Life After Doom  ## Metadata - Author: [[Brian D. McLaren]] | [[3. Resources/Authors/Brian D. McLaren|Brian D. McLaren]] - Full Title: Life After Doom - Category: #books - Kindle: [Open in Kindle](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CD5MZ8N3) - Document Tags: [[Faith]] ## Document Notes ## Highlights - Doom is a kind of pre-traumatic stress disorder that arises when our old normal is deteriorating and no new normal has come into view. For our purposes, it isn’t a single catastrophic event at some point in the future. Instead, it is the emotional and intellectual experience shared by all who realize the dangerous future into which we are presently plunging ourselves, our descendants, and our fellow creatures. ([Location 118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=118)) - letting go (a path of descent) to letting be (a place of insight) to letting come (a path of resilience) to setting free (a path of agile engagement). ([Location 155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=155)) - Our global civilization as currently structured is unstable and unsustainable. ([Location 373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=373)) - complex societies collapse when their key institutions can no longer solve the civilization’s problems. ([Location 385](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=385)) - In all of these scenarios, the primary problem is not the environment. The primary problem is us. Humans don’t have an environmental problem; the environment has a human problem. ([Location 458](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=458)) - Survival of the fittest did not mean survival of the most competitive, survival of the most aggressive, or survival of the most dominant. It meant survival of those who fit best within their environment. In other words, if we do not fit in with Earth’s ecosystems, if we overshoot our environment’s carrying capacity, we will go extinct. ([Location 472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=472)) - In other words, long before the Earth destroys us, we destroy ourselves. ([Location 508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=508)) - both optimism and despondency can lead us to complacency, and complacency is a poor survival strategy even in the best of times. ([Location 613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=613)) - the survival committee. This is the complex part of me that evolved long ago in fish and reptiles and has been passed up the evolutionary tree, further evolving through mammals and primates to humans. The survival committee’s headquarters are in my brain stem and cerebellum. Its primary job is to keep me alive at least long enough to reproduce. That means it has to keep my heart beating, my lungs breathing, my digestive system operating, my need for sleep satisfied, my body temperature regulated. ([Location 626](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=626)) - the seven F’s of survival for our species: our instincts or reflexes to feed, fight, flee, freeze, fawn, flock, or … mate. ([Location 631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=631)) - belonging committee. It is often associated with the limbic system of the brain. This essential part of me evolved among mammals (and also birds) whose survival depended on strong bonds of primal attachment between babies and their mothers, and sometimes their fathers and siblings, too, and often, the members of their herd, troop, flock, or pack. The belonging committee operates in constant communication and deep partnership with the survival committee, a relationship forged and fine-tuned over millions of years. It motivates me not only to care about my own survival, but also the survival of my family and herd. ([Location 641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=641)) - meaning (or understanding) committee, often associated with the neocortex of the brain. It makes language possible and gives meaning to the word “meaning.” It enables me to talk to myself and observe myself. It integrates current awareness with memory of past experiences and with the ability to imagine future scenarios (as we did in the previous chapter). It organizes my experience in stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. It helps me think critically, creatively, and independently. ([Location 647](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=647)) - In each of us, all three committees experience and share constant observations, negotiations, arguments, deadlocks, and breakthroughs. I experience these interactions as thoughts, feelings, and decision-making processes. ([Location 661](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=661)) - To mind my mind is to be aware of what is going on inside me. To mind my mind is to seek to integrate my committees and all their subcommittees and members in the healthiest ways I can so I don’t jump to premature closure, whether optimistic or despondent. To mind my mind is to keep waking up and welcoming myself to reality and welcoming reality to myself. ([Location 681](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=681)) - The first way we mind our mind is social: we learn to speak our mind in circles of trust. ([Location 687](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=687)) - The second way we mind our mind is personal: we practice contemplation. ([Location 698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=698)) - Contemplation is meeting all the reality you can bear.4 ([Location 700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=700)) - I step out of argument mode and decision-making mode into awareness mode so I can actually become curious about what reality—external and internal—is trying to tell me. In this awareness mode, my more mature values like wisdom, love, compassion, humility, and justice can change the atmosphere and set the stage for future negotiations. ([Location 707](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=707)) - Contemplation liberates me from being a perpetual prisoner of my trains