Embracing Our Predicament - Dowd (2020)

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The second video in a two-part “crash course” in post-doom thinking and living. Given how visually rich and dense this presentation is, watching rather than listening and doing so without multi-tasking is recommended. MICHAEL DOWD writes: "I am inviting churches, synagogues, and secular groups (environmentalists, climate activists, friends and neighbors) to email this link to their members and then to schedule a Zoom Q&A / discussion session with me (no cost). My contact information is at the end of the video. TIME-CODED TABLE of CONTENTS follows...
Michael Dowd: "Embracing Our Predicament: Trading Confusion for Clarity"
Program 2 (of 2) in series "Post-doom Thinking and Living 101" contains 4 sections:
2A . "First Things First" - Our name for 'primary reality' is a life or death issue
2B. "Sustainable = Faithful" - The evo-eco purpose of religion and of science
2C. "Progressing Toward Ecocide?" - History's verdict re human-centeredness
2D. "Problems vs. Predicaments" - 5 stages of awareness / post-doom living
00:00 Introduction
03:41 Part 2A. "First things First"
Part 2A elements: "Right relationship to Reality"; "Words create worlds"; Reality is nested; relating to Reality as a Thou; sustainability requires an Eco-Theo worldview; possible names = Gaia, GOD, Godde; Reality with a personality; ecology as the heart of theology; gods as personifications; evolutionary religious studies; "Nature Is Speaking" videos; Reverend Reality; Dowd's 6-part credo;
Sources: Loyal Rue, Joseph Brodsky, Martin Buber, Thomas Berry, Daniel Wildcat, Wendell Berry, James Hillman, Stewart Guthrie, David Sloan Wilson, Philip K. Dick
19:15 Part 2B. "Sustainable = Faithful"
Part 2B elements: Practical truth v. factual truth; life-centered religiion; religion as control mechanism of sustainable cultures; 3 aspects of indigenous cultures that promote sustainability; accountability to the future as core value; "grace limits" (carrying capacity); "consequence capture"; religion/lifeways as "control mechanism" of sustainable cultures but "coping mechanism" of unsustainable cultures; "Religion needs science, and evidence needs a moral voice"; untrivializing the word 'God'; secular forms of "ultimate concern"; 'supernatural' as an ecocidal delusion; biocultural approach to religion; secular examples of "powers and principalities"; "Relate to the larger body of life as divine, or perish"; honoring Earth; rise-and-fall of civilizations; "current evidential revelation'; "Ecological overshoot is always a religious failure"; idolatry as human-centeredness (both relgiious and secular forms of); theism v. atheism debate is "collective insanity"; eco-theism
Sources: David Sloan Wilson, E.O. Wilson, Edward (Teddy) Goldsmith, Paul Tillich, Benson Saler, Michael Winkelman, Walter Wink, Thomas Berry, Marc Perkel, Carl Sagan
39:58 Part 2C. "Progressing Toward Ecocide?"
Part 2C elements: "Sane v. Insane 'Progress'"; history and basics of sustainable v. unsustainable governance, economy, and theology; civilizational patterns that lead to overshoot and collapse; history and causes of collapsed civilizations; techno-fix idolatry; preconditions v. triggers of collapse; universal human needs v. cultural acedia; Maslow's Hierachy of Needs (grounded in ecological health); rights & entitlement v. obligations and reciprocity; ecocentrism; critique of Steven Pinker's conclusion of "progress"; 1972 "The Limits to Growth" (and its accuracy today); debunking "the secular religion of perpetual progress,"
Sources: William R. Catton Jr., Thomas Berry, Edward (Teddy) Goldsmith. Richard Adrian Reese, Wlliam Ophuls, John Michael Greer, John Perlin, Walter Youngquist, Clive Ponting, Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Camille Paglia, Luke Kemp, Joseph Tainter, Michael & Joyce Huesemann, Dave Pollard, Abraham Maslow, Confucious, Tom Atlee, Donella Meadows
58:52 Part 2D. "Problems vs. Predicaments"
Part 2C elements: "Overshoot" manifests as predicament because "we have carrying capacity surplus expectations and institutions but we actually live in a carrying capacity deficit world." • Our failure to relate to the ecosphere as a thou • Five Stages of Awakening = "Climbing the Ladder of Awareness" (by Paul Chefurka, with Dowd's personal example of) • "Post-doom Conversations" hosted by Michael Dowd • 4 Qs that reveal our ecocidal insanity: (1) Does God exist? (2) Will civilization collapse? (3) Will we go extinct? (4) Is it too late? • love-in-action
Sources: William R. Catton Jr., Paul Chefurka, Christopher Ryan
1:14:57 Summary
1:15:28 More resources
Part 1 of this 2-part video series by Dowd in 2020:
"Finding Meaning in the Dark: Sobering Inspiration for Hard Times"
• Finding Meaning in the...
Michael Dowd's webpage and contact information:
thegreatstory.org/michaeldowd....
Post-doom videos playlist on youtube:
• Postdoom conversations...

