For some, the election of President Trump to a second term is a disaster, but let’s step back and take a longer view. It is true that Kamala Harris stood for many values that appealed to the “liberal” community, but there was nothing new. Her platform promised tweaks around the edges to hold the ecosystem, and the economy together a little longer, but did not address the fundamental problem that this economic, and political system is unsustainable in the long run. Over the past 50 years it has become clear that the democratic system, which is by nature fixated on 4 year time segments, cannot address the overriding issues of our time such as climate change, resource depletion and other elements of the polycrisis. On the financial side, the capitalist economy is designed around the untenable concept of unlimited growth on a finite planet, with the net result that the global footprint of humanity in 2024 is 1.73 earths. For years the environmental community has been saying that we must reduce our carbon emissions, but every year, with the exception of the pandemic in 2020, emissions keep rising. Trump followers voted against the status quo. Many of them apparently did not realize what the consequence of their vote would be due to the spread of disinformation, but they were correct in their sensing that something is wrong with the system, but neither they nor Trump have a clue what it is or how to fix it.
Eventually some degree of chaos will result. In that period there may be an opportunity to create new models that will acknowledge the earth and the biosphere as a fundamental part of us, and not as something to be exploited. If there are no new models ready to fill the gap, the usual outcome is something worse, governments that turn to totalitarian rule, economic systems that exacerbate the transfer of wealth to the rich. Our task is to create alternatives on a local scale and to build trust within the community in new ways, and then link up communities that are exploring alternative models to form a coherent network. There are a lot of options on ways to introduce concepts that could revolutionize our way of doing business, but first lets look at our own value system and the rules we operate by.
I have written about ways that tribes in the Pacific Northwest oriented their culture to allow them to live sustainably for fifteen thousand years on the same limited territory. (A Greater Vision) We come from a different culture and will need to find our own path, perhaps being inspired by what they accomplished, but making our own way. We need a path to reconnect with our own deepest essence and with the natural world. In other cultures, rites of initiation were essential for bringing children to adulthood. Some initiations were rigorous and actually dangerous, so they are not likely to win favor in our culture. There are less risky, though perhaps no less challenging paths, but our educational system does not address the critical issue of transforming adolescent mentality into aware adults, secure in their worth and their place in the world.
Bill Plotkin has described eight stages of human growth between birth and death. The adult is stage six, but he writes that very few people in the western world reach that level. His definition of an adult reveals why it is a rarity, and at least part of the failure to mature is the lack of a “revelatory experience” of the kind often associated with initiation rites in aboriginal cultures.
Bill Plotkin’s definition of an Adult.
“Also known as true or ecocentric Adulthood, this is the life stage whose central feature is the conscious inhabiting of the unique eco-niche a person was born to inhabit, during which they deliver their singular gift to the more-than-human world. An Adult is someone who experiences themself, first and foremost, as a member of the Earth community, who has had one or more revelatory experiences of their unique place in that ecological community, and who is embodying that unique place as a gift to their people and to the Earth community. Doing so makes them an agent of evolution — and, in an egocentric, patho-adolescent society like ours, an agent of revolution. All Adults are visionary artisans of cultural evolution.[view stages diagram]“
Adulthood in these terms is a radical shift of allegiance, placing the earth and its creatures above all other priorities such as nationality, political party and even family bonds. The second requirement is equally challenging, to truly know without doubt our place in the community. To know that requires a deep connection with our own soul, and from there to find ways of expressing that for the benefit if the whole ecosystem. Plotkin realizes this is a long term transformation requiring generations, but image what a world run by adults would be like. Unfortunately we do not have generations before the multiple issues of the polycrisis overwhelm our ability to hold the system together, so we need to work the personal, political and economic reforms simultaneously.
Notes:https://www.animas.org/glossary-to-language-of-soul-canyon/#Adulthood
https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/footprint-scenario-tool/