The core theme is the necessity of a profound shift in human consciousness, moving from an individualistic, future-oriented perspective to one that acknowledges our deep interconnectedness with past generations and the natural world, particularly in the face of civilizational and ecological crises.
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is Miss entropy our version now of
conscience my answer is no there is a
way of figuring out how to do this and
it's to put yourself in the middle of
something and not at the beginning of
something so in other words rather than
seeing yourself at the beginning of
seven subsequent generations as if you
are the kind of moral architect of the
world in time to come you could
understand yourself as standing in the
midst of fourteen generations the seven
generation that are prior to us right
now we are the heirs to all of that and
if you look like I do a standard white
guy then you realize you're copping to
all of the Industrial Revolution
material all of the age of empire
building and so on all of that material
that goes back seven generations and
more I am the repository of that stuff
and my obligation is to carry myself as
if I'm the consequence unintended or
otherwise of the way life has been lived
until now Ashley it's only my ability to
see myself that way I think that gives
me the capacity to govern myself
differently and understand my
fundamental responsibility will be to
people I'll never meet and the way I can
practice that is to understand that as a
global citizen it's not a future tense
reality I have obligations to people
I'll never meet and we're both alive at
the same time no this post doom
conversation was filmed in September
2019 with co-host Michael Dowd and
Barbara Cecil first a brief introduction
to who's Steven Jenkinson is and his
books his website is orphan wisdom and
here he speaks of himself as a teacher
author storyteller spiritual activist
farmer and founder of the orphan wisdom
school a teaching house and learning
house for the skills of deep living and making
making
human culture it is rooted in knowing
history being claimed by ancestry
working for a time yet to come now
orphan wisdom as he means it is people
like himself people like Barbara Cecil
like Michael Dowd who come from the
colonizing ancestry in North America our
ancestors left their culture behind and
because of the situation they found here
aggressively individualistic resource
rich culture was never really developed
in the sense that Steven Jenkinson
through his own scholarly understandings
and his experience on site in eastern
Canada and with indigenous people of a
kind of culture that humanity has always
needed Jenkinson first came to wide
public attention with the release of a
Canadian film board award-winning film
called grief Walker the synopsis says
this documentary introduces us to Steven
Jenkinson once the leader of a
palliative care counseling team at
Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital through
his daytime job he has been at the
deathbed of well over a thousand people
what he sees over and over he says is
quote a wretched anxiety and an
existential terror even when there is no
pain in dining the practice of
palliative care itself he has made it
his life's mission to change the way we
die to turn the act of dying from denial
and resistance into an essential part of
life grief Walker came out in 2008
Steven Jenkinson wrote a book about this
topic and the stories of his palliative
care experience in a book published in
2015 called die wise a manifesto for
sanity and soul now that was on the
individual experience of death and as
you'll hear the reason why Michael Dowd
and Barbara Cecil are interviewing him during
during
this posting conversation series is
because of a later book that he wrote
published in 2018 called come of age the
case for elder hood in a time of trouble
and so when anyone's contemplating the
death of this civilization and possibly
even the extinction of our species the
understandings that Jenkinson used in
applying to individual death the
existential unk's that goes with that is
well translatable into the existential
angst that is civilizational and species
level Michael Dowd begins the conversation
hello Steven holding so delighted that
you can participate in this series just
a little background I first encountered
my wife Connie Barlow who will be the
audio editor of this series
she and I encountered you when I was
going through cancer treatment ten years
ago on Whidbey Island and it was between
the last round of chemo and when I had
my spleen removed two months later that
I watched grief Walker for the first
time of course I've watched it several
dozen times since and shared with a lot
of people and then you came down you and
your wife came down to Whidbey Island
and Langley and fielded questions for an
hour and so that was our introduction to
to you and to your work and then we've
got die wise of course and come of age
and this conversation series on post
doom conversations exploring overshoot
grief grounding and gratitude is
something that just was birthed with
Paul Shaffer Kahoot lives in Ottawa
actually we had a conversation with him
and Paul Beckwith when we were there
just a month Hado and so Barbara Cecil
will be co-hosting she spent some time
with you at hollyhock not long ago I
believe and she and our Jamel I don't
know if you're familiar with but they've
written a series of articles and truth
out which are just that perfectly
capture what I'm calling post doom
consciousness I've invited Barbour to
take the lead on this conversation but I
really want to give you the bulk of the
opportunity to share so over to you Berkeley
Berkeley
Stephen I know you'll take it wherever
you want to take the question and that's
fine I'm just wondering if you could say
something about your experience in the
death trade and the difference between
those those dying who do and do not
