But first: Collectively? Systemically? Culturally?
Surely not. We humans are ingenious are we not? We humans will continue on,
will we not? We’re not about to die out – surely not?
Well, indications are strong that we may be on the
road to doing so. There has been talk of the Sixth Mass Extinction for some
time now. Little do many of us humans realise that we are on that extinction
list.
This blogpiece will not traverse the evidence for
suggesting we are facing extinction. The possibility has been, briefly,
discussed elsewhere on this blogsite.
Rather, this blogpiece accepts the likelihood of
extinction, or at least a collapse of our ecological/social/economic/cultural systems.
This blogpiece asks the question that arises from that acceptance: Can we
face our collective death with dignity and grace?
The seeds of an answer to that question can be found
in the ways in which we face our individual deaths in our present
(western-styled) culture. And the quick answer to that is: not very well.
We live, by and large, in a death-phobic culture. Our
medicalisation of death has conditioned us to want to prolong life,
rather than accept the reality of death and thus die with dignity and grace.
In his excellent book about death and dying (Die
Wise1), Stephen Jenkinson writes in one poignant passage about More
Time. He writes of the assertion that palliative care and the medical
system provides us with more time to live. In reality, however, Jenkinson
claims that “More Time almost always means more dying.”
Our Way of Life Must Die
Our current (western-styled) lifestyle, and the
systems we create to support that lifestyle, are unsustainable, violent, and
human-centred. This cannot continue. We have already over-shot the
environmental limits. Climate change is but the latest symptom of that
overshoot.
Yet, we are still acting as if our lifestyles can
continue. Furthermore, any alternative solutions that are being offered are
simply attempts to prolong our lifestyles, albeit with supposedly sustainable,
green, or socially just technologies.
If, then, we are facing environmental and social
collapse, and our present attitudes and behaviours are geared towards either a)
denying our coming cultural death, or b) attempting to prolong our lifestyles
by various fixes and solutions, then we are not approaching this death in a wise
manner.
Can we discover ways to approach our cultural death
that are wise? Can we learn to collapse with dignity and grace?
It is a big ask.
Our systems are old and are dying. Vanessa Machado de
Oliveira2 refers to modernity as being unable to teach us how to
allow it (modernity) to die. She notes that “most people will not
voluntarily part with harmful habits of being that are extremely pleasurable.”
She then goes on to explore ways of:
“…acting
with compassion to assist systems to die with grace, and to support people in
the process of letting go – even when they are holding on for dear life to what
has already gone.”
Perhaps the first step is to honestly face our present
(cultural) fear of death. Should we learn to accept death as part of life,
rather than attempting to make more time to prolong dying?
Maybe then we will be able to face collapse wisely and
to act compassionately.
Notes:
1. Stephen Jenkinson, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity
and Soul, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2015
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