Tag: social collapse

Nonduality & Meeting the Meta-Crisis III

A literal interpretation of meta-crisis suggests a combination of interdependent factors combining to create stress, most likely leading to, if we do nothing, unmanageable breakdowns. Complexity reaches an ungovernable state, suddenly and unpredictably reverting to a lower level. The various forms of stress reflected in crisis leave considerable leeway concerning its identity, scale, and impact. But one thing is likely: meta infers a superseding principle on a planetary scale. 

The current crisis is an internal one, referring to the collective mind, combining cognitive, philosophical, and spiritual factors having to do with the human relationship with the world; namely, our objectification of it. We have placed ourselves at a distance. We have created conditions categorizing the world as other, permitting us to reject others, to reject waste, to carve up the commons, to create registries of property and to accept the ongoing externalized violence committed in the name of progress.

To look at the crisis within returns us to the world and restores us to its indivisibility. To imagine the planet as more than a visualization, we enter a sensing, intuitive, feeling level intra-action with planetary life beyond the human. Connecting at this scale is the nature of the transition we are in. We are feeling ourselves between worlds now. We’ve not left the old world behind, nor do we see more than the outlines of a new world emerging. But we surely sense ourselves in transition. We are in a liminal, fragile, some might even say treacherous, terrain. What are we to do? A Nigerian proverb declares, “To find our way, we must first become lost.” We cannot embark on any real journey with certainty about where we will arrive, especially when we are wandering between worlds. In some sense, arrival itself is a quaint notion, serviceable at times, but in the broadest sense, not so much. Perhaps we will never arrive. The case of humanity encountering profoundly disturbing and threatening conditions is also not far removed from either the transition of birth, or from receiving a terminal medical diagnosis. Our attention is immediately drawn inward. Shall we live or shall we die? What must die for us to live?

The feelings arising in this circumstance mostly align with what we expect. Feeling our way into an advancing radical condition elicits a flood of anticipation, fear, disorientation, helplessness, confusion, denial and even despair. It’s dawning on us that our lifeboat, the Ark of earth, has been cast adrift. We are tempest-tossed in the sea of the unconscious, reflexively reaching for guidance, for solutions. Ironically, accepting such an analysis produces an inexhaustible supply of abstractions as we grasp for meaning, much of which merely reifies the dilemma. It may be the way our minds work, meta-upon-meta, but abstractions do not explain the heart of the matter and distract us from exploring our innate capacities and a full view of our condition. So, we may resist the first impulse to grasp for medicine. Instead, becoming lost in not-knowing may be the most appropriate first response.

With an initial grasp of the nondual view, we can examine our responses, addressing systemic issues with a measure of confidence and vision. We may realize that while we are on the Ark, we should understand that we arethe Ark, we builtthe Ark. We have made the storm! Humanity is the flood!! There are plenty of signs of breakdown already before even touching the question of flawed human thinking. We can look to Nicholas Lattanzio, Terry Patten, Zak Stein or Daniel Schmachtenberger for deeper context. Many refer to it as a proliferation of rising existential threats. And since the term meta-crisis cannot be reduced to any single one of those threats, it is only by viewing them as interdependent that we arrive at the meta-view. While any of these perspectives may reference a seamless reality, wholeness, the essential definition of nonduality is too often stripped of spirituality with the notable exception of Steve March.

A Developmental Model for Meeting the Meta-Crisis

Steve March is a professional coach and founder of the Alethia Project. He takes a developmental view to coaching and applies it to humanity’s status, which he sees reflected in his model. According to that framework, we are already on a path of realizing deeper states of being and releasing ourselves from the destructive trajectory we are on.

He outlines a hierarchy of four cognitive states with the deepest being nondual awareness. It’s immediately apparent that overlaying this hierarchy upon the meta-crisis also reveals parallels with the common description of experiencing critical illness. We can readily interpret the planetary process as an immersion in a critical illness diagnosis reaching existential proportions.

March’s four categories represent distinct stages of attention and capacity both at a personal and a collective (or cultural) level. They are indicators of ways of thinking and ontological limitations on our grasp of our circumstances. These seem to be so clear and relevant as indicators of background awareness. We sense their potential as a means of intervention, as ways of expanding beyond the limits of category to a deeper comprehension of our condition: wholistic awareness, or nonduality.

