Existential Anxiety, Grief, and Mourning

In recent weeks I have found myself in many conversations with people around responses to existential collapse and the anxiety that arises because of that threat (and reality.)

A study of 10,000 children and young people (aged 16 – 25) in ten countries about their thoughts and feelings related to climate change was published in December 2021.¹ The results of the survey was consistent across all countries, with 59% of respondents being very or extremely worried about climate change. A further 25% were moderately worried.

Respondents reported feelings of being sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and/or guilty. High levels of anxiety and distress were correlated with perceptions of government inaction and betrayal.

Reading this research, and reflecting upon my conversations with people around existential collapse, I was reminded of the work of Francis Weller (The Wild Edge of Sorrow.) Weller notes that when we do not allow for, and honour “the needs of the soul during times of grief” then “sorrow mutates into symptoms of depression, anxiety, dullness, and despair.”²

A year ago (August 2021) I posted a series of four blogpieces exploring Existential Grief and Mourning. In response to the above observations I now offer these four blogpieces in their complete form below. Hence, this weeks blog is substantially longer than my normal weekly blog. However, it may be of use having it all in one place.

Considering the results of the survey of 10,000 children and young people, it is worth restating an observation from Existential Grief and Mourning. “We must find the courage to begin conversations about Existential Collapse – even if we do not know how or where to begin.”

Notes

1. Caroline Hickman, Elizabeth Marks, Panu Pihkala, Susan Clayton, R Eric Lewandowski, Elouise E Mayall, Britt Wray, Catriona Mellor, Lise van Susteren, Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey, The Lancet, Vol 5, December 2021.

2. Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2015.

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Existential Grief And Mourning

This blogpiece seeks to understand our collective and individual response to social and environmental collapse.

The first warning bells sounded fifty years ago with the release of Limits To Growth.¹ That ground-breaking study looked at several possible future scenarios based on projections of population, resource use, pollution, food per capita, and industrial output. One of these scenarios the authors termed the Standard model. Since 1972 this has come to be re-phrased as Business As Usual. Recent research and studies have shown that those warning bells rang true.²

We are at the limits to growth. In fact, we are beyond the limits and are now in collapse.

Many reading this may think that I am speaking of collapse as resulting from climate change. I am…but so much more as well. To borrow a term from the climate change lexicon – we are facing a perfect storm.

This perfect, super, storm is comprised of: climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, soil depletion, pollution, water degradation, food scarcity, diminishing fuel reserves. Added to these are the more socially constructed harms of: political polarisation, mass refugee and migration movements, an ever-increasing chasm between rich and poor, techno-addiction, and loss of trust in so-called world leaders. All these, and more, are coming together simultaneously, to create unavoidable collapse.

Whether we know it or not, like it or not, this existential crisis gives rise to grief and mourning.

Five Stages of Grief

In 1969 the Swiss-American psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross postulated five stages of the grief process. Her theories and ideas have little changed in the intervening five decades. Her five stages of grief is a useful model with which to dissect our collective response to existential loss. This blog will look briefly at each stage: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Following this, this question will be posed: what does it mean to mourn when faced with the possibility of human extinction?

Denial

For decades, denial was the default position on climate change for most of the world’s leaders, captains of industry, politicians, and other decision-makers. Within the general population, denial of climate change was also widespread, although this has changed somewhat during the course of this century, with denial less evident within the general population.

More recently, even some of the most recalcitrant of the world’s leaders have shifted and now, at least, acknowledge the reality of climate change.

However, the planetary system has shifted immensely in far less time than it took these leaders to change their minds. It has gone from Global Warming to Climate Change, to Climate Chaos, to Climate and Environmental-Social Collapse within just a few short years.

Collapse, however, goes much deeper than Climate Change – it is a death. A death of our way of life, perhaps even the death of our very existence on this planet. Such a thought is extremely uncomfortable – so much so that a common response is denial. Indeed, denial is reasonable and totally understandable. Denial protects us from those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. At least, it does so until such time as we are capable of moving on.

There is a danger in lingering too long in denial however.

When someone is faced with the death of a loved one, a person in denial wonders how they can go on, perhaps even questioning why they should go on.

