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After I completed studying Daniel Quinn’s 1992 novel Ishmael, I did one thing I’d by no means achieved in my life and have by no means achieved since. I came upon the place the writer lived, purchased an airplane ticket, and knocked on his door to inform him that his e book had modified my life. Ishmael, which obtained the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for one of the best work of fiction providing constructive options to international issues, started with these easy phrases:
Instructor Seeks Pupil.
Should have an earnest need to avoid wasting the world.
Apply in individual.
After I arrived unexpectedly at his dwelling in Austin, Texas, I used to be answering the decision. We spent the day collectively and I met his spouse, Rennie. Through the years we grew to become buddies. After I wrote the e book, The Warrior’s Journey Residence: Therapeutic Males, Therapeutic the Planet, he supplied these phrases.
“Jed Diamond’s homeward journey of awakening has taken him far into the thriller of being male and human—harmful territory in an age when being male and human is virtually against the law.”
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 alternative social organizations—packs, pods, flocks, troops, herds, and so forth. One species whose members have been unusually clever developed a novel social group referred to as a tribe: Tribalism labored nicely for them for hundreds of thousands of years, however there got here a time once they determined to experiment with a brand new social group (referred to as civilization) that was hierarchal fairly than tribal.
Earlier than lengthy, these on the prime of the hierarchy have been residing in nice luxurious, having fun with excellent leisure and having one of the best of every thing. A bigger class of individuals under them lived very nicely and had nothing to complain about. However the lots 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 lots mentioned. ‘The tribal manner was higher. We should always return to that manner.’
However the ruler of the hierarchy informed them, ‘We’ve put that primitive life behind us perpetually. We are able to’t return to it.’
‘If we are able to’t return,’ the lots mentioned, ‘then let’s go ahead—on to one thing totally different.’
‘That may’t be achieved,’ the ruler mentioned, ‘as a result of nothing totally different is feasible. Nothing will be past civilization. Civilization is a ultimate, 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 have 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 unattainable to place into phrases. Right here is an excerpt I share in my forthcoming e book, Lengthy Dwell Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Supply 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 providers 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’ll proceed on its current course perpetually.
There are numerous decks on the ship beginning manner 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 one of the best that the Ship has to supply.
Everybody on the decrease decks aspires to stand up to the subsequent 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 number of individuals who notice that one thing very unusual is going on.
What they arrive to know is that the Ship of Civilization is sinking. At first, like everybody else, they will’t consider it. The Ship has been afloat since time earlier than time. It’s the better of one of the best. That it may sink is unthinkable.
Nonetheless, they’re certain the Ship is sinking. They try to warn the folks, however few consider them. The Ship can’t be sinking and anybody who thinks so have to be out of their thoughts. Once they persist in attempting to warn the folks of what they’re dealing with, these accountable for the Ship silence them and lock them up. The Ship’s media maintain grinding out information tales describing how great the long run might be and know-how will remedy all our issues.
However because the water rises, those that have been issuing the warnings can now not be silenced. Increasingly more escape confinement and lead the folks in the direction of the lifeboats. Although there are boats sufficient for all, most individuals refuse to go away the Ship of Civilization. “Issues could look dangerous now, however certainly they are going to get higher quickly,” 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 course. However they keep related with the opposite boats and finally create a unique sort of world than the one they left. They’re guided to a brand new future, based mostly on outdated methods of partnership based mostly on our two-million-year historical past of indigenous knowledge. They proceed their struggle 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 Finish of the U.S. and the World as We Know It and The Reality About Our Collective Future,” I mentioned,
“What we name ‘Civilization’ is a misnomer. Its correct identify is the ‘Dominator tradition.’ So long as we consider the parable that civilization is one of the best people can aspire to attain, we’re doomed to go down with the Ship.”
In The Chalice & the Blade: Our Historical past Our Future first revealed in 1987 and her most up-to-date e book, 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 by no means knew sufficient. Nor have been we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins within the nice household of the earth. Nor may we take heed to the assorted creatures of the earth, every telling their very own story. The time has now come, nevertheless, once we will hear or we’ll die.”
