Imagine Safe Landings and New Beginnings

Imagine what a “safe landing” would look like in a swirling, stormy world, in which we experience “economic meltdown, climate countdown, racial throwdown, political breakdown, technological shakedown, and religious letdown.” (pg 176)[i]

One of the projects of the World Climate Research Programme focuses on “safe landings, exploring the routes to ‘safe landing’ spaces for human and natural systems. You’ll notice the plural: they are searching for multiple routes to multiple safe landing spaces. They are not looking for one perfect route, one magic solution, one silver bullet.” (pg 175)

Based on the concept of multiple “safe landing routes”, Mc Laren had suggested four possible future scenarios: Collapse Avoidance, Collapse/Rebirth, Collapse/Survival, and Collapse/Extinction. He wants us to imagine more than one possible future scenario, and also more than one possible future “safe landing”.

“You and I both know that there are infinite gradations among the four, and beyond each, many different futures may unfold.” (pg 177)

When we can imagine the possible scenarios before us, and then also begin to imagine how we might cope with these scenarios, we are on our way to imagining both safe landings and new beginnings.

These landings and beginnings will always occur through crisis. Whatever advances we can claim in our modern times, they were able to happen because of the crisis (crises) which caused the fall of the Roman Empire and the collapse of the political and ecclesiastical structures of the Middle Ages. During the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages very few realized that collapse was imminent (or actual), nor could anyone imagine how the world after their world might look. But collapse their worlds did, and out of those collapses came the world in which we live.

The work of imagining safe landings and new beginnings has at least three overlapping phases:

“First, in the early stages of decline…we will imagine ways to resist decline, ways to fix broken systems, ways to recover lost ground, even if temporarily…

Then, when broken systems collapse beyond repair, people will imagine ways to cope with loss and grief, ways to self-organize to support one another, ways to fill gaps and share resources.

Third, as it becomes increasingly clear there is no going back to the status quo, increasing numbers will imagine something new, something beyond fixing broken systems and surviving turbulent times. They will imagine new worlds.” (pg 182)

We will need all kinds of people to do this imagining. We will need those who can imagine how to actually fix things; we will need people who can imagine what kind of adaptation is necessary; we will need imaginers of new worlds. Each requires different skill and gift sets. They may not always get along. There will be friction as the different groups struggle to imagine the new future. But through the crisis is the only path. There is no way around it.

“As we move from letting go (a path of descent) to letting be (a path of insight) to letting come (a path of resilience), we cannot guarantee that the world ahead will be more just, more peaceful, and more humane than our world today. We cannot even guarantee that we will survive.

But we can commit to work for justice, peace, and compassion wherever we are in this world, as long as we live.” (pg 185)

[i] With the 2nd Trump administration just 2 months old, many are suggesting that the collapse has already begun.

John Lennon's iconic song "Imagine" has been a source of inspiration to many, and a source of derision to those who scoff at the idea of "nothing to die for". It may be helpful to listen with the perspcetive of this chapter. Imagine everything you held dear being gone. What might that be like? How could you imagine a safe landing? a new beginning? Take some time - maybe a lot of time - to reflect on that.

(For all posts in this series on Life After Doom, click here or on the Life After Doom box below)