Beyond the Edge

Let's clear ourselves of any doubt that our current global cultural is in a state of collapse.  

I could rehearse here all the reasons why, but there are a great many other writers who do that.  One I recmomend, if you haven't yet experienced him, is John Michael Greer.   You may also want to check out Bill McKibben's work or even Dmitry Orlov, if you dare.  McKibben writes from a somewhat Judeo-Christian perspective, and both Greer and Orlov sometimes take politically conservative positions.   Let the reader be warned. 

That being said, this blog is about redefining how we see death, so I want to attempt to lay a framework for what could become the infrastructure to a better way of living.    Physical death - the physical, systemic cessation of processes that keep life flowing to various members and parts - is an inevitability.  This may relate somehow to that very famous second law of thermodynamics - which we fondly have labeled entropy - which says that as we move forward in time, the degree of extant chaos within all systems - whether biological, philosophical, political, or whatever - must also increase. 

So, as I said, no doubt - we're headed toward the edge of a cliff, and few people (outside of politicians) even bother to pretend that we're not anymore. 

The question is: what lies on the other side of it? 

What does life look like for us beyond the hard limits of our natural resources? 

I think this question applies the same as it does in physical death.   No one can say 100% with certainty exactly what happens - even if we've experienced physical death thousands of times before, we don't know it - we carry no memory of it with us.  So even taking in account the potential veracity of religious contexts, we still cannot know what physical death feels like within the construct of our current physical reality and all its limitations.  

In light of these limitations, then, it seems the most logical response we can have to this imminent event is to prepare.  How does one prepare for death, then?

Physical, biomechanical death requires preparation that often involves finances, the allocation of certain resources to those we will leave behind, the arrangement of our proceedings intended to honor us after our departure, etc.   Can we not apply this same process to planning what may come for us after we've tip over the edge we're facing as a culture - as a globe?

How, then, do we prepare - and more importantly, reimagine - life beyond the edge?   If our heavy reliances on exhaustible resources has placed us on a path toward climate shift and significant reduction in available resources, what can we do now to prepare for a different way of living? 

I want to explore this question in a series of future posts.   We already know we're dying; the question now is what do we do about it?