In a current article titled “Transformations: The Finish of the U.S. and the World as We Know It and The Fact About Our Collective Future,” I described the challenges we face in our world as we speak.
“It isn’t simple to simply accept, however it’s turning into an increasing number of apparent that our nation and our world should not doing effectively,”
I mentioned.
“Some imagine the U.S. is falling aside and the people have made such a multitude of the setting that we should always name it quits, exit in a blaze of destruction, and depart planet Earth within the fingers of species who’re higher capable of be good companions in the neighborhood of life on Earth. Others imagine that human ingenuity and progressive applied sciences will sort things and now we have a vibrant future forward. I’ve a distinct 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 Residence within the Universe, best-selling creator Jeremy Rifkin presents is personal imaginative and prescient for our future that very a lot resonates with mine. He says,
“What would occur if we immediately realized that the planet we dwell on appeared eerily alien, as if we’d been teleported to another distant world? That scary prospect is now.”
What has occurred to us? “To place it bluntly,” says Rifkin,
“our species, significantly within the Western world, has come to imagine that we dwell on terra firma, a verdant inexperienced expanse of strong floor upon which we stand and thrive and which we name our house within the cosmic theater.”
That’s definitely the best way I’ve come to think about our house. However our house travels and the images of the Earth that have been despatched again reveal a brand new understanding of our house.
“Earth was immediately lowered to a veneer atop of which has at all times been a water planet circling the solar, and up to now, seemingly alone in its a number of shades of blue in our photo voltaic system and maybe within the universe,”
says Jeremy Rifkin.
Taking a look at our world as “a water planet” permits us to raised perceive the poly-crises we face and find out how to cope with them extra successfully. In his e book, Planet Aqua, Rifkin provides us a brand new option to perceive and doubtlessly resolve our issues. Rifkin lists a couple of of the crises that we face, together with the scientific references to assist the statistics:
- As we speak, 2.6 billion individuals expertise excessive or excessive water stress. By 2040, a complete of 5.4 billion individuals—greater than half of the world’s inhabitants—will dwell 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 individuals dwell in nations which are unlikely to have the flexibility to mitigate and adapt to new ecological threats, creating circumstances for mass displacement of populations and compelled local weather migrations by 2050.
- Droughts, heatwaves, and large wildfires are spreading throughout each continent, raging ecosystems and destroying infrastructure around the globe.
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 be able to 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 identify is the “Dominator System.”
So long as we purchase the parable that “civilization” is the perfect people can aspire to attain, we’re doomed to go down with the ship. In The Chalice & the Blade: Our Historical past Our Future first revealed in 1987, internationally acclaimed scholar and futurist, Riane Eisler first launched us to our lengthy, historic heritage as a Partnership System and our newer Dominator System, which has come to be referred to 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 steerage for making a world based mostly on partnership.
Historian of religions, Thomas Berry, spoke eloquently to our have to be trustworthy about our current scenario.
“We by no means knew sufficient. Nor have been we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins within the nice household of the earth. Nor might we take heed to the varied creatures of the earth, every telling its personal story. The time has now come, nonetheless, after we will pay attention or we are going to die.”
- There’s a higher world, past civilization.
Once I was given the e book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn,I obtained 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 presents 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 is not going to be as a result of some previous minds got here up with some new applications. Packages 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, provided these highly effective and startling insights:
“To science we owe dramatic modifications in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the middle of the universe however merely one among billions of heavenly our bodies. From biology we realized that we weren’t specifically created by God however developed together with thousands and thousands of different species. Now archaeology is demolishing one other sacred perception: that human historical past over the previous million years has been an extended story of progress. Particularly, 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 now we have by no means recovered.” [Emphasis added by me, Jed Diamond].
An awesome deal has been written about what triggered this disaster. Anthropologists had lengthy demonstrated that people had lived in comparatively wholesome steadiness 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 youngsters, 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 numerous 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 non secular nations typically essentially the most bloody and violent?
- What particularly occurred to alter the face of the world so dramatically for the more severe, to provide the large mess wherein a lot of humanity finds itself as we speak?
He presents 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 selected time and place of origins on the Earth; delinquent violence was not distributed world-wide always prior to now! Moreover, it was realized, the origins of violence was exactly timed to a serious historic epoch of local weather change from comparatively moist in direction of dry circumstances.”
The complete title of the e book captures his whole thesis: Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Little one Abuse, Intercourse-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence within the Deserts of the Outdated World.The e book was initially revealed 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 imagine that the final word explanation for Jared Diamond’s “Worst Mistake within the Historical past of the Human Race” was associated to water. DeMeo’s analysis reveals that years of drought triggered giant areas of the Center East to be was desert and was the unique trauma that led to lots of the issues that we face as we speak.
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 collection. Should you aren’t already subscribed to my free weekly publication, you are able to do so right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/
