What Would Hobson Do?
Figure 1: Illustration by MR.FISH (Dwayne Booth) ©2019
[[ NOTE: ‘MELEE-R6’ is an acronym mnemonic for ‘Mass Extinction Level Events on Earth – Round 6,’ i.e., the existential truth and reality we face today as the anthropogenic threat to survival of life on Earth. Cf. “Holocene extinction (Wikipedia);” “Are we in the sixth mass extinction on Earth? The signs are all there (ABC News).” The subtitle refers to the logical notion of a “Hobson’s Choice (Wikipedia)” – i.e., a free choice but with only one thing offered. Since refusal to accept what’s offered is one option, the two options are taking it or taking nothing. In other words, one may "take it or leave it." Except with MELEE-R6, we’re getting the same annihilation outcome whether we choose or not. ]]
As I’ve grown more fully engaged and deeply involved with the Deep Adaptation movement on its website and in Facebook and LinkedIn social media, I’m both encouraged and saddened by the experience.[1] On one hand, we appear to be alongside other existential crisis movements, including Extinction Rebellion (XR), Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future, et al. (and still counting).[2]
On the other hand, at the same time, we seem to be slipping into the same sorts of old paradigms, old ideologies, old habits, and old reflexive actions that are actually elements of the root causes of MELEE-R6 itself. Many hours of deep philosophical discussion and empirical dialogue would be needed to fully explain my views and concerns. This blog post primarily focuses on my roles within the Deep Adaptation Forum Professions Network (DAFPN) community in particular, but more generally, it serves as a morbid and mortal case study of being present in the same pit of cognitive (semiotic) MELEE-R6 darkness and dissonance overwhelming us all.
Telescope Teddy was Wrong
In addition to being famous for offering the pithy advice of, “speaking softly and carrying a big stick,” POTUS25 Theodore Roosevelt was nicknamed “Telescope Teddy” because, when out West in 1900, he had all his rifles fitted with small telescopes for long-distance shooting. He apparently insisted on seeing all his targets up close and personal to maximize his chances of shooting to kill. He is also quoted as having said, “If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” In our current situation as humans being present on Earth in the 21st century, however, he was quite wrong – thanks to our own brute stupidity and evil genius, nature has us seized by the balls, but our hearts and minds are incapable of following. We just don’t get it – we’re sign-blinded by pain, fear, rage, grief, and agonizing futility. We know, as Guy McPherson observes, “nature bats last,” all rules of game and order are the cosmic causal laws of her well-ordered universe. Bottom of the 9th … score = nature Aleph-Nought / humankind absolute zero .[3]
We don’t seem to be capable of keeping our hearts saturated in and our minds wrapped around the fact that humanity has never before been in anything remotely resembling MELEE-R6 truth and reality. All the bets we’re used to making are off – and the brutal truth and reality are that we’re all, already, all-in for our very survival as a species.
What Would Jesus Say?
I'm not in any way proselytizing or evangelizing Christianity as it’s commonly understood, but seen from an apologetic explanatory perspective, a metaphor in Mark goes to the heart of our challenge in facing MELEE-R6 both generally and within DAF especially (Mark 2:18-22 NIV):
No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.
The world as we’ve known it is an ‘old garment’ and an ‘old wineskin.’ 'Pragmatism’ as we’ve reflexively conceived and applied it – and corresponding notions of strategic analysis, planning, systems, logistics, institutions, etc. – is an ‘old garment’ and ‘old wineskin’ developed by fascist corporatocracy and weaponized technocracy for profit. MELEE-R6 is the toxic vinegar now souring in those old ideological paradigmatic wineskins, and we’re stuck with nothing else at hand or in view as old or new cloth, wine, patch, or new wineskin, nor any salvific Gilead balm or panacea to be had (Jeremiah 8:22; 22:6; 46:2,11).[4]
As things now stand globally, locally, and in DAF, I fear we haven’t even begun weaving new fabric or fermenting new wine. The ideas of ‘weaving’ and ‘fermenting’ per se are mired in paradigms that either never should have come to pass at all or should by now at least be long past gone. Worse, we barely know what the ‘threads’ and ‘fruits’ are to begin with when we seek and strive to confront MELEE-R6 in all its truth and reality and abruptly adapt enough and rightly to preserve a viable remnant of humanity through and beyond it.
Meanwhile, perhaps desperately most afraid of doing nothing, we reflexively turn to what we do ‘know’ – but that may well be more likely a fatal misstep across the event horizon of our doom than a light to our path and lamp to our feet in the cognitive dissonance and darkness of MELEE-R6. An example, I think, is seen in the ease with which we turn to and find comfort and confidence in such techniques, approaches, and tools as SMART goals, SWOT analyses, and the like, in our DAF discussions and actions, or worse, spiritual narcissism that seems to be spreading virally in reflexive response to the desperately morbid and horrifically mortal reality we’ve brought upon ourselves.
Similarly, while the core aspects of the ‘permaculture’ idea appear to be quite well-founded, the concomitant shift to ‘systems thinking’ strikes me as being self-defeating for those same sorts of reasons. ‘Systems’ and ‘systems analysis, strategy, and planning’ within current ‘permaculture’ actions or movements are likely to be grounded in the same old-garment old-wineskin long past gone ways of thinking and paradigms permeating human being and presence in the world today. It isn’t so much that Joanna Macy’s “Active Hope” Buddhist sangha, general ecological systems theory, and “Work that Reconnects” approach and practices are wrong or wide of the mark. It’s simply that it’s too little, too late, and too far past cautionary principle redemption to make a significant difference for the survival of life on Earth as we know it today.
The Delusion of Rational Science and Our Identity Crisis
“But,” you and others may object, “the very science that confirms the present truth and reality of MELEE-R6 itself is the product of that sort of systems thinking.” I can only reply, “Yes – and that very science provided the theoretical and technological ways and means through which the crises of MELEE-R6 were created and continue to accelerate through the present and into the future. How genuinely rational is any such science? More to the point, how ethical or moral is it?” At the end of the day, nevertheless, I’m still Diogenes looking for an honest scientist who will own up to the fact that modern scientistic scientism created MELEE-R6 as the indentured servant of the fascist capitalism whose wealth and power created, rule, and control the world as we know it. [NOTE: ‘fascist capitalism’ is simply the modern name and hashtag du jour for the evils of egregious vanity and avarice that wax and wane throughout human history.]
Please understand – I struggle against these same reflexive ideological tendencies all day every day in all that I do. We all do. Some are in denial, some rage in fury, some suffocate in despair, and some few have been able to accept, acknowledge, and adapt through a fragile and tenuous new identity. Yet the depth and breadth of MELEE-R6 truth and reality and the destiny and legacy they have in store for whatever may in the end remain of humanity are entirely beyond the pale of our meager comprehension. ‘What do to’ or perhaps more to the point ‘who to be’ are the existential crisis questions whose answers still elude us in that darkness and distance of mystery and madness. If our 21st century scientistic scientism is indeed an irrationally unsound, existentially absurd, and irreal worldview, how do we answer? The very idea of preparing for the inconceivable is the shaggy dog gallows humor of our times.
For me, the meaning and purpose of who I am and what I do are found in healing and prophecy. By that I mean, creatively imagining ways to heal myself and others from the pandemic spread and oppression of solastalgia.[5] By ‘prophecy’ I mean being present – transparently as myself and for others – as a futurist, philosopher, scout, guide, and mentor who happens to be somewhat skilled in reading the signs of what was, what is, and what is to come … in other words, a semiotician who heals with truth about reality.
Be Real, Tell Truth, Mind Misery, and Succor Suffering
As anyone who has experienced any major invasive surgery will attest, recovery is an incredibly painful ordeal. For some, the treatment of heart disease provided by coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) or arduous regimens of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery for cancer, for example, can seem to be far worse than the diseases they treat. Likewise, the massive doses of truth and reality as treatment for solastalgia, and recovery through denial, rage, despair, acceptance, and regeneration can be excruciating as the old self is put to death so a new self may emerge.
Who will we be? Whoever that is, ready or not, here we are and there we’re going. What will we do? Die. Most likely far sooner than hoped or expected and in ways we’ve never dreamed possible. MELEE-R6 is Hobson’s Choice with a fatal vengeance – ‘leave it’ is no longer an option. All that’s left is to take it as it comes.
NOTES
https://www.deepadaptation.info/
[1] See Deep Adaptation Forum & Professions Network website; Positive Deep Adaptation Facebook group (private); Deep Adaptation LinkedIn group.
[2] See the Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future websites. Hundreds of climate activism movements are rapidly become thousands. The trend should be in the opposite direction – the many must become one movement with one heart, one accord, and one voice if it is to have even a marginal chance of making a true and real difference. But apparently we humans are incapable of resonant harmony on that universal scale, which is certainly part of the MELEE-R6 problem.
[3] Guy R. McPherson is an American scientist, professor emeritus of natural resources and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. He is known for the idea of Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE), a term he coined about the likelihood of human extinction by 2030 (Wikipedia). The heading of his eponymous website and blog is, “Nature Bats Last: Our days are numbered. Passionately pursue a life of excellence.”
[4] “There Is a Balm in Gilead” (Wikipedia); refers to Old Testament Scripture, while the lyrics of the traditional African American spiritual refer to the New Testament story of salvation through Jesus Christ. The Balm of Gilead is interpreted as a spiritual medicine that is able to heal Israel (and sinners in general). In the Old Testament, the balm of Gilead is taken most directly from Jeremiah chapter 8 v. 22: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wounds of my [God's] people?" (Another allusion can also be found in Jeremiah chapter 46, v. 2 and 11: “This is the message (of the Lord) against the army of Pharaoh Neco … Go up to Gilead and get balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt, but you multiply remedies in vain; here is no healing for you” (cf. Jeremiah 22:6.).
[5] The term ‘solastalgia (Wikipedia)’ refers to a neologism describing mental or existential distress caused by environmental change. In many cases this is in reference to global climate change, but more localized events such as volcanic eruptions, drought or destructive mining techniques can cause it as well. Coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2005[2], it was formed by combing the Latin words sōlācium (comfort) and the Greek root -algia (pain). Differing from mere homesickness, solastalgia refers to distress specifically caused by environmental change. In 2015, the medical journal The Lancet included solastalgia as a contributing concept to the impact of Climate Change on Human Health and Wellbeing (cf. Nick Watts, W Neil Adger, et al., "Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health," The Lancet, 386 (10006), 1861–1914.