acknowledge what's happening and how
that relates to these times oh boy
start with a start with a light weight question
I didn't know there was such a thing as
the death Street and looking back on it
now I wish there wasn't by which I mean
I was at the at the tip of the tower of
you know the most high-tech medical
environment that North America has ever
seen and the the reliance upon expertise
the slavish reliance upon expertise of
all kinds and the willingness of the
general public to forgo any obligation
or any capacity you know to participate
deeply in the quote practice wisdom
that's supposed to guide all that
technology made a kind of perfect storm
of of strange reliance upon
professionals who'd never undergone what
you're undergoing it's a very peculiar
arrangement you know you you entrust
yourself to people who are Frank
amateurs at the existential level if
you're the one who's dying and they're
the one who's not and the alternative is
to entrust yourself to fellow dying
people which well that's questionable
too so then so what's left and the thing
that eventually claimed my full
attention was the notion that it's it's
that kind of professionalized silo of
practice knowledge that is an enormous
dilemma for citizens because it really
neutralizes the obligations and the role
of citizenship in the in the
democratization of wisdom I would say so
I'm not saying anybody said all this
stuff when I was in the business but I'm
telling you that after a brief but
intense sojourn in that in the thing I
found that amongst the most egregious
arrangements and it was architectural so
it was virtually invisible and I never
heard anyone troubled by it
then not since either so um what did I
do well I failed to comply which is not
much to brag about i-i-i was troubled
enough that i began to believe in the
trouble instead of trying to seek out
yet another range of solutions that
would neutralize my disturbance about
the whole thing and of course this
doesn't make me in any way heroic not
then not now but what it did do was kind
of give me a something like nerve I
guess I would say and now I'm very much
an outlier and I get absolutely no gigs
from the business no gigs at all how has
your experience shaped how you now think
about people who deny or stay in denial
or people who face courageously our
global predicament it's not that
apparent to me that there's legions of
people who are quote facing what's
coming I mean that's a very particular
formulation and I would like to sort of
reimagine it in the following way it was
routinely claimed that I was belaboring
the obvious when I was in the death
trade when I kept contending with the
notion that it wasn't clear to me that
people knew that they were going to die
not before they were told not during the
period of treatment and the rest and not
afterwards Island it obliged me to
wonder what knowing you were going to
die could possibly do to you since I
rarely saw it and the conclusion I came
to something like this about I don't
know 30 some odd years ago everybody
knew there is enough oil now I would
imagine three of us would say no that
was never true and I would agree with
you it was never true but that didn't
prevent us from knowing that it was true
if you take my meaning there and how
could you tell that we knew
that there was enough oil for everybody
forever the answer is by how we
conducted ourselves particularly our
buying habits and that told you where
the knowledge lay and what its content
was so I look in vain for the same trail
the same kind of chem trail across the
existential sky that that clearly
indicates that people know that they're
going to die not imminently but at all
and if I take that understanding apply
it to the question that you've asked me
I end up with some tragically similar
observation that there doesn't seem to
be much in the daily grind as people let
me in on it that suggests that they are
quote facing what's coming you see if
anything I would suggest that most of
the strategies are to get on the other
side of facing it counter that doesn't
necessarily mean deny but make a very
temporary visit to the way it is in
order to find a more livable and
quote-unquote life positive response
I find that frankly tragic on the one
side and truant on the other side what's
true at me true it ok that's a lightning
and thunder you're just hearing there's
just come in since I sat down and talked
to you so I don't know if we're onto
something here and the fates are are
colluding or not I don't know I just
don't even what the last six weeks or
very lucky to have good ok what is
truant mean it means it's what they
accused you of doing when you were fully
capable physically of going to school
believe it or not the sky is clouding
over as we speak well James said
something about well you know we don't
anticipate anything like that happening
again today and I say don't tempt the
fates we didn't anticipate it last time
a culture that is so deeply traumatized
by being caught up in a web of and in a
momentum of change that is so relentless
so purposeless so without recourse
without some without it Brooks no
challenge it will leave you behind in a
heartbeat if you're not willing to go
along with it all of that struck me is
of course the question of who's in
charge derives from a feeling that that
the governing the regime is an idea now
it's not a people it's not a cabal it's
not the rich guys it's an insane idea
that if we just spend more we'll find a
way to spend less if we just do more
we'll finally be able to do less if we
do just take all of the problems that
our reliance upon technology has
generated and generate more technologies
solve the problems we're going to be ok
that that recipe is a kind of ongoing
low-grade traumatized madness a kind of
nonspecific free-floating anxiety that
seems to be the tone and maybe it comes
down to this I'm sure this is a piece of
urban lore but the gist of it is that
somebody had a visitor from some cat
