Tag Archives: nature

Whistling Past the Graveyard

I must begin with a confession. I have always been troubled by Earth Day. As a lifelong activist I understand and appreciate the concept and how it came to be. But over the years I’ve seen it morph from an almost spiritual movement for ecological consciousness and justice into an opportunity for corporations and politicians to tout their empty gestures at “saving the planet” all while they mercilessly plunder it. Greenwashing has now taken center stage and the effect has often lead to the neutralizing of public outrage. Like so many things corporate, Earth Day has been tinged with a pathological optimism. The dominant message today exudes an all too pervasive “feel goodism” for a situation that is by all accounts truly monstrous, not only for countless other species on the planet, but for our own.

Nearly fifty years ago in April of 1970 people of conscience gathered to address the destruction of the planet. Since that time politicians, corporations, the fossil fuel industry and their mouthpiece think tanks have worked feverishly, not at addressing the crisis, but at polishing their image. Today their lavish conferences and consortiums generally serve as window dressing and are a distraction to our collective, growing existential angst, as each passing year gives us a terrifying glimpse into a fast approaching future for our planet, one rife with super storms, floods, mega-droughts, crop failures and species demise.

Within the last decade alone there have been monumental shifts in climate models leaving even the conservative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shocked and bewildered. Indeed, record breaking temperature extremes have become a defining norm of the 21st century, with an ice free Arctic summer now on the horizon. It is becoming apparent that things are more dire than anyone had previously anticipated. We are beginning to see the first stirrings of climate chaos; and it is set against the ominous backdrop of an already ravaged biosphere.

This past year we witnessed an American west coast at once bathed in fire and then awash in mud. We saw the Amazon rain forest, the vaunted “lungs of the planet,” belch out smoke as it reeled from over 200,000 fires. We stood aghast at the hurricanes which decimated the Caribbean and the floods that killed thousands and displaced many more over the summer and into autumn and winter, from China to India and Nepal, to Southeast Asia and West Africa.

Other revelations were equally staggering. Recent studies have confirmed a catastrophic drop in insect populations worldwide. Bird populations are being decimated by loss of food sources, and marine plastic pollution is set to outweigh all fish in the ocean by mid-century. Fish stocks have plummeted and over 90% of Coral reefs, the ocean’s nurseries, will have disappeared by 2050 from bleaching thanks to warming waters and ocean acidification. Forests are being felled at a rate akin to a “New Zealand sized area“ every year. Yet despite these staggering developments little to nothing of substance is being done on the global scale that is required.
To be sure, history has demonstrated that most politicians will never face unpleasant realities until they are literally upon us. Our current climate and ecological crisis is no different. As this century unfolds cities and towns will likely be lost to rising seas as governments eventually find that they are too expensive to salvage. Entire regions may become uninhabitable from deforestation, pollution and drought. The specters of famine and disease will undoubtedly haunt billions of people, in fact they already plague millions today. Mass migration could easily make today’s issue appear negligible and would put a strain on fragile social and economic systems that already suffer from vast, structurally imposed inequities. Rich, biodiverse areas could become graveyards. Those in power would undoubtedly answer the concomitant unrest in more Orwellian doublespeak and with insidious distraction, coupled with draconian crackdowns on dissent, protest or objection. None of this is fiction. It has all happened, and not only in civilizations throughout history which have faced socio-economic or ecological collapse. It is happening today in societies which purport to be democratic.

Here is where people of conscience, like those untarnished souls at the first Earth Day nearly fifty years ago, must be unabashedly truthful about our monstrous and collective predicament. We must face the painful fact that our species has exceeded its limits in growth, population and the exploitation of the natural world. We must also grapple with the fact that the global north is most responsible for the decimation of the biosphere and the ruthless subjugation and exploitation of the global south.

And that there will be no substantive actions taken by our political and corporate leaders to halt this plunder or stem the carnage of the planet’s rich biodiversity. After all, according to their economic ethos they have no vested interest since they profit handsomely from this global arrangement to begin with. They have demonstrated that they are both unwilling and incapable of addressing the issue with the integrity and impetus necessary. Instead, they will continue their bait and switch dance of empty placation and denialism while they stuff their coffers with coin, even as the earth rapidly transforms into another planet before our eyes.

Despite all this we still have tremendous agency to affect the future, both personally and collectively. We have the power to create communities of solidarity and to meet the looming catastrophes and calamities with dignity and humanity. We possess the moral authority to oppose the further defilement of the water and the soil, the very source and sustenance of our lives and that of countless other species. But that agency is diluted and made ineffectual so long as we continue to lie to ourselves and others about where we are as a species.

Earth Day should no longer be taken simply as a gentle, yet trite, reminder to recycle, or use canvas shopping bags, or cycle to work one day out of the week. It should no longer be diminished to “lifestyle choices” that let corporations and governments off the hook. It must quite literally be transformed into a rallying cry for the life of the biosphere. Because anything short of that is merely whistling past the graveyard.

Kenn Orphan, April 2018

The Insatiable Lust for Plunder

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“Rocky Mountain Landscape” by Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902), oil on canvas.

