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Jamie, thank you for clarifying. Perhaps I misread your post about the convoy. With these hcharged topics I’ll be the first to admit my lens isn’t always clear of bias in “how I interpret” what I read. Case in point, you said anti vaxxer and I read it through the lens of my own wounds . I’m not one to typically post comments but I have reverence for how you deliver your message and your keen insight. I’m trying myself to regularly reboot to that centre point as a practice. Thank you for challenging me and for your levity. Can you share the two Convoy posts?

It was a couple of years ago but I found the talk. I believe It was promoting Recapture the Rapture. It prompted me to buy your book and introduced me to your work.

https://youtu.be/Pbnn2X2fVvA?si=d-jWq6NZcq8G4RJI

Absolutely brilliant! How you brought all of that wisdom together and articulated it is a gift. I took the time to listen again and as someone who has been through the death and rebirth Initiation several times throughout my life, and most recently alchemizing cancer through the principles you describe in your talk, it was so helpful to me in understanding my journey with more clarity than before. I’m glad this exchange brought me back to that YouTube video.

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this was prob the one that you were tracking most closely: https://jamiewheal.substack.com/p/anna-delvey-and-canadian-truckers

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Appreciating the particular emphasis on the fundamentals of habitability. This morning at 5 am, on my way to the Austin airport to fly back to Boston, I spent 30 minutes in a lyft with a genial south Texan driver who wasted no time letting me know how much he disapproves of liberals, city governments, "that black lives matter crap," and the "homeless people tearing up the city." Although some of his language triggered my inner woke libtard, I rode it out because, you know, it was 5 am... and also because it was clear that he was genuinely sad about the state of the city and from his POV the ways it had become unlivable. When I asked him where he lived now, he said Canyon Lake, and described the gorgeous clear water and the houses surrounding the lake. That must be great, I said. Yeah, he replied, except our water is as low as it's ever been. Over 1.5 feet below the usual low water line. It ain't good. Damn, I said. Then we were at the airport. As I trundled my way onto the massive sky bus that would soon be belching out emissions (sorry, still probably gonna talk about that too) it struck me that his fear about the state of his home land might be the one place where an aging Boston millennial and a South Texan good ol boy could sit together and agree that yeah, things ain't good. If we're going to survive the road ahead, we're going to have to get a lot busier at making ourselves home in a natural world that no longer functions the way it did when we built all these cities, and suburbs, and strip malls and airports that serve as our current standard for the good life

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I was incredibly moved when a friend introduced me to an audio you shared a few years ago explaining the path of awakening consciousness on the planet. I’d never heard anyone capture the process so perfectly and eloquently.

You struck me as someone who stands in the middle, like myself.

You lost me when I read a post you shared around the trucker convoy in Canada, claiming they were funded by Russia or the far right in the USA (I’m paraphrasing because I don’t recall exactly how you worded it. That’s been unequivocally disproven, as was all the other government claims to justify the use of force, as a matter of public record. At the time I took what you said as being true until I dug deeper. That’s on me. I have to own my choice of perspective.

I decided to give you another read because I was interested in your views on climate change. Hoping again you’d be standing in the middle giving me another perspective. Although I agree with some of your points on climate change this post left me disappointed in the leadership of the internet.

You use the term “anti vaxxers” freely, leaving me to believe you’re out of touch with the evidence/people, or ignoring it to guard your reality, by broad stroking 20%+ of the world and their right to bodily autonomy and sovereignty around what is forced into their body. I invite you to read the 10 points of the Nuremberg code and relate that to the covid vaccine. In my country there was considerable use of pressure, removal of charter rights, and shaming as a result of my choice.

Have you read the mounting pile of peer review evidence that substantiated people’s right to informed consent around an experimental drug? I’m not anti vax. I’m pro choice and belief I should have the facts available to me before I take a drug with proven harmful side effects and has been subsequently evidenced to not actually do what they claimed it would do.

Both of my sons are in the highest risk bracket statistically, for being seriously harmed by this drug, and my choice to protect them has me labelled ignorantly as an anti vaxxer/conspirorist. You’re perpetuating virtue signalling and gaslighting with your choice of vernacular and perspective without making the effort to understand people’s experience is and why they make their choices.

I feel you’re assisting in further division of humanity when you could be leading it to bring the world closer together with shared perspectives. I guess from this you would now label me as as a “warrior of the light” (with your sarcasm noted)?

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thanks for writing and glad that audio bit landed for you. (pls share here if you still have it, curious as to what talk it was?). I've read the rest of your comments/critique and even went back to the two posts related to the Canadian Truckers, and am a little confused? My point in both was a trans-partisan comment on media literacy and how we're all slapping totally different lenses over the same "facts." I take the piss out of all sides, all the time! For a couple of reasons. 1) if we can't laugh at this absurd tragicomedy we'd all go insane and 2) a spoonful of humor helps the polycrisis go down. And at no time, did I privilege one group over any other. So FWIW, whatever "centrist" POV you thought I was holding in that audio, is likely the same one I still hold, and almost certainly the one I was keeping through writing all of these pieces. The only reason I bother with culture war topics is to point out "hey, these are all Finite Games that end up destroying us, and we have to be able to come together on higher ground and play the Infinite Game to get shit sorted." Covid was a shitshow. Vaccines were a shitshow. Lockdowns were a shitshow. Almost nobody rose to the occasion (with the possible exception of frontline docs and nurses trying their best), and almost every position was deeply flawed and compromised by bad information, logic, motives and leadership. (which sounds like a big chunk of where you've anchored on our positions diverging). I WISH there was only one group of asshats on the field right now. Then I could just write about how stupid and wrong they obviously are, and point to the clear headed voices of reason. Seems like the entire pitch is crawling with them, though, and we're gonna have to figure this out for ourselves.

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I use a very interesting 3-hour educational tool from an NGO called the Climate Fresk to raise awareness on climate change, and I agree with your point in seeing the reactions of people while ‘playing’ on building this fresk, that the click always happens at the end when they see the impact on resources, water, food, climate immigrants, wars, etc. At the same time, it only makes sense to them because they built up on the physical elements leading up to it. For the diversity comprised in the kind of groups I delivered this to, regardless of their initial skepticism, they always get bamboozled by the clear, damning reality of climate overshoot in the end. I therefore think that it’s less about the fact that the physical elements are too complex, and more about that the information presented to them in mainstream media is too messed up, when it can be made more accessible. One relatable thing, though, from your article, is that the moment I move from debriefing on the physical elements into asking participants around potential solutions (reducing your carbon footprint being a central element of the conversation), the conversation gets kind of messy, complex again- it happens with the shift from factual physical reality to politics and lifestyle choices.

What is the right approach in such case is the hard question to answer. If everyone got to receive a basic education around climate overshoot with effective tools such as the fresk tool referred to, combined with an understanding on how to “master” our neurobiology without overshooting the planet with tools such as the one you mention in Recapture the Rapture, it might give us a shot at solving parts of the problem. The challenge I am still not figuring out is how there could actually be a chance for scalability, for these or other solutions, that prevails in these days of increasing culture wars, polarisation, mass disinformation…etc.

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you and me both!

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That was excellent! Best read on the topic. But share the same sentiment as Craig's comment, I've read both Jamie's books and recommended them a lot. Back on topic, Vivek has taken a lot of shit for saying let's focus on "human flourishing" vs "climate change agenda." Nothing good happens in a slogan or sound bite. But this spoke to all my sensibilities as a tree hugger, humanitarian, capitalist (my definition is solve problems for a profit) and someone that knows a lot about influence/persuasion and the dark sides of human nature.

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