Decay Embraces Beauty

A couple of days ago on my morning walk I came across a decaying leaf on the ground (see photo.) I picked it up and thought to myself – what a beautiful leaf. The speckled and spotted pattern gives this leaf a lovely chaotic look. The broken tip and serrations on the edges tell me that this leaf has lived a full and productive life.

This leaf is a metaphor for our own lives, is it not?

This leaf reminds us that life is not simply about newness, freshness, or blossoming. Life is also about decay, dotage, and atrophy. It reminds us that everything is impermanent. Everything that is born will die.

Yet, this simple leaf shows us that at all stages of the life-death cycle there is beauty. Indeed, there are many cultures who consider that beauty increases with age, and that youth are too young to have grown into beauty yet. Whatever is believed, this leaf is a reminder that aging can be entered into with grace and beauty.

Decay too is a beautiful process. It is the process, whether a leaf or a human being, of giving back. The decaying process returns vital nutrients to the soil, and so contributes to the continuation of life, and to new births.

The eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin calls this the return to mystery. An apt naming, for we come from mystery, and we return to mystery.

The esteemed Catholic priest and student of earth history, Thomas Berry (who died at age 94) called this a time of fulfillment.

So, next time we look at a decaying leaf, or think of ourselves as slowly decaying, think again. There is profound beauty in that process.

Whether we be mottled and specked, and with bits missing around the edges, we are entering the time of fulfillment, mystery, and beauty.

At Work In The Ruins – Book Review

When I was a young lad my father would occasionally take me to “the tip” – the local refuse facility. There, we would sift through the rubble and ruined stuff discarded by local residents. (Trying to do this these days is not possible, because “tips” have been closed off due, presumably, to hygiene “science” – something Dougald Hine would possibly appreciate.)

Amongst those ruins I would search for, and often find, treasures and useful bits ’n pieces that could be transformed into a trolley. A trolley was a cart made of old planks of wood, discarded pram wheels, axles, and hinges. By way of a hand-held rope the trolley could be steered, usually down a hill, the steeper the better. I’m sure my mother despaired when I arrived home with scrapes and bruises after an afternoon of trolleying.

Something similar, although on a grander, global scale, is what Dougald Hine is writing about in At Work In The Ruins: Finding our place in the time of climate crises and other emergencies.¹ Hine searches for treasures amongst the discarded (or soon to be discarded) ruins of modernity.

Hine does this cleverly by posing a number of questions without fully answering any of them. And, nor should he. We cannot know the answers until we stumble upon them amongst the ruins.

But one thing is clear, and Hine states this on just the 3^rd page; ‘The way we talk about the trouble is making it worse.’ Pithy and crisp. The following 197 pages are Hine’s attempts at clarifying why this is so and some ideas for a different way of talking. One of the languages we have been using is that of science. Hine is clear that we need to use this language differently, not discard science will-nilly, but to recognise that ‘science can know many things; yet it cannot say, because it does not know, when enough is enough.’  

The point of departure for a new way of talking, according to Hine, is to admit that we are already amongst the ruins. Furthermore, he claims that ‘If hope exists, it lies on the far side of the admission of failure.’

Failure!!? Yes – failure. Writing about failure, and admitting to it, may turn off some readers. After all, one of the messages of modernity is failure is not an option, you cannot fail, you must not fail.

But, read on. There are many indications of this failure, two of which Hine points to; climate crises and covid. If I have any disappointment with this book, it is that Hine lingers too much on the covid pandemic as one of the indicators, spends a little time on climate crises, and hardly any time on the other emergencies, as promised in the subtitle of the book. To my understanding, it is the entanglement of all these emergencies that has brought us to the predicament we are in.

This disappointment aside, Hine’s book is an important read as it does provide us with a new vocabulary with which to talk about the troubles, predicament, and ruins we are in.

An example, and one well covered by Hine, of this new way of talking (and listening) is the way we talk about death. Hine addresses this in a lucid and useful manner. He quotes a critical care nurse working with those on the ’brink of death.’ The families of the dying tended to react in one of two ways: to become obsessed with vital signs and lab data, or to deny and avoid. There was a third, less common, path open to families that the nurse termed ‘the path of engaged surrender’ – a term reminiscent of Tara Brach’s radical acceptance.