Like many of his colleagues Albert Bierstadt was captivated and awed by the beauty of the North American continent. He painted grand and sweeping scenes of the American west at a time when little was known about it to European Americans except in rumour. His use of light and space thrusts us into the sphere of the transcendent splendor of nature and its power.

Of course Native Americans knew of this beauty for many centuries prior to colonialism. They revered it as sacred, and understood that human beings and nature were not separate entities but were one in the same whose identity and destiny were inextricably linked. Today much of that land has be despoiled or is imperiled by industry and development. Protected areas are increasingly hemmed in by the interests of corporations, petroleum companies and mining, creating islands of besieged wildlife.

The battle for these last remaining lands has never ceased. The capitalist robber barons of the 21st century have never sated their lust for plunder, and Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to rescind national monuments is a living example of that sad fact. One might wonder what someone like Bierstadt, or his contemporaries in the Hudson River School, would have thought about the reckless and insane drive to rid the continent of its last remaining sanctuaries for wildlife. But looking at this painting it isn’t too difficult to imagine the sorrow he would have felt.

Kenn Orphan 2917

Ushering in the Closing Chapter of the Human Species

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The epic assaults being carried out against the vulnerable around the world at this very moment will determine the fate of our species and the living earth itself. To the powerful this statement is hyperbole at its extreme, but to those of us on the other side there is no condemnation that is too exaggerated when it comes to the destruction of communities and of the biosphere itself. The attacks are taking place along ancient rivers in the American Dakotas, in the life drenched rain forests of Ecuador, in historic olive groves in Palestine, in the melting tundra of the Arctic circle, in the sun baked Niger Delta, and in the war torn or misery laden shanty’s of Aleppo, Kolkata, Jakarta, Nairobi and beyond. These may seem like separate instances to some, but they are a part of a global struggle and the outcome will in all likelihood determine our collective future and that of millions of other species that we share this planet with.

I believe that the intersectionality of these conflicts are indicative of a broader struggle over guiding principles and mythologies. Some may see this as an oversimplification, and while I would agree that we should be careful to consider and respect nuance, context and individual histories, there are some general themes which may unite us while there is still time. These conflicts have been with our species since we began to walk upright. But now they are global in scale and there are two sides that should be identified above all others.

One side values living beings over profit, and sees protection of the water and the soil and the air as the most fundamental responsibilities of any society. It values cooperation and generosity above individual ambition. It shuns all forms of violent coercion, land theft and repression. It is against aggression and wars of conquest. It is the way of Community. The other is based upon the dominance of the physically powerful and suppression of the weak. It sees the living planet merely as a means for amassing material profit. It commodifies everything, living and non. It values avarice and ruthless competition over cooperation. It believes the only viable way forward is through suppression of dissent, ridicule, marginalization of the poor and the downtrodden, jingoistic nationalism and organized State violence. It is the way of Empire.

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The language of Empire is duplicitous. It employs the parlance of pale euphemisms like sustainability, austerity or free trade to obscure its true authoritarian and feudalistic intentions. It encourages nationalistic sentimentality and racial and ethnic division to obscure the reality of its imposed classism. It objectifies the living planet through clever marketing and branding with such subtle ease that it becomes ever more difficult to decipher and parse. But in the end the Empire cannot cloak the stench of a dying world forever with catchy jingles, cynical ploys, shiny new objects, paranoid bigotries or vapid distractions.

In their quest to maintain and grow their coffers, the powerful see the dissolving ice cap as a strategic business opportunity for geopolitical advancement. They see the growing difficulty in extracting high quality petroleum as an excuse to erase ancient mountaintops, pierce deep ocean trenches and scrape away primeval forests for less viable and more earth damaging fossil fuels. They see growing inequities between us and the handful of people who own half the world’s wealth as opportunities for enhanced security walls and surveillance. They see hunger and famine as a chance to litter the world with pesticides and chemically or genetically altered food or factory farms which are little more than massive concentration camps for sentient beings. They see flattened forests and fouled rivers as a way of moving indigenous peoples into overcrowded, cordoned off corporate colonies for easier exploitation, social control and abandonment. And if they continue on their path the world they are forging will rival every other civilization in history in atrocity, repression and misery.

The war the Empire is waging is not about isms or ideologies, it is about power, exploitation and wealth. And to those of us being assaulted the cause is as urgent as it is dire. It is literally about life and death. We see the rising tides of an ever imperiled, acidic sea. We walk in the fallow fields where there may be no crops harvested tomorrow. We breathe the acrid air choked out by smokestacks of insatiable, blind industry. We see the walls and borders and checkpoints and guard dogs and police tanks and surveillance cameras and detention camps burgeoning as if unstoppable. We hear the drums of imperialistic war being beaten every day of every year. And we stand in shock at the unquenchable lust for wealth that stain the halls of power even as they dig our dusty mass graves. When we sound the alarm or even raise concern about any of this we can expect to be ignored, chided or silenced by the powerful in the media, corporations, the military or political establishment or even clergy. We anticipate being co-opted by the ruling oligarchy or by cynical corporate interests. But we are weary of this kind of marginalization and we aren’t going down without a fight.

