Pause for a moment of uncompromising reflection on what you understand your life to be: the things you’ve done, said, created, and believed. How much of that has remained constant throughout the years? If you’ve been honest with yourself in this process, you’ll gladly admit that “you” are not nearly as permanent as you once assumed.

It could be argued that there’s little to be gained by revisiting the past: after all, what’s done is done, and we can only affect the future, right? Then again, remember that our actions are directly and inextricably influenced by our perceptions, beliefs, and worldview.

If anything, it’s the willingness to become intimately attuned to our most sacred and cherished assumptions, (re)examining them compassionately within the framework of who we are now that provides us not only with the strength to discard the obsolete aspects of our being, but to synthesize yet greater integration with the natural universe, and in doing so, awaken into our true essence. This catharsis, this birth, this abandoning, is who we are.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
—Anais Nin

As Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson express so eloquently in the brilliant documentary What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire:

It’s time to be thoughtful and learn what’s going on. A paradigm shift will require that we question our deepest and most fundamental assumptions. And that will require that we take our current worldview gently in our arms and hold it while it breathes its last.

It’s time to be truthful: the dominant culture is destroying us. What would happen if we let ourselves feel our feelings about all of this? Our feelings are the swiftest path back to our forgotten selves.

The essence of this returning is the honesty and unflinching ability to—as necessary—abandon everything we understand ourselves to be, admitting any illusions and mistakes, and like the phoenix, emerge from the ashes into our real destiny. It’s almost inevitable that the process of adopting a new understanding will result in accusations of inconsistency and revisionism, but the cultural change so critical for our survival can only occur at the individual level.

In the most recent entry on his website The Earth Blog: Giving the Earth a Future, Keith Farnish bravely walks this sacred path, and gently releases his attachment to a number of his essays, many to which he devoted weeks of his life. What a magnificent expression of love, particularly within the context of materialist Western culture that rewards accumulation, competition, and glorification of the ego above all else. In that light, it’s not surprising that we have such difficulty admitting error—the culture pressures us to be perfect, yet the ultimate irony is that the unattainable illusion of perfection takes us in the opposite direction from what we really need: inclusion, community, and cooperation.

It requires real serenity to say “I was wrong.” But far more critically, this admission can only be borne of compassion and the remembrance of our fundamental unity.

A consistent dilemma to me—immersed as I am in the hyper-materialist Silicon Valley culture—has been the method with which I express the collective need for immediate action regarding the convergence of crises we face today—yet without coming across as preachy or strident, which invariably results in reactions along the lines of: “geez, it’s such a beautiful world, and I realize we face a few challenges, but why do you choose to be so negative?”

I’ve heard it expressed before along the lines of: “is it rude to tell someone their house is on fire?” People simply aren’t wired to recognize long-term threats, so they tend to miss the subtle changes, and assume they can continue the “lifestyle to which they are accustomed.” Hey—didja catch that ‘Niners game the other day?

Guy McPherson illustrates the gravity of the situation eloquently in his latest post:

Your medical doctor informs you: “You need to stop all industrial activities immediately, or you’ll be dead in twenty years. And so will your five-year-old child. You might die anyway — after all, nobody gets out alive — but your death is guaranteed if you do not stop relying on fossil fuels for travel, heating and cooling, water from the tap, and food from the grocery store.”

Naturally, you go straight from the clinic to the nearest store. You need liquor, and time to ponder whether the trade-off is worth it.

About two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced we were committed to warming the planet by about 1 C by the end of this century. Never mind that we were almost there when they reached this profound conclusion. Simply for elucidating the obvious, the IPCC was granted a share of the Nobel Peace Prize (climate crusader Al Gore received the other half).

About a year ago, the Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research provided an update, indicating that, in the absence of complete economic collapse, we’re committed to a global average temperature increase of 2 C. Considering the associated feedbacks, such an increase likely spells extinction of the “wise” ape.

Last month, the United Nations Environment Programme concluded we’re committed to an increase of 3.5 C by 2100, thus leaving little doubt about human extinction by then.

Last week, Chris West of the University of Oxford’s UK Climate Impacts Programme indicated we can kiss goodbye 2 C as a target: four is the new two, and it’s coming by mid-century. In a typical disconnect from reality, the latest scenarios do not include potential tipping points such as the release of carbon from northern permafrost or the melting of undersea methane hydrates. Giving the response I’ve come to expect from politicians, the Obama administration calls any attempt to reduce emissions “not grounded in political reality.”

Have you noticed a set of patterns? Each assessment is quickly eclipsed by another, fundamentally more dire set of scenarios. Every scenario is far too optimistic because each is based on conservative approaches to scenario development. And every bit of dire news is met by the same political response.

Is there any doubt we will try to kill every species on the planet, including our own, by the middle of this century? At this point, it is absolutely necessary, but probably not sufficient, to bring down the industrial economy. It’s no longer merely the lives of your grandchildren we’re talking about. Depending on your age, it’s the lives of your children or you. If you’re 60 or younger, it’s you.

In 2002, as I edited a book about global climate change, I concluded we had set events in motion that would cause our own extinction, probably by 2030. I mourned for months, to the bewilderment of the three people who noticed. About five years ago, I was elated to learn about a hail-Mary pass that just might allow our persistence for a few more generations: Peak oil and its economic consequences might bring the industrial economy to an overdue close, just in time.

If we abandon the industrial culture of death, we might persist until your children are old enough to die a “normal” death. But the odds are long and the time short. Barack Obama epitomizes the actions of every politician in the world by ensuring, with every political act, a miserable future and insufferable death for his wife and children.

Now I mourn because the solution is right in front of us, yet we run from it. We fail to recognize our salvation for what it is, believing it to be dystopia instead of utopia. Are we waiting for the last human on the planet to start the crusade?

So how do you reach people, but more critically, what are you doing to change?