215 / Transitions: There Is Infinite Hope, But Not For Us / Barbara Cecil + Dahr Jamail
In this episode, I speak with Barbara Cecil and Dahr Jamail, co-authors of the How Then Shall We Live? series published at Truthout.
An excerpt:
What I've learned is when you really listen, and I mean go really quiet — put all the mental jargon aside and just get really quiet and really, really humble and really listen to the Earth — then I believe that each one of us is going to get our own personal marching orders of “here's what you're going to do, here's what I need you to do.” That's where I've gotten my messages to go to Iraq, to do the book that I did with 'The End of Ice,’ and so many other big decisions in my life — and small ones. When I go out there, I listen and I get this clear message, and I always know what to do. And I really believe that now is that time for people to — don't run around and panic. Don't light your hair on fire. Don't go out and see what other ten more things you can do, or how many articles you can forward and all this. But just stop and get really, really quiet and touch down into the Earth and really listen and see what comes up into your heart. When you ask: “What is it that I need to do to really serve this planet?" — because I think if we do that, and in the proper context of understanding that it is too late….
You're not going to get all that heat out of the oceans. The oceans have absorbed ninety-three percent of the heat we've put into the atmosphere. That heat is staying there and it's increasing and it's not going to go away. We're not going to turn this thing around.
In the context of knowing the great loss that's now upon us what is the most important thing for me to do? And for some people it might be "I need to play music,” and that's great because God knows we need music right now. And for some people it might mean "I'm going to write a book.” Barbara and my good friend Colin MacIntosh just went and got arrested, and he's in Extinction Rebellion. All power to him. To other people it might mean we're going to go shut this fucking shit down once and for all. Great. Please do.
But my point is that if you really listen in closely and get that call for what you need to do, and understand that it's in the context that we really have nothing left to lose — I would argue that that's going to generate an activism and actions taken from love that could never happen in the context of "oh do this because this book tells you to do it,” or "go to this march because we're organizing it,” and "we have a permit on this date we're going to do this….”
I'm talking about doing things way more radical and way further outside of the box than a lot of this stuff that we see happening right now. I'm talking about real risk.
Bios:
Barbara Cecil is the author of Coming Into Your Own: A Woman's Guide Through Life Transitions. Barbara Cecil’s Master’s degree in speech communication and human relations has supported her in her calling to assist individuals, groups, teams, and organizations toward the full manifestation of their creative potential.
Dahr Jamail is an award-winning journalist who (formerly) reported on climate disruption and environmental issues for the online publication Truthout. Dahr is the author of multiple books, including The End Of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption.
Episode Notes:
- Read Barbara and Dahr's 'How Then Shall We Live?' series: http://bit.ly/2M2g9Ek
- Barbara's work: http://endingsandbeginnings.com
- Dahr's work: http://www.dahrjamail.net
- The song featured is “Wolves” by Down Like Silver from their self-titled EP.
This transcript was fact-checked and edited for clarity and length by Trish Reader.
Patrick Farnsworth: First, I want to thank both of you for being with me. I've been up here [ in northern Washington state] for a couple of weeks, and I’ve come to know Barbara quite a bit. And of course Dahr, your generosity has been incredible. So I sit here in gratitude for having the opportunity to sit with both of you and have this interview. Thank you both for allowing me to inhabit your space. Thank you.
Dahr, this is our fifth interview. You're definitely at the top next to one other person that I've had on the podcast, so I was thinking it's kind of funny, but you and I have developed a relationship. So it makes sense to keep on doing these updates with the podcast.
We've swung back and forth with interviews where we're talking more about the data of climate change, climate disruption, and then going back to how do we be in this time, the awareness, the grief that comes up and all that comes in when you start to really take in the science of it. The last interview we did was only a couple months ago. In that, we discussed more of the data, I think.
So, this is appropriate. We're swinging back to the other side, and of course now we have Barbara — this is your first time on the podcast. So I think we're going to have a really good, dynamic group discussion.
I know both of you have collaborated quite a bit. You have a series that you've been doing together for Truthout, the How Then Shall We Live? series.
I’d like to start with Dahr first because this has been a year, at least for me, of transitions. And of course Barbara you're kind of an expert in transitions, life transitions. Dahr, if you could comment, in whatever amount of detail you feel comfortable, about some of the transitions you've experienced with your work in journalism and maybe other personal experiences. That would set the tone for the interview, I think.
Dahr Jamail: Thanks Patrick. And I'll just add it's been lovely having you here and you feel like family. It's been a real joy and a very settling experience. I'm grateful that what started as a lone interview on your podcast has turned into not just a good strong series of production of work, but a friendship. So I'll also preface this on a lighter note that Barbara's dog Koa is sitting right here. If people hear a little heavy breathing in the background, it’s just our emotional support dog, Koa, snoring.
Patrick: The last time we spoke in-person in January, our support dog was Rob's dog Sage in the interview with us.
Dahr: That's the theme. We can't do in-person interviews without an emotional support dog.
Patrick: We need a cute animal to keep it in focus.
Dahr: Keep it real.
Patrick: Keep it centered.
