Bushfires in Australia and wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, and everywhere else they are raging out of control, take out plenty of prepper properties, as well as more conventional buildings (not to mention the millions of other lives). The recent floods in northern NSW, outrageous in their extent, must have washed out countless veggie patches, some of which would have been substantial. The days of thinking that individualistic, survivalist forms of prepping, to create climate proof shelter and food sources, are over.
I’m still growing as much food as i can, but now i know that could all be flooded out tomorrow. I’m still hunting in my local ecosystem for protein, but now i know those same floods make conditions for my chosen sport – spearfishing – completely hopeless. I see that my own humble efforts are part of a bigger picture of trying to become free from the mass markets and their supply chain weaknesses; and i see that none of us can become free of climate chaos.
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We knew ecosystem collapse was going to be non-linear, but now the results are starting to become known. They are not completely random – superstorms will whip up more intensely in certain places, due to ocean currents and prevailing wind patterns, while droughts and heatwaves will become more prominent in some places than others. But regardless of the randomness or predictability of the effects, one thing we can be sure of is that we are about to be as psychologically assaulted as people have ever been. And this time the “we” really is everyone.
Sure, the 1% and other assorted squillionaires might hold out longer in their bunkers, enjoy whatever media they have pre-recorded and swill whatever goods they have shelved while we bake on the surface above. But eventually, apocalyptic conditions will affect all of us, everywhere, all the time, increasingly. All humans as well as most other animals and complex life forms are going to be as ‘baked in’ as the feedback loops that now ensure that climate action will no longer be enough to mitigate a mass extinction event.
Given that those exponential graphs still ain’t going nowhere but up and off the charts, i think it is time we got all post-doom and cranked up the volume on our spiritual response to this reality. And by spirit, i simply mean the essence of a thing, the enlivening force, the mysterious energy that explodes into life as the universe, and as consciousness, and incarnates as us sentient beings, intelligent primates, self aware and embodied by some miracle we did nothing to deserve.
In fact, celebrating this is half my answer. Getting back to thankfulness, appreciating our outrageous fortune, loving life in all its myriad forms while we still can. Recognising that all the work we do for our environment, all our attempts at evolving social justice, every act of compassion is a drop in the ocean of eternity – not producing anything, not changing the direction of the world, just doing good for its own sake.
Surrendering to this is humbling and beautiful. My Zen practice – a prosaic term for breathing in the miracle of presence in every moment – has never been so strong and lasting into the day as it has been since i gave up thinking i was going to change anything except the way someone thinks for a while, the way a child smiles when i am genuine with them, the way a bee flies on when i rescue it from tidal seawater, the way a plant flourishes because i watered it.
Aside from this deeply personal response, which all of us can make, immediately, and keep doing, there is community. That will be the subject of my next post; how we can work together, in groups of like-minded individuals, for mutual support. I’d like to be doing this more in my local area, but in the meantime i am currently facilitating retreats to help people connect more deeply with nature, for the purposes of therapy and liberation, and i recently enjoyed Jem Bendell and Katie Carr’s Leadership and Communication During Societal Breakdown course.
These are the most effective prepping activities we could be doing right now. Getting better at living again, for the moment, for the little things, while we can, together and alone. There’ll be plenty of big stuff to attend to, no matter where we live, soon enough. And in the meantime, children still smile when you are kind to them. Even adults do sometimes …
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How then shall we speak of what is to come? It’s time to start talking about Near Term Human Extinction (NTHE).
It is the most momentous moment of our species, our swansong, the end. No more living or writing for posterity; that vanity is dust. Homer, Virgil, Dante, the older classics from the earliest recorded stories, will be consigned to the winds, along with all other human arts. And with us, so much other animal life, so many ecosystems, entire forests of life, wiped out. Let’s try to chew this down in bite size chunks, because i have had it marinating for a while, and i still can’t figure out how to talk about this in one hit. We’ll get to the nightmare scenario of 450 nuclear reactors popping because we won’t have the time or resources to decommission them safely later. And the new era of industrial flotsam and jetson, as entire cities scour the shore where once clean ocean passed by. Let’s cover that one later too.
