Fiver's First Blog: Blessings and Curses

3/2/11

It's both a blessing and a curse for the curious to come to know the future. When my Green Party friend, Ed, invited me to see the movie Split Estate I attended thinking it would deepen my understanding of peak oil. The blessing was that it did. The curse was that I wasn't expecting how that occurred.

My spiritual practice teaches me not to assume anything. I have found that tenet most challenging; worse now because I'm now aware that an expectation is an assumption about some aspect of the future. I recently heard that an expectation is also a premeditated resentment. I hate to admit the truth of that. I think I'll understand it better in the coming years… unless I don't.

As the coordinator of the Post Carbon Institute's first Relocalization Outpost in Pennsylvania, a trained Transition facilitator, and a member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) I've had my ears licked clean. Knowledge of the future is very exciting and seductive these days, especially for a recovering adrenalin junkie like me. But it's led me to deep concerns for my grandchildren. This is as much a painful haunting as it is a curse.

In the process of coming to terms with what may well be the greatest crisis that humanity has faced since the last ice age, I have to continually remind myself that I didn't cause this perfect storm of crises. I certainly can't control the issues that could lead to the end of civilization (as we know it). And by myself, even my single-handed sailor self, I can't cure it.

Although I can't abandon the cause I'd sure like a lot more support. But that's just another story, because the universe is most probably unfolding just as it should. It's certainly unfolding as it will, and I haven't had a proper vacation in a long time. Another story I'm running is that it would be more fun to be dedicated to sailing somewhere warm than to an exciting, essential, and terrifying cause.

It's a blessing to know that there is hope, in spite of the fact that I, and most of humanity, waited too long to react to this perfect storm of peak oil, global climate change, and a Black Swan economic crisis of biblical proportions,. Now that I've written this, I'm free of the curse of suffering over some dumb story I could make up over a catastrophic outcome. For the truth (if there is any) is that I cannot see the outcome, and that Transition Cheltenham's Bill Mettler's unbridled optimism is the best possible attitude to have in this situation, even if it sometimes seems like one of his Quiet Riot acts.

Part of Cassandra's curse, aside from not being believed, was caring about the people and creatures. It is they who will have to live in less than the best of all possible worlds. Of course, it's doubtful that anyone finds this the best of all possible worlds. Only the deluded, the very rich , and the criminally insane would agree that it is. Although it may well be that many of the criminally insane would notice how far we are from that more perfect world.

Aside from reading John Naisbitt's trendy tea leaves, it's both a blessing and curse to see a possible Eden-like future that could only come about if a large number of us care to make it happen. Creating that vision is a task for the many not the few. It is harder work than bailing a leaky boat in wracking seas, but probably the most exciting and satisfying creative task that ever awaited mankind.

So, if we all contribute the best part of the most positive vision we could have and create a future too wonderful to ignore, we can do it.  In the crock pot in which that vision simmers and slowly cooks something may emerge beyond our wildest dreams for a utopia we may never know. But, for the children, we must begin to do it and to build. Another blessing, and a curse.

Humanity has nearly always sought to take what is and, in Rube Goldberg fashion, tack on corrections as if something small was wrong. What a contraption we have wrought. It's really a house of cards.

The other flaw about that approach is that ours is not a material universe. In material worlds there is a limit to correction before the contraption collapses. In our quantum world, one creates a future out of whole cloth, new, and unsullied. With that kind of material and a compelling vision we can find the excitement and energy to create a far better world for the children, and by extension, for us.

I may never set foot in that world. But it would be enough for me to see it, if I knew the children would get there. Perhaps this is the real story of the wandering. For me, it's the ultimate blessing. I may never see it, even from across the river, but I'm willing to take that journey for the sake of the children and everything that I love.

Fiver: A small rabbit; his Lapine name is Hrairoo, which means "Little-thousand". His visions of the destruction of the Sandleford warren lead him to leave, along with his brother Hazel and several other rabbits. His visions are almost always centered on Hazel, saving him from the snared warren and dying from a gunshot wound. He also gives Hazel a vision that inspires Hazel to set up the release of the Nuthanger Farm dog to save the Watership Down warren from General Woundwort. In the TV Series, Fiver's visions come in rhymes, and he often feels responsible for foreseeing terrible things, blaming himself for their outcome.