Dahr: So changing the tone dramatically on a dime, I've been working as a journalist for 16 years. I got into it passionately, with reckless abandon, throwing myself into the Iraq occupation and reported on that for a long time. And then I’ve been on the climate beat now for a solid nine years. For a long time I've really felt done and felt I've covered this from so many different angles. And what I realized was…
Well, I'll back up by contextualizing it with what happened to me in Iraq and why I knew it was time for me to leave. My coverage of that was… I'd covered it so extensively from every imaginable angle and then started noticing that I was doing the same stories over and over and the only thing that was changing was adjusting upwards the body counts. And that takes an emotional toll, as well as feeling my contributions are done. I'd covered it from every way I know, repeatedly, and knew it was time for me to do something else. So I moved on. Plus, I always knew the climate story was one that I really wanted to cover.
And so, I've had a similar experience with the climate beat, where I've covered it from every possible angle that I can, culminating after five years of climate dispatches for Truthout and then this book The End of Ice, which Barbara edited. I feel everything I have to contribute on this topic is in the book. The only way I could improve upon the book would be to go back in and update some of the figures as time goes by. It's a strong collection of work and I don't have anything else to add. That's where I was coming into this time, and knew it was time for me to move on as a journalist. I'm finished being a journalist. I don't feel like I can contribute more in that way. It's time for me to do something else.
This was already in motion and I had actually given Truthout one month notice a few weeks ago, and so as we speak I'm officially finished as a journalist. By the time this airs, it will be made public to our readers, but it hasn't been made so public yet while we're talking.
Barbara and I will continue our column, however, but I'm going into something else.
Literally in this last week of my work as a journalist, my best friend of 23 years, Duane French, passed away. I had the honor of sitting with him by his bedside when he took his last breath after his long battle with cancer.
Both of these things happening, overlapping, have been a huge transition in my life. That was a friendship of 23 years — and a journalism career of 16 years. And so I've had a lot of direct, personal, visceral experience in loss and death and letting go. It's extremely poignant and I do not question the timing, and it's perfect practice for me in these times.
And, my joke since Barbara and I came up with the title of our column [How Then Shall We Live?], I'm getting to really walk my talk and I'm being forced to practice that now, and it's hard as hell because you've been here with me and I have times when I just don't want to get out of bed, and I’ve been in some pretty dark places at times inside. And it's all against the backdrop of the global apocalypse, of the climate apocalypse, of the political apocalypse, of all of this… massive loss. It is the age of loss.
And so, that's the context I'm bringing in personally to this conversation today.
Patrick: Okay, thank you for sharing that. And Barbara I think this dynamic of transition on the personal level, whether it's endings with death, or maybe the ending of a relationship, or the ending of a career, or all the transitions human beings inevitably go through… that are happening on the micro level, on the individual level. But there’s something happening globally right now that’s also asking us to accept endings. In your perspective, how can we learn from the personal side of this and then integrate that into a deeper understanding of what's happening to our biosphere?
Barbara Cecil: I do a lot of coaching work with people who are in the process of changing and shifting from one thing to another at thresholds in their life, and that usually is triggered by an ending. And I like how you've described the parallels at a giant ending of capitalism, of Western civilization. What I notice in my mind when I read about all this, I know that it’s going on and I actually accept that, and sometimes I'm rather excited by that, and I know it's right because the seeds were planted along the way and it is inevitable. But I think the things I feel most intensely are the endings that happen in close, and they all get melded into one thing.
What I'm noticing… a couple of years ago I could not live in the town I’d lived in for 20 years. I needed to be on different ground. I couldn’t explain it. There was a need for me, at this stage of my life, to connect to the Earth. And that was not my Earth. I had a lot of justification for leaving that had to do with smoke and fires in the area, climate related things. But deeper down, underneath, I knew I needed a new setting and a new place to have a real, reciprocal, deep relationship with the Earth. And that's how I got here to Port Townsend.
So, I think many people are being moved to end things that no longer serve, that don't feel right, that were initiated on a wrong basis that serves ego, that serves who we used to be and not who we are becoming. So there's the need to make changes. Whether they make sense or not. And I think part of my job is to be holding that perspective where there is a multi-level transition going on, that will have deep personal impact, when we need the ability to put our arms around it for what it is. And listen underneath the chaos and the deep angst for actually what's trying to come through, or to be born, to manifest — in this particular time.
Patrick: Thank you Barbara.
Dahr, when you talked about being at your friend's side as he's dying, you had a choice that you told me about. It's the choice that many people have when their loved one is dying and they have to make decisions, or the person — if they're able to make decisions themselves as they're dying — of whether they should do all the extremely intense procedures, surgeries, whatever sort of treatments are thrown at them by the modern medical system — to give them more time. And then the choice of living in it. It can be denial of what's happening. That's how it can manifest often, even if it's just a few more days of life. People will go through incredible pain and stress and difficulty just to give that person just a few more days of life, regardless of the quality of those last days.
This is not even acknowledged or brought into the discussion, because if you bring it up, then what is more time really going to bring to us? Is it going to be quality [time]? Is it going to be serving that person ultimately through the transition into death? Or is it serving something else? That was something you said that really struck me when you were talking about being there with your friend, and that you had to make a decision for yourself: Am I going to be present, totally present, with this person as they pass? And in that work you've done for so long on the climate and seeing it for what it really is, what are the parallels there?
Dahr: Right. So what happened with Duane was he had stage-four bladder cancer and he went through chemo. He was told if the chemo worked they could go in and essentially remove the bladder and several other organs with cancer. It would require reconstructive surgery.
