It seems there isn’t much more on the Internet besides climate change. Whether because of the “failure” of the COP27 or the repeated stunts from various movements such as the extinction rebellion, humans all over the world (especially the western world) are living in fear of the consequences of climate change.
In this article, I’ll explore the reasons why the climate must change, the deeper meaning behind climate change and especially, what humans are meant to learn from it. In the process, if you’re brave, patient and open-minded enough to read through all of this, you’ll discover that perhaps there is a reason why humans exist at all, why the universe bothered to spawn creatures like us in the first place.
Let us start with identifying a pattern, a very simple one, identified by many a thinker or philosopher.
“The only constant in life is change.” Heraclitus
While this may seem obvious, few truly understand the depths of this quote. We naturally recognize that certain things change, such as our own bodies. We no longer look like apes. The principle of evolution is well ingrained in our minds. We can see that in general, the universe throughout its history, has evolved at the global level, going from a young universe with bundles of hot gas, to the first stars, the first planets, life appearing on at least one of them, all of this cosmic dance reaching all the way up to us. Looking at all of the steps leading all the way up to us makes sense from our point of view. In hindsight, we recognize that all of it has a purpose, all of that story is flawless in a way, lest we would not be here to tell it! Imagine if the universe exerted judgement in the same way humans do. It would look at a lion and a wolf, and say: “I don’t want any of that bloody violence and carnage in this reality!” And *pouf*! No more carnivores. Except that perhaps such a diverse biological cocktail was absolutely necessary in order to evolve beings such as humans. Without the carnivore “variable”, the story of our planet might have turned out completely differently: with herbivores eating all of the plants until all of them died of starvation… Of course, in these kinds of counterfactuals or thought experiments, there is no way to tell what might have happened.
Still, in general, when scientists look back at all of the forms that precede humans, they recognize nature’s wisdom. For instance, when looking at a plant grow in harsh conditions, scientists would not judge it, they would admire it, even if it is all dry, twisted and crooked. They would see, in such a plant, the miracle of life’s power to thrive. But when we look at our own development, we are constantly judging ourselves. Humans did this mistake, and that mistake… As if nature’s wisdom didn’t apply to us, as if humans were somehow smarter than nature, or outside of nature. Often, you will hear about all the bad things humans did to nature. From my vantage point, I would rather say that nature is doing things to itself via humans. And that changes everything. When we look at the rest of nature, we understand that every element has a role, a purpose, a reason for being. We look at the bees and the flowers and we get it instantly. But when we look at humans, somehow, we fail to see why nature would have bothered spawning humans in the first place, as they wreck such havoc on the planet. Are we some kind of autoimmune disease, something akin to nature attacking itself? Or some kind of cancer, that slowly grows until it kills the entire biosphere?
Perhaps. But maybe it’s our ego that gets in the way. Humans like to think of themselves as being in the center of everything. As if they are above nature, observing it, but not at all subject or a product of its wisdom. How ego-centric of us to feel so self-important, and treat nature as this frail broken thing that needs to be saved by humans. It’s as if your pinky wanted to save your entire body. Perhaps it should first and foremost learn its rightful place, lest it will break by trying to do something that is way out of its league.
So lets go back to this famous principle: “the only constant in life is change”. What we fail to do, is apply this principle to everything including our worldviews or paradigms. Humans have gone through many different paradigms (which are essentially global models to understand or give meaning to reality): tribal superstitions, polytheist religions, monotheism, and now, materialist science. Contrary to biological evolution, however, humans always believe that whatever paradigm is dominant at the time, is the truth while the older ones are now false. But let’s assume that everything, indeed, changes. Then saying that materialist science is true whereas monotheism is false is like saying the homo sapiens is true and the homo erectus is false. Just because your current or present experience of reality has now evolved or changed, that doesn’t mean that the older reality was false. The homo erectus experienced reality, from his biological body of the time, in a radically different manner than a homo sapiens today. A person living in the middle-ages under monotheism also experienced a very different reality to a person living in the 21st century under materialist science. So what if this principle of constant change also applied to our paradigms or worldviews? How does that shed any light on climate change?
Let’s just say, to put it simply, that whenever there is a resistance to change, then life has this ugly tendency of exposing that resistance to painful experiences which will either break you or forcefully make you accept to change.
A simple example, in biology, is the evolution of apes. Once they descended from the trees to live in the open savannah, if some of them refused to stand upright, they were eaten by predators hiding in the high grass. Thus this principle of permanent change requires adaptation. Failure to adapt, and you’re toast.
