UN Warns of ‘Total Societal Collapse’ Due to Breaching of Multiple Planetary Boundaries

A landmark report by the United Nations concludes that ‘global collapse’ is becoming more likely. But was it watered-down before being published?

“I think the problems we’re seeing now, whether you’re talking about hunger, massive inequity, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity, have been driven over the last 200 years by a system of overproduction of stuff and a overconsumption of stuff. And then that’s been inflated and inflated and inflated to the point where it really is not in any way reasonable. The companies and those within government who have supported that approach are now saying they will provide new technologies, to continue that consumption of stuff, that level of production, its just not realistic.” -Jim Thomas

“This report was published back in May 2022. There have been zero mentions of it in any of the media outlets I frequent. There have however, been many mentions; a deluge if you will, of climate related disasters, characterized as “catastrophic”, “unprecedented”, “once in (insert hundreds or thousands of years here) climate events. There have been ever widening droughts and desertification worldwide, food scarcity, rapidly disintegrating biogeochemical systems, widespread habit losses, mass extinctions, etc, etc. etc. It has been suggested by some scientists that 6 of 9 “planetary boundaries” required to maintain a safe operating space for our species have been breached. It was recently reported that it’s all but certain the 2.c climate safety threshold will be breached toot sweet. And the wild shit is, an unnamed source who worked on the UN report discussed below claims what has been published is “an eviscerated skeleton” of what it was pre publishing. IMO this all ads up to more confirmation that we are in for the worst case scenario, leading to total societal collapse in all probability, faster than expected. Be kind to each other and all other beings while you can. Only love remains. Planetary hospice is where we’re at. ” -Jevon

By Nafeez Ahmed @ Byline Times

When the United Nations published its 2022 ‘Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction’ (GAR2022) in May, the world’s attention was on its grim verdict that the world was experiencing an accelerating trend of natural disasters and economic crises. But not a single media outlet picked up the biggest issue: the increasing probability of civilisational collapse.

Buried in the report, which was endorsed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, is the finding that escalating synergies between disasters, economic vulnerabilities and ecosystem failures are escalating the risk of a “global collapse” scenario.

This stark conclusion appears to be the first time that the UN has issued a flagship global report finding that existing global policies are accelerating toward the collapse of human civilisation. Yet somehow this urgent warning has remained unreported until now.

The report does not suggest that this outcome is inevitable or specify how close to this possibility we are. But it does confirm that, without radical change, that’s where the world is heading.

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Planetary Boundaries

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework are a set of social, economic, legal, political and institutional measures to reduce “disaster risk and losses” – both involve targets to 2030 which the world is in danger of failing to meet.

That failure, however, is directly linked to the rate at which human activities are interfering with natural systems, in particular, ‘planetary boundaries’.

The planetary boundaries framework was developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2009 to provide what it calls a “science-based analysis of the risk that human perturbations will destabilise the Earth system at the planetary scale”. This framework identifies a range of nine key ecosystems which, if pushed passed a certain threshold, will dramatically reduce the “safe operating space” for human habitation.

The report notes that at least four of the nine planetary boundaries now seem to be operating outside the safe operating space.

While land system change and climate change are in a zone of “uncertainty with increasing risk” of overstepping the safe operating space, the report says, biochemical flows and ‘novel entities’ (“new engineered chemicals, materials or organisms and natural elements mobilised by human activity such as heavy metals”) have “far exceeded” that space.

However, the situation is likely to be worse than acknowledged in the UN’s report.

Byline Times revealed last summer that, according to Professor Will Steffen of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, two more planetary boundaries – ocean acidification and freshwater use – would probably by then also be “transgressed”, meaning that we are breaching six out of nine planetary boundaries. If we continue to cross boundaries at this rate, it is possible that we cross almost all of them before 2030.

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Don’t Look Up

According to the UN ‘s report, “the human material and ecological footprint is accelerating the rate of change. A potential impact when systemic risks become cascading disasters is that systems are at risk of collapse”.

Yet, although the risk of systemic collapse is discussed at different points in the report, the “global collapse” scenario did not receive extensive elaboration. Instead, the report makes reference to a separate ‘contributing paper’ published by the UN’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

That paper, ‘Pandemics, Climate Extremes, Tipping Points and the Global Catastrophic Risk – How these Impact Global Targets’, offers an in-depth scenario analysis of global collapse risks based on how human activities are transgressing planetary boundaries.

The paper is authored by Thomas Cernev, a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. It finds that the continuation of ‘business as usual’ and a failure to invoke drastic policy changes means that human civilisation is moving inexorably toward collapse.

“From the scenario analysis… it is evident that in the absence of ambitious policy and near global adoption and successful implementation, the world continually tends towards the global collapse scenario,” it says.

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Four Pathways – Three Lead to Collapse

Thomas Cernev’s paper identifies four potential pathways ahead. Yet only one of them, “stable Earth”, involves the achievement of global targets under the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Sendai Framework. All the others are heading toward collapse.

“In all of these scenarios except for ‘stable earth’, the achievement of global targets and accompanying frameworks is negatively impacted,” the report states. “Furthermore, in the absence of change, scenarios ‘Earth under uncertainty’ and ‘Earth under threat’ tend towards that of ‘global collapse’.”