And, this is a guy who's been a quadriplegic for 51 years. He went into this surgery weighing 75 pounds. So this is a really big deal, right? To call him a tenacious individual was to put it lightly. I've seen this guy literally resurrect himself from the dead before. And so it seemed like a bleak prospect to begin with, but if anyone was going to make it through this, it was going to be him.
So he goes through the surgery, and the surgery was successful. However, when [the doctors] were in there, they found a whole new cancer that hadn't shown up on the scans; it was squamous cell and impervious to chemo. So they sew him back up and give us this news.
They said things like, “Well, you know we're very concerned but the next step is: he recovers from the surgery, and then he goes home, and then we look at possible clinical trials, or immunotherapy, etc., etc.” Basically they start throwing Hail Marys at it. And then it comes down to what you mentioned — a question of quality of life. But before it got to the point of having to make those kinds of decisions, Duane wasn’t recovering from the surgery and had to wear a breathing mask. And then literally a decision was made by Duane himself. So, with myself and his partner and the doctor present, we took off the breathing mask which was essentially what was keeping him alive.
Although he was suffering mightily, he said, “No more mask, no more mask.”
And we all knew exactly what that meant. And so, then it was just make him comfortable and sit with him. And so that's what we did. And it was absolutely profound for me to just be there and be present for my friend.
Then it hit a point where the doctors said, “Well, he's gone now. He can't hear you. This is just his body.” But I knew he could hear me and I kept talking to him, and there were several things that happened which confirmed to me without a doubt he heard me. I kept telling him, “It's okay, you're finished here. You've done everything you came to do. You can go anytime you want. Now feel free to go. We're gonna be okay.” You know? And I kept telling him, and I kept telling him that — and when the time of his choosing came, and it was without a doubt to his choosing, he went.
However, I should tell the whole story because it's pretty remarkable… in that he was moved up to another room, essentially a transition room, for hospice, and we were hoping to get him home the next day so he could die in his own bed. We got him up into his room. And then his partner [Kelly], Kelly’s daughter, and son-in-law, were flying in. As this was happening, I kept telling him, “We're getting you up to this room. Kelly's gonna go get the kids and bring them up, and all y'all are going to have some time together. And then they're going to take her home because we’re all exhausted. I'm going to be with you until 9 PM at which time your other friend, Sukum, is going to come and sit with you through the night. And then tomorrow we're all going to be back up here, and we're going to get you home.”
That’s how I kept him abreast. They came up, they had their visit, they left. I updated him: “Okay, they're heading home and I'm with you now. Sukum's going to show up at 9 PM and then she'll be with you through the night, and we'll all be here tomorrow.” Again, I told him, “It's okay to go anytime you want.” About two hours after Kelly and the kids left, he went into apneic breathing. As I sat with him and told him again, “It's okay to go. I love you. It's okay to go.” And, he went.
The next day, when I got down there, I learned: they all had got home, Kelly did a couple of things and got comfortable and then they all met in the living room — and right when they sat down, like that minute, was when I called Kelly to let her know that Duane had passed.
No coincidences. And you know, it was a great honor for me to do that. It was also very clearly the time to let go. It was time. To help him let go.
And, I feel there was a deep, very personal experience for me of where we are on the planet. It really brought down the climate crisis for me to a level that made it that much more real. Right now we're losing 200 species a day, and this is only going to accelerate. The report which came out earlier this week said the US has lost something like a third of its bird population.
Patrick: Nearly three billion birds have disappeared in the past several decades.
Dahr: Right. So we're staring it in the face, you know? These reports are coming out every other day now.
So, I got to do that with my best friend. But if we're going to be less human supremacists and look at these other species, then we're getting to do this every day. If we really look closely enough and take in what this means, from where things are looking today, with all my analyses and everything I've learned from my climate reporting, it's really hard to see how humans make it through this. I'm not saying that's a guarantee, but it's really hard to see humans making it through this. That's the kind of stuff we all have to get our head around.
And so it comes down to: How then shall we live? How are we going to use this time we're still here? We all still have work to do. How are we going to use that time? To me now, that is more in focus than it's ever been in my entire life. How am I going to use this time, how am I going to employ the things I've learned from my friend and from that experience of helping him die?
Patrick: Thank you for sharing that. Barbara did you have any thoughts on that? Anything that came up when Dahr shared that?
Barbara: I think I'm into listening. I can appreciate really deeply where I've had the privilege of walking with Dahr in this particular passage, and I appreciate the depths to which he's dropped in himself and the wisdom that's rising in the space of the grief.
Patrick: Can I ask something? Because I think people are afraid of the wisdom that can arise from the grief. Do you think there is something about the denial of accepting the grieving process, and letting it come in? That does tie to the climate movement or the sort of activism that sprung up around climate change. In a sense there isn't room for grief. It's all about action. Right?
Barbara: Yes. Underneath there is a fear that if you go into the grief you're going to get stuck. That there's nothing on the other side of it.
I think it's really important, probably the greatest service many of us can provide at this time, those who have a rich experience of life and having actually gone through endings and let themselves feel them, and feel the phase after that — they provide reassurance to others terrified of admitting where we are, because they're terrified of the feelings.
