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chelidonThis post was inspired by a recent post by my friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yezida. I read her post as a constructive spur to action and to engagement, and a few apparently saw it as being, at least in part, apocalyptic. The dialogue that resulted had me thinking about some recent writings I've seen which were genuinely apocalyptic. For what it's worth, here are some of my thoughts about The End Of The World As We Know It (henceforth abbreviated as TEOTWAWKI ;>)
People who seem to actively hope for TEOTWAWKI can really creep me out when I perceive what seems like a gleeful anticipation of chaos, as if massive change will somehow improve the world, reallocate power, or redress inequity. People who eagerly anticipate TEOTWAWKI sometimes appear to me to have a personal chip on their collective shoulders, a gripe against aspects of society which anger or upset them. That gripe often seems to be accompanied by a sense of personal powerlessness to make effective and constructive change in the world as it is, and a belief that more violent change will somehow result in a better world. There can be a feeling that the world now is so bad, so fallen, so hopeless, that chaos and dissolution is the only hope for some kind of improvement.
In other words, belief in TEOTWAWKI can be a serious cop-out. The answer to "why aren't you engaging constructively with the world and making it a better place NOW?" sometimes given as, "well, it's fruitless, and besides, the world is coming to an end" makes no more ethical or practical sense coming from a pagan or anarchist than it does coming from an apocalyptic Christian. Using that grim, hopeless apocalyptic mindset as an excuse to withdraw from the world, and instead pray for deliverance in some imagined and anticipated "next world" is just as much a cop-out if the next world is a Mad Max scenario as the holy Rapture. There ain't nobody or nothing, no god, alien UFO, ascention, Rapture, or Peak Oil collapse, going to pull us out of our own messes and give us all the easy answers, lead us into any frickin' utiopia, holy land or perfect afterlife. We get what we do, and if we do nothing, that's what we get.
Those who suffer the most and hardest during times of calamity and chaos are the weakest, most vulnerable and those already on the margins of society -- the young, the old, the sick, those in poverty, those with the least resources available to them. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina made this clear on worldwide TV to anyone who had any doubt whatsoever. As a compassionate human being, and a parent, I want universal health care, not a sudden lack of any kind of real health care for most people. I want an end to hunger, not widespread starvation. I want access to clean, fresh water to be an acknowledged right, not something only the rich and ruthless can take for granted. I want justice in a world of just laws and processes, not justice at the point of whomever holds the biggest guns.
I spent seven years back in the 1990s working at the National HQ of the American Red Cross, most of that time spent developing systems and processes which were used on very large national and international disaster relief jobs. Some of the work was at headquarters working with local chapters and designing and developing new stuff, and when there was a very large-scale disaster, my pager would go off and I'd have to be on the next plane out to wherever, so I could fix or improve/re-build whatever broke or wasn't a good fit for that particular job. And if everything was working fine, I could go run a shelter or drive a forklift unloading supplies in the field warehouse or something.
So I've seen many parts of the U.S. shortly after they were blown apart, flooded, burnt to cinders, shaken to bits, or otherwise had Very Bad Things happen to them. Katrina was way after my time (and a lot had changed in between at the Red Cross, some of it unfortunate), but Katrina, as incredibly, terribly destructive as it was, and is, was also one massive disaster among many, and was far less destructive than a number of disasters around the world in recent years. I've seen firsthand over and over again what happens when you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, no matter how much preparation you've done. The Dark Mother wins if she wants to. Always. And people do their best to react and assist, but even the best you can do (and the Katrina response was *far* from the best) can't really fix, all it can do is help. True recovery takes years, sometimes decades, and things never do return fully to the way they were.
But the fact that bad things happen to good people, even good and "prepared" people, doesn't mean that preparedness is a bad idea, or that you can't prepare for disaster. The stronger you are, the more you can handle, and the more options and choices you have. And the more choices you have, the less likely you are to find yourself shit up a creek with nothing to do but pray for god or government to save you.