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23 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 29

@tadagunter8537 2 года назад

Thank you, Reverend Reality! Your passion and generosity are inspiring and amazing! I’m a person who has been a seeker of truth since my childhood, and I am 77 years old. Thanks to the internet, I’ve found many wonderful sources of information about Reality, and you and Connie are two of my favorite sources. An important understanding that I have been focusing on for the past 15 years or so is the effects of propaganda and misinformation on people’s ability to have an accurate perspective on reality. Big business and some wealthy people who are accumulating more and more wealth and power, have been using their wealth to confuse and misinform people. They have pretty much captured the Republican Party and much of the Democratic Party as well. My opinion is that those of us who believe that seeing reality as clearly as possible should focus on exposing the misinformation and propaganda-why and how it’s preventing so many people from recognizing the truth of what’s happening. Our political and financial systems are incentivizing the destruction of our democracy and of the natural world. Most of our media is owned by big business, and most lobbyists are working for big business and wealthy people. The time has come for this to be exposed.

@thegreatstory 2 года назад

I fully agree, Tada!

@Em-df4ww 4 года назад

Found this video through Facebook Deep Adaptation, thank you. Our ( historically Western, US lead) path towards the death of our biosphere pains me to the depth of my soul. My spirituality, if you will, is personal and concrete. I am an introvert, and although I go to UU, I communicate with nature individually and privately. I suppose this has been necessary, my entire life having been raised in the white, corporate, human centric culture of the US. I love my neighbors as they pour chems on their lawns and tear up remaining wild places for Mc-houses. I have to love them, and myself as I unavoidably contribute to the devastation. My yard, however, is a sanctuary for non-humans - nothing much grows in it that is directly useful to me other than shade and joy. I live in the middle of monoculture (corn and soybeans as far as the eye can see) - I absolutely do not get my fellow sapiens who do not connect or empathisize with nature and do not act to save it but I have to love them, for the majority will not change. Love, love.. You ABSOLUTELY speak the truth, thanks.

@jeremycassidy3796 4 года назад

I resonate with so much you share... It is to love, love, love.... at the end, all there is is love. The hardest lesson for me to learn.

@Em-df4ww 4 года назад

@@jeremycassidy3796 yes. Being a US citizen it is almost impossible to not be a part of the problem. I am in my 50's and small, my weapons love and kindness. Anger I express privately and get on with what is helpful through the day.

@UgoBardi 4 года назад

So, I think our descendants will inherit from us a lot of the technology we developed: the data keeping and recording technologies, the way of controlling electrons inside semiconductors, the ways of harnessing solar energy and turn it into benign purposes. It is not "Progress" in the naive sense the world is used nowadays: bigger and faster toys. It is the march from the primeval hydrogen cloud toward something we can only barely fathom right now, as Paulus said, "Now we see darkly, as in a mirror." Perhaps in the future we'll see face to face.

@goodgriefnetwork 4 года назад

Brilliant, Michael.

@UgoBardi 4 года назад

The story is that there is a movement in the universe. There is not necessarily a purpose in that movement, but there is. The beautiful image you provided, that of the universe starting as a cloud of hydrogen and then turning into a planet singing opera. Seen from a physical viewpoint (as Gorshjkov and Makarieva do) the universe is a computing machine. It computes itself. Maybe there is a purpose in all this, maybe not, but the computation is moving onward. And the basic element of computation is memory. You write numbers on a substrate of some kind. The ecosphere is so fascinating because it is a grand calculation on a planetary scale. What are we computing? We don't know, but we are doing that.

