David Suzuki and the apocalypse blues
how to respond to the quickening of catastrophic change
David Suzuki, the beloved Canadian academic, science educator and environmental activist, host for decades of the iconic The Nature of Things, recently told Ipolitics in an interview that, with regards to the climate crisis, "We're in deep trouble. I've never said this before to the media, but it's too late."
“We have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems. For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down.”
Although Suzuki is far from the first leading ecological thinker to say this, hearing it from him has a special resonance for many Canadians. It’s enough, to put it mildly, to give you the apocalypse blues. It’s also enough to agitate the mind— again— into questions about what, on an individual level, we can do to prepare.
I’ve written, and will write again, about how to adapt to our time of ecological and societal destabilization and possible collapse. In this series I suggested a Stoic approach to ecological destabilization; here I argued that anger and grief are not virtues to cultivate; here I reflected on the bigger picture and the beauty still available to us.
I myself often don’t feel that I do enough to adapt to, or battle against, the threats to human and animal wellbeing posed by the climate crisis. As a member of the precariat, I am absorbed in taking care of my family and my own wellbeing, and what calls to me as essential to my life is more in the realm of the intellect and spirit— I’m a words and yoga guy. Yet I also reflect that not everyone can or should be a warrior of politics, just like not everyone should be a Buddhist monk, or entrepreneur, artist, athlete, or millionaire investor, though some seem to think everyone should be all those things at once.
Some people absolutely shine in their lives while avoiding politics and activism, caring for the people in their family and immediate circle in powerful ways, or making exquisite and life-giving art which improves the human experience for strangers they will never meet. Some people care just for animals. Some people garden. Some people are just surviving. All of these things are important, and not everyone has the capacity to fight to save the human world on a meta ecological or political level. Some people may even neglect spheres where they are badly needed, or have much more power— in their homes, or workplaces, or micro-ecologies, in favor of posturing like Fritz Fanon or Greta Thunberg on the internet.
So I don’t think we all have to be warriors of the big picture.
That said, I am thinking there are some things we probably all would benefit from doing, and which I am going to try to do more of myself. This is just an outline. We all need to fill in the details based on our own lives:
Embed
“Nothing is as useful to human beings as human beings,” as the great philosopher Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) said. If we don’t feel embedded in communities where we can both offer and receive support, we should seek that out. Any community where people stay in touch easily and often and have a sense of care for each other will do. Ideas: religious communities, community-minded yoga studios, cohousing projects, clubs with a real sense of camaraderie, grassroots political groups, or hey -even prepper communities.
Root
Get to know our communities better, and our ecologies whether natural or urban or both. Get to know how one’s own neighborhood functions, patronize local businesses, walk around talking to people.
Connect
Keep in touch with family and friends. Reach out to people you haven’t talked to in a while. Learn about their lives in detail. See if there’s something you can offer them— a support, a service, a kind gift, or just attention.
Strengthen
Strengthen the mind and body. We should all be in training for what’s coming in the next few decades (or years). Now is the time to make sure our diet is healthy, that our basic body systems are fit, and that we’re cultivating mental resilience, meaning, and well, dealing with our shit. The future will need leaders and friends.
Prepare
Can we do anything to heat-proof our homes? Should we buy mini-solar arrays? Do we have a crisis kit for ourselves or our family, some back up food, basic equipment for power outages and floods? What else do you think we need?
What do you think? Did I miss anything?
Here's a lengthy reply; not my words, but important words from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.
Excerpted from here. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola is an American poet, Jungian psychoanalyst, post-trauma recovery specialist, author and spoken word artist. Estés grew up in the now vanished oral tradition of her immigrant, refugee families who could not read nor write, or did so haltingly, and for whom English was their third language overlying their ancient natal languages.
We missed our first deadline. Unfortunately, missing means that the poorest people on the planet are going to die unnecessarily. We should have responded seriously 60 years ago when we discovered the climate problem.
There is still hope, at least for the projected survivors, until the next deadline. But there are going to be some changes around here.
Since the odds are against us all surviving, the Olys are building lifeboats for themselves and their loyal obedient crew. If you were a selfish, paranoid mega-man, wouldn’t you? The groveling line is already too long and the make up of the olys strongly suggests there will not be many alpha males on board. Think LindseyGee.
We could still ameliorate the emerging catastrophe if we acted in concert with the rest of the world to reverse population growth through attrition. Seems like a joke when you think of the obstacles involved. Everything would have to change.
Chances are, well, not quite zero. But Remember the life boats. The odds are better that all the kids on the FascioXMusk boat will look like him. Trump would grow children because as J. Swift noted in his seminal work, “A Modest Proposal” they are cheap to feed and they taste good at that age. I can see his ad now: “Can’t Beat Trump’s Meat.”