honestly, that was my thesis for that last book Recapture the Rapture. Soul Force or bust. I left the actual conclusions all between the lines, because (as you well know) folks' capacity to shoot sacred cows and digest their grief are limited. But honestly it feels like we're heading for an epochal dip, and the move now is courageous bearing witness to the highwater marks of human civilization, community and consciousness, and embracing Joanna Macy's "We the People of the Passage" notion. Build life boats now, that become star arks later. It's like a three wave hold down set is coming in the ocean and we need to duck dive, not panic, catch breaths where we can, and look for the lull on the other side of the beat down.
I don't know if you read my book, "How Soon Is Now", but essentially it is obvious to me that this is an initiatory threshold for humanity as a whole. To survive, we will have to shift from thinking of ourselves as "I" beings to understanding ourselves as "we" beings (interdependent). Instead of operating out of self-interest, we will have to operate, at every moment in our daily lives, out of collective interest -- care for our human species and for the local and planetary ecology. In fact, this is how truly functional indigenous communities understand themselves and how they deal with their surrounding ecology.
The result of my various psychedelic initiations described in my first books was that, for a long time, I stopped conceiving of myself as important or special, except in how I could leverage my gifts and position/connections to try to assist the greater awakening / transformation process. This led me to start a web magazine for consciousness (we published 1,000+ writers) and The Evolver Network, where we provided a template for local communities to self-organize around a new paradigm of consciousness, shamanism, local economy, permaculture, etc. I stopped my own writing career and threw everything I could into this effort to build a "movement of movements:" We were also promoting MAPS (early days), Transition Town, and other synergetic movements with our vision.
It was horribly difficult - I was also subject to so many attacks and projections, while having no financial resources. Finally I cracked under the pressure. I truly learned how trapped we are in hyper-individualism and Capitalism, always forced to fight for ourselves (even Substack is an example of this, rather than having a magazine or movement where we work with others, now we all write our own little fragmented things with no community cohesion, adding to the problem).
I believe that Capitalism and hyper-individualism will not survive this emergency, this initiatory crisis. But it is fairly clear it is going to have to go an extreme level -- it is possible, if not likely, or even inevitable that we will go extinct. This could happen faster than most might imagine (10 - 30 years ish). We should do what we can to try to find a different option from extinction, but that will require a breaking free of the Capitalist structure and repurposing tools like social networks and AI to build something like the resource-based economy that Jacques Fresco or Buckminster Fuller proposed.
These are a few excerpt from How Soon Is Now, where I tried to define a pathway beyond this current civilization and, also, explored how we could get there, using the tools we have now:
"We can think of our current civilization – its technical and socio-political infrastructure, its ideology and beliefs – as an operating system, much like the software that runs our computers. Now we need to reboot and install a new system software. ...
"The study of biological evolution – the history of life on Earth – reveals an inveterate tendency towards greater levels of cooperation, coordination and symbiosis. This idea may seem surprising at first. As part of the paradigm we inherited – the one we are now leaving behind – many thinkers and scientists placed their focus, instead, on the competitive, aggressive and destructive aspects of nature. This view of biology as a constant struggle for life meshed perfectly with the predatory economic mode of capitalism. This idea has now been superseded by a new view of life as an intricately networked phenomenon, where organisms support each other far more than they compete. ...
According to biologist Lynn Margulis, the author of Microcosmos, who developed the Gaia hypothesis with scientist James Lovelock, ‘The trip from greedy gluttony, from instant satisfaction to long-term mutualism, has been made many times in the microcosm. While destructive species may come and go, cooperation itself increases through time.’ ...
"In Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright noted that humans keep developing increasingly larger and more complex forms of social organization – from the small tribe to the city-state, from national governments today, to extra-national bodies like the United Nations and the European Union. For Wright, this suggests an eventual transition to global government. I look at this transition differently, believing that we will eventually transcend national governments by establishing a harmonic planetary orchestration, where local communities will function like the cells and organs in an efficient, self-regulating body. ...
"Over the last 60,000 years, since leaving Africa, the human species has developed language and culture, increasing in numbers, slowly at first, as we spread ourselves across the surface of the world. For most of that time, we lived as small tribes of hunter-gatherers. Around 10,000 years ago, we began growing crops, building cities and launching empires. Over the last few centuries, our species discovered steam power, electricity, coal, oil, mechanical technology and industry. We split the atom and beached on the moon.
