“Its meaning is translated by Brewer in the forms “When I am dead the deluge may come for aught I care”, and “Ruin, if you like, when we are dead and gone.”[4]”
That’s a good summary and is key to understanding the backlash against President Carter’s fact based downer, and Ronald Reagans limitless growth magical thinking, which ignored all the damage and destruction our amazing growth and riches required.
Oh, and so you understanding me, the way I see things, we have entered a free fall period. From my perspective, it’s too late for decisive actions to confront the disastrous future we have been creating for ourselves.
That window of opportunity to intelligently confronting the damages our progress was inflicting upon Earth Systems was big in the '60s and '70s, when relatively minor adjustments to our unrealistic expectations, a little better appreciation (which is one step beyond understanding the reasons for something - to absorbing the lesson into the fiber of your being and awareness. ), a little more fear of corporations endlessly merging into too big for their britches destructive behemoths, too big to die monopolies capable of undermining governments.
A little willingness to confront biology’s natural human impulse of always wanting more.
Perhaps it was still manageable, with some will and commitment, into the new millennia. But, rapidly shrinking, the loss (stolen election actually) of Gore, and the rise of the Tea Party MAGA, pretty near hammered the last nails into that coffin. So here we are, our distant future is gone and our near future promises little but increasing hardships at every level.
But the thing is, it’s not going to be like the Hollywood movies that have created our understanding of end of world catastrophes. This is a creeping thing. Today we are in the era of Extreme Climate Roulette and waiting for the next Black Swan events.
Like drops of acid, here and there, then slowly coalescing into pools that overrun all that’s in the way. Meaning humanity still has a long, if difficult future ahead of it. At some point the global networks will unravel but life will continue, after some most unpleasant adjustments, with the survivors becoming isolated within distinct climate niche, where survivability is still possible.
The survivors will do what they always do, bury the dead, clean up, get some sleep, and carry on within their new reality best they can.
This what where my personal efforts are focused on these days. Helping folks get a more realistic, better sense of self and our kinship with Earth.
An awareness that becomes understanding, and then deep down appreciation, that we are filaments in the Pageant of Creation. That today matters, because it is today and that in the end each of us only has our own life to live in the here-and-now and then we die, so we may as well do the best we can with it, even when death is inevitable.
After all, your death was always inevitable anyways.
The biggest challenge will be how to keep living our lives, even as we know our life sustaining Earth, as humanity has always known her, is forever gone. Leaving the isolated survivors within their lucky habitable zones with ever new challenges nearly as radical as landing on an alien planet.
For course, the way we keep pouring on the fuel, Earth may overshoot that and take it back down to life’s most basic survivors. After all ocean acidification can turn even uglier than a warming climate, as Earth’s geologic history documents.
For me, it’s about getting right with our minds. It’s about appreciating how much we are a part of Earth’s systems. Not about saving society. After all, some of us gave it our best shot, but it was never enough. And that’s simply what it is.