For now, let’s stick with societal breakdown, the need for deep resilience as a minimum standard, the testing of all our mores, no matter how well rehearsed.
The floods smashing south eastern Queensland and north eastern NSW right now are off the scale. The megafires that threatened my home and torched billions of animal lives a couple of years ago were unknown until recently, too, Aboriginal Australians even saying they have no story for this scale – a sure sign it has not occurred for tens of thousands of years, for the length of their oral history.
This isn’t just anthropogenic climate change – this is ecosystem collapse. When the methane burps and so much more of the polar caps slips into the ocean that we see sea level rises in metres, we will know it is coming for good this time. The ocean wants us back and it keeps the lowest elevation real estate on the planet. That’s where we’ll end up. In the Deep.
Let me know what you think, what you want to talk about, how we’re going to process this together. Are you relieved someone is finally telling this story, even though it is about to end? Frightened, avoidant, carefree, devastated? I’ll add chapters, if you let me know how this conversation might unfold. We’re going to need a level of understanding we’ve rarely displayed before. I want compassion, empathy, spiritual generosity to lead. There’ll be plenty of nastiness to go around, without us adding to it. Let’s go.
There’s a beautiful tree out back of my place. I love its almost symmetry, the way it fans for the sky, maximising on the available sunlight and growing strong, even as we are still in drought, long term. Since the fires, trees have been getting cut down everywhere up and down the south coast. It’s slash and burn on the the roadsides, as there is an unusual amount of licence granted for those kinds of actions right now. Putting in fire breaks, cutting down trees, clearing out shrubby undergrowth, making areas around houses more safe.
Newly cleared roadside
Fair enough. I’ve seen examples down backstreets that were lined with dry, scrubby undergrowth, which the locals see as little more than unnecessary fuel left to burn. Some get grumpy about greens stopping them from burning off, some know that’s not right, many admit that regardless of the politics involved, it has also happened because we don’t listen to the Aboriginal knowledge about how to burn country so that it regenerates. We have the option of doing that now, which is why i am working with local elders to see it happen.
But sometimes you sense that some people are also enjoying this. Almost taking revenge on the bush, for being so difficult. Yeah, there’s a lot of it out there, but we’ve seen this summer how vulnerable it is. And we don’t actually have to perpetuate the archetype of the pioneer, always ready, willing and able to tear the bush down to extend the property.
Properties need to be made as safe as possible and traditional owners burnt in small patches to leave cleared spaces too … but geez we love to slash and burn don’t we?
Trees are not the problem, the way we’ve managed them are. A forest is not just a carbon sink and a home to so many animals and plants. It is a place to breathe and a generator of wellness for the entire ecosystem. In physical terms, forests help produce – along with the sea – the oxygenated air we breathe, so perfectly balanced for the sustenance of mammalian and so much other life. And in psychological terms, time spent in forests boosts our mental and emotional health.
One thing I saw, during the NYE fires in Broulee, was that people’s mental state during crisis is paramount to their outcomes. Both in the way they respond in the moment, to needs like getting hoses ready to fight ember attacks; and in the way they come through it, afterwards. There’s a real case for eco-grief work, taking into account people’s personal experiences (even when vicarious) in consideration also of the wider context of the climate crisis. My work with the International Ecopsychology Society is always a heartening reminder that we heal and grow through crisis with nurturing guidance and thankfulness practices.
We need to remember how to live in and with the forests, with love and respect, rather than either logging them relentlessly or leaving them untouched, which leads to dangerous fuel loads. There are many stories of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people having profound layers of ecological wisdom when it comes to maintaining life in the broadest spectrum of ecosystems.
Bruce Pascoe in Dark Emu and Bill Gammage in The Biggest Estate on Earth have reminded us of how we can live within the natural world without compromising the very fabric of life that supports us. Traditional cultures have so often lived in this way.