of thoughts and feelings; it helps me realize that I am not my thoughts and feelings. It helps me see that these inner reactions and negotiations happen to me and within me without my consent, like digestion, like sleep, like fatigue or laughter. ([Location 745](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=745)) - In the stillness, new insights, comfort, and ways of being often arise. If stepping off the train is letting go, and if dwelling in the stillness is letting be, receiving these gifts is letting come. When these new gifts come, I experience a kind of liberation, a setting free. ([Location 748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=748)) - when faced with current or anticipated loss, our brains are frequently jolted by waves of shock and denial, bargaining, anger, and depression. ([Location 816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=816)) - Ideally, depression eventually recedes and leaves us in a place of acceptance. ([Location 817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=817)) - once again, let’s continue waking up and welcoming ourselves to reality. Let’s continue minding our mind: the world that we so love is ending, dying, being murdered by ignorance, being killed for convenience and profit. ([Location 861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=861)) - as these powerful emotions wash through us or over us, we can learn to drop down into the sweet current of deep grief that helps us appreciate—to know, to praise, and more fully to love—all that we are losing, all that may soon be lost. ([Location 864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=864)) - If we stay with grief long and with intention, if we don’t suppress it or escape it, if we humbly gesture with words toward a lost beauty too big for words, we feel both our own grief and the poignant sweetness of what is being lost. ([Location 906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=906)) - Our individual identities as true believers are woven into the corporate ego of our religious group, and that corporate religious ego is fused with our theology. ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1033)) - as a matter of identity, belonging, and survival, we must be right. If it takes the destruction of everything and everyone everywhere to prove us right, then bring it on! ([Location 1036](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1036)) - Conventional capitalism—by which I mean the economic story that upholds our current global civilization—acts as if the economy is the ultimate reality, the invisible hand that guides human history. It tells us who we are: abstracted consumers with wants and needs that the economy can fulfill. It provides ultimate justice, rewarding the hardworking and punishing the lazy. ([Location 1056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1056)) - One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. ([Location 1072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1072)) - Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing regardless of how it turns out.… [This] hope … gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now. —Former Czech president and playwright Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace ([Location 1174](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1174)) - When we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we’re in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free—truly free—to honestly start working to resolve it. I would say that when hope dies, action begins. ([Location 1251](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1251)) - If hope means optimism—a sense that we can “win”—I often feel that I have lost hope. ([Location 1292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1292)) - Even without optimism, I still have motivation. I still have no interest in giving up. ([Location 1302](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1302)) - To put it differently, even if we lose hope for a good outcome, we need not lose hope of being good people, as we are able: courageous, wise, kind, loving, “in defiance of all that is bad around us.” ([Location 1378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1378)) - That’s why Richard Rohr describes this kind of hope as “the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. You come out much larger and that largeness becomes your hope.”14 ([Location 1384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1384)) - It is high time that we realize it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. —Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung1 ([Location 1412](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1412)) - Because nearly everyone around us also sees the world tinted rose and gold, it’s almost impossible for us to imagine seeing any other way. Scientists call this way of seeing a paradigm, philosophers call it a world view, and sociologists call it a social construct, but whatever we call it, it is, to us, simply common sense. It’s the way we see. ([Location 1435](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1435)) - When you put tipping points and lag times together, you can see why humans find it so hard to see the danger we are putting ourselves in. Inch after inch, crack after crack, our actions produced few obvious negative consequences and many positive, enjoyable ones. We got away with murder. ([Location 1518](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1518)) - Now we face the cascading lag times and self-reinforcing cycles of consequences labeled “doom loops” by experts. ([Location 1520](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1520)) - The human social sphere is part of the larger interdependent community of living things, the biosphere. And the biosphere is part of the larger sphere of the Earth itself, the geosphere. Our planetary home, the geosphere, exists within the solar system (or heliosphere), which exists within the spinning disc of the Milky Way galaxy, which exists along with billions of other