Reply To: Election Results in the US and Deeptime

[Kevin McNally]

Thank you all for your wisdom on how to cope with the present crisis.  And particularly to Bonnie for reminding us that Thomas Berry said (not just to Brain Swimme but in many of his writings) there would be much suffering during the transition from technological civilization to the Ecozoic.  I noticed when taking the recent course on his thought that no one seemed to want to acknowledge this aspect of this teachings.  And it’s not just Berry.  Nearly every spiritual and ecological teacher I’ve encountered over the past three decades has been saying that our technological civilization is unsustainable and that we are headed for a breakdown.  It seems like we (and our political leaders) have been hanging on by our fingernails, trying to plug the holes in the dike and putting out fires and … (insert your own favorite cliche here), hoping to get through crisis after crisis without wanting to question the viability of the cultural and economic assumptions underlying our civilization.  People sensed this wasn’t working and voted for the only alternative offered to them.  My sense is that this will only accelerate the breakdown.  When that doesn’t work, someone (us?) needs to be ready with an alternative vision.