Beyond Humanism

Living beyond humanism is a handicap.  If you are able to look around and see life more as it is, you will handicap yourself in the ways of man.  Living this is a tough calling making it surreal.  This is probably the reason shamans lived on the edge of the community.  It is here they could reflect beyond humanism and maintain a degree of sanity.  The ways of the world contradict so much of what a higher reality represents.

This is likely why there is religion and the reason there are nutter new age spiritualist.  It is finding the middle ground that is necessary.  The control and usurping of spirituality by religion destroy spirituality but also tames it.  The freedom of pursuing unhindered spirituality is exhilarating but also maddening.  This is the tensions of the dualism of being.  We have our minds that live in two worlds of the metaphysical and the physical.  One we must take care of food, water, shelter.  In the metaphysical there is the search for meaning.  How much meaning should we pursue?  This of course has become complex and complicated with modern life where the two get blended and confused.

I have to revisit the basis of REAL Green because I live in the two worlds.  REAL Green is chiefly a spiritual approach.  This spirituality is needed so one goes further into reality than is normal to see the deeper human condition.  In the case of the modern human this is the reality of a world of decline.  This decline is actually being in the vicinity of decline.  It is a tipping over point of everything on this planet into decline.  The planet is now shifting an epoch and human forcing is the reason.  Man is nearing a shift of being a new type of man.  It will be this tipping over that reshapes this new human type.  The dawning of this new human type is unclear but the transition is near.

Spirituality is the new growth aspect for humans.  In the past it was affluence of comforts and knowledge.  These combined to form the new man of science and technology.  We are now transhuman with our machines and knowledge resources.  Significant amounts of our humanity has been lost in this technological growth.  Much of the rich natural diversity and complexity of our planet has been lost because of this development.  This is now a condition of diminishing returns.  This will drive human evolutionary change rapidly.  REAL Green seeks to orientate to this change

This evolutionary change is decline based.  It is centered on the physical world.  The spiritual damage has been done.  The growth of technological man came at the expense of spiritual man.  Now the process is turning over to spiritual growth and less technology.  Our comforts and knowledge resources have hit limits.  Not only have they hit limits they are set to degrade rapidly mainly because complexity of the type humans have created degrades rapidly when growth is taken away.  Abandonment, dysfunction, and the irrational destroy integrity of human institutions rapidly.  So, this tipping over is a paradigm of destructive change for human civilization.  This is the reason why REAL Green is a degrowth doom and the reason it pursues green prepping.

Spirituality is the one area of human life that can expand.  Meaning will be a new growth opportunity.  This is expansion is with wisdom.  This new wisdom will be of what knowledge and comforts to embrace and what to reject in this new age of decline.  Currently man is still fully embracing more comforts and knowledge.  The tension of this tipping over is at this very moment is a building up of metaphysical seismic energy.  Man is pushing hard against limits.  He continues opening doors which in the past solved problems and increased affluence but now is quickly compressing problems into predicaments.

REAL Green seeks to live in both worlds.  Very few can leave this world that is on a collision.  There is very few places for transcendence.  Few can leave into the wilderness of spirituality except for insanity.  You must live in this world of growth even though in your gut you know much of what we are doing is mad.  Yet to leave this world is also mad for most people.  It will actually destroy families and communities.  This is probably why there are established religions.  Even though they are destructive of meaning because of the moral hazards of human life they do hold civic responsibilities together.  In this way REAL Green does not advocate taking this spirituality as a new religion.

REAL Green is an add on that seeks to throttle modern life.  Important spiritual aspects if embraced yield a different physical path of the basics of living.  The key aspect of this spirituality is just to add on to your existing spirituality acceptance and return.  The acceptance is the wisdom that human agency is failing.  This failing will be anti-meaning.  The narratives that are used to give us meaning are tipping over into failure.  REAL Green is about a hybrid of living in this world of false narratives with an acceptance.

REAL Green takes this a step forward by using the wisdom of green prepping to return to an earlier humanism.  This humanism was of a time when there was less knowledge and comforts but more meaning.  This meaning may be looked upon as superstitious because of the huge amount of knowledge we have at our finger tips today.  Yet, it can be argued we are even more superstitious today with our flagrant disregard for limits.  Limits are the closest we can get to reality.  Limits are definition.  Humans today are lost without meaning because there is too much knowledge and opportunities that allow life to be delocalized.  Delocalization is a type of entropy.

This return is about going back in time but more in the sense of a rhyme than repeat.  The world of our ancestors is gone but the wisdom is not gone.  Proper wisdom is timeless and it is an art.  Art is a reflection of beauty.  It is finding that road that threads this needle that is the key to REAL Green spirituality.  You will have to live a difficult surreal mentality of knowing you will be living a life that is destructive.  You will also live in a new world that is the old world.  A world back in time to when man lived simpler less destructive lives.  This means a difficult disposition of rejecting many aspects of modern human life.  Knowing what to embrace and reject is a very hard won ability.  This is green prepping wisdom.  It is a toughest of wisdom because it is one of rejection.

At no time in man’s recent history except for extreme royalty of the past have humans had so much opportunity and choices.  I can be across the world tomorrow with the right connections.  I can build a small city in a year.  I can amass a fortune winning a lottery.  Saying no to these extremes is a tough mental postion.  What is also tough is knowing you have to embrace these opportunities.  It is a two edge sword. 

You will have to seek success and profit or you will be consumed by those who do.  This is the Anthropocene which is a human world with new predators.  In many ways this new world is more dangerous than the old one.  You may have longer life spans but many have lost meaning so what is the value?  We may not have tigers that eat us but we have new kinds of predators.  I would say more insidious and vicious predators both man and machine.  Increasingly man and machine are being merged into transhuman predators.

