Wonderful message Jeremy. Love your books. We also need a new global myth. A religious uniting concept that will bring us in the future.
Incorporate religions to a broader planetary concept of a religion for the earth a cosmic evolution. A religion for all life on the planet. Dogmas dont matter, only peace, love and compassion
This sounds similar to something Daniel Schmachtenberger said-”We need to reify the great religions so they can have something meaningful to say about the metacrisis” I wonder how that would work though?
It's so true that we're in a trance that has us destroying the planet. Part of that trance is our acceptance of wars, which have huge environmental impacts on top of being disastrous for people.
And we need alternatives to neoliberalism articulated.
Something that gave me and a lot of my friends hope recently was Avi Lewis being elected as the leader of the federal New Democratic Party here in Canada. He's worked on creating environmentally and socially responsible alternatives to neoliberalism his entire adult life before getting into politics, and he's an extremely good communicator.
For an alternative, read Jason Hickles's book Less is More.
Good news regarding NDP. In the UK we have hope with Zac Polanski the new Green Party leader. Now the US needs a young radical leader. Only radical action will give us any chance of a future.
That is a very powerful metaphor, and quite apropos. It reminds me of another appearance of it. Arran Gare, author of The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization (2018) had earlier referenced this image in one of his review articles: "... we can now see that this nihilistic conclusion is not the wisdom of people with superior intelligence. It is the mindless drifting among fragments combined with shallow optimism of people with malfunctioning brains. And where will it lead us? McGilchrist concluded '... expect a sort of insouciant optimism, the sleepwalker whistling a happy tune as he ambles towards the abyss.'
Source: Gare, A. (2012). ’The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Western World’ by Iain McGilchrist. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 8(1), 412–449. https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/290
Yes, wake up! See also Nate Hagens TGS and his long row of pro-social experts and educators. Try his 10 myths still taught in Business Schools. And alongside 'the economy' is the TINA war machine. But fear is not a way out despite 'Western' incited wars. BAU economics, the major critical issue appears for the moment like so much displacement activity.
Ever since I read some of your work and attended some of your online courses I have attempted to interest everyone I know in your remarkable work and the work of Riane Eisler.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson in the wonderful American commentator, author and historian who writes Letters from
an American and I have followed her wonderful work since 2022.
I so hope that at some time you will connect with her and perhaps exchange ideas. I look forward to your new book and to your excellent writing here.
I introduce the League of Evolutionary Catalysts, and describe communication tools Evolutionary Catalysts use to help people face of the reality of catastrophic ecological trends, thus breaking their trance. https://www.evolutionarycatalyst.net
Our aim, unabashedly, is mobilize thoughtful public will to do everything required to pull out of our ecological nosedive, and indeed evolve a compassionate ecologically sustainable world. In other words, a life-affirming culture.
I would like to think that you care enough about the future to want to work with us.
What if the problem isn’t so much our desire to destroy everything, rather it’s our unlimited desire to sample and consume everything?
And in that sense the destructive aspect is our relationship to our “shit”, our waste?
Our belief that the byproducts, the sin, of our consumption can simply be metaphysically and materially expiated down an ontological U bend to some othered “hell hole”.
In accord with your comment, tjarlz, I noticed one thing missing from the illustration accompanying this article: the continuing slide from "production" through "product" to "waste" that is supposedly thrown "away."
The first thing that it would take is a global population 1/1000th the current one. Which is what's going to happen, love or hate as we might. But don't blame me; I merely foretell.
