a catastrophe. It’s going to take a catastrophe before people will wake up.”

I just turned off the lamp behind my head. The room is dark at this time of the morning, but seeing the words on the screen of my laptop really does not require the light behind my head. I can go without these carbon-fueled electrons this morning.

This is all staggering. And confounding. And I’m not the only one with cotton in my head and a knot in my gut when I read these things. My question is: why do James Hansen and Bill McKibben and others say, “It’s not too late?” That assertion, it seems to me, just intensifies the cotton effect, the numbing, the craziness.

If they said, “It is too late,” what would happen?

I’m going to try it. It’s too late.

There I said it. It’s too late. It’s too late to get out of catastrophe. There’s no way this civilization is going to grind to a halt, get off the fossil fuel train, reduce the population voluntarily by 3/4 and start growing food sustainably, without catastrophe. We’re in for it. And we don’t even know what we’re in for.

My son, Andy, who holds together the business end of VisionQuest Pictures in a tiny room on the other side of this funky recycled house-turned-duplex-turned-cooperative-living/ business place, and Tim and I talk about the advisability of making such statements. We want this family business to succeed. And we know that saying it’s too late doesn’t sell DVDs to a large potential audience of people who listen complacently to smart, white, male authority figures who say it’s not too late. Those people don’t want to hear it’s too late.

But this is where Tim and I drew our line in the sand. This is where our inner “Cheyenne dog soldiers” placed our picket pins. We can’t pretend to not see what we see. So Andy and Tim and I are coming to terms with the idea that What A Way to Go is not going to be a blockbuster. At least not this month. Things still look too good out there, in spite of the volatility of the stock market. It’s too soon for What A Way To Go to be the poster child of progressive documentaries. That would require ruthlessly honest viewers, willing to challenge the American way of life beyond our choice of light bulbs. That’s not easy for people trapped in this culture. But the feedback we get, from those rare but growing numbers who are screaming for some sanity in the face of 383 ppm, is that watching the movie, talking about it all, facing into it, finally, is a balm. The cotton starts to loosen in their heads and they start to feel related to reality. They start to feel sane.

And that’s why we do this. That’s why we look at things exactly as they are, even when what we see feels at times so grim, so dire, so irreversible. We do this, we look at it, we talk about it, and we write about it, because it’s our best approximation of reality. And I want to live fully. I want to live consciously. I want to live with full integrity, sanely. And if I want those things I have to be related to life as it is, not life as I wish it were. I have to look at things exactly as they are. And so do you, if that’s what you want.

“Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.”
~ M.Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

I was doing some research in preparation for a retreat Tim and I facilitated. The organizer of the retreat, blessings on him, called a gathering with the intention to create such a strong and cohesive group that we would be able to enter into deep dialogue about these issues, to step out of denial, to look at, and feel, things exactly as they are. Unless we do this we will not be effective in our lives. We will not be fully ourselves, not in our intimate relations with family and friends, not in our work as helpers, visionaries, catalysts, healers, nor in relationship with the larger community of people and planet.

Wikipedia had some great information about psychological defenses. Denial and two others form a triad of “Level 1 Defense Mechanisms.” The other two are distortion and delusional projection. The projection in this case shows up as the tendency to fear and label people who look at reality as “negative” or “doom-sayers.” Wikipedia says that the combination of those three can

“permit one to effectively rearrange external reality and eliminate the need to cope with reality.”

The denial member of that triplet is defined as:

Refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening; arguing against an anxiety provoking stimuli by stating it doesn’t exist; resolution of emotional conflict and reduction of anxiety by refusing to perceive or consciously acknowledge the more unpleasant aspects of external reality.

So this morning, as I reflect on the article about James Hansen’s most recent comments and on Bill McKibben’s report about those comments, I can’t help but think about denial as a psychological defense. These questions go through my head:

When James Hansen and Bill McKibben say, “It’s not too late,” are they not supporting all of America to embrace denial?

Are statements that suggest it’s not too late not an example of refusing to accept external reality because that reality seems too threatening?

Are such statements not made to argue against a stimulus that provokes high anxiety: the stimulus being the idea that it IS too late?

Are these statements not used to “resolve” our conflicted emotions by supporting Americans to refuse to perceive or consciously acknowledge these unpleasant aspects of external reality?

Are our best and brightest scientists and journalists, Hansen and McKibben being two representatives of those, caught in denial themselves? Or are they just stumped about what to say, what to do, how to be with all of this?

My chest and gut get tight as I articulate these questions. Am I allowed to do this? Do I get to ask these questions? Am I breaking an unspoken rule when I question if renowned White Male Authorities could be caught in denial?

I have a lot of compassion for being caught in denial. At this very moment, in order to ease the discomfort in my chest and gut, I am tempted to run for denial myself. I’m tempted to defer to White Male Authority, especially to two of the best, brightest, and highest intentioned of the bunch. I’m tempted, at least momentarily, to judge as faulty or misguided my own perceptions and analysis.

But I don’t want to do that. I want to be intimately connected to reality. So I decide to look at more data. Data always helps me remember that just because I’m female doesn’t mean I’m wrong, or crazy, or overreacting.

Here’s the data I look at: net geothermal, solar, wind, wood and waste electric power went from 195 billion kilowatt hours in 1980 to a whopping 370 billion in 2005.

Wow. Almost double in 25 years. Is there a bright spot here? Those look like big numbers and a large increase. Maybe that’s good. I wonder how those numbers compare with total fossil fuel energy use.

Whoops. Fossil fuels actually provide 93% of the world’s energy use. Renewables provide only about 7%.

Consider what kind of ramping-up, now and everywhere, would be required to move from the fossil fuel based civilization we have to a cleaner, renewable energy based civilization. Consider how much recycling of our current infrastructure would have to take place. Consider how much time and energy it would take to revision, rebuild, and retrofit what we have now into a non-fossil fueled operation?

I don’t know how much it would take, or how long, but I know it is a lot. Like most of the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, the billions of barrels of oil, the billions of tons of coal, consumed daily. And, while we may have a lot of technological know-how, I don’t see how we have the time, energy, political will, cultural awareness or deep understanding of ecosystems, currently, to pull it off to avoid catastrophe. We are on the edge of the cliff pretending we can fly. While we have defined the physics of flying, we have not grown wings.

When I let the anxiety rise, when I resist the move to denial, when I sit with all of this, I know we aren’t going to sprout wings and fly out of all of this. I know the chances of “It’s not too late,” being really true are about the same as the chances that Jenny, the 14-year-old Springer spaniel that we buried a month ago, will magically appear at the door scratching and whining and wagging to be fed. I can want that. I can imagine it. I can even wish for it. But to hold onto that as a real possibility, rather than to face and grieve her loss, is to be in a severe, pathological form of denial.

I suspect most people, down deep, when they aren’t drunk with denial, or shopping, or television, know this also. Collectively, we know the secret plan and we know it can’t go on forever. What we don’t know is what IS going to happen.

So, if not denial, then what?

Pema Chodron, author of The Places That Scare Us: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, begins her book with this idea:

“…we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.” (p.3)

I would add that we have this choice only if we are willing to be related to “what’s so,” to reality. When we are not in reality we are caught in denial or some other form of psychological defense. Defense is always about hardening ourselves off. It’s about blame, resentment, or frozen, unfelt fear, fantasy, projection.

Tim and I talk a lot about the ruling paradigm of this culture, “the paradigm of domination and control.” We use those words to assess various approaches to the current situation. As Tim said in the voice-over in What A Way To Go,

“What we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. We’re going to have to try something else.”

The circumstances we living beings of this planet face are about as scary as I can imagine. Can we allow these circumstances to soften us so that we become less resentful and afraid, kinder and more open? Can we step out of the paradigm of domination and control? Can we let go of denial and face into things exactly as they are?

Life has been inviting me, using the knots in my chest and gut, to “try something else.” I am not willing to use pharmaceuticals, or even herbs, as a technofix for the discomfort. And my favorite distractions have not worked. But in the last two weeks there are three things that have been extremely helpful. They all involved softening, letting down my defenses, and letting myself feel.

A couple weeks ago I took some dried garden sage to the edge of what this drought has left of the pond that lies a few hundred feet from our house. I lit the sage to let the sweet, smoky fragrance remind me of times I’ve spent on longer retreats I’ve made to the woods. As the smoke swirled about in the breeze, I lay down and I cried. I asked for help. Out loud. I asked the ancestors. I asked the unseen forces that might be waiting, wanting to help. I asked any and all creative forces in the universe. I admitted, again out loud, that I am not doing well. I felt the fear and the helplessness in my body. I surrendered denial. I surrendered control. I want to join the winning side and I have a feeling that ultimately this culture of control and domination is not on that side. I wept gently and sincerely. This is part of what it takes to step out of the paradigm of domination and control. The willingness to surrender.

