BUT, I am a fan of constructive thought. It’s what feeds my mind and what makes me feel human. I want engineering projects on a grand scale, and I relish the prospect of a concert of intelligent individuals planning and executing such a feat, even if it is in the vain hope that it will impact upon the catastrophic reality that is 350+ ppm of CO2 currently in the atmosphere.

And I want constructive political commentary as well. If the movement is failing, tell me how to make it succeed. If people are misguided, show them the way.

Plonking a massive great dark mountain in the middle of the dead-end street we’re heading down might make you feel better, and assuage the intellectual responsibility for coming up with some of the answers, but I can’t see much value in it beyond that.

I’ve spent the last too many years meditating on this point, my novel, Shoal Hope, (in ms) has this as its theme. I’ve posted an introduction to it on my blog, at http://antoniodiasri.blogspot.com/2009/11/introduction-to-shoal-hope.html.

What I am, not proposing but nosing around, is a way past such polarization. A shoal hope as something to guard while we face our realities and their implications. That at rock bottom there is more to be gained by simple witness than by any flight into delusion. The delusions are many, from denial, to hope in the sense you decry, optimism or pessimism, or despair. That unless we can look into the horror, – isn’t that what the twentieth century was for? A school of horror? – Unless we can look into it and maintain our sanity and our autonomy, our ability to think and act for ourselves; we will not be able to face our calamities, predicaments, the mystery of the human condition within the mysteries of the broader conditions of Earth and its life.

We protest the emptiness of mainstream western life and decry what it has done to us, to the planet. Underneath that criticism there needs to be the force of an alternative ethos. If that way of life is empty and life negating and destructive, then what is an alternative? How can we develop and establish an ethos that provides a ballast of meaning, reasons for living, and touchstones for how to make ongoing decisions that build on that foundation?

This is precisely what I see as my task, and what I find as such a happy convergence with the Dark Mountain Project’s goals and aims. To anyone who thinks it’s silly, in face of all that is ahead, to take precious time fiddling with stories and fine points of thought and expression, remember that throughout human existence, in times when life was much more dire and close to the bone than it is today, people have always put precious and limited resources into creating, developing and caring for their sense of meaning and purpose, rather than running off half-cocked at chasing “solutions.”

Myth is another debased term today, in the present meaning a myth is some hair-brained unbelievable story told to gull the unwary. I agree that our knee-jerk assumption: that we simply face problems; always, nothing more than problems; is a silly myth. But unless we are able to replace this myth; but also re-establish Myth itself as a vibrant repository of meaning and lesson, then “What is the point?”

I am most heartened by your response to the distractions of Copenhagen and the rest of the political circus. Also by the gentleness of your expression. There is a fine distinction that must be maintained between an openness to the yearnings to do good versus the difficulties of finding adequate expressions of its practice. Climbing the Dark Mountain is difficult work, people require havens and rest as they strive to reach its summit. There are, who knows what paths to reach it? No one should proscribe anyone’s attempts, or push anyone beyond what they can endure. To do these is to become what we are opposed to.

Still, guidance is necessary, gentle reminders of the urgency and of the dangers, of perils that lead to chasms yawning over the abyss.

If we are to attempt this as people, we need to do it in communities of some sort, not alone. Remember that some will be point guides, some will make up the main body, others will form an after-guard. Some will feed our spirits, some will feed our bodies and some will provide the strength we need; while others will carry the tenderness that we cannot survive without. All of this is needed for the journey and for whatever lies beyond.

I want to believe (shades of the X-Files) that I am involving myself in things that will help – Transition, the Green Party, marches through London and changes to my own way of living, but so many times I feel that it’s all going down and ‘resistance is futile’. Or that it needs to go down because we need to learn to grow up and realise that we are not Gods that can do whatever we wish with our planet and hang every other species if required.

When I read your manifesto and many of these comments I remember again the clarity of directly and instinctively knowing certain things at various times in my life. As though a veil had been removed and I saw the truth directly. But the comfort of home, my computer, the town in which I live seems to wash it away, to dilute it so that they have less urgency to me now. Once they seemed the most blindingly obvious things that I had to address, and for a time I did but it feels as though our civilised world can only exist by removing that experience and soothing me with all the trinkets I’ve come to know and love. I feel as though I’ve fooled myself yet seem unable to break out. It’s not good for my sense of self. This is all big stuff.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/12/human-ecology-of-collapse.html

I could suggest you have a look at http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/42068 for some ideas of what you can do, but that would terribly reckless of me.

Best

Keith

I will join your project but I will keep doing the other stuff as well, maybe like water on rock, these small actions will one day create a breakthrough. I think the new narrative will arise but I think the birth of a new and different society will be bloody and painful and what we give birth to could be a beautiful new life or a monstrous savage.

I totally agree with the need for honesty about the problem and I’m not advocating for a second that we should be encouraging the massive, mainstream so called ‘responses’ that we are seeing at copenhagen or hoping that they succeed, as what they would define as success would ultimately be pointless and damaging.

What I am saying is that those of us outside the mainstream, who are trying to reskill, reeducate and physically change the way our small patch of the world works need some hope. Why would I plant an orchard if I have no hope of seeing fruit? Why should I learn to feed myself from the land if I have no hope for the future? Every step that I take to bring myself closer to natural rhythms and cycles feels saner and makes me more hopeful. Not for the doomed civilisation we are still attached to but for the future beyond the fall. We can still make that future better by changing things now.

You say that stopping emissions and living lightly are hugely important targets, but how can we even begin to move towards these without hope that we might be making our future less bleak?

Fancy a collaboration?

K.