The paper explains that, by adopting a systems analysis, it is possible to see how “the crossing of one planetary boundary systematically results in the crossing of others”. They are crucial to providing a ‘safe operating space’ for human societies to develop within a stable earth system, “with the passing of these boundaries subsequently, and most likely resulting in societal destabilisation and potential GCR events”.

Global Catastrophic Risk (GCR) events are defined as those leading to more than 10 million fatalities or greater than $10 trillion in damages.

The paper’s worst-case global collapse scenario is described as the result of multiple planetary boundaries being breached, increasing the likelihood of GCR events that set in motion a sequence of economic and political breakdowns, which further drive ecological collapse processes.

In this scenario, “total societal collapse is a possibility”, the paper warns.

“This scenario presents a world where planetary boundaries have been extensively crossed, and if GCR events have not already occurred or are in the process of occurring, then their likelihood of doing so in the future is extreme,” the paper says. “In this scenario, global targets have most likely not been achieved, and the resulting collapse of society in this scenario means that the future achievement of any global targets is unlikely, and total societal collapse is a possibility. Disaster risk reduction has not been successful and disasters are common, with disaster events as well as GCR events such as pandemics increasing.”

It goes on to suggest that, in such a scenario, without policy changes designed to mitigate risks and make the global system more resilient and adaptable, “the crossing of planetary boundaries is likely to exacerbate GCR risk, with large and complex environmental feedback loops leading to further environmental and social collapse” and that “depending on the extent of the crossing of the planetary boundaries and the severity of any GCR events that may have occurred, policy interventions that are not drastic are unlikely to improve society and a reactive policy approach will need to be taken”.

That scenario leads to extremely limited international cooperation, in turn creating a higher risk of global or environmental conflict as the environment degrades, “with potential forced migrations of people from uninhabitable areas that in turn has the potential to heighten GCR by making events such as a pandemic or nuclear war more likely”.

While the global collapse scenario represents the worst-case, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we can see signs of it emerging today. Of greater concern is that the two other scenarios explored by the paper still tend toward this worst-case scenario.

In the earth under threat scenario, “planetary boundaries have been crossed past a safe limit, or there is a large degree of uncertainty as to humanity’s position relative to the boundaries with strong suspicion and evidence of some if not all having been crossed”. We appear to be either very close to reaching this point, or have already reached it.

The UN paper adds: “Whilst GCR is low and GCR events are unlikely to occur, the complex feedback loops that operate between the planetary boundaries are likely to increase the likelihood of GCR events occurring in the near future.”

The paper argues that political and global instability will be exacerbated by “a quickly degrading environment” which could further “drive conflict and hinder future progress towards achieving global targets. In this scenario, the world is on a path towards a global collapse scenario, where GCR events are occurring unless considerable preventive and reactive policy interventions that are ambitious are globally adopted and successfully undertaken”.

Even in the Earth under uncertainty scenario, where “planetary boundaries have not been extensively crossed, or there is a high level of uncertainty as to humanity’s position relative to the boundary”, we would still be in a position where “GCR risk is high, with the likelihood of a GCR event being extreme or a GCR event having already occurred or in the process of occurring”.

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Avoiding Collapse

Despite the potential to achieve some global targets and international cooperation, the paper concludes that only further ambitious policy changes can “ensure that development targets are achieved and the world is not pushed towards a Global Collapse scenario”.

The paper states: “The scenario analysis undertaken illustrates a dangerous tendency for the world to tend towards the Global Collapse scenario,”

Although “reactive” policies are necessary to mitigate existing risks, the paper calls for a focus on “preventive” policies to build greater system resilience and to avoid further crossing planetary boundaries.

In particular, it calls for “the creation of a planetary boundaries goal” in the next version of the SDGs adopted after 2030, along with “the incorporation of GCR into the targets”.

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A Diluted Narrative?

As I had found in 2017 as a researcher at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute, the process of global societal collapse is likely to accelerate as a self-reinforcing feedback loop between human system destabilisation (HSD) and earth system disruption (ESD).

In this feedback loop, earth system disruptions – in this case, triggered by breaching of planetary boundaries – destabilise social, political and economic institutions. This, in turn, inhibits successful policy responses to ESD, leaving the planet vulnerable to further ESD outbreaks.

The result is a feedback effect in which HSD and ESD occur in an amplifying cycle with the potential to culminate in a dramatic loss of complexity in the human system – what might be defined as a collapse.

The UN Global Assessment Report, and its contributing paper by Thomas Cernev, offer scenarios that are consistent with this process – but it is not clear whether any of these scenarios have actually begun, only that currently the world is tending dangerously toward them.

No precise timescales are identified in the documents and neither the UN nor Cernev have responded to requests for comment from Byline Times.

But there are reasons to suspect that a collapse process has already started, even if it is still possible to rein in.

A senior advisor to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and contributor to the Global Assessment Report who spoke to Byline Times on condition of anonymity, claims that the GAR2022 was watered-down before public release.

The source said that the world had “passed a point of no return” and “I don’t feel that this is being properly represented in UN or media as of now”.