country in Africa visiting a man in a
big city in the US and the city had a
subway so he thought he would introduce
the man to the city by bringing him to
the subway so they emerged out of the
subway in rush hour when people were
heading to work and the man glued
himself to the wall and was obviously
terrorized his hosts said what's the
matter the men said what are all these
people running from and the host said
they're not running from anything
they're going to work and and and I
guess it no that's not possible
nobody nobody moves like this
if there
terrorized and fleeing something so you
wonder which of the two of them
understood the rush hour for what it was
you can't let yourself not be in control
you say it's the nature of control to be
in a thousand way is nefariously
insinuating itself into everything you
see and every way you have obscene it
life will introduce you to the unerring
possibility that it's not overly
concerned about your psychic habits it's
not invested in affirming them it's not
invested in destroying them it hasn't it
makes no reference to how we see things
I learned this from the death trade
because dying among you know in a
handful of other things is is a
relentless deity which which will
exercise its its capacities that its
obligations to be a deity regardless of
our readiness our our promise you know
our inclination to entertain it or not
and you know the the climate change
which is a very neutral way of referring
to what's happening I think we would
agree it's too neutral in fact because
the sense of urgency about it and the
the oncoming nosov it is kind of is
blunted with the phrase climate change
it's it's warming for the most part and
maybe it's maybe that reference it could
be helpful so so the climate warming
shows no sign of slowing down or even
flatlining it's increasing its
increasing as a direct consequence of
our other unwillingness to govern
ourselves as if it's happening well
that's a recipe not a recipe that's a
description of a kind of sociopathic
preoccupation with what serves me and
you know alas it seems that we are in a
time where we would much rather be
defeated by mounting and mounting
evidence then we would rather than to be
persuaded before the evidence is all in
I mean how much is enough evidence to
cause you to investigate every buying
habit that you could possibly engage in
a given day and pass all of those
decisions through the filter of what's
happening but I don't see it
and the the climate certainly is a fair
like a seismograph of this unwillingness
at least in our corner of the world to
govern ourselves accordingly and this is
more exercise in self-determination and
as soon as you defy self-determination
you know be not surprised that until
your personal sky begins to crumble into
fall you feel no obligation to to govern
yourself as if the sky in other parts of
the world is indeed crumbling and
falling large in large measure as a
consequence of your self-indulgent way
of life and we know that the climate
response is behind the wave so to speak
which is to say that we do not see today
the consequences of our behavior today
what we're looking at is the
consequences of our behavior over the
last let's say literally 30 to 40 years
that's what we're looking at right now
this means that demonstrably our
children will be the ones who be obliged
to live up the consequences of what's
happening while you and I are having
this conversation we will not even live
the consequences of what we're putting
into motion that's how far away we are
from quote what's happening
and that seems to me the only the only
let's say shift of mind that can allow
the briefest episode of sanity into this
arrangement is to borrow if we could
this understanding of so-called the
teaching of the seven generations and it
enjoys a lot of high-end sort of sort of
kitchen poster prominence today and the
notion is basically to govern yourself
understanding that the consequence of
seven generations from now will be there
seven generations from now so this is
all well and good but the question is
how do you do that you just feel bad all
the time is misanthropy our version now
of conscience my answer is no there is a
way of figuring out how to do this and
it's to put yourself in the middle of
something and not at the beginning of
something so in other words rather than
seeing yourself at the beginning of
seven subsequent generations as if you
are the kind of moral architect of the
world in time to come you could
understand yourself as standing in the
midst of fourteen generations the seven
generation that are prior to us right
now we are the heirs to all of that and
if you look like I do a standard white
guy then you realize you're copping to
all of the Industrial Revolution
material all of the age of empire
building and so on all of that material
that goes back seven generations and
more I am the repository of that stuff
and my obligation is to carry myself as
if I'm the consequence unintended or
otherwise of the way life has been lived
until now Ashley it's only my ability to
see myself that way I think that gives
me the capacity to govern myself
differently and understand my
fundamental responsibility will be to
people I'll never meet and the way I can
practice that is to understand that as a
global citizen it's not a future tense
reality I have obligation
to people I'll never meet and were both
alive at the same time no Connie
specifically requested that I ask what
are the similarities and differences
between coming to a sense of equanimity
and gratitude about one's own impending
death and the death of the civilization
and perhaps even our species oh boy well
let's work backwards in the last part I
think the death of the species is
conjecture at this point your personal
death ain't there's the first one so
they're not really in the same let's say
order of likelihood that's the first
thing second thing is the death the
civilization is it's it's suicidal it's
