Don’t Look Up or You will see the Truth

“Not everything needs to sound so goddamn clever or charming or likeable all the time. Sometimes we need to just be able to say things to one another. We need to hear things.” –Dr. Randall Mindy, Don’t Look Up movie

Have you watched the new climate disaster comedy film Don’t Look Up? I just saw it for the first time, and want to explain why I think you, and as many people as possible, ought to watch this exceptional movie. First of all, the film’s director, Adam McKay, wanted to make this film a comedy, instead of the usual climate disaster -horror films that are produced. The premise of the plot is that Professor Randall Mindy and his PhD student, Kate Dibiasky, discover a large comet which is almost certain to hit the earth in about six months, basically wiping out most life including humanity. They go to Washington D.C. and tell this news to the woman president (played by Meryl Streep), who along with her lacky son, is unimpressed, being much more concerned with the latest scandal her administration is dealing with. The rest of the film revolves around Dr. Mindy and Kate going through all the stages of grief, shock and finally acceptance of the comet’s approach, while continuing to attempt to warn  everyone about what is coming. 

This movie has a lot of social commentary woven through it, which makes it wickedly funny and also holds up a mirror to where human society is at in 2022. I think the film does a great job at showing our current political idiocy, highly controlled media scenarios (including a wicked personality played by Cate Blanchett), and even a character who seems to be a spin off of Bill Gates-Jeff Bezos insane multibillionaire. There’s also an appearance by Ariana Grande, who plays a weirdly comical version of herself as a mega superstar singer. If you pay close attention while watching it, you are sure to find all the archetypes of our time somewhere in the two hours plus that the movie runs.

Dr. Mindy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, represents the Everyday Scientist who realizes that humanity is about to be destroyed, and when he and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) attempt to warn the people of Earth, are met with such disregard and disrespect that it’s darkly funny as well as tragically sad. Here is a clip from one of the best scenes in the movie, a heart wrenching monologue by Dr. Mindy.

Dear Readers, we know that the best films are the ones that show us to ourselves in the most accessible way for the most people to understand. I recommend Don’t Look Up as one of those films. As the new year of 2022 gets underway, the Earth changes and extreme climate events continue. While our supposed leaders spend their time navel gazing and concerned with their own political power and wealth, our world is spinning closer and closer to catastrophe on a scale no one alive has ever experienced. Don’t Look Up is based on real science by astronomers who spend years working out climate models and predictions for the foreseeable future. The years we’re living through are exhausting us all, and by now we’ve seen so many climate disaster films that we are at saturation level. The humor and spot-on characterizations in this movie help to be able to stomach watching Dr. Mindy and Kate as they shout out their warnings in vain.

I hope you will take the time to watch Don’t Look Up, and allow its message to percolate within your heart and mind. It’s still not too late for humanity as a whole to come together to change our trajectory towards extinction. As the movie depicts, it will certainly be a messy ride.

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World Savers and New Earth Bringers

There is an ancient story from Jewish mysticism that tells of “36 humble righteous ones” known as the Lamedvavnik (Yiddish: לאַמעדוואָווניק‎). The story says that at any given moment on Earth there are, at a minimum, 36 holy souls who are (without being conscious of it), holding up the world and preventing it from total destruction. For the sake of these 36 hidden saints, God preserves the world even if the rest of humanity has degenerated to the level of total barbarism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadikim_Nistarim

In more recent times, many authors have woven this folklore into their own modern stories of humans wrestling with forces of darkness. There are those who have written of the numerological aspects of the number 36, fascinating in its own granular way. But I prefer to infer a larger meaning of the idea of a relative handful of souls who incarnate on Earth with the express purpose of keeping it aloft and intact. We all know of people in our lives and communities who seem to have a little extra goodness, patience, and compassion than most. They are the ones who offer a smile, a hand, a joke, or perhaps even a hug when life feels unbearable. Humanity has always experienced difficult days, periods of duress and suffering. Fortunately, the Lamedvavnik have always been there to help us push on through.

image via https://www.meaningfullife.com/kabbalah-inner-journey/

I just spent the past month reading The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It falls in the genre of Cli-Fi, and “hard science fiction” because Robinson did extensive research into both the very real and dire circumstances humanity is in related to climate disaster, as well as the many solutions being developed by scientists of all stripes across the globe. The result is a sweeping work of the imagination that offers a frighteningly possible world in the coming few decades.