“The GAR2022 is an eviscerated skeleton of what was included in earlier drafts,” they claimed.

The UN GAR2022 is a landmark document. It is the first time that the United Nations has clearly underscored the impending risk of “total societal collapse” if the human system continues to cross the planetary boundaries critical to maintaining a safe operating space for the earth system.

Yet, despite this urgent warning, not only has it fallen on deaf ears, the UN itself appears to have diluted its own findings. Like the fictional film Don’t Look Up, we are more concerned with celebrity gossip and political scandals, seemingly unable – or unwilling – to confront the most important challenge that now faces us as a species.

Either way, these UN documents show that recognising the risk of collapse is not about doom-mongering, but about understanding risks so we can make better choices and avoid worst-case outcomes. As the report acknowledges, there is still much that can be done. But the time for action is not after 2030. It’s now.

Conscious Capitalism is an Alibi and an Apology for Our Existing Paradigm

“Many people in the psychedelic realm are aspiring tech entrepreneurs or Silicon Valley mavens. They believe capitalism—rather than human ingenuity—creates innovation, jobs, and “progress.” As a result, the breadth of ideas within the psychedelic discourse is astonishingly narrow because they’ve already situated themselves within a false construct. It is of no surprise then that ideas such as conscious capitalism have become popular among psychedelic communities.

Conscious capitalism is often dressed up in appealing euphemisms like social innovation, cultural entrepreneurship, green growth, financial inclusion, and impact investing. Although some truly believe in the power of these approaches, I would argue their bias stems from their privilege—and privilege is a blinding constraint.

It is hard to hold a truly structural, constellational worldview that takes into account a vast multitude of factors and perspectives required for deep social change, while benefiting from the current system. Conscious capitalism is an alibi and an apology for the existing paradigm.

For those who have disproportionately benefited from the last 500 years of a globalizing capitalist force, animated by extrinsic values, it seems apparent that more of the same could only be better. After all, it was called the “Enlightenment.” How could more be worse?

Conscious capitalism is simultaneously more and better, like the economic equivalent of Diet Coke. Conscious capitalism’s role is to prop up the existing order by modifying its more minor attributes, while keeping its essential nature intact. It is the desperate strategy of a dying system trying to keep our thinking within the narrow band of logic that makes it appear inevitable and necessary. This entirely false belief is what gives us the license to act as if we can continue human activity as we have been. In fact, it tells us that the world will be better for it. It is a strategy of business as usual, with the addition of a moral incentive.

Imagine a world where no one would have to toil as a wage slave, but the basic needs to thrive (food, shelter, transportation, healthcare, etc.) were provided by society. Imagine a world where every human had access to the privileges of Western spiritual communities: yoga, ayahuasca, ayurvedic diets, juice cleanses, qi gong, etc. We would have a social, cultural, and spiritual renaissance on this planet.

Although there is no blueprint for what post- capitalist systems could look like, what unites the various expressions are shared values such as love, generosity, altruism, interdependence, empathy, non-violence, compassion, and solidarity with all life. These values inform ideas such as zero-waste, circular production methods that mimic nature’s own genius in turning all waste back into productive use; co-operative ownership models and commons-based governance structures that privilege a more democratic distribution of economic power; universal basic income, a global wealth tax, and shorter working weeks that restructure the logic of work in the age of automation and AI; regenerative agriculture that rebuilds depleted soils, sequesters carbon, and returns our food production to long-term sustainability; localization to bring economies back to human-scale; and many other growing alternatives.”

–Alnoor Ladha

“WOWOWOWOWOW. Resonating so deeply with these thoughts from Ms. Ladha. Capitalism is at it’s root a devastatingly destructive, carnivorously cannibalizing and externalizing force with which we “modern” humans have radically altered multiple fundamental and life sustaining biogeochemical processes of the planet upon which we depend for life, to service our ever expanding constellation of wants and “needs”. We’ve turned this garden of eden into a toxic and tortured waste dump. Business as usual is failing, as this way of being nears collapse. It is necessary for us amidst this 6th great extinction of life to deprogram and disidentify with this dominator culture animated by fear and greed. Psychedelic and ancestral medicines provide means by which we can change our programming. We have to figure out new and easily repeatable ways to provide access to these medicines that fall outside the extractivist, destructive and hyper consumptive capitalist constructs that currently reign supreme. Ways which protect and place at the forefront, the first peoples, who carry the ancestral knowledge required to sustainably and respectfully administer medicines. Not tech bros and venture capitalists.” -Jevon

By Alnoor Ladha @ Double Blind:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” –James Baldwin

Scientists call our current period of planetary history the Anthropocene, the geological epoch where humans have become the most powerful force affecting the global ecosystem. We are also, not coincidentally, entering the 6th great extinction in our planet’s 4.4 billion year history. The ancient texts of India called it the Kali Yuga, the dark age of unconsciousness, shadow, and despair. Buddhists call this time “the degenerate age” because of the preponderance of great suffering and the denigration of compassion within society. The Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (commonly known as North America) invoke wetiko, the spirit of cannibalism that impels some humans to consume the living world.