" ... a collective march to destruction." Once again, Jeremy, you've nailed it, the direction we're headed in and the various reasons for it. Bravo! Yet, as to the other direction, " ... establishing a reciprocal, mutual relationship with living systems that makes long term human wellbeing possible," I have my doubts. It sure sounds good on paper, but not so good to the delicate human ego that thrives on, "I want it all ... I want it now ... and I'd rather die trying to get it, than to accept defeat by compromising my dream in any way. That compromise may or may not prevent the destruction of our civilization, but that it sure as hell would destroy me." I wish it weren't so Jeremy, but down-we-go seems inevitable. On the way down, let's send our love and our high hopes to whomever or whatever else may arise, evolve from our ashes. Endings are not cause for sorrow. Without them, there would be no new beginnings. God bless all that has been, all that will be and the Force of Evolution that makes life, in whatever form possible. Pete
Pioneering psychologist, Donald Winnicott, observed "there is never just a baby". As a psychotherapist, i would suggest that Psychology is one of the key (Modern) institutions that manages not to speak truth to power by pointing to the limitations of assuming a separate self, disconnected from context, community and ecology. Of course, this limited/limiting conception has usage in a McGilchrist left-hemisphere kind of way, but allowing this to unquestioningly underpin the dominant institutions of the dominant paradigm makes anthropocentric division and self-aggrandising dissociation the norm, power-over the safest tactic, and destructive exploitation the accepted way.
Life sciences differ. Biologists like Varela and Maturana recognised autopoesis, the self-organising innerness of organisms. With Winnicottian insight, Beth Dempster noticed that many systems are not actually self-producing, but rather exist as networking, collective assemblages co-creating in a manner better described as "Sympoiesis". Andreas Weber has elaborated on such processes, describing the vivifying feedback currents of "enlivenment".
Even the Catholic church differs. The recent clarification of prayer from Pope Leo after the so-called "Secretary of War" led a prayer for violence and destruction is another example of contextual feedback, albeit at a social rather than biophysical level.
In this context, the notion of psychosphere is useful. Whereas du Chardin's noosphere engages the phenomenon as if laid over human consciousness, human consciousness is the human aspect emergent from the psychosphere whose processes are concurrent with those of evolution at every level since the get-go. The universe's first act, as it were, is the creation of possibility for relationship. And then everything begins.
The great thing about self-reflective consciousness is it offers the potential for consciously engaging in the relationship between left/right hemispheres drawing on somatic information received as feedback from the intelligent system of which we are part. The purpose of this is the maintenance of systemic homeostasis, achieved through the homeostatic processes of all the parts. That is, of course, the experience of being embodied, and we don't do well when, say, gut flora is out of balance. when one persists in an inappropriate diet, the symptoms likely increase and spread to other systems of the body.
If there were grounds for applying this perception to more-than-just-human macro scale circumstance, one would expect the feedback to be getting louder ... increasing ecological imbalance, louder social unrest, growing individual psychological distress and so on .... not only as a result of ill-advised behaviour, but also in order to get attention and change. As Michael Pollan recently observed on prime time TV, feelings are the way in which the body communicates to the mind. However, rather than exploring together, within and between ourselves, and by developing practices to explore information from the living system of which we are part, in what might be called a mythopoetic understanding, we take a pathologising approach. In such settings, as Yoruba psychologist Bayo Akomolafe notes, the solution is often part of the problem.
Currently, the psychosphere is simultaneously dominated and ignored by our species. We attend to its feedback through personal or social disregulation, and pathologise our response. We decry, deny and finally shoot the messenger. Given no alternative, we do more of what what we have learned to do with greater intensity and less and less reflection.
What would change in psychology were we to explore our relationship within the context of psychosphere?
What would psychology have to say to the way our institutions function?
What would we learn if, together, we explored our experiences of the living world as communication?
How would a CoP process be different if psychosphere were included alongside the other 'spheres?
What would it feel like if our governments were to say "we are listening to the natural world."
What would be the results if, for example, AI was regulated to always give an ecocentric perspective in its responses?
What would we, individually and collectively, need to surrender in order to embrace the invitation of being included and welcomed into the living whole? What we individually and collectively gain?
Good response. Holistic intelligence requires merging both masculine and feminine components of our consciousness. Scientism, such as the climate con is pure intellect, left brain thinking based in materialistic, mechanical world views that are founded in secular humanism - the belief that man is the measure of all things which is the adopted mindset of the satanic, psychopathic ruling classes. The real power in this world is the ability to distort perception which is why dark occultism, or sorcery, manipulate behaviour to form a reality in their favour. It's master psychology, the minor arcana of natural law. I wrote an article called the satanic mindset that covers this issue. We're losing because most of humanity has been influenced to adopt the satanic mindset which is very uncomfortable for people to admit.
