Innovation and Inevitability
Forgiving a short-lived species
I've hesitated to share this post because I did not want to violate my number one rule which is: “If you cannot share something hopeful, don't share anything at all.” (Yes, I can hear the advice of my mother in there.) The thing is, I've come to the conclusion that what I want to share IS hopeful, in a backdoor way.
First, why "the rule?" Cynicism, nihilism and other forms of mental distortion run rampant in our culture and I do not want offer these any oxygen. It is so easy for humans, especially young humans, who live in times of great change and difficulty, to become discouraged. I feel that to share the results on ones own doom-scrolling is yet another way to avoid feeling the pain and not particularly helpful.
So, it is with some caution that I share my insights from Peter Russell's new book: Forgiving Humanity: How the Most Innovative Species Became the Most Dangerous.
Forgiving Humanity is a wholly different take on our planetary situation. Russell speaks of the inevitability of collapse of species who reach certain technological capabilities--due primarily to the exponential acceleration of innovation. A few days ago, he posted a playful and engaging AI conversation --between his author-self avatar and his reader-self avatar about the book (video embedded below).
My take: To be human at any time is a challenge--for we do understand that life is fleeting and that death is inevitable. Lately I've felt the burden of this knowledge, especially as I age. Navigating wounding and death isn't taught in school, and most of us learn how to grieve through loss. In fact, many don't fully grieve--rather than feeling the immensity of loss, we turn to distractions: from addictions to cults to entertainment.
Our personal response to loss is first denial, then anger, bargaining, and even despair. Eventually, if we do our individual inner work, we come to a place of acceptance--opening once again to true joy and creativity. So it is true for our culture. It's fair to say we as a culture are experiencing the earliest stages of the grief cycle when it comes to the planetary impact of our technological age. Recently we have collectively shifted from denial to anger and blame.
Thomas Berry once said that humanity, especially the Western European psyche, rails against death. He suggested that a great wound took place during the middle ages, when a third of Europe died from the plague. Our response was to attempt to focus our creativity and innovation on dominating and controlling nature, and we continue that response to this day. Is it no wonder our culture is so fascinated by stories of angels, life after death, heroes with superpowers, and science fiction, and so addicted to play and distraction?
Prior to reading Russell's book I concluded that even if societal and ecological1 collapse is inevitable (and I felt it probably was), we can and must choose to live fully and focus our creative energies on how to best serve life on Earth. Our responsibility is to the future--to do our best to preserve the conditions to life to survive and thrive. For me, this has been an intuitive choice, and a personal one--one that I need to re-make almost every day against a backdrop of horrifying news.
I'm still contemplating and grappling with Russell's take on our current trajectory--that collapse (death) of our society, our species, and probably most of our ecology is inevitable due in part to the acceleration of human innovation. I found the AI-to-AI video conversation quickly identified the key conundrum: how do humans accept the inevitability of collapse without succumbing to despair or denial?
Russell offers a back door. Where I'd focused on humanity's exponential growth, flawed worldview, and greed as a driving force for collapse, in Forgiving Humanity Russell asserts that while accelerating innovation leads to inevitable consequences, it also challenges us to move beyond anger and blame and instead choose life on the terms it has been granted.
Species and biological eras on Earth, flower... and fade. Perhaps we can learn to accept that our current circumstance is the natural consequence of things, as we, even in a single human life, must accept our limits. With that knowledge, perhaps we can forgive ourselves for all we have set into motion and get to work repairing our impact on ecology, and on living and loving fully... perhaps even loving each other through our losses.
Mary Oliver said it best:
"Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
"Ecological collapse" is already underway. The open question is: how much can be saved for the next epoch?