We Are Not the First Ones Here

“The world has been ending off and on for almost all of recorded history….” Mathematician and collapsologist B. Sidney Smith, in How to Enjoy the End of the World.

Those who study nature have seen that nature moves in cycles: growth (exploitation), conservation, release, reorganization. Forests rise, fall, decay and form the bedding for new forests. Stars rise, shine hotly, burn out, and explode, impacting the nature of the galaxy in which they exist(ed).

“Growth/exploitation, stability/conservation, release/collapse, and reorganization: we can trace this pattern through virtually every civilization of the past about which we have sufficient information…Many factors, external and internal, can tip a civilization from stability toward collapse. It might be an enemy invasion or a volcanic eruption. It might be climate change or soil degradation, economic inequality or mass migration, civil war or a plague. Though the triggers differ, the pattern remains remarkably similar.” (pg 168)

Our current (western) civilization has existed for about 500 years. During that time, we have colonized peoples around the world and grown rapidly into an enormous powerhouse of economic, cultural and military might. McLaren maintains that the conservation phase is now giving way to the release stage, “as our current global system finds both growth and homeostasis harder and harder to sustain.” (pg 169) The concept of overshoot teaches us that this is so.

“We dreamed that we would be like gods, exceptions to the adaptive pattern, but our bubble of exceptionalism has burst for many of us, and it will eventually burst for everyone else. We thought we could hold on to the exploitation and conservation phases forever, and forever keep release and reorganization at bay. Now many of us are beginning to see that is not possible.” (pgs 169-70)

But we are not the first ones here.

Native American cultures have experienced the destruction of their environment and cultures as settlers moved across their lands, killing the bison[i], taking the land by force or broken treaty, destroying the culture – especially by removing the children to be brought up by the white people. Choctaw elder Steven Charleston: “’In their suffering, (my) ancestors embodied the finite and vulnerable condition of all humanity’. They modeled both that the suffering is great, and that the end of the world can be survived. Not without unimaginable pain. Not without unimaginable social and psychological destruction. Not without heartbreaking tragedy and loss. But it can be done.” (pg 171)

Black Americans have, of course, experienced the same thing. Torn violently away from their West African homes and cultures, they lost everything and for generations have had to survive in a world that enslaved, exploited, tortured and killed them. We Americans could learn much from our Native American and Black neighbors as we face our environmental and societal crisis, if only we would learn.

“Those survivors must become our teachers. They must become our inspiration. They knew (or learned) how to survive the end of the world.” (pg 172)

McLaren closes the chapter by expanding on words of Jesus he has already quoted: “If you try to save your life, you will lose it. If you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.”

“You have a life as a member of this civilization, this age, this economy”, Jesus is saying. “Your life means something within it. If you think this is the only way your life can have meaning, you will hold on to that life. And when this arrangement collapses, so will your life. But look at how I am living. I am pouring out my life for a bigger framework of meaning, for a story that is so much bigger that this little civilization that will soon run its course. If you join me in letting go and letting be, you will find what your life has really been about all along.

If we let go of exploitation and conservation…if we release, for the sake of others, for the sake of future generations, for the sake of our fellow creatures…we can pour our energy into what can live beyond us. What might be, we cannot know. We can only dream.” (pg 173)

[i] To give you an idea of the scope of the destruction and the genocidal reason for the killing: In 1800, about 60 - 100 million bison lived in North America. By 1900, only about 300 remained. Colonel Richard Dodge wrote in 1867: “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.” The Secretary of the Interior in the 1870s, Columbus Delano, wrote in his 1872 annual report, “The rapid disappearance of game from the former hunting-grounds must operate largely in favor of our efforts to confine the Indians to smaller areas and compel them to abandon their nomadic customs.”

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