William R. Catton, Jr., whose e book, Overshoot: The Ecological Foundation of Revolutionary Change, was praised by indigenous author and advocate, Vine Deloria, Jr. as “probably the most necessary books I’ve learn in my lifetime.” When the e book was revealed in 1980 Catton courageously described the fact of our current state of affairs, saying,
“In a future that’s as unavoidable as will probably be unwelcome, survival and sanity could rely upon our skill to cherish fairly than to disparage the idea 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 dependancy restoration convention in 1993 the place we have been each talking. She started her discuss saying,
“My identify is Chellis. I’m in restoration from western civilization.”
She received fun, however she was useless critical. Later she wrote the e book, My Identify is Chellis & I’m in Restoration from Western Civilization. Within the Preface she says,
“I repeat what I mentioned each time I converse at a restoration convention, psychological seminar, or political gathering about what’s quick turning into the screaming hyperlink between pervasive private dysfunction and the ecological disaster.”
One other social activist buddy is Michael Dowd. I met him following the publication of his e book, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Faith Will Rework Your Life and Our World. In a latest discuss, “Serenity Prayer for the 21st Century: Love in Motion” he begins by sharing the Serenity Prayer that’s supplied at most 12-Step restoration conferences equivalent to Alcoholics Nameless and was initially penned by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian.
“God, grant me the serenity to simply accept the issues I can’t change, braveness to alter the issues I can, and the knowledge to know the distinction.”
Dowd goes on so as to add the road from the unique prayer that most individuals have by no means heard.
“Dwelling someday at a time, having fun with one second at a time, accepting hardship because the pathway to peace.”
Like William Catton, Jr., Daniel Quinn, Riane Eisler, Thomas Berry, and lots of others, Michael Dowd affords a imaginative and prescient for a greater future. He sees the Serenity Prayer, as path to the long run with three guiding ideas:
Trusting the realities of our current state of affairs that we don’t like or need. This contains accepting the inevitable ache, struggling, and lack of life because the Ship of Civilization sinks. It additionally contains accepting the emotions of worry, denial, and grief that accompany that actuality.
After we settle for the issues that can’t change, we additionally transfer in the direction of the serenity that’s the basis for performing with braveness to handle the issues that we are able to do to help those that endure.
“It permits us to take daring motion in help of all that’s regenerative, redemptive, life-giving, pro-nature, neighborhood constructing,”
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 attractive world that also exists, as we grieve what has been misplaced. We do what we are able to to dwell each day with loving kindness. Elizabeth Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, writer of On Demise and Dying, reminds us that “Every of us are like snowflakes, completely lovely and distinctive, and right here for a really brief 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 Have been Meant for These Instances.” She says, partly,
“My buddies, don’t lose coronary heart. We have been made for these occasions. I’ve heard from so many not too long ago who’re deeply and correctly bewildered. They’re involved in regards to the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of just about day by day astonishment and sometimes righteous rage over the most recent degradations of what issues most to civilized, visionary, folks.”
She goes on to say,
“You might be proper in your assessments. The bluster and hubris some have aspired to whereas endorsing acts so heinous in opposition to kids, elders, on a regular basis folks, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. But, I urge you, ask you, mild you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these troublesome occasions.”
After I change into discouraged or neglect the constructive elements of my imaginative and prescient that included the lifeboats, I bear in mind these hopeful phrases from Clarissa.
“I grew up on the Nice Lakes and acknowledge a seaworthy vessel once I see one. Relating to woke up souls, there have by no means been extra ready vessels within the waters than there are proper now the world over. And they’re totally provisioned and capable of sign each other as by no means earlier than within the historical past of humankind.”
If you happen to recognize this text and want to learn extra, please go to me at www.MenAlive.com. I write articles on well being and wellbeing of people, {couples}, and communities. You may get our free publication and learn extra right here.
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