Free At Final: Overcoming Our Dependancy to the Sinking Ship of Civilization
Once I completed studying Daniel Quinn’s 1992 novel Ishmael, I did one thing I’d by no means completed in my life and have by no means completed since. I discovered the place the creator lived, purchased an airplane ticket, and knocked on his door to inform him that his guide had modified my life. Ishmael, which acquired the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for the very best work of fiction providing optimistic options to world issues, started with these easy phrases:
Trainer Seeks Pupil.
Should have an earnest want to save lots of the world.
Apply in individual.
Once I arrived unexpectedly at his house in Austin, Texas, I used to be answering the decision. We spent the day collectively and I met his spouse, Rennie. Over time we grew to become pals. Once I wrote the guide, The Warrior’s Journey Residence: Therapeutic Males, Therapeutic the Planet, he provided these phrases.
“Jed Diamond’s homeward journey of awakening has taken him far into the mystery of being male and human—dangerous territory in an age when being male and human is practically a crime.”
Quinn wrote many different books constructing on the themes he explored in Ishmael. In Past Civilization: Humanity’s Subsequent Nice Journey, he begins with this fable.
“As soon as upon a time life developed on a sure planet, bringing forth many various social organizations—packs, pods, flocks, troops, herds, and so forth. One species whose members had been unusually clever developed a novel social group referred to as a tribe: Tribalism labored effectively for them for hundreds of thousands of years, however there got here a time after they determined to experiment with a brand new social group (referred to as civilization) that was hierarchal relatively than tribal.
Earlier than lengthy, these on the prime of the hierarchy had been residing in nice luxurious, having fun with excellent leisure and having the very best of every thing. A bigger class of individuals under them lived very effectively and had nothing to complain about. However the plenty residing on the backside of the hierarchy didn’t prefer it in any respect. They labored and lived like pack animals, struggling simply to remain alive. ‘This isn’t working,’ the plenty stated. ‘The tribal way was better. We should return to that way.’
However the ruler of the hierarchy instructed them, ‘We’ve put that primitive life behind us perpetually. We are able to’t return to it.’
‘If we can’t return,’ the plenty stated, ‘then let’s go ahead—on to one thing completely different.’
‘That can’t be completed,’ the ruler stated, ‘because nothing different is possible. Nothing can be beyond civilization. Civilization is a final, unsurpassable invention.’”
The Ship of Civilization is Sinking: My Personal Introduction to TEOTWAWKI
I first encountered TEOTWAWKI, The Finish of the World as We Know It, in an unlikely place. In 1993, I used to be attending a males’s management convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. As a part of the expertise we had been invited to take part in a conventional Native American sweat lodge ceremony. Over the past spherical of the ceremony, the warmth was so intense that many within the small sweat lodge crawled out. Although I used to be seated on the again, the very hottest a part of the sweat lodge, I didn’t really feel the warmth, however was transported to a imaginative and prescient the place I witnessed the sinking of the Ship of Civilization.
After the ceremonial sweat had ended I wrote down my expertise, although it was almost not possible to place into phrases. Right here is an excerpt I share in my forthcoming guide, Lengthy Reside Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Provide Hope to Humanity.
We’re all on an enormous ocean liner. It’s the Ship of Civilization. The whole lot that we all know and have ever recognized is on the Ship. Persons are born and die. Items and companies are created, wars are fought, and elections are held. Species come into being and face extinction. The Ship steams on and on and there’s no doubt that it’s going to proceed on its current course perpetually.
There are lots of decks on the ship beginning approach down within the boiler room the place the poorest and grimiest toil to maintain the Ship going. As you ascend the decks, issues get lighter and simpler. The individuals who run the Ship have suites on the very prime deck. Their job, as they see it, is to maintain the Ship going and maintain these on the decrease decks of their correct locations. Since they’re on the prime they’re certain that they should have the very best that the Ship has to supply.
Everybody on the decrease decks aspires to rise up to the following deck and starvation to get to the very prime. That’s the best way it’s. That’s the best way it has all the time been. That’s the best way it can all the time be.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of individuals who understand that one thing very unusual is occurring.
What they arrive to know is that the Ship of Civilization is sinking. At first, like everybody else, they’ll’t imagine it. The Ship has been afloat since time earlier than time. It’s the better of the very best. That it may sink is unthinkable.
Nonetheless, they’re certain the Ship is sinking. They attempt to warn the folks, however few imagine them. The Ship can’t be sinking and anybody who thinks so should be out of their thoughts. After they persist in attempting to warn the folks of what they’re going through, these in command of the Ship silence them and lock them up. The Ship’s media maintain grinding out information tales describing how fantastic the longer term shall be and expertise will resolve all our issues.
