Tag: deep adaptation

Don’t Forget the Dread – Deeper Healing in the Metacrisis

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I invited the co-admin of the largest Deep Adaptation group in the world to share her ideas on the difficult emotions experienced by people who awaken to metacrisis and collapse. In this essay Krisztina Csapo explains it is unhelpful to frame such emotions as a form of general anxiety. Instead, more can be gained from recognising and responding to them as dread, grief, trauma and moral injury. I have left comments open for you to share relevant resources and initiatives at the end. Thx, Jem (Image by Ellis Rosen).

How do we psychologically sustain ourselves in times like these? This question arises again and again within communities working on ecological and social harm, and especially on the prospect of societal collapse. Through six years of engagement with the international Deep Adaptation movement, including facilitating the largest such national group, I have become much clearer about what helps — and what does not. That clarity begins with taking seriously the emotional reality people are living with as they confront the full gravity of our predicament.

I have come to see that framing what people — especially young people — are feeling as “climate anxiety” is often a misdiagnosis. It is misleading because it suggests a variant of generalized anxiety, thereby pathologizing responses that are understandable and proportionate to the situation. And it is unhelpful because well-known anxiety-management strategies frequently fail to address the deeper distress involved, sometimes adding shame or a sense of inadequacy when the “anxiety” does not go away.

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Reclaiming Environmentalism: Saner Responses to the Ecological Crisis

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I invited an essay from a conservationist who recently worked in the crucible of US politics, and is now seeking ways to bring more authentic attention to ecological realities. 

By Aaron Vandiver 

Over the past several decades, environmentalism has been driven far from its roots. What began as a movement grounded in ecological understanding, love for the living Earth, and resistance to industrial destruction has been reduced to a narrow technical problem: carbon emissions.

When, on this blog, Professor Jem Bendell explains a pan-ecological perspective, he is calling us back to a truth environmentalists once grasped intuitively. As Rachel Carson wrote, “Nothing in nature exists alone.” Forests, oceans, soils, coral reefs, and natural hydrological cycles are, as philosopher Charles Eisenstein puts it, the “vital organs” and systems of a living Earth. A mechanical climate model focused on atmospheric physics and emissions cannot capture this living dimension. As Professor Bill Rees put it in response to Jem’s essay, climate is not primarily a physical system but a “biophysical” one. Recognizing this requires elevating biology — life itself — to the same status that physics and chemistry have enjoyed in the institutions of science on environment and climate.

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Taking time to reflect, remember, and recommit – year end thoughts

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The following notes are my end-of-year reflections, which I sent to people who subscribed to receive that from me. I think they may be useful for prompting your own reflections, ahead of the next Metacrisis Meeting, so am posting them here as well. Wishing you bright times in the year ahead, no matter the darker stuff that surrounds . Thx! Jem

When I look back on a year I don’t just consider what I experienced, contributed and accomplished. I always wonder what I have learned, and how I want to apply that in future. I had that in mind recently when I was interviewed by the e-zine Grist. One of their journalists is aware that the creeping collapse of societies has become a more credible framing amongst both experts and members of the public. She was interested in what can happen from such an awareness. So she asked how that awareness has shaped me over the years, and what’s been changing. I realised my own journey might help you with your own reflections, so I wrote them up for this personal newsletter that I send out twice a year… 

Becoming collapse-aware doesn’t mean the process of collapse suddenly concludes around us. Like me, most of you reading these words are fortunate enough not to be living in destitution. We live in the society as we find it, with our identities, assets, skills, networks, responsibilities and desires — which have built up over time within that society. So with collapse awareness, or even collapse acceptance, there are many types of response.