not death death is a given a given
consequence of the fact you that you
were lucky enough to draw breath and
keep going but a suicidal way of life
could not in any way be understood as
some as a matter of your good fortune
it's what you did with the good fortune
that was bestowed upon you instead say
and that you couldn't find good enough
reason to act in in the interest of that
which you relied upon so you develop
self-reliance instead and acted on that
but endings though endings limits
frailties that kind of Holy Trinity of
Aging or yeah of impermanence if you
will these things are enormous ly
important practices every one's death
before your own that's where you get a
chance to get the hang of things
every you know I never had anybody walk
into my office all the years I had an
office and say to me well my wife still
loves me well the kids are still talking
to me my Health's pretty good the job is
working out well I thought I'd come and talk
talk
my life it never happened so things
working out is never a prompt to wonder
about anything and if things go bad
enough the prompt is similarly gone
without a trace so what does it take
what does it take maybe it's this before
your own endings and frailties set in
for the duration you get an opportunity
to see what it looks like and there is
some real mercy in that because you're
not obliged to come to these things as a
rookie or as an amateur you're obliged
to come to these things as an informed
observer who beginning to recognize his
or her own fortunes in the declining
fortunes of others if that constitutes a
kind of spirit practice that contributes
to our willingness to see down a kind of
living arrangement that is properly
finding its end then I'm all for it
I'm not persuaded that that's the way
it'll go because people are fighting off
you know coming to their own personal
limits so apparently being limited is
for suckers now you see it was an act of
real devotion in the death trade to bear
faithful witness to what was happening
when the recognition was that what was
happening was what was going to happen
come with me I'm not sure that it's wise
to draw a kind of moral and aesthetic
parallel between the givenness of the
death at the end of one's life of an
individual person and the kind of
maniacally consumptive way of life
that we've been alluding to off and on
I'm not sure that the same order of
existence really so with that in mind
you could say that that being willing to
see the frailties and limits and endings
that that surround us could prepare us
not to end
or the civilizations ending but rather
to prompt it towards that ending since
it would not appear to know how to end
on its own it's a kind of midwifery
function mysteriously the greater act is
not sabotage the greater act is seeing
down what you have tried for so long to
restore and to love that's great thank
you this is one of the heart questions
of this this series most of us who were
born in the 1940s 50 60 70 s just as
soon perpetual progress or you know whatever
whatever
and we're heirs to this tradition and
then that's shifted for us sometimes
gradually sometimes sometimes very
suddenly and how did that shift happen
for you what would then a little bit of
your story in terms of how you went from
sort of normal American consciousness to
the kind of place that you are and you
to so profoundly now well I don't have a
normal American consciousness because
I'm a Canadian so there's the first
thing okay good thanks yeah I know it's
easy for you guys to forget that there's
there's lots of differences here yeah um
well you know anyone who speaks with
great authority about the comings and
goings of one's own life is a fool in
the making you know and I'm not sure it
even credits anything I could come up
with to imagine that I can that I have
an overview of what you're asking me
about I have a kind of episodic
disturbance from time to time that I can
recollect that's as close to authorities
I can manage so so here's one so I and
I'm not proud of this and I don't
recommend it as a strategy for
realization of any kind but I tried to
save money in my twenties the money I
didn't have even into my 30s by not
going to the dentist so you know what
that means for me now I'm spending a lot
of money at the dentists okay so in the
debt I know you're wondering at this
point Wow
where's this story going and it's a true
story well so I'm in the dentist's
office for the first time in many years
and I'm terrified and I have a kind of
Freudian terror about all of that and as
I'm waiting for my time in hell I'm
leafing through the magazine stack which
is a fascinating study a magazine pile
in a dentist's office is an amazing
encounter yes because if you're a kind
of cultural archeologist and you start
to look at these things many of them are
dated right so you're getting a
remarkable kind of cross section like
almost a geological cross section of
through the advertising mainly but also
what ends up on the front page etc
anyway this is the way I'm built so I'm
easy to I'm easy to entertain from that
point of view so I'm flipping through
there and here don't I find old copies
in a giant National Geographic probably
from the 50s maybe and so I start
leaking through these things and
National Geographic for all of its
merits has for the longest time been a
remarkably fascistic organ of
disseminating American exceptionalism
excuse me but there's no question that
that's the case and so I'm looking
through this stuff and it hits me
because there's another discovery of
another lost civilization in the jungle
somewhere and it's the standard story
you know they find this it's all a
mystery and and the mystery is easily
answered it goes like this the mystery
is what happened to these people and the
writers of the thing never said you know
these natives we hired to help us dig
this place out that's what happened to
them they're right there but nobody ever
says that of course so so what happened