galaxies in the expanding sphere we call the cosmos or the universe. Each of these spheres is porous, in the sense that each interacts with the other spheres. ([Location 1563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1563)) - Geosphere: The Earth’s physical systems have already been dangerously disrupted by human activity. Additional disruption is on the way in the form of higher temperatures, changing oceanic currents and wind zones, more extreme storms and droughts, melting ice and rising, acidifying oceans, drying, eroding, and deteriorating soils, depleted aquifers, and disruptive anomalies in familiar regional weather patterns. ([Location 1568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1568)) - Biosphere: Physical disturbances in the geosphere pose a threat to all plants and animals in the web of life, a web that connects every living thing to every living thing, a web that includes us. ([Location 1571](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1571)) - Social sphere: As our geosphere and biosphere become increasingly unstable, our civilization will also grow increasingly unstable, setting in motion unprecedented disturbances that will affect every dimension of society—all our economic, political, educational, agricultural, recreational, religious, and other shared activities. ([Location 1573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1573)) - Personal sphere: Turmoil in the geosphere, biosphere, and social spheres will create turmoil within each of our individual nervous systems. It will take a new set of habits and practices to sustain personal well-being during this disruptive time. ([Location 1578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1578)) - The experience of doom takes a lot from us. But yes, it does bring certain gifts, one of which is a new clarity and insight. ([Location 1585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1585)) - Native American culture in North America has been through the collapse of civilization and lived to tell the tale. —Choctaw elder / retired Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston ([Location 1629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1629)) - see colonialism more from the point of view of the colonized. ([Location 1643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1643)) - Look closely at our civilization and you’ll find the short-term prosperity of some group of people being purchased at the long-term expense of other people, other creatures, and of the Earth itself. ([Location 1655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1655)) - They are wise when they tell us to do our own homework, part of which is to learn from books and other resources by indigenous leaders to help us see just how deeply our own civilization has brainwashed us, dehumanized us, and shrunk our imagination. ([Location 1691](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1691)) - when many people today hear the word Bible, they think of it as the tool of the colonizers, not the literature of the colonized. ([Location 1724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1724)) - I have come to see the Bible and all its major characters—God, Adam, Eve, Moses, Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, David, Isaiah, Mary, Jesus, Paul, the Holy Spirit, and all the rest—as victims of a kidnapping. They have been taken hostage by colonizing captors who parade them out in public for propaganda purposes. ([Location 1731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1731)) - If we take off the interpretive glasses we were given by colonizers, we begin to see what the actual indigenous Bible has been saying all along: that trying to live like gods leads to doom. ([Location 1739](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1739)) - how do we learn a good and loving way of life—shalom for the ancient Jews, the kingdom of God for the indigenous Jewish prophet Jesus, eloheh for the Cherokee, amahoro and ubuntu for many African peoples—when we are dominated by a death-dealing civilization that is winning its way toward collapse? ([Location 1764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1764)) - how will we live after the end—in the aftermath of the current dominating civilization’s inevitable collapse? ([Location 1766](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1766)) - The real horizon in biblical literature is not the end of an individual life at death. Nor is it the end of the space-time universe. It is the end of whatever shortsighted and small-hearted civilization currently dominates the world. ([Location 1768](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1768)) - Were you taught similarly, or did your teachers have a different approach? ([Location 1779](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1779)) - If you make victims and survivors the ones who are most responsible for reconciliation, you’re harming them again. The people who are most responsible for reconciliation are the people responsible for creating the harm in the first place. —Irish author and peace activist Gareth Higgins ([Location 1802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1802)) - Can you see how refusing to live within limits, playing Creator rather than creature, would lead to dominating civilization as we know it? ([Location 1836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1836)) - if you leave your place as one beloved creature among other beloved creatures in a sacred creation, you will experience suffering, sweat, tears, violence, and, in the end, extinction. You will no longer fit in with your environment. You will compete with it, to master it. ([Location 1838](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1838)) - The fact that everyone in Babel speaks the same language makes it easier to consolidate power, which means that the budding civilization will be able to do more harm. So God disrupts this centralization of power and suppression of difference. Babel collapses and its peoples scatter and preserve their independent identities