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Let’s not become attached to collapse

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There are moments when life confronts us with such undeniable pain that our hearts split open. For many people I know, that moment came with the realisation that our civilization is unravelling – that the seas are rising, the forests are dying, and the systems built to sustain our comfort are breaking. In that shock, there can be a strange grace. For a time, we awaken from the trance of consumption, routine and ambition. We see more clearly the suffering of the Earth and of each other. That often inspires compassion, and a yearning to live differently. It is a process I’ve often described in my past writings. It is why I encourage people to talk about societal collapse more openly, including our desires to reduce harm. Which is why, when I founded the Deep Adaptation Forum in 2019, I proposed that its ethos would be to “embody and enable loving responses to our predicament, so that we reduce suffering while saving more of society and the natural world.” Over the years I have witnessed people of all races, creeds, and economic classes, find their own ways to pursue that noble goal. It’s something I celebrate in the newly released video of Chapter 12 from my book. However, I have had to accept that something quite different can happen when we awaken to collapse, which might suppress presence, service and creativity. I wonder if that happened in me and others who participate in communities formed around an awareness or acceptance of collapse. If you are in such a community, I hope the following reflections on not becoming attached to narratives about collapse will be useful. 

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Bedtime Doom

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Lying in bed, I was too tired to read but not yet asleep. “Can you read me a bedtime story,” I said, half jokingly. “Sure,” my partner replied, and began to read aloud. Drifting off to sleep, I suddenly heard a word I never hear in normal life — relinquishment. “Huh, nobody uses that word.” My partner laughed, as if it was really funny. “Is this a Deep Adaptation story?” Rolling over, I looked towards her phone, and saw the text on the screen, which looked like the output of a chatbot. “What was your prompt?” She scrolled back up to show me: “Write a short story that Professor Jem Bendell would enjoy.” 

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A Personal Message on Covid-19

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I was surprised recently that someone close to me likely had Covid-19 again less than 3 months after her previous infection. She didn’t take a test for it either time, but the symptoms suggested it wasn’t the flu. Fever, headache, lethargy, loss of smell, but no sneezing or phlegm. As the initial symptoms didn’t put her in bed, sick, we didn’t take it too seriously. But this second infection has lingered, and created recurring lethargy and insomnia, while also bringing back some old health problems. That encouraged me to look into the latest information on Covid-19. What I found concerned me. I am sharing about it here for the same reasons I did so in the past. Since looking into it more closely in 2021, I have thought that the policy orthodoxy on Covid-19 has been counterproductive. Additionally, I have been concerned that most commentators in the environmental field are aligned with the orthodoxy and thereby turning many people away from the environmental cause. Thirdly, pandemics have often played a key role in societal breakdowns and transformations in the past, and so the risks of the Covid-19 pandemic, and future ones, is within my field of analysis and comment. Looking back, one sad aspect of speaking out over the last four years has been that many people assumed that questioning the orthodoxy means caring less about this disease, or public health in general. Such prejudice was produced by Big Pharma and their supporters in politics, the medical establishment, and mass media. In sharing on Covid-19 now, I don’t expect to have much influence, but if some of you, my readers, take the following ideas seriously enough to check them out for yourself, then at least a few of you might benefit. 

My past essays on the topic were always well referenced, and I provided links to credible sources, such as official data sets or peer-reviewed papers. I wanted to be as factual and precise as possible, and avoid the misleading spin from various commentators. This post will not be like that. I write not to influence agendas but to nudge those of you who follow my blog to act to be healthier than you might otherwise be… that’s if you look into the information for yourself and agree. You could use an AI chatbot to check some of my statements that will follow and look for relevant data. I think if we don’t do our own checking then we don’t convince ourselves enough to change behaviours. 

Anyway, here goes, with my personal message on Covid-19…

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“Resilient Life” oracle cards for challenging times

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Given what’s happening in the world, it can be tiring to stay engaged. But if we don’t remain involved in community life and some forms of political organising, then are we being true to ourselves? For me, the ongoing issue is how to stay engaged and maintain some balance in life. Over the years, I’ve benefited from knowing people who have found a deeper source of calm and creativity. They have helped me to both broaden my own activities and continue to engage in societal conversations, through my work on societal disruption, ‘metacrisis’ and collapse. My wish to help other people with similar intentions in this disruptive era moved me to create something I could not have imagined in my previous life – a pack of oracle cards for challenging times. 

Some of my friends have found resilience through spiritual teachings, while others learned from surviving various forms of suffering and tragedy. One such friend is Dean Powell, who I play devotional music with. He made a set of oracle cards for our ceremonies. They became helpful daily prompts for me to come back to what’s most important in life. So that inspired me to make a set of cards with him, so we could help others to find more resilience and resolve during challenging times. 

