The Real Paths to Ecocivilisation - Chapter 11: Metanoia, Part Three
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By this point it should be crystal clear that I expect nobody to take my word for anything at all that is based solely on my own subjective lived experiences. However, without a conclusion to my autobiographical story, at least so much as it is relevant, this book would have been incomplete. I left that story with me at university, studying philosophy and cognitive science in search of a coherent worldview capable of incorporating everything I understood about the nature of reality. This book itself forms part of the completion of that story. I began work on the first version in the summer of 2008, almost immediately after finishing my degree, and I have been working on it ever since, on and off. The reason it has taken 16 years to finish is that I kept running into show-stopping problems – either inconsistencies in my own argument or problems making it into a viable book. I had set myself a task of writing a book that passed three tests:
(1) It must be honest, and that includes not conveniently leaving anything important out.
(2) It must provide a justification for genuinehope for humanity, not honest doom and gloom until a final chapter along the lines of “It’s two minutes to midnight, but we can do this! We all need to [something that can’t happen, for one reason or another]. We must act now.”
(3) It must be something that people will enjoy reading, or at least think it was worth the bother of doing so when they have finished.
I also wanted to avoid, like the plague, giving the impression of trying to set myself up as any sort of spiritual leader or teacher. There’s not much worse than people who sell spirituality. There has been far too much of that already. Talking the talk is easy. It’s much harder to walk the walk.
On balance, I think Achyra S. and the other proponents of the Christ myth theory are probably wrong. Some of the narrative story in the gospels was indeed adapted from existing mythologies, but it doesn’t follow that there was no historical Jesus at all. Christianity didn’t just appear from nowhere. I believe the Crucifixion actually happened. I think Jesus was a spiritual and political revolutionary who called for a new sort of society that was totally at odds with Roman ways of thinking. His vision was of the sort of world that would have existed if God could have sat on Caesar’s throne: the Kingdom of God, almost literally. He called for a new sort of morality and spirituality – one that involved treating your neighbour as yourself, and not just forgiving those who had wronged you but loving your enemies. When people started responding positively to this message – when the movement that had been started by the already-martyred John the Baptist began to gather further momentum behind Jesus – the Roman authorities decided he had to go. His death, like John’s, was intended as a warning to others, but it ended up having exactly the opposite effect: it inspired his followers to fight to keep his vision alive, even at the cost of their own lives. The story I was told as a child is that Jesus died to save humanity from its sins – another Christian claim that has never made any sense to me. What does it even mean? I think he died defending a vision of a world where morality and spirituality are taken seriously – a world where it is understood that such things cannot be bought and sold, and must not be used as tools to control others for your own ends.
Christianity eventually succeeded in taking over Europe and western Asia, but by then the vision had been turned on its head. By the 11th century the Catholic Church had become a thriving business. Absolutely everything was for sale, from tickets to heaven to the papacy itself. By the 13th, “Love your enemies” had degenerated into “Kill them all; let God sort them out”, which actually meant “In order to ensure every single one of our Cathar enemies is killed, we shall slaughter the entire population ofBéziers.” What makes this arguably the lowest point in the whole of Western history is that Catharism was a movement against the moral, spiritual and political corruption of the church.
The story of the crucifixion has a deep meaning that encompasses both literal and metaphorical truth: that’s how hard it is to truly walk the walk. Sacrificing your individuality to become truly united with the Source of all things is for a tiny minority – the true elite – and at the end of the day those people must be fully prepared to sacrifice everything, up to and including their lives. I suspect such people do exist, but that in most cases very few other people, if any at all, know who they are or what they do. This is what the second half of verse 2 of the Tao Te Ching is about:
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
The first sentence describes wu wei, the idea of effortless action, where one acts in alignment with the natural order and allows things to unfold without force or interference, such as teaching through presence and example rather than through words. The second is about non-resistance and acceptance of change – the Taoist sage doesn’t cling to what arises or resist what fades, recognising the impermanence of all things. The third reflects detachment and humility – the sage engages with the world without becoming entangled in ownership, pride, or expectations. The rest of the verse is about letting go of ego and personal attachment to outcomes, the sage’s actions become timeless, enduring as part of the larger flow of the Tao. I have the utmost respect for people who choose to lead their lives like this, but I must re-iterate that it is not for me.
One of the goals of this book was to try to demonstrate to people who see the world how I once saw it that the word “spirituality” does actually mean something other than “woo”. Metaphorically speaking, while I wish to make the case that there is indeed a door, I have no intention of trying to lead anybody through it. I have no pretensions about my suitability to act as a guide for what lies on the other side of that door. I am not in the business of offering salvation to anybody, although I did eventually find it myself. There is no longer any trace of the depression I battled with for over two decades. This cannot be because the situation in the world has got any better, because it has never stopped getting worse. I can’t honestly say it has anything to do with spiritual transformation either – the most truthful answer I can give is that it is because my own life has steadily become more rewarding and meaningful. I spend most of my time doing things that I feel are worthwhile. When I am not writing, I spend a lot of time directly engaged with the natural world. For over a decade that involved teaching people how to forage for wild food. These days it mostly consists of learning how to run a smallholding fit for the future. I hope it will provide my daughter with somewhere she can maximise her own chances, not just of surviving but of living a life that is actually worth living. This meaning and purpose is something I need as an individual. As my mind, not as the Participating Observer. My brain is required, and without that brain there is no me. I am not some sort of empty husk, and I am not Jesus or the Buddha either. I am not ready to be crucified in order to help save humanity. Doing the best I can at being Geoff is enough for me.
There is another reason why this is the shortest chapter in this book: I have nothing to add to what has already been written on this subject. It is not that there is nothing left to write. A great deal of work lies ahead constructing a new kind of spirituality, but this is not that book, and I am not that author. If the real Western Book of the Eco-apocalypse is ever written, it will need to be a collaborative effort of the best minds of their time.