In a current article titled “Transformations: The Finish of the U.S. and the World as We Know It and The Reality About Our Collective Future,” I described the challenges we face in our world at the moment.
“It isn’t simple to simply accept, however it’s changing into increasingly apparent that our nation and our world are usually not doing effectively,”
I stated.
“Some consider the U.S. is falling aside and the people have made such a large number of the surroundings that we should always name it quits, exit in a blaze of destruction, and depart planet Earth within the arms of species who’re higher in a position to be good companions in the neighborhood of life on Earth. Others consider that human ingenuity and progressive applied sciences will make things better and we’ve a vibrant future forward. I’ve a unique imaginative and prescient that was given to me in a sweat lodge in 1993 at a males’s gathering in Indianapolis, Indiana.”
In his e-book, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our House within the Universe, best-selling creator Jeremy Rifkin provides is personal imaginative and prescient for our future that very a lot resonates with mine. He says,
“What would occur if we out of the blue realized that the planet we stay on appeared eerily alien, as if we’d been teleported to another distant world? That horrifying prospect is now.”
What has occurred to us? “To place it bluntly,” says Rifkin,
“our species, notably within the Western world, has come to consider that we stay on terra firma, a verdant inexperienced expanse of stable floor upon which we stand and thrive and which we name our dwelling within the cosmic theater.”
That’s definitely the way in which I’ve come to consider our dwelling. However our area travels and the images of the Earth that have been despatched again reveal a brand new understanding of our dwelling.
“Earth was immediately diminished to a veneer atop of which has at all times been a water planet circling the solar, and to this point, seemingly alone in its a number of shades of blue in our photo voltaic system and maybe within the universe,”
says Jeremy Rifkin.
our world as “a water planet” permits us to higher perceive the poly-crises we face and tips on how to take care of them extra successfully. In his e-book, Planet Aqua, Rifkin offers us a brand new technique to perceive and doubtlessly clear up our issues. Rifkin lists a couple of of the crises that we face, together with the scientific references to assist the statistics:
- At this time, 2.6 billion folks expertise excessive or excessive water stress. By 2040, a complete of 5.4 billion folks—greater than half of the world’s inhabitants—will stay in 59 nations experiencing excessive or excessive water stress.
- Over the previous decade, the variety of recorded water-related conflicts and violent incidents elevated by 270% worldwide.
- One billion folks stay in nations which are unlikely to have the power to mitigate and adapt to new ecological threats, creating situations for mass displacement of populations and compelled local weather migrations by 2050.
- Droughts, heatwaves, and big wildfires are spreading throughout each continent, raging ecosystems and destroying infrastructure all over the world.
Again in 1993, my imaginative and prescient within the sweat-lodge gave me a singular understanding of our current predicament and potential options. I noticed the “sinking of the Ship of Civilization” and the emergence of “lifeboats for humanity” which you’ll learn extra about right here. Among the many conclusions that emerged from the imaginative and prescient and my subsequent explorations have been the next:
- “Civilization” is a misnomer. Its correct title is the “Dominator System.”
So long as we purchase the parable that “civilization” is the very best people can aspire to realize, we’re doomed to go down with the ship. In The Chalice & the Blade: Our Historical past Our Future first printed in 1987, internationally acclaimed scholar and futurist, Riane Eisler first launched us to our lengthy, historical heritage as a Partnership System and our newer Dominator System, which has come to be known as “Civilization.”
In her current e-book, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Form Our Brains, Lives, and Future,written with peace activist Douglas P. Fry, they provide actual steering for making a world primarily based on partnership.
Historian of religions, Thomas Berry, spoke eloquently to our have to be trustworthy about our current state of affairs.
“We by no means knew sufficient. Nor have been we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins within the nice household of the earth. Nor may we hearken to the varied creatures of the earth, every telling its personal story. The time has now come, nevertheless, once we will hear or we are going to die.”
- There’s a higher world, past civilization.
After I was given the e-book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn,I acquired a transparent sense of the 2 worlds which are competing for our consideration: A world the place hierarchy and dominance rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Takers) and a world the place equality and connection rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Leavers). In his many books Quinn provides a transparent distinction in worldviews.
In his e-book, Past Civilization: Humanity’s Subsequent Nice Journey, Quinn says,
“I can confidently predict that if the world is saved, it won’t be as a result of some outdated minds got here up with some new applications. Applications by no means cease the issues they’re launched to cease. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will cease them. And no program will ever cease us from devastating the world.”
The Dominator System Emerged 6,000 Years In the past as a Results of Environmental Trauma.
In a 1999 article, “The Worst Mistake within the Historical past of the Human Race,” the world-famous scientist and historian, Jared Diamond, supplied these highly effective and startling insights:
“To science we owe dramatic adjustments in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the middle of the universe however merely one in all billions of heavenly our bodies. From biology we realized that we weren’t specifically created by God however developed together with tens of millions of different species. Now archaeology is demolishing one other sacred perception: that human historical past over the previous million years has been a protracted story of progress. Specifically, current discoveries counsel that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step towards a greater life, was in some ways a disaster from which we’ve by no means recovered.” [Emphasis added by me, Jed Diamond].
A terrific deal has been written about what induced this disaster. Anthropologists had lengthy demonstrated that people had lived in comparatively wholesome stability with nature for two-million years. What occurred 6,000 years in the past set us on a course that now endangers our personal lives and effectively because the lives of our kids, future generations, and humanity itself.
In my most up-to-date e-book, Lengthy Reside Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Provide Hope to Humanity, I mentioned the analysis of environmental scientist Dr. James DeMeo. In his monumental, ten-year research that culminated within the e-book Saharasia, Dr. DeMeo started by asking quite a few essential questions together with the next:
- What are the causes and supreme sources of human violence?
- Why accomplish that many political and spiritual leaders behave in such a hypocritical method, and why are essentially the most spiritual nations usually essentially the most bloody and violent?
- What particularly occurred to alter the face of the world so dramatically for the more serious, to provide the massive mess during which a lot of humanity finds itself at the moment?
He provides his easy conclusion within the introduction on web page 3 and follows with 451 extra pages of findings, maps, and discussions:
“Human violence appeared to have a particular time and place of origins on the Earth; delinquent violence was not distributed world-wide always up to now! Moreover, it was realized, the origins of violence was exactly timed to a significant historic epoch of local weather change from comparatively moist in the direction of dry situations.”
The total title of the e-book captures his complete thesis: Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Little one Abuse, Intercourse-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence within the Deserts of the Previous World.The e-book was initially printed in 1998 and has added to my very own understanding within the years since my sweat lodge imaginative and prescient in 1993.
Each Jeremy Rifkin and James DeMeo consider that the final word reason behind Jared Diamond’s “Worst Mistake within the Historical past of the Human Race” was associated to water. DeMeo’s analysis exhibits that years of drought induced giant areas of the Center East to be became desert and was the unique trauma that led to most of the issues that we face at the moment.
Trauma, in fact, impacts each ladies and men, however the response to trauma has been completely different for the 2 sexes as I’ll talk about in Half 2 of this sequence. In case you aren’t already subscribed to my free weekly e-newsletter, you are able to do so right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/