The powerful will not stop waging their war this year or next. It will undoubtedly play out and grow for the next few decades even as the planet’s ecosystem’s spiral and crash, because dollar signs and dominance are all they truly understand. This is not just another chapter in some unending saga of the human story. It is not something that any resident of planet earth can afford to sit out. If they are victorious this war may very well usher in the closing chapter of the human species and far sooner than anyone could ever imagine. We must join with each other if only to ease each others suffering, or bring one small amount of justice to the oppressed, or to protect one small river way or field or stretch of beach. This war they are waging is against the living planet and their own future whether they realize it or not. But even if they do not care about their children’s future, we must.

Kenn Orphan 2016

Grieving in Silence

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When I was in my early twenties I never thought that in my lifetime I would see the death of the Great Barrier Reef and scores of other coral reefs around the world. I never thought I would see the temperature of the North Pole reach 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, or gigantic nation-sized shelves of ice simply break off and fall into the sea in Antarctica. I never thought I would read about scores of species dying en masse, washing up on shores, or going extinct every single day. I never thought that plastic in the seas would outweigh marine life by mid century, or huge swaths of forest succumb to pine beetles and blight. Now twenty years on I have witnessed all of that and more, and most of it has happened in just the last few years. I often find myself being overwhelmed by an enormous tide of grief that envelopes my entire being; and it doesn’t countenance being ignored.

But I live within a society that values denial over truth. And lately I have begun to relate more to Edvard Munch’s iconic painting “The Scream.” It seems to me to be the perfect emblem of our times, an anthem of despair silenced by the absurdity of the status quo. I realize that many of us feel this deep sense of sorrowful terror; but many more can do little more than cry out in that private, interior space that our culture has consigned us to.
Many traditions have a public means for displaying private grief. Years ago, in Europe and in the Americas, those who were mourning the death of a loved one announced their grief to others by wearing a piece of black cloth around their arm or by placing a black wreath upon their front doors. Today much of that has been rejected as being too morbid or depressing. Perhaps part of this normalization is due to our evolutionary heritage; but certainly the distractions of our industrialized culture have numbed most of our senses and reinforced the myth of our separateness from the natural world. How else can the absence of outrage or public lamentation regarding the unfolding ecocide be explained?

I, like almost everyone else I know, go about my day in the routine that has been assigned to me by society. I get up in the morning, take the drugs that keep my blood pressure in check, eat something processed, wash up and merge into the busy and confining passages that define modernity. Living within this labyrinth discourages any introspection. There simply isn’t enough time, ever. Thoughts about our place in the universe, or our mortality, or the meaning of it all are summarily dismissed in this culture. In the media or in popular entertainment this subject is usually only included as a form of comic relief. “What is the meaning of life?” has become the crux of jokes. We are chided or ridiculed for thinking too much and sent to a cubicle to perform as a useful cog in the machine of industry; and then to another cubicle to shop for items we are told we need or that will “enhance” our lives, and then to a cubicle that we are charged money to live in and sit in front of yet another cubicle that tells us what to think, how to feel, and what is important.

This is the only way that it can all work. It is the only way that the natural world can be compartmentalized and commodified. It is the only way that the killing ideologies of militarism, nationalism and capitalism can go unquestioned. Now, of course, we can see it has worked all too well as we march head long into extinction with nary a concern. But the tower of mythology that supports every aspect of industrial civilization is beginning to crumble beneath the weight of its own hubris and apathetic indulgences. We ignored the planet’s boundaries, and now those boundaries are closing in on us fast.

The world will look very different in just a mere decade or so. This is not a prophetic declaration, it is a certainty that is easy to demonstrate. Our leaders, when they are not in outright denial, reinforce the absurd notion that we still have plenty of time to stop climate change even as it is abruptly shifting before our eyes. And sustainability is nothing more than a lie of consumer capitalism. What, after all, is worth sustaining? A societal model that requires an economy that must grow regardless of the ecological and social costs? Or that tolerates mass species extinction? Or that allows for endless military aggression to ensure a constant flow of minerals and fuel to produce objects which will end up in a landfill or in the ocean for eons? If depression and neuroses are companions of cancer and heart disease in this model of sustainability, is this really worth preserving?

The stark truth is that there is little collective will to change the path we are currently on as a species. Its trajectory is solidly towards collapse of the biosphere. And even if monumental changes were implemented tomorrow by the powers that be it would not stop the seas from rising, or stop the process of ocean acidification, or resolve the plastic soup that churns at its center, or solve the never ending meltdown at Chernobyl or Fukushima, or prevent the release of methane from the seabed, or stave off famine for millions of people, and bring back thousands of species now gone forever.