March’s Levels of Attention:

·       Depth of Parts: Everything is experienced as separate. Things are nameable, things are structure. Very attached to identity. Assumption that there’s nothing deeper. The inner experience is of parts of self that feel different things, but none of them define us – there’s plenty of room to be more than any single state. Parts work can be very effective in opening more space for hidden sub-personalities to express themselves and become known, to be discharged, helping us become more available for access and participation in a wider field of emotional response.

·       Depth of Process: With a more fluid view of world, everything, including identity, is in constant flux. Internally we connect with a flow of experience. We have a somatic sense that is meaningful, rich, complex – so multifaceted that it’s not easily put into language. The parts level might correspond loosely to a left-brain function. It represents the common rationality of seeing the world as a collection of objects other than oneself, as well as seeing the self as a collection of parts. Even so, gaining objectivity about the Process level, the identity and behavior of those parts can be quite liberating, leading to greater integration of the whole self, more freedom to feel.

·       Depth of Presence/Presence and Absence: In this depth we land in innate wholeness and completeness, that not only can we love but we’re made of love or compassion or relatedness, resilience, creativity, and intuition. This is a realm of innate virtues or qualities that may be acquired or trained on a (superficial) self-improvement path. The deeper path is that we now understand these things are intrinsic. They are what compose us. They can be unfolded, but not diminished or taken away. This level can be viewed as an integration of brain functions, a transcendence of both left and right brain, neither becoming dominant.

·       Depth of Nonduality: At this depth there is no separation. This is the level of source, of oneness. At this level we fully relax into the body, the mystery, without a need for anything to happen. This is the realm of mystical unity and ultimate freedom. The world, experience, are experienced as uninterrupted subject, held in unwavering absolute trust and confidence.

Thinking further about these spheres of contemplation and action, we can glimpse a few of the questions humanity is exploring just now to address the crisis/illness:

·       Self-improvement vs self-unfolding: must we become better people, improved people? Or must we become our authentic selves? Is the crisis or disease process revealing a need to improve how we implement known strategies for addressing dysfunction or that we need an entirely new strategy?

·       Stability vs instability: The meta-crisis is destabilizing. Yet it also calls into question whether there has ever been stability. What is it we are chasing as we pursue stability? A false security? What do we see reflected in our responses to crisis/illness? Can the strategy be modified if it doesn’t seem to be working? Maybe we must redefine stability to become more resilient.

·       Simplicity vs complexity: How do we define these terms? Where do we find balance between them? How do we come down in a measured way off the mountain of complexity into the plains of simplicity?

·       Control vs surrender: If remaining in relationship is a primary value, how does that influence our responses to crisis/illness? What are we surrendering to?

·       Centralized vs decentralized power: Where does our personal or collective agency lie? Are we deluded about what real agency is? What sustains and legitimizes power? How does power become transformational?

We can see the potential to develop a flow of perpetual inquiry to focus attention on these polarities and to explore deeper levels of imagination as either ego or eros drive our responses to the meta-crisis and in the critical illness space. Most people are thinking/experiencing the present moment in relation to crisis at March’s elementary Parts level, with fear, confusion, and reactivity. We are solution-oriented in the most reductive ways, seeking management models without much inquiry into how our view of reality has gotten us here. It’s disembodied.

The Process level of experience, by focusing on somatic responses, a feeling level flow of responses over time introduces a deeper level of inquiry. Seeing ourselves in an ongoing nonlinear, layered experience is also freeing, but it’s still not fully stepping into wholeness. The Presence level is a much more realized way of being that recognizes intrinsic qualities implied and activated by adversity. We can readily see a flow back and forth between these two initial levels in a dynamic process. The character of this balance between parts level and the process level mirrors, according to March, the larger cultural impasse.

Ultimately, developing nondual awareness is the deepest integration of experience—which, ironically, transitions into an escape from ‘experience’ altogether, entering a supreme unity with all, uncontrived, unaffected, living in trust, confidence, and benevolence. This model need not be formalized, although it may become a personal guide to discerning one’s patterns and responses to the shifting circumstances of an advancing illness/crisis, to become more mindful of the opportunities to elevate one’s awareness to a more inclusive, wholistic view.