Within this context, there is a growing contingent of people, especially within psychedelic communities, who argue that what’s needed is a more “conscious capitalism.” From Whole Foods to Tom’s Shoes, there’s an expanding choir arguing that our current model of free-market capitalism has brought vast wealth and abundance for humanity, but needs to alter its focus from profit extraction to more “sustainable” and “humane” approaches to growing the global economy.

For those who have disproportionately benefited from the last 500 years of a globalizing capitalist force, animated by extrinsic values, it seems apparent that more of the same could only be better. After all, it was called the “Enlightenment.” How could more be worse?

Conscious capitalism is simultaneously more and better, like the economic equivalent of Diet Coke. Conscious capitalism’s role is to prop up the existing order by modifying its more minor attributes, while keeping its essential nature intact. It is the desperate strategy of a dying system trying to keep our thinking within the narrow band of logic that makes it appear inevitable and necessary. This entirely false belief is what gives us the license to act as if we can continue human activity as we have been. In fact, it tells us that the world will be better for it. It is a strategy of business as usual, with the addition of a moral incentive.

So if reformist approaches such as “conscious capitalism” are not going to help address our current crisis, what will? I do not claim to know the answer to this; however, I believe that our ability to identify, curate, co-create, and amplify antidotes and alternatives will be enhanced by adopting some shared guideposts. In that spirit, I offer three principles that may assist in our collective inquiry to midwife the better world we know is possible.

Disidentification from the Dominant System

Art by Hiller Goodspeed for DoubleBlind

What characterizes a counterculture is its explicit stance against a dominant culture. While the battle lines were clear in the Civil Rights movement or the anti-war movement protests of the 1960s, they have blurred in the era of capitalist modernity.

The psychedelic movement (or more accurately movements) have a broad range of motivations and impulses that are rarely linked to social justice. Outside a shared political project or understanding, there is very little critique of the dominant culture. Timothy Leary’s prophetic plea of “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” holds very little weight in today’s psychedelic communities partly because no one knows what they are tuning into or dropping out from.

Many people in the psychedelic realm are aspiring tech entrepreneurs or Silicon Valley mavens. They believe capitalism—rather than human ingenuity—creates innovation, jobs, and “progress.” As a result, the breadth of ideas within the psychedelic discourse is astonishingly narrow because they’ve already situated themselves within a false construct. It is of no surprise then that ideas such as conscious capitalism have become popular among psychedelic communities.

Conscious capitalism is often dressed up in appealing euphemisms like social innovation, cultural entrepreneurship, green growth, financial inclusion, and impact investing. Although some truly believe in the power of these approaches, I would argue their bias stems from their privilege—and privilege is a blinding constraint.

Timothy Leary’s prophetic plea of “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” holds very little weight in today’s psychedelic communities partly because no one knows what they are tuning into or dropping out from.

It is hard to hold a truly structural, constellational worldview that takes into account a vast multitude of factors and perspectives required for deep social change, while benefiting from the current system. Conscious capitalism is an alibi and an apology for the existing paradigm.

Imagine a world where no one would have to toil as a wage slave, but the basic needs to thrive (food, shelter, transportation, healthcare, etc.) were provided by society. Imagine a world where every human had access to the privileges of Western spiritual communities: yoga, ayahuasca, ayurvedic diets, juice cleanses, qi gong, etc. We would have a social, cultural, and spiritual renaissance on this planet.

By identifying with capitalism or as capitalists, or by making the false link between capitalism and innovation, we are actively disparaging the 90 percent of humanity who are being tortured by the existing system; we are dishonoring the 200 species a day that go extinct because of our carbon-based, growth-dependent economy. Counter to what the establishment propaganda preaches, human ingenuity would actually flourish under a system that distributed its wealth more fairly, rewarded generosity, and created conditions for collective and individual healing.

Our existing globalized culture of capitalist modernity is held in place through the complicity of us all. The South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko once said, “the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” In other words, the base station of capitalism is the human mind.

Deprogramming ourselves and decolonizing our minds is both a spiritual and political practice. 

Deprogramming ourselves and decolonizing our minds is both a spiritual and political practice. It requires us to be good students of our culture. It demands that we understand the consequences of having a global economy that is required to grow at three percent every year. The implications of this is that we have to double the global output of human activity every twenty years. Exponential growth on a planet with finite resources is leading us toward collapse, yet our daily lives are structured around “more.”

In order to stop the damage of the current system, we must examine our existing values and how we lead our day-to-day lives. What are we consuming? Where does it come from? How do we treat each other? What is our relationship to our food? How do we interact with the natural world and more-than-human-life?

This is a constant practice of vigilance and a realm where psychedelics can play a critical role. After all, few things stoke the imperative to act as if one is interdependent with all other beings like the realization of oneness that psychedelics can engender; an experience that can also help us decide what aspects of our lives and privileges no longer serve us. There will be sacrifices that need to be made and consequences that need to be heeded. This is part of our maturity process as a species. This is a much more profound and personal inquiry than what the current cultural discourse has created space for. It is also precisely the type of deep inner work and deprogramming that psychedelic practices facilitate by allowing us to temporarily step outside our cultural conditioning.