I realize that this entire essay is antithetical to the zeitgeist of interminable optimism that defines our age. In truth, I gave up trying to fit into this model a long time ago when I saw it as merely a kind of collective psychosis. I write because, selfishly, I must. It is my silent scream outward from a dark, interior pain of alienation, frustration and sadness. I am not looking for a magic elixir or a pharmaceutical or an intervention to medicate or block out this pain either. I want to feel it because it exists and because this is a culture that I wish to separate myself from; and I think we must all feel it and show this publicly while we still have time. I don’t think that doing any of this will spare us the calamities that appear to be waiting for us just down the road, but maybe it can help us reclaim a sense of meaning to it all that has been robbed from us by an insipid, manic and brutal system of mindless consumption, and vacuous distraction.

I see what is unfolding and I cannot help but feel great sorrow. My scream of anguish, though silent, can no longer be inward. I am in mourning. I grieve all that has been and will be lost. And I will place a black wreath upon my door and wear a black cloth around my arm for all the world to see, not because I am brave, but because I simply cannot grieve in silence anymore.

Kenn Orphan 2016

On Being a Climate Migrant

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When I first moved to San Diego twenty years ago I fell in love. Blue skies, blue Pacific, lush, rolling hills of scrub oak and chaparral and warm sun most of the year. Back then the freeways did not seem to be full all day and night as they do now. People weren’t as aggressive towards each other either. I could walk along the beach alone and feel like I was the only one for miles; and the tide pools were brimming with life. The containment of urban sprawl was a cherished community value. The cost of living may have been high compared to many other places, but one could enjoy a very satisfying life even with a meager income.

Now living here has become very costly, and enjoyment a rare luxury. The people seem perpetually hurried and harried. And so many of the hilltops have been scraped away for housing developments, shopping malls and industrial parks. Wildlife has been cordoned off into “preserves” and roadways lace the canyons and mesas. Make no mistake, I love California and will always consider it my home in many ways. But the state I knew only exists in memory. And now we are facing a megadrought in a place where the population is ballooning with seemingly few taking notice.

So my partner and I decided a couple years ago that it was time to move on. We are collecting what we need and embracing our loved ones before we embark on a journey northward to the place of my ancestry and that I consider a home from my childhood, in what is shaping up to be the last epoch of human civilization as we know it. I would like to carve out a small sanctuary in one of the few pristine places left on the planet. Is this hyperbolic? Am I only two cans of corn away from being an “end times prepper?” I’m sure to many Americans I am being extreme. When I tell people that I am migrating from California because of abrupt climate change, and the ecological and societal collapse that will accompany it, I am often met with blank stares or eye rolls. I think this is because the reality of our dire circumstances has not yet hit home to most Americans who live in privileged, coastal cities. But to those of us who are paying attention the approaching maelstrom is undeniable.

Our planet has been warming, but this trend has taken leaps and bounds in the past few years with each one hotter than the last. Records are being shattered each month. For most of the world’s population calamity is not some distant risk factor. Water scarcity and famine now tower over hundreds of millions of people from Sudan to India to Malaysia and beyond like ravenous angels of death. Species extinction is accelerating across the globe as well. It is like watching a dystopic science fiction flick with no end of the chaos in sight.

To say that all of this is overwhelming is an understatement. But I think what is perhaps worse than this is living in the heart of a culture where grief is ridiculed and that is defined by a collective disconnect from the unfolding reality of ecocide. The sham that is American democracy is also demoralizing, especially when given the current spectacle we are seeing in the Presidential election cycle. And with climate change appearing to accelerate, the prospect of living in a divisive, burgeoning police state is terrifying to say the least. Dying empires cast long shadows of cruel absurdity as they unravel. And if one lingers too long in its darkness the soul begins to wither and harden.

So I am declaring myself a climate migrant. But I am lucky. I do not have to clamber on to shoddy boats and risk drowning, or take a perilous journey on foot across a parched and dangerous land. I see what is ahead and I have the privilege of fleeing from a lot of it. This isn’t much consolation, though. Only a smug sociopath would get satisfaction with being right in this instance. For anyone with a conscience there is no joy in telling people “I told you so” when faced with their suffering and sorrow, even if you have been largely ignored or dismissed as over the top for years. Some can do this with ease. They can point jagged, scornful fingers at the smoker who is now dying from lung cancer, and feel somehow justified in doing so even as such callousness reduces their own humanity to ashes. I believe that the depth of ones character is measured in the compassion one has for other beings; and I haven’t shed near enough tears to measure up to the tremendous suffering of our planet and all of its inhabitants.

I hope that this move will at least demonstrate just how serious and dire I think things really are. Maybe it will cause some to sit up and pay attention. I realize that most people do not have the resources to take bold steps like this; and I am not attempting to cast myself as a martyr. I do not possess the spiritual credentials to warrant such a distinction anyway. But I think if more of us take steps, big or small, that shun mindless consumerism and recognize the urgent state we are all in, we may have a chance of building communities of compassionate souls who cherish each other and hold sacred this beautiful planet while we still have time left to do so. I can only hope it will.

