Half 2
In Half 1, I talked concerning the poly-crises humanity is dealing with. I described Jeremy Rifkin’s new ebook, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our House within the Universe and the way it expands the understanding of our world to acknowledge that our planet is primarily water moderately than earth. I additionally mentioned the work of James DeMeo who traced the origins of a lot of our present issues to a specific time and place in human historical past–6,000 years in the past within the Center East–and what it could actually educate us about our current predicament and find out how to remedy it.
For many of human historical past, regardless of the various challenges of life, people lived in relative peace and prosperity. Of their ebook, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Form Our Brains, Lives, and Future, Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry, they are saying,
“For the overwhelming majority of the interval that the genus Homo has existed, nomadic foraging constituted the ever-present human life-style.”
They go on quote anthropologist M.G. Bicchieri who stated,
“For greater than 99 p.c of the roughly two million years because the emergence of recognizable human animal, man has been a hunter and gatherer.”
Eisler and Fry say our ancestors had been “The Authentic Partnership Societies” with the next options of partnership techniques that embody:
- Equality, respect, and partnership between ladies and men.
- A nonacceptance of violence, battle, abuse, cruelty, and exploitation.
- Ethics that assist human caring, prosocial cooperation, and flourishing.
As James DeMeo’s analysis demonstrated, this lifestyle modified 6,000 years in the past.
“With only a few exceptions, there isn’t any clear and unambiguous proof for warfare or social violence on our planet Earth previous to round 4,000 BCE and the earliest proof seems in particular places, from which it firstly arose, and subtle outward over time to contaminate almost each nook of the globe.”
DeMeo goes on to say,
“A large local weather change shook the traditional world, when roughly 6,000 years in the past huge areas of lush grassland and forest within the Previous World started to rapidly dry out and convert into harsh desert. The huge Sahara Desert, Arabian Desert, and the enormous deserts of the Center East and Central Asia merely didn’t exist previous to c.4000 BCE.”
There may be fashionable proof that the world in query is what had been referred to within the bible as “the Backyard of Eden.” Of their ebook, Exiles From Eden: Psychotherapy From an Evolutionary Perspective, Kalman Glantz and John Ok. Pearce cite the work of archaeologist Juris Zarins. He believes this idyllic space of the world now lies below the Persian Gulf, downstream from the traditional civilizations that flowed alongside the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. In keeping with Glantz and Pearce
“Eden was not paradise. It was only a place—a spot the place human beings lived the way in which all people lived earlier than the rise of civilization.”
“The ‘Backyard of Eden’ myths, which exist within the historic literature of many Previous World cultures, look like factually rooted on this early interval of socially-cooperative and peaceable social situations, when the Saharasia was inexperienced and fruitful,”
says DeMeo.
“Then got here the devastating local weather change in the direction of aridity, which fashioned the huge Saharasian desert belt, and people had been actually solid ‘out of the backyard’. The remaining is historical past.”
DeMeo’s analysis reveals that the drought that occurred 6,000 years went on for generations and impacted the lives of all who lived at the moment. Latest analysis on the affect of “Adversarial Childhood Experiences,” demonstrates that the implications of childhood trauma are lengthy lasting and trigger bodily, emotional, and relational well being issues all through our lives.
“Famine and hunger is a extreme trauma from which survivors not often escape unscathed,”
says DeMeo.
“Lots of people die, households are cut up aside, and infants and youngsters are sometimes deserted, and undergo enormously. Hunger impacts surviving kids in an emotionally extreme method. These attitudes and behaviors are deeply protoplasmic in nature, and are handed on to ensuing generations it doesn’t matter what the local weather, by social establishments which replicate the character construction of the common particular person at any given time period.”
Though this type of trauma impacts each men and women, women and men typically take care of the trauma in numerous methods. The comic, Elayne Boosler, gives a humorous, but insightful reflection on this inherent distinction. She says,
“When ladies get depressed they both eat or buy groceries. Males invade one other nation. It’s an entire totally different mind-set.”