But what about our paradigms or worldviews? Well, the same pattern repeats. Humans are simply faced with outside events which expose them to the limits of their current paradigm or worldview to deal with such an outside event, which forces them to evolve past it. Of course, humans have no trouble understanding the biological manifestation of the imperative for change, or the drive behind evolution. But there will be much psychological resistance to transposing this same principle to our paradigms or worldviews, since we cling on to them for dear life.
If we examine the last great paradigm shift humanity has traversed, the shift from monotheism to materialist science, it is quite easy to see the patterns:
More and more people believe that the Apocalypse is near. These limiting beliefs take the form of the Black Death or the Black Plague, which killed nearly half of the European population in the 14th century. This is as close to an Apocalypse as you can get.
Faced with the Black Death, the church has only one solution: pray, repent, and pray some more.
Faced with predators in the savannah, the apes stubbornly crawl on all fours and attempt to run to the closest tree if a predator shows up.
But then, these weird people, the first doctors, show up and suggest implementing certain measures, like better hygiene, taking some medicine made up of natural herbs. They talk about “diseases” rather than punishments of God.
But then, these weird apes, the first hominids, start standing up and walking on two legs, in order to better see predators and having time to seek cover or organize in the face of danger rather than being caught off guard.
You can see that change manifests in different ways. In biology, changing the body’s shape or form allows a biological being from overcoming certain obstacles or simply adapting to change. But the same can be said about humans and their worldview or paradigm. Changing our beliefs about reality enables us to find new solutions to the same problem. Regardless of the number of times you prayed, it didn’t make any difference with regards to fighting the Black Death. However, adopting another paradigm, such as materialist science, enables people to find innovative solutions to the same problem.
If these outside events are not enough to convince people to change, then inside events will creep in to push people to change: around the same time as the Black Death, the catholic church launches a violent inquisition against people, trying to root out “evil” by burning witches and heretics. These experiences are essentially internal events to the same paradigm, showing the limits of such a paradigm or worldview.
What we can notice, is that since humans cling onto their worldviews and refuse to evolve them naturally, they need to come face to face with painful experiences that force them to change, especially by putting their lives in danger, via the fear of death as the ultimate argument to accept change.
Now transpose all of this to the current predicament we are in. And this is where some of you might start to feel a bit dizzy.
Our scientists are basically announcing a scientific version of the Apocalypse: planet Earth, rendered inhabitable in half a century, with a global temperature rise of 4°C because we didn’t manage to curb our consumption of fossil fuels. Sterile lands, peak water, cataclysmic storms and other weather catastrophies, loss of biodiversity, dead ecosystems…
And we can also see the beginnings of a scientific version of the inquisition: putting in place various measures to hunt down the SUV heretics and private jet witches. Of course, we’re more civilized. Nowadays, we won’t burn them at the stakes. We’ll grill them on TV sets and on social media, and then use the states legitimate use of violence to somehow force them to stop committing blasphemous acts like flying their private jets. Just like the inquisition, first, one goes for the obvious target: the weird women living on the outskirts of the village, talking to no one, brewing some weird stuff in her big cauldron muttering things to herself. But soon after, the inquisition comes knocking at everyone’s door. If you read about the plans of the World Economic Forum, they propose a world where an AI calculates objectively the total quantity of renewable resources, and automatically allocates each human with the amount that one is entitled to per day. “Today, you may take a 2min36sec shower. Today, you may take the public transportation for 35 minutes. Today, you may consume X quantity of food.” I’m exaggerating of course. But understand that the pattern is leading us there, should we fail to change paradigms and recognize that materialist science is not the exception to the rule: “the only constant in life is change”.
At this point, you might already formulate plenty of objections which are linked to the paradigm or worldview that inhabits your mind, keeping you just as hypnotized as a devout Christian in the Middle Ages. You’ll say: “No. My view of the world is objective. It is empirically tested. It is THE TRUTH.”
Let’s see about that.
What convinced many devout Christians from shifting from their monotheistic world view to a materialist one was, on the one hand, the better results obtained by early doctors in treating various ailments that the church was powerless in addressing, and on the other hand, witnessing and experiencing, sometimes firsthand, the climate of fear and constant oppression and surveillance brought about by the inquisition.
Nowadays, we are seeing a similar pattern repeat. There is a growing anxiety setting in with regards to climate change. People are starting to get scared, and resort to violence, so far in rather mild forms such as what the extinction rebellion is doing to paintings in museums, or to office buildings of fossil fuel companies and big banks.
