SOOM

I am a green shaman.  This story is my cave painting.  I have been to places and having gone there I have been instructed to go back and tell others.  What I tell you is not perfect because I am an imperfect vessel but I will tell you what I have seen the best I can.  This place was very strange and other worldly and has persisted over my life.  So, it is my entire life with a few moments of the bright light of the truth along with moments of complete failure.  It is the visiting of both these worlds that is required.  Keep in mind this may be completely delusional on my part because humans that enter this world will be delusional.  In fact, being delusional is a requirement.  This is not the delusional of what we call sanity and adjusted.  It is the insanity the sane want to repress because this world is so dangerous to their sanity and adjustment.  This is why religion is created and why man now worships science.

If I appear to be crying wolf about doom, I am but my intentions are different.  My goal is to adapt your reality filter not scare you.  Doom is scary and not something people seek out.  In fact, in most cases, it is taboo like many sexual fetishes.  I do not want to judge you or push you to extreme change.  The reality is most of us are trapped and have limited options.  A few can do dramatic change that is restorative but for most because of nature and nurture are trapped in a world that can’t be changed much.  The people that can change can renew places and inspire people.  This is why my message is so important and why you should take doom a step further if you are one of the new human types.  You will pick up the pieces of a destroyed world.

None of this will matter at the macro level.  Decline is a force now.  It is the current of change.  It is what people like to refer to as progress but now progress is regression.  What once was constructive change is now destructive.  Growth is now degrowth.  This degrowth is not the positive kind with proactive discipline of entering uncharted waters.  Positive degrowth is triage of deadwood not taking on of baggage.  It is about bailing water out not taking on water.  This is not the blind embrace of growth because of path dependencies that growth is all we know and the only way to react.  In this case what is called growth is really the degrowth of failed growth.  This growth is lied about and made to appear to be real growth.  This is what human civilization now is.   Civilization is a wonderfully complex and complicated house of cards built on a foundation that is a planet in abrupt change caused by the weight of this human construction 

So, the human narrative is a lie.  This is not a noble lie although the elites are lying to us about what they are doing with noble lies.  This lie is not the Marxist and or Machiavellian lies of political warfare of these elites who are pitting groups against groups to divided and conquer.  This is at work today too.  This is an existential lie of human wisdom that is approaching collapse.  This is a systematic lie that is pushing the envelope of stasis of a planet.  This lie is that humans can grow physically and with knowledge.  It is the lie we have a manifest destiny that we are made in the image of the divine and that this will ensure success.  Science is just as much part of this religious lie becuase science has now become scientism.  The universe is looked upon as embedded with intelligent design with math and physics.  We are discovering the very secrets of the universe we think and worshiping our success with false icons.

There has been talk by the elite of science and academia that God is dead.  Now I say atheism is dead too.  The reason I say this is atheism calls on its faithful in academia to embraced scientism.  They have replaced the God of traditional religion with a god that is the universe of intelligent design in their image.  This is the golden calf of Scientism.  This is a lie just as much as traditional religion is a lie.  Spirit and science must remain at different poles.  Science serves a different human function.  It is ego driven.  The spiritual is when the ego ceases to be the ego in surrender.  When the ego is completely gone is when you have entered the spiritual.  In science man is inquiring and breaking apart into packets of knowledge of all.  In the spiritual there is a connection into what is beyond and above human agency where humanity is left behind. 

This spiritual connectivity is complete humility in mysticism.  Science is about power and control.  The spiritual is above this in the loss of control into complete humility of connectivity with an unknown higher power.  Embracing this higher power is nothingness.  When you mix them there is an existential lie both with religion and science.  This is the human narrative today of dualism with both religion and science.  It has always been the human condition but in times of primitive man it was properly scaled.  There is no longer scale so what we have today is complete failure of control so we are on the cusp of an explosion of spirituality.  This is the necessary lie of being human but on occasion it must be destroyed completely in total humility.  We are now collectively at that point and this is the reason for my doom.

The reason I bring up this lie of traditional religion and scientism is both have been coopted with the corruption of today’s carbon trap and path dependencies of growth.  This is transhuman now with machines.  The most basic is the car culture.  You can live in a walkable community and still are in the car culture.  Population overshoot of all is a function of the car culture of moving human economics that is now global.  Even the poorest who labor and toil in their subsistence without much outside support are subject to it.  No one can hide from the self-destruction of this car culture. 

This transhumanism is now accelerating with the world wide web of the digital that is an ascending level of this car culture of delocalization.  In fact, this stage is the final destructive stage.  This is delocalizing man even further and quicker.  We no longer connect to the land and life around us with our digital delocalization.  They are now calling for the metaverse.  The metaverse is complete and final mechanization of life.  Even environmentalist are looking to science and technology to help nature with large and small geoengineering strategies. 

The reality is we are destroying nature.  It is this false divinity that is the issue because man is no longer scaled properly.  Proper scale is a seminomadic hunter gatherer with the basic science of primitive agriculture, foraging, and shelter.  This culture is a spoken culture that is alive with animation of the spirit world which is much closer to reality than the mechanization of the spiritual in transhumanism.  The spoken human culture of the primitive is superstitious but in a balanced way.  The most superstitious man is modern man in the delocalization of transhumanism of tech and knowledge power.