Engaged surrender is the path Dougald Hine advocates as we are faced with the death of the ‘world as we know it, but not of the world.’ To help with this approach, Hine refers often to a colleague – Vanessa Machado de Oliviera, who’s incisive book Hospicing Modernity (see myreview here) can easily be read as a companion piece to At Work In The Ruins. To need to hospice modernity is one of the clear answers Hine gives to his questions.

Modernity, says Hine, has been on the Big Path for many years. This path leads only to a futile future. There is another path however, and Hine visualises this as ‘unpaved, hardly a path at all, and it will be made by those who walk it.’ Hine is under no illusion that this path will be chosen by many. Nor does he envisage that this path will be easy and pleasant for those who do walk it. He warns us: ‘Do not underestimate what such a choice may cost you.’

Getting hold of and reading At Work In The Ruins will be one of the lesser costs you may pay. I recommend it as one worth the price.

Notes:

1. Dougald Hine, At Work In The Ruins: Finding our place in the time of climate crises and other emergencies, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont, and London, UK, 2023

How Close Is The Future?

This blogpiece is a little more personal than most of those on this page. It is personal with respect to my musing on how much time I have left on this Earth and my relationship with that time.

Let me start with a personal observation.

As I get closer and closer to my death, I find that my thinking about the future becomes more acute, and more fearful. Let me explain.

I do not mean fearful for my own death, nor do I mean fearful for what any afterlife (or non-afterlife) may hold. None of that do I find fearful.

But, I do discover that as I have less and less existential future, the more concern I have for the future per se. Yet, when I had plenty of future ahead of me (say, in my 20s, 30s and even into my late 50s) I had little to concern me about the future. How is it, I ask myself, that as I get closer to my death, the more I feel a distress and unease about the future that is to occur after my death?

Partly, I suspect, the answer to this paradox can be found in the book Future Shock,¹ written by husband and wife team, Alvin Toffler and Adelaide Farrell (often unattributed), published in 1970.

The basic thesis of Future Shock is that too much change in a short period of time leads to psychological stress and anxiety. Toffler and Farrell noted that previous generations of humans had dealt with major change about once (or less) in their lifetimes. Yet, by the time of their writing, each generation was now experiencing significant change twice, or even thrice, during their lifetime.

We are now 55 years on from the publication of Future Shock. The pace of change has accelerated in that time, so that now the amount of change in a person’s lifetime is much greater. We are now facing an ‘abrupt collision with the future’ as Toffler and Farrell predicted in the book.

Is this what I am facing and noticing in my unease? Have I collided with the future?

Yes, but it is only a partial answer. A further aspect is my own involvement with the environmental movement. This is a movement that has shifted and morphed into various identities since the early 1970s when I first became involved.

When I first became involved with the environmental movement the environment was viewed (by me at least, and I suspect most others in the movement) exactly as the words etymology suggests: the environment is what surrounds me, it is outside of me and is the medium through which I pass.

However, as the years and decades passed by my understanding of environment and the nature of the world has shifted. Indeed, the word environment is no longer useful, as my perception now does not recognise a difference between me and not-me. This shift passed through a stage of “I am part of nature” to “I am nature.” That is a long way from the understanding of my youth.

Alongside this spatial shift I also experienced a temporal shift. My part in nature is not confined to my lifetime. I am part of the entire cosmos. The atoms that make up me today have been part of the universe for millennia, they have been part of humankind since the stone-age and before, they have been ingested by wolves, beavers, and many other animals, they have been spewed out of volcanoes 13 billion years ago. These atoms in my body will exist somewhere in the universe in another 13 billion years.

We have learnt a lot about the world since the 1970s. We have learnt a lot more about how intricately entangled it is. We have learnt a lot about how the feedback loops that have kept the Earth in homeostasis are breaking down and the system as a whole is collapsing.

None of this was I able to see, or foretell, in the 1970s when I was much younger. Then I had no sense of a collision with the future.

But now I do.

The collapsing future will not only impact humanity. It will, and already is, impacting the more-than-human life upon this planet. Extinction rates are presently anywhere from 100 times to 1,000 times the normal background rate.

So it is that, although I can appreciate my spatial and temporal entanglement with the cosmos, the closer come to my death, and the less future I have personally, the more unease I have for the future of those to come (human and other-than-human.)

Do any other readers of my cohort notice anything similar?

Note:

1. Alvin Toffler (and Adelaide Farrell) Future Shock, Bantam Books, New York, 1970

Michael Dowd - Farewell to a Shambhala Warrior

Michael Dowd

This week's blog mourns the death of Michael Dowd, creator of the resource-rich website postdoom.com, who died on 7 October 2023. Michael was a writer, a lecturer, a preacher with the Unitarian Universalist church, and an advocate of eco-theology. He is best known by many around the globe for his extensive body of work related to post-doom.