I feel like my service at this particular time is being a basket, or a place of sanctuary and reassurance for people who are out there doing every possible thing they can with their lives on the line, knowing they're going to hit a wall and the realization that this is too little, too late. Incremental change isn't going to do it. Political action in the way they’re seeing it, isn't going to do it. And when you hit the reality of that, there's usually some level of depression, and that's when we really need one another. That's when our spiritual fiber is needed. And that's where there’s some level of real living and everything that's not important drops away. There is a quality of intimacy and love between people with the Earth that begins to show itself amidst the the waves of realization and as the news comes in. And it's not like you go through grief once, it’s an iterative process.
If you pay attention at all, there is a kindness and an understanding and a beauty in the intimacy that's possible here. And strangely enough, there is some level of fulfillment because instead of doing this and fixing that and flexing our muscles — there is a quality of listening and being that starts coming into the picture where some deeper part of our nature begins to come out. And I believe part of our nature rests more easily in the web of life, where our mental supremacy begins to fade as we realize that we can't think our way out of this or act our way out of this. A humility begins to set in. And then there's some sense of a new kind of belonging. And a new sense of time and a new sense of connection to ancestors, and a new experience of what it means to be human.
Patrick: So there's something on the other side of grief. There's something that comes out of it, that’s extremely necessary and valuable in the time we're in.
Barbara: That's my experience.
Patrick: It's your experience, okay. Have either of you seen the film, My Dinner with André?
Barbara: Yes, I remember it very well.
Patrick: It's a film [showing] two old friends sitting, having dinner in a restaurant in New York. And they're talking about their life experiences and it's really profound. One of the characters, André, is grieving at this point in his life and he is explaining it [to his friend, Wally]. I think it's a similar thing, where his mother is in hospital and she’s dying, and he describes the doctor coming in and looking at her and saying, “Oh yeah, [her arm] is healing up just fine.” But the doctor wasn't able to see the patient as somebody who was dying, and it was so obvious to the family — that everybody who was really seeing, really listening, really present, could see this person was dying. And André said something like, “That doctor is a kind of butcher,” a murderer — because he came in and tried to impose a false world-view on everybody, that everything is fine and everything's going according to plan, and this person is healing up when it was so apparent and obvious to everybody in the room that was not the case.
And in that part of the film when André is speaking, he's viscerally angry thinking about it. He talks about going out and the world being very raw, and everyone wants to chit-chat with him and they're not seeing him as he really is. Until finally somebody sees him and says, “My God, what happened?” And he tells them his grandparent died or however it was; and he says she was the only person who could really see me because she herself was also in a state of grief for some other reason and had experienced that.
And so, I think I want to talk a bit about this today. There've been massive climate marches and climate strikes happening today. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands… millions around the world in various cities are protesting, demanding some sort of change. Whatever that is.
And I would like Dahr, if you could, to speak to that. It's beautiful in a certain way, but in there is something like a denial. And what I wanted to bring up, however much you wanted to express this side of yourself — coming out against the hopers. Coming out against the people who are really trying, like I described that doctor as the butcher, to put a veil over everything and say, “We still have time. Keep on pushing harder. Keep on pushing and we'll save the world.”
Dahr: I have a lot of thoughts about that. What you shared about My Dinner With André is extremely poignant because that's what I just experienced. There was a point when it was clear my friend Duane was gone and it was just a matter of time, and helping his body let go. And yet, the doctor would walk into the ICU, “Okay we're gonna do this now.” And I had a sudden realization, looking at [my friend], knowing he had cancer all through his body and had just come out of an intensely traumatic surgery, and [the doctor] coming in and treating him saying, “Okay. We're going to do this now, and then we're gonna do this. And then tomorrow if that doesn't work out, we can do this.”
And I had suddenly realized they're treating him like a piece of meat — not like he's human, not factoring in his age and what he's already been through and what this means. And what this means for the people who love him. It was all about keep him alive no matter what even if it's just for another day, without really appreciating the magnitude of the situation, which is — this is his last stage.
This is a rare, precious time, where we're going to have these experiences and come out with a new wisdom that Barbara just talked about. And they’re just missing that whole thing because we're all hell-bent; we're going to use Western medicine, and we're going to do this technique next and then this drug. And, it felt like — you missed the whole thing, you missed the whole point.
For me, having just hung up really my journalism saddle and knowing that I've contributed what I can with this book [The End of Ice], and I feel like it's a book that will become even more pertinent with time — but that I have nothing left to say. I understand deeply in my body what it means to be on a planet where the life-support systems of the planet are dying. And while they're dying, what's left of them are being killed off as fast as possible by global governments.
Then we have, I think, the majority of the people, even in the climate movement, who don't really understand that, and don't really get what it means. Because for those who don't really get it and still think, “Oh, the Green New Deal.”
You know Naomi Klein's book just came out [On Fire: The (Burning) Case for the Green New Deal], and you still see the lingo, save the planet, or we still have 10 years or 11 years — and that you have to have hope.
In my conversations with people who understand what's going on, they say, “No, you can't just give people this hard information — because they'll lose hope.” To me as a journalist and as a writer and as a truth-teller, that's the antithesis of everything that I'm about. It's completely unethical and immoral. To me, it would be like going up to my friend Duane, saying, “No, you don't… well, okay, you might have stage-four cancer but there's this and this, and you're going to be just fine.” Or, in the analogy I used with some of the folks in the climate movement, not even telling them they have stage-four cancer. You know? If you were a doctor you'd be buried in lawsuits. You wouldn't be a doctor for long if that was your approach.
