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This web site is dedicated to my
partner and soul-mate Estelle. She showed me that awakening to
the true state of the world we live in has genuine value only when it
is
complemented by an awakening to the true state of our inner world.
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to articles]
Over the past couple of years I have used this site
as
a
notebook to record my thoughts about some of the large-scale
developments in
the world. It was prompted by my
discovery of Peak Oil, and has since broadened to cover a range of
topics like
climate change, overpopulation, ecological damage and food security. The
common theme of my exploration has been the dawning realization that
our
global industrial civilization is facing imminent biophysical limits to
its
growth.
Quick, wake up and kiss your children goodbye!
 During this journey my
mood darkened
considerably. I discovered that the moment
of Peak Oil has now arrived; that there is no combination of
alternative energies that can
keep our
industries running as they have on oil and gas; that we have
passed the climatic tipping point; that the oceans will not recover
their
former
glory; that we are even
facing the limit
of our ability to grow food. I was seized by dread, and portents of apocalyptic doom washed over
me. I responded by writing long, passionate essays about the
coming
die-off,
in which billions of people will lose their lives prematurely, leaving
humanity’s
survivors marooned in a world starved of the most basic resources.
As a result,
many of my articles have been
been profoundly depressing. I have tended
to focus on the
potential for hopelessly negative outcomes, to the exclusion (and through the exclusion) of all
else. Much of my writing has been a robust defense of
despair. Despite the occasional attempt to pull
back from the brink (as in my discussions of Deep Ecology and “Gaia’s
antibodies”) the facts of the situation have made it very
difficult to see much hope for our future.
Fortunately,
further reflection in areas not directly related to ecology, population
or energy has finally allowed me to understand that there are
legitimate, positive directions we can take even in the teeth of our
Perfect Storm. Some of these perceptions are discussed in my
article Fighting Despair. As
a result, the time has come for me to
shift the tone of the discussion and offer a perspective that moves
beyond fate,
locked doors and doom.
Things are as they are.
 Now, this change of tone does not mean that I will be backing away
from
any of the facts I have discovered on this journey. It
is clear to anyone who has been following
the news that the converging crisis we face is no longer the stuff of
theory,
of arcane computer models or speculation in learned journals. It has become the stuff of our daily lives,
and its implications become clearer every day.
There is an
accelerating flood of news stories about Peak Oil, climate
change, shrinking food supplies, a
global economy on
the brink, dying oceans, shrinking fresh water supplies, and a world
population
that is still growing by 75 million people every year. It is
obvious
that the Limits to Growth that that
the Club of Rome warned us about in 1970 have arrived.
Because of the cultural messages we
are bathed in every day, we feel an irresistible urge to "fix the
problem", to get busy and do even more
of what seemed to work in the past — to innovate and
expand. The problem is that expansion got
us into
this mess and so is unlikely to get us out, and innovation just
creates ever more ingenious ways to drain our remaining resources a
little bit
slower. Even worse, in our urgency we make
terrible
mistakes, such as mining our food supply for transportation fuel. Becoming ever more clever will
only make our problems worse.
There is no technical solution to this
dilemma. There is no "solution" that will keep things running
much like they have in the past, with just a few minor adjustments to
our technologies and lifestyles. The problem is too large and
complex for any such solution to exist.
There appears to be little chance for
a social solution either, one that would result in a wholesale
reorientation of our culture's devotion to material growth. The
economic, commercial, political, social and educational institutions
that define our culture will work tirelessly to defeat any such change,
as it undercuts their very reason for being.
A massive, involuntary, physical
transformation of our civilization now appears inevitable. This
will not be not some New Age "transformation of universal energy" based
on the Mayan calender. This will be a fundamental change in the
physical circumstances of our lives, driven by encountering biophysical
limits to our growth as a culture, civilization and species.
The shape this transformation will
take in various places as it sweeps across the planet cannot be
known. There is no way to avoid the transformation, it is an
elemental force much like other large changes humanity has lived
through in the past. An example of a previous change on the scale
of the one we're now facing might be the last great Ice Age.
We cannot control the coming
changes. What we can
control, though, is our personal response to them. There is one quality
that would improve our chances of
emerging from the transformation as sane and
sustainable members of the community of life.
What is that quality? In a word, it's wisdom.
Intelligence vs. Wisdom
Wisdom is a curious thing. The difference between wisdom and mere
intelligence
is that intelligence
is directly tied to brain functions of the prefrontal cortex, whereas
wisdom
arises from internalizing the lessons of life experience. Wisdom
relies on the ability to coordinate one’s life with
the world, including other humans, as well as the ability to comprehend
causes
and effects through dynamic systems relations — to see the world as a
whole and
understand the interconnections between seemingly separate objects and
processes. Wisdom is unifying rather
than dualistic, holistic rather than reductionist.
A wise person will recognize good
opportunities on all
levels as they present themselves, and will tend to seize them. They
will also
recognize poor choices, and will tend to avoid them. The
best feature of wisdom is that it works at
every level. All human decisions, from the personal to the strategic,
are made
by individuals. A wise consumer might
choose to spend more on local produce to foster local, family farms. A wise community leader might choose to
resist a developer who dangles the carrot of tax revenues from a new
subdivision. A wise national leader might
remove the subsidies that encourage the development of food-based
biofuels, and
put the nation’s money instead into rail electrification.
 One wise person in a position of power
can change the
world. The best way to ensure that
wise people rise to power is to increase the number of wise people in
the world.
Can wisdom be taught?
Unlike
intelligence, which appears to be tied to our brain and can only be
trained, I
believe that wisdom can indeed be taught. Remember,
there are two main components to wisdom – experience and holistic,
system-oriented
thinking. To that pair I might add a third
– empathy towards other people and life in general.
While our brain function is hard-wired, the skills
of holistic thought, self-awareness and empathy are all
within
the learning reach of the average person, given just a bit of
motivation and
guidance.
In fact, I’m pretty sure the amount of
wisdom in the world
is on the increase today. We have seen the
global response to Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth”; the burgeoning awareness of Peak Oil; the
growing revulsion towards factory-raised food animals and the whale and
seal
hunts; the change of world opinion regarding crop-based biofuels from
enthusiastic acceptance to militant rejection; the recent blossoming of
the “personal transformation movement” though
Eckhart
Tolle’s collaboration with Oprah Winfrey – all this is encouraging
evidence
that
the amount of wisdom in the world is growing, and just in the nick of
time.
Encouraging
the growth of your own wisdom is the
greatest gift you can give the world.
Wisdom lets you
see your own way forward more
clearly and lets you see how you might influence others to
make
wiser choices as well. Unlike simple universal
prescriptions for "correct behaviour", wisdom gives you the ability to
make better choices no matter what circumstances you find yourself
in. Who knows, if you
are a
politician it may give you the insight and courage you need to lead
many of
your fellow men off the path to certain disaster and toward more
positive destinations.
The coming changes represent not only
the greatest
challenge humanity has ever faced, but also the greatest opportunity
that
has ever been presented to us. Improving
our ability to make wise decisions is not only the best chance
we
have, in the final analysis it is the only way we can become sane,
sustainable
members of the community of life.
Wishing you wisdom,
Paul Chefurka
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