The “trance” seems related to human exceptionalism - that we are not part of nature. Should we start to understand that we are part of what also sustains us, perhaps we’ll become less selfish. Pre-ordered the book!
We Must see through and past the beguiling entrancements of ‘charisma’ and the magnetism of those projecting the ‘gravity(sic) of their narcissistic and parasitic deficit of empathy and shame in predating upon all desperate for the delusions of certainty.
"Consensus trance of global capitalism" is a pithy sound bite. But consider for a moment that it goes deeper than that. Consider the "consensus trance" of statist thinking - the statist paradigm. Most people live in a state-level society and never even question whether the state is a "good thing." I suggest it is not and I have been studying this for nearly 60 years. Monopoly on violence, centralized authority, institutions that favor the elites, resources distributed by class, growing populations, growth economy; all the characteristics of a state-level society argue that the state is the REAL problem.
Wonderful message Jeremy. Love your books. We also need a new global myth. A religious uniting concept that will bring us in the future.
Incorporate religions to a broader planetary concept of a religion for the earth a cosmic evolution. A religion for all life on the planet. Dogmas dont matter, only peace, love and compassion
Try the Quakers for a guided way of living in peace. Non-theists welcome!
try the African fractal systems!
https://aeon.co/essays/lessons-from-the-fairness-of-african-fractal-societies
This sounds similar to something Daniel Schmachtenberger said-”We need to reify the great religions so they can have something meaningful to say about the metacrisis” I wonder how that would work though?
Hi Jeremy,
It's so true that we're in a trance that has us destroying the planet. Part of that trance is our acceptance of wars, which have huge environmental impacts on top of being disastrous for people.
And we need alternatives to neoliberalism articulated.
Something that gave me and a lot of my friends hope recently was Avi Lewis being elected as the leader of the federal New Democratic Party here in Canada. He's worked on creating environmentally and socially responsible alternatives to neoliberalism his entire adult life before getting into politics, and he's an extremely good communicator.
Here's his acceptance speech, and a video of someone talking about him being the right person for this moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QbvLoBn5Jc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vFl9WvlqfE
For an alternative, read Jason Hickles's book Less is More.
Good news regarding NDP. In the UK we have hope with Zac Polanski the new Green Party leader. Now the US needs a young radical leader. Only radical action will give us any chance of a future.
The Greens are Labour with Birkenstocks on.
The idea is to step out of the trance, not to deepen it.
That is a very powerful metaphor, and quite apropos. It reminds me of another appearance of it. Arran Gare, author of The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization (2018) had earlier referenced this image in one of his review articles: "... we can now see that this nihilistic conclusion is not the wisdom of people with superior intelligence. It is the mindless drifting among fragments combined with shallow optimism of people with malfunctioning brains. And where will it lead us? McGilchrist concluded '... expect a sort of insouciant optimism, the sleepwalker whistling a happy tune as he ambles towards the abyss.'
Source: Gare, A. (2012). ’The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Western World’ by Iain McGilchrist. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 8(1), 412–449. https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/290
"Such an assumption is closer to science fiction than the rigorous analysis worthy of a model on which our civilization is basing its future."
The IPCC is a corporate construct, we were conned. In conjunction with the mass murderer William Nordhaus, they sealed our fate.
The 'Seneca Cliff' is above and behind us, our best option atm is to 'Brace for Impact'.
We're all like Thelma and Louise, chatting after going off the cliff.
Not accepting that reality ensures that we waste our time on projects doomed to fail.
I have two blog posts on the IPCC.
The first one I wrote is titled: Survivable IPCC projections based on science fiction.
