May 6, 2019 | Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecopsychology, Emotional/Spiritual, Extinction, Resilience, Society In Decline, Trauma
You, dear reader, who are paying such close attention to the unraveling of all that we know, must share in many of these feelings. When you see another of these grotesque, pasty-white iterations of humanity stuffed into a glossy suit, acting as nothing more than a fossil-fueled ventriloquist’s puppet, do you, like me, burn inside with rage, a rage that threatens to incinerate you? Do you fantasize of their demise? Of somehow bringing them, at least, a taste of the pain their soulless and heartless actions are bringing to the fish searching for food atop the bleached-out coral reefs? To show them the starving polar bears swimming for hundreds of miles to find no ice to rest upon? At these times, I wonder if any of these so-called humans can feel a goddamn thing anymore.
Apr 17, 2019 | Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Culture, Emotional/Spiritual, Extinction, New Paradigm, Resilience, Society In Decline
This week I have been disheartened by climate activists who have minimized, trivialized and literally mocked humanity’s mourning of the losses at Notre Dame Cathedral on April 15. Yes, Notre Dame is a building made by human beings, and the loss of its...
Apr 16, 2019 | Articles, civil liberties, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corruption, Racism, Religious Fascism, Society In Decline, Trauma, Tyranny, Violence
When I look at America, here’s what I see. A country where the extreme, fanatical right wing takeover of its institutions — all of them — is almost complete. From laws to courts, representation to presidency, norms to rules, from press to public sphere — America is now controlled almost entirely and exclusively by the most fanatical kind of right wingers the rich world hasn’t seen for decades, probably since Nazi Germany. Yes, I mean that. Let me make my case — and you can judge for yourself whether my words carry any weight.
Apr 6, 2019 | Articles, Carolyn's Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, community, Culture, Emotional/Spiritual, Extinction, Grief, Resilience, Society In Decline
We easily associate empathy, compassion, an open heart, support, cooperation, honesty, integrity, and gratitude with love, but how about boundaries, limits, grief, anger, discernment, comfort with not knowing, and a commitment to working on our personal and cultural shadow?
Apr 4, 2019 | Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecopsychology, General, Resilience
The irony of your starkly-titled book is that it ends up being, from our perspective, too ‘optimistic’. This may blind readers to the greatest new need now: for Deep Adaptation – that is, for accepting that some kind of eco-induced societal collapse is now not merely possible, but likely, and preparing honestly for it; for recognising that – while it is absolutely vital to continue to seek to mitigate our society’s climate-deadly emissions – the time is past when it was credible to fixate on doing this while ignoring the increasingly-urgent need for Deep Adaptation.
Apr 2, 2019 | Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, community, Emotional/Spiritual, Grief, Resilience, Sacred Activism, Society In Decline
There is another reason for fending off sorrow about the loss of the wild natural places we love to visit and the communities where we live, and this is perhaps the hardest one of all to accept and overcome. Many of us are simply afraid that if we allow ourselves to wade, even for a moment, into the feelings of sadness for the living world that lap at the edge of our consciousness, we will find ourselves pulled so ruthlessly into grief and despair that we will never emerge.
Mar 29, 2019 | Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Economic Meltdown, Emotional/Spiritual, Extinction, Options/ New Paradigm, Society In Decline
I was recently asked to respond to a short email interview. My response seems like a nice summary of how I’ve spent the last decade and a half of my life, so I thought I would share it here.
Mar 16, 2019 | Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Energy Depletion, Extinction, Food Security, Gaia, Resilience, Society In Decline
It is time for us baby boomers to honestly acknowledge what we did and didn’t do with the gifts given to us by our forebears and be clear about our legacy with which we have saddled the next and succeeding generations.
Mar 4, 2019 | Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Emotional/Spiritual, Grief, Resilience, Trauma
Despite our having caused so much destruction, it is important to also consider the wide spectrum of possibilities that make up a human life. Yes, on one end of that spectrum is greed, cruelty, and ignorance; on the other end is kindness, compassion, and wisdom. We are imbued with great creativity, brilliant communication, and extraordinary appreciation of and talent for music and other forms of art. We cry in tenderness when we are touched by love, beauty, or loss. We cry in empathy for others’ pain. Some of us even sacrifice our lives for strangers. There is no other known creature whose spectrum of consciousness is as wide and varied as our own. You likely know well the spectrum of human consciousness within yourself. Perhaps you have had many moments when greed or hatred overtook your mind. But it is likely you have also had many moments when you knew that love was all that ever really mattered. And in your final breaths it is likely to be all that is left of you and all that you will leave behind, a cosmic story whispered only once.As Leonard said, “It is in love that we are made; in love we disappear.”
Feb 25, 2019 | Articles, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Emotional/Spiritual, Empire, Extinction, Grief, Society In Decline, Trauma
The 21st century is going to be the first time — ever — that the human species stops increasing, expanding, and growing. The human population is — for the first time in history — projected to finally peak around 2050, for the first time ever, in a hundred thousand years. Let me put all that in perspective, if your response is — “so what?” — I think it is one of the most significant events of all time, and I don’t say that for hyperbole’s sake. So powerful and meaningful that we haven’t even begun to think about it. I think it explains everything from today’s wave of fascism, to climate change — to tomorrow’s urgent, desperate need for better paradigms of everything, from economics to politics to society
