Guest blog by Palden Jenkins
Alan Heeks writes: Palden is an old friend, who plays a Merlin-like role in my life, popping up periodically with cryptic insights. He’s a deep thinker out of the box, a seer and astrologer, who usually offers a radically different point of view. If you’d like a further-out, interplanetary view of Earth’s current crisis, see this blog on a book Palden edited.
Re: the climate crisis, here’s a thought. The current concern is based on a projection, according to current knowledge and belief, of what will happen in the future. Then there is what will actually happen in the future. In my experience as a forecaster, future predictions, especially about timing, are highly unreliable. For a variety of reasons, but one of them is that, as the future unfolds, we discover more about the whole situation that we didn’t know before. Also, since humanity has left this question for fifty years, there’s a lot of underlying fear and guilt coming up right now, and this distorts perceptions. Owing to the vagaries of political operation and persuasion, issues are narrowed down to specific selling points, such as CO2, and in order to get the point across a certain doomsday optic is generated.
Personally, I think there are four major causes of climate change that need looking into, accounting for roughly 25% each of the problem. One is CO2, one is electromagnetic and nuclear radiation (a blind spot in the scientific worldview). The third is land use changes, urbanisation and general pollution and agro-forestry practices. The fourth is the psychic dissonance of humanity as a whole (8 billion hurt, damaged, fearful people in competition with each other). The latter is a key issue. If humanity achieves a certain underlying psychic resonance of purpose and mindset (‘together in the same boat’), then things change, like bigtime – the whole context and range of possibilities changes, and what was impossible becomes possible, even easy. To explore this further, try the book Humankind by Rutger Bregman, published by Bloomsbury. He shows how groupthink beliefs, particularly of threat and distrust, cloud society and politics today.
But the bottom line is this: it’s a matter of faith. Do you believe humanity will get through it, or not? This is an emotional and in the end spiritual matter, and it is not resolved with scientific evidence, fear, public opinion, media coverage or groupthink. It’s resolved in your heart, and probably up a mountain next to a tinkling stream! I do believe, deep down, that humanity will make it, and make it good. Despite groupthink to the contrary, I believe the war will end – humanity’s war against everything and itself. But there’s a big question about the amount of pain and damage that needs to happen first.
Also, while current climate and other prognoses hold true for now, and in the context of what we currently believe, I do not believe that the forecasts are correct. I’m not complacent on this, and this is serious, but I think things will happen differently – and we need now to incorporate other, more serious issues into the calculus. And also, here’s the big one, for me: magic happens. We live in times of choice. As Bernie Segal put it, 40ish years ago, we’re faced with a fear choice or a growth choice. Then it was personal, now it’s going global. And, given that so many people are religious and spiritually awakening, do we really believe in ‘God’, in a power greater than us with its own plan and logic, or do we not? Are we truly on our own and lost in the slough of our self-created despond? This is indeed a battle for the hearts and minds of humanity. But there’s a rub: there is actually no choice or option.