As the “slow-motion” implosion of the structure of the sky-scraper global village continues to kick up dust and debris that has only lately caught the attention of those of us living on the top floors, our strategies for denial and distraction are wearing thin. “The poor and unfortunate have always been with us,” the thinking goes, but up here in the clouds where the disaster far below is out of sight and out of mind, our self-medicating, self-mesmerizing and Prozac are beginning to fail us. The dust, the clamor, and the cries of agony are reaching us with increasing frequency.
Those of us who are older had the small comfort that the final plunge to the earth would not take place in our lifetime and did the best we could to not think about our families and loved-ones who would not escape Armageddon. Now the undeniable reality is raising the level of our anxiety but is not, unfortunately, increasing our willingness to wake up and confront, with a profound awareness, our own role in the collapse of human civilization.
What is profound awareness? It is the distinction between illusion and Simple Reality. It is the parachute that will float us gently to the ground after we fling ourselves out of the collapsing structure of P-B. This is the only remedy for the disaster that is harder and harder to deny as the evidence piles up. What evidence?
We all know what it is but since most of us are good at repressing it, here it is again. Keep in mind the various threats that scratch at our fitful and sleepless nights are not causes but symptoms; but since most of us think they are causes we must begin there.
One of the older threats surfacing in the 60’s and soon to return will be overpopulation. Nuclear winter is once again in the news [2014] thanks to Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan with unstable governments, fundamentalist narratives or long-standing enmities, e.g. India and Pakistan’s conflict over Kashmir. Pre-pandemic bugs developing defenses against our disease-combating medications have made overtures that hint at their potential to return us to the Black-death experience of yesteryear. Social justice issues like the widening gap between the rich and poor has potential for widespread vengeance and violence.
History seems to prove that widespread war has always been inevitable, as well as the localized violence among entrepreneurs in the drug business, and ethnic or religious “cleansing.” The drug business, incidentally exists because many of us use them to deny and distract ourselves from the anxiety produced by the global implosion. Don’t forget, everything is interconnected.
Global warming is coming on faster than we thought so it’s in our face almost daily. “The report published this week [March 2014] by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that the world’s poorest people will suffer the most as temperatures rise, with many of them already contending with food and water shortages, higher rates of disease and premature death, and the violent conflicts that result from those problems.
Widespread famine, a perennial, will be back in earnest soon. Refugees are beginning to flee in unprecedented numbers from the encroaching sea, desertification, sectarian violence, famine, collapsing governments and economies, and environmental destruction by corporate exploiters of natural resources. This is a dark picture and no more examples are necessary especially for those who live on the lower floors of the collapsing P-B structure.
What are we doing about these threats to humanity that need our urgent attention and immediate action? We are turning to the human intellect, of course, we are “thinking” about them, we are “studying” them, we are obsessing about them and we are investing time, energy and money in strategies and topics that have nothing to do with them. Which brings us to the heart of this essay; it will be disturbing, but it is based on the truth of the current human condition.
We offer as proof the following evidence that humanity has its head stuck in the sand. Remember, that we need to respond, not react to what is happening. These behaviors are most definitely reactions, very intellect-centered unconscious reactions.
In 2014, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation offered research grants and Ph.D. Dissertation Fellowships. Pick out the ones that address the problems causing the implosion of the global village.
RESEARCH GRANTS
- An unexpected peace: Understanding resilient order and violence in multi-gang environments
- Collective crimes in times of war: Explaining local variations in violence against civilians
- Political violence during the German occupation of France: A micro-level analysis
- Spatial analysis of criminal violence in Guerrero, Mexico
- “There is still no justice here!” Theorizing women’s movements’ influence on postwar African states’ enforcement of gender-based violence laws
- Political economy of memory: The making, unmaking, and remaking of the Nigerian-Biafra war
PH.D. DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIPS
- Nation-empire: Youth mobilization in Japan’s colonized peripheries, 1895-1950
- Anticipating the revolt: Trends in military mutinies in West and Central Africa since independence
- Torture and revenue extraction in company-administered Madras, c. 1833-1857
- Made in Sinaloa: From the regional to the global history of the Mexican war on drugs, 1909-1985
- What violence makes: Transnational gangs in post-war Guatemala
- Troubled peace: Explaining political violence in post-conflict environments
- The social cost of war: Investigating the relationship between inter-group and intra-group violence during the Mississippian period of the Central Illinois Valley
- A sea of blood and tears: Ethnicity, identity, and survival in Nazi-occupied Volhynia, Ukraine 1941-44
- Inside a revolution: The cognitive foundations of armed struggle in Libya
Have we disabused you of the hope that the 7th Cavalry of science, academia and the intellect will ride to our rescue from the marauding “Indians” of human self-destruction, the 7 billion false selves snoozing in temporary repose. Sorry about that.
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References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in the Simple Reality Trilogy
by Roy Charles Henry:
Where Am I? Story – The First Great Question
Who Am I? Identity – The Second Great Question
Why Am I Here? Behavior – The Third Great Question