Kenn Orphan 2016

Earth Day and the Phantoms of a Pathological Culture

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I must start with a confession. I have always been troubled by the concept of Earth Day. I understand its origin and why it came to be, but as an environmentalist I see it as window dressing an unfolding disaster of monumental proportions. It’s not that it is useless. Raising awareness is never useless. But over the years it has morphed from an almost spiritual movement for ecological consciousness and justice into an opportunity for corporations and politicians to tout their empty gestures at “saving the planet” all while they mercilessly plunder it. It also has the effect of neutralizing public outrage at the dire state our world is in. It spreads an all too pervasive “feel goodism” to a situation that is truly existential, not only for countless other species on the planet but for our own.

In our time, the powerful have crafted enormous facades of pomp and ceremony extolling their efforts. Their conferences and consortiums serve as a distraction from their business as usual pillage, and a placation of our collective angst against the backdrop of a gathering storm. But each year gives us a terrifying glimpse into a fast approaching future. One rife with super storms, floods, mega-droughts, crop failures and species collapse.

The economic model that dominates the world is incapable of grappling with our dire predicament. It simply does not possess any sense of ethical obligation, even when it comes to its own species. It has become imperative for us to shake free from this paradigm of self destructive failure and begin the process of true community building. We can talk about the benefits of permaculture and a gift economy, but in order to reach this we need to do something that the Western world routinely scoffs at and ridicules. We must take a long, hard and urgent look into the underpinnings of our entire way of life and the pathology that is industrialized civilization itself. We must look into our soul.

We can start with natural landscapes. They are the contours of the soul. And they have been, and continue to be, brutalized and decimated, or replaced by concrete, glass and steel. The effect this has had on our species is collective alienation and crushing despair. Modern mega-cities are emblematic of this tremendous disconnect from reality. They are scratched onto the land with feverish disregard for nature as well as for their inhabitants. They create an illusion that we are separate from nature, divorced from its power except when confronted by a storm, earthquake, volcano, flood or heatwave. Western science and religion, in whatever form it takes, reinforces the myth of separateness from the natural world, and otherizes the myriad of species we share this planet with.

When European explorers set out to “discover” the world most did not do so as observers. They unmoored their ships and set sail in search of gold and other “precious” metals. In the process they decimated indigenous societies and imposed their world view on where ever they landed. They justified all of this madness through a perverted form of patriarchal religion which augmented a hierarchical system of domination and class that persists to this day. This paradigm still informs the current global economic system, neoliberal capitalism, which commodifies every thing and everyone in the known universe, and transforms them into exploitable, consumable or disposable products.

The truth is that materialism corrupts the very nature of the human soul. It deadens the tendrils of empathy and compassion that have evolved to give meaning to our existence. And it creates an insatiable void needing to be filled by elusive and meaningless junk, which is eventually discarded once the novelty wears off. It is the reason landfills are bursting their confines. It is the reason the world’s oceans have become a toxic soup where plastic refuse is fast out weighing fish and other wildlife. It is behind the rising global temperatures and changing climate. It is the cause of stagnation, addiction and ennui within the general public. It is the reason for every war and conflict; and why our species, along with every other one on this planet, is facing extinction.

To be sure, we cannot expect the dominant culture to bring about any positive or substantive change. It cannot. Not now, not ever. It reflects the pathology that industrial civilization is at its heart. Its “solution” to the looming ecological collapse is to spruce up its image to the “consumer” by taking small, meaningless actions that momentarily sooth our conscience at the moment we are consuming their product. At its very core it is a cancer that must grow rapaciously regardless of the terminal malignancy it inflicts upon the living planet and the weakest of our species. And, as I have noted before, a cancer cannot be “reformed.” It must be extracted or eradicated, or the condition will lead to nothing other than death.

But we need not be plugged into this matrix of delusion and absurdity. We need not play the cruel game of mindless consumption of sentient beings housed in torturous concentration camps, or gadgets crafted in suicidal sweatshops that promise a better life, or entertainment that dehumanizes us or others, or trends that celebrate avarice, militarism and violence. That choice is still left to us. And our agency lies in us realizing this and beginning a transformation that connects us to each other and to the living, yet besieged and battered planet on which we all depend.

I have another confession. I am not a preacher. I loath those who connive or badger or guilt people into altering their lives. I am one of you. I was born into this theater of the absurd, bathed from conception in petroleum, the primordial life blood of industrial civilization. I have been dazzled by the spectacle and I have consumed far more than I have ever had a right to. So I am taking this journey with you because none of us, not one, can do it alone. We cannot face the phantoms of our pathological culture in isolation and think we will emerge on the other side unscathed, intact and whole. One thing I am certain of is that the future of humanity, perhaps nearer than anyone of us could fathom, is destined to be full of misery and strife. In truth it already is for the vast majority of us and countless species we are not even aware of. But if there is any solace to be found it begins in our refusal to be willing participants in the unfolding ecocide, and the recognition of ourselves in each other and every other life form we are surrounded by.

The only way I can honor Earth Day is to grieve all that has been lost, and to refuse to participate in the ongoing destruction. It only has meaning to me if it is not externalized as a commodity with a catchy jingle, and is the beginning of the end for the pathological mindset that has gotten us to where we are now and the collective death knell that lies before us. Maybe the best way to “celebrate” it is in realizing that we need a new community with a natural soul, unseparated from this world. Because in its absence it is nothing more than a mechanical set of empty routines. And a soul without a community has no meaning at all, and is adrift in a universe where love cannot penetrate.

