The first of my six essays are now published by Amazon as a book, entitled Everything and Nothing: Essays on Climate Change and Cultural Transformation.
The first of my six essays are now published by Amazon as a book, entitled Everything and Nothing: Essays on Climate Change and Cultural Transformation.
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These are apocalyptic but they may also be luminous times. We have reached a global turning point. We have lived with the real prospect of nuclear Armageddon since the end of the Second World War and are now aware of climate change and the extinction crisis - global warming, biodiversity loss, deforestation etc. At the same time our social, political, and economic world appears to be facing the possibility of existential collapse.
Yet there are signs of a new awareness everywhere, a new understanding of the world and ourselves in it. We have to endure suffering, there is no doubt about that. And we have begun to be conscious of our absolute transience. But it is a transience that also brings a sense of timelessness beyond our mortality and conventional understanding of human nature. It is dawning on us that we are not who, or what, we think we are, nor is the world, as it appears to be, the world “as it is”.
This book is divided into five sections. After the Introduction, it offers three chapters on the theme of apocalypse and revelation, and then includes a section which explores how death and dying may be viewed as a transformation rather than just a terminal phenomenon. Part Three describes a new appreciation of knowledge in non-occidental cultures, particularly the experience of the emptiness, nonduality, and buddha nature of East Asian contemplative thought and practice, reminding us of our own perennial and mystical traditions.
Part Four gives an account of how the three main value spheres in Western civilisation may be integrated: of Ethics - how to lead the “good life”; of Science - the exploration of “truth”; and Art - how, subjectively, we view phenomena and ourselves. And how these may be brought together as a unity to succeed the overwhelming fragmentation of modernity.
Part Five devotes chapters to: the nature of “mirror wisdom” - how the world is our projection, not the objective entity we think it to be; how the perennial tradition can make a difference to our global problems; and how, also, a new understanding of time and timelessness can be an awareness of the sublime continuum that unifies all life.
This short book comprises six essays on the theme of the climate crisis and cultural change in this 21st century. Climate scientists predict that, if we don’t cut our carbon emissions drastically in the next decades, the future will be catastrophic. But this is also an opportunity for a new awareness.
Despite, or because of, the apocalyptic times we find ourselves in, we may be experiencing a breakthrough to a new era of consciousness. Along with a new interest in the world’s mystical, timeless, and perennial traditions of thought, we find ourselves moving from a materialist- to a values-based global vision. Climate change and mass extinction are crucial issues but so also are the ethical values of social justice and human rights and responsibilities. More and more people are becoming aware of the climate emergency but realise we, ourselves, also need to change our way of thinking and living fundamentally.
The essays explore themes such as the nature of ‘radical hope’, the interconnection between Western and non-Western cultural thought, the concept of identity, the phenomenon of an inner awakening today, the question of the ‘Anthropocene’ and the possibility of a new ‘Axial Age’. They also make wide reference to world thinkers and activists who have thrown light on these perennial themes.