The truth of ultimate oneness, however, can also be a trap if it is understood in a reductive or unskilled way. It requires careful examination and a subtle, ongoing practice to discern its true meaning and value for issues of societal change.

Transcending the Fear of Dualism

Art by Hiller Goodspeed for DoubleBlind

There is an unstated understanding within psychedelic communities, and the New Age more broadly, that the root of societal problems is the idea of “us versus them.” So much of the violence on this planet stems from othering and creating separation. Yet, by accepting this belief the result is often an abdication of personal responsibility and a refusal to engage in political processes. Many refuse to take a political stance out of fear of judgement—they believe that judgement creates duality.

Let’s look at this another way. Could it be that the fear of duality creates duality itself? As we have established, there is an existing system of capitalist modernity that is destroying life at an unprecedented rate and scale. Issues such as inequality, poverty and climate breakdown are not externalities or aberrations of the system—they are the logical outcome of the system’s rules, a system that turns every living thing into a commodity and resource to fuel more growth. By ignoring this reality we actually strengthen it.

Perhaps, part of what is happening on a societal level is that we are being initiated into understanding non-dualistic thought. We are transcending the binary, oppositional logic that is inherent in many of our languages to see that there is no “us versus them” and simultaneously, there are those who are disproportionately responsible for what is happening on this planet.

Yes, the “psychopathic one percenter” is a shadow aspect of the collective unconscious and, simultaneously, there are individuals who have agency and power that are actively benefiting from the destruction of the planet. Yes, there may be a Donald Trump archetype within all of us—the bully, the patriarch, the misogynist—and yet, he is responsible for the morality of his actions as an elected leader. This is not creating separation. The separation already exists. We are simply acknowledging multiple layers of a non-dualistic reality.

By exclusively focusing on one layer of reality or the meta-layer of unity consciousness—the New Age equivalent of monotheism—we are engaging in a form of spiritual bypassing. A common variant of this is the argument that all reality is an illusion or maya. In studying the Vedic texts that originally discuss the concept of maya, what I’ve come to understand is that maya does not simply mean “the world as illusion,” but rather, illusion is what you as an aspect of God, as Atman, decide is illusion.

There is a responsibility that comes with being a co-creator of reality. As Ram Dass once said, “the universe is perfect, including my desire to change it.”

There is a responsibility that comes with being a co-creator of reality. As Ram Dass once said, “the universe is perfect, including my desire to change it.” Creation or maya or evolution are not static processes that are happening outside us; we are active participants in co-creating reality, or more accurately, relationality. We, ourselves, evolve by actively engaging in creating a better world. The struggle for justice, empathy and solidarity with all Life creates grace within us and deepens our spiritual practice.

Non-dualistic thought is a critical ally when trying to understand the complexity of modernity, and, fortunately, is greatly aided by psychedelic medicines where we achieve states of consciousness where we can actively hold multiple realities without conflict. We can simultaneously critique the system, live within the contradiction of being complicit in that system, while working towards changing the system itself. We don’t have to define ourselves by what we stand against, although we do have to know what we stand against and why. That’s how all the progressive shifts in culture have happened—from the abolition of slavery to women getting the right to vote—that the majority of us benefit from every day. How can we reap the fruits of labor for those who risked their lives to enter the messiness of duality, while claiming that the sanctity of singularity or oneness is all that matters?

Fortunately, there is a growing movement of people applying their spiritual and psychedelic practices to engage in non-dualistic thought and action, giving birth to a multiplicity of possibilities. Many of these emergent possibilities are a part of the umbrella concept of post-capitalism—ideas that transcend the traditional structures of ownership, growth and accumulation. Post-capitalism is not simply another ‘ism’ to replace previous ideologies. Rather, it is a conceptual container of pluralities based on shared values that stem from the critique of the existing system.

Although there is no blueprint for what post- capitalist systems could look like, what unites the various expressions are shared values such as love, generosity, altruism, interdependence, empathy, non-violence, compassion, and solidarity with all life. These values inform ideas such as zero-waste, circular production methods that mimic nature’s own genius in turning all waste back into productive use; co-operative ownership models and commons-based governance structures that privilege a more democratic distribution of economic power; universal basic income, a global wealth tax, and shorter working weeks that restructure the logic of work in the age of automation and AI; regenerative agriculture that rebuilds depleted soils, sequesters carbon, and returns our food production to long-term sustainability; localization to bring economies back to human-scale; and many other growing alternatives.

For those who aspire to truly create systemic change, post-capitalism is a powerful unifying frame. As an idea it is testament to what is possible when we transcend the fear of dualism and actively engage in critiquing and remaking the world around us.

Being in Dialogue with an Animate Planet

Art by Hiller Goodspeed for DoubleBlind

It goes without saying that human beings have approached most of the problems of human history with a particular, anthropocentric lens. We have also created and exacerbated most of the issues and risks we face as a civilization with the same problem-solution mindset. The Cartesian, mechanical, binary, linear model of causality has been the core engine of Western thought and the lens by which we see the world.

If we are producing too much carbon as a civilization, how do we capture and store this carbon? If the climate is changing, how do we geo-engineer it? If capitalism is creating inequality, how do we redistribute wealth? This is how basic human problem-solving tends to work—but it is also an indicator of how dangerous anthropocentric thinking can be.