Despite the psychological nature of March’s model, there can be no doubt that our drift is a spiritual crisis. Others may have differing root beliefs about the dysfunctions driving it all, of overcoming separation, and technical solutions are so appealing. March’s developmental approach addresses the transformational potential of nonduality. The nondual view is personal, spiritual, and collective, transcending and including the dominant cognitive frames of our time.

Present as Prologue

We are in the midst of an awakening, a rough transition from the dream of modernity and the emerging reality of its failing, if not wholly false, promises of universal prosperity and abundance.

When I think back over the past couple of decades and ask how was it and when my thinking shifted from imagining it was possible to find the political will to confront climate change to realizing social collapse was far more likely, I can point to a number of inflection points. It’s not quite so easy to assign specific turning points, but there are some events marking the passage toward my current position.

In 2012, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone published a book called Active Hope. The subtitle was ‘How to Face The Mess We Are In Without Going Crazy.’ Segueing from anti-nuclear activism that began in the 80s, Joanna has spent the past forty years helping people access deep feeling for what is being lost and then to watch a fresh and grounded conviction to act emerge. But seeing that particular book appear was a signal to me that she was acknowledging our intensifying circumstances and the increasing difficulty of not only processing all the emotions associated with the incremental decomposition of nature and culture, but also of realizing a positive outcome of The Great Turning. I wondered when active hope or, if you will, radical hope becomes desperation? If we imagined hope as a regenerative resource, is it inexhaustible? When does active hope become hopium– an intoxicating strategy of pacification, helplessness and rising delusion?

To add some context, Obama’s weak stance and the failure of negotiations at COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009 were also part of my turning, particularly upon learning that the fossil fuel propaganda campaign was deliberately targeting that event. In 2013, I was also collaborating on a political strategy to promote a carbon tax in the USA, submitting it for critique and confronting the obstacles to that effort. Ultimately, I found that process to be deeply dispiriting.

Not too long after that episode was the Paris Agreement of 2015, when the INDCs, Individual National Declared Contributions (to global decarbonization) were declared voluntary. Of course it would be naive of anyone to imagine nations agreeing to self-generated required contributions and submitting to enforcement, whatever that could mean. But voluntary contributions were also guaranteed to expose the entire effort to be more platitude than action, particularly in the case of the biggest polluters, which of course meant the United States. And it was.

These are moments I’m calling inflection points. They all had antecedents, a series of episodes dropping like grains of sand on one side of a scale until suddenly their accumulation shifts the entire balance away from the probability of avoiding systemic collapse to one of guaranteeing it. Accompanying all of this is a process of letting go of hope, similar to the five stages of grief. But I’d be wary of trying to fit myself into boxes that might be too small. Regardless, that negotiation with all the familiar names is about the ultimate acceptance of endings, the contemplation of mysteries we enter most gingerly.

So here we are. As with grief, the entire process is not one of giving up so much as opening to something new, regardless of its mystery. When do we let go of bargaining? When do we loosen our grip on a false future of endless beginnings or, to put it another way, step outside the law and induced conventions sustaining a false future to expose ourselves to the truth (and terror) of something far less familiar, but which is becoming ever more likely? 

And anyway, was that even the future to which we were–or are–clinging? Or was it the past? A past in which the so-called promises of modernity could become ever more inclusive and the fantasy of personal and collective prosperity could continue indefinitely? In those terms, we’ve not been headed into the future at all. Our increasingly desperate grip has always been on the past–the conveniences we enjoy and particularly the ideology of endless growth. The culture war, the current battle of narratives is between those who deny it altogether, those who believe we can manage climate change without really giving up very much, that we can keep most everything we have and still call ourselves ‘sustainable’-and those who believe we must explore and design radically different lifestyles based on a new definition of abundance. What if nature has another agenda entirely?

The real future, if we can stop lying, is so overwhelming we may not fully grasp what is virtually imminent. Thus, we turn our gaze to the past, the recent past, to preserve the fantasy of human omniscience, the fantasy of our unlimited capacity to manage our way through every obstacle, every rising tide, every rapid in the downstream flow of history. Party like it’s 1999! All of this is fueled by vapid pronouncements from the technology sector, the advocates of bioengineering and the offices of politicians bought by fossil fuel interests. In fact, we have no idea precisely what will finally convince us of a collapsing biosphere. But we know the signs are all around us.