Kenn Orphan 2016

#earthday #climatechange #capitalism #ecocide #consumerism

The Sky is Falling

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A few years back I had an experience that hammered home the notion of the normalcy bias. I worked for a healthcare service in Southern California which assisted home bound patients and their families. That summer the hills and scrub brush ignited into one of the West’s most ferocious wild fires. As it devoured the countryside my colleagues and I hurried to warn all of them who were in harms way and advise them to evacuate. We told them to listen to the firefighters as they knew best. One family I called were unconvinced. They said that others in the neighborhood weren’t leaving so why should they?

A few hours later we made another frantic call to that same family to urge them to leave. They said they could see flames coming up the hillside behind their house and the black smoke was thick and almost unbearable. But they were still unconvinced of the urgency since the electricity was still on and they could watch the news on television which did not warn them of any immediate threat. Eventually they did leave at the behest of determined firefighters. They were spared, their house was not. I have thought about them a lot over these past few years when thinking about the unfolding events in our world today. There is a segment of the population who appear to go too far in preparing for disaster; and in doing so they forfeit appreciating life here and now. But have we, as a society, normalized our dire predicament and the looming ecological catastrophe so much that we have paralyzed ourselves in a collective trance?

The human brain is a remarkable organ, but it is far less unique than our egos would like to admit. Like practically every other species we share this terrestrial orb with, we possess an evolutionary defense mechanism which protects us from overwhelming stress. The normalcy bias has been analyzed by many clinicians and scientists for years. It is that strange ability of an organism to deny impending danger, standing almost paralyzed in a hypnotic stupor in its face. This is most likely where the expression “deer in headlights” comes from. And it may be accurate to surmise that, similarly, the human species has its gaze fixed ahead into the blinding beams of a racing truck.

We have never been here before. This sentence sums up practically everything we are seeing unfold before us when it comes to carbon emissions, polar and glacial ice melt, erratic temperature fluctuations, ocean warming and acidity and species extinction. It is a new and terrifying landscape of the unknown. But despite all of this, industrial civilization appears to be accelerating toward the abyss rather than slowing down. Indeed, our leaders have reinforced this trance of normalization by numbing our senses with mindless entertainment and advertisements. How easy they distract us from our own existential crisis with new, plastic bobbles or gadgets and salacious celebrity gossip. How easy they play our emotions with political spectacle, nationalistic nonsense and manufactured outrage.

But they are not as intelligent as all this may imply; they have simply mastered the art of illusion. They are clever magicians in a rather cruel and, ultimately, fatal performance. Thanks to capitalistic authoritarianism they own the media which has become an effective mouthpiece and stage. They also own the institutions which are, in theory, designed to protect civilization and the common good. But cupidity, avarice and power are their only interests. They can see the fire climbing the hillside and they can certainly smell the smoke; but they know they are powerless to stop it so, instead, they do what they do best. They divert attention and create dazzling spectacle. They manufacture crises which they can, at least in pretense, handle effectively while they downplay actual threats. All this while they accumulate enormous material wealth as if to protect them from the angry hordes ascending their piles of gold with blazing torches. But are they, alone, to blame for where we are at now?

To be sure, civilization began before any of us where born; and within it lay the seeds of planetary destruction yet unborn. And industrialization sealed this covenant. The institutions our forbears built codified and ritualized our artificial separation from the natural world. They created elaborate myths to justify raping and slaying it, and profiting from the crime. But though we cannot ignore the sins of our ancestors, we are the ones to blame for continuing the illusion and the pillage and even expanding upon it. Consider this definition of civilization from Wikipedia:

“A civilization… is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment by a cultural elite. Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming as an agricultural practice, and expansionism.

Historically, a civilization was a so-called “advanced” culture in contrast to more supposedly primitive cultures. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists or hunter-gatherers. As an uncountable noun, civilization also refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure.

Civilizations are organized in densely populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.”

With few exceptions, we haven’t yet shattered the illusion of this separation from or dominance of the natural world, and groped our way out of the cave and into the light. We have not yet realized, as the above definition demonstrates, that it is we who are fully dependent upon the benevolence of nature, and not the opposite. But nature is uninterested in our timetable. She looks indifferently at our bridges and buildings, or our money and digitalized memory, as she does our arrogance, folly and foibles. And our ignorance, willful or not, of the consequences of all of this will not delay her fury. Is all this to say that nothing good has come of industrial civilization? No, but it has most certainly proven to be both the poison and the cure for all that afflicts human existence. It developed within an unnatural framework that purported to control the uncontrollable. And this paradigm has driven countless species to their end, with our own being on a very short list.