You know, it wasn’t that bad, the surrendering and the weeping. It never is when I remember to do it. It’s actually pretty easy and sweet and simple. It just takes admitting what’s so: I’m just one human being. I’m limited. I’m doing my best. Many, many of us are doing our best, and we’re still collectively drowning in carbon dioxide, facing economic and environmental collapse, while the growth machine continues to struggle to ramp up production and population.

When I sat up my face was wet with tears. I looked out across the pond. Sunlight reflected off the tiny ripples there like nothing I have seen before. What appeared was more beautiful than the most beautiful fireworks I’ve ever seen. I saw thousands of tiny, crystalline flames dancing in ecstatic patterns before my eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was stunned at this sight.

I was not so stunned of course that my mind did not theorize about this phenomenon. Was it the chemical composition of my tears that was creating this? Was it the angle of the sun in relation to my position on the bank of the pond? Was it some weird atmospheric condition brought on by the drought in the Southeast? But miraculously, even in the throes of my mind’s compulsive theorizing, the phenomenon persisted.

Perhaps it was my ancestors speaking, revealing their love?

After the pond experience I felt less anxious for a day or so. Apparently the lesson is not quite learned however as the anxiety returned full force. I complained to Tim. I journaled about it. Mostly my knuckles just turned white. When I went for acupuncture, though I had not told her anything about this, my saintly and apparently psychic acupuncturist said in her Israeli-accented English,

“You have substantial worries and you have insubstantial worries. You know what I’m saying here? You must work on these. You must let go these insubstantial worries and you must deal with the substantial worries. Do you understand this?”

I understood. The substantial worries are about the planet, the insubstantial ones are more petty. Those are just garden-variety neuroses, like worry about whether people will like and approve of me; like if it’s okay to question renowned White Male Authority figures.

That evening Tim and I took one of our late night walks. We bundle up to walk the road, to talk, and to look at constellations, the moon, and the dozen or more blinking lights from airplanes coming and going, even late at night, from the Raleigh/Durham airport. I truly will not miss the airplanes in the night sky if I’m around when we stop using fossil fuels.

As we walked I noted again the knot in my stomach, the “substantial and insubstantial worry,” that I need to let go of, or deal with. I noticed it, and then I stopped. I lay down on the bank next to the road. Tim’s gotten used to this kind of behavior and seems to like me anyway. As I lay on the ground, I looked up at the stars, and I cried. As I had earlier in the week, I asked for help and admitted how difficult this all is, this looking head-on at reality, this mission to encourage others to do the same.

Just as it had been with the pond experience, it wasn’t so bad, this surrendering, this asking for help. I admit it’s a little awkward. I have no generations of conscious spiritual tradition to back me up in this. This practice is based on a twelve-day intensive workshop in the wilderness of Tennessee and several individual retreats on my own, away from all things man-made. So it’s largely intuitive what I do. And I still feel awkward. I’m glad Tim doesn’t laugh at me.

It occurs to me that this is what it means to pray. It is a mighty step out of the paradigm of domination and control and a giant step toward the paradigm of humble relationship. If as a culture we took this journey, step by step, we would routinely act with humility. The precautionary principle would be the eleventh commandment. We would not have collectively fucked up like we have, if we had already taken these steps.

In the end what I do as an individual is engage in active, physical, vocal acknowledgment of what is: of my feelings, of my limitations in the face of climate change tipping points, of my utter not-knowing what to do. We need to do this collectively, now and everywhere.

I didn’t feel immediately better after. This time there were no visible fireworks, at least not on the outside. But I slept well that night and, come morning, I felt lighter. I felt adequate to the day. It was easier to approach what was on my plate creatively, with peacefulness. The calm lasted a while.

And then I read the article Tim emailed me. And I read the article by Bill McKibben. And I felt sad and sick and a little crazy. The White Guys didn’t validate my experience.

You need to know I have nothing but respect for James Hansen’s scientific work and for his courage in continuing to report accurately on the facts of the situation. And I have nothing but respect for Bill McKibben’s journalism. But I have to say, they come from White Guy Culture: the dominant European culture of progress and control, based on unexamined and pervasive assumptions about the superiority and near omnipotence of humans, and especially of white, male authority.

They are White Guys. And like most white guys, they’ve likely been brought up to feel like they have to fix it or, in this case, to at least suggest that it can be fixed by other White Guys.

We know that men in White Guy Culture routinely jump into “fix it” mode. We joke about it. We observe it whenever their wives or sisters or mothers are sad or angry or scared. It seems to be just part of the deal, of being a guy, a white guy, a well-educated, privileged, white guy. They are supposed to be able to fix it. It’s not all bad. There’s a very good part of it. At root it comes from a genuine desire to help, to serve, to protect. But as women will attest, men’s attempts “to fix” all too often end up offending and missing the point. And those attempts usually make things worse. The attempt “to fix” cuts short what women, in their own profound wisdom, know: that they need to feel, and that they need to feel deeply. It is through feeling that they arrive at wisdom.

What women need, and of course what men need as well, is to be supported to feel deeply, and to be respected as they work their way into and through those feelings. They need to be supported to trust their capacity to feel and to find the wisdom and healing that comes of that.

Maybe Mother Earth doesn’t want to be fixed. Maybe She wants to be heard and respected.

Collectively we have a similar situation on a grand scale here. Our Mother is hurting. She’s wounded. She loses children at the rate of 200 or more species a day. She’s being bled to death and her blood is burned to create a great cloud of pollution. She’s sending all kinds of signals that things are way out of whack. She’s in the throes of huge feeling about what’s been done to her over the course of industrial civilization. It’s not pretty.

In the face of that, White Guys feel like they need to fix it. They feel compelled to say, “It’s not too late. We can fix it.” Because if they don’t do that, they don’t know what to do. They would have to just sit and feel too.

Sit. Be still. And listen. For you are drunk and we are at the edge of the roof. ~ Rumi

Last night, after I put down my current Orson Scott Card novel, as I shut my eyes and sealed out the chilly air with the wool comforter around my shoulders, a great wave of sadness and helplessness came over me. Again I cried. I cried and I prayed.

“Help us. We’ve really fucked up. We really have. Help us. Help us be humble and open in the face of this. Help us respond in sane, heartfelt ways. Help us learn what we need to learn so we don’t ever do this again. Help us. We are drunk and we are at the edge of the roof and we don’t know what we’re doing.”

I wiped away the tears with the edge of the sheet and resealed the comforter around my shoulders. And then I drifted off to sleep.

Today I have the courage to say that I believe the most important thing we can do in the face of the current situation is to sit still. We have really fucked up. We are drunk on technology and insane with the power it has given us to turn fossil fuels and the very body of the planet into tons of meaningless toys. We need to sit still, sober up, and look at this.

We need to surrender to the reality of what we’ve collectively done and become utterly willing to learn.

I also have the courage, and it takes some, to say that it is vitally important that White Guy culture look to women to take the lead in all of this. While women have been wounded by this culture, we generally carry less of the wounding that prevents things like surrender, prayer, tears, and genuine humility. It is critically important for women to step more deeply into our wisdom, the wisdom of our bodies and our feelings. We all need to sit, to become still, to become fully sober, thoughtful, and willing to grieve. Men need women to step up and lead in this process. And women need men to acknowledge them and to support them to do so.

This has been, in microcosm, the course of my partnership with Tim. When we first met I took the lead in the scary work of unveiling all of my feelings to him. Over a period of several months, early in our relationship, I opened up, soberly and thoughtfully. I grieved deeply about past disappointments. I felt my fears, risked my sadness and carefully shared my anger. Then it was Tim’s turn to do the same. Being a man, and having had less opportunity to do this kind of surrender into feeling, he took a long turn at it. Now we pass the stick, the talking stick, the crying stick, the ranting stick, the praying stick, back and forth, with great regularity and more grace than I had imagined possible. We feel like we’ve made great progress between us in stepping out of the paradigm of domination and control.

There is now an inside joke in the tag line for What a Way To Go:

A middle-class white guy comes to grips with peak oil, climate change, mass extinction, population overshoot, and the demise of the American lifestyle.