As its science and technologies advanced, the modern West constructed a new social model based on conspicuous consumption and planned obsolescence. We exported this experimental way of life across the world. In a short span of time, because of our capacity to exploit energy from fossil fuels – one barrel of oil holds the equivalent of 23,200 hours of manpower – humans went from biospheric nonentity to the catalysts of a geological event. The crisis confronting us is the result of what might prove to be our very short-lived success as a species.
As modern society became increasingly severed from nature, our science-based culture propagated an ideology of materialism, dismissing any mystical or religious belief system as antiquated and false. We rejected the natural, the feminine and the intuitive, replacing them with the masculine ideals of order, logic and rationality. Faith in science and technology replaced religion for many people.
When we fully accept and realize that this crisis is our invitation to undergo a collective metamorphosis – to establish something much better than we have now – then we can find the will and courage to handle the distressing specifics. Deepening global crisis is going to force transformation, one way or another. The best thing we can do is seize this chance to leverage a mass awakening. "
This was so clear. For me, my shelter piece is about temperature. With several autoimmune conditions and long Covid going on 3.5 years, I’ve been sleeping with ice packs to keep body temperatures down enough at night so I can sleep. No air conditioning. But the electric grid can get iffy. It feels so vulnerable. I moved somewhere this week where it’s cooler because I can bundle to stay warm easily if power is out than overheat and die from heart [and heat] exhaustion.
I saw a series on Netflix about how things are connected and clouds forming and being lost to water cycle collapse was life changing for me. Every time I see clouds I am grateful. I can’t survive in a world without clouds. So I’m just practicing gratitude everyday for what I have now and teaching others to do the same.
Looks like you’ve got it down Jamie. Dead ringer but real life follow up to any of the Last of Us type flix. It’s showing up in real time but the folks are still snoozing.
honestly, that was my thesis for that last book Recapture the Rapture. Soul Force or bust. I left the actual conclusions all between the lines, because (as you well know) folks' capacity to shoot sacred cows and digest their grief are limited. But honestly it feels like we're heading for an epochal dip, and the move now is courageous bearing witness to the highwater marks of human civilization, community and consciousness, and embracing Joanna Macy's "We the People of the Passage" notion. Build life boats now, that become star arks later. It's like a three wave hold down set is coming in the ocean and we need to duck dive, not panic, catch breaths where we can, and look for the lull on the other side of the beat down.
Hi Jamie,
I don't know if you read my book, "How Soon Is Now", but essentially it is obvious to me that this is an initiatory threshold for humanity as a whole. To survive, we will have to shift from thinking of ourselves as "I" beings to understanding ourselves as "we" beings (interdependent). Instead of operating out of self-interest, we will have to operate, at every moment in our daily lives, out of collective interest -- care for our human species and for the local and planetary ecology. In fact, this is how truly functional indigenous communities understand themselves and how they deal with their surrounding ecology.
The result of my various psychedelic initiations described in my first books was that, for a long time, I stopped conceiving of myself as important or special, except in how I could leverage my gifts and position/connections to try to assist the greater awakening / transformation process. This led me to start a web magazine for consciousness (we published 1,000+ writers) and The Evolver Network, where we provided a template for local communities to self-organize around a new paradigm of consciousness, shamanism, local economy, permaculture, etc. I stopped my own writing career and threw everything I could into this effort to build a "movement of movements:" We were also promoting MAPS (early days), Transition Town, and other synergetic movements with our vision.
It was horribly difficult - I was also subject to so many attacks and projections, while having no financial resources. Finally I cracked under the pressure. I truly learned how trapped we are in hyper-individualism and Capitalism, always forced to fight for ourselves (even Substack is an example of this, rather than having a magazine or movement where we work with others, now we all write our own little fragmented things with no community cohesion, adding to the problem).
I believe that Capitalism and hyper-individualism will not survive this emergency, this initiatory crisis. But it is fairly clear it is going to have to go an extreme level -- it is possible, if not likely, or even inevitable that we will go extinct. This could happen faster than most might imagine (10 - 30 years ish). We should do what we can to try to find a different option from extinction, but that will require a breaking free of the Capitalist structure and repurposing tools like social networks and AI to build something like the resource-based economy that Jacques Fresco or Buckminster Fuller proposed.