By contrast, the process of colonisation, fuelled by more developed technologies (of agriculture, war, industry and now digital), is designed to extract wealth from the earth and accumulate it in urban centres. We need to shift away from this culture and back – as well as forwards – to one that respects its home. Traditional people like the Walbanja where I live know how to practice hunting and gathering, tending to Country, cultural burning, harvesting and ensuring future seasons are plentiful. We need to listen to them and learn better how to keep forests and grasslands healthy, how to propagate robust populations of plants and animals into the future, while the forests they live in and with help create rain as well as fresh air. Comparatively, excessive clearing creates drought, then allows more topsoil to run off when floods follow. We’re seeing it again. Let’s listen to the elders on Country, for better results.
Artwork generously supplied to SCAE by Raymond Carriage
Geoff Berry is CEO of the South Coast NSW Aboriginal Elders Incorporated Association, who create employment for Koori and at-risk youth with rebuilding and regeneration projects. SCAE aim to build culture and communities that respect tradition, and seek to perpetuate the best aspects of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures, for the good of all, in a modern context.
You’d be forgiven for thinking there were more important things to do, more pressing actions to be taken, than sitting quietly on a meditation cushion. And you’d be right. Sitting meditation is practice. For being in flow with the moment, moving with grace, embodying consciousness in the best way possible, as a primate capable of self-awareness. While doing important stuff, like fighting fires. Grab the hose, aim the water, protect the assets, move back, come around the side, get out, get in and do your job. All under extreme pressure. Professional or volunteers; now that’s action.
HILLVILLE, AUSTRALIA – NOVEMBER 13: RFS Firefighters battle a spot fire on November 13, 2019 in Hillville, Australia. Catastrophic fire conditions.
Most of us who faced fires in Australia over recent weeks aren’t heroes. We’re just trying to save our lives, families and homes, and helping others when we can. But no matter whether you had to fight ember attacks or full blown fire fronts, or if you were watching the previously unimaginable horror unfold, as monster fires joined up to create a mega-catastrophe on a world changing scale, we’ve all been scarred by this experience. How we deal with it can be a matter of personal choice, but from a therapeutic perspective, if you get time, you could do worse than to sit. Contemplate.
Hone your mind. It helps. Getting to know yourself better, you can come to realise your habits and choose what works for you according to the balance of your desires and values. Or just relax, let the mind melt down the spine like a melting egg of golden butter. Breathe into the centre and up along that spine, lifting each part as if it were carried by a silver rope hanging down from the heavens. Let that breath go through the top of your head, lifting it also and tilting it slightly forwards, so that your chin is tucked a little. Look 45 degrees to the floor. Let thoughts float away like clouds in the sky. Don’t judge them, it’s a waste of time and undermines the self you want to be. Breathe in, up the spine, and let go as you exhale. Repeat.
Sit in nature if you can. It’s precious. As we’ve seen.
Sitting in meditation affords you time to check in with yourself and give you time to recognise if you are carrying some self-defeating patterns. Also to melt them away a little each time, or to support better ones. We practise in every sit, as well as throughout the day. This is a clarifying of the mind that is also self-care, because sitting in meditation can help you ensure that you’re not getting too wound up in cycles of action and reaction, by putting your daily experiences into a more expansive framework. Just like the monk who learns that the same amount of salt in the wound feels very different when you identify with the expanse of the lake and not just the limited confines of the personal mind, we can become more than an action/reaction machine.
Sitting with how expansive our minds can be can transform them from their former limits.
Sore? Let that pain dissolve into the entire energetic matrix within which we incarnate: the earth. Rest in that exact place where you are for a while. This will remind you of how much you can be as well as help you do stuff better. This includes fire fighters and frustrated parents, baristas and climate scientists. It could also help activists entering upon the shores of burnout, or just plain exhausted by the fight against a corporate and political class that is supposed to be serving us but is serving its own interests instead. The forces of climate denial are varied and very well funded. This makes the current mainstream story unpalatable, at best, and criminal, in terms of the environmental damage being wreaked upon the planet right now. We must feel this, if we are to identify with our larger being, the one that dissolved into the lake, and be true citizens of the earth, along with all our kin, without whom we cannot survive, let alone flourish. Air comes from forests and seas (remember this sometimes with your breath). To be fully alive, we must be fully alive with the earth. That’s expanded consciousness. That means something.