And yet we have people in the climate movement making a killing selling hope, and I think it's the worst kind of snake oil at this point and it's robbing people of the deep experience to really understand the gravity of the moment and let that inform whatever actions they're going to take — because if it was done in the proper context, these marches and the climate strike, and the students and what they're doing today, is magnificent and it's beautiful and it's powerful. Then, it's, “Hey, these kids, these people, are wanting to go out on their feet!” You know? They're going to be able to look back at this and say, “Yeah, we knew this was going on and this is what we did. And we did it though we knew things were probably already all lost, and we did it anyway. Because it's the right thing to do.” That is the height of morality. That is the height of dignity and integrity.
Instead, how many of these kids are doing it because they think there's still 10 years because Naomi Klein said so, or there's still the Green New Deal and there's still hope when the Green New Deal is just capitalism with a green leaf on it — which is still the system that's brought us to this point of extinction. So there's a huge divergence, really a philosophical and perceptual difference. It’s amazing to be on one side of it and looking at the other side of it — and they might feel as amazed. And so I get accused of being a doomer when all I've done is tell the truth. There's 21 pages of citations in my book, but how many times has the kill the messenger onslaught been at my doorstep when all I'm doing is citing scientists and scientific studies. That's the reaction that one gets when trying to tell the truth amidst a political climate in this country on the left, of a soft denialism. I think what's at stake is literally, are you going to be honest with people and let them have the experience and make the choices that we each get to make — staring death in the face, and then deciding from that point, honestly, how we want to live our lives.
Another analogy that I’ve used: I've worked as a guide up on Denali [formerly known as Mount McKinley, Alaska], and I’m responsible for a crew of people at High Camp at 17,200 feet. So, I’m getting the nightly weather report from NOAA [US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration] that says we've got the biggest storm in history ever coming, we've never seen a storm like this, it's coming so fast — and you guys can't descend. So you're there, and you do whatever you need to do. And then, I get a choice — if I'm going to be peddling snake oil and false hope, maybe I wouldn't tell people this big storm is coming, or maybe I would say, “Hey this storm's coming, but I think we're going to be okay if we do X, Y and Z, and if we change a few things, or we do a few things differently…”
Or, would it be more responsible for me to say, point blank, “Okay, here's what I know. NOAA just said the biggest storm ever, off all the charts, is coming — so here's what we're gonna do. I don't know about you guys, but let's give it a go and see if we can make it through this. So Patrick, you're going to start reinforcing snow walls. Barbara, you're going to double pull the tents. So and so over here is going to check our provisions. And we're going to hunker in and get really dialed in, and then we're going to sit and enjoy and appreciate each other's company and get ready for what's coming.”
That's what I hope would be the scenario that everybody would take.
I think that’s what's upon us. And I could keep going on and on. This is a very important question, but I think I've spoken long enough.
Patrick: Barbara, we were talking earlier about an article published in The New Yorker by novelist Jonathan Franzen, What If We Stop Pretending? It's about the climate apocalypse. We talked about it [earlier] and didn't find much fault in the article and its conclusions. But speaking of those who peddle hope, their reaction was immediate and it was fierce. They asked, “How dare you use your huge platform to tell us that we have no hope?” In that, we're already in this runaway climate change situation — and the clampdown, or the reaction, was massive and very fast.
What did that speak to you about the state of, maybe not just activism’s, but the general population's softer denialism that Dahr spoke to? It's on the left, where they accept the science of climate change up to a point. Right? You see many of the major climate activists out there, Naomi Klein or whomever, say trust the science. And trust the science always brings that point up. And I think, practice what you preach. Science is showing, and Dahr said this in an interview just the other day — we have three degrees [C] of warming baked-in right now. What kind of planet is there going to be for us as a species? Or other life on this planet? That's going to happen regardless of what we do.
So, the responsibility, ff you want to speak to that. Some of these people have to be honest and speak to the truth of it.
Barbara: Speaking about that article and the reactions, I was more interested in the intensity and the timing of the reactions than the content of the reactions because it was like a microcosm of what happens. Some kind of terror about actually taking in what the guy said and listening to what was underneath it. There was very little space to consider it, to reflect on why it pushed my buttons so badly. Like, what is it in me that just went crazy listening to this thing?
So, the space to actually digest and consider and to be open to something was foreclosed so bloody fast by most people. And many people who were peddling hope as Dahr's described so articulately, I think it's a way of being that refuses to live in the spaces, that is so addicted to taking action and fixing things. There isn't any space to let go, to release a lot of the beliefs we have and a lot of the assumptions that we have about living. To go down. To appreciate the dark. To encounter uncertainty. To grow up.
Patrick: Grow up. Yeah.
Barbara: And live from a different place in ourselves.
Patrick: Yeah, I agree. And I think that speaks to how quickly the reactions were. It speaks to what you're saying about finding those spaces in between, analyzing or trying to really feel what's being triggered in people. What is that speaking to?
Barbara: Well, I know what I'm craving right now is space to feel and think together. I just know that I have a great, big aversion to words right now. And sometimes I can't find my own.
Patrick: And here you are, talking with us.
Barbara: Yeah I know, and I had some resistance to even doing this…
Patrick: I had to twist your arm a little bit.
Barbara: Because I get sick of this big long spew of people's opinions. Okay here's your opinion, and here's your opinion, and it’s dizzy making! A lot of it is just about ego, and a lot of it is about winning.