What if the current polycrisis, this civilizational crossroads we face, is demanding from us something else, something more?

Rather than approaching social issues from a problem-solution lens of linearity and causality, what if we started being in dialogue with our living planet, and indeed, the living universe?

The last thirty years of science has helped the Western world catch up to many Indigenous worldviews. For example, the Gaia Theory posited by chemist James Lovelock, microbiologist Lynn Margulis, and others helped to popularize the idea that the planet is a living being: a self-regulating, complex system that actively creates the conditions for life on Earth. Evolutionary biology is revealing the complexity and interconnected nature of living ecosystems, from mycelial networks to the bacteria that make up the human body. Chaos theory is revealing the fractal patterns and non-linearity that make up reality. Developments in quantum mechanics have helped us see the universe as animate, responsive, and queerer than we can imagine. The very act of observing atoms shifts the behavior and position of those atoms. As the quantum physicist and philosopher Karen Barad reminds us, there is no objective reality; we meet the universe halfway.

Rather than approaching social issues from a problem-solution lens of linearity and causality, what if we started being in dialogue with our living planet, and indeed, the living universe? If it’s our best thinking that got us here, perhaps it is time for us to embrace a trans-rational approach, to start asking our elders—including the living landscapes and more-than-human-life that surrounds us—for perspectives on what we should do.

I don’t mean this in a sentimental way or in addition to thinking through the best strategy for what to do as a civilization. I mean this seriously, as an activist and political strategist. I would like you to imagine what the world would look like if our primary activity was to humble ourselves to Nature and ask what the living world needs from us as a companion species.

What would it mean to engage in life-projects or social change projects based on seeking request, permission, and consent from the natural world? What if we stopped thinking of our purpose as an individual endeavor of choice, but rather a prayer to be heeded in guidance with broader planetary needs? What if our starting place for our social, political, and economic work was asking the most marginalized beings, human and otherwise, how we could be of deepest service to their needs?

No tree would consent to conscious capitalism. No eco-system would.

Perhaps this type of dialogue and permission-based action will be a part of the evolving role of psychedelics and psychedelic communities—to serve as a bridge between our maturing species and the entelechy of a living planet; in turn, to help re-sacralize Nature with and through the sacraments generously offered to us.

I’m not sure the rational mind can fathom such a reality, but I assure you, whatever the outcome, it would not look like the linear, reformist approaches that are masquerading as social change today. No tree would consent to conscious capitalism. No eco-system would.

Like trees, we are also ecosystems—literally, on a cellular level, we are made up of communities of bacteria and microorganisms. On a temporal level, our ancestors are living through us, as are our future selves and future generations of our lineage, if they have the same chance at life as we did. On a spatial level, we are an ecology of selves, of all the beings, seen and unseen, that we are in perpetual entanglement with—those that define us through our relationality.

The false choice of growth or more growth must give way to new and ancient ways of being. Animism may be our most potent antidote to rationalism, as humility is to hubris, dialogue to domination, and wonder to knowing.

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Toward A Revolution Of Love

From Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism, the ground-breaking book she started writing at age 19, through works such as All About Love, Bone Black, and Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks was one of the most influential progressive thinkers of our time. A practicing Buddhist, she was a frequent contributor to Lion’s Roar. Photo by Karjean Levine / Getty Images

“Right now there is such a profound collective cultural awareness that we need to practice love if we are to heal ourselves and the planet. The task awaiting us is to move from awareness to action. The practice of love requires that we make time, that we embrace change… Fundamentally, to begin the practice of love we must slow down and be still enough to bear witness in the present moment. If we accept that love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we can then be guided by this understanding. We can use these skillful means as a map in our daily life to determine right action….When we commit to love in our daily life, habits are shattered. We are necessarily working to end domination. Because we no longer are playing by the safe rules of the status quo, rules that if we obey guarantee us a specific outcome, love moves us to a new ground of being… This movement is what most people fear. If we are to galvanize the collective longing for spiritual well-being that is found in the practice of love, we must be more willing to identify the forms that longing will take in daily life…. Lots of people listen to and affirm the words of visionary teachers who speak on the necessity of love. Yet they feel in their everyday lives that they simply do not know how to link theory and practice… Whenever anyone asks me how they can begin the practice of love, I tell them giving is the place to start… Through giving we develop the mind of gratitude. Giving enables us to experience the fullness of abundance—not only the abundance we have, but the abundance in sharing. In sharing all that we have we become more. We awaken the heart of love… Dominator thinking and practice relies for its maintenance on the constant production of a feeling of lack, of the need to grasp. Giving love offers us a way to end this suffering—loving ourselves, extending that love to everything beyond the self, we experience wholeness. We are healed.” -bell hooks

“Oldie but goodie from Sister/Teacher bell hooks here. In this time of the Great Turning, we are bearing witness to the end of a doomed and diseased way of being, grounded in domination, destruction, exploitation, extraction, and infinite industrial growth on the earth we inhabit. A revolution of love is key to facilitating the transition to a life-affirming and supporting way of being that is grounded in care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust. Giving, without expectations, without conditions, without fear, is a powerful antidote to the culture of scarcity and lack that is currently dominant and causing widespread suffering for all life. Find time to slow down, be still and cultivate your practice of love. Practice moving through life with a commitment to mindfully loving everything beyond self… Be love, give love, behold with awe the beneficent dance that is inter-being in this thing called “life” all around you and be grateful for the experience. Give love and be healed!” -jevon

By bell hooks @ Lions Roar:

Fundamentally, the practice of love begins with acceptance—the recognition that wherever we are is the appropriate place to practice, that the present moment is the appropriate time. But for so many of us, our longing to love and be loved has always been about a time to come, a space in the future when it will just happen, when our hungry hearts will finally be fed, when we will find love.