These are a few excerpt from How Soon Is Now, where I tried to define a pathway beyond this current civilization and, also, explored how we could get there, using the tools we have now:
"We can think of our current civilization – its technical and socio-political infrastructure, its ideology and beliefs – as an operating system, much like the software that runs our computers. Now we need to reboot and install a new system software. ...
"The study of biological evolution – the history of life on Earth – reveals an inveterate tendency towards greater levels of cooperation, coordination and symbiosis. This idea may seem surprising at first. As part of the paradigm we inherited – the one we are now leaving behind – many thinkers and scientists placed their focus, instead, on the competitive, aggressive and destructive aspects of nature. This view of biology as a constant struggle for life meshed perfectly with the predatory economic mode of capitalism. This idea has now been superseded by a new view of life as an intricately networked phenomenon, where organisms support each other far more than they compete. ...
According to biologist Lynn Margulis, the author of Microcosmos, who developed the Gaia hypothesis with scientist James Lovelock, ‘The trip from greedy gluttony, from instant satisfaction to long-term mutualism, has been made many times in the microcosm. While destructive species may come and go, cooperation itself increases through time.’ ...
"In Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright noted that humans keep developing increasingly larger and more complex forms of social organization – from the small tribe to the city-state, from national governments today, to extra-national bodies like the United Nations and the European Union. For Wright, this suggests an eventual transition to global government. I look at this transition differently, believing that we will eventually transcend national governments by establishing a harmonic planetary orchestration, where local communities will function like the cells and organs in an efficient, self-regulating body. ...
"Over the last 60,000 years, since leaving Africa, the human species has developed language and culture, increasing in numbers, slowly at first, as we spread ourselves across the surface of the world. For most of that time, we lived as small tribes of hunter-gatherers. Around 10,000 years ago, we began growing crops, building cities and launching empires. Over the last few centuries, our species discovered steam power, electricity, coal, oil, mechanical technology and industry. We split the atom and beached on the moon.
As its science and technologies advanced, the modern West constructed a new social model based on conspicuous consumption and planned obsolescence. We exported this experimental way of life across the world. In a short span of time, because of our capacity to exploit energy from fossil fuels – one barrel of oil holds the equivalent of 23,200 hours of manpower – humans went from biospheric nonentity to the catalysts of a geological event. The crisis confronting us is the result of what might prove to be our very short-lived success as a species.
As modern society became increasingly severed from nature, our science-based culture propagated an ideology of materialism, dismissing any mystical or religious belief system as antiquated and false. We rejected the natural, the feminine and the intuitive, replacing them with the masculine ideals of order, logic and rationality. Faith in science and technology replaced religion for many people.
When we fully accept and realize that this crisis is our invitation to undergo a collective metamorphosis – to establish something much better than we have now – then we can find the will and courage to handle the distressing specifics. Deepening global crisis is going to force transformation, one way or another. The best thing we can do is seize this chance to leverage a mass awakening. "
This was so clear. For me, my shelter piece is about temperature. With several autoimmune conditions and long Covid going on 3.5 years, I’ve been sleeping with ice packs to keep body temperatures down enough at night so I can sleep. No air conditioning. But the electric grid can get iffy. It feels so vulnerable. I moved somewhere this week where it’s cooler because I can bundle to stay warm easily if power is out than overheat and die from heart [and heat] exhaustion.
I saw a series on Netflix about how things are connected and clouds forming and being lost to water cycle collapse was life changing for me. Every time I see clouds I am grateful. I can’t survive in a world without clouds. So I’m just practicing gratitude everyday for what I have now and teaching others to do the same.
Almost felt like a call to action. Then you hung me out to dry. No laughs or smiles for me on this one. Hope or dope we all gotta cope. 🌄
I like how you framed this without the "hyperobjects". Great piece.
News this morning,Israel cutting off food,water for Gaza
id shove my head in the sand but its too feckin hot
Useful perspective. Thank you.
Great stuff as usual Jamie!
Looks like you’ve got it down Jamie. Dead ringer but real life follow up to any of the Last of Us type flix. It’s showing up in real time but the folks are still snoozing.