Plan And Reconsider [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 3, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Last night it snowed. I had to pry open the back door and shovel so I could let Dogga out. It is snowing now. We are lying low, appreciating the quiet that comes with winter.

Societies have seasons, too, though their winters look more like forest fires than bears sleeping.

I remember standing atop a Mayan pyramid in Belize, having just read Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse, and wondering how it was possible that such an advanced society didn’t see their demise coming. As NASA Science aptly wrote, “They Did It To Themselves.” It’s hard to see the mountain when you are sitting on it, I suppose.

I no longer wonder how societies do-it-to-themselves as I feel I have a historical front row seat of our unwavering commitment to collapse. We are following a well-known pattern, a rat trail of self-destruction. We are not the first society to impact our temperatures, to influence our rainfall. We are, however, the first to do it on a global scale.

There are so many people ringing the alarm of climate change, the science is incontrovertible, yet overpowering evidence is no match for dedicated human denial. Ignorance is, in this case, to ignore. Action will hurt the markets. Non-action, of course, could destroy life as we know it. We will not be the first society to sacrifice the greater for the lesser, to throw away the essential by protecting the luxury. We will not be the first to ask, “How did that happen?”

I revisited Jared Diamond’s, Collapse. He identifies “two crucial choices distinguishing the past societies that failed and those that survived:” 1) Long term planning – the courage to make difficult choices when problems become perceptible and before they reach crisis proportions. 2) Willingness to reconsider core values – the courage to make painful decisions about values (which treasured values must be jettisoned and replaced with different approaches).

Courage. The-courage-to-make-choices-and-decisions.

The Maya did not cope well when their problems emerged. They doubled down in hearty denial until all resources were exhausted. They waited until their crisis was full blown before attempting to deal with it. The survival odds are better by planning for the hurricane before it hits.

And us? We are on the Mayan path. It seems that we are, like they were, penny wise and pound foolish.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I am not nihilistic or hopeless. In fact, quite the opposite. As Rich used to say, when the pain of change is greater than the pain of staying the same, people get moving. The levels of pain are rising on all fronts. The problems are more than perceptible and it’s debatable about whether or not the crisis has fully arrived. What we’re experiencing could be the very beginning of movement, the willingness to face ourselves and take a good hard look at what we value. It might be the leading edge of courage.

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