Facing the Polycrisis: Is There Hope For Humanity?

Who cares, and who is the one who cares?

I just read this post from Jamie Wheal about the “polycrisis,” which I suppose needs no explanation, but it’s basically a word for summarizing that every kind of shit possible is hitting the fan which was already half broken:

Leaving Space for Grace

It’s a very long post, and I’m surprised there are people still reading such long things. It actually gives me hope in humanity to know that!

The point of the post was to explain what a sensible hopefulness looks like (no, we can’t vote Obama again, lol) for our collective future, vs a naive faith. Tl;Dr: Jamie thinks everything will work out somehow in the end. My mom always said, “Well, everything does always work out somehow.” And that’s pretty much tautological, but the insinuation is that things will work out in a good way, even if we must go thru a terrible polycrisis first, although it will take all of our collective energy to make it turn out favorably.

This hits home for me a bit, since my dad devoted his life to telling the world the same thing: “Hang in there, folks, we’re gonna make it, one way or another, and here’s why!”

1. Because we can all join intentional communities!

   1. Well, he did live in the Bruderhof for 20 years, but after that he could never find one that we could fit into. They generally kicked him out when he exposed some dishonesty in their politics.

2. Because there will be clean renewable energy soon! (true)

3. Because there are so many natural cures for diseases! (I agree)

4. Because Steven Greer’s UFO Disclosure Project will allow aliens to save us!

   1. That, or they are taking over the world bit by bit for some nefarious purpose, as my professor, David M. Jacobs, taught.
      

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Hope is Dope: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

Karl Marx said, “religion is the opiate of the masses.” Well, we’re too poor for real opiates and religion now, so instead, I would update this to say, “hopium is the krokodil of the masses.” It’s just another psychological gimmick to distract ourselves from the truth of reality. Did you know, that everything is already perfect, without you?

Instead of Hopi Prophecy Humming (hopiumming) for everything to work out in the “end,” I think it makes sense to take a more Buddhist approach and understand that there is no common end. Look at life and death. Do you believe everyone shares the same afterlife? New-agers might, but NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) show a different story.

Almost universally in NDEs, the theme is not about the collective future of Earth, but rather the future that the person dying is headed for. As Buddha explained, your mindset at death (+ past deeds), which is determined by your mindset during life, will determine your next life, for the most part. And in a bit, I’ll explain how to go beyond even the next life.

So, the bad news is, there’s a polycrisis, but the good news is, there’s never been a better time to work on your mindset!

Yeah yeah, but what about Planet Earth?

It sounds a bit selfish to think about just your own salvation when the rest of us are going to hell in a handbasket, and that is always the criticism levied against old-skool Buddhists. But as I recently explained to my friend Derek, it’s a bit like when you’re in the airplane, and they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on before helping your baby with theirs. Because if you aren’t saved yourself, how will you save others?

Here is how I think saving ourselves could potentially save everyone…

Ok, so, most people are hopefully sort of aware by now that the organization which controls the world is called the World Economic Forum (WEF), and it’s been controlling the world for at least 50 years now, and probably millennia via more secret societies. And the WEF has this vision for the year 2030, called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), in which humans and machines will merge into one collective cyborg race.

When I was a kid, the only TV show my dad and I watched together was Star Trek. I hope you got to watch it, because it was incredibly inspiring, and often taught some important life lessons. In Star Trek, there was an alien cyborg race called the Borg which was slowly assimilating every race in the galaxy into its hive mind. Humanity finally came up with the one weapon that could defeat the Borg: the injection of a paradox into their hive mind. After they injected the paradox, the Borg hive dissolved back into a brazillian individual entities who needed immense help to learn to cope all by themselves again.

The only question remaining is, what will the paradox be that we can inject into the hive mind? My suspicion is that when the WEF tries to cyborgify all humans, they will start with the easy ones, the folks who are just desperate to end their misery, then they will eventually progress to encompass everyone, which will be their downfall. Why? Because some folks are so far beyond this conventional reality that they can’t be understood by any machine or conventional intelligence. For example, in Tibetan Buddhist Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s book, The Joy of Living, he recounts the incredible tale (verified by Dr. Mitchel Levy) of the 16th Karmapa’s last days:

 In 1981 he was treated for cancer at a hospital outside of Chicago. The course of his illness bewildered his medical team, as his symptoms seemed to come and go for no apparent reason, disappearing altogether at times, only to reappear later in some previously unaffected area of his body-as though, according to one description, “his body were joking with the machines.”

Throughout the ordeal, the Karmapa never complained of pain. He was much more interested in the well-being of the hospital staff, many of whom stopped by regularly simply to experience the enormous sense of tranquility and compassion that radiated from him despite the ravages of disease. 

When he died, the lamas and other Tibetans who’d stayed with him throughout his treatment asked that his body remain undisturbed for three days, as is the Tibetan custom after the passage of a great master. Because the Karmapa had made such a profound impression on the hospital staff, the administration granted their request, and, rather than immediately removing his remains to the hospital morgue, they allowed his body to remain in his room, seated in the meditation posture in which he’d died. 

As documented by the doctors who examined him over the course of those three days, the Karmapa’s body never underwent rigor mortis, and the area around his heart remained nearly as warm as that of a living person. More than twenty years later, the condition of his body after death defies medical explanation, and still leaves a profound impact on those who witnessed it. 

While these ‘magic tricks’ are astounding, they are just pointers to a deeper reality. The Buddha wasn’t focused on the tricks themselves, but on their power to shock people out of their habits of perception. And the main perception that we must learn how to unweave is the unification of perceptions itself, which lays the groundwork for identity, birth, and death: saṃsāra. Reality, once unwoven into an infinity of self-known, disjoint perfect flows, is referred to as nibbāna. His main teaching on nibbāna has been lost in most of the Buddhist schools today, although it’s still preserved in part of the Theravada Pali Cannon.

Perhaps the most hopeful scenario would be that those of us who’ve already dissolved into nibbāna will automatically inject that wisdom and capacity into the hive mind once we are assimilated, making it accessible for anyone individually. After all, nibbāna is literally the unweaving of the unification of perceptions (ni = un, bana = weaving) known as “mind” (and thus also hive mind). When little self is seen through, big Self, in all of its forms, natural and artificial, is also seen through.

It’s gonna be a grand ride, folks. Try not to get distracted. 💕🙌