Michael was surely one of the warriors of the Tibetan story of Shambhala.

This legend tells of how, when the Earth is in danger, the realm of Shambhala emerges. Shambhala is not a place; it exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala Warriors. You cannot identify these warriors by any external appearance. They wear no uniform, and they do not display insignia. The only way to recognise a Shambhala Warrior is by the two weapons (or implements) they wield. (Listen here to the legend retold by Joanna Macy, as it was told to her by a Tibetan monk.)

One of these weapons is compassion. The other is insight into the inter-being of all things.

Michael Dowd had a firm grasp on both these weapons. Just two weeks before his death he gave his final sermon to the Flint, Michigan congregation. Fortunately, for us, this sermon was recorded. It is a sermon in which, as you watch and listen, you notice that he wields both these weapons with highly trained skill.

Appropriately, this sermon is titled ‘Being theCalm in the Storm’ - no better label could epitomise how Michael lived his life and how he wished for all of us to be able to live in these troubled times. No matter whether you are a theist, an atheist, or a non-theist, this final address by Michael is one for all of us.

When you listen to his interviews with others, or watch his YouTube clips, his grace and wisdom are readily apparent. The range of people he interviewed (all available on his website) is staggering. As a resource and as a link to other people’s work, Michael Dowd’s website is possibly unsurpassed. It is a testament to his dedication, not only to his subject matter, but also to his endeavour to provide the best resources available for anyone wishing to find out more.

Michael Dowd coined the term post-doom, and in doing so opened up the possibility of living with compassion, joy, an appreciation of beauty, and love, even though understanding that the world as we know it has entered the global, and quite possibly final, collapse phase of an unsustainable boom-bust scenario. His website (postdoom.com) contains dozens of interviews with people from all over the world who understand the nature of the predicament we are in, yet who live their lives in a meaningful and joyful manner.

Michael too, understood this very well. It is telling that in his final sermon he offered us three tools for “being the calm in the storm” of these troubled, and disruptive times: 1. Nurture your personal intimacy with life, 2. Honour your and our mortality, and 3. Attend to what matters most.

Michael leaves us with a wealth of resources: interviews, podcasts, book readings, videos, talks, and documentaries. These resources cover everything you ever wanted to know (and a lot more besides) about the state of the world and how best to negotiate it.

Surely, Michael was, and remains, a Shambhala warrior.

Farewell Michael. 

Hospicing Modernity (Book Review)

How do you review (let alone, read) a book that spends 12 of the first 40 pages warning you off reading it? Yes, Hospicing Modernity, by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, is one such book.¹

Perhaps to do so you must borrow the traits of one of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s grandmothers – determination, endurance, and confidence. It is fitting that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira titles the Preface to her book, My Grandmothers’ Gifts. One Grandmother comes from German heritage and the other Guarani (an indigenous people of South America.) So it is that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira is well placed between both worlds – the coloniser and the colonised – to write this book.

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira is right to make this buyer beware warning. This is not an easy book to read. Indeed, it is uncomfortable reading.

Little wonder. For, as Vanessa Machado de Oliveira tells us, “Modernity conditions us to avoid, escape, or want to be rescued from discomfort…”

(Before continuing, there is one further caveat that may be worth considering. If you are a reader who wishes to change the world, then after you have read this, you may want to do so in a totally different way than you were before reading it. That is, if you wish to change the world at all – you have been warned!)

So, let go of your desire for comfort, disregard what you thought of social/environmental change, and allow Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s experience, knowledge, and wisdom guide you through some thought experiments and exercises that will leave you questioning not only the system we are trapped within, but also your own self.

Modernity does trap us.

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s gift to us in this book is to make the bars, the padlocks, and the security cameras, of this trap visible.

But, once visible, what do we do?

This is where the title of the book is significant. Consider a hospice. Most often it is a place in which those who are dying are cared for and supported through their dying. It is not a place for healing. So it is with modernity. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira warns us against wanting to fix, reform, or otherwise solve a set of problems. Modernity is a predicament, not a problem (nor even a set of problems.) Problems potentially have solutions. Predicaments do not, only an outcome – which we are unable to predict or plan for.