I want to sit down at the dinner table and pray together. I want to give thanks together. I want to go quiet. I want to hear what's going on in the depths of your heart. I want to make space for me to change, for me to be wrong, for me to feel — and all of that requires a different kind of pacing. And serial sound bites, the onslaught of news —we’re trained into a loss of personal authority.
The very worst of the whole thing… we have this fascist authoritarian wave running through the world. And for me the question really comes… we're going to be subject to everything on the outside of us unless we hit our own authority. Unless these kind of spaces are opened in our conversations and our spiritual practices, in the way we live our lives, where a different level of knowing comes. And that's the opportunity of this time.
Patrick: Sometimes I try to not give what we're going through collectively an intelligence. That’s to say climate catastrophe, ecological disintegration, social unrest, everything that's coming and is currently manifesting. I don't want to give it some sort of life in-and-of itself, as if this force is asking something of us. Because I think we are a meaning-generating species and we use narratives to explain ourselves.
But if this were to speak to something, if we were to find meaning… as the subtitle of your book, Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, Dahr, what is that meaning? What is it really speaking to, here? To me, it can be framed in a very cynical or negative way which may serve a certain purpose up to a point, but I think as you're saying Barbara, getting to that deep place — it's asking us to accept something. In your explorations in the subject what are these crises asking of us?
Dahr: That's a huge question, and it's a great question. I'll bring it back to what I just went through with my friend Duane, which is, at the end of the day, when all is lost and there's nothing left, it comes down to: I love this guy and I'm going to be there and be as present with him as I know how to be. It’s in the intensity of presence that I experienced in how much I loved him in those last days — and I'm still recovering. I’d slept 11 hours last night and I'm still tired. The intensity of presence I had bestowed upon him, just being there with him and for him, was a real gift. And I've never experienced anything like that.
And it comes down to love… I love him. He'll be gone any minute now. And so I am going to just be there with him as fully with every cell of my being as I can. It comes down to love and service.
And it’s that way now with the planet. In the wake of his passing, I already knew this intellectually before that happened, but now I know in my heart that’s why — why I have a compulsion to be out in the mountains as much as I can. It’s because I love it. That's my favorite part of nature and I love it and I want to be out in it as much as I can, because I know the glaciers that I see when I go into the Olympics or the Cascades are going to be gone, many of them within my lifetime. All of them probably before 2100. But they're still here, so I want to go and appreciate them, and be with them, and marvel at them, and have awe when I look at them. It's because I love them and I love that part of the Earth.
The bearing witness part of my subtitle comes from: it is our moral responsibility to bear witness to these things as they're going away, because that's a way to love them. Then the finding meaning part comes in, “How can I still be of service while they're still here?” And after they're gone, “How can I still be of service?”
I've had different things come up for me in the wake of my friend's death and I've struggled with a couple of them, some regrets, and what I might have done differently. I've had some great conversations with Barbara that have helped a lot, and with some other friends.
Our mutual friend, Stan Rushworth, who you're definitely going to have on this podcast, he’s an elder of Cherokee descent, and he affirmed for me: “You were there. You gave [Duane] your utter, complete and perfect presence, and there's nothing else you can do beyond that.”
The other thing Stan said that really helped a lot was all this other stuff, and he wasn't talking just about Duane, but about all this other stuff that people do and everything else that we do in our lives and the fights we get into, and the disagreements and the opinions and all that — and he said, “Man, that's all just a bunch of fucking horseshit.” Because when you get all the way down to it, the only thing that matters is how we're going to treat each other. Are we going to treat each other well, are we going to be kind to each other and love each other, or not? All that other stuff is just bullshit and digressions and a complete and utter waste of time — because if you're living your life the right way, it's all going to come down to: how can I be a better person, and that means how can I treat other people better.
Patrick: That reminds me of a line from Joanna Macy. What did she say about that?
Dahr: Yeah, she was asked in a really poignant interview, quite a ways back: “So Joanna, why do you keep doing this work?” And she said, “I’m doing this work so that when things fall apart, we will not turn on each other.”
Patrick: Do you have anything Barbara? You write notes while Dahr is talking. I feel like you're going to have something to say, but not necessarily. [laughing]
Barbara: I think Dahr is cutting to the chase. There are some things to do in this time, in this window. When you ask about meaning, I think each person will find, if they're really listening, for what's theirs to heal. To restore. To remember… so they can get down to the core truth of themselves.
For me, of late, I'm glad that Dahr brought up Stan, because there's something to reckon with about how we got here. There is some need in me to take some ownership of what's happened in the past, where a deep separation from the true, deep and real self, that Dahr's talking about.
And I think that's part of the work of this time. I don't believe we're at the apex of civilization, I think we've fallen to this level. I think a lot of this is a big mistake, not some wondrous manifestation of great human accomplishment. What's happening now is because of the seeds that were planted historically, and the work and the muscle that's needed from some people to look — square in the face — at what happened in this country.
This country was built on genocide. In the history of California, 16,000 Native Americans were deliberately killed because they were in the way of the gold rush and the settlement by white people who wanted to come in and claim the paradise that had been there for [tens of] thousands of years under the care of the Native Americans.
So something went awry. And part of bringing something back into balance in ourselves, and in our relationship to this Earth, is to see what we did and to understand how the greed and the control and the need for security is endemic. In my own thinking, I learned it in my own education, it’s everywhere and beginning to find some perspective. All of that feels really important when you ask: “Where's the meaning in this time?”