More than thirty years ago, when I first began to think about Buddhism, there was little or no talk about Buddhism and love. Being a Buddhist was akin to being a leftist: it was all about the intellect, the philosophical mind. It was a faith for the thinking “man,” and love was nowhere to be found in the popular Buddhist literature at that time. In circles where an individual would dare to speak of love, they would be told that Buddhists were more concerned with the issue of compassion. It was as though love was just not a relevant, serious subject for Buddhists.

During the turbulent sixties and seventies the topic of love had made its way to the political forefront. Peace activists were telling us to “make love not war.” And the great preacher Martin Luther King, Jr., elevated the call to love from the hidden longing of the solitary heart to a public cry. He proclaimed love to be the only effective way to end injustice and bring peace, declaring that “Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace.… If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

There could not have been a more perfect historical dharma moment for spiritual leaders to speak out on the issue of love. No doubt divine providence was at work in the universe when Martin Luther King, Jr., and a little-known Vietnamese Buddhist monk named Thich Nhat Hanh, found themselves walking the same path—walking toward one another—engaged in a practice of love. Young men whose hearts were awakening, they created in mystical moments of sacred encounter a symbolic sangha.

They affirmed one another’s work. In the loneliness of the midnight hour, King would fall on his knees and ask himself the question, “How can I say I worship a God of love and support war?” Thich Nhat Hanh, knowing by heart all the bonds of human connection that war severs, challenged the world to think peace, declaring in the wake of the Vietnam War that he “thought it was quite plain that if you have to choose between Buddhism and peace, then you must choose peace.” Linking Buddhism with social engagement, Thich Nhat Hanh’s work attracted Westerners (myself included) precisely because he offered a spiritual vision of the universe that promoted working for peace and justice.

hooks in her apartment in New York’s West Village, where she lived for many years before returning to her native Kentucky to teach at Berea College, now home of the bell hooks Institute. Photo by Joyce Dopkeen / The New York Times

Significantly, Buddhism began to attract many more Western followers because it linked the struggle for world peace with the desire of each individual to be engaged in meaningful spiritual practice. Coming out of a time when it had been cool for smart people to be agnostic or atheist, people wanted permission to seek spiritual connection.

For many Western seekers, the feeling that we had failed to create a culture of peace and justice led us back to an introspective search of our intimate relations, which more often than not were messy and full of strife, suffering, and pain. How could any of us truly believe that we could create world peace when we could not make peace in our intimate relationships with family, partners, friends, and neighbors?

Responding to this collective anguish of spirit, visionary teachers (like King, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Sharon Salzberg) were moved by spiritual necessity to speak more directly about the practice of love. Proclaiming transformation in his consciousness engendered by a focus on love, Thich Nhat Hanh declared in the poem “The Fruit of Awareness Is Ripe”: when I knew how to love the doors of my heart opened wide before the wind. / Reality was calling out for revolution. That spirit of revolution, that call to practice transformative love, captured my critical imagination and merged with my longing to find a loving partner.

When lecturing on ending domination around the world, listening to the despair and hopelessness, I asked individuals who were hopeful to talk about what force in their life pushed them to make a profound transformation, moving them from a will to dominate toward a will to be compassionate. The stories I heard were all about love.

That sense of love as a transformative power was also present in the narratives of individuals working to create loving personal relationships. Writing about metta, “love” or “loving-kindness,” as the first of the brahmaviharas, the heavenly abodes, Sharon Salzberg reminds us in her insightful book Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness that “In cultivating love, we remember one of the most powerful truths the Buddha taught…that the forces in the mind that bring suffering are able to temporarily hold down the positive forces such as love or wisdom, but they can never destroy them.… Love can uproot fear or anger or guilt, because it is a greater power. Love can go anywhere. Nothing can obstruct it.”

Because of the awareness that love and domination cannot coexist, there is a collective call for everyone to place learning how to love on their emotional and/or spiritual agenda. We have witnessed the way in which movements for justice that denounce dominator culture, yet have an underlying commitment to corrupt uses of power, do not really create fundamental changes in our societal structure. When radical activists have not made a core break with dominator thinking (imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy), there is no union of theory and practice, and real change is not sustained. That’s why cultivating the mind of love is so crucial. When love is the ground of our being, a love ethic shapes our participation in politics.