Indeed, trying to fix problems, and find solutions is, she says, part of the very nature of modernity itself.

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira suggests that modernity is in its dying stages and as such, the best we can do is to offer our hospicing skills. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Not so, as we are part and parcel of the very thing that is dying.

But Vanessa Machado de Oliveira does not leave us floundering or grasping at some forlorn hope. She counsels us that, “Whatever happens ‘then’ (the future) depends more on the quality of relationships in the ‘now’ than on the accuracy or appeal of images of the future that one projects as a way forward.”

The journey between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’ will be a difficult and uncomfortable one, and we will not even know where we will end up – or even, if we will end up. However, the  thought experiments and exercises that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira offers us throughout the book at least make the journey possible, albeit uncomfortable.

Get ready to overcome (if you can) the six C’s that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira associates with our ego-logical desires of modernity – comfort, convenience, consumption, certainty, control, and coherence.

Overcome also the warnings given early in the book and read this important addition to the understanding of our times.

Heed also one more warning the author imparts: “I cannot say ‘I hope you enjoy reading this book.’” It may change you though, or at least change the way you perceive modernity.

Note

1. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2021.

How Will We Die?

How will we die? Collectively, systemically, and culturally I mean; not how will we die individually. Although, the way in which we die individually may foreshadow how we will die collectively.

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

2. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2021. (Review forthcoming)

Existential Grief And Mourning

This is the first of a series of blogpieces seeking 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. We are nearing 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 first part will explore the stage of Denial. Further Parts will explore the other four stages: Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. A final Part will ask: what does it mean to mourn when faced with the potential extinction of the human species?

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 Climate Change, to Climate Chaos, to Climate and Environmental-Social Collapse within just a few short years.

Collapse goes much deeper than simply Climate Change – it means 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 the most 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 will 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.

But!  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.

Next week will explore anger and bargaining.

Notes:

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

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

Fear Of Death = Loss Of Life

Western-styled culture is highly death averse.  We have a greater fear of death than other - indigenous and nature-based – cultures.  Not only do we fear death; we are also fearful (or at least, reluctant) of talking about death.

In life we also have a fear of nature.  This fear manifests in our desire to control, dominate, and eliminate nature.  Could there be a connection?  Could our fear of death trigger our fear of nature?

Perhaps those who are best able to answer that question are people who have had a near-death experience (NDE).

For those who have had a NDE their fear of death afterwards reduces significantly with many studies into the phenomenon showing that post-NDE the incidence of people reporting they have no fear of death is well above 90%, often 100%.  A ten-year longitudinal study in Holland during the 1990s found that after a NDE the fear of death dropped considerably in the first two years following the NDE, and continued to diminish as time went on.  This wasn’t an initial response that then lessened, the lack of fear remained and heightened.¹

A reduction in fear of death wasn’t the only change in people’s lives.  Other changes occurred – primarily related to what they valued in life.  Eight years after their NDE more than 80% of people reported that nature and the environment in their lives was of greater importance.  Many regarded everything as connected, that there is a one-ness to life, with most recognising this unity for the first time in their lives.

Following their NDE people also found that they had a much greater desire to help others, empathy, and to show compassion, with more than 70% indicting these.

Other factors to increase significantly in people’s lives following a NDE included: a heightened sense of social justice, accepting of others, willingness to listen to others, and a greater understanding of life and oneself.

Interestingly too, following their NDE people’s appreciation of money and possessions dropped markedly, and the importance of a higher standard of living reduced significantly.  The importance of ordinary things increased.

A further remarkable outcome of the study was that interest in spirituality increased greatly and, seemingly paradoxically, their church attendance and involvement with organised religion decreased significantly.

What Can This Teach Us Of Life?

If these changes come about after a NDE, then must we wait until we go through a near-death experience ourselves for this to happen? 

There is certainly a correlation between a lack of fear of death and the changes in values for those experiencing a NDE.  Perhaps then, it is our fear of death that is a driver for our fear of one another, our disconnect from nature, and our avaricious consumption of the Earth and what she provides? 

What if we found a way to let go our fear of death?  Perhaps a start would be to talk about death.  We mostly do not talk about death until someone near us dies, and even then the conversations can often be simplistic, prejudiced, and brief.

Overcoming our fear of death may be the first, and essential, first step in healing ourselves and healing our planet.

1. This research is reported in the book: Pim van Lommel, M.D. Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience, HarperOne, New York, 2010.  All subsequent statistics are also from this book.