A New Year

Well, the sun’s rising on the morning of a new year. 2018. As a number it has a nice even round feel. But 2017 leaves us in something of a mess, and at this point, Jan. 7, the end of the New Year’s first week, it might be hard to imagine how things might get better.

 

The big problems we drag with us into the New Year aren’t going away: spreading ecological crises, species extinction, global climate change, terrorism as an aspect of shifting and seemingly devolving political landscapes, massive and still growing inequality and consequent suffering for the great majority of human beings, to name a few of the most obvious. And, in the end, the looming possibility of the collapse of western civilization. We wouldn’t be the first.

We privileged North Americans all feel a strong pull to forget all that and just go about our lives; but the world gifts us with daily reminders. A large winter storm, dramatically called a “bomb cyclone,” piled up snow in the southern states of the U.S.’s eastern seaboard that almost never see snow, and from there up into the maritime provinces of Canada. Meanwhile record arctic cold blanketed central regions of the continent. Our esteemed President Trump responded with one of the dumbest tweets ever, saying in response to the unusual cold that “perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming….”

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Trump tweets: "In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!"   4:01 PM - 28 Dec 2017

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As if in response, now (a couple of days later), on the other side of the continent massively destructive mudslides hit California following the summer’s devastating wildfires.

Speaking of costs, Forbes reports that climate-related disasters since 1980 have cost the U.S. $1.5 trillion, topped off by 2017’s unprecedented losses from hurricanes, fires, and other events in the hundreds of billions. This year already has a good head-start on beating last year’s record.

On the political front, Trump’s presidency has just been hit with a “bomb cyclone” of sorts itself with the publication of Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.  It’s hard to imagine how, at this point, Trump can ever gain any standing or trust within the world community of nations; or how his administration can ever be anything but a national political disaster for the United States, and a terrible embarrassment internationally. We’ll see what 2018 brings.  Many of us wonder if he’ll make it through his term.

Those and many other problems are all too obvious. We don’t all interpret them in the same way, or agree on what they mean, but everyone on Earth sees and experiences them in some way, on some level.

 

A New Level of Consciousness

At the same time, I’m becoming more and more sure that we (humankind) are moving into or birthing a new level of consciousness—of reflexive self-awareness and understanding that runs like a tidal slipstream against the kinds of problems and apparent backsliding that I’ve been describing. But it is hard to set your sights on such large changes when you’re in the midst of them as they’re happening. It’s hard to wrap your mind around your own mind….

Nevertheless, our own culture (call it the modern or postmodern West, just to give it a name) is continuing to develop ways, far beyond those of any previous civilization, to reflect on its place in the long stream of human history; to understand its place in and effects on the natural environments that sustain it; and to discover and examine its own most basic ideas and assumptions about the world, nature, and human nature.

In future posts, I aim to explore further such reflexive knowledge—knowledge that is about us—knowledge that, I think, represents the emergence of a new level of consciousness. We’re not there yet—not by a long shot; we have to keep working on it. But if more people understand what we truly have going for us, there might be less cynicism and despair, less vulnerability to the siren songs of demagogues, and more positive action based on what we know.