why? : my rationale for creating 'a calm presence' newsletter
why? : my rationale for creating 'a calm presence' newsletter
this newsletter is a gesture of reciprocity in response to the many gifts and teachings that I have received...
Welcome
This first posting of a calm presence is an extended introductory essay that provides a framework and rationale for the newsletter. Regular postings (every week or so) will be ‘short and practical’ (c. 3 minute read) with an optional podcast version for each posting, narrated and commented by myself.
where to begin?
The Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective reminds us that:
We are part of a much wider metabolism, and this metabolism is sick. There is a lot of shit for us to deal with: personal, collective, historical, systemic. Our fragilities are a big part of it. This shit needs to pass, so that it can be composted into new forms of life, no longer based on the illusion of separability.
Do you feel sick, fragile and disconnected?
I certainly do… but I also feel gratitude and joy for being alive at this time.
It’s like walking a tightrope (I’ll come back to this).
I consider a calm presence as a gesture of reciprocity in response to the many gifts and teachings that I have received. The service that I offer — with humility and respect — is to help connect various knowings that I encounter and offer them to those who are frightened by the ecological crisis.
I know. This sounds pretentious. Who I am to comfort those who “are frightened by the ecological crisis”?
Let me explain.
I began my learning and unlearning journey in 2020 with the conscient podcast and the conscient blog and their French language versions, balado conscient et blogue conscient (for more info on these podcasts see background information) and added a calm presence in 2024.
My initial goal with the conscient podcast was to explore “how the arts contribute to environmental awareness and action” and how to deal with feelings of terror about the ecological crisis (see conscient podcast e01 terrified).
After 153 episodes, over 4 seasons (and many blogs), I realized that there was no point trying to convince people, to convince you, that the world (as we know it) it about to end (there is more than enough information available about this).
Rather, my goal now is to be a calm presence through this newsletter and listen to artists and cultural workers through my podcast. In both cases, I try to keep in mind that the cause of our demise is our deep and tragic disconnection with nature.
When in doubt, I refer to this excerpt from Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective’s Gift Contract about how to walk tightropes...
We need to face humanity’s wrongs, our own complicities in harm, and the likelihood of social and ecological collapse in our lifetime, while learning to walk a tightrope between naive hope and desperate hopelessness, with honesty, humility, humor and hyper-self-reflexivity.
the inspiration for a calm presence
The inspiration for a calm presence comes from an exchange I had in July 2023 with Catherine Ingram, an accomplished author, dharma teacher, and host of the In the Deep with Catherine Ingram podcast.
I wrote to Catherine:
You’re right that love is what we must do and be. It might be all we can do and be. So where do we go from here? Is there any point going on?
Catherine replied:
Yes, there’s a point in going on. It is to be here for others who are not as strong or clear as you and who will be frightened and in need of a calm presence. But that’s about it.
So from that exchange, a calm presence was born.
Recommended listening: e153 full circle (en francais : é153 boucler le cercle) which explains how ‘a calm presence’ came about.
une grenouille dans l’eau chaude
Our predicament reminds me of the frog in hot water story, first told to me in conscient episode e19 reality by composer Robert Normandeau in 1992.
It’s a bit like taking a frog, which is a cold-blooded animal, and putting it in a jar of water and heating the water, little by little. The frog will get used to the temperature rising and rising, and it will not notice that the temperature has risen and one day the temperature will be too hot for it, and it will die.
As a result of feeling the heat rise, I spend most of my time reading blogs and articles, listening to podcasts and eBooks, watching documentaries, reading speculative fiction, immersing myself in workshops, courses, spending time in nature, listening to artists, etc.
When my friends and colleagues ask: ‘why the doom and gloom, Claude?’ I respond with following quote from Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective:
We have no genuine possibility of hope if we cannot face all aspects of reality: the good, the bad, the broken and the messed up.
I tell them I feel more alive when facing reality than living in denial.
Recommended reading: James Bridle’s Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence?
a reality lens
a calm presence is anchored in the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective’s article, “Preparing for the end of the world as we know it”, which concludes:
Approaches to climate engagement should go beyond instilling hope in the world as we know it. We need tools and practices that can support all of us to “compost” and “grow up”. We need to accept that we have contributed to the creation of the current crises, but also that we have a responsibility to “show up” differently in order to create the conditions for other possible worlds to emerge in the wake of what is dying.
I do this work with a “reality lens,” which to me means seeing/hearing/feeling life as it really is (e.g. a finite living planet) as opposed to what we have been conditioned and brainwashed to believe through a “modern lens” (e.g. endless extractive growth).
This shift in perception changes everything for me and it keeps me grounded. It also energizes me to carry on and helps me to prepare for my own passing.
Recommended viewing: Louise Harris’ We Tried, a powerful speculative fiction video about the climate crisis.
eco-denial, eco-awareness and eco-radicality
I see three ways of being in the world today:
1. eco-denial
Those living ‘normal lives’ within the illusion of endless growth and separability and in denial of reality.
2. eco-aware
Those involved in incremental “greening” and searching for solutions within modernity.
3. eco-radical
Those engaged in radical action to hospice modernity and prepare for ecological collapse and recovery.
In other words, we (in particular those in eco-radical more) need to:
a) buy time (slow down the damage)
and the same time…
b) work on real solutions (living within planetary boundaries)
And that’s about it.
Anything else, (e.g. business as usual) is a waste of precious time.
Recommended reading: Eco-Types by Emily Huddart Kennedy: exploring how to approach each other from a place of compassion and respect.
is it really the end of the world as we know it?