But this may very well change in the future, since if the survival of an entire species or even, an entire ecosystem is at stake, then it is legitimate, necessary, self-evident that the ends justify the means. If the human race is in danger, if CEOs and political leaders refuse to listen to the voice of reason, then to paint sprayed on their windows, it will become a vital necessity to go further, perhaps break a few office windows, setting some empty offices and buildings on fire perhaps, or maybe even threatening the lives of influential and “guilty” people: the CEO of a big investment bank, or the minister in charge of energy policy, etc… At the same time, a harsh judgmental attitude will set in place, where people will start to shame those who go to the airport to take the plane, or those who drive SUVs. It has already started, through actions where such big vehicles have been found with flat tires in some cities.
In the Middle-Ages, people who were devout Catholics and firmly believed that the Apocalypse was near, were no less scared of death and believed as firmly as climate activists today, that their “witch hunting” activities were for the greater good. After all, if killing heretics could prevent humanity from sinking into eternal damnation and guarantee them a seat in paradise, it’s a pretty enticing deal.
And obviously, most people will object that this time, it’s because it’s “for real”, and not based on a made-up fantasy. But that’s besides the point. The point is: while the excuse to encourage people to change their worldview is different, the pattern is the same.
But now, let’s move into the meat of the article. Because unless I provide you with an alternative narrative, much like the first doctors had a different narrative to present when faced with the Black Death, then you’ll just cast this article aside and dismiss it by labelling it as the works of another climate change denier that wants to keep flying planes and drive SUVs (even though I don’t own one), and comes up with esoteric and philosophical arguments given the lack of objective arguments, since the science has spoken, and climate change is real.
The key to my alternative narrative is to put ourselves in the shoes of nature and its innate wisdom. Why would nature want to create creatures like humans? Once you can answer that question, then the alternative solution to climate change and what to do about it will seem perfectly obvious.
So imagine that nature is actually an intelligent, self-aware, conscious entity, and not some dumb mechanism that does things in a machine like and predictable fashion. Life has suffered immensely on this tiny planet. It has gone through a myriad of climate changes which were completely unrelated to life’s activity, but rather linked to complex cycles or events which were outside of nature’s or life’s control: the reversal of the magnetic poles, variations in the sun’s activity, asteroids hitting the planet, giant tsunamis, massive volcano eruptions, ice ages, etc. How catastrophic do you think Snow ball Earth was to ecosystems back then? How many species survived? How long do you think ecosystems took to restore their balance following something like an extinction level event such as an asteroid hitting the planet? Ecosystems can take thousands of years to recover.
Now imagine that nature was annoyed at this. “What could I do to overcome all these events?” Well, I hope you see where I’m getting at here. Humans, as it turns out, are the perfect tool that nature could conjure out of what it had to work with, to reach self-awareness of its own mechanisms and to be able to consciously adjust and manipulate itself. There are only two problems: first, humans are not aware that that is what their purpose actually is, and second, humans are a double-edged sword, they are capable of helping ecosystems recover in a matter of years, but they are also capable of devastating ecosystems in a matter of months.
The new worldview or paradigm that transcends science, is that of rekindling with a sense of purpose to life and to nature, which was completely lost with science, which presents the universe as a dead machine, doing things “mechanically”, with a simple unravelling of cause and effect until the entire energy of the universe is spread out uniformly and the universe undergoes an entropic heat death. Ironically, if one truly subscribes to science, then there is no reason for being alarmed at climate change or the behaviour of irresponsible polluting humans. All of what is happening is just a logical succession of causes and effects, unravelling completely outside of our control. Thus with a purely scientific and materialist lens, humanity’s fate is already sealed. Every human is just a machine responding to outer stimuli via preprogrammed chemical reactions in the brain, and so ultimately, one should just sit back, grab a bag of popcorn, and watch the extinction rebellion and the oil industry fight it off, just like you would watch the match between two competing robot teams.
On the contrary, with my worldview, you understand that humans actually do have a place in nature, just like any other species, and that all will be well once we consciously decide to play our part. If bees would spend their time stinging people instead of collecting pollen and making honey, I’m not sure nature would function in the best of ways. By the same token, if humans waste their time fighting amongst themselves, that’s also lots of wasted energy. What the climate change activists and scientists don’t seem to get, is that far from minimizing the human impact on nature, crawling back into our caves, make ourselves small and diminish our footprint and influence on ecosystems, letting the climate restore itself via its embedded natural self-correcting mechanisms, humans are meant to proactively manage the climate, control it consciously, become the instrument through which ecosystems can stabilize quicker. We are meant to maximize, not minimize, our impact on this planet, but simply, making it a net-positive impact as opposed to a net-negative one.