through a diversity of languages. But soon, new Babels arise. ([Location 1865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1865)) - By the time they cross the wild expanse and come to their ancestral lands, they justify the slaughter of its new inhabitants by saying their God gave them a mandate to do so, an episode in the biblical story full of moral contortion and travail. ([Location 1909](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1909)) - Jesus arises in the tradition of the prophets before him. One story claims he is born completely apart from the violent patriarchy of earthly civilization: God bypasses patriarchy and produces a new kind of human being through a woman alone. ([Location 1929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1929)) - When Jesus comes of age, he speaks of an alternative civilization that operates by radically different values: the kingdom, empire, or civilization of God, or perhaps (translated into our current situation) the alternative economy or regenerative ecosystem of God. ([Location 1932](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1932)) - Jesus advocates an indigenous ethic of biomimicry, counseling us to learn creaturely wisdom from birds and wildflowers, growing seeds and resilient trees. ([Location 1934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1934)) - He flips the script of civilization, trading the imperial love of power for the primal power of love. ([Location 1935](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1935)) - The nonviolent and unifying divine Spirit does not eradicate or homogenize diversity, but rather celebrates it and harmonizes it in concern for the common good. ([Location 1967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=1967)) - This alternative approach, rooted in indigenous values and narrated from the vantage point of those who have been oppressed and marginalized by extractive and exploitive civilizations, could help create the conditions in which we might imagine a new arrangement, a post-colonial and ecological society, a new beloved community that learns what the old arrangement wouldn’t or couldn’t accept. ([Location 2001](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2001)) - Don’t read the Bible from the vantage point of the colonizers and oppressors. You’ll see only what an exploitive civilization in overshoot has already trained you to see! ([Location 2006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2006)) - Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, There is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, The world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” Doesn’t make any sense. —Sufi poet Rumi1 ([Location 2043](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2043)) - We who thought our civilization was superior and exceptional begin to see its downsides, and so we turn to indigenous peoples for the treasuries of insight that colonial civilization tried to destroy. ([Location 2060](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2060)) - We realize that our sacred texts are actually repositories of that indigenous wisdom, and we understand why our civilization’s authority figures trained us not to see that wisdom. ([Location 2062](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2062)) - Whatever right and wrong really are, they may not correspond to our simplistic ideas as people shaped by a civilization that has proven itself wildly successful, amazingly arrogant, and deeply unjust and unsustainable. ([Location 2066](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2066)) - What do we do? We love life. This is our full-time job. Like diligent farmers, we sow seeds of kindness wherever we go. Please don’t ask us to be accountants of wine cups. We are worshippers of the Wine. ([Location 2085](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2085)) - “Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not” is another way of saying maybe good and bad aren’t the best or only categories to lump everything into. Yes, some plans are good first steps, but they’re bad long-term strategies. Yes, some solutions are better than the problems they address, but they’re not as good as new solutions that could soon replace them. Yes, some developments are a step in the wrong direction, but sometimes, a step in the wrong direction takes us quickly into trouble, so we look for a better direction. ([Location 2122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2122)) - our simplistic binaries like good and bad, right and wrong, wonderful and terrible have been calibrated by the habits, values, and structures of our current civilization. ([Location 2126](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2126)) - I see how much harm has been done by my tradition in upholding these binaries. They presented God as bipolar, prone to moods of extravagant blessing at one moment and extreme rage the next. As a result, crusaders, conquistadors, and colonizers of my tradition saw themselves as the exceptional beneficiaries of God’s blessing mood, and they saw those they conquered, killed, enslaved, and oppressed as the targets of God’s damning mood. Our theological binary created good guys who were always “us,” and bad guys who were always “them.” ([Location 2147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2147)) - old theological binaries were abused by my religion. ([Location 2177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2177)) - Octavia Butler said, “Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.” ([Location 2196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2196)) - The mind that is not baffled is not employed. ([Location 2209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2209)) - The impeded stream is the one that sings. ([Location 2210](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2210)) - Poignancy … is the richest feeling humans experience, one that gives meaning to life—and it happens when you feel happy and sad at the same time. It’s the state you enter when you cry tears