Like the family resistant to fleeing their imperiled home, we are resistant to fleeing the trappings of industrial civilization. Scientists, like the firefighters, have been warning us all about what looms ahead. And we have largely dismissed them, preferring instead to hold fast to the fleeting comfort of an illusion. I say all of this knowing full well that I am in the same place as many reading this. I have enjoyed the luxury afforded to me through a system of madness and disconnect. But now the ancient blood of fossils on which all of this is built is beginning to wane and become ever harder to come by. We could say this is a good thing, but that would be less than honest. The damage is done and the dominoes have begun to fall. Nuclear armed nation states are sparring, crowds are lining up for water and rice, and birds, fish, frogs and animals are beginning to die out en masse. We in the privileged West have not yet seen what most in the world are witnessing, but to think we are insulated simply because we possess more money is the height of farce and absurdity. We are all in the same house, and the fire is getting closer by the day.

No one wants to be the alarmist chicken who believed the sky was falling when struck on the head by a falling acorn in the children’s tale “Henny Penny.” But the signs of a looming catastrophe are far more plentiful than one acorn. The fires will come. The waters will rise. The storm clouds will gather. And we are running out of places to escape to. In the years ahead we will be faced with the greatest challenges our species has ever known. Many will be clambering to higher ground away from the rising seas, others will be chasing after water in drought stricken lands. The best response to all of this is to face the storms together, fearful, trembling, yet in the embrace of each other and our shared humanity, especially for the weakest among us. But it is hard to imagine what will become of us after the final warning has been issued, and so many remain unconvinced that there is even a fire to begin with.

Kenn Orphan 2016

Another Year, Another Paradigm Shift

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“Our own life has to be our message.” ~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

This month the solstice gently ushered us all into a new year. In times past, this occasion was often viewed as an opportunity for reflection. It is a turning point when the sun begins to intrude into our lives just a bit more each day, casting away shadows, one by one. As the calendar scrolls down another year I have been reflecting on my personal journey as it relates to the changing and tumultuous world around me.

2015 was a year where climate change, endless war, mass migration (the biggest since the second World War), the growth of the repressive, militarized police/surveillance state and environmental decimation all appeared to be converging at a crossroad, with industrial civilization itself teetering on the brink of collapse as a result. Has it happened yet? No. But collapse should be understood as a nonlinear phenomenon. It is more akin to the sputtering engine of a damaged airplane, dying in fits and starts before the ultimate plunge.

The acknowledgement of any of this can send us in the direction of conscious grief and deepened empathy or paralyzed despair and indifference. It has the power to “widen our circle of compassion” as Albert Einstein encouraged and view the death of one thing as the foundation of life for another, or find us at a dead end of alienation and apathy. Ours is a culture of denial, fraught with vapid phantoms peddling sadistic entertainment and extolling rapacious consumption on a planet with finite and dwindling resources. It is a theater where all the players are mindless and the audience is blind. When ones eyes are pried open a searing light is cast on a stage of depravity and misery. But this experience, traumatic as it is, can also be a catalyst for “a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.” A paradigm shift.

In our society narcissism has become a celebrated virtue; but I have never been very good at separating myself from the suffering of others. A forest somewhere is felled, I feel as though my body has been hacked into. A refugee is demonized, I feel as though it is a personal attack on my own character. Another species goes extinct, I feel as though a piece of my soul has died. Mind you, I am not admitting any of this to curry admiration in anyone’s eyes. In fact, this part of who I am I consider deeply private and I often struggle with my own grief as a result of this kind of association. But how can I, as Thích Nhất Hạnh says, make my life my message without acknowledging this pain publicly?

Industrial, consumer civilization, with all of its self destructive trappings, deeply wounds the soul as much as it wounds the body, communities and the living earth itself. But wounds, both physical and psychic, have a remarkable ability to heal with an intelligence that is beyond our consciousness. The soul, just like the body, will repair itself too leaving a scar as a testament to the struggle and a symbol of solidarity with others who suffer. But this can only happen when we show it to the world.

A physical wound must be covered for a certain amount of time to protect it from infection, but its bandages must eventually be removed exposing it to fresh air if it is to complete the healing process. This is also true of wounds to our soul. We must eventually reveal them to the world and be receptive of the empathy that can bring. This, in turn, becomes our message. It is up to us, though, to nourish the conditions that make this healing possible, and to apply whatever balm is necessary. Healing our wounds does not spare us from death. But in nature, even death itself is a fount for the renewal of life.

We cannot stop the convergence of very bad things in this world. None of us can hold back the rising seas or quell the warming air. And the specters of war, avarice and tyranny continue to haunt our world every day. In truth, the end of all we know may be closer than any one of us could fathom. But that does not mean that all is lost. In her book “Love in the Age of Ecological Apocalypse: Cultivating the Relationships We Need to Thrive,” Carolyn Baker eloquently expresses how we can react to all of this:

“As the bearers of conscious self-awareness on this planet, we have failed miserably thus far in recognizing our inextricable oneness with the universe. Whether we can refine this innate capacity in time to prevent the annihilation of the Earth—a travesty in which we have consciously and unconsciously colluded, is unknown. Nevertheless, in the remaining days of our presence here, we can love the Earth and we can love all its sentient beings.”