What scientists and climate change activists are trying to do, is equivalent to getting rid of our immune system in our body because it’s potentially “dangerous”, because it could turn against you and kill you, in the form of an autoimmune disease. Technically, it is a possibility. But your body wouldn’t be any wiser without its immune system. By the same token, this planet without humans would make it defenseless against many a cataclysm that humans can learn to anticipate, prevent or heal over. At this stage, however, I do agree that humans have not reached the state of consciousness necessary to fulfil their purpose. But we’ll get there. For the moment, given the way our financial and economic system work, we only develop technologies designed to modulate the climate when it generates profit. For instance, via artificial snow to make sure rich people can have their ski holiday each year. It’s a poor use of our collective ingenuity, but it’s a start.
In the future, the climate will thus change more not less, but it will change for the better. To go full esoteric, understand that what humans have the ability to achieve, is to reach a stage where they form a collective global planetary consciousness or in other words, a planet becoming self-aware through its “parts” functioning as a whole (among other things, humans).
Humans represent self-aware biology or life becoming aware of itself. That is made possible via the harmonious interactions of a myriad of body parts. If your body didn’t function as a harmonious whole, if your stomach went to “war” with your liver, you wouldn’t be able to stay alive very long, or in other words, you would stop being capable of accomplishing all the things that you do, as a collective global organism. The individual cells in your body might still be “alive” in a way, but they would no longer function as part of a whole. Your human consciousness would disappear. Thanks to your bodily parts functioning as a whole, you are capable of accomplishing miracles. For instance, if you transform all of your cells into single celled organisms, dumb that 70kg biological mush into a wheelbarrow and leave it out in the middle of the desert, what do you think will happen to that biological heap? It will burn in the sun. That biological mush would be incapable of activating certain mechanisms, such as sweating or covering oneself in white clothing, to protect themselves from the sun. Thanks to all of your body parts functioning as a harmonious whole, your body is capable of activating a great deal of mechanisms for keeping your bodily temperature constant: sweating to cool you down, burning fat to keep you warm… In effect, your body is capable of consciously adjusting its internal temperature.
A planet with humanoid beings reaching a state where they function as a harmonious whole is the moment it becomes conscious or self-aware. Planets are essentially big balls of unconscious chemistry. They are subject to the whims and circumstances of the universe. But with self-aware humanoid creatures on its surface, a planet has the potential to become self-aware chemistry in the same way as humans represent self-aware biology. Through our collective actions, behaving as one global collective organism, this planet will naturally acquire all the mechanisms necessary to regulate its planetary temperature or in other words, its climate, much like you are capable of regulating your own body’s temperature.
What are we missing, then?
We are missing:
- Forgiveness and self-love: scientists and climate change activists mostly paint a very dark picture of humanity, denouncing irresponsible humans who are polluting too much. On the contrary, perhaps humanity has developed exactly as planned but is now faced with a choice: to form a collective global organism or disintegrate.
- Harmony: the biggest priority is to reach a state of peace. And that can’t happen so long as we have various “isms” fighting one another. This can be achieved mostly via each individual human reaching a state of consciousness where he/she becomes aware of what he/she is. Rekindle with a deeper sense of purpose, and subtracting oneself from all the pointless oppositions. From that state of consciousness, any human can then start living his/her life and determining his actions and sense of priority from the deep knowing that he/she is part of a whole, and following his intuition to carry out the right action at the right time, disconnected from any eternal truth or doctrine which would have him do the same thing like a robot (such as praying for salvation, or buying into the materialist lens of reality).
We are not here by mistake. And should we follow what current scientists and climate change activists are proposing, nature and this planet will get rid of us much faster still, as we will have failed to fulfil our purpose. We would be like a baby born prematurely, dying outside of its mothers’ womb, as it has failed to develop sufficiently in order to form a mature collective global organism, capable of maintaining its structure. That’s your story of the “collapse” of our entire civilization, much like a still-born baby is a “collapse” of an entire civilization of various complex organs and body parts, which slowly disintegrate into their constitutive parts.
Put yourself in nature’s shoes or in the shoes of this planet. Looking at the way humans are dealing with our current challenges would prompt an epic cosmic level face-palm.
But no worries. We’ve been through this sort of change before, as I have explained in this article when I discussed the shift from monotheism to materialist science. The only difference today, is whether we want to face this shift unconsciously (which promises to be pretty painful) or consciously. And if we choose to do it consciously, we can finally experience “Heaven on Earth”, for you must realize that your cells are in paradise. They are fed, housed, they are free to carry out their role without fearing of being attacked by other cells and wasting energy on defending themselves from “predatory” competing cells…
If you want to explore all of the implications of the new emerging paradigm or worldview, I invite you to read my book: “Mother Earth’s final push”.
https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Earths-final-push-humanitys/dp/B0BLR6YXND
