I have not walked the Himalayas but when the glacier collapsed, I had friends, students and pilgrims I feared were among the thousands dead. I have walked the canyons called Grand and slept with the phantoms of Bright Angels Creek. I can remember the morning light on the ragged cliffs even as I type. I have rested in prayer on Point Sublime high above the river.
And I have voted in every election since turning 18, proud to be among the citizens of an admired people, now as collapsed as any glacier, running as ugly as any flash flooded creek.
Ecologists speak of “compounding extremes” that acerbate and accelerate where unstable phenomenon collide. Warming oceans destabilize rain patterns, which compound the instability of what seems eternal, the roof of the world. It turns out those structures are fragile, not stable at all. They rose up quickly by geological time, but can begin to collapse in the breath like speed of a single human life.
Perhaps you are like me and wonder what to do in this wild unstable now.
The Fellows of the Leading Causes of Life Initiative have been thinking about this for quite some time captured in a small book a year ago, tuned to resilience and rebound beyond the collapse.
“Our friend Daniel Taylor is at home in the highest reaches of the tallest mountains in Nepal, pillars that reach into the jet stream as it whips past the peaks. After reaching a high glacier, he found it covered several feet deep in a crazy quilt of new boulders, released by the permafrost melting at elevations never anticipated before. Indeed, he had to shelter in caves during the day as the mountain fell around him. This land has always been dynamic but at tectonic pace; a slow catastrophe as the Indian tectonic plate continues to move north, diving below the Himalayan plateau, raising it even higher into the sky, the friction building over decades until it predictably releases some of the most severe earthquakes on the planet.
“What Dan’l saw was not caused by the rising of the tectonic plates but something more like a planetary death rattle, the climate melting snow and ice quicker than even the highest mountains could withstand.
“Who could imagine the Himalayas falling apart? But then who could imagine 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the northern Arctic coast of Alaska? Or ice shelves the size of nations breaking off in Antarctica at the other end of the planet? Boreal forests turning into fire-storms? Hurricanes so regularly severe we need new measures? Extinctions accelerating at a rate unknown since the dinosaurs left town?
“Equally, who could imagine battle tanks, cluster bombs, and missiles raining down on European land in Ukraine only a generation removed from the ‘never again’ wars, or violence erupting like a spewing volcano in Palestine/Israel, in Myanmar, in Tigray, in Sudan, in far too many places, with threats of more to come? The United States Capitol under violent siege, an impossible act defended by people sworn to protect dialogue and deliberation – and then the next election voting in the instigator in chief? Nearly the entire miraculous South African miracle of a peaceful end of Apartheid desecrated by the most venal and brazen kind of state capture?[1] The impossible concentration of wealth in a handful of impossibly rich human lives and a new Feudalism delighting a few while hundreds of millions have no clean water to drink or a place to defecate (‘Let them eat tweets’)?
“We may be in the last tragic era of our young species. We are only a few generations into the period marked by what we may now call the Anthropocene.[2] We broke the world, it’s ours now, and as we see the collapse underway, we realize our fundamental human impact on the complex human ecosystems. Maybe the humbling gives us hope that we might yet act responsibly. We will need more than humility, though; we need to be deeply accountable for our presence in the world. That is what this compact book is about.
“How are we to grasp the totality so that we act in ways that lead to life? This is why this book, and the Fellows who helped shape it, ask how we can be deeply accountable in investing our relative handful of years, our small weight of influence, our inherent capacities to choose, to act and to move against the abyss. What could be more important?
“It’s not illusionary to believe that, together, we can achieve more than we might imagine. Paul Hawken, writing in Blessed Unrest in 2008,[3] estimated that by then two million non-governmental organizations had emerged over a few decades, each finding its way to lay hands, on and lend energy to, some hopeful possibility. The pace and urgency of that creative activity has only swelled since he wrote. Today almost every significant issue has attracted hundreds, if not thousands of life-seeking organizational energies. In the most preposterous and unlikely places, hopeful energy is finding voice and creating traction. We are not asked to be deeply accountable for something that isn’t possible. Everything we hope for is already happening.”
Do not try to outrun the boulders or cool the arctic. Look directly at the profound challenges, but with eyes wide open to be part of a Great Turning – a turning toward life. Things are not just breaking down; they are also breaking open. Sense that the quickening forces that threaten collapse may be matched, maybe more so, by an accelerating mesh of generative movements. We not only must, but we can use our most powerful human capacities to make the choices that lead to life, not just away from death.
How to signal to each other that we are not giving up on life?
- If you are an American, make sure you have a plan to cast your vote. Our government carries outsized impact on global phenomenon with many things simply impossible without a functional government in the United States. Voting may not be as easy as in the recent past. Make sure you do.
- Be generous with the many organizations and efforts throwing themselves into the torrents of pain and suffering, and into the rising tides of grace and hope. A vast portion of wealth is currently in the hard fists of mean-spirited people thinking of private islands and Mars. As the multi-billionaires act disgracefully, it is up to those of us thousand-aires and hundred-aires to pick up the slack. You and I have pockets that need to be emptied. Don’t think too hard; if someone is doing good and asks for help, give it. Now.
- Move together and into the streets. Be joyous, not angry; but be together. If you haven’’t been to church in a while, this is a good time to show up and breath in some hope. I’ll be moving in silence in the first ever Quaker Silent Walk for Peace in London September 19th. Worship in the Quaker manner but moving our feet (slowly) for peace. If you’re in a more chatty mood, find out where Dr. Barber is walking or Invisible or Interfaith Alliance. Don’t be alone.
- Go someplace green, put your hands in the soil—I mean into the soil where you can feel the life in the roots. Then find some moving water; look closely and really feel it. You will notice life hasn’t given up. You shouldn’t either.
//////
You’ll like the whole book: Taking Responsibility for the Life of Complex Human Ecosystems. Anthem, 2025. Please avoid Amazon for all the reasons you know: try here:
And subscribe for free. It helps me know what works.
Oh, and the footnotes:
[1] Ivor Chipkin, Mark Swilling, Haroon Bhorat, Mzukisi Qobo, Sikhulekile Duma, Lumkile Mondi, Camaren Peter, et al., Shadow State: The Politics of State Capture (Wits University Press, 2018).
[2] The International Union of Geological Sciences has decided not to apply the term Anthropocene to a new geological age, but it notes that the term will nonetheless ‘remain an invaluable descriptor of human impact on the earth system’; see Raymond Zhong, ‘Geologists Make It Official: We’re Not in an ‘Anthropocene’ Epoch,’ New York Times, March 20, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/anthropocene-vote-upheld.html.
[3] Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming (Viking Press, 2007).