REAL Green is speaking to the rich in the west.   There are 6 billion poor but keep in mind many of these poor are being lifted out of poverty and will face similar issues the 1 billion face with the dangers and opportunities of affluence.  I am a rich westerner that calls on the poor to be very carful how much wealth you pursue if the opportunity arises.  REAL Green is essentially an add on spirituality for the rich of the world but the poor should reflect on the wisdom reflex of green prepping too but at a different starting point.  Many of the poor 6 billion still have a connection to the land the rich have lost.  Many of these poor are much more localized.  They have better family relationship because of this.  Of course, many do not and many are oppressed, disenfranchised and suffering.  I am not speaking to these people because I am not worthy.

REAL Green is about being an add on to your spirituality.  It is about green prepping.  The green is that which is a lower planetary foot print.  This is essentially permaculture localism.  That which is permaculture localism is more prepped.  REAL Green is green prepping because REAL Green embraces decline as the new paradigm of the dawning of an age of decline.  This is not meant to be a new age spirituality nor a nutter prepper way of life.  This is a humble spirituality of acceptance that will power you through the destructive changes immediately ahead.

Since this is a spirituality with many dangers, REAL Green calls on humility and simplicity as the time proven ways to adapt and mitigate destructive change.  This spirituality goes forth once you have gone through the spiritual transformation of REAL Green to adapted living.  You will live differently but within the life you are living now.  The key aspect of REAL Green is acceptance of decline but also the acceptance of the limits to the transformation of embracing decline. 

Very few will have the right stuff to make a significant transformation.  This is because we are all trapped in the carbon path dependencies of modern life.  Here carbon is energy and technology.  The path dependencies are the civilization that has developed and now requires carbon and technology.  There is a limit to how much simplicity one can embrace and not lose stability.  Keep in mind this involves others.  This involves people who are not capable of the spirituality of REAL Green.  In some ways there is an innocence that must be lost in REAL Green.  You must respect the innocence of those significant others who just don’t have this ability.  This will make you a leader.  Many are not capable of leadership.  Know your abilities of leadership before you embrace REAL Green in the advanced stages.

This journey is other orientated as well as planetary.  This is a heroic journey.  It is unique to you because it is your life and that life has unique nature and nurture.  This journey is specifically local and rejects delocalization and homogenization.  In this respect your local is unique with its own special limits and what changes can be made.  Use REAL Green as a tool of return to an earlier time of simplicity and meaning but use it within the limits modern life places on you.  This means you will still have to budget your time, money, and happiness.  There will be many choices to make and many of these will be added to the already large amounts of choices modern life puts on your backs.

REAL Green is essentially saying embrace a wisdom of green prepping relative and realistically to your uniqueness.  Local uniqueness allows authenticity and from authenticity comes truth.  This is so simple it can become overly complicated especially in our modern world of too much of everything except meaning.  Many complications will occur when you attempt this dissonance generating mentality.  If you are feeling dissonance you are over the target.  This is because pain is part of the process especially mental pain.  It is tough to say no when so much is possible.

This is going to create a lack of harmony at times.  They key to limiting these difficulties is localism and simplicity.  Use a wisdom that embraces these qualities in your decision making process.  You are going to fail and you will fall into traps but you will learn from this.  This is inevitable when life systems collide.  REAL Green is one life system based on decline and the modern world is centered on growth.  In the modern world failure is taboo.  Doomers are consider nutter and relegated to the fringe of the social narrative.  Yet, degrowth doom is the new meaning.  Try to harmonize this without destroying either life system.

Where REAL Green succeeds is growth in decline.  You will have to grow because you are living in the modern world of the Anthropocene but your growth will be one that is within a niche created by the declining modern life.  This decline is likely going to be rapid at some point.  Your growth will be a growth of return that is essentially a retreat in force.  It is a hybrid that will combine the new and the old better.  This will leverage your decline with more adaptation.  You will have to be significantly focused on triage.  You will have lots of deadwood to clear out.  This is where optimism occurs in the overall pessimism of decline.  You will become an optimistic pessimist.

It is apparent as a REAL Green you will be living a life of incongruous juxtapositions.  This will be a life full of paradoxes.  You will constantly be faced with the surreal of irony.  You will need to keep a strong sense of humor and a durability of character.  The reason this is more likely for you in REAL Green is you are embracing localism and simplicity.  While REAL Green is for everyone to a degree its advanced stages are only for a few.  It is not something to be taken lightly.   It is a rigorous life of voluntary simplicity within complexity.  Know your limits before you entertain this life system.

If you live in a city leave it.  If you can’t then be aware your permaculture homestead and monestary of knowledge will be at increased risk.  If you can move to the edges of a city this is better.   Just like shamans did in the time of our ancestors when they would live on the fringe of their community.  They went there because it was easier to find meaning.  It is meaning that is the key element of spirituality.  REAL Green is a spirituality that brings a physical transformation.  So, in this case you must first find a permaculture of the spirit before you find your permaculture homestead. 

Cities are delocalizing and a place where the wisdom of saying no is hindered.  Find a place where you can connect to the planet in permaculture.  Find a place where you can find community or at a minimum raise a family away from the worst of decline ahead.  This is about returning to the land.  This is what is real human nature at its best.  Our current human nature has now hit limits and cannot be maintained.  This is the tipping point you will be negotiating.  REAL Green is not a refuge.  There are no refuges except in the spirit world but this is not so much a refuge as an acceptance of a higher power.  It is the humility of the ego embracing ascending levels of mortality and in doing so connects to the truth to find life.