<\/p>\n
\u201cStory teller, mythmaker, and destroyer of the living world.\u201d<\/p>\n
So begins Edward O. Wilson\u2019s Half-Earth: Our Planet\u2019s Fight for Life.<\/i>[1]<\/a> <\/i>The renowned biologist, in his most fervent work, proposes giving back half the planet\u2019s surface to nature. Only in this way can life, aside from microbes, jellyfish and fungi, be saved from mankind\u2019s failure to serve as loving steward of the earth.<\/p>\n Jackson Browne sings: \u201cThe world\u2019s going to shake itself free of our greed somehow.\u201d[2]<\/a> Critics see this line as indicating \u201chope\u201d in his otherwise dark lament. But one cannot escape the other possibility, that the earth\u2019s shaking, in what scientists are now calling \u201cthe coming cascade of mega-quakes,\u201d may in fact shake the world free of our greed, \u201cto shake itself all the way free somehow.\u201d <\/p>\n After one of the major earthquakes in California, I did a survey of university student\u2019s dreams and fantasies upon awakening. What I found was that more than 80% had dreams or fantasies or feelings that the earthquake was \u201crevenge.\u201d Some of these experiences were highly personal, others more collective.[3]<\/a> More than likely, deep in our own psyche, we already know that the earth will \u201cget back\u201d and cost us dearly for our transgressions. <\/p>\n The machinations of greed are increasingly entrenched, increasing in degree and scope, and so blinded to the consequences for themselves, others, life itself and the earth, that nothing short of something that would \u201cshake the world\u201d is going to lead to any consequential changes. Whether such mega-quakes occur in the earth itself, or the world\u2019s financial system, or some other world or human disaster, my dream tells me that Ragnar\u00f6k is coming\u2014the final<\/i> Ragnar\u00f6k. One way to take this is that we are in fact in the sixth extinction, one that will lead to the end of much of life on earth\u2014including humans. Ragnar\u00f6k belongs to the world\u2019s \u201cdeath of gods\u201d mythology and all such mythologies point to a subsequent rebirth<\/i> of the gods. There are two ways to take this. <\/p>\n One is that a final Ragnar\u00f6k would be the last<\/i> death of gods and there would be no future rebirth of gods because people would be no more. The question of whether this means the psyche would be no more must be left an open one, because we simply do not know the full extent and depth of the psyche-as-reality and how it might manifest in such a future. The psyche may not be just<\/i> a human attribute.<\/p>\n The second is that what would follow would be \u201csomething else\u201d\u2014something other than what we know as gods of myth. The Coming Guest<\/i> is one such possibility. I wrote Psyche Speaks<\/i> to suggest that the Coming Guest would be Eros, not as concept, not as myth, but as the fully realized manifestation of the psyche in the world.<\/i> Until then, as an earlier poem suggested, \u201cmadness\u201d will be psyche\u2019s only nurse.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n So, in this sprit, I will toast the final <\/i>Ragnar\u00f6k and the Coming Guest<\/i>\u2014as soon as I get some Blavod, which, so far, is not possible to get where I live.<\/p>\n There are some who see clearly the state of the world and what is coming and who are trying to tell others the truth. As Ben Franklin said, \u201cHonesty is the best policy.\u201d But this has not been the policy at all, and this failure of honesty has played a key role in bringing us to our present state. I say \u201cus,\u201d because we are all<\/i> complicit in playing along with the untruths disguised as truths. Few of us can \u201cget off the train\u201d of this truthless track we are living. <\/p>\n Here are some links to things that convey a good dose of truth you will not be hearing on the TV news or in your local newspapers.<\/p>\n 1. http:\/\/guymcpherson.com<\/a><\/p>\n 2. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DCeADT8Y8Pw<\/a><\/p>\n 3. http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/31661-mass-extinction-it-s-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it<\/a><\/p>\n 4. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mwhh7xBj-Cg&feature=youtu.be<\/a><\/p>\n [1]<\/a>Edward O. Wilson. Half-Earth: Our Planet\u2019s Fight for Life. <\/i>New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation (W. W. Norton & Company), 2016.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Jackson Browne. \u201cIf I Could Be Anywhere.\u201d Filmed November 2010, at TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch. https:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/jackson_browne_if_i_could_be_anywhere#t-51079<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> The day before this earthquake, I had workmen cut down a glorious pine tree whose roots were about to break apart the swimming pool. I felt bad about having to do this. At 6 am the next morning, I was roused by an intense earthquake (the \u201cSylmar Quake,\u201d February 9, 1971). While the quake was still in progress, I lurched to the patio windows with strong images of the swimming pool cracking, the tree taking its revenge. It did not crack, but I stood there watching the water thrown up at me from the pool. I was quite shaken, literally and emotionally. It was this experience that gave me the idea to survey my students that day. <\/p>\n
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