YES EVERY NEW MOMENT MAY BE UNIQUE. BUT THE LEVELS OF RISK, THE SCALE AND MOMENTUM OF THE CRISIS WE FACE: ALL ARE COMPLETELY UNPRECEDENTED.

The rules for living here have changed.

Our parents and grandparents tried to live outside laws they didn't recognize. They could not or would not imagine the consequences of building a civilization on oil. They adapted to gradual change as "progress." They assumed it was a legacy well-earned and deserved, without costs or limits.

We assumed we could multiply without limit.

We took consumption for granted as our birthright. We thought our waste simply “went away.” We adapted and became addicted to technologies without noticing what we were giving up or how they changed us. Now we cling to obsolete assumptions and continue to ignore the new rules.

Sudden history in slow motion.

Now Gen Next adapts to accelerating transformation, takes constant change for granted. It's hard enough for adults to understand this revolutionary age, because we are so deeply embedded in it. It's hard to see our situation as absolutely unprecedented when it's the only one we know. The young have an extraordinary challenge: selecting from the information overload the bits and images that can help them understand and manage this unique time.

Of course every day is different.

Every year brings more change. Every hour offers new options. Every second is potentially unique. But most days unfold much like the day before. Yet the earth and our world are changing faster than they ever have.

THE RECKONING ...

... will involve the realization that these are in fact unprecedented and seriously perilous times ... that this moment represents a millennial tipping point or turning point.

Even the most sudden of the Ice Ages must have taken decades to occur. But we don't have time for perspective to descend on us gradually. We have to shift our thinking now. We need a new lens, a clear window on this extraordinary time.

Jokes about the alarmists abound.

The sky is falling. The end is near. In a weird coincidence, the contradictions only seem ironic. Don't worry. Everything's going to be OK. Yeah right. Which is it?

History and memory ...

are vital mental resources for understanding the present. We couldn't learn to live in the world or inhabit our shared cultures if we couldn’t remember what happened yesterday. As Steven Colbert quipped, "Those who cannot remember history are ... something something something." Our shared past is so deep and complex, so much of it has been distorted or forgotten, and the present is changing so fast. The ability of the young to grasp even the key fragments of history approaches the impossible.

Time is of the essence.

The speed and momentum of industrial consumption are essential to the system. Profit and waste are flip sides of the driving force. The faster fuel is consumed, the more work squeezed out of cheap labor and the faster resources are converted to landfill, the quicker profits grow and the wider grows the gap between the obscene rich and the desperate poor.

Quarterly stock prices eject long-term thinking from the boardroom. Novelty and obsolescence obscure true innovation and function. Electronic money transfer accelerates everything else. Advertising turns our unconscious needs into shopping addiction. Lust for unlimited power makes every mountain of wealth inadequate. Cash flow makes trash flow.

Urgent decisions occur in narrow windows of time.

Democracies, ours in particular, tend to move deliberately slowly. The U.S. Senate has brought ours nearly to a standstill. Corporations have acquired "the best democracy money can buy," which for them means one that is impotent. The right makes ineffective government a self-fulfilling belief, and hand over the keys to future to the corporations.

Democracy can be seen as the cultural extension of free will.

One person or many, facing decisions of all kinds, can perceive the world, gather the data, recognize the need, assess the risk and decide to act. But free and smart decisions, particularly in a large-scale emergency, require an unrestricted spectrum of information, collective insight and the power to act quickly.

When information is a product ...

in a "marketplace of ideas," the options are filtered through the money megaphone and the rest of us are muffled or crammed into the corners of the internet. Information vital to our life and death decisions has gone missing. Historic misdeeds are written out of history. Corporate crime is cropped out of the frame. The real good and bad possibilities are edited out of the timeline.

At the precise moment in history when clear perception, enlightened understanding and quick, popular decisions are the keys to survival, our civilization is being beaten by what gamers call "Lag" or "Latency," an inherent, systemic delay between information, decision and action.

