First we take Manhattan…

“Solutions“ to ecosystemic evolutionary crisis…

“They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom

For tryin' to change the system from within

I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin…”

— Leonard Cohen

Though I myself have been graced with the privilege to avoid decades of boredom, I nonetheless resonate with the sentiment.

Whether we have been subject to the grind, have found an activist niche, or simply live a life of quiet wonder and terrible awe in the face of humanity’s slow-motion global catastrophe, there is no doubt momentum is building towards a decisive point for action.

But what action(s), by whom, and towards what discernible end?

By now, the vicissitudes of the world have enacted a global species level PTSD. The vast majority of us go about our business each day in suffered oblivion to the profoundly tenuous nature of the complex of systems we take for granted. Still others look on in terror at the measure of incomprehensible destruction looming on nearly every conceivable horizon.

The youth of today enter a world predisposed to distraction either by design, or simple necessity to eke out an existence in the face of diminishing access to natural well-being. Again, the response seems posttraumatic, in hopeless wonder to blindly follow the path laid out by artifact, or to wander in longing confusion for a sense of possibility and direction…

The whisper is out there, a clear and quiet certainty that SOMETHING must be done, but again, what action, by whom, and towards what discernible end? How even to conceive of the obstacle to be overcome?

We grasp at Climate Change, political division, a reinvention of the monetary systems and arbiters of value, perhaps it is a spiritual poverty that is upon us, a failure of education, an economic systemic crisis, a problem of population or the self-interested leadership of the 1%, the gesture is frantic, uncertain, and often profoundly impotent in the face of “reality.” Multipolar traps abound.

Still… First we take Manhattan, then we take Beijing!

In the face of overwhelming odds, the time is for decisive action. Whether, in our action, we are fools, or genius, only history will tell. Meanwhile, what we can confront is our ethic. With what careful discernment will we begin, what measures must we take, individually and collectively in our small but growing groups, to discern whether our actions tend towards those of an enlightened mind, and away from the archetype of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice?

Whatever is this object to consider, efforts to influence its nature, well-being, and trends will undoubtedly have nth order effects which will be, at best, difficult to predict.

Timothy Morton coins the term “hyperobjects” to refer to “entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place.” Indeed, our object of concern is the ecosphere itself. Within it all of our ever evolving elemental systems of earth and water and wind and fire and flesh mix in their various states with the interiors of natural longing, values, emotion, identity, culture, and spiritual awakening in the timeless dance of kosmic transformation.

Even here, this Terran paradise lives not in isolation. Mystery abounds stretching from the depths of our own hearts into the widest cosmological constructs splashing about within and beyond the mind and awareness of humankind.

We are working out the tension of our (r)evolution, not separate from, but as awakened expressions of a profoundly vast and awesome hyperobject.

First we take Manhattan… But how? By what intent do we design, and by what design do we intend?

In the next installment we will begin to explore and hopefully integrate some of the questions posed here…