Faced with existential death however, our collective denial shifts our response from one of ‘how do I go on’ to a stubborn ‘we will go on.’ Denying the possibility of the extinction of humanity we, collectively, say: it’s business as usual, we won’t change, we’ll keep on keeping on. And so, we continue to extract minerals from the earth, we will continue to exploit nature for our own ends, we will continue to pollute the land, sea, and air with our waste. Denial says we must keep fuelling the industrial-consumerist machine in whatever way possible.

Denial, ultimately, stops us from seeing the error and foolishness of our ways.

We cannot afford to linger in denial, for the longer we remain in denial, the closer collapse comes, and the harder the fall is likely to be.

Anger

Anger is an on-the-top emotion. When we experience it, we know it – and usually, so do those around us. Anger is driven by, and protective of, the ego. Anger declares: I am threatened, or I have been harmed. Our ego wants to protect us from real and/or perceived threats. So, our ego looks for, and usually finds, an external source of the threat or pain.

Anger is also a cover-up emotion. It covers up deeper emotions. Beneath anger we often find other emotional states: betrayal, physical harm, abuse, and abandonment, are some possibilities. These hidden emotions vary from person to person, and from culture to culture. Anger, and our ego, is determined to shield us from these deeper emotions. With respect to Existential Collapse, beneath the anger may be the pain of a deep sense of impending loss. Loss is always difficult, and painful. Existential Collapse is the ultimate loss, and extremely painful. No wonder we want to shield ourselves from that.

Once a source of threat or pain is identified, the ego now has something, or someone, to blame. Presently, various movements around the world find it easy to identify culprits: business leaders, trans-national companies, world leaders, the media, politicians. Once identified, it is easy to uncover further evidence for this analysis. Confirmation bias kicks in and we can find many articles with titles such as “Biggest 10 carbon emitters” almost every day.

Anger is a useful early response to Existential Collapse – it protects us. However, remaining within this stage is unhelpful, because we remain externally focussed. We can find more and more evidence that we are right, that someone or something else is to blame, and hence deserving of our anger.

When that happens, anger has become a blindfold, preventing us from seeing the bigger picture.

Bargaining

The other stage that many activists (and others) are caught in is that of bargaining. Bargaining allows us to hold onto hope, even though we are experiencing pain. Bargaining asks: If I (we) do this then can things get back to normal?

Bargaining in a time of Existential Collapse says: If we do this, and that, then collapse will not happen. Bargaining is a hopeful stage, it paints a rosy picture of the future, one in which everything will be okay.

Because this stage is hopeful of the future, it is often a solutions-generating stage. However, solutions posited in this stage tend to be of a reactive and grasping nature. Solutions offered from this stage often react to a simplistic analysis and grasp at quick (often technological) fixes. Such solutions arise from a mechanistic way of thinking.

The mechanistic, Cartesian, ways of thinking have been with us in the western world for some 400 years or so. Einstein, however, challenged this by telling us that:

“We cannot solve problems using the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Einstein was not simply suggesting thinking differently about problems, he was suggesting a completely different way of thinking.³

Because we continue to think and generate solutions within a mechanistic mindset, the solutions generated in this bargaining stage, more often than not, also tend to exacerbate the very problem we are wanting to solve.

Bargaining keeps us locked into an historical trap. A trap that keeps us thinking we can be certain of being able to fix things. A trap within which we continue to believe we can be in control of the anthropocentric project of progress. This is techno-addiction.

The bargaining stage is useful to us, it means we can, at least, look forward to a possible future. However, as with anger, if we linger here too long, we do so at our peril.

Plus, we fail to see the underlying cause of the strife we are in and the damage we continue to inflict upon the earth.

Depression

We live in a world where we want to fix things. If its broke – fix it! If it ain’t broke – still, fix it! You could say we are fixated on fixing things. The same is true of depression. Depression must be fixed.

But, in a time of grief, depression is a natural response to loss. Indeed, when facing Existential Collapse – the ultimate loss – depression may be a vital part of the grieving process; a “must-see” stop off point on the grieving journey.

Yet, there is much fear around depression, sadness, and despair. This fear leads to a reluctance to talk about Existential Collapse. “Don’t talk about it. Don’t go there – you’ll only get depressed.”