The inside joke is that Tim is no longer a White Guy. He resigned, went AWOL, jumped ship, escaped. He deconstructed the prescription “Big boys don’t cry,” and claimed his right as an adult male to grieve and rage, to feel afraid and awestruck. And to surrender his white guy ego to something greater.

This is the work. To recognize we are drunk. We are at the edge of the roof. It’s time to be still and look at things exactly as they are.

Share This

And defender of the poor,

Physician of the sick,

And champion of kings,

O trophy-bearer,

And Great Martyr George,

Intercede with

Christ our God that

Our souls be saved.

The Hymn of St. George    

“So how’d it go?” I was sitting by my woodstove, checking in on the website, when Todd’s sticky popped up announcing he was back from Chicagoland. It was twenty degrees outside, the first real bite of winter we’d had. It felt great. The squirrels just outside my window were having a blast.

ok I guess

I hadn’t heard much from Todd lately. About a month ago he figured out that what he really needed to do was to talk to his family about the great unraveling. He’s been at it since. He checks in from time to time, reporting on his progress, asking for advice or coaching or information. But, what with the holidays and all, he’s been gone more than not.

It’s been a pretty hard year for Todd. The whole dying thing. And his trials with the chicken. And his journey into awareness of the world situation. It has been, I think, an initiation, in the fullest sense of the word. He’s been undone and rearranged and rebuilt from the inside out. And the hardest part, of course, has been with his family.

Mom was cool and all shes had more time but Spence was a real asshole all weekend and Daria would only joke around and Smithy didn’t even come he said he was sick but I checked and he went to a party with his new girlfriend

“Did you talk to your dad?”

no I tried but he said he was just too sad right now and overwhelmed and afraid and that he needed more time so we made a date to talk again on the ninth after his surgery

“But you’re worried he’ll just blow you off again then, right?”

its ok he needs time Im just worried that there isn’t any

Here’s a program so you’ll know the players. Todd’s mother, Ellen, lives by herself in an apartment in Tacoma, Washington, where she moved a few years ago after splitting up with Todd’s father, Ed, who still lives in Mt. Prospect (north and west of Chicago), in the house Todd grew up in. Todd’s older sister, Daria, and her husband, Spence, live with their two young boys, Sam and Max, in a house just west of Gurnee, a small town north of Chicago, not too far from where Todd was living before he died. Smithy, Todd’s younger brother, is a marketing student at Northwestern University in Evanston.

“So how was Spence an asshole?”

you remember how I gave him Heinbergs new book for Christmas well he had it there by his fireplace and every time he started a fire hed rip out a few pages and crumple them up to start it with he said he tried to read it but it got bullshit all over his hands so he had to stop

“Great guy, that Spence. So did he even watch the DVD I sent?”

we put it on the first night but he fell asleep almost immediately that was after he called you-

Todd stopped.

“Called me what, Todd?”

you dont need to know

“Oh c’mon. I can take it.”

he called you a whining puffed up eco-goebbels I was confused at first because I thought he meant gerbils

I laughed. That’ll have to go on my next business card: Tim Bennett – Eco-Gerbil.

I saw your dvd in the trash the next morning

I sighed. One of those big, long, dramatic sighs meant to communicate to the people around you just how tired you are of the whole damn thing. Todd was the only one around me at the time. And he was just as tired as I was, I think. But it’s hard to sigh on a sticky, so I was sighing for the both of us. It felt good.

It’s been a tough year for Todd’s family, too. First, Todd choked to death on a pizza roll. (The coroner ruled it “death by imperfect mastication”.) Then, a few months later, he shows up in his mother’s cell phone. Imagine getting a text message from your dead son. Especially when you didn’t know your phone could even do text messages. Over the course of a few months, during which he was also helping me get the DVD finished and designed and mastered, and during which he was accompanying Sally and me on tour, Todd managed to convince his mother that she had not, in fact, gone “crazy with grief” and that he was still “& kicking”, if not actually alive. She pinned an iPod Shuffle to her sweater and they began to take long walks together, Todd hanging out in the wires and talking to her via the ear buds. It was the first time they’d talked at length in years.

Once convinced of his reality, Todd’s mother, with Todd’s guidance, embarked on her own journey through the planetary predicament. And she’s proven to be a quick study. She gave notice at her busy-work day job just before Christmas and she leaves for a month-long permaculture intensive in a few days.

The rest of the family has been more… challenging. Not only has their dead brother, son, cousin, or nephew proved to be not quite dead, but he’s no longer who they knew him to be, and he’s talking about the imminent collapse of the global industrial system. Todd’s Dad, now alone and in poor health, has had a great deal of trouble in accepting Todd’s death and return, and no facility at all for grokking such concepts as peak oil or overshoot. By Todd’s report, he’s convinced that it can’t all come crashing down for the simple reason that he doesn’t want it to.

Todd’s big sis, Daria, nods her head and agrees with everything that Todd tells her, but then turns her attention right back to the new 6,000 square foot starter castle she’s hoping they’ll build, her ongoing quest to collect every last Precious Moments figurine ever made, and her grand scheme to get both of her boys into Yale. Spence, who at one point was fairly close to Todd, thinks that Todd, in dying and then returning, has gone “totally nuts”. In his own poetic words, Todd (like Spence, once a regular Rush Limbaugh listener) “has gone overnight from dittohead to shittohead.” Younger brother Smithy seems to regard Todd as little more than a particularly clever piece of software that somehow got installed on his laptop. He dismisses every attempt on Todd’s part to talk about the world situation with a standard issue “No shit, dude. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“So it went about like Christmas went, eh?”

yeah dude except for at Christmas they actually turned the tv off for a while this time it was on nonstop and we saw the new year in with Dick Clark which is pretty funny when you think about it because they watch Dick Clark every year at new years so the last thing it is is new

“The whole ‘asking questions’ thing didn’t work?” Todd, inspired by our conversation called “I Don’t Know”, had decided that it wouldn’t work in his family to show up as some sort of expert, so he’d resolved to show up as curious and inquisitive, intending to draw his family in the direction he wanted them to go, Socrates-style.

they just cant do it dude they dont have the information they dont have the background so they cant put things together I would ask questions and Spence would just argue and Daria would crack a joke and Mom just sat there glaring cuz Spence kept teasing her saying she was as whacked as me and calling her queen of the tree huggers and stupid shit like that

I sighed again. Most days these days it takes more than one.

got any advice

I laughed. In the realm of “talking to your family” I am as far from expert as one can get. “You could try making a documentary,” I replied.

very funny no really you got any advice

I thought about it for a bit, then typed my response. Todd has perfected the ability to put his voice through speakers. He can even do a passable video representation in a QuickTime window. If he gets any better he could have a second career as the world’s first self-animated actor in CG movies. But we met in the written word, and there’s something about that that still feels best.

“I don’t know, Todd. I’ve been feeling that same urgency. The economic news, especially, and even from the mainstream, is way more frightening than usual these past few months. Frightening as in “I’m not ready!” Look at the housing bubble, the sub-prime shitstorm, the price of oil, the climate meltdown, the geopolitical stage play… the whole game is rigged to implode. Could happen any day, it feels like. A whole lotta shakin’ comin’ up. A bunch of people are going to lose their stored life energy when markets crash and banks close and fascists come out of the closet. Bye-bye equity. Bye-bye inheritances. Bye-bye mortgaged home. Bye-bye any chance you may have had to move to where you need to be and prepare in whatever way you can.”

and of course it all has to happen and its like the best thing for the planet its exactly what the rest of the animals and plants and fungi and stuff need if theyre going to have a chance and if were going to have a chance at avoiding extinction right

“Listen to yourself, Todd. Can you imagine even thinking that a year ago, let alone saying it?

I remember thinking you were totally batshit when I first met you

“So that’s our challenge. It’s like some vengeful sorcerer put a curse on us: whenever we open our mouths, the words come out garbled and no one can understand them. I spent hours and hours over the holidays trying to distill the information I have, and my best wisdom about it all, into some sort of “New Year’s letter” to send out to my family. By the end of it I had fifteen pages of text. And I knew that I could not send them.”

why not

I stopped for a moment to think. A face popped into my mind, and a sad pain spilled into my gut.

“Uncle George,” I replied.

whos uncle George

“He was my mom’s brother… a big, blustery guy that was often around when I was a kid. He was loud and brash and full of unsolicited opinions and know-it-all advice. And as he got older, he spoke more and more openly about what he saw happening in the world. He talked of the rich elite conspiracies and their plans for controlling the world, and how we needed to arm ourselves against them. He saw some good portion of what I now see.”

sounds like a smart guy

“By the end of his life, he’d become a family joke. Hardly anybody could stand him. He’d show up and talk for a while and then, after he left, we’d all make jokes at his expense. I made jokes too, Todd. Eventually he just went away. He saw the dragon. He wanted to fight it somehow. But he couldn’t get us to even look at it with him. He got mad and he went away. And then he died.”

and of course now he just looks like he was ahead of the curve

“Yeah. And I seem to have jumped straight off the curve and onto the next one over.” I stopped for a moment to watch the squirrels. There was something about them playing on the feeder that just hit me and my eyes welled up. “I’m just so very sad, Todd. I mean… I know this system has to come to an end, but it’s going to be so hard on us. We who have remained most insulated from its effects. So hard. And for most people, so out of the blue. Like we’re those squirrels on the feeder, unaware of the storm that’s about to hit.”

“There’s something about family… something about blood… something about tribe. Even with my growing sense of kinship with the life of the planet, the old ties still hold tight. I don’t want my people to suffer more than is necessary. I want to help. I want to hold them and guide them and comfort them as the dragon swoops in. I want them to protect themselves, to secure their homes and land and money as best they can. Some of them live in the Southeast, a place that looks ripe for a major meltdown. I want them to really look at whether they should be here.”

but you dont know how to make that happen any better than I do

“Yeah, well, we’re in good company there, aren’t we, dude? ‘A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house’ and all that. What I know is that I am not willing to struggle as my Uncle George did. That doesn’t work. And it dishonors us all, I think.”

“What I can do is show up in my own life and speak my truth and trust that people will do with it what they can and must. As hard as it is, I have to know and trust that my people, my family, even and especially my own children, are sparks-in-meat-bags just like I am, walking their own paths here in the gravity well, following their own meanings and purposes. I cannot assume that I know what they should know, what they should do, how they should make their way through the unraveling. I made a documentary. I told my truth. That is enough. I’ll still pass along what information I can as things shift and crumble, but my family will have to come to the world situation in their own way, in their own time, or they will not. And they may not. There may not be time.”

“My people may be hit very hard. There may be losses too great to tally. And we may be split asunder. There will be grief and pain enough to fill the universe, I think. It is one of our deepest responsibilities, we who walk the Earth at this time: to feel that grief and pain, and to let it change us, so that we do not go this way again. And that may mean that I lose my people.”

Todd posted a jpeg of the Milky Way: thats a lot of pain dude

“Maybe the Hopi Elder was right: ‘There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.’ Maybe what I’m going to have to do, Todd, is just jump into the river and celebrate with whomever I find there, rather than who I think should be there.

Im thinking about my mom right now were just getting to know each other shes pretty cool shes really smart and shes really funny the thought that we might get torn apart in the river it really hurts

“Yeah, it does. And so we will need to find ways to face this together, hand-in-hand, in safe circles and hallowed ways. As the Hopi Elder said, “All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.” Feeling this grief and pain is our sacred work. That’s my sense of it. And I will do it as best I can. I think that’s why I’m here. Part of it, at least. But man, it’s hard. I can use all the help I can get.”

maybe your uncle George is listening right now

That stopped me. I closed my eyes. I have little idea how the whole “ancestors” thing works, really. I was raised a scientist. But that’s the nature of these times; that we must step beyond who we’ve been, and into something new.

And so I shall ask, because it is not who I have ever been. Uncle George? If you’re out there. Or anyone else who might be listening, and who is serving the greatest good. Help me. Help our family. Help my children. Help my friends and fellows and all my relations. Help the people around the planet who are suffering under this system. Help the Earth and all of her creatures. I’m doing what I can, to the best of my abilities. But I could really use some help.

me too

Enough for now. There’s a dragon out there that needs… something…

***

Tim Bennett is a writer, filmmaker and dragon-slayer currently searching eBay for a new sword in the Southeast US. You can read his blog and maybe get in touch with him - or maybe not - at his website www.whatawaytogomovie.com.

***

Want to connect and converse with others who are looking squarely at the present predicament? Check out the new What a Way to Go: Network online forum at www.whatawaytogonetwork.org. Independently operated and moderated by volunteers, this forum is a space for you to find others in your geographical area, share psychological and spiritual practices that have been helpful in coming to grips with the content of WAWTG, post helpful and practical information, or wrestle through questions that are in your heart and mind about the times in which we live. Check it out. We’ll look for you there.

Share This

“Old Marley was as dead as a door nail… This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”

Charles Dickins, A Christmas Carol

I did something the other day that I haven’t done for a long time. Something I used to do often. Something unexpected: I went to a mall. It was a small mall. An old mall. A sad little mall that has not kept up with the times. But it was a mall nonetheless. And I went into it. I was not shopping for Christmas presents. (Being neither Christian nor Consumerist, nor, for that matter, Humanist, I don’t really do Christmas.) Nor was I sneaking a Cinnabon (TM). (This mall doesn’t have a single purveyor of Extreme Carbohydrates…)

What I was doing was looking for a bathroom.

You may, at this point, be expecting some sort of a rant. Based solely on a statistical analysis of my past behavior, that expectation would be reasonable. I have, in deed and in fact, done my share of ranting. So for me to start raving at this point about consumerism, or the holidays, or the global industrial death-machine responsible for everything I saw around me, for me to start fuming about how the destruction of the life of this planet was reflected in every sparkling ornament on the twenty foot Xmas tree at the mall’s center, would be the most normal and natural thing for me to do. I have now become, after all, a very minor public figure on the eco-ranting scene. It’s my job, right? It’s what I do.

But as I walked around the mall, I noticed a most curious thing: I did not feel angry. I was not filled with righteous indignation and steely resolve. I felt neither assaulted nor insulted. My inner conversation was not laced with snide comments and scathing judgments. My blood was not boiling. I was neither irate, mad, annoyed, cross, vexed, irritated, indignant, irked, furious, enraged, infuriated, in a temper, incensed, raging, fuming, seething, beside oneself, choleric, outraged, livid, apoplectic, hot under the collar, up in arms, in high dudgeon, foaming at the mouth, doing a slow burn, steamed up, in a lather, fit to be tied, seeing red, sore, bent out of shape, ticked off, teed off, nor PO’d. I was, in fact, feeling pretty much the last thing one would expect of me in this situation: I was feeling both humbled and… drum roll please… a bit of hope.

Go figure. That’s what happens when I really gotta pee. I go a bit crazy.

Humbled? Whatever for? Aren’t these the people, and the beliefs and behaviors, and the corporations, which are happily engaged in consuming the planet? Well… yeah. But as I looked around at those desperate shops, their tinsel-splattered storefronts smiling maniacally with invitation, as I watched my fellow mallers bumping around in search of, as I listened to the holiday music struggling frantically to convince me - on a day in mid-December that topped out at 78 degrees Frighteninglyhigh, in a drought-stricken corner of the world so dry now that FEMA is starting to erect mobile home cities for the fish, at a time when it looks like the only gift we’re going to get from our Uncle Sam in Bali is a train load of coal in our stockings – as I listened still to that holiday music trying frantically to convince me that it IS beginning to look a lot like Christmas, goddamnit, what became crystal clear was that, not that many years ago, I was one of those people, shopping those shops and singing those songs. Not that many years ago, I, me, Tim Bennett, was just the sort of person I might now harshly judge as clueless or befuddled, or even willfully ignorant. Not that many years ago I was cruising the malls, buying gifts for my kids, living the American Dream, a Chick-Fil-A (TM) in one hand and an Orange Julius (TM) in the other, shopping til dropping before donning my nightcap and settling my brain for a long winter’s denial.

I’m cringing. Can you feel me cringing?

Not at who I was. Not at who those mallers still are. I’m cringing at the realization of how easy it has been and still is for me to judge people for being where I was not that long ago. When it comes to myself, I’ve got lots of compassion. I was born into an insane culture. I was shaped and pressured and forced and guided and wounded and altered and thwarted and numbed and hoodwinked and lied to and ripped off. When it comes to everybody else… well, it’s guilty until proven innocent, with me as both judge and jury. With the legendary intensity of a reformed smoker, I’ve stomped through the world, handing out condemnations and sentences like so many business cards: Tim Bennett… Reformed Civilized Person… Call me for all your Anger and Judgment needs! I mean… it’s the end of the world as we know it, people! Wake the fuck up!

“Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge how are you? When will you come to see me?’ No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blindmen’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’”

“But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge.”