of joy—which tend to come during precious moments suffused with their imminent ending. ([Location 2245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2245)) - If you “get” that last sentence, you’ll probably feel as I do right now as I write: we live in between two impending dangers, both real, both potential threats to our existence. To our left, we face the frightening gradual accumulation of environmental and social consequences of ecological overshoot. To our right, we face the more sudden social consequences of having our terror management strategies fail, plunging us and our neighbors into our most reactive, most neurotic, and least rational behaviors right at a time when we need cool heads and a collaborative spirit. ([Location 2320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2320)) - We’re all just wax and wick, I thought. On the day of our birth, our life flame begins to burn, and from that moment, each new moment of life brings us one moment closer to its inevitable end. I felt how little control we have: we choose neither the length of our candle nor the conditions in which our wick, wax, and flame come together. ([Location 2336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2336)) - death adds value to life.5 Death tells us that our lives matter because they are precious, long enough to be meaningful, but short enough that we can’t take even a single day for granted. ([Location 2360](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2360)) - learning to accept the reality of death is an essential dimension of maturity and wisdom. We come to see that life is not about you or me: we are about something bigger than ourselves. We are about life itself. ([Location 2363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2363)) - To live as part of this universe of beautiful impermanence, of generous self-giving, with some constantly departing and others constantly arriving, is to be faced with the most profound and meaningful choice imaginable. ([Location 2374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2374)) - Over the millennia, we have developed elaborate terror management strategies … religions, philosophies, economies, cultures, even civilization itself. Driven by fear, we tried to transcend our impermanence, to deny that we are candles, to grasp for rights and power without responsibilities and limits. ([Location 2402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2402)) - If we are to get through this dangerous time, if the darkness of the tomb can also be the creative “darkness of the womb” (to use Valarie Kaur’s apt phrase),10 our denial of death is one thing that must die. ([Location 2407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2407)) - we can also become more wise, letting denial, anger, bargaining, and depression pass through us like a storm. In the calm beyond the storm, we will see our remaining moments, days, and years for what they have always been: a precious gift, fleeting as morning mist, a fragile flame on a tiny wick in a bit of wax, gloriously impermanent and too magnificent to waste. ([Location 2418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2418)) - What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis? —Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe ([Location 2446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2446)) - It’s no wonder that many idealistic people like me eventually burn out and descend into cynicism and disillusionment. ([Location 2517](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2517)) - We can’t go on responding to our crisis in ways that perpetuate the crisis. ([Location 2636](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2636)) - A culture does not tend to train its young to endure its own breakdown. —Philosopher and psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear ([Location 2685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2685)) - “Be where your feet are.” ([Location 2690](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2690)) - reorganization phase, when the new post-collapse conditions create the possibility of rebirth for some new arrangement of matter and energy. ([Location 2729](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2729)) - paschal mystery: birth and growth, suffering and death, followed by rebirth. ([Location 2742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2742)) - If there is any atom of truth at all to the biblical words that pride goes before a fall and that individuals and groups reap what they sow, then collapse of an unrepentant civilization like this one is inevitable. ([Location 2795](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2795)) - Rather than tightly grasping at single solutions to help us regain a feeling of control, we need to loosen up our imagination, so we can imagine multiple ways through the turbulence, multiple routes to multiple safe landings. ([Location 2871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2871)) - We shift our imaginative energies from averting collapse to building life rafts and arks of sanity, resilience, and morality. ([Location 2892](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2892)) - “Let’s talk now about how we want to handle tough situations when they develop, because we both know that I will eventually disappoint you, and you will eventually disappoint me. Let’s think from the beginning of how we want to handle inevitable problems. And let’s talk now about how we want our working relationship to end when the time comes. Let’s try to set ourselves up for a good ending, right from the beginning. Does that make sense?”8 ([Location 2921](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=2921)) - When we are vulnerable about our fears, honest about our sufferings or sadness, and open about our need for help … we create a model that others can mirror. ([Location 3064](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3064)) - there is also such a thing as collective stupidity, when people come together in a race to the bottom, mirroring one another’s