to them and then they answer their own
question although more research is
necessary they're very the great
likelihood is overpopulation combined
with environmental degradation you know
and we're hearing this now we're going
Oh now should do a graphic if it lasts
longer than us you're gonna write about
us the same way however I'm thinking to
myself here the overarching
story that they insinuate upon every
discovery they make it's catastrophe
that ends successful human events that's
the that's the moral order that they're
counting on so I sat there and you know
waiting for my purgatorial event and I
said lovely hit what if this as an
explanatory tool is more of the same
not something neutral not something
helpful but more of the spell so let me
propose to you what I came up with in
response while I waited for my time in
the chair it hit me that the end of that
place could very conceivably be
understood as the willingness of overly
successful people to be informed by the
consequences of their quote relative
success and have their understanding of
what it means to be human
regulated by the unwitting unintended
consequences they visited upon their
home place I mean bear in mind these are
places and times where people understood
places to be alive they understood these
places to be their psychic spiritual
ontological homes they understood them
to be deified places so these are their
gods this counts for something in the
ensuing story so I mean we could take up
the whole thing let's see if I can say
it very quickly so so the notion is this
as the people become increasingly
capable of making a go of it in this
place the direct consequence is more
people there's other things too but more
people is an inevitable consequence of
us figuring stuff out so so there's the
longer that people begin to reproduce at
that level the shorter the memory
becomes of the time when it wasn't like
this when there wasn't so many of us
when our place in the order of things
was neither guaranteed nor supreme and
I'm imagining a time like that
where it's the oldest people in their
midst who find a way to say to the guys
in charge and you know the strong people
and some of the leaders do you know even
though it's settled right now our memory
tells us that this place has not always
looked as it as it's beginning to look
now and by virtue of us being successful
at feeding ourselves and our material
culture production and so on we can see
already some sudden diminishment of that
which has been sustaining us and so
we're asking everybody to to reimagine
what loving this place could look like
now there was a time when loving this
place meant drawing our sustenance from it
it
could it be them that if we're really at
home in this place and if we really love
it and if this is really our origin that
we write a new love letter to this place
which is a letter of farewell and that
our willingness to love it this time is
going to be different because it's
taking into consideration the
consequence of our former love our old
way of loving it's not less loving it's
differently articulated because the
circumstances are different and the
understanding of love has to shift in
order for it to remain loving and its
failure to do so become something more
self-sustaining and and the rest so I
imagined a time when at least some
cultures decided to stop being themselves
themselves
stop being so successful divided up into
clan groups and dissipate and basically
quote-unquote disappear from the
historical record far from being
catastrophic this was the willingness
for catastrophe as a possibility to
inform how they would proceed know
something like that and that realization
in the dentist office kind of gave me an
understanding that wasn't print on this
matters that wasn't predicated on grievance
grievance
or misanthropy or guilt or shame or did
all of that not that it's not there but
instead it gave me an understanding of
this matter that if it were approached
from an understanding of love conscience
the willingness to be a human instead of
being ashamed for being one and the
relay ssin of what deep running humanity
could possibly look like in a time of
trouble it seemed to me that that was a
repertoire that could be immediately
useful not as a solution but two but as
a as a way of beginning the cultivator
let's call it a an unsought realization
that places are squarely at the level of
responsibility and minorly at the level
of we might be able to do something
about ourselves not for ourselves about
ourselves my my sigh it's more like I'd
like to know what you think of this
Steven but I my sense of things reading
history internally Teddy Goldsmith has
been every Goldsmith the publisher and
the editor of the ecologist magazine for
close to 40 years and he wrote a book
called the way an ecological worldview
and he's probably done more certainly
for me in helping me distinguish
unsustainable self-destructive cultures
human centered cultures from those that
can live for long periods of time
without defiling and degrading primary
reality and the my simple way of
thinking about it is that sustainable
cultures are those that don't file their
own nest measure success because it
seems like our brains are gonna have
some goal or goal seeking animals so
we're gonna have some goal that we work
toward which is something to be achieved
or you know whatever and if our goal or
if our notions of success or human
centered then we saw describe our goal
is our life centered so that we measure
success or progress
by how well the soil is doing decade by
decade how well the forests are doing
decade by decade how are other species
doing decade by decade and perhaps
different clans attend to different
aspects that seems to me to be the heart
of self-destructive cultures and versus
sustainable cultures and we're so far
from that that if humanity survives this
bottleneck is climate catastrophe and
peak oil and soil and just all the