It's good to know where your food comes from, where fresh water can be found, what you could and would do if the power goes out, for a little while, for a longer while. Forget gold, skills are the most transportable form of wealth there is. What can you do that can be used to help others? Those skills are valuable now, and they will be valuable always.
A storm is coming. I believe that, it's really a no-brainer. One always does, sooner or later -- nothing lasts forever, no matter how well-built, there are always changes, slow or sudden. There are many, many concrete and tangible signs that things are unsustainable the way they are right now, and we're heading for some changes and corrections. Our rate of resource consumption is unsustainable, global warming and climate change is obviously accelerating, the U.S. economy, while not literally collapsing at the moment, is much more fragile than most will admit, and, while we are isolated into individualistic and often selfish little islands, houses and suburbs, we are more and more dependant on brittle, complicated webs of very long-distance transportation for everything from food and water to manufactured goods.
There's some karma being built up -- economic, environmental/ecological, societal. It's hard for me to see how anyone with even an ounce of sensitivity and insight wouldn't be feeling that right now, as vague unease, if not outright dread. Or, best of all, a deep and powerful spur to action. All of the scales which are getting increasingly out of balance will naturally come to rest after swinging this way and that. Chances are, though, the farther out of balance the scales start out, the wider and more extreme the rebalancing will be, and at least some of those scales are very, very far out of whack indeed.
Is an apocalypse coming? I sure hope not. Intuitively, my own sense is that we're in for a long period of what will feel like decline, with ups and downs and slow and fast periods of change. The total amount of cheap energy available to each person, and to nations as a whole, will begin to decline, at the same time as the climate and environment around us shifts and flips and and is in increasing turmoil. Everything will have to take less energy, because there will be less affordable energy to be had. The ability of people to "go it alone" will decrease to the point where we will all need to band together more closely to get by. And that's a good thing, closer to the way human beings have lived for 10,000 years, and less like the unsustainable state many of us find ourselves in today. Extended families, group houses and intentional communities, close-knit groups and "tribes," are all eccentric choices now, but will become simple necessities over the next few decades, as they were in every century prior to ours, and still are in much of the world.
But, truly, who knows? The Christians have been wrongly predicting the end of the world for about 2000 years, despite the fact that their own holy book says no one knows the day or hour of its arrival. Every absolute doomsayer has been wrong, and many of the calamities that have in fact occurred have been completely unanticipated by anyone. The universe is far stranger and more unexpected than we imagine it to be.
The best answer, to me, seems not to hole up in a bunker with a 10 year supply of irradiated "food," or build a massive arms cache behind barbed wire fences. The only people who ever profit by that are arms dealers and fear mongers. The answer, it seems to me, is not to withdraw from the world, but to engage fully, and to live, really live completely, in true beauty, balance and delight. I can't see the wisdom in giving up a single drop of the joy life holds for us out of fear for what might possiblty happen.
If we want to change the world, then change the world, don't wait for some mythical apocalypse to do it for us. We can all disentangle, at least a bit, from the invisible webs of isolation and dependence in which we're snared. Nobody can be totally self-sufficient, but we can all become somewhat less dependant on unsustainable systems and processes, especially those which tend to push us into massive debt in order to afford things which come from thousands of miles away. And we can find and make webs of support and sustainability, to replace those sticky bindings of of fear, isolation and unsustainable consumption into which we are too often tied.
We can build, right here, right now, and together, the systems, skills and relationships which will endure. Not merely to survive, but to build, and thrive, and live. The new world is coming, whether we will or not, because it always does -- one hour, one day, one year at a time. The choice between evolution and apocalypse is often one of perspective, and whether one is riding or being ridden. If we make ourselves, our relationships and communities stronger, closer, better, more capable and sustainable, that does us all good right here and now, and whatever comes, too.