It's great to have someone to blame, and revenge is a satisfying emotion. But neither is a viable tactic. Nevertheless, true causes can be identified, a trail of historical fact can lead to accountability. We can't allow the speed and complexity of the system to prevent us from seeing how we got here.

The conservative juggernaut that started with Reagan greased the skids on this thirty-year slide toward oblivion. Tax paranoia cut funding for education. Unions were demonized. Deregulation opened the door to financial fraud and corporate crime on a massive scale. The results: working capital ... real functional, personal wealth ... is sucked out of the economy and the life is sucked out of the planet. And get this if you can: those amounts must be nearly equal.

The Cold War was consciously converted into the War on Terror. Weapons profiteers were invited to design foreign policy. Efficiency and moderation were made to seem effeminate. Fear wrapped itself in the flag. And willful ignorance became the ticket to political power.

The result: there are many ways to visualize this dilemma. One is to see it as a crossroads battle in human history between collective intelligence and knee-jerk stupidity, between conscious will and reactionary fear.

The toxic waste inherent in the consumption economy does not just "go away." It enters a global ecosystem feedback loop that returns it to our lungs, our blood, our marrow, our nervous systems, our hormones and our DNA. The accumulations of hundreds of poisons in our bodies is ubiquitous, unmeasurable as "safe dosage," irreversible and unpredictable in risk. The waste we have tossed into the earth, the rivers, the oceans and the air is even more damaging in the long run.

Don't take my word for it. Type in the google. Do the math. Calculate the odds. Connect the dots. Try to put a frame around the big picture.

Global Warming.
Water.
Peak Oil.
Chemicals.
The Oceans.
Agribusiness and the Food Supply.
Deforestation.
Species extinction.
Disease.
Population.
Natural Disasters.
De-Education and the Missing Information.
Infrastructure.
Population.
Development.
Political and Social Instability.
The Next Financial Collapse.
Environmental Refugees.
The dual Myths of Unlimited Growth and the Wisdom of the Market.
Fear, Power, Money, Lies and Waste as Organizing Principles for a Global Economy.

This is a partial inventory of the maze of factors that make this moment absolutely, categorically different from all of human history. It is no wonder denial seems so comforting.

It's important to understand that climate change is only one of many ecological crises. Our complex culture has woven markets, war, elections, profits, media and policy into a menacing tangle. The legacy we leave to Generation Next mirrors the complex web. Many problems that may seem isolated or manageable are all interconnected. Any one crossing a tipping point can tip one or many others, very much like a chain reaction that we cannot predict. Without understanding the nature of a "critical state" we'll have no plan to postpone, manage or react to the one we inhabit.

 

LANGUAGE AND DISTRACTIONS FRAGMENT OUR EXPERIENCE AND TAKE OUR ATTENTION AWAY FROM THIS MOMENT, IN WHICH ALL REALITY AND POSSIBILITY OCCUR.

This moment and what we think about it are very, very different.

Our experience in this moment is the sum of our reality: breathing, sensing, thinking, moving, speaking. But thinking is a near obsessive process for most of us, and it persistently points our attention elsewhere and elsewhen. By the time we make the translation, of qualities of experience into concepts and mental images, the moment is gone and another is here.

Our thinking manages the past ...

present and future in the same mental languages of descriptions, categories and images. This tends to create the unconscious impression that these three times are similar. But they could not be more different. The past is known, but gone. The future is imminent, but unpredictable. The present is a singular totality, nearly overwhelming in its complexity.

Smart phones and networks ...

give us a feeling of "connected- ness," but they actually fragment our reality and distract our attention from the here and now. We slip in and out of the present moment as if it's a room or a t-shirt. It's easy to forget it's all we've got. It's only in this moment we exercise whatever power we possess.

A RECKONING ...

... will mean refreshing our survival relationships with nature and the world: air, water, food, breathing, sensing, moving. To realize that our experience in this moment is the only reality we really know or influence, is to see the illusion of materialism, the insanity of waste, and to feel re-connected with the planet and all life.