converging problems predicaments really
our only hope it seems to me is coming
back to life centered measures of
well-being of progress so I wanted to
hear what you think about that okay I
myself would not distinguish life
centered from human centered and the
reason for that is that if we exempt
ourselves from from understanding
ourselves as a life imbued thing and we
only imagine that that life real life
authentic life unquestionably sustaining
life is kind of out there in the green
stuff and we are it's it's horrorshow
waiting to happen well we we end up with
more of the same so my counter
suggestion would run something like this
rather than life centered versus human
centered you might simply inquire after
the kind of moral and sort of mythic
poetic architecture by which a given
people govern themselves where do they
place humanity in the story not whether
they exempt themselves from it which
would be a grim grim scenario which
we're on the verge of trying to do I
think in the West at least but simply
ask yourself not whether humans belong
in there but where is their proper
belonging and what you often find in
cultures that we have a hard time
finding and recognizing anymore is that
humans are granted a place of deep
reliance or dependence
as it dependent not as a co-conspirator
not as in anyway central to the
operation not even as mandatory simply
is heavily reliant I wrote about this in
the die wise towards the latter third of
it and a lot of people said to me why
are you writing about sustainability and
all this kind of stuff in a book about dying
dying
I said well you'd only think that
doesn't fit if you thought it was a book
about how to not die while you're dying
so so the thing I was able to come up
with on short notice went something like
this we are the most dependent life form
that I think I know about there could be
others but I can't imagine anybody's
more reliant upon every other thing than
we are and I just wonder whether the
reliance is mutual is it is it
recognizably go back and forth and the
answer is indisputably not there's
virtually no life form on the planet
that relies primarily or even
secondarily upon our presence on the
scene for its sustainability or itself
it's amazing we on the other hand
require the presence of virtually
everything that's out there just to eke
out you know our day-to-day so where
does that place us in the order of
things properly it places us not quite
on Pluto you know but you could say
heavily reliant should have a kind of
mythic moral poetic religious
consequence if we're willing to see
ourselves properly this way if we're the
most reliant and the least needed then
you could say that our obligation to
what sustains us runs more deeply more
implacably than it runs in any other
life form yes because we're so much but
the beneficiary and so little the
benefactor of the gig right that's the
way I'd imagine it that's the kind of
I've sure put it that's the kind of
mythic and moral universe I would like
to have been able to be born into well I
think you've alluded to quite a a call
to those who are willing to step into an
be at home here and to find their own
and be able to speak to people who have
been successful in traditional terms and
I'm he followed that I believe with
saying something about a farewell letter
and I just wondered if we could go back
to that for a second about the farewell
letter and there might I don't know if
there's something more you'd want to say
about it but it it touches something in
me as you spoke I'm glad I did it
touched something in me every time I say
it to ya
it's actually the phrase if I didn't say
it the first time I'll say it now what I
mean by it is a love letter of farewell
not a love letter of farewell there you
are wishing goodness upon that which you
are leaving you're not asking for good
fortune as you depart and in fact you
could go further in and imagine that
you're real good fortune is you haven't
come to your collective senses and
deciding to depart this is not you
cutting off your nose to spite your face
this is your beauty finally appeared you
could say well the word I would use that
I think both detonates and and and draws
this understanding into something that
could be observable is our word in
English the verb to belong which I think
one of you used in in a question
recently that you asked me so we know
how we tend to try to use it today
we mean it to be included in to be a
part of and there's no sin in them
really for belonging the kind of that
order that gives you a sense of primary
purpose and and station in life you
could say all of this derives from
finding a place and the people to whom
you belong but if we investigate the
word we find out that our experience of
belonging has nothing to do with what
the word is actually granting us as an
understanding so here we go this is an
old English word and because it is we
can track it differently than we would
Latin or Greek so we have to be a prefix
which in Old English was a prefix it was
never stand alone word that's a fairly
recent evolution in the syntax of our
language so you'd never be able to talk
about being for example because there's
only relational meaning to that word but
the way we use it today there's a kind
of essentialist understanding which
isolates the particularly
from everything else that contributes to
its sustenance and its presence and so
on you end up with this this horrific
and deeply alone sense of the primacy of
existence you know okay so the b e
prefix has the function in Old English
simply of it intensifying what follows
in the rest of the word so you could say
it doesn't mean a lot of but it means
something closer to just when you
thought the whole thing was here there's
more there's a different kind of more
that doesn't add to it it deepens it
instead and then we have the root word a
verb that I rarely if ever hear anyone
use the verb too long and people who
don't who don't practice loaning often