We have hope, because we have each other, and that is truly all we need. And the stronger we are, as individuals and especially as communities, the more hope we have, and the more abundance, now, and always.
yezida. I read her post as a constructive spur to action and to engagement, and a few apparently saw it as being, at least in part, apocalyptic. The dialogue that resulted had me thinking about some recent writings I've seen which were genuinely apocalyptic. For what it's worth, here are some of my thoughts about The End Of The World As We Know It (henceforth abbreviated as TEOTWAWKI ;>)People who seem to actively hope for TEOTWAWKI can really creep me out when I perceive what seems like a gleeful anticipation of chaos, as if massive change will somehow improve the world, reallocate power, or redress inequity. People who eagerly anticipate TEOTWAWKI sometimes appear to me to have a personal chip on their collective shoulders, a gripe against aspects of society which anger or upset them. That gripe often seems to be accompanied by a sense of personal powerlessness to make effective and constructive change in the world as it is, and a belief that more violent change will somehow result in a better world. There can be a feeling that the world now is so bad, so fallen, so hopeless, that chaos and dissolution is the only hope for some kind of improvement.
In other words, belief in TEOTWAWKI can be a serious cop-out. The answer to "why aren't you engaging constructively with the world and making it a better place NOW?" sometimes given as, "well, it's fruitless, and besides, the world is coming to an end" makes no more ethical or practical sense coming from a pagan or anarchist than it does coming from an apocalyptic Christian. Using that grim, hopeless apocalyptic mindset as an excuse to withdraw from the world, and instead pray for deliverance in some imagined and anticipated "next world" is just as much a cop-out if the next world is a Mad Max scenario as the holy Rapture. There ain't nobody or nothing, no god, alien UFO, ascention, Rapture, or Peak Oil collapse, going to pull us out of our own messes and give us all the easy answers, lead us into any frickin' utiopia, holy land or perfect afterlife. We get what we do, and if we do nothing, that's what we get.
Those who suffer the most and hardest during times of calamity and chaos are the weakest, most vulnerable and those already on the margins of society -- the young, the old, the sick, those in poverty, those with the least resources available to them. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina made this clear on worldwide TV to anyone who had any doubt whatsoever. As a compassionate human being, and a parent, I want universal health care, not a sudden lack of any kind of real health care for most people. I want an end to hunger, not widespread starvation. I want access to clean, fresh water to be an acknowledged right, not something only the rich and ruthless can take for granted. I want justice in a world of just laws and processes, not justice at the point of whomever holds the biggest guns.
I spent seven years back in the 1990s working at the National HQ of the American Red Cross, most of that time spent developing systems and processes which were used on very large national and international disaster relief jobs. Some of the work was at headquarters working with local chapters and designing and developing new stuff, and when there was a very large-scale disaster, my pager would go off and I'd have to be on the next plane out to wherever, so I could fix or improve/re-build whatever broke or wasn't a good fit for that particular job. And if everything was working fine, I could go run a shelter or drive a forklift unloading supplies in the field warehouse or something.
So I've seen many parts of the U.S. shortly after they were blown apart, flooded, burnt to cinders, shaken to bits, or otherwise had Very Bad Things happen to them. Katrina was way after my time (and a lot had changed in between at the Red Cross, some of it unfortunate), but Katrina, as incredibly, terribly destructive as it was, and is, was also one massive disaster among many, and was far less destructive than a number of disasters around the world in recent years. I've seen firsthand over and over again what happens when you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, no matter how much preparation you've done. The Dark Mother wins if she wants to. Always. And people do their best to react and assist, but even the best you can do (and the Katrina response was *far* from the best) can't really fix, all it can do is help. True recovery takes years, sometimes decades, and things never do return fully to the way they were.
But the fact that bad things happen to good people, even good and "prepared" people, doesn't mean that preparedness is a bad idea, or that you can't prepare for disaster. The stronger you are, the more you can handle, and the more options and choices you have. And the more choices you have, the less likely you are to find yourself shit up a creek with nothing to do but pray for god or government to save you.