However because the water rises, those that have been issuing the warnings can not be silenced. Increasingly escape confinement and lead the folks in direction of the lifeboats. Although there are boats sufficient for all, most individuals refuse to go away the Ship of Civilization. “Things may look bad now, but surely they will get better soon,” they are saying to one another.
Those that do depart get into their particular person lifeboats and row away from the Ship, every in their very own route. However they keep related with the opposite boats and ultimately create a distinct form of world than the one they left. They’re guided to a brand new future, primarily based on outdated methods of partnership primarily based on our two-million-year historical past of indigenous knowledge. They proceed their battle to maintain the outdated methods alive whereas the Ship of Civilization continues to be reclaimed by the huge ocean.
Overcoming Our Dependancy to Civilization
In an article, “Transformations: The End of the U.S. and the World as We Know It and The Truth About Our Collective Future,” I stated,
“What we call ‘Civilization’ is a misnomer. Its proper name is the ‘Dominator culture.’ As long as we believe the myth that civilization is the best humans can aspire to achieve, we are doomed to go down with the Ship.”
In The Chalice & the Blade: Our Historical past Our Future first printed in 1987 and her most up-to-date guide, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Form Our Brains, Lives, and Future, written with anthropologist, Douglas P. Fry, internationally acclaimed scholar and futurist, Riane Eisler first launched us to the unique Partnership System and the more moderen Dominator System.
Historian of religions, Thomas Berry, spoke eloquently about our current predicament.
“We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth, each telling their own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”
William R. Catton, Jr., whose guide, Overshoot: The Ecological Foundation of Revolutionary Change, was praised by indigenous author and advocate, Vine Deloria, Jr. as “one of the most important books I have read in my lifetime.” When the guide was printed in 1980 Catton courageously described the truth of our current scenario, saying,
“In a future that is as unavoidable as it will be unwelcome, survival and sanity may depend upon our ability to cherish rather than to disparage the concept of human dignity.”
Free At Final: Becoming a member of the Restoration Motion and Accepting Hardship because the Pathway to Peace
I met social activist, Chellis Glendinning, at an habit restoration convention in 1993 the place we had been each talking. She started her speak saying,
“My name is Chellis. I’m in recovery from western civilization.”
She obtained amusing, however she was useless severe. Later she wrote the guide, My Identify is Chellis & I’m in Restoration from Western Civilization. Within the Preface she says,
“I repeat what I said every time I speak at a recovery conference, psychological seminar, or political gathering about what is fast becoming the screaming link between pervasive personal dysfunction and the ecological crisis.”
One other social activist buddy is Michael Dowd. I met him following the publication of his guide, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Faith Will Remodel Your Life and Our World. In a latest speak, “Serenity Prayer for the 21st Century: Love in Action” he begins by sharing the Serenity Prayer that’s provided at most 12-Step restoration conferences resembling Alcoholics Nameless and was initially penned by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Dowd goes on so as to add the road from the unique prayer that most individuals have by no means heard.
“Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.”
Like William Catton, Jr., Daniel Quinn, Riane Eisler, Thomas Berry, and plenty of others, Michael Dowd gives a imaginative and prescient for a greater future. He sees the Serenity Prayer, as path to the longer term with three guiding rules:
Trusting the realities of our current scenario that we don’t like or need. This consists of accepting the inevitable ache, struggling, and lack of life because the Ship of Civilization sinks. It additionally consists of accepting the sentiments of worry, denial, and grief that accompany that actuality.
After we settle for the issues that can’t change, we additionally transfer in direction of the serenity that’s the basis for appearing with braveness to deal with the issues that we are able to do to help those that undergo.
“It allows us to take bold action in support of all that is regenerative, redemptive, life-giving, pro-nature, community building,”
says Dowd. And we take motion to withstand no matter is anti-future, anti-nature, anti-community.
Knowledge includes accepting ourselves, our world, our lives, and the gorgeous world that also exists, as we grieve what has been misplaced. We do what we are able to to dwell day by day with loving kindness. Elizabeth Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, creator of On Dying and Dying, reminds us that “Each of us are like snowflakes, absolutely beautiful and unique, and here for a very short time.”
For individuals who are prepared to simply accept hardship as a pathway to peace, you aren’t alone. One other buddy and colleague, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, wrote an essay, “We Were Meant for These Times.” She says, partially,
“My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary, people.”
She goes on to say,
“You are right in your assessments. The bluster and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times.”
Once I develop into discouraged or overlook the optimistic facets of my imaginative and prescient that included the lifeboats, I bear in mind these hopeful phrases from Clarissa.
“I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.”
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