mistake it for desire as if it's more or
less the same thing if you look up your
standard dictionary
it'll probably use design
as a kind of vague synonym for it but
here's the difference
you know desire and you know think of it
way beyond the narrow sexual connotation
desire has the remarkable capacity to
fool itself into thinking that it's
trying to find a way to stop I'm just
looking for the object of my desire and
as soon as I do magic no more desire
just just I don't know what the the end
of desire looks like never been there
myself but anyway that's the kind of
phantom opera of the thing get on the
other side of the desire so you can
finally stop desiring well you know what
happens every time you find the object
of your desire your desire has a
remarkable capacity to revive in a
couple of days couple of weeks couple of
years whatever it takes but it's not
gone at all
it's heavily addicted to the next new
thing and here it comes again it never
tried to stop longing on the other end
has no such mo the amazing thing about
longing is it is its own reward it
doesn't it doesn't seek out an object to
long after and therefore begin to appear
in our midst you can for example long to
be alive as you live which on the
surface of it sounds a little crazy I
mean you're alive why would you long to
be alive at the same time and you know
what the answer is
well you know how humans are we can be
alive but not very we can step all the
vital signs cooking around and
everything still in good working order
but some aspect of us is deeply
distracted from the understanding this
is as good as it gets man that there's
nothing to wait for and you've already
got the mercy of the ages and it's
called knowing you're still alive why
you can still act on it and so forth so
that's the mystery of longing is it's
not trying to get on the other side of
itself to turn into something
more user-friendly longing mysteriously
is amongst the most user-friendly frames
of mine that human beings capable of
reassemble the word and what is
belonging now the answer is it's a kind
of intensification of longing it runs so
deep and is so impossible to replace by
anything else that it gives you a sense
of almost involuntary gratitude just
because you're still here and it doesn't
have to get better and you don't have to
have more it's miraculously deeply and
properly enough and of course these
moments don't last very long and desire
says yeah yeah yeah and then you're
after that stuff but so anyway I guess
the point I'm making here is to follow
up the previous idea about the love
letter and so on is that it you could
reimagine belonging to a place as living
a life in such a way that the place
lasts longer than you last longer than
your way of life lasts longer than your
people does and as long as it lasts then
your way of life becomes commendable as
long as the place lasts but if the place
doesn't survive your way of life your
way of life is indefensible and probably
should not be called a way of life but a
means of extraction or kind of psychic
fracking instead I'll just summarize
myself you know for because it's not
that easy to do the gist of it would be
something like this I don't know if you
get the feeling tone from what I'm saying
saying
but it's not joyous in the obvious sense
of the word I was talking about things
that are remarkably soul-stirring
but they're not reassuring there's a
different function there and it's the
animating force frankly is grief that's
what it is
it's why is it so friggin hard
can be said in a sentence or two what is
it about daily life that makes living
seems so impossible kind of thing not
what's wrong with us
but how has it come to pass that the
capacity to long has become something
that your life coach is trying to train
you away from as if it's a source of
your deep dissatisfaction with yourself
it is that's the point if you're
dissatisfied with yourself you're
starting to get the hang of things see
because the primacy of your personal
happiness you've already experimented
with that it's enough already
with being all you can be right the
world's not big enough for all of us
being all we could be how about
imagining our children being entitled to
much less than we had when we were their
age I'm just noticing our time Stephen
and I I'm wondering if there's something
to say about our children and our how to
join them and be of deep partners in
reestablishing some new ground here when
they're feeling the so many of them are
angry and feeling the paucity of what's
been left behind for them and seems that
I'd like to just maybe and with that
heart of the eldership theme yeah I'll try
try
I got a few kind of titular
grandchildren wandering around the farm
now which is to say that they're not my
biochemical spawn but I've been claimed
by their families and so on and it's
quite an honor but it's a kind of
diabolical honor in this time because my
obligation that seems to me now is to
proceed as if if not them then someone
of their generation should I still be
alive when there
their 20s or early 30s is going to come
to me with two questions and I hope they
do and they should and they better and
the first question goes like this when
you were my age did you know what was
happening and I'll tell you I'm fairly
sure that anybody who asked this
question in 30 or 40 years from now he's
going to hope that the answer is no
that's what they're relying upon more
than anything else it's a very strange
formulation you're asking a question did
you know and you're not very secretly
hoping that the older person you're
asking didn't know why because it's the
only answer you can live with why
because if they did know and things went
the way they went it means that the
older people you're asking didn't do
anything or didn't do enough based on
what they knew and the current regime is
proof positive that they didn't and
that's an unbearable thought to look
somebody in the eye and to realize their
