The Ship of Civilization is Sinking: What Men and Women Can Do to Survive and Thrive

Many people are afraid these days. The financial crisis continues with wild fluctuations. Hearing from clients and friends, it seems that many of us feel like we are riding a roller-coaster that we didn’t know we had gotten on. Gasoline prices are coming down, but few people have confidence that this is a trend that will last. What is going on here?
I think what we are experiencing is nothing short of the end of Civilization. For most people that’s a pretty scary proposition. For me it’s a source of excitement and joy. Why is that?

Well, it seems to me that what we call Civilization is a way of life that began 5 to 10 thousand years ago when we gave up our tribal life where we lived more in balance with the Earth and began to believe that humans were separate and apart from nature. Slowly at first, but increasingly quickly since the 1800s, we have been consuming more and more of the Earth’s resources.
As we have used more and more fossil fuels and keep our society running, we have moved into an addictive loop that is familiar to most of us. We are using more and more of resources that are not renewable.

The more we use, we more we feel we need to use in order to stave off the pains of withdrawal. Like all addicts, we can’t seem to stop.
Like the massive luxury ocean liner that most believed unsinkable, Civilization is hurtling at a lethal “iceberg” with climate change, peak oil, economic dislocations, environmental destruction, population overshoot, and male-led terrorism and violence looming just beneath the surface.

We are told by our leaders not to worry, that the leaks in the boat can be fixed, that modern technology will save us. Yet more and more people believe that collapse is imminent and are clamoring to get off the ship.
And that’s why I feel so hopeful. Getting off a sinking ship is a good idea. What does that mean? It means disengage from the global economy and becoming more local. It means a life that has less “stuff” in it and more of the things that money can’t buy, such as leisure, time with friends, walks in the neighborhood.

We hear a lot these days comparing our economic situation today with the Great Depression. We have images of bankers jumping out of windows on Wall Street. We worry that we may give up on life and jump as well. What the media doesn’t tell us is that many people remember the Great Depression as a time of financial hardship, but also as a time of personal joy.

My mother and father who lived through it told me, “It was a time when people pulled together. We grew our own food and helped each other out. Work was hard to come by so we had more leisure time. To be honest, I was sorry when it ended.”

What do you think? Could these tumultuous times really be a transition to something better? Is it possible that the breakdown we are experiencing is leading us to a breakthrough? It will take a different mind-set than most of us have been living. Rather than fearing the future, we would begin to embrace it. That’s the direction I would like to go. How about you?