Releasing our grip on the future—telling the truth of the moment—is a landmark principle of psycho-logical health—admitting what is—allowing us to deal with ‘reality.’ At the same time, we are also trying to modulate extreme emotional responses, rising solastagia and deepening disorientation, which are negotiated in a specific system of the brain devoted to survival. While we don’t want to trigger impulsive, personally damaging or anti-social behaviors, we do want to retain enough forebrain function to generate positive corrective measures.

We–and by that I mean we in the US–may be a single extreme climate event away from triggering a mass shift in public attitudes about what is on the way (several are already underway), what mass media is still timid (or worse, negligent) about addressing. But this is where we find ourselves wading into a swamp of uncertainty, disagreement and potentially dangerous outcomes that were wholly unanticipated at the beginning. We don’t want panic to become even mildly contagious–like the pandemic. And besides, a significant segment of American culture is already being bombarded with triggering messages generating anti-social behaviors against their own interests, which are also threatening the collective well-being of the nation.

In trying to temper the information flow to avoid elevating mass anxiety, fear or contagious hopelessness, we remain deeply embedded in the territory of complacency. When Greta Thunberg addressed the annual World Economic Forum in Davos in 2019, she said, “I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day, and then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.” 

Meanwhile, managing social behavior, refusing to form a vision of a collective response to the realities upon us or being determined to ‘both sides’ it all is robbing us of the opportunity to convey clearly how fragile our situation really is. Everything matters more than ever if we ever expect to become someone’s ancestor, because everything, the wake-up call and the suffering of the past 18 months, the dislocation, the uncertainty, the disruption of commerce, the loss of stability, the political and economic inequalities, the creative energy and social innovation, the conflicting moralities and the redefinition of community are all just a rehearsal for a rapidly advancing future.

The following is an obscure Facebook post from 2017, written by a nameless founder of the Into The Wild Festival:

And finally the great ancient god of nature, of the wild places, of the muddy-brooks and the golden hills, of the damp forests and the hidden glades, the protector of beasts, of horned and hoofed, he of the wild-lichen eye-brows, musk-eared pungent aromas swelling in through the ether, playing his deep octave of enchantment on his bone flute from beyond the veils, from under the other worlds. He curls his misty eyebrow towards humanity once again, reminding them that their tiny insignificant lives are mere dew-drops on the vast garden of existence. All their self-help seminars and self-important narcissistic endeavors are nothing but the froth of waves under the infinite sun-rays of existence. 

You can wash your hands, but you cannot wash away the wild, the mysterious, ravaging ferocious tenacity of the world. You can try to blame it on 5G or 4G or GG. You can create as many concepts as you like, but in the end, nature will rule with wild and ecstatic bloodthirsty longing to take us all home to where we began, the deep dark emptiness where everything arises and begins, time without end. Pan, the original horned god will once again step out of the shadows with his name on the tongues of all beings, pandemic, pandemonium, panic, panacea, all bursting forth like wild flowers yearning to kiss the sky.

In this realm there is no good or bad, high or low, rich or poor, just the wild abandoned expression of life and death forever dancing in the orgasmic Milky Way of existence, radiant in its potential. So, we are nature in our deepest dreaming, before we civilized ourselves into square boxes of ready meals. We are life and death. We are the earth-woven lovers of the wild. We are that radiant mysterious emptiness. We are Pan. We are all people. Listen to the call of all beings deep in the dark of night, at the cusp of dawn or dusk and you will hear your ancient voice forever singing you back home.

We are all Pan, as god, as archetype, as a voice of the irrational. Pan travels deep in our psychic underworld. Nature is Pan, both beautiful and treacherous. By exiling him from our natural terrain, by dislocating or repressing the divine Pan from the pantheon of gods, we are dishonored. We lose ourselves. Eventually we suffer the consequences of that repression in the form of emerging tortuous pathologies.

We are in the midst of an awakening, a rough transition from the dream of modernity and the emerging reality of our failing, if not wholly false, promises of universal prosperity and abundance. That was never really part of the deal and now, with all the Pan-words dancing before us, the true costs are mounting.

How will it all Pan out?

Is Deep Adaptation Mere Doomsaying?

Is Deep Adaptation simply scary talk? Unscientific hyperbole? Depressing fatalism?

The irony of climate hyperbole is that while many people disappear emotionally and become immobilized, there are also many who believe catastrophe is inevitable. They may believe the science and they may largely understand that scientific modeling has consistently underestimated reality, but they may not grasp the breadth of action required.