This discussion above has to be understood to understand the intricacies of decline.  This is needed to understand this decline has been a process from the very time when humans began to gather into small civilizations and then embraced agriculture.  Modern science began with agriculture and proper science will return to permaculture.  The narrative is this.   When humans began their enlightenment it was locked in dualism.   This process proceeded it also degraded until now it has gone to an extreme planet changing process with an arrogance of humanism that is an extreme of dualism.

It has progressed over thousands of years and is now at the point of tipping over.  On a finite planet there are limits.  This includes knowledge and tech.  We are there and somewhere in the vicinity of the tipping over into a new time of decline.  This means a new reality that man has not ever developed in is now at work.  The various dark ages and depressions mirror this but are not it because they all occurred in a steady average growth over these thousands of years.  They were blips in this process.  This is a systematic current of destructive change.  Where as the growth has lasted thousands of years the decline phase will be measured in decades or quicker.  It is this defining aspect that needs to be embraced to properly adapt.  We are talking rapid and complete change not steady average growth.

I call this “Soom”.  This is soon combined with doom.  Doom is not a new concept nor is the soon of collpase.  I would define it as the process of tipping over into decline that will accelerate at a nonlinear rate that knowledge and tech go into as they go from solving problems to being the problem.  It will infect all subsets but at different rates.  All places upon this planet are part of this tipping over because this is a consequence of the human forcing of growth globally.  It is within the human ecosystem of civilization but also geologic change.  It is the planetary systems being forced into abrupt change by human activity.  This is similar to cyanobacteria that initiated the theory of a snowball earth.  Life is also a planetary process and now humanity is the equivalent to cyanobacteria.  This is an amazing view of things because it is a full circle of the complexity of life.

All those planetary cycles that support life are now in phase change.  The carbon, nitrogen, and hydrologic are tipping with negative convergences feeding feedbacks beyond human control.  It is terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric.  It is within the human sphere with activity and meaning.  It is this current that is a river of destructive change.  The planet changes without destructive or constructive change.  It just does what planets do.  The destructive and constructive is in regards to the succession of the life system. 

Here there is the constructive of increasing complexity or the destructive of the undoing of complexity.  It is here where there is evolution or devolution and the combination of both in the turbulence of change.  This is where extinction is also.  Eventually all will be absorbed into a red giant star so the story goes.  In today’s scientism we will be elsewhere in the universe so the story goes.  Traveling in time through wormholes with quantum computing so the story goes.  My cave painting says otherwise and this is my humble story of a delusional green shaman.

You have to see this all-encompassing nature of decline to truly adapt.  This is a process but compared to the run up to the point of thousands of years of growth this will be a rapid decline.  In the world of the mortal humans this may not touch many.  Some of us in our 50s and older may not experience this.  For what it is worth I predict anyone under 30 will have to embrace decline as the new reality.  This is a blind prediction though because there is no way to equate decline.  It now has a life of its own.  In fact it is art and that is why what I am telling you now is a story not science.   

Keep in mind reality now is the tipping point.  It is that place where turbulence will phase change.  It is not a reality of growth or decline it is the turbulence of both in phase change.  Just like turbulence does not have an equation this period does not have the predictive element humans crave.  In fact, this turbulence is allowing humans to mistakenly consider growth growth when the reality is much of this growth is decline.

Since you the individual in your local of people and place are in a phase change.  You have no choice but to embrace both.  This is why I talk of the dualism of REAL Green.  You will be required to embrace both worlds.  Reality is going to tell you decline but the human narrative is growth.  The human narrative is a religion of growth because this is what scientism is.  Science and technology are the only truly revolutionary human force because they are unstoppable in the human drive of progress.  It seeks to know all.  Technology is the physical manifestation of this drive of affluence of efficiency into destructive change.  This human forcing has now adapted the planet and the web of life.  This forcing is self-destruction that is built into the human predicament of dualism. 

It is here the phase change is occurring and it is here where you do REAL Green adaptation.  REAL Green calls on you to live in both worlds.  It creates a new world for humans.  This is the world of degrowth doom.  It combines these two worlds in constructive growth of finding niches in a planet and human civilization in phase change.  You embrace human and planetary change to adapt locally which is the only place left to constructively change.  You will be adapting these two human realities or worlds together in a hybridization.  There will be triage and there will be salvage.  You will know you are there if you see the surreal world of paradoxes, incongruous juxtapositions, and irony.

This adaptation must be local with people and place.  In fact, it is the community of Christ that is so relevant here.  I do not mean to be religious here but only to shed life on what is arguably the most powerful message Jesus left us.  This means small scale.  It is this small scale which humans developed to become the modern human and are no losing in the delocalization of transhumanism.  Is it any wonder scientism is trying to destroy the family?  This is why.  You must begin the journey back to this human type that will become a new human type that will be postmodern after the coming bottleneck. 