Patrick: Yeah, I feel that completely as well, and I've tried my best to explore that in my own way. Did you want to say something, Dahr?
Dahr: Continuing on the track Barbara was just on, I concluded my book by talking about this — and it's something that I was reminded of, from Stan the elder — the importance of listening. And the three of us have been taught this, and it’s been one of the themes of conversation we've all been having since you've been up here Patrick, and that I learned through working with Stan, that the reason I have always gone into the mountains is because that's where I go to listen. That's where I go to get quiet, and I get humbled and I have awe of what's around me. To know my place in the world. And then I'm able to listen. Because when I'm up there, it's very easy for me to comport myself the right way. It's like, you're going to have proper respect or you're going to pay for it dearly, really quick, if you go out ill-prepared, if you try to go up and you're not prepared for it… in the mountains. And so I listen…
One of the things I've been talking about in my book talks, and sometimes in interviews, is that people ask, “What do we do? What should we do?” And, it's one part of the whole climate mobilization, I think… part of the dinosaur that Barbara just alluded to… part of an hierarchical, patriarchal system of having someone else tell us what to do. Needing to have a leader, when right now all systems have failed. All systems have failed. All systems being settler-colonial, global capitalist, control-over… are being separated from the Earth's systems. I mean, just the hubris and the sheer arrogance in that statement, how we can still save the Earth. It’s repulsive.
Patrick: And I think what they're saying isn't the Earth. They're talking about our civilization and capitalism.
Dahr: They are, to be more specific, yes. And so, what I've learned is when you really listen, and I mean go really quiet, put all the mental jargon aside and just get really quiet and really humble and really listen to the Earth, then I believe that each one of us is going to get our own personal marching orders of, “Okay, here's what you're going to do. Here's what I need you to do.”
That's where I've gotten my messages: to go to Iraq, to do the book that I did with The End of Ice, and so many other big decisions in my life, and the small ones. When I go out there, I listen and I get this clear message and I always know what to do. And I really believe that now is that time for people to not run around and panic. Don't light your hair on fire. Don't go out and see what other ten more things you can do, or how many articles you can forward in all this. But just stop, and get really, really quiet and touch down into the Earth and really listen and see what comes up into your heart — when you ask, “What is it that I need to do, to really serve this planet?”
Because, if we do that, and in the proper context of understanding that it is too late — you're not going to get all that heat out of the oceans. The oceans absorb 93 percent of the heat we've put into the atmosphere. That heat is staying there and it's increasing and it's not going to go away. We're not going to turn this thing around. And so, in the context of knowing the great loss that's now upon us — what is the most important thing for me to do? And for some people it might be, I need to play music, and that's great, because God knows we need music right now. And for some people it might mean, I'm going to write a book, and for some people it might mean… You know, Barbara’s and my good friend Colin McIntosh just went and got arrested, and he's in Extinction Rebellion — all the power to him. To other people it might mean we're going to go shut this fucking shit down once and for all. Great, please do.
My point is, if you really listen closely and get that call, and understand that it's in the context that we really have nothing left to lose, I would argue that it’s going to generate an activism and actions taken from love that could never happen in the context of — do this because this book tells you to do it, or go to this march because we're organizing it and we have a permit on the date we're going to do this. I'm talking about doing things way more radical and way further outside of the box than a lot of stuff we see happening right now. I'm talking about real risk.
Patrick: I am on board.
Barbara: Yes, and just to say, the other day we were talking and the one liner we came up with that “hope is fundamentally an avoidance of an essential risk that needs to be taken,” and that risk is different for every person. But that hope occludes the radical act of love, of choice, of being sourced from within, to do something that may not fit at all. And in that case, I think the sum total of a lot of radical acts of risk is pretty spectacular. Could be.
Dahr: I think this is an idea that's going to be pretty different and new for a lot of people. Can you maybe talk a bit more about how does having hope occludes risk, or how does it stand in the way? Can you just unpack that a little bit?
Patrick: Yeah it seems like a foreign idea for many people. They see hope as being a facilitator for right action and from a good place. And having optimism is always the right way to go. How does it occlude what you're discussing now?
Barbara: Okay now I have to think for a second…
Patrick: So I think the theme of this has been pauses and taking moments to listen. So take as long as you need.
Barbara: I know that we're onto something because I'm sweating and I can tell you that right off the bat my hands are just absolutely soaked and freezing.
Patrick: If we were filming this you'd just see Barbara just drenched in sweat right now. It would just be pouring off of her.
Barbara: [laughing]
Dahr: She needs a sweat band. [laughing]
Patrick: This is a sport, yeah.
Barbara: Well, I'm looking out the window right now and aware there is a young man who has left his career as a librarian at Sonoma State University. He had a very good job. His mother was a librarian so he was really cool with his family.
He came to a point where it was unbearable: the politics in the situation and the fit for his spirit, and the misfit of focus for this time. And he picked up with his partner and moved up here and is living in a what looks like a Civil War tent that they have kitted out with a stove. They're going to weather the winter in it. And he is learning permaculture.
Not everybody needs to take this risk. Not everybody can take this risk. But I have a feeling there is a risk for everyone because business as usual has gotten us into the mess we're in. And if hope somehow relates in any way to the continuance of business as usual, we will not see the risks we need to take to change course; because where we are, I don't believe is an expression of the true human spirit. Somewhere we diverted and to get back on track means following some other kind of impulse.