The “Resilient Life” cards also integrate some ideas from the frameworks of “Deep Adaptation” and “The Work that Reconnects”. Unlike other oracle cards, they don’t assume, or pretend, that our situations are stable and everything is possible. Instead, they help us find a realistic positivity, whatever the situation.  

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Heartfullness: The Way of Contemplation

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In a time of metacrisis, disruption and collapse, many of us yearn for deeper spiritual meaning but aren’t attracted to institutional religion. We also sense that growing recognition of humanity’s predicament could prompt a spiritual awakening, at least for some. This means many of us aren’t sure where to turn to find either advice or community, or to invite others together for that. That has been my situation. Personally, I have benefitted from Buddhist and Daoist philosophy and practice, nature-based Indigenous wisdom, and mystic strands of Christianity, as I shared in a ‘Buddha At The Gas Pump’ interview and now integrate into my music. I now want to go deeper and further with others. In the New Year, we launch the Metacrisis Mentors programme, where we will draw upon a variety of wisdom traditions to explore, in challenging times: what is mine to do and how am I to be? 

In January, we will announce more about the programme, which will be open to all members of the Metacrisis Meetings initiative. One of the key texts will be Heartfullness: The Way of Contemplation by Reverend Stephen G. Wright. A former palliative nurse, academic, and ordained inter-faith minister, Dr. Wright has cultivated decades of wisdom at the intersection of caregiving, contemplation, and mystical inquiry. His voice is deeply rooted in the lived experience of guiding seekers and spiritual nomads — those who feel estranged from dogma but still feel the call of the sacred.

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Summary of Breaking Together

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Portuguese is the fifth language that my book Breaking Together is available in. Many at the launch in Lisbon last month travelled from the countryside where they are working on community resilience. For them, the book Juntos Na Rutura provides a useful explanation to others about why they are promoting community economics. One of the interviews around the launch was with the Portuguese degrowth network, which is available on video.

After that inspirational boost, my next speech was to a more general audience in the UK, and I discovered how my analysis on the causes and implications of societal collapse can be easily misconstrued.  Therefore, I wrote a summary of the foundational concepts in my work, including concepts like Deep Adaptation, the Metacrisis, the Great Reclamation and Ecolibertarianism, to appear here on my homepage. In addition, I worked with a colleague to prepare a summary of some ideas in each chapter of Breaking Together, which I publish below.  

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Restoring Forest Cover and Ocean Health as the Frontline in the Climate Fight – an FAQ

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After my essay on September 5th on the need for a pan-ecological understanding of climate change and how to respond to it, I received a range of feedback and questions. “Does it change your anticipation of collapse,” was one question. Ahead of next week’s Metacrisis Meeting on this topic, in this blog I am sharing my provisional answers. An 800-word summary of my essay on the topic can be found below the following FAQ.

The renowned Professor Bill Rees, who popularised the concept of ecological footprint, welcomed the climate dogmas essay as follows:

“Most climate science sees climate as mainly a physical system with scant attention to  systems ecology… Your essay goes a step beyond, to see the climate as a biophysical phenomenon, as a product of the interactions among the physical drivers— atmospheric gases, the solar flux, etc. — and biological processes both marine and terrestrial.  I.e., it forces recognition that the climate system cannot be understood in isolation from the biosphere. To acknowledge and fully understand the role of the oceans (e.g., dimethyl sulfide), forest cover, soils production, evapotranspiration, etc. and their effects on atmospheric gases (hydrological cycle), albedo, heat balance , etc. would be a massive leap forward for climate science.  I suspect, as your article implies, it would go a long way toward revealing why (more or less in the words of top US climate scientist Gavin Schmidt) present climate models cannot explain what’s actually been happening for the past decade or so… I agree completely that what you are calling a ‘pan-ecological paradigm’ would “recognise that the pervasiveness and complexity of living systems” and that related bio-processes “are salient to any natural phenomena” including the climate systems.

As a sociologist and transdisciplinary research analyst, rather than a climatologist or ecologist, I am grateful for such feedback, and hope it encourages you to read the essay and look at the sources and references I link to from it. 

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