The second: It’s Time to Acknowledge the Spectacular Success of the IPCC., clearly the title is sarcasm :)
https://kevinhester.live/2017/05/18/survivable-ipcc-projections-based-on-science-fiction/
https://kevinhester.live/2021/09/06/its-time-to-acknowledge-the-spectacular-success-of-the-ipcc/
Yes, wake up! See also Nate Hagens TGS and his long row of pro-social experts and educators. Try his 10 myths still taught in Business Schools. And alongside 'the economy' is the TINA war machine. But fear is not a way out despite 'Western' incited wars. BAU economics, the major critical issue appears for the moment like so much displacement activity.
Excellent! Many thanks.
Thanks Jeremy,
Ever since I read some of your work and attended some of your online courses I have attempted to interest everyone I know in your remarkable work and the work of Riane Eisler.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson in the wonderful American commentator, author and historian who writes Letters from
an American and I have followed her wonderful work since 2022.
I so hope that at some time you will connect with her and perhaps exchange ideas. I look forward to your new book and to your excellent writing here.
Hi folks,
I have written a follow-on to Jeremy’s insightful article called Breaking the Consensual Trance. https://app.box.com/s/lyu5ap4t1spzpfypqwcuroxdmlmq9eh9
I introduce the League of Evolutionary Catalysts, and describe communication tools Evolutionary Catalysts use to help people face of the reality of catastrophic ecological trends, thus breaking their trance. https://www.evolutionarycatalyst.net
Our aim, unabashedly, is mobilize thoughtful public will to do everything required to pull out of our ecological nosedive, and indeed evolve a compassionate ecologically sustainable world. In other words, a life-affirming culture.
I would like to think that you care enough about the future to want to work with us.
I’m happy to talk!
Andrew Gaines FRSA
andrew.gaines@evolutionarycatalyst.net
0416 489 809
What if the problem isn’t so much our desire to destroy everything, rather it’s our unlimited desire to sample and consume everything?
And in that sense the destructive aspect is our relationship to our “shit”, our waste?
Our belief that the byproducts, the sin, of our consumption can simply be metaphysically and materially expiated down an ontological U bend to some othered “hell hole”.
In accord with your comment, tjarlz, I noticed one thing missing from the illustration accompanying this article: the continuing slide from "production" through "product" to "waste" that is supposedly thrown "away."
The first thing that it would take is a global population 1/1000th the current one. Which is what's going to happen, love or hate as we might. But don't blame me; I merely foretell.
" ... a collective march to destruction." Once again, Jeremy, you've nailed it, the direction we're headed in and the various reasons for it. Bravo! Yet, as to the other direction, " ... establishing a reciprocal, mutual relationship with living systems that makes long term human wellbeing possible," I have my doubts. It sure sounds good on paper, but not so good to the delicate human ego that thrives on, "I want it all ... I want it now ... and I'd rather die trying to get it, than to accept defeat by compromising my dream in any way. That compromise may or may not prevent the destruction of our civilization, but that it sure as hell would destroy me." I wish it weren't so Jeremy, but down-we-go seems inevitable. On the way down, let's send our love and our high hopes to whomever or whatever else may arise, evolve from our ashes. Endings are not cause for sorrow. Without them, there would be no new beginnings. God bless all that has been, all that will be and the Force of Evolution that makes life, in whatever form possible. Pete
Pioneering psychologist, Donald Winnicott, observed "there is never just a baby". As a psychotherapist, i would suggest that Psychology is one of the key (Modern) institutions that manages not to speak truth to power by pointing to the limitations of assuming a separate self, disconnected from context, community and ecology. Of course, this limited/limiting conception has usage in a McGilchrist left-hemisphere kind of way, but allowing this to unquestioningly underpin the dominant institutions of the dominant paradigm makes anthropocentric division and self-aggrandising dissociation the norm, power-over the safest tactic, and destructive exploitation the accepted way.
Life sciences differ. Biologists like Varela and Maturana recognised autopoesis, the self-organising innerness of organisms. With Winnicottian insight, Beth Dempster noticed that many systems are not actually self-producing, but rather exist as networking, collective assemblages co-creating in a manner better described as "Sympoiesis". Andreas Weber has elaborated on such processes, describing the vivifying feedback currents of "enlivenment".