Sounds like denial, doesn’t it? Depression – a necessary stage in the grief process – is to be denied.

The reluctance to recognise the possibility of depression takes on an even greater significance in a time of Existential Collapse. The ramifications of collapse will seriously impact younger generations and those yet to be born. Older generations (if we/they understand at all) may be reluctant to engage with younger people because we/they wish to protect children and grandchildren from such thinking.

Yet, not talking about collapse hides a truth. An enormous truth! An unwillingness to enter into conversations around collapse is tantamount to lying. Such conversations may be difficult, they may be painful, they may even be depressive. But, have them we must – for this collapse has already begun, and will become worse – much worse.

Furthermore, younger generations cannot be protected and must not be lied to. Indeed, younger generations most likely know more about Existential Collapse than do older generations.

Notwithstanding the possibility of depression, we must find the courage to begin conversations about Existential Collapse – even if we do not know how or where to begin.

Let us not allow our fear of depression to hinder us from facing our fear of Existential Collapse.

Acceptance

Accepting Existential Collapse may seem to be a strange (even counter-intuitive) notion. How does one accept the possible extinction of the human race? Surely, that is an untenable idea. However, let me be clear: Acceptance is not synonymous with “being okay with.” Nor is acceptance a resigned, non-involved, withdrawal.

Tara Brach coined the term Radical Acceptance which is possibly a better term than the single word – Acceptance. She has said that Radical Acceptance is “…an inner process of accepting our actual, present-moment experience. It means feeling sorrow and pain without resisting… (It is) clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart.”⁴

Perhaps an analogy may help to distinguish between this form of acceptance, and a resigned withdrawal.

Imagine you are a member of a sports team (e.g., rugby, netball, Aussie rules, gridiron, basketball, league …) and the full-time whistle is about to blow within the next couple of minutes. Your team is trailing by thirty points or more – your team is going to lose. Do you, and the rest of your team-mates, give up, stop playing, walk dejectedly off the field? No! You keep playing, right up until the whistle, even though you know you are going to lose. Furthermore, you keep playing as part of the team. You don’t take on the burden of loss all to yourself. Nor do you hog the ball – you pass, you support your team-mates.

That is Acceptance.

Acceptance in a time of Existential Collapse also understands that past actions are no longer relevant. Past behaviours and ideas cannot be returned to. They are unsustainable.

This understanding leads many in the Acceptance stage to conclude that the very basis of western-styled techno-industrial civilisation is at the core of the collapse. Business-As-Usual is not an option.

Although Acceptance understands the big picture, it also realises that there are no solutions. Existential Collapse is not a problem to be solved or fixed. It is a predicament which has an outcome, but does not have solutions. See the excellent blogsite (Problems, Predicaments, and Technology).

This would seem to suggest that the emotional response would be depression. It is not. True Acceptance, in fact, opens one up to a new appreciation of beauty, love, joy, and contentment.

Existential Mourning

Having now delved into the five stages of Grief, with especial reference to Existential Collapse, these concluding paragraphs consider the emotional response of Mourning.

Existential Collapse is incomprehensible. Existential Collapse is unheard of. We have never been here before. We have no blueprints. We have no roadmap with which to navigate our way.

However, if we get over denial, and then manage our way through the three stages of grief (anger, depression, bargaining) then we may arrive at Acceptance.

In that state of Acceptance we can truly Mourn.

(Before moving on, let me make an important distinction. Mourning is not depression. Mourning is not melancholia. Mourning is not sadness, nor is it sorrow.)

Mourning is like the soft woollen cloak that wraps around us and holds in the warmth of a deep love.

Tracing the etymology of mourning is illuminating. It has Old Germanic and Old Nordic roots; roots that also give us words like memory, commemorate, and remember. So, when we mourn, we remember something.

When we think of mourners we think of those (as in the painting at right by Teodor Axentowicz) following a coffin. These followers (mourners) have lost someone, and in their following, are remembering that loved one.

Thus, we could define mourning as “remembering our love for someone, or something, that has been lost, or is about to be lost.”

It is this love, and the memory of love, that sets mourning apart from melancholia and depression. You could say that mourning is a remembering of joy, beauty, love, and connection.

