I had nearly forgotten about Chris Hedges, the extraordinarily passionate and articulate author whom I first came across during the Occupy movement. Can you believe? That was in 2011? And it’s now eleven years later?
Much has happened since that time to my own mind. Back then I was still a leftist, but now I’m very decidedly not. Over these years I have watched the left contort itself further and further from common-sense only to end up completely crazy.
Four years after Occupy, Donald Trump rode down the elevator. That was in 2015. I did not vote him. I couldn’t imagine anyone voting for Trump. But at that point I was way beyond voting for HIllary, and ended up throwing my vote away on Jill Stein.
Then Donald Trump got to work. Or he tried to, inside an unrelenting maelstrom of vitriol directed against him. One thing he wanted to do was throw Hillary in jail. Check! Another thing he wanted to do was go after child trafficking. Check! Plus stop all wars and bring the troops home! Check! This latter he actually managed to do, in the sense that he was the only American president in 40 years to not start a new war. If there’s nothing he else he did that was of value, there was that.
At some point, I reversed my opinion on Donald Trump and began to cheer him on, despite his bloviating personality which, of course, put me off as much as it does anyone who holds even a modicum of modesty.
On the other hand, I was also fully aware, that without that massive ego, he could not have stopped the attacks before they got to him, got inside him. Instead, he kept deflecting them off the surface of his portly self, and increasingly, turned the attacks into boomerangs. As we witness now with both January 6, and the Trump MAL raid.
Why did I start this post with that introduction? Because I wanted to give context to what I’m going to say next, and that is that Trump did end up at least pointing in the right direction, which is yes, as he put it, to drain the swamp.
But, as anyone who thinks about these matters now knows, the cancerous, murderous swamp has embedded itself within, infiltrated the interstices of all governmental institutions. So much so that it does indeed feel like we are standing the edge of a “precipice,” with our nation’s survival very much at stake.
Enter Chris Hedges, a chronic doomer, who’s utterly positive that not only will our nation, and therefore the entire global civilization, collapse, but that it will “probably” be the very last time this happens. Why? Because, he says, there’s no more pristine land to migrate to. That the whole globe is full up, and sullied fatally, with us, the human species, once again, gone wrong, gone off.
We Are Not the First Civilization to Collapse,
but We Will Probably be the Last
Note the assumptions he makes in this post: 1) that climate warming is real, the wave of the future (wait a minute. What about its opposite, global cooling? Or for that matter, what about a climate that is always changing? Do you really be-LIE-ve any so-called data put out by “experts” with an agenda?); 2) that the globe is already overpopulated (the opposite assumption can and has been made), and that most crucially, the reason “We Will Probably Be the Last” is because there’s no more pristine land to migrate to.
I’ve been posting a number of times lately, on the dire straits that we do appear to be in during this first ever Pluto Return to its natal degree in the U.S. chart. But with this post, my ire has been aroused. Is this just because I’ve been attacked by wasps, twice, in the last two weeks, and have transmogrified into a waspish character? Possibly. Or perhaps the wasps had my back, in the sense that their fierce stings aroused me to a new level of activism.
Because, I think Chris Hedges is absolutely wrong. That though civilization is, once again, collapsing yes, it will not be for the last time, meaning that humanity is utterly doomed, but that this collapse can, will, and actually IS catalyzing rebirth, a boon. A rebirth in place. Right where we live. No need to migrate elsewhere. All we need do is change our perceptions to the point where we recognize that no matter what the built environment looks like now, we can likely repurpose it to encourage, embrace, nourish new life.
For example, take the place I landed in right before my husband Jeff died, a boring suburban house in the middle of Bloomington Indiana. That was in 2004. Since that time, working with others, I have been blessed with the energy to transform this living space into a tiny paradise, now called Green Acres Permaculture Village.
How do we begin to initiate this kind of fundamental change right where we live? Via permaculture. No matter where we are located, whether it’s on a farm outside town, or in a townhouse surrounded by other townhouses, or in a homeless encampment, or in a suburban wasteland, or a downtown apartment, we can take a look around us, and recognize that we are all in this together, that we are all human beings, who gain sustenance through our interactions with each other, and with the living earth, despite how mind control conditioning has attempted to deform us. We are each, underneath, in our heart of hearts, a sovereign soul, at one with all. We are thoroughly flawed human beings, who have been born into this material planet to make choices, continuously, between good and evil, the right road and the wrong road, selfless or selfless. As such we are each both individual, having made our own unique mistakes, and now sufficiently chastized, we realize that we are meant to work together, in common, collaborating, cooperating with each other to ignite the new world from the ashes of the old.
Meanwhile, here are three interesting takes on how to navigate this strange liminal time when collapse is occurring, and we know it, but it hasn’t quite buried us yet. (Nor does it need to; see above.) Instead, we can look up, and see bombs falling; we can look down and feel the earth trembling beneath our feet; we can look around and see lost souls jabbing themselves with poisons of all kinds; we can breathe in all this, and still live. Not only live, but thrive. It’s a project, you see. and we all signed up for it, or we wouldn’t have been born.
First, Jon Rappoport praises Catherine Austin Fitt’s emphasis on decentralization. Very important. Change the world here, now, where you live. What you actually have control over.
Catherine Austin Fitts, Solari, and decentralization of power
Next, Caitlin Johnstone, who, believe it or not, has hope, despite the madness. And what is that hope? “Expansion of Consciousness.” Yes. Agreed. Notice, when you’re about to start a fight, or when you’re about to light that next cigarette. Notice yourself doing what you do, to the point where a space opens between the small you that acts out of habit and fear and the larger strict, but forgiving awareness. This awareness, this detached witness to your experience, has your back, even when you don’t yet know it.
The Human Race Is Acting Like a Self-Destructive Individual
And finally, Martin Geddes, who offers welcome words of advice in navigating the accelerating turbulence without going crazy yourself. Just do what is yours to do. Pay attention to your own day, to the details of your day. Don’t bother thinking you can change anybody else. You can’t. But what you can do is become more and more present to your own life, to its beauty, and grace, inside the maelstrom.
Geddes video message
And just remember who you really are, okay?