Indeed hope does exist, but it is meaningless unless it expands our capacity to love. This truth is the paradigm shift we are all in desperate need of, and one that will be even more urgent in the troubled and stormy days that lie ahead.

Kenn Orphan 2015

For the Record

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When I was a young boy I dreamt of other planets in far flung solar systems in our galaxy. I would draw pictures for hours of what I thought alien life might look like and try to imagine civilizations that may have evolved to our level of technology or beyond. I would build starships out of loose leaf paper and plastic utensils and fly them through my house and out into the backyard. As I grew older these musings faded, but never died.

I confess I still have some of those starships in an old trunk, and every now and then when no one is around, I take them out for a flight around the room and picture myself traveling to one of the countless planets that fill the Milky Way. The alien life I imagined as a child has expanded, but in ways I could never have dreamed of when I was very young. I have had the good fortune and privilege to travel the world, learn about other cultures and encounter wildlife up close. I began to realize that I did not have to travel to a distant world to see alien life. It was all around me, and it was wondrous.

According to a growing number of scientists, we are in the grips of the Sixth Mass Extinction; and, sadly, we can only guess how many incredible life forms have been eliminated by the rapacity and carelessness of industrial civilization. Hundreds more species go extinct every day, and it is likely that our own may be on that list in the future, given our trajectory and penchant for self-destruction. But I have compiled a humble collection of some of the creatures my partner and I encountered on our numerous journey’s to Central America. And I wanted to put them on the record and share them here.

Please keep in mind that I am not a biologist so I will not attempt to identify any of the insects, plants or animals with scientific names. This is merely a photo essay to register their marvelous existence on this planet. I hope they fascinate you and enliven your imagination and sense of wonder as they do mine.

Kenn Orphan 2015

Walking With Grief in the Anthropocene

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It was a couple years ago that I saw my first glacier. I was on a trip to Alaska with my family before my father died. He had always dreamed of seeing the region, and we were happy we could do this one, last trip to fulfill it for him. We cruised through the Inside Passage past glaciers glimmering with cerulean blue ice, drove through part of the Yukon Territory of Canada by turquoise lakes, and hiked close to one of the last, ever receding glaciers. All of it was as awe inspiring as it was heartbreaking.

I am one of those people who finds it difficult to set aside what I know about the planet and where we are headed, and simply enjoy the moment for what it is. I cannot walk through a forest without feeling a sense of dread that it will someday be felled. I cannot watch whales breaching the waves without wondering if they will die out in my lifetime. I cannot see a glacier and ignore the overwhelming evidence that globally, they are in retreat. And I have come to realize that I am far from being alone in this feeling of joy mixed with sorrow.

Grief in the West is often viewed as some kind of disorder to be dealt with by pushing it away, ignoring it or medicating it. We often hear well meaning people suggest to the bereaved that they “keep themselves busy.” If our grief lingers, we are told that we are “depressed” or “not coping well” or that we need “closure.”

The reality is that our consumer culture is incapable of understanding grief. It is designed to ingest anything and everything just to keep it going. It does not pause for reflection. It is a giant throat ravenously swallowing the earth with our soul along with it. But this culture is destined to slam into a wall of reality on a finite planet with dwindling resources. There is a point of no return and it is closing in fast, and no distraction or technological fix will be able to stop the impending crash of a system that is fundamentally flawed. One way or another, we will have to face the crimes we have committed against the natural world on which we all depend.

I, like many others in the West, understand the paradox of where we stand. My family and I took this journey to Alaska thanks to our inordinate privilege. By global standards we are wealthy and benefit from being born into one of the most powerful empires the earth has ever known. And while many of us in the West mourn what industrial civilization has done, most of us still benefit from its excesses, wars of plunder and ecocidal convenience. But none of us can avoid getting caught up in the coming turmoil. It is a tide that will sweep all of humanity into its chaos. It has, in fact, already begun to do so in many areas of the planet, although this is carefully obscured by the wizards of Western, consumer society.

But perhaps if we shun the impulse to avoid feeling despair, as this culture encourages us to, we can step into our sorrow and walk with our grief as a companion rather than an adversary. In doing this we may be able to open up corridors of empathy and compassion for each other and the myriad of species we share this planet with. Grief can be a guide through the wilderness of alienation that this society perpetuates. It can deepen us and open our senses to a force greater than ourselves. It won’t spare us our fate, nothing can. But it may spare us a kind of spiritual death.

Standing on the deck of the boat, passing under great mountains of melting ice, I felt that sense of wonder that a child does when struck by the awesomeness of life itself. I also felt immensely small. My heart beat with an ache as I attempted to comprehend what my species and, in particular, my society has done to this precious life giving earth. I felt the cold air from that melting glacier roll over me. But this time I decided to not chase that specter of sorrow away. I embraced him like a long lost friend. And he smiled at me and said, “what took you so long?”

Kenn Orphan 2015

This essay is dedicated to the memory of my father, George Orphan, Sr. (June 7th, 1925 – November 25th, 2014). You will be forever in my heart and I can never repay you for the gifts you have given me.

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