Living with the Acceptance that our Capitalist Industrial Civilization is not Redeemable and will Collapse
An Encounter with a discussion group talking about the deep Grief caused by Solastalgia
I sometimes wondour if we are not all like alcoholics and drug addicts, addicted to behaviours that we know are self destructive. Anybody with open eyes can see that our current way of life is killing us and the Earth… and yet we persist? Why is that? Why do alcoholics keep drinking when they know it is killing them?
We have all heard that alcoholics cannot stop until they have hit rock bottom. Only then do they know, I mean really know in their bones and soul, that unless they must change, or die. However, as all know, some alcoholics are unable to make the difficult choice to change, and die. We at the CDN. Assoc. for the Club of Rome have been working for 50 years to help our alcoholic society become sober and accept the fact that exponential growth in population and consumption and energy use can only lead to death and destruction – to no avail. Perhaps now is the time to accept that we are like the 2nd type of alcoholic who cannot face his/her demons, cannot change, and thus dies.
The group zoom session I attended last night believes this to be the case. Everybody there has struggled with the anxiety and depression caused by the realization that there is nothing to be done to save our current society – it, along with many good people, is/are going to die. This painful realization then begins a journey well elaborated by the Nurse Kubler Ross in her stages of grief when faced with death:
Being with these grief filled people last night made me feel like I was in an AA 12 step meeting. People shared their pain, how lonely they were in their struggles, the need for a group like where they were accepted and we not labelled a “crazy”, how freeing it was to simply accept that no matter what they did the collapse was going to happen and how freeing that was, how this acceptance made them more compassionate as they interacted with people and how many of them saw this way of acceptance as a’ spirit path’ towards enjoying the blessings of being alive every day.
I know that is a lot to absorb – you may need to read what was shared as it took 1 ½ hours of my listening to distill these main take aways for me. It truly was an AA session – and given that we have alcoholics and drug addicts in our circle [fortunately, they did work through the 12 steps and are sober] – I know how gut wrenching this journey to acceptance is.
The meaning of life is to find your gift.
The purpose of life is to give it away.
-Pablo Picasso
Am I saying “give up”? No! What I am saying is grieve for what is passing, accept it, but at the other end of the process is, at least for now, a new and better life where you will appreciate every day more than over, knowing it is a gift. [see Appendix for a course on this] One person there said that every day was more vibrant, more filled with smiles, than they had ever experienced before. And they maintained that state by giving life back to their family, friends and community – by focussing on what they could do instead of being frustrated by trying to do things which they knew were “the right thing to do” but had no impact and only drained them of energy and caused sadness. Their comment inspired me to draw me “What are you doing?” image of the day:
I know it’s not great Art, but it’s the best I can do. The message is clear: in this age of collapse give back. Share. Meet up with your friends and family and don’t isolate yourself. Find something beautiful and revel in it – whether it be a sunrise, a snowflake or your favourite music.
And remember, life as always, for the past 3.5 billion years, gone through extinctions and trauma – but life has always bounced back stronger, smarter, more adaptable and resilient. This was confirmed by an article I read about life returning to the oceans after the Permian Mass Extinction where 80% of life in oceans died. It was thought that it took many millions of years for life to begin to recover but recent fossil evidence shows that it took only 1 million years to begin its recovery from this near extinction event. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3209679/lobster-drew-our-attention-chinese-fossils-reset-recovery-great-dying
So you see, the collapse of our capitalist industrial way of life is not the end, it is only the seed that in dying can allow a new, and hopefully better, way of living to be born: a way of life where humans see themselves as part of the family of life and not separate from out as we do today. Life has always been one disaster after another – why? Perhaps just to see who is the most fit to survive? [see Appendix] And yes, randomness and luck play a role. So may humanity be both adaptable and lucky.
Appendix
Watch The miracle planet series, from 1990s, joint CBC/japanese production on how life has survived, then thrived on earth, not in spite of disaster but because of it…..
It seems, based upon evolutionary history, the way to do that is throw a big disaster at life and see what happens. so our “disaster” it just normal… if you take the long view.
There are courses to help you face this reality – for example:
Resilience & Acceptance in the Face of Collapse
Things seem to be falling apart. Biodiversity loss, ocean degradation, urban flooding, political strife, climate crisis and migrations, economic instability, food shortages, wildfires, soil degradation. This is the Great Unraveling.
Join course facilitators Steve Aman, Mary Gleason and Doug Della Pietra as we examine climate and societal collapse, and then explore inner and outer strategies for developing resilience and acceptance in the face of collapse. https://www.pachapeopleroc.org/resilience
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