It is unclear when this will happen and keep in mind humans may go extinct.  This is the nature of turbulence, remember.  There are no equations for this.  It is instead art and the subject of cave paintings.  We are in phase change now so there is no equation for this future.  Quit obsessing over the destination that is eventual death for all.  Mortality is the great equalizer and true honesty.  Nothing man has created will remain.  When that day comes is vital but also irrelevant to sombody doing REAL Green adaptation.  REAL Green adaptation takes the humility of this ultimate failure and gives it meaning in the journey through this time of turbulence.  It is about being pessimistic about all that is wrong with the modern human narrative and turning that into optimism of the journey of localized growth in meaning.

The truth is the ultimate quest of all humans.  Of course, this varies in intensity but all humans seek to embrace the truth as the proper course of action for actions.  It is the truth of this phase change and what is required that is the new meaning.  This embrace of the truth is what will give you optimism and it is this optimism that will transform your human agency.  You will not transcend this world of destructive change you will just transform it with a meaning that reflects reality.  You will do positive degrowth locally but only as best you can.  You will be declining in place in localism and permaculture.  You will be doing this relative and realistically according to your trap that is the trap of your greater community.  This greater community is like a ladder of increasing complexity and delocalization into globalism and the world wide web of human connections no one can escape. 

It is here where the real surreal living comes in because this will be the fight between localization and delocalization.  It is the fight of affluence between what is physical and what is spiritual.  Growth is with localism and spiritualism.  In fact, the only true growth ahead is spiritual with the meaning of this phase change.  It is this spiritual meaning that will direct small groups to the constructive growth of niches that form as eddies in the current of destructive change.  Yet, this trap will define and limit how much change a local of people and place can change.  This is the critical element of the hybridization.  You will have to try to live more local in a world of increasing delocalization.  You will have to embrace less affluence to find more.  The reason for these juxtapositions is you will have to trade physical affluence for increased spiritual affluence but you will have to do this in a measured way or you will lose both and be destitute and disenfranchised.

This is a critical element of this adaptation process.  It is here where REAL Green becomes an art that requires vision.  This vision is surreal.  It is littered with incongruous juxtapositions and paradoxes.  It means embracing the trap and most of all it is about embracing the humility of the wisdom of insecurity. This wisdom of insecurity is about finding security in insecurity.  This is the paradox of life.  The more you hold on to security the less you will have.  The wisdom of insecurity embraces the turbulence of this phase change.  It does this with meaning.  If you embrace the truth the truth will support you.  If the planet is in phase change, then embracing this truth is the equivalent of the planet supporting you.  This means understanding everything you hold near and dear is at risk including the meaning of your life.  In the wisdom of insecurity, you will be finding wisdom in decline.  This wisdom will guide you through the coming human bottleneck that no one will escape.  There is a great waterfall ahead and you now see the mist given off by this existential phase change.

This wisdom of insecurity will not save you.  There is no refuge there is no place to hide from this phase change but there is the freedom of a spiritual awakening that is a burst of positive energy to restore and renew human connectivity.  In this time in human history this connectivity is to the land in localism.  It can only be found in permaculture.  Keep in mind this permaculture is more than just farming the land.  It is permaculture strategies that require human networking found in small towns that permaculture farms orbit.  

This permaculture is about going local in a delocalized world with people and place.  This means a diverse group but a simple group.  Gone must be all those hyper specializations of modern man who can’t live without delocalization.  In this world all these people must be engaged in the complexity of the simplicity of permaculture.  True complexity is found only in nature.  Only Nature can overcome Nature.  The simplicity must be with the human network of knowledge and tech.  These permaculturist must have one or two specializations and be versed in all the basics of permaculture.  Permaculture is not delocalization.  Permaculture is the true affluence not delocalization.

This is about family and tribe.  It does not rise to urban.  Cities will be depopulated.  These are the places where the greatest turbulence will occur.  REAL Green prescriptions work here in the surreal of seeing the decline process but if you see the decline process then you will leave the cities because there will be no constructive growth in these places.  You will be like those hallowed souls of Chaco Canyon who deserted their development because they saw what it had become.  The difference with Chaco Canyon and today is there is no place to go to.  The world is now totally globalized in delocalization.  This is why you will have to adapt realistically and relatively but it must be towards that which is not what we have today.  Today man is urban and transhuman.  You will want to leave this on a journey of optimism.

This means you will have to flow with the current that is the current of truth with that which is now the current of lies.  This takes a special mentality.  This mentality is so simple that it will be the hardest thing you do because it is about calling into question everything and choosing one of two doors that will have consequences.  If you choose the status quo, you are choosing the world of lies.  If you chose the door of truth and meaning of phase change this will also have consequences.  No choice is not an option because that is a default choice for the status quo.  You will fall back into the current human narrative of the status quo because you are trapped.  Actually, in REAL Green you will go in and out of these doors because remaining in the bright light of the truth is only momentary.  It is the impact of seeing this light but returning to the lies where the support is.  This is why I say the planet and the stars will support you in this transformation.