In my latest ebook, Lengthy Reside Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Provide Hope to Humanity, my second chapter is titled, “Male Violence is Rising—From College Shootings, to Home Violence and Revolt on the US Capitol. From Irritability and Anger to Despair and Suicide.”
I am going on to say,
“Males are the ‘canaries within the coal mine,’ alerting us to the necessity for change. Canaries had been utilized in objective mines as an early warning system for miners. Poisonous gases corresponding to carbon monoxide and methane within the mine would kill the chook earlier than affecting the miners. Male psychological sickness and breakdown are the world’s early warning indicators of impending disaster. Issues like Irritable Male Syndrome, male despair and aggression, and excessive suicide charges are alerting us to the poisonous nature of our present surroundings and existence.”
Our Moonshot For Mankind and Humanity
We imagine man’s psychological, emotional, and relational well being is the important thing to empowering males to reside lengthy and effectively. Our mission is to assist males reside more healthy, happier, extra cooperative lives—fulfilling lives of function and productiveness, the place males are supported and valued as they make constructive contributions to their households, mates, and communities. When that occurs, households develop stronger, communities prosper, and humanity takes its subsequent leap ahead.
In 2004 I learn a robust research, “Sexual Choice and the Male:Feminine Mortality Ratio,” by Daniel J. Kruger, PhD and Randolph M. Nesse, M.D. They examined untimely deaths amongst males in 20 nations. They discovered that in each nation, males died sooner and lived sicker than ladies and their shortened health-span and lifespan harmed the boys and their households. They concluded with quite a lot of highly effective statements:
- “Being male is now the one largest demographic issue for early demise.”
- “Over 375,000 lives could be saved in a single 12 months within the U.S. alone if males’s danger of dying was as little as ladies’s.”
- “If male mortality charges could possibly be lowered to these for females, this is able to remove over one-third of all male deaths beneath age 50 and assist males of all ages.”
- “If you happen to may make male mortality charges the identical as feminine charges, you’ll do extra good than curing most cancers.”
For me, this was a name to motion. I invited quite a lot of colleagues who had been main organizations that had confirmed profitable in serving to enhance males’s well being. We launched the non-profit, MoonshotForMankind.Org. We invite you to hitch us.
We even have an extra solution to share info that may be useful. Come take a look at our Substack, https://substack.com/@moonshotformankind and listen to what our founding members need to say.
There are clearly quite a lot of biologically based mostly the explanation why ladies reside longer than males. However we all know that even our genes will be modified by adjustments in our life-style and beliefs about ourselves and the world.
The teachings I’ve realized through the years are these:
- We will not be chargeable for the traumatic local weather change that occurred 6,000 years in the past, however we should take accountability for our current scenario. As they are saying, “Nature bats final.” If people will not be keen to alter, nature will pressure the change upon us.
- We’d do effectively to hearken to our animal elders. Most species have been right here longer than us and are higher tailored to life on planet Earth. As historian Thomas Berry reminds us.
“We by no means knew sufficient. Nor had been we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins within the nice household of the earth. Nor may we hearken to the assorted creatures of the earth, every telling its personal story. The time has now come, nevertheless, once we will hear or we’ll die.”
- Once we’re happening the flawed highway, it’s by no means too late to show round.
- We could not be capable of flip again to the previous, however we are able to transfer forward to the longer term. As Jeremy Rifkin says,
“We have to reset our notion of waters as ‘useful resource’ to at least one the place waters are seen as a ‘life supply.’ We have to adapt to the hydrosphere moderately than making an attempt to adapt the hydrosphere to us. The subsequent stage within the human saga is to rebrand our residence ‘Planet Aqua’ and study to reside and thrive in new methods on a singular water planet within the universe.”
You possibly can study extra about Jeremy Rifkin’s work and his ebook, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our House within the Universe right here. If you happen to favored this sequence of articles and wish to learn extra about how we are able to create a wholesome future for ourselves, our youngsters, and future generations, I invite you to enroll in my free weekly e-newsletter. You are able to do so right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/