resentment, bigotry, or vengeance. ([Location 3069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3069)) - Self-preparation is not to the exclusion of helping others: it is for the purpose of group cooperation. ([Location 3242](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3242)) - telling children (or anyone) not to feel what they feel doesn’t generally work out well. ([Location 3286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3286)) - Telling stressed children to stop feeling what they feel puts impossible pressure on them when they’re already past an emotional breaking point. ([Location 3287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3287)) - We will need repeated encouragement as we cope with situations that push us to and beyond a breaking point. ([Location 3301](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3301)) - if you don’t keep maturing in wisdom, you will not remain at your current level of awesome. ([Location 3314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3314)) - This openness, this receptivity to lifelong learning and growth, is what Zen Buddhists mean when they speak of shoshin, the beginner’s mind. It’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless you become like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” He wasn’t urging adults to regress toward childish ignorance or uncritical trust: only a demagogue would want that. He was inviting arrogant, complacent, or misguided adults who think they have arrived to humbly realize that they are only beginners in adulthood, and they have a lifetime of adult growth ahead of them. His language of being “born again” offered the same invitation: to become beginners again, with the insatiable curiosity of children who know that there’s a lot they don’t know, and aren’t ashamed to admit it.6 Bob Dylan brought a similar message in 1964: You’ll either learn to swim or “sink like a stone,” he said, “for the times they are a-changin’.” So ([Location 3316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3316)) - we have entered a gilded age of misinformation, ([Location 3326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3326)) - We will need to train our minds for wisdom as athletes train their bodies for the Olympics. ([Location 3329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3329)) - you don’t just learn: you learn to keep learning in deeper and broader ways. ([Location 3330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3330)) - You develop the skills of contemplation, where you learn to observe your own observation, climb out of your own mental ruts, detach from your habitual reactions, understand the limitations of your perspective, and widen the aperture of your awareness. ([Location 3335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3335)) - healthy religion exposes us to the deep wisdom of sages, past and present, so we can learn to imitate their way of life—so we can live in our time with the same creative insight they modeled in their time. ([Location 3338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3338)) - our current situation is a petri dish for fear and mean-spiritedness. ([Location 3344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3344)) - If we don’t want to join that race to the bottom, we will have to pursue strength of character. ([Location 3350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3350)) - When others stoke fear and resentment, we radiate courage and grace. ([Location 3353](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3353)) - we are entering a time of increasing fragmentation where everyone will be tempted to turn on everyone. So, in addition to developing tough minds, kind hearts, and strength of character, we will need to develop the skills of interdependence. ([Location 3354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3354)) - Those who aim for interdependence know that the only way through tough times is together. ([Location 3362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3362)) - the tough times ahead will constantly suck us down toward despair. To face and endure that despair with wisdom, kindness, character, and interdependence, we will need courage, especially the courage to differ graciously. ([Location 3363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3363)) - When we are intimidated into silence, afraid to speak our truth, we lose heart. ([Location 3364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3364)) - in the tough period after peak civilization, we’re going to need the toughness of agility. We’re going to have to accept that constant change is here to stay. ([Location 3372](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3372)) - to grow stronger in wisdom, kindness, character, interdependence, courage, and agility, we’ll have to discover new depths of the human spirit. ([Location 3376](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3376)) - At the same time, by inducing fear and anger and by driving me for solidarity in an in-group and against an out-group, ugly news increased my dependence on other mood-altering hormones like dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, and adrenaline, creating a vicious cycle. The less happiness I felt, the more I needed likes on my social media as rewards for posting outrage about an outrage, or the more I needed to feel a deep belonging to an outraged in-group, or the more I needed to fight with somebody about something. I felt I was being sucked into a vortex where all other stories became insignificant: I was drawn irresistibly to ugliness. I saw it everywhere. I was becoming a connoisseur of the ugly, and maybe even an ugliness junkie. ([Location 3462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3462)) - Based on our focus, ugliness is everywhere or beauty abounds. ([Location 3476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3476)) - I understand that you are learning to live by a different story where beauty abounds. You don’t need me physically present to tell the beautiful story. You