Apocalypse or Apokalypsis? Destruction or Awakening? (Chris Searles, editor)
Is there an apocalypse happening today to Life on Earth?
This keynote will be relatively short. It’s difficult, i think, for people to find positivity when faced with conflict, tough times, hard truths. Last night i sat with Rev.’s Louis Tillman and Billy Tweedie over dinner and the conversation at one point turned to cicadas in Baltimore. “Every 17 years,” Louis said, “they take over Maryland. They cover your windshield, they’re covering my porch, they’re as loud as a subway train…”
I thought, “17 years, Wow—Such a short amount of time, the life cycle of a cicada…17 years ago i was one of the few people warning folks about climate change’s predicted impacts to life on Earth.” 17 years ago it was 2004. Louis was 13, i was 32. The climate science was already clear but it would be 7 more years before the devastating drought fires that took over 5,000 acres of forest and +1,600 homes in Bastrop, TX, 30 miles from where i live. This was Texas’ first, real wake up call to climate change. Hurricanes were becoming a major problem, but Katrina wasn’t until 2005. The warnings kept coming, the world kept choosing growth of business as usual, and a few of us tried to rally around green solutions.
Since Katrina, since Bastrop, there’s been a rapid uptick in annual devastation. By 2014 (seven years ago) the UN was clear, "Global Warming is to blame" for the string of unprecedented extreme weather events worldwide since 2010.
By about 2014 i caught on to the fact that climate change was not Life’s first concern, or even humanity’s. Somehow the me-centric nature of even the best-intentioned environmentalists (of which i am one) had focused only what it saw on our televisions and from inside our cars to define environmental priorities, not on an analysis of what was happening across the Earth. The narrative i gathered from the Sierra Club, 350.org, and still today, the environmental movement in the English-speaking world, was “Climate Change will cause an extinction crisis and that crisis will cause the end of life as we know it.”
Unfortunately, most of the damage the environmental movement was afraid would be caused by climate change — the devastation to other life forms on Earth, was already nearly complete by 2014. Humans, our growth, our way of living “out of balance” with the life-support system, which is the other life forms of our planet, this was already driving the extinction crisis. Climate change, yes, is catching up quickly now, but to make it public enemy #1 for the future of humanity is unfortunately totally innacurate.
Our way of life and the growth of our way of life reduced mammal, bird, fish, amphibian and reptile populations by an average of 68% between 1970 and 2018.
Why does this matter to you? Because we depend on a complex life, life-support system to live. This most recent radical change in “the balance” of life forms on Earth, from 1970 when there were fewer than 4 billion people to today where we are set to reach 8 billion unsustainable humans by about 2023, IS the apocalypse for other life. We have grown without regard for other creatures or our planetary life-support system. We have destroyed or fragmented virtually all large-scale habitats on land and in the oceans in less than 50 years.
These radical losses are not “indicators” they are realities; realities that we are destroying the habitats of (probably) all other species, and those habitats are the physical infrastructure which made and makes human life possible. Somehow religion, philosophy, science, and even the best-intentioned environmentalists, have missed that point.
So, yes — climate change is devastating but no, it’s not the leading cause of death to our planetary life-support system, which as far as we humans are concerned is primarily comprised of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and vegetation. (We depend on complex life to live.) Climate change will be the nails in the coffin we’ve been building as fast as we can over the last few decades or, you could also say, since the advent of White-male superiority began to colonize the Earth, starting with European environmental devastation in the Middle Ages.
So, apocalypse? Yes. There’s no question. You can see it from NASA and other scientific authorities’ mappings of what wildernesses (our life-support system) remain intact today. But, let’s get this straight: Life wants to live. Whether you’re religious or not: Life always comes back. This is a fundamental that’s been proven over the last 4+ Billion years on this planet. People want to know where the answers are to climate change and species loss? They’re right outside your door. They’re in you, too.
Apokalypsis—a society-wide uncovering, awakening, revelation
What i think this issue of AllCreation quickly establishes is there is an awakening taking place on the urgency of changing our way being, our way of life, on Earth today. And here’s what i think is most real and most exciting.
#1. Life
#2. Our Wilderness “Apokalypsis”
#3. Our Social “Apokalypsis”
This issue of AllCreation shares insights on all three.
Life
We can’t live without a planetary biosphere and Earth is the only planetary biosphere in the known universe. I discuss this in my other piece, Biospheric Philosophy. Furthermore, Life is spirit embodied. This seems simple enough, yet our current way of life lives in denial of this MOST basic truth: that the difference between life and death is literally animation; that whether you’re talking about a person, a mosquito, or a blade of grass, the difference between life and death is simple. When something dies all that changes is the animation goes away. The body remains. And that, i think, can lead us to a more enlightened human identity. Add to that miraculous truth what was stated above, that so far, no matter what: Life always comes back.
Wilderness
Wilderness, the composition created by Life’s continuous diversification and development, is at planetary scale the life support system of our planet. It’s also becoming the source of a more deeply resourced Christianity. We feature several leading thinkers in that space in this issue. Theologians Rev. Matt Syrdal, Mary DeJong, and Carol Kilby have found a path that connects the “four walls of the Church” to the ecology and spirituality that powers it; connecting us to each other in deeply respectful, compassionate, healing, and more balanced ways.
Human Beings
Meanwhile, we have “real world problems.” Racism. Mysogyny. Wealth injustice. Systemic injustice. A history of annihilation of people of color. Refugeeism. Poverty. Political divisionism. Denialism. Toxic media that feeds on our greatest fears and insecurities. Sure, yes, it can be overwhelming. How do we evolve out of these messes? I think the next step is clear: Advancement. As Vance Blackfox says we have to find a new way of living, which is actually based on an older way of living, “living in the balance.” This is not an abstract concept. This means observing and choosing to live within the laws of reality, the laws of our only life-support system. And to get there, as Rev. Louis Tillman says, we have to dismantle white dominance.
How do we “change everything?” We change ourselves. We heal ourselves as an out-of-touch peoples. We strengthen ourselves as members of an infinitely connected life-force reality. We advance ourselves as powerful change-makers in every action we take. We think. We learn. We love. We struggle. We grow. We help. We evolve. We dance .
Religions essentially get as these values: the golden rule. Jesus said, love neighbor as self, which i think means, first of all: love self. That seems to be our primary challenge, most of the time. But what religion, science, philosophy, environmentalists, and our economy need is to understand: Regeneration is continuation. We must love our life-support system, which is to say the other living members of creation, if we are to reverse today’s life-on-earth apocalypse.
“Continuation” of the only human life-support system was never a concern, really, until our industrial machines and the sheer number of people using them to fragment Earth’s ecology with non-living technologies overwhelmed the literal amount of Life on Earth, as has happened since 1970, and is continuing today.
The Great News here — the Gospel as it were, is that “becoming indigenous” to the Earth, getting real, getting out of life’s way, enriching and choosing to regrow the wilderness continuum that made humans and modern life and its many religions possible, IS ENOUGH to address, stop, and reverse today’s global environmental apocalypse. And, this kind of endeavor is a spiritually-enriching, abundantly reliable, reality-based response to our accidental destruction of our only planetary life-support system.
Connectedness + Spirit = Biophysical Reality
I hope you’ll engage in the awakenings, the Apokalypses, put forth in this collection, find your deeper, Earth-bound identity, and get started on becoming the next generation — the people who stopped and reversed the global environmental collapse of our times.
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Chris Searles is co-founder and executive editor of AllCreation.org. Check out more of his writings and contributions to AllCreation here. Cover image from the US Drought Monitor, retrieved 6/18/21.
