Debunking Millenial Fears; the Green Perspective

Sorry for the absence (likely to continue due to needs of post-production on a short film) but I couldn't resist putting up the opening to an article which manages to combine two of this particular blog's likes in one: green topics + debunking the end of the world.

Entitled "The Apocalypse Makes Us Dumb" by WorldChanging's Alex Steffen, here are the first few 'graphs:

"In thinking seriously about the negative trends in our future, we're severely hampered by the Hollywood idea of the Apocalypse. That idea, in turn, has deep roots in the millenarianism of monotheistic religions (in which there is an End of Days and it's coming soon) and of 19th Century social movements (there is a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and it's coming soon). Millenarianism has its own problems, not least of which is that people do horrible things to others in the name of clearing the way for their chosen perfect future. But for our discussion here, let's just confine our understanding of the credo to what it has done to our conception of the future.

"Believing in a millennial future, or even frequently telling stories of such futures, blinds us both to what history teaches us about collapses and to what we know about our present moment. It makes us bad at thinking intelligently about the future.

"This is a topic that could use careful consideration from a number of angles, but I have about 30 minutes to write today, so instead let's just list some of the futurist fallacies we tend to embrace because (whether we're consciously aware of it or not), we're applying a millennial lens to the events unfolding around us.

"1) The Apocalypse is coming. There is a tendency to believe that big, catastrophic and singular events are going to come and destroy everything: that the Bird Flu or whatever is going to suddenly happen and immediately life will be hell. (The funniest example of this is climate change in The Day After Tomorrow, where sea level rise is so sudden that water rushes down the streets of New York in great rolling waves.)

"2) The Apocalypse is forever. In disaster movies and such, people seem to lack the ability to regroup and rebuild. Sometimes a hero will -- usually by killing a monster/ warlord/ robot/Tina Turner -- win the chance for one small group to start over, but the implication is usually that the rest of the planet's a write off for the imaginable future.

But naturally, you want to read the rest. Be my guest... click here.

Apocalypse Now. Definitely Maybe.

"The promise of a recovery of a long-lost Golden Age reverberates through countless myths. The heart-chord it strikes has inspired visionaries and idealists from time immemorial. As well, it fuels a healthy discontent – the flip side of modern anxiety – that refuses to believe that this is the best we can do. It is an indignation, a muted outrage that can be allayed temporarily by comforts and luxuries, that can be subdued, temporarily, by survival anxiety, that is always strongest in the young, and that lies latent in all of us, ever-ready to be roused into a crusading idealism, though often coopted toward the perpetuation of the very conditions that give it rise. It is my purpose, dear reader, to give voice to your indignation and to reaffirm your intuitive knowledge that life is meant to be more."

From "Waiting for the Big One" by Charles Eisenstein, Reality Sandwich

Continuing from yesterday's post, I simply had to draw attention to another really great pick from the web magazine Reality Sandwich, which puts the current spike in 2012 and apocalyptic fervor into perspective.

I'd like to say Eisenstein offers good news. But he doesn't. At least, not exactly. What he offers is hope and a certain 'realistic' or 'grounded' line of approach to what he believes is the inevitable: the breakdown of life as we know it. Which would be pretty darn depressing if he didn't also add the following:

"Today we already can catch a glimpse of the technologies-social forms as well as paradigms of material production-of a future in love with life, which encompasses the love of being alive as well as the love of living beings. They are the technologies of sun, soil, and water, of bioenergy and rhythm, light and sound, word and touch, mind and dreaming, matter and information. All of them arise from and embody a different understanding of self and world. Just as present-day social forms and technologies both spring from and reinforce separation, 21st century technology will be both a cause and an effect of separation's reversal-a very different understanding of the universe articulated on every level from psychology to cosmology. As our crises intensify we will be faced with new choices and new possibilities. Let us recognize the full ramifications and full power of the choices that will soon open up to us."

You can read the full article here.

Oh, and on a not-so-very-related note (my Aquarius Mercury and Mars apologise), earlier this evening I learned (via the excellent NorthNodeastrology blog - checkitout) of a good place to go if you want to do something about the apalling suffering of women in sexual violence-ridden Congo. You know exactly the sort of despicable and cruel acts I mean - rape, mutilation and murder. In light of this ongoing barbarity, please consider going to Women for Women International, which is an organization committed to providing "financial and emotional" support to women "on the margins of hope", either to make a donation or sponsor an individual rape victim directly.