(Speaking Truth To Power) -- In his most recent post, Richard Heinberg asks "How Do You Like Collapse So Far?" and also asks why we should think or talk about collapse if there's nothing we can do about it? He suggests that in the face of the gargantuan unraveling over which we have very little power, keeping in mind what it is about our species that is worth saving is a salutary emotional and spiritual practice. In fact he says, "...there may in fact be only one occupation worthy of our attention: that of identifying the qualities that make our species worth saving, and then celebrating and exemplifying those qualities. If we concentrate on doing that, perhaps we win no matter what. Outwardly, it will probably look a lot like what many of us are already doing: working to save a species, an ecosystem, a human community; to make a village sustainable, or to halt a new coal power plant."
What Heinberg states here is exactly what many other collapse watchers have been up to for the past several years. We look at the truth, we feel it, we act. As we take action, we do not do so naively believing that any particular action or several actions taken even by masses of individuals will prevent collapse, but we do it because it's the right thing to do-that is, acting according to what Sharon Astyk calls "The Theory Of Anyway."
I keep coming back to that fundamental underpinning in collapse-that thing called "death" and notice that no matter how you spin the unraveling, it keeps coming back to the two most unpleasant realities: the death of the planet and of one's individual egoic existence. I notice what a Herculean task it is for any of us to thoughtfully ponder our own demise, but I cannot escape or deny the fact that that is exactly what collapse is putting in our faces whether we like it or not. If you've read this far, and if you've been consciously watching and preparing for collapse, then to a large extent, you are already confronting your own death, but I believe it's important to consider the many layers of death that are in front of us. Of course, there's the possibility of the end of our own physical bodies, but more importantly, in my opinion, is the diminution and transformation of the ego with which we identify.
Civilization and all of its discontents has been gestated and birthed in ego as if domination and control of the earth, its inhabitants, and even oneself is the raison d'etre-the meaning of life. Civilization and the empires it has endlessly created have been constructed on the illusion that we are what we possess, what we control, what we achieve. All of the great spiritual teachers have told us otherwise and have reminded us incessantly that behind that tapestry of egoic productivity is who we really are-a more profound spiritual essence-a light that shines from behind and through the tapestry. Some people call it "god", some call it "nature", some call it "faith in the human spirit", others call it the Self.
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