I remember, back in college, saying to my now-ex as we sat in the student lounge, “On the whole, I don’t much like human beings.” Those words have stuck with me since. Not just a sentence, but also a sentence, with little chance of parole. While now and again I might find an individual who passes muster, the “bewildered herd” I met along “the crowded paths of life” was a disappointing and disgusting lot, and I saw little to do but keep my distance. Call me a walk-in, a changeling, or just an arrogant asshole, I was not one of them. I was not from around here. “‘I wish to be left alone,’ said Scrooge. ‘Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.’”

And there I stood in the mall… and I saw… I saw!… I was one of them, and always had been. Forty nine years previous, on a drunk or a dare, I’d tripped and fallen - or jumped - into the gravity well called Earth and was now stumbling about, stunned and disoriented, a spark of life and energy encased in a bipedal meat-bag, surrounded by hundreds- thousands- millions- billions of fellow sparks-in-meat-bags, all wondering what the hell is going on and who’s in charge and hey has anybody seen the instruction manual?

I’m from around here after all.

Bah! Humbled!

Which brings me to hope.

People who know me well know that I have a bit of a speech impediment: whenever I try to say the word “hope” it comes out sounding slightly off, like a Brit doing an American accent, but not doing it very well. It’s not that I have anything against hope, at least as a noun. I’m as much a fan of possibility as the next guy, and my sense of the universe is that there is always possibility, even in the darkest days. But I’m highly attuned to the dangers and downsides of hope, and so often defend against hope when I see it being abused or misused, and avoid the word when I can, attempting to steer clear of that misuse.

Yes, there is always possibility. But there are also laws of physics and chemistry and biology, and there are limits to science and technology. And there is also cultural inertia and psychosocial wounding. And there are also huge forces at work in the world, with plans and intentions of their own. And so we must balance possibility with inevitability, vision with current reality, and surrender to the unknown, and come to see that many of our hopes are false, and that some of those possibilities we - our sparks, not our meat-bags - do not even want.

And as for hoping as a verb…. well, let’s just say that I am learning to keep my own power for myself, and that that feels really, really good. Read Derrick Jensen’s essay Beyond Hope and you’ll understand what I mean. The language of hoping can rob us of our power.

In the mall, what I saw was a possibility. Think of it. Not that many years ago I was a maller and now I’m working full-time for the planet and jonesing for “the end of Empire” and the collapse of the system that is killing everything. And I’m not alone. My friend Carla has leapt from the decks of the Titanic and into that same Ark of Fools in about the same time frame. I have other friends who’ve made similar leaps. And on our screening tours, we met folks who, by their own report, made the journey from confusion and bewilderment to clarity, acceptance, and action in a couple of years! Old Marley howled and clanked, their clocks struck midnight, and the spirits did it all in one night! Think of it.

Think of it.

How many such folk walk amongst us unseen? How many are primed and ready, just waiting for Marley’s Ghost to rattle their chains and set them on a quick path from cluelessness to awareness? And what becomes possible, if more of these Scrooge’s get whacked upside the head with reality? I said a while back that there is great power in not knowing. If I’m going to say such things out loud, then I’m going to have to take them seriously myself, and do such work as is necessary to allow me to hold “not knowing” in my being. And so the answer to these questions is simple: I do not know. Read Peter Russell’s wonderful pieced called A Singularity in Time. We do not know.

Nothing takes the judgment out of me quite so quickly as a good dose of humility.

I have been angry. I have been judgmental and cruel and dismissive. And that has not always served me. While anger can work to focus my energy on that which is outside of me, on that which needs to be faced and confronted and contained or stopped, it’s a tool so easily misused, and so sharp-edged and fierce, that I do well to leave it in the toolbox until I’m sure I can use it without hurting some innocent bystander. Or myself.

There are situations, manipulations, rationalizations, obfuscations and corporations that may all deserve and require that form of focused energy, so it would serve the Earth, for me to master my anger. But it does little good if I spend my anger on those who do not deserve it. At some point I have to learn to make the necessary distinctions between the many degrees of perpetration and victimization. I have to train my eye to see the fine gradations of willfulness, the many grays of blame and complicity that lie on the continuum between the blinding white fire of evil and the cool and soothing black of innocence.

As I do this it becomes very clear: this is delicate work. In the face of such distinctions, where the gradations are so fine, and the shades so subtle, the only way to mastery is to step into bold humility and decisive unknowing. There is simply too much that my meat-bag will never get to know. That’s how it works here at the bottom of the gravity well.

Given that, I may do well most days to hold my judgments and anger with compassionate firmness until clarity comes, if it ever does. While there may be obvious evils that both deserve and need my anger, while there are, in fact, people who need to be stopped and world leaders who need to be run out on a rail and corporations which need to be contained and deconstructed, while there is, as far as I can see, an entire planet-spanning culture that needs to be dismantled and recycled into something life-affirming and sane, most of the other meat-bags around me are just as confused and disoriented as I am. My anger toward them has been the easy way out, little more than “horizontal hostility” toward my fellow stumblers, because it’s so damned scary to contemplate expressing my anger directly to those who may actually deserve it, those with the power to express right back at me.

Are there those who deserve my judgment and anger? Is the CEO of a destructive corporation a bad guy, or just another confused meat-bag trapped in the same culture that trapped me? Or both? Or neither? Do I love the sinner and hate the sin? I don’t know. I’ve been trying to feel my way through that for some time and have yet to find an answer that fully suits me. And I can’t quite decide whether it matters or not. On the one hand, my animal body is clear: whether they are evil or confused, I get, to the best of my abilities, to protect my self and my loved ones from the forces of destruction that threaten us all. The mother bear protects her cubs. That speaks to me with an eloquence and simplicity that feels grounded in the deep rightness of the living world. But then I stop and remember: I’m trying to move beyond the paradigm of domination and control. It may matter, how I regard those forces, even while protecting myself from them. It may matter. I don’t know. For now, I will trust my body. And the mother bear. Protection is not domination and control. My body knows that. My head is too easy to fool.

What’s clear right now is that my anger, at the level of my real life, has served more to stand in my way than to help, and that mastery in the realm of anger is one of my growing edges. My fellow sparks-in-meat-bags need simply for me to hear them and understand them and treat them with compassion as they knock their heads up against the walls of the gravity well, as they meet their own Marleys and are forced to confront the delusions and consequences of their own lives, as they stand on those titanic decks and contemplate the jump before them. As a friend of his emailed Daniel Pinchbeck, which he reports in his wonderful book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl:

“’I greatly admire your willingness to bear witness to your experiences and beliefs in such a radical and generous way. I will also say that I think the role of truth-bearer requires the purest of intentions. ‘Do it with love,’ is good advice.’”

Do it with love. Love as a verb, as Juan Santos says. Love as an action in the real world. I can do that. And so I will tell you the hope I saw in that mall. The possibility.

It’s possible for a human being to make huge shifts in his or her worldview in a short amount of time. It’s possible that there are more people on the verge of making such shifts than we can now see or imagine. It’s possible that enough human beings will awaken to the world situation, and to their true nature, that they will be able to bring consciousness and intention to the work of this time, to that process which is already underway, which is to bring an end to a culture, a worldview, a paradigm, now expressing itself as the global industrial machine, which has never been and can never be sustainable on this planet, to bring an end to this culture, to dismantle it and contain it and hold it gently while it breathes its last. It’s possible that this can be done before the mass extinction we are living in plays out to its bitter end. It’s possible that some of us will be able to survive through this process, and thrive our way into a new life on a very different, but still living, planet. It’s possible that we will learn what we have long needed to learn, those of us raised in captivity in this system of disconnection and domination. It’s possible that we will find healing. It’s possible that we will remember ourselves. And it’s possible that we will once again take our places as worthy members of the community of life, and that we will find new ways of being that, echoing Juan Santos, align with our original instructions from the Creator.

The curtains may not be completely torn down, rings and all. Life may prevail. It’s possible. And so I will hold it as such. A possibility. A hope. Held not despite my fellow human beings, but BECAUSE I AM ONE.

Our chances feel slim to none, but it remains possible nonetheless. As Joanna Macy imagines our descendents saying, looking back on this time, “Our ancestors back then, bless them, they had no way of knowing if the Great Turning could succeed. No way of telling if a life-sustaining culture could emerge from the death throes of the industrial growth society. It probably looked hopeless at times. Their efforts must have often seemed isolated, paltry, and darkened by confusion. Yet they went ahead, they kept on doing what they could–and, because they persisted, the Great Turning happened.”