can tell it yourselves. Even just two or three of you can gather together, embodying my way of being in the world. You can be cells of resistance, outposts of transformation, seedbeds of beauty.” ([Location 3497](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3497)) - It just means that every time ugliness presents itself, after noticing it, grieving it, and feeling furious about it, you commit yourself to fighting the ugly with the practice of the beautiful and joyful, celebrating and adding to the beauty that abounds, the goodness in the world that is worth fighting for. ([Location 3533](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3533)) - “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” ([Location 3556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3556)) - our humanity cannot be reduced to our current narratives and institutions. As they fail, we can disentangle and step away from them. We can tell better, more honest, more healing stories, and we can build better, wiser, more durable, representative, and ethical institutions, starting small, and, if necessary, rebuilding from the ruins or replanting in the ashes. ([Location 3663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3663)) - But it is not too late to love, and it never will be. Love will count, no matter what. Even on the last day of the world. ([Location 3691](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3691)) - they sought for things that don’t really matter and missed what really matters: life lived simply, in harmony with neighbor, self, the Earth, and God. ([Location 3833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3833)) - Every system of self-centered civilization with its barns and banks for hoarding will inevitably collapse, the story of the rich fool reminds us. ([Location 3836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3836)) - the divine ecosystem of interdependence and sharing, the holy and harmonious arrangement of life in which wildflowers and ravens live and thrive … it goes on. That’s where to put your heart. That’s where to invest your inner energies: ([Location 3837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3837)) - We need to face the scenarios of doom and do all we can to avoid the worst of the bad scenarios. ([Location 3869](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3869)) - But in the end, doom isn’t the point. The dream is. ([Location 3869](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3869)) - please don’t let doom have the last word. Focus on life, and remember the dream. ([Location 3871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3871)) - We want to align our creative energies to save people and things we love so they can thrive. ([Location 3957](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3957)) - 3 If we don’t learn how to control the psychological energy of our own fear and resentment, we can be sure others will exploit our emotional energy for their own selfish and destructive projects. ([Location 3975](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=3975)) - Reading this book, I trust, is helping you in this inner work. First, you start waking up. You welcome reality. You learn to more intentionally and skilfully mind your mind. ([Location 4000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4000)) - You find yourself increasingly able to hold back from judging everything in simple binaries of good and bad. ([Location 4005](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4005)) - If we are to exist, we must exist not for ourselves, but for the health of the whole, for the joy of the cosmic dance, the dance of energy, light, love. ([Location 4035](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4035)) - Detachment means disentangling from all delusions of separateness, so we can stop being wallflowers and join the dance of energy exchange that we call the universe. Detachment from our delusions of separateness is the portal to coming together with wisdom and courage when worlds fall apart. ([Location 4044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4044)) - in this time of turbulence when worlds are falling apart, all of us with willing hearts can come together … together with one another, poor and rich, whatever our race or gender, wherever we live, whatever our religion or education. ([Location 4048](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4048)) - In my dream, we would know God not as separate from creation, but as the living light and holy energy we encounter in and through creation: embodied, incarnated, in the current and flow of past, present, and future, known most intimately in the energy of love. ([Location 4064](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4064)) - As Maya Angelou says, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then do better.” ([Location 4124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4124)) - It’s super tempting, when you’re pouring your heart into your own plan, to get mad at everyone else for not joining you. But attacking your allies is counterproductive; who wants to join a team of mean people? ([Location 4133](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4133)) - The things you as an individual are doing now really matter, and the many things we come together to do matter even more. ([Location 4138](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4138)) - assurance that everything matters, and some things matter more than others. ([Location 4170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4170)) - Voicing your concern matters, and voicing your commitment matters even more. ([Location 4173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4173)) - Your anxiety matters and your citizenship matters even more. ([Location 4184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4184)) - What you’ve already learned matters, and remaining curious matters even more. ([Location 4194](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4194)) - What you’ve already contributed matters, and your ongoing contributions will matter even more. ([Location 4203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4203)) - The salary and benefits of your job matter, but the benefits your work provides to others and to the Earth matter even more. ([Location 4215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4215)) - The return on your investments matters but the impact of your purchases, investments, and donations matters even more. ([Location 4218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4218)) - Whether or not you have children matters and how much you care for everyone’s children matters even more. ([Location 4224](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4224)) - Your individual actions matter and the institutions and social movements in which you play a part matter even more. ([Location 4229](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4229)) - Your mistakes or failures matter way less than what you learn from them. ([Location 4234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4234)) - Your organized religion matters and your spiritual organizing matters even more. ([Location 4239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4239)) - What you think matters and how you love matters more. ([Location 4245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4245)) - Your anger matters and your sadness and joy matter even more. ([Location 4250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4250)) - often our anger is poorly processed sadness, ([Location 4252](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4252)) - Your arguments matter and your agreements matter even more. ([Location 4258](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4258)) - Your family matters, and your community of resilience matters even more. ([Location 4262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4262)) - What I’m telling you on this page matters way less than what you tell yourself when you turn the page. ([Location 4268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4268)) - Confirmation Bias: Our brain committees screen new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standards we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. ([Location 4584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4584)) - Complexity Bias: The human brain often prefers a simple lie to a complex truth. ([Location 4592](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4592)) - Community Bias: Your brain finds it very hard for you to see something your community or in-group doesn’t want you to see. Also known as social confirmation bias, this bias puts tribe over truth. ([Location 4597](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4597)) - Complementarity Bias: If people are nice to you, you’ll be open to what they see and have to say. ([Location 4604](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4604)) - Contact Bias: If you lack contact with someone, you won’t see what they see. ([Location 4607](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4607)) - Conservative/Liberal Bias: Because of community bias and contact bias, our brains like to see as our party sees. ([Location 4611](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4611)) - Consciousness Bias: Our brains see from a location. A person’s level of consciousness—from dualistic to pragmatic to critical to integral—makes it possible to see some things and impossible to see others. ([Location 4622](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4622)) - Competency Bias: Our brains prefer to think of ourselves as above average. As a result, we are incompetent at knowing how incompetent or competent we are, so we may in fact be less or more informed and competent than we think. ([Location 4631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4631)) - Confidence Bias: Our brains prefer a confident lie to a hesitant truth. We mistake confidence for competence, which renders us vulnerable to the lies of confident people (many of whom are con artists, which means artists at manipulating others by their confidence). ([Location 4636](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4636)) - Conspiracy Bias: When we feel shame, we are vulnerable to stories that cast us as the victims of an evil conspiracy by some enemy “other.” ([Location 4639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4639)) - Comfort/Convenience/Complacency Bias: For a majority of us, our brains welcome optimistic information that allows us to relax and be happy, and our brains reject pessimistic information that might require us to adjust, work, or inconvenience ourselves. ([Location 4643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4643)) - Catastrophe/Negativity Bias: Our brain’s primary job is to keep us alive, which means being vigilant about the approach of immediate and catastrophic danger. As a result, when under stress, we are wired to notice and remember bad news and bad experiences, and to minimize good news and good experiences. ([Location 4647](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4647)) - Constancy/Normalcy/Baseline Bias: Our brains are wired to set a baseline of normalcy and assume what feels normal has always been and will always remain constant. ([Location 4651](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4651)) - Cash Bias: Our brains are wired to see within the framework of our economy, so whatever helps us make money, we consider good. ([Location 4658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4658)) - Certainty/Closure Bias: Our brains find it difficult to rest with uncertainty, so we would rather close in on an unwarranted certainty than live in uncertainty. ([Location 4662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4662)) - Cleverness/Deception Bias: Our brains know that deception comes in many forms, from a venomous snake camouflaged in fallen leaves to an internet scammer trying to get our bank information by posing as a friend in need. ([Location 4665](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD5MZ8N3&location=4665))