We can’t help staring into the flames. Whether it be a humble campfire, the stars at night, or the glitter and glam of stage and screen, we are drawn to light like primate moths around a flame. That’s why we also love burning fuel; from the humble whale oil lamp to nitrous guzzling race cars, Prometheus rules our evolution. The demigod who taught us to control the flame could have guessed we would become addicted to it, but i’ll bet he would have hoped we’d also learn to temper our love with wisdom.
Prometheus bringing fire from the gods to humanity
Because we can’t help ourselves, we can become passive consumers trapped by the market, as well as inspired beings finding our own way towards the intelligence and wisdom of light. The screen upon which you are reading this, the TV that came before it, even electric light itself – only a century or so old – our attention can be drawn along by flashing luminescence. And in modern times, this ancient fascination is owned. We don’t look to nature for connection, but to technology. That’s where we are at home; in the new ‘natural’ environment of the city, hooked up to the light bulb, the lime light, the paid advertisement, the street lights and LEDs in the ceiling. We can hardly move without being flooded in light, mostly provided by the burning of fossil fuels hundreds of miles away.
We love our cities of light and hardly question why
It doesn’t have to be that way. We used to find the light within, as well as without. In fact, we don’t have to look anywhere, if we are talking metaphorically, for the light of consciousness. We can trust ourselves, we can find a way, we can figure out where we stand … we can listen to our bodies and to the nature they represent.
This is because light is within all matter; in fact, matter is very slow light wavelengths (or electromagnetic radiation), just as light is the same stuff moving infinitely more quickly. This is physics, not philosophy. So, it would be more accurate to say that light is matter, matter is light, in a unified field or flow of all things, or the “only one thing,” as physicist and author Frank Wilczek writes in The Lightness of Being. Hence, the sun’s power within carbon, released as fire, is also the same as the light that emanates from stars; our friendly yellow one as well as the red giants and pulsing quasars of distant galaxies.
Light is what we are and what it all is: a unified field filled with celestial intelligence, the knowledge of all things as it was sent upon its cosmic journey by the fire of life. This is wisdom, love, goodness and abundance, as well as power. That means power over, as well as power with. Power is neutral and we choose what to do with it. And behind every light falls the shadow. In the case of human consciousness, this shadow is greed, hatred, and ignorance. Manifest in its most potent force, it is the elite at the top of the pyramid, those who control the market, who demand that we receive the sign, the mark of the slave class, the workers who create profit and send it up the line. And the ultimate victory for the shadow is when it convinces us that it represents the light, the one true light, the only light, the guiding light … the light that draws us on, which we follow into the cave, which enslaves us. Here are the sun kings, ancient and new, and the corporate stars that replace them.
As Orwell pointed out, we must not only fear Big Brother, we must love Big Brother. And we do; Big Brother rules, brings us the light of order, peace, security. Perpetual war is the cost and we accept it; war upon the earth, which creates so much wealth we no longer even question our right to it. We love the Big Brother of the marketplace while he promises us full shelves in the supermarkets, freely available fuel for our cars and planes, and cities of light so bright it hardly matters whether it is night or day.
And so the shadow wins; we believe we live in perpetual light and we have not asked clearly or persistently enough the only question that really mattered: what does it cost?
It costs us the earth. To relate this to the Christian religious framework that sits behind the godless capitalism that chokes the planet to death now, the modern city is a place where we sacrifice dark fossil fuels to create endless light – the New Jerusalem of Revelation, which today is a church of endless consumption.
The New Jerusalem, once a spiritual vision of life completely divorced from earthy realities, now a shopping mall, just as dangerous.
The New Year’s 2020 bushfires in Australia are a logical result of our Promethean tendencies and they are also a warning from the future that we have created; this is the beginning of the apocalyptic conditions, which arise out of the devilish bargain we have made with our ‘resources’. The increased ferocity of storms, heatwaves, hurricanes, droughts and floods that are all still forecast by the same climate modelling that promised us these fires were coming will not stop soon. They are coming because we burn too much fuel. But while fire is the focus, let’s remember something about its nature as light, and hope that this also reminds us of a few things about ourselves. We are the light, as is the earth, and this is our only home while we are here in these bodies. This is right relationship to our planetary home. This is what we can learn from out of control fires, if we choose to do so.
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