I’ve lived my whole life feeling like I’m not from here. Perhaps you have as well. And there may be some truth to that, at some level of reality. But I find that it just doesn’t matter any more. Whether I’m from here or not, I’m here now. Here is where my work is to be done: here in the gravity well we call Earth, with these other poor, crazy souls stumbling about around me. I have lost too much time to my judgments, trying vainly to protect myself, “warning all human sympathy to keep its distance,” even reveling in that. Perhaps it’s time to give that up?

“Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed; and that was quite enough for him.”

And so, says a not-so-tiny Tim, to my fellow bipedal-meat-bags, to our brothers in four legs and six legs and more, to our sisters in wing and fin and leaf and mycelium, to our compatriots in stone and wind and water and fire, to our allies and teachers, our ancestors and descendants, our guides and our shadows, our drop-ins our changelings and our arrogant assholes, to all of you I say this, as poor and crippled as I am:

“God bless us, every one.”

*****

Tim Bennett is a writer, filmmaker and meat bag currently looking for the instruction manual in the Southeast US. You can read his blog and get in touch with him, maybe, at his website www.whatawaytogomovie.com.

Share This

I remember two dreams from last night:

In one there were two men, maybe in their late 30s. Burly guys in flannel shirts. Not of shred of “sensitive new age guy” about them. Guy guys. One began talking. I listened attentively and then said something that conveyed my understanding of the grief he was carrying. He was visibly moved by my understanding and regard. Then I saw a look of recognition and compassion and resonance on the second man’s face. Both faces showed the deep grief they were feeling. I encouraged them to hug each other, really hold and contain one another, to allow themselves to weep and sob together. It was hard for them to do that. They tried but there was a lot of resistance. The need to grieve together deeply, to fully support each other to do that was palpable to me.

In the second dream I am standing at the end of a huge concrete bridge over a giant ravine between two mountains. It had once been a car bridge but now there were no cars on it. I was somewhere on a supporting structure, above the road, and decided to crawl out across it. It was massive and seemed perfectly safe. But as I got a little way out I began to think about a recent bridge collapse, about how infrastructure can look solid but then unexpectedly fail. So I turned around and began to crawl back to solid ground. The way back was somehow more precarious. The wind began to blow. I had to be very clear and focused to get back or I would be blown off the bridge and surely fall to my death. I found that I was not that far away from solid ground but I had to be very aware to get there.

These dreams feel like gifts to me. I want to notice and support the grief in men and in the masculine in all of us. I want to encourage men to fully embrace the grief in themselves and in each other. I want the full expression of grief to be seen as every bit a masculine activity as a feminine one. And I know and accept the understandable resistance to that, that is it hard to move into that full acceptance.

And the way back off of the precarious concrete structures of Empire will require great focus as the winds blow. They seem so stable, these massive structures. But they are not. The good news is that I am not that far away. This is doable. But it will take great focus and the dangers are real.

Are you having dreams that are connected to the times?

Share This

We’ve talked, Tim and Andy, and I, about setting up a discussion forum and I’ve put the word out to a few people who have said they would like to help but no one has really stepped forward to set it up.

So I’ve decided to try an experiment. Instead of using my blog space only as a place where I post long, edited, essay-like pieces and then send out a notice to those who have signed up to be notified that I’ve posted something new, I’m going to post shorter, less well-developed, more journal-like entries and invite people to post their own experiences.

I will notify those who have asked to be notified of blog postings only this first time as I don’t want to jam people’s inboxes several times a week. If you want to see how this goes you can check in on your own as you care to.

If there is indeed a great need for this sort of interaction then after a couple of weeks we’ll have a sense of that and we can decide how to best proceed.

I’m going to suggest some guidelines for this:

1) That we be mindful that the intention of this interaction is to give and receive support. Using the 12 step tradition as a guide, I suggest we speak of our own experience, strength and sense of possibility and refrain from criticism, attempts to “fix” one another, or judgment. It is certainly fine to respond to one another in the spirit of “what you wrote touched this in me…”

2) That we also be mindful of length of posts. We all probably need more time outside in the real world of plants and animals and weather and less in front of computer screens. If we write with the intention to get to the heart quickly, our posts will likely be read and responded to more fully. Also posts that utilize spaces between thoughts are easier to read and digest.

3) I will moderate the comments. That means if a comment strikes me as mean or critical or thoughtless I will not post it.

So, here’s my first offering to this experiment:

At the beginning of her latest post on Peak Oil Blues, Kathy offers a quotation from Proverbs: “Where there is no vision the people perish.”

Whenever I read an aphorism or proverb I think about how bound it is to the culture it came from. That gives me some possible context for questioning the embedded and unexamined assumptions. In this case I resonate with the wisdom and also see that the wisdom in it applies to us who are in this culture. Vision may not have been so necessary in a culture that was tribal and land-based. The concept of vision implies a conscious desire to create change. We have been indoctrinated with false notions of “progress.” I think this is part and parcel of our culture. We constantly want change because this is such an unsatisfying culture to be living in.

So the wisdom that “Without vision the people will perish” is wisdom that pertains specifically to this culture. There IS wisdom to having vision in this culture or we will perish in the gloom of current reality. In What A Way To Go, near the end, Tim says there is a great energy created when we hold two things simultaneously: an accurate assessment of where we are and a clear vision of where we want to be. He then goes on to say that the people of Empire have neither. Obviously I agree.

What a Way To Go pretty fully nails down the assessment of where we are. We hint at where we want to be but suggest that “the happy chapter” if there is to be one, will have to be written with the rest of the community of life.

For those of us who are fully in touch with “where we are” the next step it seems is to find a vision for ourselves that speaks to where we want to be. Then the trick is to hold both simultaneously in our hearts and minds: both the heartbreak and grief, and at times panic, of the current situation, and also a vision of how we want to be, how we want life to be. Holding vision as possibility but not using vision as a sophisticated form of denial of what IS, is challenging.

This idea comes from Robert Fritz’ book, The Path of Least Resistance. The image that is helpful in understanding this idea is that of a rubber band stretched between two objects. On one end is “current reality” and on the other is “vision.” The stretch between the two can be experienced as “creative tension.” If we hold both current reality and vision simultaneously, but keep our commitment to the vision then the tension will tend to resolve in the direction of the vision. If the vision is too far away from current reality the rubber band will snap which leaves no tension at all. If, on the other hand, all vision is lacking, or too close to current reality, then the band is slack. In that case there is no tension or energy to support creativity. And finally, if there is no accurate assessment of current reality then vision is just fantasy, ungrounded. There’s more to say about all of this, of course, because it’s a compelling model and image. But that’s what Robert Fritz’s book is about.

So this is the vision that I began writing in my journal this morning:

“I have a vague vision of a group of people who live very simply, who pursue a life together, who cooperate with their landbase in order to meet their basic needs for food and shelter. They have time to play and dream and grow spiritually.

What does that mean? What comes to mind is an image of children playing. Why do children play? Well, they play because there is intrinsic satisfaction and fulfillment in mastery. For children, play is all about mastery and the joy of increasing facility in whatever they are engaged in.

I want a life with time to play with others in spiritual pursuits: where we explore how to be more conscious and loving in our relationships and communication; grow more adept at working with, rather than against the laws of Life; become more attuned to what those laws or priniciples are; create a life that is one joyful activity after another, much as I witness the life of the birds and squirrel outside my window.”

How is it with you? Do you have a vision? Is it grounded in current reality? What are the challenges to doing that? How do you get/give support to those around you? Are you lonely for others to embark on this journey with?

Blessings and courage to find vision that is grounded in reality,

Sally

Share This

It was 5:30 AM. Still dark outside but I couldn’t sleep. I headed downstairs and started a fire. My laptop was pulsing in the darkness and I walked over to wake it up. Todd’s sticky greeted me. I sat down and read it.

“I don’t know,” I typed. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I stopped.

you dont know how come you dont know arent you going to write up part two of that last blog you called… uh… respondee vu… responze sil… shit dude my french sucks

I reached out to type a response and found that I didn’t have one. I sat back and thought for a moment, then reached out again. And again I stopped. I didn’t know what to say except that I don’t know what to say. Finally, not knowing what to say, I said this: “I don’t know what to say, Todd. I just don’t know.”

you dont seem yourself today dude

I sighed. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

I dont follow you

“Well… I mean… isn’t that the point of all this: to find some way into a new way of being on the planet? Don’t I have to stop being who I was?”