Yet, while we ruminate, the predictions for the future are coming true sooner and with greater impact than anticipated.

On the other hand, another form of gloom is to believe Business As Usual cannot be interrupted, no matter how dire the predictions become, because if the last 30 years is any indication, the system is rigged in the interest of the polluters. Greed and corruption trump science.

The more dire those predictions do become, the more dismissive the pushback from the CEO class and those who resist their own straw man of a top-down master plan for civilization and cling to their “liberty” until their last choking and overheated breath. For them, participating in collective action is about as likely as giving up their guns…or tax breaks.

What’s different about Deep Adaptation is that future scenarios are unpacked, differentiated and labeled: social collapse, climate catastrophe, species extinction and everything in between. Each of these terms can be further broken down into real factors and evaluated by bioregion. What is going to break down… and where…and when? And what is required of us? What resources are required to build resilience?

There is a speculative aspect to such predictions, of course, but we already know who is likely to be most impacted and soonest by advancing disaster — because it’s already happening. These domains are all thrown together in the rhetorical reactions to extreme climate futures, rendering them all more abstract and the likelihood of personal impact becoming unrealistically remote.

We also can’t reliably predict where and when the next catastrophe is going to occur, or its nature. We only know the ingredients for such events are in ample supply. This is less predictable than determining where the next avalanche is going to occur on a snow-packed mountain. Yet none of the existing efforts to shift policy, build out renewable networks, upgrade and decentralize energy systems, use resources more efficiently, develop new technologies, educate the public or retrofit infrastructures should be abandoned.

The most appealing aspect to Deep Adaptation is its implication for transforming our relationships. The demand is to determine our values and stop procrastinating. Let’s make the world we want Right Now. If the world is indeed on a path toward social collapse or eventual catastrophe, the human impacts are incalculable in terms of economics, social upheaval, displacement, potential resource conflict, food and water insecurity….the list goes on.

Equal to all these issues will be the impact on mental health, social cohesion, our outlook on the future, finding meaning in existence. We are called upon to define our core values — and value to each other — if we are to survive the magnitude of upheaval on its way.

Refocusing and empowering individuals to develop local emergency resilience strategies, i.e. preparing for social collapse, is something else.

First they have to recognize and break through existing denial. They have to shift out of habitual “me” culture to “we” culture. We have to examine the integrated systems on which we all depend so heavily. Climate impacts are not something that only happens to others. The more local strategies are articulated, the more tools exist to identify and address personal and community resilience, the more people are drawn from their bleacher seats to a place on the field to fully play the game. That also requires empowerment. There’s nothing empowering about doom saying.

Anyone claiming Deep Adaptation is doom saying must believe we can’t walk and chew gum. Even scientists who claim doom saying is not scientifically supported are, in effect, taking the denial position relative to what we already know and have seen with our own eyes.

Doomsayers do not generally have practical agendas nor are they even likely to develop one. Doomsayers have given up.

The cartoon characters standing on the corners holding signs saying, ”The End is Near” are only holding signs. It’s easy to call them crazy because they aren’t offering any practical remedies, no path to resilience, no restorative strategies. Deep Adaptation is doing that, not merely for the sake of giving people something hopeful to cling to, but to save real lives in a real future.

No one is suggesting we all build bomb shelters and stock up on canned goods. But when we start asking the right questions, it turns out there are many practical ways to redefine infrastructure for the sake of local resilience.

The critics of Deep Adaptation appear to believe our greatest hope lies in continuing to deny the magnitude of the problem, to continue believing the myth of perpetual growth and closing our eyes to the degree of our entanglement with each other and the natural world.

We have to examine the steps we’ve trod for 30 years and stop acting as if a different outcome will happen if we simply persist.

Anyone who takes an unfiltered look at the science and the record of popular responses and even long-term organized initiatives on many fronts, would have to conclude the record of success is slim — too little and too late. Which only leaves room for a different approach, a shift toward compensatory measures, getting our hands dirty with the realities of multiple interdependent infrastructures, local resilience, a long-term view, redefining the resource inventory and planning for either an immediate or a phased response.

To those who would claim Deep Adaptation is unsupportable doom saying, I would say many of us are already suffering in deep and mostly unconscious or unaddressed ways. The prime directive of all climate action (even every life) is to relieve suffering.

