Reaching Into the Universe Dedicated to creating an enlightened world: spiritually fulfilling, physically healthy, socially just, and environmentally sustainable.

Talk: Climate Change and the Way of the Shaman

Speaking as someone who is not actually a patriot, I would LOVE to see our faltering country step up and be a global leader once again. I would love to see my country leading the world into an age of sustainability. And yet I must face the reality that it's probably not going to happen, particularly any time soon.

Ruthless realism was a main theme of Jim Garrison's recent Bay Area Integral talk, Climate Change and the Way of the Shaman. According to Garrison, we must face the reality that environmentally we have passed the point of no return, if not scientifically than certainly politically, and that we are now headed into increasingly turbulent times.

Given that assessment, Garrison invited us to pull back from the global political scene and focus on local initiatives & creating community, saying, "If you know the truth, then you are empowered to build what you need to be." You can see Garrison doing exactly that in his letter canceling the State of the World Forum's Washington conference.

Finally, he shared his current understanding that the power that will allow us to do the above is contained in the Turquoise and Purple levels of Spiral Dynamics, the Holistic/Global and Shamanic/Tribal levels. After all, what's happening now is about the global impacts of our severe disconnection from nature and the shaman was the original mediator between nature and humankind.

Garrison is an engaging speaker and experienced in global politics. I hope he's wrong in his assessment. And yet, as I find myself contemplating the idea that putting any more effort into shifting humanity's current course is energy wasted and imagine funneling that energy into creating resilient local community I feel lighter and more empowered. Watching the leaders of the world fail to create any real change while simultaneously observing the mainstream generally failing to give a shit has been, in a word, depressing. Global fail. At least at the local levels the chance at having an impact is non-zero and you get to see real results from your actions.

I question the Purple/Turquoise idea. Throughout the talk he referred to Purple as the level that's "connected" to the Earth, but after reading Ascent of Humanity I think it is more accurate to call Purple the "least disconnected" level. Not that I don't think Purple has something to contribute; on the contrary, I would think an integral approach would include the strengths of all the levels. Perhaps Turquoise, though, is where the real work of rediscovering connection, healing separation, and creating what Charles Eistenstein calls the Age of Reunion, lies.

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