 I've been chatting back and forth with Kenny Ausubel, founder of Bioneers, whose amazing essay The Empire Strikes Out I posted last year. The important messages of this essay are:
- Historically, the disintegration of cultures occurs quickly, just after they peak
- The places in the world with the worst environmental crises
are, not coincidentally, also the places with the most poverty,
illness, and violence ("terrorism")
- We know the solution: We need an immediate global plan of
clean, renewable energy, and the re-design and rebuilding of our
decaying infrastructures and transportation systems; transition
to an ecological agriculture that produces healthy, nutritious food in
regionalized foodsheds -- restores the land, air and water -- and
revives rural economies thriving with small and medium-sized farms; and
a just legal system that puts human and environmental rights above
corporate rights. All of these are attainable if we have the political
will.
Kenny wanted to bring to environmental readers' attention two other essays he's written:
- The 21st Century Blues
-- about the enormous body of scientific evidence of the damage we have
done to our ecosystems and the historical consequences of such damage,
and the unwillingness of politicians to face the facts or even exercise
precaution.
- The Long Way Home
-- on the suppression of science in the US for political and
ideological ends, and the near-theological acceptance of "a dog-eat-dog
world of extreme inequality" and corporate economic globalization as
the solution to all the world's problems.
Our discussion has been about Kenny's optimism. Although my instincts
tell me his optimism is unwarranted, I respect enormously that he's on
the front lines of the battle to save us all from civilization, and I'm
just reporting from a distance. I mentioned in an earlier post
on the Green Manifesto that historically the most knowledgeable people
in society are also its most pessimistic, so I wanted to know how he
has remained at once relentlessly informed and relentlessly upbeat. His
answer was to refer me to an article from last September's Harper's, In Defiance of Gravity, by fiction author Tom Robbins, the guy I keep quoting for his eternal quest for the answer to how to make love last.
In that article, Robbins describes his personal experiences with
near-suicidal depression, and how he was able to pull himself back from
the brink of what he calls Weltschmerz (What a wonderful word! -- per
dictionary.com it means "Sadness over the evils of the world,
especially as an expression of romantic pessimism.") The trick was to
rediscover playfulness, or what the Tibetan Buddhists call Crazy
Wisdom. Robbins says it is "the
wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one's gaze from
the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of
everything". That's a very generous reading of the Tibetan
Buddhists' approach, which, from my research, seems to be more about
teaching by entertaining and distracting the students from linear
thought through crazy behaviour. I like Robbins' literary license of
the term better, because to me it makes better intuitive sense. Our
Western approach to struggle and adversity is to bear down and 'work
through it', and that is what we do, all of us who have not stopped
paying attention to the mountains of evidence that this culture is
truly terrible and the damage it is doing is catastrophic and
unnecessary. It is not surprising that Weltschmerz is a German word.
Our symbol is the Hanged Man in the Tarot deck, who symbolizes
self-sacrifice, and perhaps the seeing of the world as totally turned
upside down. I had adopted him as my own, since he showed up in all
three Tarot readings I have had in my life.
 But the Tarot deck has another interesting character in it, the Fool or Jester. Here's what an Australian writer says about him (or her?):
The archetype of the wise Fool is
one that is found in many cultures in all parts of the world. His lack
of experience in the ways of society is seen on the surface to be a
disadvantage, but in reality it ensures that his mind is not closed to
unusual experiences that are denied to ordinary men.
He is the vagabond who exists on the fringe or organized life, going
his own way, ignoring the rules and taboos with which men seek to
contain him. He is the madman who carries within him the seeds of
genius, the one who is despised by society yet who is the catalyst
which will transform that society.
The Fool is the Green Man, the harbinger of a new cycle of existence,
the herald of new life and fresh beginnings. He can be seen as the
innocent spirit about to embark on physical incarnation; the young
child who has yet to learn of the perils of the world; or as the seeker
after enlightenment chasing the elusive butterfly of intuition in the
hope that it will lead to the mysteries.
Like the Court Jester, and Shakespeare's Hamlet, the madness of the
Fool is part deceit, part misinterpretation. As in Tibet, the craziness
is a mechanism to reframe and make her underlying knowledge more
palatable. But perhaps, too, it is a defence mechanism, a way of coping
with too much terrible knowledge.
Robbins says the epitome of Crazy Wisdom is the cat. I have seen cats
of all ages, cats of amazing wisdom and style who otherwise show
themselves to be cunning and astonishingly self-sufficient, chase a
piece of string dragged by a child around the house for an hour or
more, indefatigably and with enormous concentration, creativity and
energy. What is the purpose of this unexpected playfulness? Is this the
cat's way of discharging the tension and anxiety that preoccupies her
more sombre and sober moments? Is it her way of teaching the child (or
the adult, since I get great pleasure from such games, until usually
some intrigued child coaxes the string away from me to learn more about
this magic trick) important lessons about instinct, about reflexes,
about strategy, about the need for play, and a hundred other lessons we
are too besotted with WeltSchmertz to appreciate?
Kenny and Tom are on to something here. If we really want to capture the
attention of the world and teach them what needs to be done, and soon,
to save us from catastrophe, might we be better to act The Fool than
The Hanged Man? No, not just act the fool, but be
the fool. We might in fact find the costume fits us better anyway. And
not only will this amuse our comrades and possibly beguile those that
don't yet understand, it might also make our own lives much less
painful, less sorrowful.
Is it insane to resolve to behave in a playful and joyful way even when
you know, deep inside, the world is horrendously misdirected and filled
with unnecessary hardship and anguish? Well, maybe. But they don't call
her The Fool for nothing.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
