conscient podcast

a calm presence - a sense of communion

Episode Notes

This bonus episode is a narration of my a calm presence posting called 'a sense of communion'. See the 'Transcript' tab of this episode for the original text.

Episode Transcription

Life After Doom explores :

the challenges of living well in a world facing climate breakdown, civilizational collapse, and other existential crises. It encourages readers to find wisdom, courage, and resilience by examining the complexities of hope and grief, and by developing new ways of thinking, becoming, and belonging.

McLaren, a US based pastor, identifies four possible futures or scenarios for humanity which are typically represented in dystopian fiction:

Collapse Avoidance : where the modern world unites to stabilize ecological degradation and delays collapse
Collapse Rebirth : a gradual decline where survivors rebuild communities and economies in new and sustainable ways
Collapse Survival : a miserable and desperate existence for the unfortunate who survive)
Collapse Extinction : where no humans survive but some more-than-humans might

I think McLaren gets our four scenarios right, and I like to keep in mind that there might be some variations in between those scenarios.

Life After Doom has been a tipping point in my life. As I read the book I came to this realization.

For the last few years - those who have been following my work on conscientpodcast and this a calm presence Substack - I’ve been worrying, and proselytizing, about the ‘end of the world as we know it’ (based on fact) while speculating about the role of art within this.

While one this journey, I've sometimes been drawn into doomism and fatalism.

Life After Doom helped me understand and accept was that civilization collapse is not only natural but inevitable and necessary.

In other words, what goes up must come down.

Here’s another excerpt from the book:

Standing on the brink of oblivion (to use Ernst Becker’s phrase) we feel arising within us this sustained declaration: We will live as beautifully, bravely, and kindly as we can, as long as we can, no matter how ugly, scary, and mean the world becomes, even if failure and death seem inevitable.

This statement resonates with me.

I felt my doomist and fatalist anxieties melt into the ground as I worked my way through the four parts of the book:

Letting Go : A Path of Descent
Letting Be : A Place of Insight
Letting Come : A Path of Resilience
Setting Free : A Path of Agile Engagement

I was also affected by the six appendices in the book including ‘best resources on our predicament’ and ‘a short list of biases’.

As I listened to McLaren narrate Life After Doom I thought back to my conversation with Stephen Huddart in conscient podcast e213 - so much to do:

[00:07:30 - 00:08:40] Stephen Huddart
One of the most useful ways that I found to think about where we are in the world and what's happening in the world now originates in the work of the resilience scholars and the use of the panarchy cycle, which describes transformations in natural and human systems. And it does a nice job of situating humanity in the same sort of cyclical dynamic of renewal and growth and creative destruction and so on. So it's a metaphor that I've used a lot in thinking about where are we now and what do we do about this? I think it's one of those devices for thinking and regarding humanity and nature and the states of transformation otherwise.
[00:08:42 - 00:08:45] Claude Schryer
And we're clearly in the destructive cycle.
[00:08:45 - 00:09:06] Stephen Huddart
Yeah, the so-called back loop where resources, the forest fire is the natural metaphor, but it's playing out with our institutions, with levels of civic trust in many ways.
When William Gibson said the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed. There are so many places where new possibilities, new relationships and new experiments and demonstrations are alive and thriving. They're not always well connected and they're not always well resourced. But we have the intellectual, the financial, the technological, and one would hope, the human and spiritual resources with which to affect a beautiful transition. Why aren't we doing it? Well, this is not easy stuff to do. And yet if we take seriously our commitment to the life systems, to the planet of which we are stewards and to the well-being of future generations of human and non-human beings on this planet, we actually do… It's a very compelling call to action. And I'm happy to say there are aspects of this in evidence and some very, very intelligent, committed, energetic people working on these things.

Not easy.

Not easy at all, with so much to do.

I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to those brave ‘intelligent, committed, energetic people’ who work day and night on our behalf to avoid collapse while developing collapse rebirth strategies and contingencies.

I’m also grateful to Stephen, who goes on to talk about the role of art:

I think we need the arts to bring perspective, to penetrate shibboleths and sacred cows and things that we don't think can be challenged. The arts have done this many times in history and we need them more than ever. They also enable us to celebrate and to feel a sense of communion in all of this.

I feel uplifted by his sense of communion.

Thank you artists. Thank you activists. Thank you system changers.

So… Is there life after doom?

I invite you to read (or listen) to Life after Doom to find out.

Perhaps you already know?

Here’s a final quote from the book:

I do not know for certain whether our current doom trajectory can be changed with courage, or if it should be accepted with serenity. I do not yet have that wisdom. The only thing I know is that I want to set a moral course for myself, without judging others if they take another course. So then the question becomes personal : what is mine to do?

What is mine to do?

I’d be curious to know what yours is?

My answer, for now, is to search for a balance point between courage and serenity while moving towards emptiness.

Those three words keep me going these days : courage, serenity, emptiness.

I’m reminded what dharma teacher Catherine Ingram told me when I launched a calm presence :

Yes, there’s a point in going on. It is to be here for others who are not as strong or clear as you and who will be frightened and in need of a calm presence. But that’s about it.

And that’s about it for me, for now.

Thanks for reading (or listening).

If you think this posting can be of help to others, I invite you to share it.

If you would like to share some of your own thoughts please post a comment or write to me claude@conscient.ca