Mourning, in the context of Existential Collapse, is remembering the beauty of nature. It is remembering our connection with the enormity and totality of life. It is remembering our place. It is remembering that we are all derived from, and owe our very existence to, Mother Earth.

Mourning and Acceptance are two aspects of the same understanding. Both recognise that whatever we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. When we treat the Earth with disdain, we lose our connection and humanity.

When we treat the Earth as part of us, we can remember beauty, joy, and love.

We are losing that Earth. Or, at least, we are losing our part of that Earth. And for that, we can mourn, we can remember.

Notes:

1.    1. Meadows, Meadows, Randers & Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (Report for the Club of Rome), Universe Books, New York, 1972.

2.     2. For example, https://www.livescience.com/collapse-human-society-limits-to-growth.html (accessed 28 July 2021)

3.     3.This blog further explores Einstein’s famous dictum about thinking.

4.     4. www.tarabrach.com (accessed 10 August 2021)

5. 

Zoe's Children - Heat Waves

In late July 2022 Seville, in southern Spain, suffered with a heat wave. The city had only recently introduced a 3-tiered measurement for heat waves, with 3 being the most severe. This heat wave attained the Tier-3 category. The heat wave was also the first in the world to be given a name (like tornados, hurricanes, typhoons etc) – an indication that the authorities in Seville expect to have other heat waves deserving of a name.

This heat wave was given the name Zoe.

In mythology, Zoe is known amongst the Greek Gnostics as having a fiery breath. Zoe certainly breathed fire over Seville and the rest of Spain during the month. Indeed, the whole of Europe underwent severe heat waves, resulting in an estimated 12,000 + deaths between June and August.

Other cities are also implementing heat wave categories and considering naming them (in an alphabetically backward manner) as has Seville.

Heat waves raise the risk of stroke, kidney and heart problems, as well as directly causing heat stroke and dehydration in people.

And, scenarios such as this will only get worse. The latest IPCC¹ report (finalised in February 2022) noted that there will be a “very likely increase in length, frequency, and/or intensity of warm spells or heat waves over most land areas.”

Ominously, the authors of that IPCC report were “highly confident” of the “very likely increase” in south-west, south, and east Europe. Seville is almost as far south-west in Europe as it is possible to get!

Seville, Spain, and Europe are not alone. Severe heat waves have occurred in Australia, many parts of South America, India, Pakistan, the U.S., China, and Japan – since the beginning of 2022.

Heat waves do not affect human populations only. We know that heat waves can cause mass die-offs amongst some animals (birds and mammals in particular.) Even for surviving members of species heat waves have a tremendous cost. Heat waves can damage the DNA of nestling birds in the first few days of their lives, meaning that they may die younger and produce less offspring.²

What can we expect after Zoe?

Zoe’s children will birth more frequently. Zoe’s children will live longer, and Zoe’s children will be more brutal.

The name Zoe means life. Zoe’s children are more likely to take life, than to give it.

Notes:

1. IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

2. Eastwood, Connallon, Delhey, Peters, Hot and dry conditions predict shorter nestling telomeres in an endangered songbird: Implications for population persistence, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 13 June 2022.

 

A Broad Mind Can Travel Anywhere

There is an oft repeated saying that travel broadens the mind. Does it?

Perhaps for some travellers the experience is indeed mind expanding. Perhaps some travellers discover different cultures and, in the process, find that the encounter changes their attitude towards other people, and other ways of life, in a positive manner.

If that is the case, then travelling has indeed broadened the mind of the traveller.

But, what of those “others” who has been travelled to?

Sadly, too often in today’s world, those who live in places travelled to are damaged by the encounter. (A previous blog piece has commented upon this.)

Let us return to the traveller.

What if the saying about travel and broad minds is turned inside-out, turned upon its head?

The French novelist, Marcel Proust, claimed that “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

How might we obtain new eyes?

Some of the world’s most enlightened people (those with broad minds) hardly travelled at all.

Jesus is said to have travelled no further than 50km from his place of birth. Buddha travelled only through northern India and Nepal.