However we might be suffering as we contemplate a very uncertain future for ourselves and for younger generations cannot be allowed to prevent us from building a thriving, humane, brilliant and creative, life-affirming and resilient world in the midst of advancing disaster. What could be more urgent?

Deep Adaptation II

Jem Bendell arrives at his assessment of existing climate conditions to conclude that near term social collapse (within 10 years) is a certainty, mid-term catastrophe is likely and species extinction is possible. That’s his core platform. He is now the principal progenitor of what is being called the Doomasphere. Yet for us to proceed as if this is the only possible scenario is silly. Each of us may come to a very different subjective assessment on the issues of collapse, catastrophe, personal impact, timeline or helplessness/hopelessness. Every person will make their own assessment, regardless of its rationale, and arrive at a personal ‘temperature’—what they expect will happen over the next 10-50 years. This will become the basis of further inquiry, examining our assumptions and refining our perspective.

Second, Bendell’s reference to collapse and catastrophe only hint at the wide range of possible differences each of us may face depending on our location, climate and social conditions. An urban dweller will face different issues from a rural farm site. I have unpacked them and created a process to look deeper at our own attitudes about these issues and to form an outlook to address these possibilities in our own communities. However, as Bendell says very clearly in his initial paper, denial gets in the way of seeing clearly and moving forward. Hence, though it’s not as simple as we might imagine, denial in its many forms must be addressed.

Third, Bendell also alludes to values several times in his video interviews. But again, he is not explicit–nor do I think he should be. We have an opportunity—perhaps an obligation—to come to consensus about what we hold most important, particularly as we might anticipate conditions that will cause conflict. This is the territory of Reconciliation, determining what principles we will hold and measures we will create to reduce conflict.

I understand Deep Adaptation to be about reducing suffering. The deeper we go into the values, intentions and objectives for developing personal and collective local responses to the advance of climate disruption, the more clear it becomes that this is the primary directive.

Finally, as Bendell also indicates in multiple communications, the possibility of extinction implies the onset of rising fatalities due to displacement, the loss of infrastructure or support systems—the possibility of mass death, being personally impacted by community or family vulnerabilities, even our own death. That possibility may be very slim for some people and quite daunting at the very least. But again, here is where denial enters the calculations.

Imagine receiving a personal diagnosis of a condition, which, if left untreated, would definitely be terminal. Beyond the initial shock and grief, what would become most immediately important to you–a commitment to the treatment, the values on which you can no longer compromise or procrastinate, defining your community, deciding how you wish to live? Humanity is being given that diagnosis. Bendell has cut though a great deal of chaff to define the territory. It is up to us to explore it. That’s what Deep Adaptation means to me—discovering how we wish to respond.

Where Did Deep Adaptation Come From

Jem Bendell is a professor of sustainability and leadership at the University of Cumbria. In July, 2018, he published a paper, Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. Based on his assessment of all available climate data, he reached a conclusion that Social Collapse is “inevitable” within 10 years, that climate Catastrophe is “probable” in the mid-term and human extinction is “likely.”

His paper received a dramatic response, all the way from highly critical reviews from scientists, social psychologists and others, to viral circulation and positive responses from the general public. Since that moment 18 months ago, over 100,000 people have downloaded the paper and many around the world have quickly become involved or connected in some way to this approach.

A Deep Adaptation Forum emerged in March, 2019, providing 10 different categories of engagement including an active community forum. The principles that drive Bendell’s approach are the 4Rs: Resilience, Relinquishing, Restoration and Reconciliation. In order, he’s talking about saving what we need, restoring what has been lost, letting go of what we don’t need and what needs to be done to reduce conflict as we enter more extreme climate conditions.

The issue of Deep Adaptation has significant personal and collective implications. What needs to be done individually; what needs to be done to build trust and confidence among people who wish to become involved at this level and what needs to be done collectively to address the world that is coming? These are not simple issues to untangle. But there is a vein of rational assessment, emotional clarity, creative potential and spiritual hunger that is being galvanized by this approach. I feel it and I’m in.

What I intend to be doing on this issue is to explore many questions arising around this approach to the climate emergency, finding clarity for myself and offering the same to anyone else who cares. I will also be exploring what needs to be learned, how to craft an accessible and fulfilling approach to Deep Adaptation for those wishing to become more involved and active in their communities.