(Author’s note: The following short essay is part introduction, part manifesto and helps set the pace for both the intensity and originality of views and insights expressed through these writings. The introduction of human interference into nature’s ancient system of order and balance is the starting point and central theme upon which most of my essays are predicated. Ergo, this will be a recurring theme throughout the e-Books, essays and education sub-site. So, enjoy the ride and oh, don’t forget to fasten your seat-belts).
Collapse and Regeneration
A Global Meltdown From a Nature-centric Point of View
‘An optimist looks for a light at the end of the tunnel. A pessimist looks for a tunnel at the end of the light. A realist takes a deep breath, exhales, and accepts that the universe is unfolding as it should.’
My all-too-brief writing career has been driven by the need to make sense of the world in which I live. The adventure began ten years ago when I was developing the layout for my first book project titled ‘The Honour Song Trilogy’ which was a critical examination of Canada’s Indian Residential schools and their effects on my family. Without going into any detail about the schools themselves, I was particularly interested in tracing – and hopefully locating – the source of the mentality, the mind-sets and the attitudes that created those mean-spirited and ultra-racist institutions. The following ten-year investigation soon took on a life of its own and before I knew what was happening, the breadth and scope of the inquiry had widened to include all of western civilization and the source of the ‘mentality, mind-sets and attitudes’ which created that larger train wreck. It was over the course of this historical journey back in time that I managed to pin point (stumble over) a plausible suspect in my investigation, which was the introduction of human interference into the natural order of biological life on Planet Earth. The element of interference – which spawned the invention of agriculture – was so poisonous and so vile that it triggered a tsunami of exponential processes which would culminate in the social and environmental meltdown unfolding around us today. Of course one needs to have a healthy respect for the laws of consequence and causality to reach this kind of conclusion. Here it is ten years later and my personal worldview has changed significantly as a result of these revelations… I am no longer confused by the craziness I see in the world…it all makes perfect sense to me…there isn’t a hair that’s out of place.
The above revelations not only allowed me to walk in peace and acceptance in the midst the chaos and collapse but they also re-kindled a new sense of hope, yes, hope about the world in which I live. I don’t mean hope that by some stroke of magic or by some miracle we’ll turn this train wreck around or that our fragile biosphere will somehow be brought back from the brink. No, my conclusions are exactly the opposite. After taking a good look at all the ‘elephants’ in the room, the ‘hockey sticks’ on the graph and having gauged the general apathy, complacency and denial coming from an extremely, extremely distracted public sector (the masses) it is this scribe’s stated position that a global collapse is not only inevitable and necessary but will be highly beneficial to the Earth as well. And thus the hopefulness.
The Earth is quite young, as living organisms go. It still has fifteen to twenty billion years left on its ‘ticker’. It has endured five major extinction events thus far – the Ordovician, the Permian, the Devonian, the Triassic and the Cretaceous – and undoubtedly it will weather the current onslaught by the ‘Super-humans’ and their machines as well. Of course this will mean the loss of most of the planet’s living organisms and species-groups (including humans) but the ever-resilient Earth will survive and continue on to see yet another rebirth and regeneration of life in myriad profusion. The Permian event witnessed the loss of 95% of all living organisms and the biosphere survived that cataclysm quite well. In fact we super-humans are the distant, distant by-products of a lot of ‘doors’ opening and closing and we now appear to be in the dubious process of single-handedly causing another ‘big door’ to close and time will only tell how many (or how few) life forms will ‘sneak’ through this time to become the next rendition of life on Planet Earth.
“And how should this collapse unfold… will it be a long, drawn out and excruciatingly painful ordeal or a swift and expeditious coup de grace, much like euthanizing a rabid dog? Will we dawdle around for hours and hours rearranging the red and blue deck chairs into neat and inconsequential rows or simply blow a hole in the left side of the hull and get on with the business of sinking?”
