Start with Step One

Those struggling with addiction are familiar with the Serenity Prayer, which is often used to close Alcoholics Anonymous meetings:

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Given the doom scenario laid out by McLaren, the question is whether we should accept the things we cannot change, or change our future with courage.

Because according to McLaren, our civilization is addicted to fossil fuels. Fossil fuels allowed us to replace human labor as our energy source (which was true of civilizations before the industrial age) with fossil fuels. Fossil fuels give us superhuman power, and allow us to accomplish things that would be otherwise impossible. “To put it starkly, fossil fuels set us up like plantation owners in the antebellum American South…Our civilization is powerless over our cheap energy addiction; our civilization has become unmanageable and needs to be restored to sanity.” (pg 155)

Recovering addicts know that the first step on the road to recovery is to admit that one is an addict. We must admit that we have become so dependent on fossil fuels that we are going destroy our environment and perhaps even our species unless we can tame our addiction. Until now many of us have believed that it is possible to recover from our addiction to fossil fuels and turn the tide of destruction.

But that leads us to another possible scenario: “What if we proceed…and succeed? What if we successfully decarbonize and create a new post-carbon economy? What then? The next crisis will come, and we will solve it with the same logic, of course.” (pg 157) 

“Imagine that for 250 years we continue to plunder wild places and reduce the biomass of all wild living creatures to make room for the billions of tons of chicken, cattle, pig, salmon, and tilapia flesh our carnivorous majority wants to eat. Imagine that many of our religious communities continue to decline, leaving a moral and spiritual vacuum. And then imagine that other religious communities experience a fundamentalist resurgence, throwing their power behind violent authoritarian political leaders. And let’s say that during this time, we continue to multiply the number and kill power of our weapons, a highly likely prospect based on our past and current performance. And then, let’s say we being to run out of lithium or its substitutes (the copper, aluminum, cobalt, graphite and rare earth minerals) that we need for our so-called renewable economy.

And then, let’s say between 2220 and 2280 or so, we really do manage to self-destruct, driving ourselves and most vertebrate life into extinction, leaving Earth far more devastated than it is now. Can you see how “fixing” today’s crisis in a superficial way could kick the time bomb down the road to create an even greater ultimate catastrophe?” (pg 157)

Our natural tendency is to respond to the current crisis with the same tools and solutions that have brought us here – almost guaranteeing that the “fix” will only be temporary.

So, what do we do?

Just accept what we cannot change?

Or have the courage to change the things we can change?

McLaren wants us to just sit in this conundrum for a bit.

Don’t try to get out of it – especially toward solutions – too quickly.

There is good in facing our powerlessness – especially in the face of addiction.

We are not used to that.

Our society and our religions teach us that we have the power to do anything we want, if we just put our minds and skill toward it.

“I hope you will dare to sit with me in this place just a little longer. A place to which we are admitted when we descend to the bottom. Where we feel our powerlessness as a civilization. Where we admit our powerlessness as individuals. Where we know our current stinking thinking cannot fix the mess created by our stinking thinking. Where we don’t simply substitute one new “fix” for an old one. Where we feel the insanity of our situation and want to be restored to sanity.” (pg 161)

This is not a comfortable place, is it?

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