You don’t even have to look at the information to know that issues will not be going properly in our world. The indicators of collapse are throughout us. There are two methods most individuals reply: (1) Shut your eyes, put your head within the sand, and faux that each one is properly, or hope that some magical resolution shall be invented to sort things shortly and simply (2) Redirect your concern, rage and despair to somebody or one thing you may blame for our issues, or attempt to escape into one diverting fantasy after one other and quickly calm your nerves.
There’s one other selection that’s simpler, however not for the faint of coronary heart. It begins once we face the reality about our current state of affairs. I acquired my very own wakeup name greater than thirty years in the past. Right here’s how I described it in my newest ebook, Lengthy Dwell Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Provide Hope to Humanity:
“In 1993 I attended a Males’s Leaders’ Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. One of many actions provided was a standard Native-American sweat lodge ceremony the place we ask for steering and assist for ourselves and our communities. I had the next life-changing imaginative and prescient.
We’re all on an enormous ocean liner. All the pieces we all know and have ever recognized is on the ship. Individuals are born and die. Items and providers are created, wars are fought, and elections are held and disputed. Species come into being and face extinction. The ship steams on and on, and there’s no doubt that it’ll proceed on its current course eternally.
There are a lot of decks on the ship, beginning means down within the boiler room the place the poorest and grimiest toil to maintain the ship going. As you ascend the decks, issues get lighter and simpler. The individuals who run the ship have suites on the very prime deck. Their job, as they see it, is to maintain the ship going and hold these on the decrease decks of their correct locations. Since they’re on the prime, they’re positive they deserve to accumulate increasingly more of the sources of the earth.
Everybody on the decrease decks aspires to stand up to the subsequent deck and hungers to get to the very prime. That’s the way in which it’s. That’s the way in which it has all the time been. That’s the way in which it should all the time be. Nonetheless, there are just a few individuals who understand that one thing very unusual is going on. What they arrive to know is that the ship is sinking. At first, like everybody else, they’ll’t consider it. The ship has been afloat since time earlier than time. It’s the better of the perfect. That it might sink is unthinkable. Nonetheless, they’re positive the ship is sinking.
They attempt to warn the folks, however nobody believes them. The ship can’t be sinking, and anybody who thinks so should be mentally in poor health. Once they persist in attempting to warn the folks of what they’re dealing with, these accountable for the ship silence them and lock them up. The ship’s media retains grinding out information tales describing how great the long run shall be. Any issues which might be occurring will certainly be solved with the wonders of our civilized, technological life-style.
The leaders of the ship smile, wave, and promise prosperity for all. However water is starting to seep in from under. The upper the water rises, the extra frightened the folks turn out to be and the extra frantically they scramble to get to the higher decks. Some consider it’s the finish and truly welcome the prospect of the destruction of life as we all know it. They consider it’s the success of non secular prophesy. Others turn out to be more and more irritable, offended, and depressed. Like caged rats they chew their very own tails and people of their cage mates who seem like a menace.
However because the water rises, those that have been issuing the warnings can not be silenced. Extra folks escape confinement and lead others towards the lifeboats. Although there are sufficient boats for all, many individuals are reluctant to depart the ship. Many questions are requested. “The previous tales inform us that we’ve been on this ship for greater than six thousand years, isn’t it safer to remain aboard? Might issues actually be so dangerous that we should depart? The place will we go? Who will lead us? What if that is all there may be?”
Nonetheless, the Ship is sinking. Many individuals go over the facet and are lowered right down to the boats. As they descend, they’re puzzled to see lettering on the facet of the ship: T-I-T-A-N-I-C. Once they attain the lifeboats, many are frightened and search for somebody who seems like they know what to do. They’d wish to trip with these folks.
Nonetheless, they discover that every particular person should get into their very own boat and row away from the ship in their very own course. In the event that they don’t get away from the ship as quickly as doable, they are going to be pulled down with it. When everybody who desires to depart, every in their very own boats, rowing in their very own course, reaches their very own place within the ocean, they start to create a brand new, partnership, internet. It is going to be the premise for a brand new lifestyle that can exchange the life that was lived on the previous ship of civilization.“
Right here’s What I’ve Realized That Has Helped Me Survive and Thrive
1. “Civilization” is a misnomer. Its correct identify is the “Dominator Mannequin.”