@jimicunningable 7 месяцев назад

Namaste Guru, you will be missed. ❤😢

@UgoBardi 4 года назад

The story of technology is peculiar and so far not so well understood. Something that fascinates me is how the ancient Roman society collapsed as a political entity, but technology kept going forward. The European medieval monks used the codex technology (that we call "books") that the Romans had developed but never really used -- the Romans were stuck with papyrus or parchment rolls. The codex was immensely better. So much that it made possible the printing press and that ushered the great massacres of the 30 years wars. And it evolved more all the way to our times. There is a beautiful book by Ivan Illich ("In the mirror of the past") where he explores how the world could be seen from the viewpoint of a medieval monk, compared with the view of a modern scholar who sees is on the screen of his pc.

@thegreatstory 2 года назад

Thanks, brother Udo! Keep up the great writing, my friend!!

@robertocupaniopsisanacardi9458 4 года назад

Good work really enjoyed this. You're right about all the stages of awareness. Definitely been through them all. Enjoying the series keep up the good work

@UgoBardi 4 года назад

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to google-translate a youtube speech. Not directly, at least

@jeremycassidy3796 4 года назад

Have you tried using the subtitle option, next to the cog at the bottom right of the video window. Then click on the cog to auto-translate to your language.

@AudioPervert1 4 года назад

an unpleasant situation that is difficult to get out of: predicament - meaning. But have you ever thought of the millions and millions of human beings who had no predicament but life-long suffering, disease and poverty to start with. Wish they heard and knew this word - Not that it would make an iota of difference in reality.

@thegreatstory 4 года назад

Heartbreaking, indeed.

@UgoBardi 4 года назад

As a further note on how technology (good technology) affects our view of the world, you might perhaps be interested in cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2020/06/english-as-sacred-language-path-to-new.html

@UgoBardi 4 года назад

And I see that my comments should be read from the last to the first, but I hope what I wanted to say is clear

@thegreatstory 4 года назад

Thanks for all that thoughtful commentary, Ugo! Let's catch up via Zoom in the not-too-distant future. I type slowly and so much prefer phone or Zoom to text-only based communications. Connie and I are in Eureka, CA (Pacific time zone). I'll send you an email. Thanks, again! ~ Michael

@treefrog3349 2 года назад

As a caveat I must say that I agree with everything presented here, totally. What concerns me, reading between the lines of many of your presentations, I get the genuine feeling that much of your proselytizing is about YOU and less so about the things you say. Like so many preachers throughout history, the messages is subsumed by the messenger. I merely suggest a wee bit of personal soul-searching and humility. It would be beneficial for you personally and your devoted listeners, of which I consider myself one.

@thegreatstory 2 года назад

Thanks... your coaching is well received.

@UgoBardi 4 года назад

Now, the only thing that bothered me about your series was when you praised "The Planet of Humans" that, in my view, is little more than paid advertising for the fossil fuel industry. But we can find meaning even in advertising -- although perhaps beyond what the advertisers themselves thought. You correctly identified idolatry as evil, in our world idolatry is the naive faith in the technological miracle that will save us from ourselves. In a sense, it is probably what the ancient idolatry that the early Christians fought. I can understand how the ancient cult of the ancestors of the Roman world had became little more than go to the temple, pay some money, get the good luck. But idolatry is the negative version of the cult of the ancestors which was not evil. It cannot be -- as you yourself note in your presentation. So, technology is something more than a piece of an evil idolatry. It is part of us.

@thegreatstory 4 года назад

Ugo, I urge you to read the reviews of "Planet of the Humans" that I mention. I suspect you will revise your opinion. It is *hardly* an ad for the fossil fuel industry! I suggest starting with these two:: (1) mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/planet-of-the-humans-review-shining-a-light-on-the-energy-black-box/ (2) steadystate.org/crossroads-for-planet-of-the-humans/