In a recent article titled “Transformations: The End of the US and the World as We Know It and the Truth About Our Collective Future,” I described the challenges we face in our world today.
“It’s not easy to accept, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that our country and our world are not doing well.”
I said.
“Some believe that the US is collapsing and humans have made such a mess of the environment that we should give up, go out in a blaze of destruction and leave planet Earth in the hands of species better able to be good. partners in the community of life on Earth. Others believe that human ingenuity and innovative technologies will fix things and we have a bright future ahead of us. I have a different vision that was given to me in a sweat lodge in 1993 at a men’s gathering in Indianapolis, Indiana.”
In his book, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe, Bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin offers his own vision of our future that resonates with mine. He says,
“What if we suddenly realized that the planet we live on looked strangely alien, as if we had been teleported to some other distant world? That terrifying prospect is now.’
What has happened to us? “To put it bluntly,” says Rifkin,
“Our species, particularly in the Western world, has come to believe that we are alive solid ground, a verdant green expanse of solid ground upon which we stand and thrive and which we call our home in the cosmic theater.”
That’s definitely how I think of our house. But our space travels and the images of Earth sent back are revealing a new understanding of our home.
“Earth it immediately turned into a veneer on top of which has always been a water planet circling the sun and to this day, seemingly alone in the many shades of blue in our solar system and perhaps the universe.”
says Jeremy Rifkin.
Seeing our world as “a water planet” allows us to better understand the multicrises we face and how to deal with them more effectively. In his book, Planet Aqua, Rifkin gives us a new way to understand and potentially solve our problems. Rifkin lists some of the crises we face, along with scientific references to support the statistics:
- Today, 2.6 billion people experience high or extreme water stress. By 2040, a total of 5.4 billion people—more than half the world’s population—will live in 59 countries facing high or extreme water stress.
- Over the past decade, the number of recorded water-related conflicts and violent incidents has increased by 270% worldwide.
- One billion people live in countries that are unlikely to have the capacity to mitigate and adapt to new ecological threats, creating conditions for massive population displacement and forced climate migration by 2050.
- Droughts, heatwaves and massive wildfires are spreading across every continent, ravaging ecosystems and destroying infrastructure around the world.
Back in 1993, my sweat-lodge vision gave me a unique understanding of the current predicament and possible solutions. I saw the “sinking of the ship of civilization” and the emergence of “lifeboats for humanity” which you can read more about here. Among the conclusions drawn from my vision and subsequent explorations were the following:
- “Culture” is a misnomer. Its proper name is “System Dominator”.
As long as we buy into the myth that “civilization” is the best that man can strive to achieve, we are doomed to go down with the ship. In The Chalice & the Blade: Our History Our Future First published in 1987, internationally recognized scholar and futurist, Riane Eisler first introduced us to our long, ancient heritage as a Cooperative System and our most recent Master System, which has been called “Civilization.”
In her recent book, Cultivating Our Humanity: How Sovereignty and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Our Lives, and Our Futurewritten with peace activist Douglas P. Fry, they offer real guidance for creating a world based on cooperation.
The historian of religions, Thomas Berry, spoke eloquently of our need to be honest about our present situation.
“We never knew enough. Nor were we intimate enough with all our cousins in the great earth family. Nor could we hear the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has come, however, for us to listen or die.”
- There is a better world, beyond civilization.
When they gave me the book Ismail, by Daniel Quinn, I have a clear sense of the two worlds competing for our attention: A world of hierarchy and dominance (Quinn calls it a world of Receivers) and a world of equality and connection (Quinn calls it a world of leaving). In his many books Quinn offers a clear contrast of worldviews.
In his book, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure, Quinn says,
“I can confidently predict that if the world is saved, it will not be because some old minds came up with some new programs. Programs never stop things they start to stop. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will. And no program will ever stop us from destroying the world.”
The Dominator system emerged 6,000 years ago as a result of environmental trauma.
In a 1999 article, “The worst mistake in the history of the human race” world-renowned scientist and historian, Jared Diamond, offered these powerful and surprising insights:
“To science we owe dramatic changes in our complacent self-image. Astronomy has taught us that our earth is not the center of the universe, but merely one of billions of celestial bodies. From biology we have learned that we were not specially created by God, but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archeology is overturning another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been one long story of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, our supposedly most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a disaster from which we have never recovered.” [Emphasis added by me, Jed Diamond].
Much has been written about what caused this disaster. Anthropologists had long established that humans lived in relatively healthy balance with nature for two million years. What happened 6,000 years ago set us on a path that now endangers our own lives but also the lives of our children, future generations and humanity itself.
In my latest book, Long live Men! The Moonshot mission to cure men, close the lifespan gap and offer hope to humanity, I discussed the research of environmental scientist Dr. James DeMeo. In his monumental, ten-year study that culminated in the book saharasia, Dr. DeMeo began by asking a series of critical questions, including:
- What are the causes and ultimate sources of human violence?
- Why do so many political and religious leaders behave in such hypocritical ways, and why are the most religious nations often the bloodiest and most violent?
- What exactly happened to change the face of the world so dramatically for the worse, to create the great mess that so much of humanity is in today?
He offers his simple conclusion in the introduction on page 3 and follows with 451 additional pages of findings, maps, and discussion:
“Human violence appeared to have a specific time and place of origin on Earth. Anti-social violence has not been distributed worldwide at any time in the past! Furthermore, it was learned that the origin of the violence was precisely timed at an important historical time of climate change from relatively wet to dry conditions.’
The full title of the book captures his entire thesis: Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sexual Repression, War, and Social Violence in Old World Deserts.The book was originally published in 1998 and has added to my own understanding in the years since my sweat lodge vision in 1993.
Both Jeremy Rifkin and James DeMeo believe that the ultimate cause of Jared Diamond’s “Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” was water related. DeMeo’s research shows that years of drought caused large areas of the Middle East to turn into desert and were the initial trauma that led to many of the problems we face today.
Trauma, of course, affects both women and men, but the response to trauma was different for the two sexes, as I will discuss in Part 2 of this series. If you haven’t already subscribed to my free weekly newsletter, you can do so here:
