It’s no longer about nation versus nation, ruler versus ruler, group versus group, person versus person. It’s about humankind versus extinction.
Flood warning. (hahatango, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
During a 1987 speech before the United Nations, Ronald Reagan spoke positively about the unifying effect that an alien invasion would have on humankind around the world.
“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity,” Reagan said.
“Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
The “antagonisms of the moment” in Reagan’s case were the tail end of a cold war standoff with the U.S.S.R. that had held humanity hostage to the threat of nuclear annihilation since the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949. Prior to that the antagonisms of the moment were the two world wars, and prior to that were countless conflicts between nations, kingdoms, civilizations and tribes stretching back past the horizon of recorded history.
Antagonisms have continued on from moment to moment to the present day, with a new multi-front cold war which could turn hot at any time already bringing the threat of nuclear Armageddon back to the forefront after a brief intermission. Which is absolutely ridiculous, because humanity does have a common universal threat which should be bringing us together.
That threat comes to us not from outside ourselves as in Reagan’s hypothetical alien invasion scenario, but from within. For the first time in history humanity is being forcefully confronted with its own self-destructiveness, because we are driving ourselves to our own extinction.
Drop Dead Gorgeous. (Paul Hocksenar, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Humanity has been at its own throat throughout all of known history, with violence, war and tyranny remaining a behavioral constant around the world for as far back as our records can show us. As soon as we became the new apex predator on the scene we ceased having to worry about being killed by hungry carnivores and instead worried primarily about being killed by other humans. Other humans who wanted our things. Other humans who wanted our land. Other humans who served a different ruler from us. Other humans who worshipped a different god from us. Other humans who espoused a different political ideology from us.
And while all that was going on, nature was just quietly doing its own thing in the background, unnoticed and unappreciated. Our biosphere had always been there, functioning in more or less the same way, at least in recent memory, so we mostly just took it for granted and focused our attention on the far more urgent task of killing and enslaving and oppressing and exploiting each other throughout the ages.
[Related: Choosing to Evolve]
And now, suddenly, nature won’t let us ignore it anymore. Our biosphere is showing numerous and diverse signs of rapid deterioration and destabilization as a direct result of the competition-based models that have been driving human behavior in recent centuries. If we don’t come together as a species to drastically change the way we’re collectively functioning on this planet we’re going to lose the only home we have.
We’re coming upon a point where humanity is going to have to unite to defend its home planet, not from extraterrestrial invaders, but from its own self-destructive impulses. We simply cannot keep harming and competing against each other any longer, not because it sucks but because it has become unsustainable. We’re being forced into a situation where we must transcend our self-destructive patterning and move into a new way of operating on this planet, or go extinct. We will annihilate ourselves by environmental destruction or nuclear war if we don’t drastically transform our behavioral patterns very soon.
Ancient Forces
When The Man Comes Around. (Paul Hocksenar, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
In this sense we are being existentially confronted as a species by forces deep within ourselves. Deeply unconscious forces. Ancient forces. Forces which have been whipping around within us in some form since before our evolutionary ancestors first walked upright. For the first time in history we are approaching a point where we’ll be required to turn and face those forces consciously, head-on, as you would an enemy who threatens your very life. Because that’s exactly what they are.
Our common foe is any aspect of our species that is pointed at death, destruction, domination and exploitation instead of health and harmony. Some humans and some human institutions embody those forces much more severely than others, but they exist within us all. If we’re to rise to the occasion and drastically change our collective behavior, we’re going to have to uproot it all. Only then can we become a truly conscious species and proceed to the next stage in our adventure in this world.
Every species eventually hits a point where it must adapt to changing situations or go extinct. We’re arriving at ours currently. I don’t know exactly what it will look like if and when that adaptation occurs, but I think we can probably assume it would look like a rapid increase in awareness of the forces which drive our behavior, both individually and collectively.
Like an addict who has hit rock bottom, we’re going to be pressed hard to look at what makes us do the things we do. On an individual level that will come down to the psychological constructs and inner habits interwoven with the ego, which can be dispelled with rigorous inner examination. On a collective level it will come down to the systems, institutions and people who are keeping humanity locked in its self-destructive patterns, which can be dispelled through revolution of all varieties.
That seems to be what we’re headed toward as humanity begins to turn and face its collective enemy: either a massive explosion of consciousness, or a horrific self-inflicted extinction. But what we are definitely not headed toward is a future in which nuclear-armed powers continue ramping up aggressions against each other while ignoring the health of the biosphere we all rely on for survival. One way or the other, those days are coming to an end.
It’s no longer about nation versus nation, ruler versus ruler, group versus group, person versus person. It’s about humankind versus extinction. It’s a fight that can only have one winner, and it’s a fight we can only win together.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
‘Greed now rules the day, why?’
Because we let the people with money set the rules and the morals for society. What values to the people with too much money hold? Greed of course. So, what do you expect when you let such people set the rules and morals for society? Seriously folks.
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
— Yosarian. “Catch-22” by Joeseph Heller.
A great anti-war novel, but since in these modern times, nobody knows what ‘anti-war’ means, and since the Comic Book has been elevated to the pinnacle of literature, I thought a reminder might be useful.
And yes, that is ‘anyone’, no matter what side ‘they’ are on. And of course, the people on ‘your’ side usually have an easier time getting you killed. Your defenses are usually pointed in the wrong direction.
Yes, the structure of human society and the concomitant human consciousness has become almost certain to meet a certain negative outcome. The abject silliness of the mob is apparently impervious to rational discourse. As Jack London recorded this phenomenon in 1902. The British Coronation in all its contrived splendour: London writes:
”I check myself with a rush, striving to convince myself that it is all real and rational, not some glimpse of fairly-land. This I cannot succeed in doing, and it is better so. I much prefer to believe that all this pomp and vanity, and show, and mumbo-jumbo foolery has come from fairy-land, than to believe it the performance of sane and sensible people who have mastered matter and sold the secrets of the stars.
Prince and princelings, dukes and duchesses, and all manner of coroneted folk of the royal train are flashing past; more warriors and lackeys and conquered peoples, and the pageant is over. I drift with the crowed out of Trafalgar Square into a tangle streets, where the public houses (pubs) are a-roar with drunkeness, men, women, and children mixed together in colossal debauch.”
Of course nothing has changed, the show must go on; it is the same everywhere. A show, a mass hypnosis impervious to reason. Try breaking through that. (Jack London – People of the Abyss 1902.
That superb 11th paragraph ought to drive the final nail on the coffins of all the destructive forces that have been arrayed against an otherwise innocously evolving humanity that aspires to realise its Divinely-given mandate as diverse, pro-social albeit competative beings. The common foe, thus, is not humanity as a whole but is rather actually a dynamic element within it that is, unfortunately, hell-bent on pursueing self-aggrandisements at the expense and cost of the rest of humanity. It is this that must be rectified, perhaps by re-education !
The truths here should be self evident. Those of us who are stuck in reality and not subject to self deception, for the most part, a high percentage of us, agree 100%. Greed now rules the day, why?
Many Americans evidently like to think our government, elected by us, is to serve our best interest. This idea was trashed by the phrase, ” what is in the best interest of the nation is the recommended path”. Our elected officials long ago decided “we the people” were incapable of choosing and maintaining the correct path.
What I consider as “dark forces” have worked in earnest to take over leadership since the WW I period. In my opinion, The Bretton Woods “group think ” was established to do dirty work.
They have been dominating world politics ever since.
If we are to save the planet and ourselves these people must be forced to focus on this or be rendered powerless.
One would think that the greed heads must at some point realize all the wealth in the planet is worthless if the planet becomes a dead zone. Those on the planet with extreme wealth have created their own cages, cages built of fear of the other greed heads who they see as their enemy.
From Warren Buffet to to Elon Musk, these people, were they to do the right thing would immediately start working using their influence and treasure to save the planet and every0ne on it.
Don’t hold your breath for that to occur. Think “intervention”!
Thanks Caitlin for another classic and the entire CN Crew!
As long as we think our fake Democracy is going to save us, our extinction is around the corner or on the next block. Worshipping propaganda machines like MSNBC and the NYTimes is the golden spike in the heart of truth. Why is it that Americans are so passive when it comes to their own demise ?
“Hiting rock bottom” is too much of a worn cleche. Stories of addiction often contain fear and pain, fear of abandonment, grief, loss; pain of hanging on to self distructive patterns of insulation and numbing.
The most difficult thing some of us do is mirror work: personal inventory. Difficult because of misperceptions.
On the one hand overcoming 18+years of being fear mongered and misperceptions is a bitch. On the other hand, we have been overcoming more than 3.2 million years. (“Lucy”- Johanson)
Thanks excellent thoughts and truth. I started teaching climate change at colleges over 50 years ago. And everyone laughed.
I did not watch the Republican “debate” this week but saw an extensive review of it on the independent Breaking Points show. Great job by them. But it was so obvious that that “debate” was a key indicator of human decline and no doubt future disappearances from the earth. The US political system is so pathetically corrupt, unsound and without any workable rules and regulations. it showed up constantly on this “debate.” One wealthy connected candidate claiming climate change is a hoax. No real questions asked and no real debate occurring. It was almost comical but we are running out of time for humor and running out of time period.
Another excellent contextual explanation of what it is past time to realize.
But I don’t think humans think with their brains anymore. Essentially what determines thinking is their wallets. Money and power now dominate all thinking, and that means dire consequences in learning that the pursuit of money and fun may provide much, but because nothing is unlimited and everything has consequences, in the end this civilization will collapse as all have done.
The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature – written by David Suzuki (1997) “…combines science, philosophy, spirituality and Indigenous knowledge to offer concrete suggestions for creating an ecologically sustainable future.”
“Long ago an evolving humanity reached the outside of a cultural and genetic envelope that has ever since prevented it from breaking with the past. So far, the drop-down menus for the future have all of them been enclosed and limited by that same envelope. These choices are the limits of the possible, and have kept the human journey upon this planet well within certain intolerable tolerances.
Why didn’t the human neocortex– the sapiens part of the genus homo–do a better job when it fashioned culture and engineered future history?
Certainly it had the neural horsepower to design a program for the future that would be both reasonable and secure–didn’t it?
Or did it?
Poised on the evolutionary cusp that peaked at the earliest ragged edge of hominid neural evolution, the new human brain faltered as it stared with its untested, but truly fabulous intelligence into an uncertain future.
There was so much to do; and so much of it had never been tried before!
Lacking experience and shy about asserting its new powers in a bid for control of the human journey out of nature, the new brain deferred to the ancient menu as it lisped the phrases that would become the script for the future.
And so we humans act out the large and small dramas of our lives in a never changing, ever familiar world. Adorning our fragile limbs with a gold that is not of earth but which comes from the cores of long extinct collapsed stars, we motor down glacial till expressways to keep an ancient appointment with the future. Our engines fueled by the rotted carcasses and flora of a carboniferous past, we are lured toward an illusory tomorrow by those recent evolutionary inventions, the sirens of the neocortex.
But not even they can enable us to achieve enough velocity to escape the enormous pull of our ancestral heritage: the ancient, reptilian and stone age forebears who brought us here, and who clasp us to themselves through our ritual, need for hierarchy, and love of myth.”
Spot on. Win-win cooperation or zero/sum egocentricism; both arise from within us. One leads to a future and prosperity and the other to extinction. All around us we see the outcomes of the latter based on instinct and egosim which has dramatically metastasized in centers of power.
As Ms. Johnstone has correctly implied, we are out of buffer. There is no longer any buffer in the environment to absorb human foolishness. Every environmental abuse now adds directly to immediate consequences, from world-wide wildfires to a rapidly warming arctic as tipping points and feedback loops are reached. In this new world, consequences are everywhere/planet wide, all at once and rapidly increasing. And they never go back.
What is necessary is an internal human revolution in the lives of many individuals to transcend the instinct of me first/me only to we and us; cooperating and surviving together. It’s not really a choice any more but a decision that we can either make or have violently imposed upon us. Ever try to stand in the face of a force 5 hurricane or a raging wildfire? Where to run? What if the whole world is on fire? There is no negotiating with Nature.
In fact, this is all nicely summed up in the preamble to the UNESCO constitution in 1945: “Since wars begin in the minds of men (human beings), it is in the minds of men (human beings) that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” This applies to conflict of all sorts, within humanity and with nature. It is certainly possible but it won’t be found in the status quo.
It is a fight we are losing because humanity’s single common foe is – itself. Ourselves. We are incapable of managing ourselves and our habitat, and so it is extremely likely we will destroy ourselves along with the planet. The Doomsday Clock reflects how close we are, even though it is mainly about the likelihood of nuclear war.
How the hell do we get 8.1 billion people to wake up, find out what’s really going on, take full personal responsibility, organise, and act, not to mention overcoming the forces that don’t want to fix the problems?
Even if there were a nuclear holocaust, and the population was drastically reduced, I’m not sure the remaining people would ‘see the light’ and rebuild the world along genuinely sustainable lines.
What will it take to kick the human race up the evolutionary ladder a few rungs?
Can we grasp roots of “evil” in our cultures? What is courageous? Who is hero?
“Better get yourself together.”
“Like an addict who has hit rock bottom, we’re going to be pressed hard to look at what makes us do the things we do.”
there’s a certain fish with comment relevant
We’re not facing extinction. At least that’s not a contention well supported by any convincing evidence right now. But we are probably in for massive and ugly population decline.
We have to learn to adjust to climate change, whether we cause it or not, because there’s never been a stable climate for very long through the entire history of earth. The fact that we’ve had about 10,000 years of stability was a remarkably unlikely event and is surely part of why society has been able to progress to where it has. But fossil fuels or not, stable climate is bound to come to an end before too long. In fact we’re just about due for another 100,000 year deep ice age, which would be even worse for humanity than warming. If fossil fuels have staved that off, then that can only be a good thing.
I’m just saying, climate is more complicated than people think. It’s not just drive electric cars and everything will be fine. Yes drive electric cars, but we still must be prepared to adapt to continuously changing climate than to try to control climate, which is a losing battle.
Well, damn, that was absolutely beautiful, Caitlin Johnstone. Well done.
Humanities greatest foe is neo liberalism .
Thank you… great article Ms. Johnstone, (I’m a Johnstone too)… as always you have hit the nail on the head. MJ
Here’s a quote that I think supports what you’re saying: “Humans have the means to destroy the planet and perhaps not the wisdom and intelligence not to do it. ” Rodrique Tremblay. I’m guessing that the earth is waiting for us to destroy ourselves so that it can get back to “normal”.
I love Caitlin Johnstone, but she is not a scientist and, IMO, frankly, adds nothing here to understanding of H. sapiens’s relationship to planet Earth and his place in its natural environment. Aside from a general fearmongering that helps no one and plays into the globalists’ agenda.
“I love Caitlin Johnstone, but she is not a scientist”
So, do you profess to be one, or just another contributor with only an opinion apparently based upon a connection which you seem to think exists? The first awareness of the threat of global warning by actual scientists arose well over a century ago and the data accumulated since strongly indicates that they were right.
If you can offer any further insight to our relationship to the planet and our place within it’s environment, please don’t hesitate.
One of the interesting things the right-wing billionaire oligarchs have done is to turn ‘globalist’ into a curse word. That’s one element of modern mind-control. A bunch of very rich people who control worldwide corporations, have spent a lot of money making ‘globalist’ a dirty word. If a person tries to think of the good of the whole world, of all of humanity, you get burned at the stake or perhaps nailed to a cross as just another ‘globalist’. Jesus was also a ‘globalist’, with all of the ‘turn the other cheek’ and ‘love thy brother’ stuff. How can someone think of the good of everyone, when there’s plenty of good money to be made? And they had better not get in the way of Business.
Unfortunately it is group vs group, because the group who chose this path is very small, and it is they who hold all the cards. “We” did not choose this path, the violent plutocrats did. They did so because they fear a reduction in their own wealth and power, and their superiority complex was forged into a pervasive ideological narrative; private profit comes first. Negative externalities are shared as a collective problem, but wealth and political power are not.
The plutocrats kill millions in pursuit of acquiring more. Always more. They will not change. They are cognitively caged by their hubris, as much as the populace is cognitively caged by the structure they inflict upon us. You see, it isn’t “our” world, it is “theirs” because they own it. They will do what they want with their own things, and to them, human beings are expendable. “We” are merely a herd to be managed and cajoled into being worker drones and soldier pawns.
This collection of plutocrats will end their own reign one way or another, just by being the Caligular-esque creatures they are. The only way to limit the destruction, is to remove the very wealth and power which made them so damaged… that for which they shamelessly kill to keep.
” To be or not to be—that is the question.”
sigh—–Unless we have leaders that aren’t able figure out that we are truly headed for Earth wide disaster—then sadly, it appears that humans will be destroying their own planet. Even more sad is that so many nations think that THEY will survive—but nothing else will.
Perhaps after destroying Mars—the Martians came here?— But now—- there is no place left to go. Rodney King did ask that important question: “Can we all get along?” So far—it appears not.
The “Truth’ is the TRUTH….everyone knows when they hear it….it is not about “believing” that can be shaded or shaped. It IS. And we won’t BE.
Kings, queens, monarchs, emperors, presidents, and prime ministers have clearly shown throughout history that beyond any shadow of doubt, the greatest threat to life on this planet is the insatiable lust for power. Throughout the history of humanoids, war has been the one dominant factor in defining our existence on this planet. It never ends. Its monumental costs in terms of lives, dollars and human suffering has been a consistent but yet, all too often disregarded blight on humanity.The killing of one another has remained a shameful pillar of our species. Yet, shame has seldom been a factor in how we deal with each other. The utter disregard of life clearly shows that the relentless murder of each other is, in fact, the true nature of our civilization. Despite our many advances that for the most part have been purely technological, the manner in which we treat each other is still in the dark ages. The wanton killing of one another is made even more egregious by the destruction of countries, cities, villages and displacement of millions of refugees who’ve barely managed to survive the bloodshed. We are an extremely violent species who pretend otherwise. Although we continually pray for peace, it’s because peace is seldom ever sustained. The reality is that instead, we kill for peace. A great majority of our species are fundamentally racists, bias, prejudice and intolerant of those who are different from us either by skin color, physical appearance, language, culture, religion, race, class distinction or country which gives rise to certain untoward behaviors. Unfortunately, our most common reaction to these differences is conflict that frequently regresses to aggression and violence. This unbridled destruction has been going on for centuries but like a roller- coaster plunging ever so much faster to its bottom, recent events have riveted our attention to the perfect storm of global warming, a pandemic and collapsing economies. We as a species inhabiting this planet in conjunction with all other species and organisms need to understand the reality of our existence and the effect we have on each other and the planet. It’s not so much a matter of what we’ve become but rather, what we haven’t become – humane.
Very well and truthfully said Michael. Our evolution towards “humane” appears to have stalled/reached its pinnacle.
Caitlin I am always amazed at your ability to simply state the obvious. We have a choice. Will make the right choice seriously?
From the article:
“On an individual level that will come down to the psychological constructs and inner habits interwoven with the ego, which can be dispelled with rigorous inner examination. On a collective level it will come down to the systems, institutions and people who are keeping humanity locked in its self-destructive patterns, which can be dispelled through revolution of all varieties.”
Whilst these two ideas have great merit, i doubt either will be successful: the individual level is fraught with the incapacity for most people to think for themselves and the collective level is fraught with restrictions to revolt by the institutions and people keeping us locked in.
There may come a moment when a point is reached by which we will have to adapt. But i believe so many of these points have already passed us by and we have ignored them at our peril. How many more points do we have i wonder.
People are quite capable of thinking for themselves. We know this. In America, people used to go west, and when they were there, there were plains and mountains. But, the people there had no choice but to think for themselves. The next neighbor was several hours away. People farmed, provided for themselves, had children, life, loved and prayed … and all while thinking for themselves.
If people were not capable of thinking for themselves, then how did we get here? The ‘modern world’ has only existed for a brief fraction of ‘human history’. The ability to control the thoughts of others has been developed by rulers over time. But, naturally, people are quite capable of thinking for themselves.
Turn off all the powerful mind-control that afflicts you, and everyone around you. Press the OFF button. Go sit under a tree. You will find the ability to think for yourself returns once the mind-control that modern society inflicts upon you is removed. And you’ll spend less money, because there will be less stuff you just got to have for some reason that got into your head.
Tune out from the mind-control, drop out from the culture of hate and war. When you free yourself from mental slavery, then you will find that you, like everyone else, are quite capable of thinking for yourself.
The better part of a generation once did it, so everyone knows it can be done. Even thought the mind control now says that you can not do it, that it would be disaster to even try, and you’ve been taught to hate the people who tried it once upon a time. Dirty Hippies. Yuck. Got to hate them and everything they did. Except, they were free and definitely thought for themselves.
I’m taking the other side and betting on nuclear war first and foremost. Nothing more characterizes our species as you noted so well. Mass extinction due to polluting our own Petri dish is certainly a possibility, but could be put on hold indefinitely if a plague wipes out half of human kind which is a far more likely scenario. I’m giving the Climate Change Apocalypse about a 5% chance to play out in a time frame of a couple of thousand years, and since a course correction to prevent it is a near impossibility over this period of time, it is not worth the time and effort for minimal results given its unlikely hood.
George Carlin: “Save the planet?! We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet! We haven’t learned how to care for one another and we’re gonna save the . . . planet?!”
Good one Rover. LOL
My favorite from him is, “Save the planet? The planet’s not going anywhere…we are! Pack your shit folks!”