Only a few singular experiences

can hammer home the totality of the present: the "fierce urgency" of sudden danger, the absorbing pleasures of the senses, the moment of insight, the act of creation, the loss of control in anger or delight. But we are conditioned to forget these moments. Their very intensity resists translation into coherent memories. We are absolutely captured in this moment and it defies all logic and rationality.

"We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it." BD*

It creates an awful reminder

of the ultimate unknown. There are only two paths away from this short interval between the past and future: the short sleep and the long one.

".. he not busy being born is busy dying." BD*

Our ever-expanding windows

on the virtual world prevent us from seeing that the real world we live in is shrinking. We have built ourselves into a corner, nearly sealed ourselves in a box. Our mental assumptions about the world get further out of touch with the growing risks of a natural, living reality ignored.

Our ability to anticipate the unforeseen or to imagine anything new is equally critical to our well-being and our survival. Memory can assist imagination and foster insight but it also impedes. Without the intuitive ability to perceive the moment in all its subtlety and potential, we continue to build the future as a mirror of the past. When rapid change is the norm it's all the more difficult to imagine the unpredictable or predict the exceptional. In the context of the continually new, it's ever more difficult to perceive and understand the extraordinary

Our ability to perceive the present moment in both lights ...

the "dead" past and the "blind" future, is the key to free will and creative choice. Embedded in this paradox is the key to truly flexible thinking and evolving views of the world. If we can't question our thinking, about history or possible futures, we'll never be puzzled or inspired enough to make conscious adjustments.
     If we can't or won't imagine the worst case scenario we'll help to make it inevitable. If we can't envision the best case, it'll be impossible to create it.

Our intelligence is amazing.

It endows us with enormous power over the world. Our innate potential for learning and intelligence approach the miraculous. Our brains, evolution’s great gift, are the most complex systems we can observe or imagine. Our cultures have allowed us to develop minds with near limitless capacity. But we misuse our minds and brain. We underestimate and ignore their real potential.

We are also quite stupid.

It’s as if our brains are too big a responsibility to manage. Fear and confusion keep us trapped between the stages of fake and real civilization. The global environmental crisis can be seen as the decisive battle between intelligent insight and fearful, willful ignorance. If you don’t think we are stupid, you’re not smart enough for these arguments.

Time itself is a paradox.

All conscious beings know there is such a thing as time, but explaining it is nearly impossible. For one thing, time is not a "thing." Embedded in our language and thinking is the assumption that the world is comprised mostly of things, and "things" generally don't change.
     It's efficient to think and communicate with each other in this manner. Linear thinking and the naming of objects makes it easy to share and navigate the world. Qualities, processes, systems and relationships are much more difficult to talk about, more challenging to our thinking. But change, quality, process, system and relationship are just as real as the apparent stability of objects. The constantly shifting components of our experience are just as real, perhaps more real than static and stable "things." Linear, objective explanations are reassuring, but they only have passing relevance to a reality in constant flux.

All our sensory experience,

our thoughts and our interactions with the world all take place in time. All are continually changing, or certainly subject to change. But our descriptions, measurements and mental images of time, change, and process rely too often on "freezing" them, as if in an imaginary stopped moment of time, to make them more easy to remember. It is more than a harmless coincidence that we use visual, spatial images ... clocks and calendars ... to describe time.

Confusing space and time can limit our reality. We know other places exist when we are far from them. We know we can go back and visit our childhood home or the scene of the accident. We know we can go across the wide ocean, in just a few hours, and see the Eiffel Tower or the Sahara Desert. But we can’t go visit other times. We can’t leave this moment the way we can get up and leave the room.
     But our thinking confuses that difference. The reasons are so embedded in our learning, our unconscious world views and our media, it’s very hard to recognize or admit this confusion or its impact. When we use spatial concepts to think about the dimensions and scale of time, we constrain our sense of the possible and limit our personal experience of freedom.

*BD: Bob Dylan