dereliction of duty it must be very much
as it would have been in the generation
after the second war in Germany when
you're asking did you know what did you
do when everybody at the Nuremberg
trials is defending themselves by saying
they didn't know they only knew this
much that's and you know how likely is
that and so on I mean because it makes
you feel you're from literally
disreputable genetic material I mean the
shame of it is beyond describing I would
imagine so so did you know what was
happening when you were my age and I
think the only authentic answer has to
include the following even though the
technology was rather prosaic in my time
still the truth is that anybody who
didn't want to know what was happening
could have known but it is very clear
that not everybody wanted to know and so
not everybody did and that's what you
have to find a way to understand that
not everyone did want to know so not
everybody didn't know
and as far as I can tell things don't
seem to have changed so enormously and
the second question really no matter how
you went into the first one is
forthcoming and it goes like this so
what did you do and if we do not live
our lives as if these questions are
coming up the driveway in the form of a
younger person when that moment does
come if you have any shred of
self-respect before the question are
asked you'll have none after they're
asked or worse yeah so it's it's so it's
enlightened self-interest I'm pleading
for here among other things here's the
other thing though you know things have
changed in impalpable ways so fiercely
since I was 10 or 5 or 12 years old that
I think it's reasonable for anyone of my
age to look the camera squarely in the
eye and say I'm not sure that I have any
capacity to quote join with anyone
one-third my age of this juncture and
here's why because I don't think I have
the capacity he's been imaginatively to
occupy any chair similar to the one that
people in the 20s currently occupy as
they look towards the quote unquote near
future when I was that age I can tell
you that the sense of possibility was
palpable that if you just fill in the blank
blank
you could fill in the blank not only
matters you know as a matter of personal
fulfillment but you had a sense that
that large things could be taken on this
okay I don't believe there's even a
shred of that understanding available to
people in their 20s and their sense of
betrayal by a generation who sought
principally self expression self healing
you know self understanding self
aggrandizement a
unspeakable ok so then it seems to be
the moral responsibility of people my
age to see if they can shift their chair
enough to stop trying to quote
understand young people or see young
people for what they are and how they
feel about things and so on and shift
their gaze by some degree to see whether
or not they can bear to see what young
people are seeing and I'm not using that
formulation to arbitrary elevate the the
kind of allegations of wisdom of young
people because I don't think that's
there but I am saying they are on the
receiving end of a deeply blemished
operation and the blemish occurred on the watch of the people my age and older
the watch of the people my age and older that's a demographic fact and it's
that's a demographic fact and it's indisputable and so the moral
indisputable and so the moral arrangement of our time has to include
arrangement of our time has to include the willingness of older people to fess
the willingness of older people to fess up and I can tell you having been on the
up and I can tell you having been on the road with come of age for more than a
road with come of age for more than a year now that the general feeling
year now that the general feeling amongst older people the general
amongst older people the general willingness to see themselves as
willingness to see themselves as somewhat indicted by the things they
somewhat indicted by the things they themselves disapprove of its own menial
themselves disapprove of its own menial and so minimal that it frankly shames me
and so minimal that it frankly shames me and I'm not persuaded that I have an
and I'm not persuaded that I have an enduring obligation to continue to
enduring obligation to continue to engage people in my generation and older
engage people in my generation and older in these matters
in these matters when their reactivity is so self-serving
when their reactivity is so self-serving so defensive and so unwilling to know
so defensive and so unwilling to know things for what they are it's a terrible
things for what they are it's a terrible thing to report and I know you didn't
thing to report and I know you didn't want to end on that but you know
want to end on that but you know realistically speaking that's the other
realistically speaking that's the other half of how are we going to form some
half of how are we going to form some kind of I don't know a kind of heart
kind of I don't know a kind of heart level affiliation with the people young
level affiliation with the people young people that we have not served well as
people that we have not served well as we tried to be all we could be my answer
we tried to be all we could be my answer is
is if you do not begin with the poverties
if you do not begin with the poverties that are the current order then your
that are the current order then your solutions just carry the germ of what
solutions just carry the germ of what generated the poverties in the first
generated the poverties in the first place and that's my plea and so far
place and that's my plea and so far there's not that many takers that's
there's not that many takers that's great thank you thank you thank you very
great thank you thank you thank you very much it's a great place to leave it and
much it's a great place to leave it and to ponder in my heart thank you thank
to ponder in my heart thank you thank you for the invitation to
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