That's what comes right now. There will probably be more here in a second but I'm waiting for it now.
Patrick: That’s good. Did you have anything else to add? You're very pensive.
Barbara: This happens to me a lot. There's something under the surface and I can feel it but my mind doesn't get it. So that's happening to me right now. I know it's time to listen, until it gets all the way up here. It's hard in these times to live in a void, when you don't know what to do and you don't know what to say because whatever it is, isn't all the way up on the surface yet. And that's a risk too, to not have the answer.
Patrick: Well, I think our culture is obsessed with having answers for everything. And we're very uncomfortable, in a general sense, [with not having answers]. We've had this conversation with numerous people throughout the week, of unlearning what we have learned. We spend, maybe, thirteen or more years in public schooling, in college, in that whole drawn-out education process, and then once you get into a space — like many people we're meeting who are wanting to take a risk, and who know deeply they have to. That risk includes deprogramming yourself from the cultural conditioning that we've been awashed in, and our media is reinforcing it constantly, constantly. So, it's no surprise that young people are, of course, acting from that place. Not that it is not beautiful or worth whatever, but they're acting from that place of action because there has to be a solution, and they're being told there is a solution. So there's never going to be a space open for them to really begin to ask those questions. Or most of them at least.
Barbara: So I have a member of my family who is 17-years-old. She's really smart and she's been set up to go to any college that she wants to, in the whole country. And she has had the gumption to say, “I'm taking a year off. That real education is going to take place for me in an entirely different way. I'm going the vocational route. I am going to learn practical skills that will help me to thrive and to help other people in the times that are coming.”
So she's learning about timber-frame building. She's learning about horticulture. She's learning about welding. She's learning about electrical whatever you call it. And that's her risk — to just be different and to follow a thread that's hers and that’s very different from the educational track most young people are on. Not all people are on the track to go to college. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying it takes a risk to go your own way.
Patrick: It does. Yeah.
Barbara: I think for young people right now that is a huge thing, because our institutions are not preparing people for what's to come and a lot of young people know that. And so there is a huge revolution needed here in supporting young people for what they're going to face. What we've landed them with.
Patrick: Yeah, in your last piece that you both did for Truthout, and Dahr, at the beginning you talk about and half joke with friends about living in the Apocalypse, which is very true. You do half joke about living in the Apocalypse quite often. But really, what you're saying here is that you're kind of harkening to the Greek root of that word which means literally, uncovering, disclosure and revelation, and this is, to me, what this crisis has always presented. To me, this is the truth. This was always going to happen. If we were going to live in this way, this is what inevitably would come from that.
And you've talked about people who have encountered the white people for the first time, and white men, seeing how rapacious they are, how greedy and unyielding they are, and they're just swallowing up the Earth. We were talking about Indigenous prophecies and how you don't have to be a prophet or have some mystical skill to see into the future where this is going to lead. You don't have to be a scientist. You could just look at the way people were landing on this land and say, “Okay, this is the inevitable conclusion of this.” And they were already sensing that, because they were listening and seeing it for what it was, even before it became to a tipping point — which we've already crossed.
Dahr: That's exactly right. One of the things we've been talking about [lately] is Native American scholar Jack Forbes, who wrote a book called Columbus and Other Cannibals which should be mandatory reading especially in this country.
He talks about Wetiko Disease which is essentially settler-colonialism. And if you have it, it's a psychosis. And it means, you think it's okay to take another person's resources or life for your own benefit. That's what settler-colonialism / global capitalism is, even capitalism with a green leaf [on it], because it means you're taking things from the Earth. Of course, people like to call those resources, but you're taking things from the Earth, you're killing parts of the Earth for your own benefit — and somehow that's okay.
And so, from an Indigenous perspective of, “Oh hey, all these white folks showed up and they're completely insane because they think they can do all this, and it's okay… and they have the biggest guns and they're gonna get away with it, and they're going to just keep doing it and probably figure out faster ways to do it, more efficient ways to do it.”
How is this going to end? Hence, as you said — the prophecies are just logic. You know, let's run this out to its logical conclusion. So now, we are. The “we” being people living in the end of industrial-growth culture where the reckoning is now upon us, not just Indigenous people, but everyone — even those who have caused it — the reckoning is upon all of us. Even the rich people. Your money is not going to protect you.
Patrick: Yeah, it's funny. I interviewed Douglas Rushkoff last year. He had a piece come out called Survival of the Richest, and he talked about a huge disconnect the wealthy have — where they think that they can build elaborate, very expensive bunkers in some part of the world, and that somehow, through the wealth and power they have right now, they're going to somehow weather the storm, and they're going to have all the supplies they need.
Dahr: It's just another form of denialism. We've spoken a lot during this program about all the different forms of denialism, and we don't even need to waste a breath on the denialism of the right, and the fossil fuel industry. But then the soft denialism on the left and all the iterations, and all of it comes down to some form of hope. There's some form of hope that's consistent in all of those, that's going to prevent all of those people from taking the real risk, which is ultimately looking deep, deep inside each of ourselves and then trying to decide, “Okay, what is it now that I most need to do more than anything else in the world, given that we have this extremely finite amount of time left?”
And it means, yes, considering our own deaths. Honestly.