Ann Frank as a teenager was unable to travel outside her “secret annex” in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. Yet she left, in her diaries, an account written by an incredibly broad-minded young woman.

Stephen Hawking was confined to his wheelchair from his late twenties onward. Yet, his broad mind allowed him to travel anywhere – even to the edge of Black Holes.

Perhaps it can be better said that a broad mind can travel anywhere.

Of course, there is one journey that we can take that truly does broaden our mind. This journey requires no physical or geographical travel at all. This is the inward journey. The journey that takes us downward into the depths of Soul.

Travelling into this terrain (of Soul) is the most mind-broadening journey one can ever undertake. And there is no need to leave home; no need to disrupt other cultures; no need to leave carbon footprints in the environment.

Truly, a broad mind can travel anywhere.

Quantum Consciousness (Book Review)

When he was about 14 or 15 years old Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez made the astute observation that: “The biggest challenge we face is shifting human consciousness, not saving the planet. The planet does not need saving. We do.”¹

The young environmental and climate activist was right then, and still is. We need to shift human consciousness.

Peter Smith’s wonderful book, Quantum Consciousness, gives us a taste of what such shifted consciousness might look like, and how we might get there.

For Smith (and, I assume, Martinez,) consciousness is not simply a shift to becoming more conscious. Shifting quantum consciousness involves a complete overhaul and re-envisaging of what consciousness entails.

Smith utilises concepts from within quantum physics to elucidate and explain the realms of consciousness open to us – if we are willing to take the journey.

Quantum consciousness does not reside in our brain, Smith tells us. Indeed, consciousness is not even located within our bodies. We reside in consciousness. This idea is fundamental to Smith’s ideas and concepts.

Once this idea is recognised then the four key essences of quantum consciousness can be understood more clearly. Smith borrows four aspects from quantum physics and slightly re-words them for us non-physicists to understand. The Observer Effect becomes The Creator Effect, Non-locality becomes Everywhereness, Entanglement becomes Intanglement, and the Holographic Universe becomes Holographic Healing.

With these four key concepts in mind Smith takes us into the realms of: parallel lives, past lives, the power of beliefs, inter-connection, multi-verses, communication across distance and time, interdimensional consciousness, our role and place in nature, and other possibilities that many would dismiss as esoteric “nonsense.” Such dismissal is misplaced. It has been said that the mind is like a parachute – it only works when it is open.³ Quantum Consciousness shows us what possibilities exist, if we are open to them.

Smith is highly qualified to write this book. He has studied various forms of hypnotherapy and has been the President of the Michael Newton Institute for Life Between Lives Hypnotherapy – an institute with trained therapists in more than 40 countries around the world. He has many years experience in working with people in various states of consciousness, and utilises many of these cases to illustrate the concepts within his book.

Furthermore, Peter Smith’s writing style is straight-forward and easy to read. He expresses complex ideas in plain, uncomplicated, language. This makes it easy to grasp the concepts that otherwise might be difficult to understand.

This blog has a leaning towards a collective approach to how we live on this planet in a sustainable and amenable manner. Hence, I was delighted to read the final two chapters (Changing the Landscape of Planet Earth and, The Evolved Landscape of Planet Earth) wherein Smith addresses the links and correspondences between our individual consciousness and our collective consciousness, and how each helps the other to further evolve.

This is also a relatively short book (less than 200 pages) making it highly accessible to anyone wishing to gain further insight into what a shift in human consciousness might entail.

Notes:

1. Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez is the Youth Director of the environmental organisation Earth Guardians. In 2015, he and 20 other young people brought a lawsuit against the US government for failure to act against climate change. Although the court sympathised with the young people, the Court “Reluctantly (concluded) that this remedy (a government plan to phase out fossil fuels) is not within our constitutional powers.”

2. Peter Smith, Quantum Consciousness, Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, Minnesota, 2019.

3. This quote is attributed to Frank Zappa, the enigmatic musician and composer.

Unique Insignificance

Source: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

The photograph at right surely has to be a contender for “Photograph of the Century” (at least, so far.) The photograph was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope earlier this year.¹ It shows a galaxy cluster that is 4.6 billion light years away from us, as well as a number more in front of, and behind, the cluster.