This book took me a while to plow through because it is 563 pages and I’m not a fast reader. It is not a perfect book. After a shocking start and couple hundred pages of fascinating story, somewhere midway through comes a high point (not exactly a climax), after which the story tips dangerously into utopian fiction. I found I had trouble withholding disbelief from that point on, given the enormous scope of this work. However, it is definitely worth the time to read this expansive story of climate catastrophe and the What-If scenarios that Robinson eloquently devises in response.

There are a few main characters in this novel. One is Frank May, whose story of inconceivable trauma is the lynchpin upon which the rest of the story revolves. As he strives to deal with his PTSD life, his thoughts wander.

He pondered what he might do. One person had one-eight-billionth of the power that humanity had. One eight-billionth wasn’t a very big fraction, but then again there were poisons that worked in the parts-per-billion range, so it wasn’t entirely unprecedented for such a small agent to change things. (Robinson, pg. 65)

Frank is caught between his inherent desire to help, to be of service to humanity, and the intensity of the world’s horror. Robinson writes,

He could feel it burning him up: he wanted to kill. Well, he wanted to punish. People had caused the heat wave, and not all people…there were particular people, many still alive, who had worked all their lives to deny climate change, to keep burning carbon, to keep wrecking biomes, to keep driving other species extinct. That evil work had been their lives’ project, and while pursuing that project they had prospered and lived in luxury. They wrecked the world happily, thinking they were supermen, laughing at the weak, crushing them underfoot. (Robinson, pgs. 65-66)

The Ministry for the Future is a sweeping, long look at how climate catastrophe might unfold, while also the personal story of a small group of humans who, like the Lamedvavnik, work to alleviate the worst consequences, to turn the massive ship that is Climate Catastrophe from completely wrecking the planet, the animals, and the people of Earth. It is a story that is at once terrifying, fascinating, and idealistically possible, although admittedly a long shot. But clearly that is what Robinson was going for; offering a possible future for all of us where our planet does come back from the brink, where the majority of humans do wake up in time, and we are able to create a healthier future world for all life. Idealistic? Absolutely. And yet, reading this novel helped me to better imagine how it could all unfold in the coming decades. How we might still survive these extraordinarily painful times. How it cannot possibly be all sunshine and unicorns one fine day. I am not one to go in for dystopian future worldviews, because those scenarios paint such a bleak picture of Earth’s future that there is no hope in them. The future of Earth and of humanity are utterly intertwined. There are many Lamedvavnik, or world-savers, now alive on the planet. More are coming every day. It is an All-Hands-On-Deck moment for humanity. Will we wake up in time? Will we collectively do what must be done in order to move forward into the Light? To realize that the reality is we are all One Body, billions of grains of sand in the ocean of the Godhead, fractalized into uncountable bits?

Dear Readers, I wish you a blessed Winter Solstice and Holy Days of Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the Peace of the Void. Embrace the Light, Shine the Light, Be the Light.

References:

Robinson, K. S. (2020). The Ministry for the Future. New York, NY. Orbit. Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Wikipedia (2021). Tzadikim Nistarim.

System Breakdown

It has been a long time since I wrote on this blog. I’ve spent many hours dealing with my despair and conflicting emotions about the catastrophic state of our world. Back in May, when the weather where I live (Denver, Colorado) was sweet and fragrant with blossoms, I already felt trepidation about the coming summer. Every summer since I’ve lived here (from 2014 on), the summers have become increasingly more extreme. This is true for most places around the world—more heat, more extreme hurricanes, floods, drought, and wildfires.

What will our collective future be like?

The Earth/Gaia is clearly going through a cleansing and purging process. Humanity has for eons polluted, abused and taken from her in every way possible. And now she (for Earth/Gaia is indeed a living being, just as we are) is using all means at her disposal (all the elementals) to restore her body and become whole again. The outcomes of this process are all the extreme weather events humanity is experiencing, and will continue to endure into the foreseeable future.

For a moment, I still believed that the worst of climate changes could be avoided. Back when the Paris Climate treaty was signed, nearly six years ago, for a glimmering moment it looked like humanity was finally waking up. World leaders understood the real dangers we faced, and they made a big show to acknowledge them and committed money, time, and resources toward reversing the damage we’d caused over the past several decades of fossil fuel burning.