It's good to know where your food comes from, where fresh water can be found, what you could and would do if the power goes out, for a little while, for a longer while. Forget gold, skills are the most transportable form of wealth there is. What can you do that can be used to help others? Those skills are valuable now, and they will be valuable always.
A storm is coming. I believe that, it's really a no-brainer. One always does, sooner or later -- nothing lasts forever, no matter how well-built, there are always changes, slow or sudden. There are many, many concrete and tangible signs that things are unsustainable the way they are right now, and we're heading for some changes and corrections. Our rate of resource consumption is unsustainable, global warming and climate change is obviously accelerating, the U.S. economy, while not literally collapsing at the moment, is much more fragile than most will admit, and, while we are isolated into individualistic and often selfish little islands, houses and suburbs, we are more and more dependant on brittle, complicated webs of very long-distance transportation for everything from food and water to manufactured goods.
There's some karma being built up -- economic, environmental/ecological, societal. It's hard for me to see how anyone with even an ounce of sensitivity and insight wouldn't be feeling that right now, as vague unease, if not outright dread. Or, best of all, a deep and powerful spur to action. All of the scales which are getting increasingly out of balance will naturally come to rest after swinging this way and that. Chances are, though, the farther out of balance the scales start out, the wider and more extreme the rebalancing will be, and at least some of those scales are very, very far out of whack indeed.
Is an apocalypse coming? I sure hope not. Intuitively, my own sense is that we're in for a long period of what will feel like decline, with ups and downs and slow and fast periods of change. The total amount of cheap energy available to each person, and to nations as a whole, will begin to decline, at the same time as the climate and environment around us shifts and flips and and is in increasing turmoil. Everything will have to take less energy, because there will be less affordable energy to be had. The ability of people to "go it alone" will decrease to the point where we will all need to band together more closely to get by. And that's a good thing, closer to the way human beings have lived for 10,000 years, and less like the unsustainable state many of us find ourselves in today. Extended families, group houses and intentional communities, close-knit groups and "tribes," are all eccentric choices now, but will become simple necessities over the next few decades, as they were in every century prior to ours, and still are in much of the world.
But, truly, who knows? The Christians have been wrongly predicting the end of the world for about 2000 years, despite the fact that their own holy book says no one knows the day or hour of its arrival. Every absolute doomsayer has been wrong, and many of the calamities that have in fact occurred have been completely unanticipated by anyone. The universe is far stranger and more unexpected than we imagine it to be.
The best answer, to me, seems not to hole up in a bunker with a 10 year supply of irradiated "food," or build a massive arms cache behind barbed wire fences. The only people who ever profit by that are arms dealers and fear mongers. The answer, it seems to me, is not to withdraw from the world, but to engage fully, and to live, really live completely, in true beauty, balance and delight. I can't see the wisdom in giving up a single drop of the joy life holds for us out of fear for what might possiblty happen.
If we want to change the world, then change the world, don't wait for some mythical apocalypse to do it for us. We can all disentangle, at least a bit, from the invisible webs of isolation and dependence in which we're snared. Nobody can be totally self-sufficient, but we can all become somewhat less dependant on unsustainable systems and processes, especially those which tend to push us into massive debt in order to afford things which come from thousands of miles away. And we can find and make webs of support and sustainability, to replace those sticky bindings of of fear, isolation and unsustainable consumption into which we are too often tied.
We can build, right here, right now, and together, the systems, skills and relationships which will endure. Not merely to survive, but to build, and thrive, and live. The new world is coming, whether we will or not, because it always does -- one hour, one day, one year at a time. The choice between evolution and apocalypse is often one of perspective, and whether one is riding or being ridden. If we make ourselves, our relationships and communities stronger, closer, better, more capable and sustainable, that does us all good right here and now, and whatever comes, too.
We have hope, because we have each other, and that is truly all we need. And the stronger we are, as individuals and especially as communities, the more hope we have, and the more abundance, now, and always.