What’s more – this is just a tiny tiny portion of the universe. If you were to hold a grain of sand at arm’s length up against the night sky, then this is the picture you would see (if you had the same optics as the James Webb Telescope.) Now ask yourself: How many grains of sand at arm’s length would encompass the whole sky? Mind boggling isn’t it?

Current estimates of the total number of galaxies in the universe vary between 100 billion and 200 billion. Within each of these galaxies somewhere between 100 billion and 400 billion (depending upon the size of the galaxy) stars exist.

If you wanted to you could multiply the number of galaxies by the number of stars per galaxy to get a rough estimate of the number of stars in the universe. The number is enormous. To write it out longhand is rather tedious. It is much easier to say it is a 10 followed by twenty-two 0s. The number defies our ability to conceive of it.

That’s the numbers. What about the size?

First, I need to define a light-year (for those who may not know.) A light-year is the distance that light travels in one Earth year. Again, it is an astonishingly huge number of kilometres. Consider that light travels at just over 18 million kilometres per minute, then the distance travelled in a year has to be enormous.

Consider just our own galaxy, the one we know as the Milky Way. It takes light around 100,000 years or more to travel from one side to the other. It is quite thick as well – approximately 1,000 light-years thick.

That is just our galaxy. Look back at that James Webb photograph. Those galaxies are 4.6 billion light-years away!! Hence, we are not seeing them as they are now. We are seeing them as they were – 4.6 billion years ago, about the same time that the Earth was being formed.

Let’s take a further step. Let’s ask how many possible intelligent lifeforms exist in the universe? This question has intrigued astronomers for decades. One such astronomer, Dr Frank Drake, formulated an equation in 1961 to attempt to answer this. Unsurprisingly, this equation became known as the Drake Equation. The equation uses seven parameters to estimate the number of civilizations in our own galaxy.²

The original estimates for the number (in 1961) varied considerably – from 20 to 50,000,000. Since then, refinements to the input data have enhanced this variability, so that now the lowest estimate is zero, and the highest 15,600,000.

So, if there are as many as 15,600,000 civilizations in our home galaxy, then where are they? This is exactly what Italian-American physicist, Enrico Fermi, wondered in 1950. Apparently, he and other physicists were casually talking about UFO sightings when Fermi blurted out, “But where is everybody?” (or words to that effect.) With the possibility of civilizations existing in our galaxy being reasonably large, and the seemingly lack of evidence for them, to Fermi’s mind this was a paradox. Indeed, it has been known as Fermi’s Paradox ever since.

Many explanations have been put forward to resolve Fermi’s Paradox. Reasons for the paradox range from: that intelligent civilizations are rare (even though life may exist), that civilizations are under-developed, that civilizations are over-developed and (similar to the trajectory we seem to be on) developed themselves into extinction, that colonization of other worlds is not the norm elsewhere in the galaxy, that we do not have the technology to hear any communication, that civilizations are being deliberately isolationist, or (as some suggest) aliens are already here, but not making a song-and-dance about it.

When we consider all this (the number of galaxies and stars, the sheer immense size of the universe, the small and/or large possibility of other life-forms in the universe) then we are struck by two paradoxical observations.

Looking out from Earth we are insignificant in the vastness,

and,

Looking from beyond the Universe inwards towards the Earth we are unique.

It is a paradox. We are both insignificant and unique at the same time (and space.)

Then, if we ponder this further, one conclusion (arrived at from two different directions) can be made.

Our insignificance displays how we must care for the Earth we live in. Our insignificance shows how much we need to step up to our role as guardians and caretakers of this beautiful planet.

Our uniqueness displays how we must care for the Earth we live in. Being unique we must embody our role as guardians and caretakers of this beautiful planet.

In our insignificance we have a unique role to play.

In our uniqueness we have a significant role to play.

Notes:

1. Source: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages The image is the one labelled SMACS 0723. Images released on 12 July 2022.

2. The seven parameters are: Average rate of star formation, the fraction of these stars that have planets, the average number of planets that could support life per star, the fraction of planets that could support life to develop, the fraction of planets that go on to develop intelligent life, the fraction of these civilizations that develop the technology to release detectable signs of their existence and, the length of time during which these detectable signs are released into space.