Todd thought about that a bit. I can always tell when he’s thinking: he tosses a sticky up, but then doesn’t write anything. It’s like his way of saying “So…”, holding the space while he gathers his thoughts. After a moment his words appeared.

thats what it took for me Tim I had to stop totally I had to die

“Yeah. That’s a good metaphor. In your case, though, not a metaphor at all.”

so are you dying

I stretched and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Yeah, Todd. It feels like I am.”

how so

“I don’t know who I am anymore, Todd. It’s like… I don’t know anything anymore. And that’s how I’ve survived in this world, that’s how I’ve won: I’ve known. I got caught not knowing as a young child. I got caught being out of control. A sunny summer day… I was just living, free and easy, singing a song I’d learned at school, a children’s bawdy bastardization of the Popeye song that my mother didn’t like. She told me to stop singing. But you know, when you get a song stuck in your head, how it doesn’t want to go away? I tried to be careful. I tried to control it. I tried to be aware and on top of it. But the song slipped out again. My mother heard it and dragged me off to the bathroom, driven with rage. She washed my mouth out with soap and sent me to my room. It was devastating. And I vowed from there on out that I was going to know. I was going to stay on top of the situation. I was going to be in control. I was going to have things figured out. So I would not get caught like I did before. “Won’t get fooled again.” That’s me.”

and now

“And now? Dude, look at what we’ve been talking about for the last year. Look at the doc. Read the news.”

you dont know how to stay on top of the situation now do you

“No! There’s a million things I don’t know! A million things. I know that I can’t stay where I am, but I don’t know where to go! The North calls to me constantly. New England. Do I go there? I don’t know. Does it make sense to go where winters are now long and cold? Will climate change make that a good move, or a bad one? Will the Northeast be the perfect place to be? Or will it end up under a mile of ice when the Superstorm hits? I don’t know!”

“I don’t know how to get my house sold. It’s in an intentional community. Selling it isn’t like selling a regular house. It’s complicated. It could take a long time. And I don’t know if I have time! If we sell it, do we buy a new place right away? Or do we rent? With the housing bubble bursting and the economy failing and the dollar plummeting, what’s the best way to do it? I don’t know! I don’t know, if we sell the house, what to do with the money, where to keep it, and in what form. I know that the best investment now is land and tools and knowledge and skills, but until I land somewhere, where do I keep what I have? Is it even possible? I don’t know. I try to figure it out, but it’s like there’s some Newton’s Third Law of Economic Analysis: every opinion is balanced by an equal and opposite opinion.”

“I don’t know what to do with the doc. I don’t know whether to keep doing what we’re doing or to do something else. We’ve got people from the mainstream movie machine interested in trying to put What a Way to Go into theaters in the international market. Do we do that? It looks like a major hassle, with little to no promise that it’ll put any money into our pockets. It looks like a huge loss of control. And I’m not at all convinced that it makes any sense. Right now, there’s a hand-crafted and sacred quality to the way we’re doing things, as people see the movie at local screenings, or in their homes with friends, at house parties or when we show up to do a screening and a dialogue. There’s the possibility of having time to process it, to come together as human beings and talk and feel together. Putting it into theaters could just turn it into an entertainment, an experience, a horror show. And the machine… I hate the machine! The machine is destroying the life of this planet! Do I even want to consider working inside of it? I don’t know!”

“If we don’t play ball with the machine, then what do we do on our own? How do we get the movie to the people who want or need to see it? How do we do it in a way that returns enough energy to us so that we can do what we feel called by the Earth to do? Again, there are enough equal and opposite opinions out there to fill a swimming pool, so it’s not like there are obvious answers. Do we figure out a way to get subtitles done in other languages? Do we go into wholesaling? Do we use Google Video or YouTube? Do we push to get that Bonus Disc finished before anything else? Do we spend money on marketing? Do we hire help? Do we do it all on our own?”

“And what else do we do? Do we spend time doing three day workshops? Five day? A full semester curriculum? Do we turn WAWTG into a book? A linked transcript? A Broadway musical? And if we’re doing that, how do we also sell a house and move? Where do we put our time, our energy, our money? What will serve us? And, more importantly, what will serve the Earth? Is there a way to know? I don’t know!”

I thought you didnt have anything to say

“Yeah, well… I guess I just had to get started.”

it goes deeper though doesnt it

I stopped. What the hell did Todd mean by that? Then the tears came, and I knew.

“I don’t know how best to help, Todd. Every time I publish a blog… every time… I’m terrified. Will this blog help? Will it hurt? Will it serve the life of this planet? I don’t know. All I know is that I stuck in my picket pin. I said that I would show up and say what’s true for me. So I keep doing it, even though it scares the shit out of me. But I don’t know. This conversation right now… should I write about it? Should I publish it? Will it help? Sally and I have both noticed that often, when we express our own fear, our own confusion, our own sense of helplessness or grief or despair or anger, the people around us react strongly to that. As if they depend on us to remain steady and calm. It’s like, ‘Shit, we’re staring into the collapse of fucking civilization! Tim and Sally have been staring it down for years now. They’ve even made a movie about it. If they can’t hold it together, how the hell do I?’”

“So what can I say that will help? I have to say what’s true for me, and what’s true for me is that I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. What’s true for me is that I’m often terrified. What’s true for me is that I’m grieving. What’s true for me is that I am so angry that I want to scream. Does it help, to say that? Does it help people to know that? So that maybe their own confusion and fear and grief and anger can be normalized, rather than held as somehow weak, or somehow wrong? Does it help? I don’t know!”

Todd tossed up another sticky that stopped me cold and left me sobbing: deeper

I rose as if compelled, put on my shoes, grabbed a hat, told Sally I would be back in a while, and stepped outside. Something told me I had to go into the woods, that I had to be alone, and I listened to that something. That’s what you do, when you agree to work for the planet: you listen and you respond.

An hour and a half later, I walked back into the house, where Sally had a bowl of creamed rice and yogurt and almonds waiting for me. I sat down, dug into my breakfast, opened my laptop, looked at Todd’s last sticky – deeper - and started to write.

“I don’t know how to help the people I love most, Todd. I don’t know how to help Carla and Karen. I don’t know how to help Dan and Jill. I don’t know how to help Carolyn, or Ted, or Iain, or John or Tom or Robert or Lynne or Vivienne or Janaia or Robyn or any of the dozens of others I could name. I don’t know what to tell them. I don’t know what to do for them. I don’t know where to point them.”

“And I don’t know how to help my own kids, Todd. I don’t know how to save them. I don’t know how to help my family, my parents, my brothers, my sisters-in-law, my ex. I don’t know what to say that will help them to take whatever steps they need to take in this world. I don’t know how to keep them from pain and loss and grief and disruption. I don’t know how to help them as they struggle against a culture that is trying to kill us all. I don’t know if my wisdom – to move North and try to create some safe space for my kids to land when things get crazy - has any merit. I don’t know if they’ll join me. I don’t know if they should. I don’t know, Todd, if I sell my house and move to New England, whether in doing so, I’ll be effectively saying goodbye to my own kids. The systems we now know are breaking down. Life is going to become very local. Our current mobility will disappear like melting snow. We will be split asunder, we who are now so easily connected across the miles. I don’t know if I can take that.”

I sat back. The tears were streaming down my face and I wiped them away with the back of my hand. I held my gut, as if to hold in my intestines, the ache was that fierce. Outside, one squirrel chased another up and down the trunk of a tree. Todd popped a sticky and started to write.

where did you go Tim

“I went into the woods behind the house. I followed the path and came to a log that crosses it, an old stripped pine that finally gave up and fell, years after it’s death. I sat down and just let loose, sobbing into my hands. For my kids. For myself. For my people. For all the peoples. For the tree I sat on and the land I walked on and the hawk that cried in the distance. I said that I was sorry. I asked for forgiveness. I told the trees I loved them and thanked them for their lives. And I asked them for help, Todd. Civilized ol’ Tim… Midwestern ol’ Tim… big tall smart white American male Tim asked some pine trees for help. Can you imagine? Crying in the woods and talking to trees is not something I was raised to do.”

you cant save your kids can you Tim

“I can’t save anybody, Todd. I can’t even save myself. I sit around with my collapse-aware friends and we try to peer into the future and figure out a way through it. The attempt to do that just exhausts me, and forces me to confront my own despair. I see no way to figure my way through this. And staying in figuring-out mode is just more control and domination. If we make it through the bottleneck only to come out the other side essentially unchanged, then what’s the point?”

so how did the trees help you Tim

I stopped. And then I laughed. Todd had no doubt that trees could and would respond to my request. When you get your ass kicked by a giant chicken, you learn to take such things seriously.