In her worldwide best-selling ebook, The Chalice & The Blad: Our Historical past. Our Future, initially revealed in 1987, historian Riane Eisler stated,
“Underlying the good floor range of human tradition are two primary fashions of society. The primary I name the dominator mannequin, what’s popularly termed both patriarchy or matriarchy — the rating of 1 half of humanity over the opposite. The second, through which social relations are based totally on the precept of linking might finest be described because the partnership mannequin.”
You possibly can view my podcast with Riane and her workforce on the Heart for Partnership Methods right here.
2. There’s a higher world past civilization.
In 1992, I used to be given the ebook Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I acquired a transparent sense of the 2 worlds which might be competing for our consideration: A world the place hierarchy and dominance rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Takers) and a world the place equality and connection rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Leavers. In his ebook, Past Civilization: Humanity’s Subsequent Nice Journey, Quinn says,
“Past civilization isn’t a geographical area up within the mountains or on some distant isle. It’s a cultural area that opens up amongst folks with new minds.”
This isn’t a time to surrender. It’s time to attain out!
3. Don’t lose coronary heart. We have been made for these instances.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, creator of Ladies Who Run with the Wolves, wrote this inspiring letter to all of us who’re involved in regards to the future. She stated partially:
“My buddies, don’t lose coronary heart. We have been made for these instances. I’ve heard from so many lately who’re deeply and correctly bewildered. They’re involved in regards to the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of virtually day by day astonishment and sometimes righteous rage over the most recent degradations of what issues most to civilized, visionary folks.
“I grew up on the Nice Lakes and acknowledge a seaworthy vessel after I see one. Relating to woke up souls, there have by no means been extra ready vessels within the waters than there are proper now internationally. And they’re absolutely provisioned and capable of sign each other as by no means earlier than within the historical past of humankind.
“Ours will not be the duty of fixing the complete world all of sudden, however of stretching out to fix the a part of the world that’s inside our attain.”
4. Rethink our relationship with planet Earth.
In response to world-renowned creator and social scientist, Jeremy Rifkin,
“Now we have lengthy believed that we stay on a land planet, when in actuality we stay on a water planet, and now the Earth’s hydrosphere is taking us right into a mass extinction because it searches for a brand new regular.”
In his necessary and well timed ebook, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Residence within the Universe, Rifkin says that we should hand over our perception that it’s our obligation to dominate and management nature and reconnect as companions in all life on Earth. He says,
“We should rethink the waters as a ‘life supply’ slightly than one other ‘useful resource’ to use and study to adapt to the hydrosphere slightly than attempting to get the hydrosphere to adapt to us.”
5. Discover your tribe exterior the confines of civilization.
The rulers of civilization would have us consider that even when the Ship is sinking, we would as properly go down with it as a result of there actually aren’t any higher decisions. That’s the massive lie of civilization. As my imaginative and prescient confirmed me, there are tens of millions of options and increasingly more lifeboats within the water each day, however you gained’t find out about them within the corporate-controlled media. You possibly can study extra right here.
6. Declare your path of service.
We should act now, or we shall be swept away by the currents of change. In her ebook, Who Do We Select to Be? Going through Actuality, Claiming Management, Restoring Sanity, my longtime colleague and pal, Margaret J. Wheatley says,
“My aspiration is so that you can see clearly so that you could be act properly. If we don’t know the place we’re, if we don’t know what to organize for, then any path we select will hold us wandering within the wilderness, more and more determined, more and more misplaced.”
Margaret despatched me a latest electronic mail:
“I’m grateful to announce a brand new, self-paced course accessible beginning October 5, 2025, Claiming Your Path of Service: Selecting to Serve This Age of Collapse and Chance, developed with the extraordinary platform Advaya.life.”
If you need to study extra about my very own work, I invite you to affix me at MenAlive.com