Even the Catholic church differs. The recent clarification of prayer from Pope Leo after the so-called "Secretary of War" led a prayer for violence and destruction is another example of contextual feedback, albeit at a social rather than biophysical level.
In this context, the notion of psychosphere is useful. Whereas du Chardin's noosphere engages the phenomenon as if laid over human consciousness, human consciousness is the human aspect emergent from the psychosphere whose processes are concurrent with those of evolution at every level since the get-go. The universe's first act, as it were, is the creation of possibility for relationship. And then everything begins.
The great thing about self-reflective consciousness is it offers the potential for consciously engaging in the relationship between left/right hemispheres drawing on somatic information received as feedback from the intelligent system of which we are part. The purpose of this is the maintenance of systemic homeostasis, achieved through the homeostatic processes of all the parts. That is, of course, the experience of being embodied, and we don't do well when, say, gut flora is out of balance. when one persists in an inappropriate diet, the symptoms likely increase and spread to other systems of the body.
If there were grounds for applying this perception to more-than-just-human macro scale circumstance, one would expect the feedback to be getting louder ... increasing ecological imbalance, louder social unrest, growing individual psychological distress and so on .... not only as a result of ill-advised behaviour, but also in order to get attention and change. As Michael Pollan recently observed on prime time TV, feelings are the way in which the body communicates to the mind. However, rather than exploring together, within and between ourselves, and by developing practices to explore information from the living system of which we are part, in what might be called a mythopoetic understanding, we take a pathologising approach. In such settings, as Yoruba psychologist Bayo Akomolafe notes, the solution is often part of the problem.
Currently, the psychosphere is simultaneously dominated and ignored by our species. We attend to its feedback through personal or social disregulation, and pathologise our response. We decry, deny and finally shoot the messenger. Given no alternative, we do more of what what we have learned to do with greater intensity and less and less reflection.
What would change in psychology were we to explore our relationship within the context of psychosphere?
What would psychology have to say to the way our institutions function?
What would we learn if, together, we explored our experiences of the living world as communication?
How would a CoP process be different if psychosphere were included alongside the other 'spheres?
What would it feel like if our governments were to say "we are listening to the natural world."
What would be the results if, for example, AI was regulated to always give an ecocentric perspective in its responses?
What would we, individually and collectively, need to surrender in order to embrace the invitation of being included and welcomed into the living whole? What we individually and collectively gain?
Good response. Holistic intelligence requires merging both masculine and feminine components of our consciousness. Scientism, such as the climate con is pure intellect, left brain thinking based in materialistic, mechanical world views that are founded in secular humanism - the belief that man is the measure of all things which is the adopted mindset of the satanic, psychopathic ruling classes. The real power in this world is the ability to distort perception which is why dark occultism, or sorcery, manipulate behaviour to form a reality in their favour. It's master psychology, the minor arcana of natural law. I wrote an article called the satanic mindset that covers this issue. We're losing because most of humanity has been influenced to adopt the satanic mindset which is very uncomfortable for people to admit.
The “trance” seems related to human exceptionalism - that we are not part of nature. Should we start to understand that we are part of what also sustains us, perhaps we’ll become less selfish. Pre-ordered the book!
And you never mentioned once, the backbone of the driving force of colonialization, patriarchy.
We Must see through and past the beguiling entrancements of ‘charisma’ and the magnetism of those projecting the ‘gravity(sic) of their narcissistic and parasitic deficit of empathy and shame in predating upon all desperate for the delusions of certainty.
"Consensus trance of global capitalism" is a pithy sound bite. But consider for a moment that it goes deeper than that. Consider the "consensus trance" of statist thinking - the statist paradigm. Most people live in a state-level society and never even question whether the state is a "good thing." I suggest it is not and I have been studying this for nearly 60 years. Monopoly on violence, centralized authority, institutions that favor the elites, resources distributed by class, growing populations, growth economy; all the characteristics of a state-level society argue that the state is the REAL problem.