by James Kanady
Pissed Again
A few moons ago, the totality of inanity in this world had me locked most of the day in William Blake’s “Chinks of my own cavern.” It truly was a “Dark Night of the Soul.” Knowing this, a good friend of mine immediately shipped me the latest book by theologian Brian D. McLaren, “Life After Doom—Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart.”
His introduction perfectly summed up my feelings: “That Unpeaceful, Uneasy, Unwanted Feeling: […] it’s only an intensifying and persistent sense of anxiety growing from the realization that we humans have made a mess of our civilization and our planet, and not enough of us seem to care enough to change deeply enough and quickly enough to save it.”
Do you want more? “We’re passengers on a brakeless economic runaway train engineered by and for a feckless global elite who amass more economic, media and political power every second. No, it’s even worse than that: we aren’t the passengers on the train; we—along with the whole Earth—are the fuel.”
And he says his book is “for anyone who understands that we’ve entered a dangerous time and need to prepare ourselves to face that danger with wisdom, courage, character and compassion.”
Selah!
The rest of the book passionately details the sheer scope of the dangers we face (“Welcome to reality.”) and the mettle it will take for humans to survive.
I became aware of climate change in 1977, when one of my professors at the University of Texas at Austin showed me a map of North America and how the tree line was moving north. “Mr. Kanady,” he said, “by the time you are 50, the heat and humidity down here will be in Kansas.”
Oh, man, was he right (ever wonder why Kansas has armadillos and road runners as neighbors now?). Then I read Bill McKibben’s pivotal “The End of Nature” in 1989, and I was ready to scream “Fire!” to a crowded world. A line that has haunted me ever since: “Summer will come to mean something different—not the carefree season anymore but a time to grit one’s teeth and survive.”
That time is now.
He describes four scenarios our future will likely follow; none of them are sunshine, lollipops and rainbows:
1. The Collapse Avoidance scenario: As things continue to spiral downward, enough citizens and leaders will wake up and respond with urgency. But the needed changes will be long and difficult.
2. The Collapse/Rebirth scenario: Civilization will not respond with urgency, nor will our institutions be able to deal with the effects of social turbulence and decline toward a complete collapse. Communities will have to band together to survive.
3. The Collapse/Survival scenario: Global civilization will collapse, and the humans who survive will face a future on the decimated Earth. Cultural and technological advances will be lost, and the ugliest elements of our history will return—widespread violence, domination, desperation and brutality. Life will be nothing more than harsh.
4. The Collapse/Extinction scenario: As the environmental deterioration continues, collapse is inevitable. Authoritarian regimes, fueled by desperation, will fight to exploit remaining resources and eliminate competitors. This will end in catastrophic self-destruction with the almost total extinction of humans, land and sea life.
In all of these, the main problem is not the environment, but us.
“Humans don’t have an environmental problem; the environment has a human problem.”
And inherent in all the scenarios is plain ol’ grief—grief over what we have already lost and the many losses to come. He urges us to turn to poets to provide the heart and insight all of us need to cultivate to meet the challenges ahead.
As a devout follower of Jesus, McLaren is enraged about “the degree to which the religious industrial complex is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global capitalist economy.”
Most Americans see things from that prism, but McLaren has a higher goal: “When we dismount from our civilization’s current framing narratives, we will feel that although we are still in the civilization, we are no longer of it. It no longer defines us.”
To follow the old narratives is to look at life through the wrong end of the binoculars. To help us, McLaren looks deeply at the nature of hope, learning to see without the old delusions, cultivating indigenous wisdom, confronting death and letting our temporary lives shine, saying the Serenity prayer to restore us to sanity: “a commitment to justice, peace and compassion wherever we are in this world,” becoming tough with agility, decolonize or de-capitalize the mind to be free of delusions, savoring beauty, and so many other gifts of heart and wisdom every human needs to absorb and follow.
This book is a gift of riches, lessons, fear, inspiration, intelligence and spirit.
McLaren is a special man achingly trying to be our canary in the coal mine. He, unlike politicians, is a good man to emulate. In fact, his recent maxim is one I want to follow: “Live so that if your life were a book, Florida would ban it.” I urge everyone to read this book and inculcate his spiritual lessons for survival.
In his words: “[…] the Earth is now judging the leaders of our civilization to be a confederacy of fools—arrogant, ignorant fools—and her judgment is just, and her judgment is here.”
Selah!
(“Life After Doom—Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart” by Brian D. McLaren. Published by St. Martin’s Essentials.)