I like the way Collapse2050 author Sarah Connor (a pseudonym) explains it in “Humanity’s End Was Determined from the Start”:
The moment a species learns to manipulate its environment for gain is the moment the clock starts ticking on its demise. The Great Filter of self-destruction is a key feature of all intelligent life in our universe, and it is exceedingly unlikely for any civilization to pass through successfully. The experiment of intelligent life on Earth has run its course. This was always going to be temporary. Don't give up trying. Quite the opposite. I think we must slow down and appreciate that we are the lucky ones who get to experience conscious life — happiness, love, pleasure and pain.
In other words, as Collapse Musings author Adam Urban outlines in “10 Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse”:
People have asked me, "If we're all doomed anyway, then what's the point of scaring people? Why not just let them live their lives?" It's a fair question. My answer is that the more people know about our predicament and start preparing for what's coming, the greater chance humanity has of surviving this century and creating sustainable societies in the distant future. I don't know if that's even possible. Perhaps we will pass so many climate tipping points that temperatures will rise high enough to snuff out life across the entire planet. Or perhaps after the population declines and the planet warms, new societies will spring up in places like Greenland and Antarctica. They won't be societies that use fossil fuels, so they will likely be much simpler and more connected to the Earth. Maybe these societies will learn from our mistakes and take better care of nature—and each other. If there's any chance that a future like that is possible, then we should do everything we can to make it happen. The first step is to inform people about what's happening, and the second step is to help them prepare.
I agree with Sarah that we are fortunate to experience conscious life at this moment and that we cannot give up trying. There are many unknown possibilities…
I also agree with Adam that we need to inform and prepare future generations for ‘possible worlds might emerge in the wake of what is dying’.
Recommended viewing and listening: Living in this Time of Dying by Michael Shaw (also see conscient podcast e29 shaw – a sense of purpose).
what about defeatism?
One of the dangers here is the trap of defeatism, which writer and activist Rebecca Solnit warns us about in “We can’t afford to be climate doomers”:
History is full of people who continued to struggle in desperate and grim circumstances, and so is the news from Ukraine to the Philippines. Some lived to see those circumstances change because of that struggle. Maybe this is what Antonio Gramsci meant with his famous phrase “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”. Some days I think that if we lose the climate battle, it’ll be due in no small part to this defeatism among the comfortable in the global north, while people in frontline communities continue to fight like hell for survival. Which is why fighting defeatism is also climate work.
It's an easy trap to fall into…
I know. I have experienced the addictive dopamine hit of doomism and that comfortable, self-righteous feeling of global-north defeatism that Solnit refers to. For more on this topic see conscient podcast e143 defeatism – what are you not ready to see?.
Recommended viewing: Becoming Resilient in a World Exposed to Unprecedented Systemic Risk by Arthur Keller about why life on earth is collapsing and our remaining choices.
tools and methods for learning and unlearning
To help address my shortcomings and unconscious biases, I call upon various tools and methods. I’ve had the privilege of taking the GTDFC ‘s Facing Human Wrongs , Green Dreamer’s alchemize and Wolf Willow Institute’s Imagenarium. There are many others that I have not taken yet (but would like to): the Post-Carbon Institute’s Resilience +, emergence magazine’s engage and the Good Grief Network’s 10 Steps to Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate.
These course help deepen our ability to live more purposefully and joyfully in these troubled times.
For example, the 10-week audio-based alchemize program is a series of daily creative prompts and imagination practices — an experimental invitation to sit with the mess, stretch discomforts and alternatives, and disrupt status quo ways of thinking, sensing, being, and relating. These exercises were transformative for me and opened pathways for new ways of being.
I would love to hear your recommendations of other learning and unlearning opportunities, tools and resources, in English ou en français.
Recommended reading: Museums and Societal Collapse : The Museum as Lifeboat by Robert R. Janes, about the potential museums have to contribute to the reimagining and transitioning of a new society with the threat of collapse.
what about art?
I believe in the transformative and healing power of the arts. I wrote about it this way in my December 7, 2020 conscient podcast blog:
The arts can simultaneously comfort the afflicted, inspire the depressed, anticipate the impossible, invigorate the dispirited, catalyse the discouraged, challenge our assumptions, etc. but the arts also have the potential to inflict harm, consciously or unconsciously.
I’m grateful to artist and educator Azul Carolina Duque who taught me that the “role of art is more about the relationship between consolation and hope.”
Another tightrope to walk.
gratitude
To conclude, I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this publication, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made these publications possible. I endeavour to reciprocate.
Thanks to Conyer Clayton for support in editing this document, to Jessica Ruano for her communications advice, to Catherine Ingram for permission to use quotes from our correspondence, to my wife Sabrina Mathews for her ongoing patience and support and for use of her illustration, Sioux Falls, as the logo of this newsletter and to my children Riel Schryer and Clara Schryer for their feedback and their presence, to the authors I quote or refer to and to anyone else I might have forgotten.
Thanks also for your patience as I learn to master Substack.
a calm presence is always free
I have opted for the free format for a calm presence; I do not plan to ever ask for funds. I’ll do some basic promotion to get the word out but mostly will count on word of mouth to circulate the newsletter.
In other words, if a calm presence is useful to you or you think it might be useful to others, please pass it on using the share button below.
Readers are invited to submit comments on this forum. I can also be reached at claude@conscient.ca or on conscient podcast social media : Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin.
Thank you for reading, for listening, and being present with me on my learning and unlearning journey.
À bientôt
Claude
February 2024
Un-ceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin nation (Ottawa)