To work for peace and justice we begin with the individual practice of love, because it is there that we can experience firsthand love’s transformative power. Attending to the damaging impact of abuse in many of our childhoods helps us cultivate the mind of love. Abuse is always about lovelessness, and if we grow into our adult years without knowing how to love, how then can we create social movements that will end domination, exploitation, and oppression? John Welwood shares the insight in Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships that many of us carry a “wound of the heart” that emerged in childhood conditioning, creating “a disconnection from the loving openness that is our nature.” Welwood links individual failure to learn how to love in childhood with larger social ills; however, even those who are fortunate to love and be loved in childhood grow to maturity in a culture of domination that devalues love.

“I see love as a combination of six ingredients: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust,” said hooks in this conversation about The Power of Real Love with Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg, moderated by Lion’s Roar editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod. Photo by Christine Alicino

Being loving can actually lead one to be more at odds with mainstream culture. Even though, as Riane Eisler explains in The Power of Partnership, our “first lessons about human relations are not learned in workplaces, businesses, or even schools, but in parent–child and other relations,” those habits of being are not formed in isolation. The larger culture in our nation shapes how we relate. Any child born in a hospital first experiences life in a place where private and public merge. The interplay of these two realities will be constant in our lives. It is precisely because the dictates of dominator culture structure our lives that it is so difficult for love to prevail.

When I began, years ago now, to focus on the power of love as a healing force, no one really disagreed with me. Yet what they continue to accept in their daily life is lovelessness, because doing the work of love requires resisting the status quo. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s treatise on the subject, True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, he reminds us that “to love, in the context of Buddhism, is above all to be there.” He then raises the question of whether or not we have time for love. Right now there is such a profound collective cultural awareness that we need to practice love if we are to heal ourselves and the planet. The task awaiting us is to move from awareness to action. The practice of love requires that we make time, that we embrace change.

Fundamentally, to begin the practice of love we must slow down and be still enough to bear witness in the present moment. If we accept that love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we can then be guided by this understanding. We can use these skillful means as a map in our daily life to determine right action. When we cultivate the mind of love, we are, as Sharon Salzberg says, “cultivating the good,” and that means “recovering the incandescent power of love that is present as a potential in all of us” and using “the tools of spiritual practice to sustain our real, moment-to-moment experience of that vision.” To be transformed by the practice of love is to be born again, to experience spiritual renewal. What I witness daily is the longing for that renewal and the fear that our lives will be changed utterly if we choose love. That fear paralyzes. It leaves us stuck in the place of suffering.

When we commit to love in our daily life, habits are shattered. We are necessarily working to end domination. Because we no longer are playing by the safe rules of the status quo, rules that if we obey guarantee us a specific outcome, love moves us to a new ground of being. This movement is what most people fear. If we are to galvanize the collective longing for spiritual well-being that is found in the practice of love, we must be more willing to identify the forms that longing will take in daily life. Folks need to know the ways we change and are changed when we love. It is only by bearing concrete witness to love’s transformative power in our daily lives that we can assure those who are fearful that commitment to love will be redemptive, a way to experience salvation.

Lots of people listen to and affirm the words of visionary teachers who speak on the necessity of love. Yet they feel in their everyday lives that they simply do not know how to link theory and practice. When Thich Nhat Hanh tells us in Transformation and Healing that “understanding is the very foundation of love and compassion,” that “if love and compassion are in our hearts, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle,” we are moved. We may even feel a powerful surge of awareness and possibility.

Then we go home and find ourselves uncertain about how to realize true love. Finding ways to express true love requires vigilance, patience, a will to let go, and the creative use of the imagination to invent new ways of relating. Thich Nhat Hanh told me to see the practice of love in a tumultuous relationship as spiritual practice, to find in the mind of love a way to understanding, forgiveness, and peace. Of course this was all work. Just as cultivating a garden requires turning over the ground, pulling weeds, planting, and watering, doing the work of love is all about taking action.

Whenever anyone asks me how they can begin the practice of love, I tell them giving is the place to start. In The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen offers this testimony: “Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity I know that I am moving from fear to love.” Salzberg sees giving as a way to purify the mind: “Giving is an inward state, a generosity of the spirit that extends to ourselves as well as to others.” Through giving we develop the mind of gratitude. Giving enables us to experience the fullness of abundance—not only the abundance we have, but the abundance in sharing. In sharing all that we have we become more. We awaken the heart of love.

Dominator thinking and practice relies for its maintenance on the constant production of a feeling of lack, of the need to grasp. Giving love offers us a way to end this suffering—loving ourselves, extending that love to everything beyond the self, we experience wholeness. We are healed. The Buddha taught that we can create a love so strong that, as Salzberg states, our “minds become like a pure, flowing river that cannot be burned.” Such love is the foundation of spiritual awakening.

If we are to create a worldwide culture of love then we need enlightened teachers to guide us. We need concrete strategies for practicing love in the midst of domination. Imagine all that would change for the better if every community in our nation had a center (a sangha) that would focus on the practice of love, of loving-kindness.

All the great religious traditions share the belief that love is our reason for being. All of us who work toward creating a culture of love seek to share a real body of teaching that can reach everyone where we are, extending the circle of love beyond boundaries, bringing together people from different backgrounds and traditions, and feeling together the way love connects us.