Planet Aqua: A New Understanding of Humanity and The Way forward for Life on Earth

In a latest article titled “Transformations: The Finish of the U.S. and the World as We Know It and The Reality About Our Collective Future,” I described the challenges we face in our world at this time.

“It’s not simple to just accept, however it’s turning into an increasing number of apparent that our nation and our world are usually not doing effectively,”

I mentioned.

“Some consider the U.S. is falling aside and the people have made such a multitude of the setting that we should always name it quits, exit in a blaze of destruction, and depart planet Earth within the fingers of species who’re higher capable of be good companions in the neighborhood of life on Earth. Others consider that human ingenuity and progressive applied sciences will make things better and now we have a vibrant future forward. I’ve a distinct imaginative and prescient that was given to me in a sweat lodge in 1993 at a males’s gathering in Indianapolis, Indiana.”

            In his guide, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Dwelling within the Universe, best-selling writer Jeremy Rifkin gives is personal imaginative and prescient for our future that very a lot resonates with mine. He says,

“What would occur if we all of the sudden realized that the planet we dwell on appeared eerily alien, as if we’d been teleported to another distant world? That horrifying prospect is now.”

            What has occurred to us?  “To place it bluntly,” says Rifkin,

“our species, significantly within the Western world, has come to consider that we dwell on terra firma, a verdant inexperienced expanse of stable floor upon which we stand and thrive and which we name our house within the cosmic theater.”

            That’s actually the way in which I’ve come to think about our house. However our area travels and the photographs of the Earth that had been despatched again reveal a brand new understanding of our house.

“Earth was immediately lowered to a veneer atop of which has all the time been a water planet circling the solar, and up to now, seemingly alone in its a number of shades of blue in our photo voltaic system and maybe within the universe,”

says Jeremy Rifkin.

            our world as “a water planet” permits us to higher perceive the poly-crises we face and tips on how to take care of them extra successfully. In his guide, Planet Aqua, Rifkin provides us a brand new technique to perceive and probably clear up our issues. Rifkin lists just a few of the crises that we face, together with the scientific references to help the statistics:

• In the present day, 2.6 billion folks expertise excessive or excessive water stress. By 2040, a complete of 5.4 billion folks—greater than half of the world’s inhabitants—will dwell in 59 international locations experiencing excessive or excessive water stress.

• Over the previous decade, the variety of recorded water-related conflicts and violent incidents elevated by 270% worldwide.

• One billion folks dwell in international locations which can be unlikely to have the power to mitigate and adapt to new ecological threats, creating circumstances for mass displacement of populations and compelled local weather migrations by 2050.

• Droughts, heatwaves, and large wildfires are spreading throughout each continent, raging ecosystems and destroying infrastructure world wide.

Again in 1993, my imaginative and prescient within the sweat-lodge gave me a novel understanding of our current predicament and potential options. I noticed the “sinking of the Ship of Civilization” and the emergence of “lifeboats for humanity” which you’ll learn extra about right here. Among the many conclusions that emerged from the imaginative and prescient and my subsequent explorations had been the next:

• “Civilization” is a misnomer. Its correct identify is the “Dominator System.” 

So long as we purchase the parable that “civilization” is the most effective people can aspire to attain, we’re doomed to go down with the ship. In The Chalice & the Blade: Our Historical past Our Future first printed in 1987, internationally acclaimed scholar and futurist, Riane Eisler first launched us to our lengthy, historical heritage as a Partnership System and our newer Dominator System, which has come to be referred to as “Civilization.”

In her latest guide, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Form Our Brains, Lives, and Future,written with peace activist Douglas P. Fry, they provide actual steerage for making a world based mostly on partnership.

Historian of religions, Thomas Berry, spoke eloquently to our must be sincere about our current scenario.

“We by no means knew sufficient. Nor had been we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins within the nice household of the earth. Nor may we hearken to the assorted creatures of the earth, every telling its personal story. The time has now come, nevertheless, after we will pay attention or we are going to die.” 

• There’s a higher world, past civilization.

Once I was given the guide Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn,I received a transparent sense of the 2 worlds which can 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 many books Quinn gives a transparent distinction in worldviews.

In his guide, Past Civilization: Humanity’s Subsequent Nice Journey, Quinn says,

“I can confidently predict that if the world is saved, it is not going to be as a result of some previous minds got here up with some new packages. Packages by no means cease the issues they’re launched to cease. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will cease them. And no program will ever cease us from devastating the world.”

The Dominator System Emerged 6,000 Years In the past as a Results of Environmental Trauma.

            In a 1999 article, “The Worst Mistake within the Historical past of the Human Race,” the world-famous scientist and historian, Jared Diamond, provided these highly effective and startling insights:

            “To science we owe dramatic adjustments in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the middle of the universe however merely considered one of billions of heavenly our bodies. From biology we discovered that we weren’t specifically created by God however developed together with hundreds of thousands of different species. Now archaeology is demolishing one other sacred perception: that human historical past over the previous million years has been a protracted story of progress. Specifically, latest discoveries recommend that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step towards a greater life, was in some ways a disaster from which now we have by no means recovered.” [Emphasis added by me, Jed Diamond].

            A terrific deal has been written about what precipitated this disaster. Anthropologists had lengthy demonstrated that people had lived in comparatively wholesome stability with nature for two-million years. What occurred 6,000 years in the past set us on a course that now endangers our personal lives and effectively because the lives of our kids, future generations, and humanity itself.

            In my most up-to-date guide, Lengthy Dwell Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Provide Hope to Humanity, I mentioned the analysis of environmental scientist Dr. James DeMeo. In his monumental, ten-year examine that culminated within the guide Saharasia, Dr. DeMeo started by asking a variety of vital questions together with the next:

• What are the causes and supreme sources of human violence?

• Why accomplish that many political and spiritual leaders behave in such a hypocritical method, and why are probably the most non secular nations usually probably the most bloody and violent?

• What particularly occurred to vary the face of the world so dramatically for the more severe, to provide the large mess during which a lot of humanity finds itself at this time?

He gives his easy conclusion within the introduction on web page 3 and follows with 451 further pages of findings, maps, and discussions:

“Human violence appeared to have a particular time and place of origins on the Earth; delinquent violence was not distributed world-wide always previously! Moreover, it was discovered, the origins of violence was exactly timed to a significant historic epoch of local weather change from comparatively moist in the direction of dry circumstances.”

The total title of the guide captures his whole thesis: Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Little one Abuse, Intercourse-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence within the Deserts of the Outdated World.The guide was initially printed in 1998 and has added to my very own understanding within the years since my sweat lodge imaginative and prescient in 1993.

Each Jeremy Rifkin and James DeMeo consider that the last word reason behind Jared Diamond’s “Worst Mistake within the Historical past of the Human Race” was associated to water. DeMeo’s analysis exhibits that years of drought precipitated massive areas of the Center East to be changed into desert and was the unique trauma that led to most of the issues that we face at this time.

            Trauma, after all, impacts each ladies and men, however the response to trauma has been totally different for the 2 sexes as I’ll talk about in Half 2 of this sequence. Should you aren’t already subscribed to my free weekly e-newsletter, you are able to do so right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/