Every summer into late autumn has proved more devastating than the last. The past several years have been the hottest ever recorded on Earth. The poles are melting at rates much faster than climate scientists believed possible. Siberian forests in the coldest regions of Earth have become infernos each summer. Records continue to be broken for all the extremes, all around the planet. As it turns out, the world leaders who signed the Paris Climate agreement didn’t really mean what they said, what they wrote, nor what they agreed to do. The machine of fossil fuel use continues on and we continue to abuse our planet’s air, water, land, oceans, and resources.

Two years ago on this blog, I posted some articles written by Jem Bendell. He wrote a research paper about the impending collapse of systems due to all the factors I’ve named here. At the time, I was horrified and appalled, and yet I also could understand why he made the assertion that our world would soon experience breakdown. Two years later, Bendell’s predictions are beginning to become our reality. Everywhere one looks, there is system breakdown.

We gather and rebel not with a vision of a fairy-tale future where we have fixed the climate, but because it is right to do what we can. To slow the change. To reduce the harm. To save what we can. To invite us back to sanity and love. The truth is we are scared and we are brave enough to say so. The truth is we are grieving and we are proud enough to say so. The truth is we are traumatised and we are open enough to say so. We are angry and we are calm enough to say so and invite others to join us.” (Jem Bendell’s Opening speech of the international rebellion of Extinction Rebellion in Oxford Circus on April 15th 2019).

It is excruciating to look at the world now. I think that’s why so many people refuse to see what is obviously before them. Denial of our common situation is sadly ubiquitous among many millions of souls.  Brave scientists, authors, thinkers, journalists, and even some awake politicians have been sounding the clarion call for changing human behavior for years, and some for decades. Now we have reached the point of no return. Someone wrote recently, “this may be the coolest summer for the rest of my life.” 

Dear Readers, I am very sad to write that I’ve reached the point where I no longer feel hopeful about our common future on Earth, at least not into the foreseeable future. I refuse to join the crowd who foretells the extinction of the human race. Yet, it seems very clear to me now that the years ahead for all of us will be increasingly difficult to navigate. The extremes in temperature and global heating of the atmosphere will force us to make radical decisions about where and how we live upon Earth going forward. The Elon Musks of the world will likely find extravagant ways to live well, no matter what. But for the rest of the billions of humans, life is about to become much more difficult.

There is a loose community of people alive today who firmly believe that we have now entered into a new, Golden Age of Gaia. They advise against watching the old paradigm of life as we’ve known it for millennia crumble. Some of these folks are serious about aiding this new Earth, and spend their time giving courses, being out in nature with crystals, performing all sorts of healing rituals for Mama Gaia, and envisioning the new, healed and whole Earth and her people. In their scenario, the people have reconciled their dualistic, separate self with the One/All That Is. There is no more war, hunger, greed or bad actors. It’s basically a New Age version of the proverbial Garden of Eden story restored. This group of folks are very serious about their visioning and have been working and waiting for it to manifest for many years. They are still waiting.

As much as I want to also say yes, this New Earth has been birthed and will continue to grow in the decades and centuries ahead, I currently see only evidence of the crumbling and breakdown that apparently “needs to happen” before the new age can begin. For a lot of reasons, I sincerely hope the New Agers are right, and it will only be a matter of time before the world transforms into a beautiful, peaceful, healthy, ideal place filled with happy, secure and peaceful humans who understand that All Is One. However, I personally don’t have much energy left to keep fighting for this someday future world. I am exhausted.

These are tremendously hard words to have to write, and the main reason I seldom post on this blog any longer. No one wants to read such depressing thoughts. I wish so much to report better news. To be fair, there are small pockets of humans around the globe who are raising organic food, saving animals, helping other humans and modeling better and more sustainable ways to live upon Earth. This is wonderful and I applaud them all. But in the face of the vast tsunami of disasters facing large populations of people, these efforts are like trying to put out a hundred thousand acre forest fire with a garden hose.

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far. I send each of you love and light, and the courage and strength to keep going in your life. May all the small gestures of loving kindness we give to others and to ourselves add up to something amazing and miraculous that we cannot know right now.