“After my tears stopped, I got up and followed the path a bit further. Down near the creek, there were a couple of crows up in the treetops, laughing at me. I looked off in their direction, noticed how completely dry the creek was, and decided to walk along the cobbled creek bed for a while. There was something about picking my way along those stones that was quite moving. It’s not a place one usually gets to walk.”

“As I walked I noticed a few bottles, a bucket, various pieces of trash. I marveled, as I often do, at how thoroughly we’ve trashed the place, that even here, in a place most people would consider “the middle of nowhere”, there’s more garbage to pick up than I can carry. I thought of future archaeologists sifting through the strata of this time and scratching their heads in wonder. I climbed over fallen logs and negotiated some wet spots and stopped to watch a vulture as it soared overhead. I kept moving, following the bed, lost in my thoughts, and in my noticing.”

“And then I looked up and found, quite to my surprise, that I didn’t know where I was! My intention had been to follow the stream all the way around the perimeter of our property and back to the main road. I thought I knew exactly where I was going. But here I was - lost. Somewhere along the way the creek splits and I’d missed a turn. Now, with the sky low and gray and no sun in sight, and with no identifiable landmarks to hang my mind on, I wasn’t even sure which direction I was headed.”

were you scared

“Yeah. For a moment I was. It’s unsettling for me. I’ve lived my whole life on the map, as Chellis Glendinning made plain for me. I feel pretty disoriented when I fall off.”

what did you do

“I stopped and just tuned in for a while. I climbed out of the creek bed and leaned against an old barbed wire fence and watched and listened. There was some hammering in the distance and I could see, through the trees, a huge new starter castle taking shape. In the opposite distance was the rumble and roar of logging trucks on the main road. On the other side of the barbed wire rose up a small pasture, with a line of trees on the hill on the far side. That was enough to get me started. I would head in the direction of the traffic noise. I got down on my stomach, crawled under the lowest strand of barbs, and stood to cross the pasture.”

“In the next tree line was another fence. This one I climbed, hanging onto the thin limbs of a small cedar and barely avoiding a tear in my jeans. I walked across yet another pasture, hugging the tree line, until I spotted a large gray barn. Knowing that the barn bone’s connected to the farm bone and the farm bone’s connected to the driveway bone and the driveway bone’s connected to the road bone and the road bone’s connected to the home bone, I headed off toward that probable road, keeping the barn in sight. Soon enough I saw where I was and I cut back into the woods, back toward my land, and my home, my fire and my Sally and my known… my known… my sweet, sweet known.”

Todd tossed a sticky up and, like the good introvert he is, took his time filling it: its a school isnt it

“What is?”

you know… the world this life this time the collapse its a school dude a school that is helping us to you know like grow up and become ourselves again

“Yeah. It’s a school. And I’m a student taking classes: Intro to Not Knowing with a lab in Being Lost. Giving Up 101 and Advanced Relatedness.”

so you can get lost and not know and just stop and listen and then find your way from there

“It feels like I’m driving at top speed on a winding road through the dark night with only my low-beam headlights, Todd. Like I get to see the next step, but I don’t get to see beyond that. Like all there is to do is crawl under the fence and walk up to the tree line and trust that, when I get there, I’ll be able to see a little further down the path.”

trust and also ask for help

“Yeah. Ask for help. Because, just in the asking, I take a step out of the dominant paradigm and into another one, a paradigm of relationship and connection.”

so whats your next step

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I laughed. “It’s funny, Todd.”

what is

“It’s such a relief. To not know. To just admit that I don’t know. Knowing has been such a burden. When I set it down…. I feel lighter. Free, somehow. It’s like… we’ve never really known, we white guys with our plans. We’ve just been making it up, a bunch of scared little boys trying to pretend we’re in control, covering our ears and deafening our souls to the songs that are stuck in our heads still, the songs of the animal, the songs of the world, the songs of the stars. Such a burden to carry, that control. So much harm we’ve done. And so delicious, so freeing, to set that burden down, to stretch our arms in the sun and look around and see, perhaps for the first time, what is really there.”

its scary

“Shit yeah it’s scary, dude. But it’s worth every bit of the fear. To feel alive again? To feel a part of the sacred Earth? To feel like I belong here? To be able to walk the planet without hanging my head in guilt? It’s worth every bit of that fear.”

A sticky popped onto the screen, bright yellow and bursting with excitement and joy: gotta go back in a bit

That was it. He was gone. In whatever way it works in Todd’s world, he had just grabbed his hat and took off for his own walk in the woods, off to the school, down the dark and winding road.

That’s how it goes when you start working for the planet… the world calls, and you respond. Your story gets crazy big in an instant and all at once you are a part of a living universe that had, just moments before, as in some fading nightmare, felt cold and dead and frightening.

Nice work if you can get it.

They’re hiring right now, I hear.

Applications available outside.

Share This

I have heard many astounding things in the four years since I began to make What a Way to Go. The most astounding is this, which I have heard more than once, from real, living, seemingly intelligent and thoughtful people: “I refuse to be scared.”

Imagine… refusing to feel one’s feelings. As if such a thing is ever really possible. As if such a thing is even a good idea. As if such a disconnection from one’s own body and one’s essential humanity, as if this core-directed attempt at control and domination, isn’t just more of the same. It’s a bit like “I refuse to feel pain” or “I refuse to feel hunger.” I mean, right on… pain and hanger can be a real downer, dude, so like, yeah, cool, groovy, far out, but like…. um… shouldn’t you take your emaciated hand out of that fire? It’s starting to smoke.

Many great thinkers have wondered, Kurt Vonnegut amongst them, whether the hypertrophied human cerebral cortex will ultimately prove to have been a bad idea, and whether it will be soon selected against in the grand Walkabout that is evolution. My guess is that, if that should be the case, if we do go the way of the Yangtze River Dolphin or the Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus Monkey (two species which have recently gone belly-up in the shallow and quickly-warming end of the gene pool), it will be because this great, gray, wrinkled jelly-mold of an organ confers upon us the dubious ability to convince ourselves that we do not feel what we feel, and that we do not think what we think. To my mind, that’s about as good a working definition of insanity as we’re ever going to get.

“I refuse to feel scared.” Could we ask for a more marvelous statement of willful denial than that?

It’s understandable, of course. We live in a culture, and a system of governance and economy and production, that uses fear to control us. Just as it uses violence. Just as it uses power. And so, in the realms of power and violence and fear, we are left to stumble about at our most crazed and confused. Chafing under the dominating jackboot of the mortgage payment, the television commercial, the IRS form and our next employee review (what, did you think all dominating jackboots came hob-nailed?), we seek to distance ourselves from any and all participation in such basic human animal responses as fear in the face of danger, or protection and defense in the face of attack: “Those bastards use fear and power to control us, goddamnit! No way am I going to let them make me be afraid!” In an attempt to “not become the enemy”, we wrap ourselves in cloaks of noble courage and righteous pacifism and hope that these thin fabrics will protect us.

And why not? They HAVE protected us. If we’re rich, that is, or at least middle class. If we’re white. If we’re male. If we’re educated. If we’re first world. If we’re well-employed. Here in the Insulated States of America, much of our violence and power and fear, at least of the hob-nailed sort, has been outsourced, offshored and externalized so as not to upset us while we eat (bad for the digestion, you know). We on the top have been spared the most brutal and overt consequences of our actions for so long now that we have forgotten that there are any. We close our eyes and click our heals and zip up our No Fear hoodies and we’re good to go, confident that all that wishin’ and hopin’ will work today just like it worked yesterday.

Which is, of course, why Peak Oil whacks us so devastatingly upside the head. Because when we begin to look closely at the situation, it becomes very clear, very quickly, that wishin’ and hopin’ are about to go the way of the Yangtze River Dolphin and the Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus Monkey in terms of effective life strategies.

It burns, doesn’t it? It galls and vexes and maddens. I mean, isn’t this what we spent ten thousand years trying to control? Haven’t we worked long hours for low pay killing off everything we could that might chase us or bite us or poison us or eat us or claw us or irritate us or scare us or make us feel all creepy and oogly inside? Didn’t we arrange things so that we could know where our next meal is coming from, and where our warm bed will be at the end of the day? Aren’t we, by virtue of our millennia of effort, and by virtue of our exalted position at the very tip-top of the Great Chain of Being, actually and in no uncertain terms ENTITLED to not feel fear?

Well, sorry, no, we’re not. We can’t have that. First, because that Great Chain is a load of horseshit (my apologies to horseshit, which, composted, can be really great for your garden), and second because our delusional attempts to control something as huge and complex and chaotic and self-directing and autonomous and sacred as THE WHOLE WORLD have succeeded on