Goodness knows the Earth today is long, long over-due for a major ‘correction’. One single factoid (there are many) that supports this claim is; the global population of human hunter-gatherers was a manageable and sustainable 5-6 million just prior to the invention of agriculture…today it is 7.7 billion and expected to top out at around 11.2 billion by the end of the 21st century. That’s approximately 2000 times the pre-agriculture figures. The term ‘correction’ is used because it suggests a scientific, physics-based, logical and mathematical approach to understanding the unerring laws and universal principles involved in a global collapse. It avoids the religious and political judgments of ‘right and wrong’, ‘good and bad’, ‘ethical and unethical’ and instead sticks to the empirical facts that are ‘known’. We know that the Earth functions according to a strict set of rules and laws, foremost among them being biodiversity and balance. We know that the Earth’s bio-system is so finely tuned and critically balanced that environmental disasters can be measured in only a degree or two of temperature change or in parts-per-million/parts-per-billion variables. Entanglement pervades the system and one imbalance or glitch can have a ripple effect outward or perhaps a domino effect up and down the food chain. In a properly functioning biosphere any imbalance within the system is immediately addressed and corrected by a range of devices and tools which are at nature’s disposal, be they wildfires, drought, floods, starvation, attrition, disease or relocation. Most of these tools fall under the general heading of ‘culling’. So, culling is nature’s way of correcting any imbalance (usually population related) within the system.
The human sub-species (and their livestock) are in dire need of a major cull right now because they are frightfully, frightfully out of balance. And this dilemma has been exponentially festering since the invention of agriculture. Why the human population problem has been allowed to mass-propagate unchecked – like a virulent weed – for so long is that the super-humans (due to their aberrant over-sized brains) kept interfering in nature’s ‘work’. Nature’s ‘work’ in this case meaning a human cull. Via their dubious abilities to super-think and hyper-ideate humans kept coming up with unique ideas and ways to thwart nature – at every turn and at every juncture – in its efforts to cull and manage the ever-growing hoards of humanity (and their livestock). Due to early man’s penchant for interference we are now saddled with a lethally over-populated planet fully engaged in another extinction event.
“For the Phoenix to rise from the smoke and the ashes…there first needs to be a fire.”
All these factors combined lead to only one conclusion…the current system must collapse. It simply must. It’s unsustainable, irredeemable and non-salvageable. And another extinction event is the perfect opportunity for the Earth to regenerate itself, to renew itself, to replenish itself…. to cleanse and heal itself. The word ‘renaissance’, I feel, was invented to describe the process of systemic collapse and regeneration. Yes, a global collapse won’t be ‘pretty’ and the mere suggestion of it will strike most people as repugnant but the Earth, nature, the biosphere and the flora and fauna will no doubt view the imminent collapse of western civilization as a ‘God send’. An absolute ‘God send’. And therefore I am hopeful, I am relaxed and I am at peace with a universe that is unfolding as it should.
Conclusion
If the Earth could speak to us, if all of nature, the wind, the rivers, the lakes, the trees, the flowers, the land, the oceans, the animals and the birds could somehow communicate with us…what would they say? What would they say?
Some may think that by scribbling out the above manifesto I am giving up, that I’m resigning. That I can now dig a little hole in the ground somewhere where I can hide and live out my quiet life detached from the chaos and the tumult that usually accompany a global collapse. Quite the contrary. Yes, I have given up on saving the planet… the planet doesn’t need ‘saving’… it will take the Sixth Great Extinction in stride (just like the other five) and live on to re-flourish and re-manifest the splendors and wonders of a beneficent Creator. (Hopefully without the super-humans). But what I haven’t given up on is compassion and understanding…in terms of understanding I will continue this drive to make sense of the world I live in via the physical sciences and my qwerty keyboard. Compassion is a ‘no-brainer’. People are hurting… and it’s going to get worse. It’s obvious that the fabric of the super-human system is unraveling and we’re in for a pretty rough ride. So, with the little time I have left, my passion and activism will focus on the bottom end of the food-chain where I feel most comfortable… the homeless, the mentally-challenged, the addicted and the disabled.
I’ll leave you with a song titled ‘(Maybe the Human Beings) Will Have to Go’
Dennis Lakusta
September 22, 2019
Nanaimo, BC