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a calm presence - gliding towards a crash
Season 5
gliding towards a crash
reflections on this moment
Note: This bonus episode is from my ‘a calm presence’ substack about ‘short, practical essays about collapse acceptance, adaptation, response and art’. Cover photo was taken by me at Tribune Bay, Hornsby Island, BC on September 17, 2024.
Friends and colleagues often ask me why I focus my energies on ‘anticipating, observing, and experiencing societal disruption and collapse’ (deep adaptation forum).
A good question.
Instead of societal collapse, Arno Kopecky (author of The Environmentalist’s Dilemma: Promise and Peril in an Age of Climate Crisis and an upcoming guest on conscient e206), suggested to me in a September 14, 2024 email that I consider focusing on :
- a thriving society lens so that we’re running toward something beautiful, rather than fleeing something terrible.
A good point.
Arno also mentions that ‘ultimately it's the same thing’, e.g., that societal collapse and societal revitalisation follow essentially the same path, but I would agree that running towards something positive is more interesting (and useful than the negative).
Duly noted (as they say on the Canadaland podcast).
However, I have to admit that I quite often fall into collapse rabbit holes and sometimes can’t see the light so I call upon guests from previous episodes, such as e165 bill crandall - art can change us
- Being an artist, or making art, in the context of climate is more about being a kind of light in the darkness, making us believe in ourselves and believe in the future so that we want to endeavor to save the thing that we have, our habitat. Some people like to say art can't change the world, but art can change us. Then we can change the world more effectively.
So here’s my answer to the ‘focus’ question.
It’s a story about a story that I recorded in e202 coman poon - what are you doing with your life ? :
- When I first met Vanessa (Andreotti) in 2019, I think she shared this story with me about, you know, the metaphor of the plane crashed as a way of talking about the time of the great turning, so to speak, for lack of a better term. And this idea is that there is no. There is no prevention of the crime, right? If you and I, and, you know, every living thing that is on, so called, the plane is on Pachamama, Mother Earth with us, we're going through a crash. We're going through, you know, six, extinction, we're going through climate collapse, geopolitical collapse, economic collapse, all types of overlapping, interlaced cycles of destruction. And like on planes, what you can do, at best, is to get ready for a glide as opposed to a hard landing, because that means some will survive, and those that survive aren't necessarily the lucky ones. So while we're on the plane, you know, instead of putting on our noise canceling earphones, pretending that we're not in a sardine can, we could try turning to each other, saying hello. So many things can happen between the moment when we know the plane is going to crash, that there's no getting away from that and the crash itself. So my invitation is to the listeners, what are you doing? What are you doing before the crash, in this time? What are you doing with your life? How are you going to actually weave connection? Because it's still possible to oper
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago