This could be it.

“He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”--Thomas Paine

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born. --W.B. Yeats

As everyone now knows, Putin has invaded Ukraine, and it is not going well for him, despite his overwhelming advantage in firepower, as he steadily escalates the mass murder and mayhem he is inflicting on the Ukranian people. The entire world has condemned and isolated him, cutting off Russia from commerce, the performing arts, and sports, and sequestering their finances... As a result, the Russian economy is now in a nosedive, his currency essentially worthless, and his hapless citizens, increasingly destitute, desperate, and disillusioned. Meanwhile the Ukrainian people, despite his relentless and increasing bombardment, are united against him, inspired by their heroic leader Zelenskyy, and are willing to fight to the death no matter how much horror and suffering he inflicts on them.

What worries me most is that Putin has burned his bridges; like Macbeth, he is "...in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er (III. 4.136–8) 

He cannot possibly "win" in Ukraine without destroying the entire nation and terrorizing its population, and making yet more enemies around the world (a Pyrrhic victory indeed!). And he'll have his hands full trying to subjugate a population of 40 million who loathe and despise him (as they discovered to their cost in Afghanistan).   But on the other hand, he cannot withdraw, without losing face, and hence--in Russia especially--losing power and most likely, his life as well.  Furthermore, narcissistic thugs like Putin (and Trump) are incapable of admitting failure, for that is tantamount to the death of their own bloated ego, which they worship as a deity, and which he equates with the tribal deity he shares with his people: "Mother Russia."

His only other option is nuclear war--with which he has already darkly threatened the West, and which he knows (with whatever rational faculties remain in his fevered brain) is tantamount to suicide, not only for himself, but for all the rest of us. And herein lies the true peril of this moment. This could be it--the end of human civilization, the end of most if not all of us, the end of most larger living beings, and the end of Gaia as a habitat for human life. Will it come to this?

Who knows? Anything can happen. But the odds of this unimaginably horrific outcome are becoming more likely by the day. My one remaining hope is that a cabal of his own oligarchic cronies will conceive of a multipronged strategy to dispatch him, before it is too late. As a Buddhist, I am not supposed to wish ill, and especially to wish death, on anyone--but then one of the Jataka tales of the Buddha's earlier incarnations featured the protagonist willingly taking on a karmic debt by murdering a ship captain who was plotting to drown all 200 of his passengers--and this might be an analogous case.

The real challenge here, however, is that up to now, Putin has gained wide popularity in Russia by being a strong leader who restored Russia's economy after the Soviet collapse and thereby restored their global standing, and who weakened and humiliated Russia's historical adversaries in Europe and the US in particular, by scheming to appeal to British nationalism and undercut the EU by organizing the Brexit campaign behind the scenes, and to elect his own "useful idiot" Donald Trump to the presidency, and dividing the nation. (These were all actions for subverting his enemies that would impress Machiavelli!) However, with this bloody and brutal invasion of Ukraine, Putin has stepped over the line (as Hitler did), making the fatal transition from steely, competent authoritarian to paranoid, ruthless, and dangerous thug.

But if anyone dispatches Putin, it must be Russians themselves--for if we in the West were to attempt such a thing, it would simply unite the Russians against us, make Putin a martyr to Russian nationalism, and most likely trigger a nuclear war that will end everything.  Nontheless, as a highly intelligent, subtle, and crafty people, some of the high-placed Russian oligarchs might already have considered this option. We can only hope. (I hold out some hope for a Brutus-like figure--a high-placed Russian oligarch who is Putin's trusted confidante, to realize the danger he poses to all civilization and life on Earth, and plot a quick way to dispatch him...) 

Otherwise the best we can do is (1) practice Tonglen for the Ukrainian people (breathe in their vast suffering and fears; breathe out solidarity, determination, and hope); (2) even try Tonglen for Putin himself (breathing in the inner fears, resentments, and insecurities that engender his desperate and neurotic lust for power and restoration of empire, and breathing out the wisdom he has abandoned--awakening his dormant Buddha-nature from underneath all the layers of fatuous egocentricity. (3) practice the Gesthemane Prayer (Matt: 26: 36-56): 

O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

These are the best antidotes I know for paralytic anxiety about the world.

And if, indeed, all is lost--if our only remaining options are a quick and ugly death by nuclear holocaust, or a slow and excruciating death by global heating, starvation, endemic warfare, and ecocide--

"O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done."

And meanwhile, let us all take care of everyone and every being, and abandon no one and no other living thing. Let us therefore, for now...

Breathe, observe, let go;

Be well, do good work, keep in touch;

Learn Gaia, Teach Gaia, Heal Gaia, and Create Gaia;

and then...

Grow gardens, Grow community, and Grow awareness.

...till death do us part.

The Four Useful Attitudes

In both Hindu and Buddhist wisdom traditions, there is a very useful formulation that, in Sanskrit, is called the four Brahmaviharas, roughly translated as "the Four Abodes of God." These are (1) Maitri (Pali "Metta"), referring to a blend of gratitude and benevolence; (2) Karuna, meaning empathy or compassion; (3) Mudita, meaning selfless joy; and (4) Upeksha (Pali "Upekkah"), meaning equanimity. In Buddhist traditions, these are often referred to as the four limitless mindsets, suggesting that they can and should be cultivated continually. But a more secular and colloquial way of thinking about these is as simply four useful attitudes to cultivate.

One Indian guru I have read, Swami Satchinananda, suggested that we think of these as a repertoire of attitudes we should deploy, as necessary, with everyone we encounter. I found his teaching on this to be very useful, so I would like to share it with the community. Maitri, or benevolence, should be our default attitude toward everyone we meet, which can be cultivated with the practice of gratitude. It means that we encounter everyone with a default attitude of benevolence, since they are all, potentially, our teachers and/or students, for whom we would give thanks. This is remarkably easy once you get the hang of it. One way to monitor your attitude toward others is to pay close attention to your own facial expressions, and particularly the muscles around your eyes and mouth, for these, quite automatically, tend to tighten up when you feel uncomfortable around someone. With practice, you can notice this, and deliberately soften the muscles around your eyes. Try it! The causality is reversible here: just as a sense of external threat instinctively causes you to tighten up your eye muscles (to make you less vulnerable), the deliberate relaxing of those muscles (accompanied by deep, measured breathing) can cause you to feel less threatened and more benevolent. Once you've experienced this, it is quite magical! Karuna means compassion, but not pity; that is an important distinction, for pity involves looking down on people, whereas true compassion is empathy--the ability to use your imagination to put yourself in another person's shoes, and to feel their suffering vicariously. And this too can be cultivated through practice. One of my favorite techniques for cultivating empathy is the Tibetan technique of Tonglen: breathing in another person's pain, anguish, and suffering--taking it upon yourself (like Jesus on the cross), and then breathing out selfless love, comfort, and relief to them (like the resurrected Jesus). This makes you more likely to devote some of your time, energy, and resources to actually alleviating their suffering in reality, and not just in your imagination. Mudita means joy, but not just the giddy, egocentric pleasure of chocolate cake or good sex. Rather it refers to selfless joy--the joy you feel--and can actively cultivate--when you see a wildflower, your children's smiles, or the exuberance of college graduates at their commencement exercises when they receive their diploma. So think of it as vicarious joy. This applies also, of course, to the enjoyment of art and music--which are a kind of gratitude for the skills and inspiration of the performers, artists, or composers. Finally, Upeksha, or equanimity, is the attitude you should practice bringing to those you DON'T like, as an antidote to the rage and fury they often trigger in us, either by their boorish behavior or by simply being who they are. And, needless to say, this is an ongoing challenge, but like the other three--benevolence, compassion, and selfless joy--it can be cultivated by simply noticing when rage has arisen, going back to our breath, and observing, then letting go of it. This takes practice, of course: the teaching of Jesus to "Love your enemies" and "Bless them that curse you" is the most difficult injunction of all. Martin Luther King shed considerable insight on this when he told us "When Jesus told us to love our enemies, he did not say that we necessarily had to like them." So you can think of equanimity as quietly and patiently cultivating selfless love, even for those you don't like. And this does not necessarily entail engaging them in any way; it just entails monitoring, being honest about, observing, and letting go of your own aversive reactions as they arise. And like all the rest, this takes practice.

Here is a simple exercise for cultivating the four useful attitudes. You can do it on a single breath, or on four consecutive breaths. Here is how it works on a single breath: (1) On the in-breath, focus on the phrase "Breathing with gratitude." (2) On the pause between inbreath and outbreath, focus on "Observing with compassion." (3) On the out-breath, focus on "Letting go with (selfless) joy" and on the pause before the next in-breath, focus on "Abiding in equanimity." OR you can devote a whole breath, in and out, to each of these phrases. Try combining this with visualizations if you wish--e.g. gratitude for the trees that provide the oxygen you breathe; compassion (as you hold your breath) for all who, for one reason or another; "can't breathe" due to various forms of inner or outer suffering; joy in "letting go" of attachments, resentments, or any other form of wishing things were other than they are; and calmly and peacefully abiding, like a tall sequoia or a mountain, high above the noise and confusion of life... Experiment!

Another possibility: the familiar mantra OM MANI PADME HUM can be used in a similar way, by imaginatively assigning each of the four adaptive attitudes to one of these words: OM (breathe), MANI (observe), PADME (let go), HUM (abide). This makes sense, since "OM" is the seed syllable for the "Holy Spirit"--the breath of life; "MANI" denotes the Jewel of open-hearted compassion; "PADME" denotes the Lotus of awakening to our higher selves, of letting go of attachments; and "HUM" denotes tranquility or equanimity.(

Beyond Hope

 Many years ago, in the early 90's when the Internet first enabled online conversations with people all over the world, I got into a dialogue with a guy named Jay Hanson, who lived in Hawaii and passed away in 2019. Jay was a thoroughgoing pessimist, and his website, Dieoff.com, was, by far, the darkest and most unnerving scenario for the future of humanity that I had ever encountered. 

At the time, I was still an optimist; I still believed that if and when Gaian consciousness--the dawning awareness of our total dependence upon a unique and magnificent living planet--spread inexorably around the globe, it would lead to a great awakening, and that everyone, from the top down and bottom up simultaneously, would reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, build out solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass systems, grow organic food, limit their reproduction, preserve threatened species and ecosystems, clean up pollution on air, water, and land, and learn how to close the loop on manufacturing, recycling everything. 

My byword in those days was a quote from Norman Myers, editor of the first Gaia Atlas of Planet Management, who said in his preface, "We have two choices: a Gaian Future, or No Future." And so I argued vehemently with Jay Hanson about this, but he was adamant that given our inherently aggressive, self-serving, and short-sighted animal nature, we would never abandon our dependence on fossil fuels--and the instant wealth and gratification provided by them--until it was far too late, the oil ran out, the climate heated up, the system crashed, and humans died off en masse, turning savage and cannibalistic along the way to oblivion.

Fast forward thirty years, and it appears that Jay Hanson was right about this. Years of persistent, truthless climate denial by Republicans, and hypocritical doubletalk by Democrats (who are equally dependent on the fossil fuel industry), coupled by 24/7 advertising for more and bigger cars, houses, and consumer goods,  have closed any window of opportunity we might have had for an orderly and phased transition from a "growth" economy to a ecologically sustainable steady state, or from fossil fuels to renewables.  Meanwhile, the rising levels of atmospheric CO2 have already pushed the global climate beyond many tipping points, ensuring a horrific and catastrophic future for younger generations and their descendants. So it appears we now have only one choice: no future.

All of which begs a painful question: what do we tell our children now? But let's first ask a different question, taken from the tired old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, when they are surrounded by hostile Indians: "What you mean 'we,' white man?"

A quick scan of the rising number of editorials about the climate crisis will reveal no shortage of recommendations on what "we" need to do. "We" must convert, en masse, to solar and wind-powered electricity; "we" must put a price on carbon emissions; "we" must build carbon recapture machines to suck all the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere; "we" must block the sun's rays by geo-engineering, whether by sending big mirrors into space or generating stratospheric dust clouds for albedo; "we" must ban all SUVs and pickup trucks; "we" must prohibit the eating of meat; and so forth...But who is this "we"? Certainly not ordinary citizens, who are powerless to do any of these things; nor corporations, who have an overwhelming vested interest in the status quo, which ensures continued rising profits into the next quarter; nor our elected officials, who depend entirely on these corporations and their wealthy stockholders to fund their ever-more-costly re-election campaigns. So what should we do?

Let's convert this to a different question: knowing that our "civilization"--that is, our fossil fuel-driven global market economy (Glomart)--is doomed to a catastrophic collapse and die-off that has already started, what can you and I (not the generic, unspecified "we") do, starting today?

For starters, I will turn to the wisdom of Lao Tzu, who, writing during the catastrophic "Warring States" era of Chinese history, laid out a simple recipe for social regeneration. Let's take it one line at a time:

Cultivate Virtue in your self/And Virtue will be real.

Real cultural transformation always begins with personal transformation--from the bottom up, not from the top down, "Virtue"--the (untranslatable) Chinese concept de--can be understood as the ability to work effectively with things as they are (rather than as we might wish them to be). This, of course, entails cultivating such qualities as equanimity, mindfulness, empathy, and skillfulness.

Cultivate it in the family/And Virtue will abound. Or as the old Crosby-Stills-Nash tune had it, "Teach your children well." That is, from an early age, teach them to cultivate their innate curiosity and love of all living things, and the skills of coping, of self-reliance, and of compassion.

Cultivate it in the village, and Virtue will grow. This is vitally important in our time, when most of our social connections are remote--via the Internet, our workplaces, or our social hangouts (whether school, church, or local bar)--while we are estranged from our immediate neighbors. But true community is face-to-face; people you've worked with, learned from, or taught, and whom you can call on or assist, when disaster strikes.

Cultivate it in the nation/And Virtue will be abundant.

Cultivate it in the universe/And Virtue will be everywhere. These last two I group together because they point to the importance of playing the long game--setting goals that will extend well beyond the span of our own lives; in this case, a Gaian future arising from the ashes of No Future. 

In practical terms, this recipe for regeneration can be summed up in a few of my signature slogans:

Grow Gardens, Grow Community, and Grow Awareness.

Learn Gaia--i.e. learn Permaculture principles and practices;

Teach Gaia--i.e. teach regenerative knowledge and skills to others at every opportunity;

Heal Gaia--apply what you have learned to healing, as best you can, our topsoil, our biota, and our communities;

Create Gaia--through all of the above, dedicate your life to creating a Gaian future for yourself, your family, all living beings, and all future generations--no matter what happens. 

A Gaian Revolution

 

Unlike the connotations of “revolution” that arise in most people’s minds these days, a Gaian Revolution does not entail a violent overthrow of a government or social order from the top down, as in the French Revolution, the American Revolution, or the Communist Revolutions. Rather, I refer to the older, less violent, but more comprehensive meanings of the word, as implied by such concepts as the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, the Gutenberg (print) Revolution, the Reformation, the Italian Renaissance, the Carolingian Renaissance (12^th Century)—and long before that, the rise of Islam and Christianity from combined Hebraic and Hellenic roots, and the rise, in the Far East, of Buddhism—and giving rise to all of the above, the worldwide Agricultural Revolution, starting around 10,000 years ago. Each of these revolutions changed everything; they arose when pre-existing socioeconomic, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual orders had clearly become obsolete, and could not adapt to the changing world around them. Some (but not all) of these revolutions were spearheaded by charismatic leaders; others arose out of a zeitgeist created or activated by some new technological innovation or scientific discovery. (Neither Gutenberg nor Galileo nor Darwin, for example, were charismatic leaders; they were simply tinkering, and stumbled upon an innovation, an insight, or an observation that changed everything, through calibration and feedback.)

So what is the Gaian revolution?  It begins, like many of these others, with a new insight by a scientist—Dr. James Lovelock—a British atmospheric chemist who, as a consequence of his research (for the US Jet Propulsion Lab) into the startling difference between the (equilibrium) Martian atmosphere and the (far-from-equlibrium) atmosphere of our own planet, derived an explanation, based on systems theory, that seems perfectly obvious in retrospect, but that no others had thought of: that life itself—the biosphere—is directly responsible for the constant mixing of our atmosphere (through photosynthesis, respiration, and other biogenic reactions) that keeps it in a stable, but far-from-equilibrium state, and has done so for several billion years. This insight might well have become buried in the scientific literature and had no cultural influence whatsoever, if Lovelock had not taken a walk with his neighbor, novelist William Golding, who, with his classical background, suggested that Lovelock call his new theory the ”Gaia” hypothesis, after the ancient primordial Greek Earth-mother goddess. Lovelock took Golding’s advice, published his findings as Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth—and all hell broke loose in the scientific community, because he had violated a deep taboo within the scientific literature: never to mix myth and science. So they attacked his theory with a vengeance because it also violated their other major premise—scientific reductionism, or the idea that all causality can be explained from the bottom up; that is, by looking first at mechanisms at the atomic and molecular scale, then working up from there to larger and larger macro-scales. But Lovelock’s theory began from the insights of emerging general systems theory and cybernetics: that while the parts constitute the whole, the emergent characteristics of the whole reciprocally influence the behavior of the parts. That is, causality is a two-way street, from parts to whole and back again. Hence a simple explanation of Gaia theory is this: life creates, sustains, and propagates the biosphere, which in turn sustains and further propagates life.

But while Gaia as a scientific model was already revolutionary, it still retained the mythic resonance of its name, and this led to its embrace by the counter-culture (arising out of the cultural convulsions of the Sixties and Seventies) and simultaneously to its vehement denunciation by Christian fundamentalists, who saw it as a heretical resurgence of paganism. So Lovelock and his colleague, Lynn Margulis, managed to alienate both the mainstream scientific community and the religious right! And this endeared them even more to the “new age” counter-culture—much to their own dismay.

But besides being both a myth and a scientific model, Gaia gained cultural currency among intellectuals  as a metaphor for the holistic way of thinking championed by leading-edge philosophers such as Fritjof Capra, William Irwin Thompson, Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, and Ken Wilber. And because it resonated with the worldwide environmental movement, it likewise became a new banner for activists in that movement as well. Finally, of course, entrepreneurs saw dollar signs in its rapid cultural dissemination, so (with no understanding of, and even less concern for) its revolutionary implications, they trivialized the Gaia concept, turning it into a niche-marketing device for cosmetics, tarot cards, and yoga paraphernalia. (see Gaia.com).

But while all this was happening, another revolution was occurring, well beneath the radar of mass media. Around the same time as Lovelock was working out his revolutionary hypothesis, the Australian agronomist Bill Mollison, inspired by Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog and the systems thinking that infused it, conceived of a revolutionary new, Earth-friendly approach to the design of landscapes, gardens, and human habitat, which he called “Permaculture”—a portmanteau word for “permanent agriculture” (later expanded to “permanent culture”).  Mollison likewise acknowledged Lovelock’s Gaia theory as the source of his inspiration for emulating natural systems in his designs. And significantly, he and his colleague David Holmgren designed a 72-hour curriculum for teaching others the principles and basic practices of permaculture design, and this curriculum became self-replicating, and has spread all around the world, simply because these design principles are universal, and apply to every conceivable bioregion and ecosystem.

And so now we have two of the prime prerequisites for a global Gaian revolution: Gaian theory (i.e. general systems theory, as applied to living systems) and Gaian praxis (permaculture or regenerative design). The third prerequiste, of course, is the obsolescence of our existing status quo of “More is always better”--industrial consumer culture and media-driven politics as a blood sport, all while the forests burn and ecosystems collapse worldwide. (There is little need, these days, to elaborate on this!)

And the fourth, which is yet to come, are effective means of codification and dissemination, since the Gaian revolution presently goes under a bewildering variety of names, each appealing to distinct constituencies that are often unknown to one another, or even in competition for limited philanthropic donations or grants to their respective nonprofits. Hence we have the proliferation of concepts and entities like Postcarbon Institute, Transition Towns, Biodynamics, Steady State Economics, Ecovillages, Green parties, etc. etc.—all pursuing their own variations or portions of a common goal: what Paul Hawken and Daniel Christian Wahl refer to, in their latest books, as “regeneration.”

This is all very inspiring for intellectuals or activists—people like me, who are already “on board” with the whole Gaian vision of a human culture that is symbiotic with, rather than parasitic upon, its biological support system. But what about the ordinary Joe and Darlene out there, driving their pick-ups or SUVs to Walmart or Costco to fill them up with processed food wrapped in plastic, trying to make ends meet, worried about their children getting gunned down in school, getting brainwashed daily by strident corporate media and 24/7 advertising everywhere they look, which constantly drums in the notion that to be is to buy; that their identity and value are entirely contingent on how much stuff they own. How can a Gaian Revolution reach, and involve, the broad masses of stressed-out and brainwashed humanity, here and elsewhere?

If I had a good answer to this, I would already have accepted my Nobel Peace Prize. I don’t. But I have, at least, an idea worth sharing. What are two things that those of us who live in individual suburban homes or duplexes are likely to have in common with our neighbors—even if we don’t know them at all, and even if they are polar opposites in their politics? First, we both eat food and drink water. Second, we both own, or at least have some control over, the land we occupy.  That is the starting point for a Gaian revolution. We are both Gaians, whether we know it or not!

The next step is to find a good occasion to meet our immediate neighbors, where they are less likely than usual to be hostile or suspicious of our motives. One of the easiest ways to do this is to be out in our yards when they are out in theirs, and use the occasion to strike up a chat about gardening. Or even, during harvest season, bring our neighbors some fresh tomatoes or strawberries!

And here is where I can introduce our Gaian marching orders: Grow Gardens, Grow Community, Grow Awareness. In that order.  By growing gardens, we become less dependent on Glomart (e.g. our global market economy) and more dependent on Gaia (our topsoil). By growing community, we become less isolated—less dependent on television and the internet, and more habituated to actual conversation with our neighbors.  Then we can form Garden Guilds, which are “cells” of Gaian consciousness, where we can meet periodically in potlucks, keep in touch online, sponsor gardening educational events at our homes or elsewhere, organize neighborhood work parties to assist one another in expanding our self-reliance by growing more food, teach Permaculture principles and skills to our children and youth, and donate our surplus produce to feed, house, and teach in turn, the growing masses of homeless and landless people all around us. It is through such simple mechanisms—growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness, that the Gaian revolution can gain traction, and transform or displace Glomart—one backyard at a time.  But as we all know, there is no time to lose!

The Gaians: A dystopic fantasy

 "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,/Nothing is going to get better--it's not." --Dr. Seuss, "The Lorax."

Imagine, if you dare, a worst-case scenario, (short of the total extinction of humanity and all higher life forms).  Unfortunately, that is not difficult these days, with the rapid acceleration, worldwide, of climate-related and environmental catastrophes, coupled with the increasing strains on the global market economy caused by inflation and supply-chain disruptions, and on our political culture, both here and everywhere else, by the rise of corporate-backed brutal, thuggish fascist regimes, with contempt for truth, science, democracy, civility, and diplomacy alike. Future prospects have never looked as grim as they do today. So let's venture imaginatively a bit deeper into this unfolding hellscape of the future--in order to seek out the last "truffula seeds" of hope....

The grisly details--if you have been paying attention--have already haunted your imagination: ecological collapse; mass starvation and die-off of most of humanity; vast swarms of desperate refugees, both from the superheated global South and from inundated coastal cities worldwide as the polar ice sheets collapse; small, fiercely defended islands of extreme wealth and privilege (for a while) in a rising sea of poverty, starvation, and violence--whether from murderous drug gangs, tyrannical fascist regimes, rival warlords and their armies, or whoever...all coupled with relentless pandemics, including an epidemic of suicides, especially among the young...

But let's zero in a bit to the small, scattered colonies of survivors here and there. These fall into two broad categories: survivalists and Gaians. Survivalists are those people, mostly from rural areas, who have abundant survival skills already, and who own lots of guns. They will, no doubt, build walled fortifications to protect themselves, gun down anyone who approaches, and divide other survivalist enclaves into either rivals or allies in an endless war of attrition for vital, vanishing resources. Life will be ugly and short for them, most likely; they will likely have to indenture themselves to fascist thugs and their armies in order to survive, and of course, they will be easy prey for scurrilous demagogues (like Trump, Erdogan, or Bolsonaro) who celebrate, reward, and encourage their violence.

Urban areas will most likely disintegrate into hellscapes of starvation and gang violence (as is already happening throughout Mexico and Central America). And that leaves...the suburbs.

Most suburbanites, of course, will die fairly quickly, as their college degrees, SUVs, mortgages, and ornamental gardens will do them little if any good as things fall apart. Some, of course, will emulate their rural survivalist counterparts by building walls, getting big dogs, and packing lots of guns--but lacking both the land-based resources and the skills, they will be hard put to survive the destitute and violent predators who will attack their fortified homes relentlessly and mercilessly for whatever they can steal.  And that leaves the Gaians...

The Gaians are those who saw what was coming and have prepared for it systematically in advance--not by fleeing to the countryside in pursuit of a survivalist fantasy, nor by walling themselves in with lots of guns, but by reaching out and making friends with their neighbors, and by devoting their time and energy to learning Gaia, teaching Gaia, healing Gaia, and creating Gaia. By growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness. By practicing Permaculture, but also teaching it to others, whenever, however, and wherever possible. And by pledging their lifelong allegiance--not to any nation-state, ethnicity, religious organization, or drug gang--but to Gaia--the only living planet we will ever know.

Gaians--like everyone else--may well need to defend themselves from marauders as civil society collapses and vast swarms of destitute people may turn violent and predatory in order to feed their children. But their first task--as they organize themselves into neighborhood Garden Guilds--will be to generate enough surplus from their regenerative methods of growing food to set up distribution centers for the needy and destitute--and then teach them Gaian consciousness and Permaculture skills as well.

Many Gaians (like everyone else) will die violent, horrible deaths, of course, but their training in meditation skills like Tonglen and nonviolent resistance (Satyagraha) will prepare them emotionally, helping them overcome their fear of death in order to reach out to, and teach others, whether by precept or example, right up to their final breath. As with the early Christians in the Roman empire, their fearless willingness to face death rather than compromise their principles will inspire many others to embrace Gaianity as well.

And fortunately, no one needs to “convert” to Gaianity, since everyone who breathes air, drinks water, and eats food is already a Gaian. It is not a “belief system” so much as it is a way of knowing what is already self-evidently true: that we are a part of, not apart from, Gaia — the only living planet we will ever know — and will survive only if we learn to work with Gaia rather than against her — energetically, ecologically, and ethically.

And who knows--after the Great Die-Off has run its course, Gaians may proliferate, sowing their Truffula seeds of Tonglen, Satyagraha, and Permaculture to engender a whole new culture, in a symbiotic, rather than parasitic relationship with our magnificent, wounded living planet.

None of this may happen, of course. But it is worth trying...worth living for.

Understanding Permaculture: The Four Pillars

 

Bill Mollison's Permaculture Logo

"We have two choices: A Gaian Future, or No Future."  --Norman Myers

"What is Permaculture?"  Virtually everyone who has developed a keen interest in Permaculture, or received his or her Permaculture Design Certificate, has heard this question from the vast majority of people out there who have either never heard of the term at all, or have heard it only in passing, and have developed stereotypical images of ragged, aging "back-to-the-land" hippies somewhere in the hinterlands, crowding around their woodstoves and strumming their guitars singing "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog" and other old favorites from the late '60s and '70's... 

In fact, Permaculture is something deeper, far more profound than this: it is not just a gardening technique, or even a set of gardening techniques, although gardening is the most common arena for the application of Permaculture principles.  Rather, it can best be understood, in my view, as the convergence of four "E's": Epistemology, Ethics, Ecology, and Energy.  Let's look at these one at a time:

Epistemology: This one takes the most explaining. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge; the study of how we know things or more specifically, the study of the presuppositions that undergird the ways in which we conceptualize our world. And in the West, these presuppositions have been rooted in what Greeks called ideas (after Plato) and what later Latin-speaking scholars called essences or entia.This way of knowing could be symbolized mathematically by saying "X, not Y."  For the Greeks, the whole of epistemic inquiry involved questioning the ways we could define X so as to exclude Y, and vice versa. What, essentially, is X?  We can flesh this out a bit by replacing the empty signifiers X and Y with two actual concepts: "Man" and "Nature."

Since the Agricultural Revolution, which occurred several thousand years before Plato's time, the general assumption among agricultural societies has been that "Man" and "Nature" are separate entities, that "Man" is apart from, not a part of, "Nature," and that "Nature" is a mere "resource" whose value is latent until it is transformed, by "Man," into a commodity--something for his \own personal use, or for sale to someone else. When this way of thinking is applied in practice, it leads exactly to what we have seen ever since the Agricultural Revolution, some 8 to 10 thousand years ago: the progressive transformation of complex, perennial ecosystems into monocultural, annual (and storable) high-carbohydrate grasses like wheat, rice, and corn; the simultaneous explosive growth of human population and the rise of cities and commerce (all dependent on converting nature to commodities). The spinoffs are thus entirely predictable as well: as the topsoil in one area of land was exhausted and as human populations increased, we saw the Age of Empire arise, as cities and states fought each other over access to agricultural land, or displaced indigenous horticultural and nomadic tribes to grab yet more land for conversion to monoculture. Meanwhile both topsoil loss and pollution of air, land, and water accelerated in every area that agriculture reached and transformed. The Industrial Revolution, of course, turbo-charged this process of turning ecosystems into monocultural crops, and replacing lost nutrients in topsoil with artificial fertilizers from fossil fuels--and thereby turning both oil and ecosystems into yet more people!

Permaculture seeks to reverse this whole destructive pattern, right from its epistemological roots. Rather than starting with an emphasis on entities--"Man" vs. "Nature"--it starts with an emphasis on relationships. Rather than X being defined as not Y, the expression of relatedness would be "X is X because Y is Y (and vice versa): "This is because that is," as the Buddha succinctly put it; an insight symbolized  by the familiar Tai Chi, or Yang/Yin Symbol in Chinese culture:

In this relational understanding, we see that humanity (not just "man") is what it is because nature is what it is--that we are a part of, not apart from "nature."  Hence we need a new name for "nature" that captures this inclusive relationship, and the obvious choice is "Gaia"--the ancient Greek Earth goddess, a name that has been recycled more recently to refer to the systemic view of the biosphere (including humanity) as a Complex Adaptive System. So this is the first pillar of Permaculture--a new understanding of ourselves as Gaians--as part of, rather than apart from, the biological world we inhabit.

Ethics: This new Gaian understanding of nature as a complex adaptive system, and of ourselves as a part of that system, subject to its production rules, leads directly to the second pillar of Permaculture: ethics. According to its founder, Bill Mollison, all Permaculture design is rooted in three core ethics: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share. The first, Earth Care, takes priority: in every decision a Permaculture designer makes, he or she must first consider the effects of that decision on the larger systems of which his project is a part--above all, the biosphere or Gaia. Whenever two or more design options are available, the mandate is to choose the design option that has the least adverse effect--or the greatest potential benefits--to the ecosystem and the bioregion we inhabit--and by extension, to the entire living planet. People Care, the second Ethic, begins with the assumption that we are part of nature, not apart from it, so that in taking good care of our ecosystems, we are also taking good care of one another. 

The third core ethic, "Fair Share" is more problematic. Various permaculturists have proposed alternatives like "Future Care" or "Reinvesting the Surplus" as alternatives, but I prefer the original term that Mollison suggested. It does not, however, mean communism or redistributing the wealth by any coercive means!  Rather, it refers to reinvesting the surplus yields we get from practicing Earth Care and People Care into more of the same; it can be thought of as the replicative function of the three core ethics, sharing not only produce and other surplus yields, but also newly acquired knowledge and skills. In short, it a mandate to not only to learn Permaculture design principles, but to teach them as well, and to make use of these principles to heal our landscapes (and our planet) and to create new patterns for symbiotic cohabitation with our living planet, rather than parasitic exploitation.

Ecology is, of course, the biological science that lies at the foundation of Permaculture as a practical discipline. In fact "applied ecology" can be thought of as another concise definition of Permaculture design. So understanding ecosystems at all levels--topsoil, biota and their interactions, climate. population dynamics, plants and animals, landscape forms, watersheds, and ecological succession--are all prerequisites of Permaculture. 

Energy the final, equally fundamental basis of Permaculture design; another short definition of Permaculture is "an energy audit," for patterns of energy flow are at the foundation of everything we do in a landscape. Thus, in conceiving of, and laying out a design--whether for a household, a landscape, or a city, Permaculturists first look at energy flow, including seasonal climate patterns based on latitude and altitude, gravitational water flow, slope and solar aspect, human exertion patterns, microclimates, and external influences beyond our control, both natural (e.g. fire vectors) and human (traffic flows, noise, pollution or "invisible structures" such as laws and ordinances, attitudes and behavior of neighbors, etc.)

These four pillars--Epistemology, Ethics, Ecology, and Energy--form the foundation of Permaculture as a design discipline, but also as a way of life, a way of thinking, that could ultimately lead toward our final asymptotic goal as Gaians: to shift our collective gift of human intelligence from its current parasitic and destructive relationship with our living planet to a symbiotic and healing relationship--before it's far too late. May it be so.

Who will survive the next evolutionary bottleneck?

 An evolutionary bottleneck is a metaphor used by evolutionary biologists to refer to an apparent acceleration of genetic variation in a species due to a catastrophic reduction in its population. Unlike the normal processes of natural selection, which are driven by "fitness" or the adaptive benefits of a given allele (variant within a specific genotype) within a given ecological niche, evolutionary bottlenecks tend to result in the rapid proliferation, in a recovering population, of random alleles that may or may not confer reproductive advantage.  If they do not, the population may quickly go extinct, due to a loss of adaptive fitness; conversely, if they are lucky, a random allele may confer a benefit that gives them an edge over competition or over their prey, and enables them to rapidly proliferate, taking over one niche and expanding to others. 

A currently popular theory in human evolutionary biology is that one or more evolutionary bottlenecks--disasters that nearly eliminated our hominid ancestors but left a small remnant to survive and proliferate--may have, through this evolutionary process, conferred upon us the selective advantage that resulted in our taking over the entire planet: our unique aquisition of digital language, which enabled us to communicate not just nonverbal relationship information (e.g. dominance/submission, sexual interest, or parental guidance) but actual concepts and propositions, invented and shared as needed--a communicative intervention that gave us a decisive evolutionary advantage over all other complex species--plant and animal alike, and that led, through a familiar process of positive feedback, to the expansion of our frontal lobes that enabled us to process this vast and growing array of information.

The results today, of course, are entirely predictable from an evolutionary perspective.  As biologist Lynn Margulis once observed, "Humans are an extraordinarily successful species, but extraordinarily successful species never last long." This is true because such species, no matter how versatile, quickly outgrow the carrying capacity of their ecological niche--even if that niche comprises the entire planet.

And that is exactly where we are today.  There are far more humans alive today than all of our ancestors combined, and most of us--especially in the global North--are using far more energetic, biological, and material resources per capita than our ancestors ever imagined. As a consequence, ecosystems are collapsing everywhere, topsoil is being depleted at a far faster rate than it can be rebuilt, our fisheries are declining rapidly, and of course the climate crisis is the wild card that could upend it all within the coming decades. The possible triggering mechanisms of global catastrophe are proliferating, almost daily: rapidly melting ice caps and glaciers at both poles and on mountains worldwide; an accelerating uptick in the frequency and severity of droughts, floods, violent storms, and wildfires; the potential collapse of the international political and economic order into warring authoritarian states ruled by thuggish despots (which could easily lead to the unimaginable outbreak and proliferation of nuclear conflicts)--the convergent prospects of global biological and civilizational collapse are all too clear, leading the most pessimistic of us to warn darkly of "human extinction" within the next few decades.

Extinction?  Possibly, but I doubt it.  But a great die-off of a huge proportion of humanity is probably inevitable--and it won't be pretty.  Imagine, for example, if  Thwaite's Glacier in West Antarctica, which holds back the huge mass of ice on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, were to collapse within the next few years, as many scientists predict. This could trigger a cascading collapse of the entire western continental ice sheet, raising the global sea level by three meters. (This is why it is often called the "Doomsday Glacier")  The result would be the inundation of coastal cities throughout the world, resulting in a surge of destitute refugees inland, spawning predatory gangs that survive by raiding shopping centers, then suburbs, then farms--and governments, despite their armed forces and brutality, would be powerless to stop them. Whole economies would quickly collapse, leading to mass starvation, yet more desperate refugees, more violence, more starvation...the mind reels at the horrific prospects worldwide.  And coupled with increasing drought, violent storms, and wildfires, the global death toll of humans and other animals would continue to spiral out of control.

But would we all die? I doubt it. The most likely survivors would be the most resilient: small bands of people with practical skills who form close working relationships--either for more effective predation (like our current urban drug cartels and criminal syndicates) or for more adaptive purposes. But if only thugs survive, they will eventually kill each other off, competing for supremacy. And who wants to live in a desperate, broken world of scattered thugs and warlords anyway? Not I.

So what might be "more adaptive purposes"? If we go back to past Dark Ages following catastrophic collapses (e.g. the Eastern Mediterranean collapse of the 12th Century BC, or northern Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire, we see long periods of rival warlords and clans, holing themselves up in defensive battlements and fighting endless power struggles--but we also see a "saving remnant" of scattered communities with higher, regenerative goals--like the monasteries which preserved and disseminated literacy and both classical and biblical texts, or even the nomadic Bedouins who carried the Qu'ran to the far reaches of Asia and Africa; like Buddhist communities in war-torn India and central Asia, or Confucians and Taoists in the wake of the chaotic Warring States period in China.

Could something similar-- small, scattered communities of Gaians that preserve the best of the past along with a more adaptive, aware, and compassionate way of living within, and regenerating, our biological support system--happen again after the coming global catastrophe?  I don't know--but it is an ideal worth living for, and worth passing on to our younger generations. For now, our best bet is to propagate Gaianity by growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness.