Quit

Someone said the other day the ultimate freedom is not to go into a candy store and get unlimited candy, whatever you want...the ultimate freedom is to go into a candy store and to know and pick the exact candy that is right for you.

As the holidays are getting going and work has gone quiet, there is time to ponder.

I have been struggling these past few months with the world I once knew shifting and reshaping before my eyes...not in a way I thought it would or had hoped.

It feels that personal change is afoot too, that has been set in motion and I better get with the program. Trying to figure out what the universe is telling me.

I do believe in tipping points. You know, for those of us old enough to remember James Gleick and his book Chaos and the example of the caramel mix machine. I remember like yesterday thinking when I read it...ah...that's why there is war in the world...a world order in balance gets more and more out of balance and then eventually goes into a state of chaos and random mixing...and then eventually there will be balance and order again and a new system of order emerges.

I am not advocating for war, hell no, I read the book when I was still youngish and trying to figure out how the Third Reich ever was possible to happen, all in an effort to help prevent it from ever happening again...ahhh..those innocent years.

I did become a warrior. A different kind of one. Thick headed, determined and tenacious. I was not going to be able to prevent or fight wars but come hell and high water, my planet no one was going to take away from me, my family and all peoples on this beautiful blue balloon in the sky and the cosmos.

And here I am, having watched little change over my lifetime, by all means I have watched a doubling down on the bad, the hurtful, the extraction and destruction. I have seen an unbelievable apathy and ignorance take hold, corruption in all of us. And all for just a little more comfort and convenience which really is just another word for laziness. We live collectively in oblivion. We bought ourselves to have no conscience by subscribing to that making money is the only thing that will save us, bring us prosperity and happiness.

What a bamboozle.

Going through the The University of Chicago Graham School Leadership in Society program, pondering my purpose, I feel tired and exhausted of pushing this rock up the science hill as fast as humanly possible, to try to beat capitalism at its own game and to try to incentivize it to do the right thing if only...trying to wheel in another Trojan horse through the gates that will deliver profits and an Earth for all.

And suddenly I have this thought...what if I could do what I really truly believe in, what my core motivation is, my North Star, my happy place, that one...that aligns with all my deeply held believes and values.

And it occurs to me that I already know that place. I do...I have lived it...but I left it because I did not believe I could exist without the other, the outer world, the world of ambition, and prestige and accomplishment and people mirroring back to me that I was worth something and had value in this world. And my friends and family, who are all in it.

What makes us unhappy and lonely, drives us to pile up all these ungodly amounts of stuff is the difference to others, what others have. There is a science to it, goes much deeper than just keeping up with the Johnses. Read up on it. Applies to everything. Material stuff, power, beauty, smarts...

We all have deeply felt heroes. Even if we can't think of one in the moment when asked sometimes. One of my all time heroes is and I forget his name, the protagonist in Eugene Ionesco's play 'Rhinoceros'. Favorite play too by the way. In short, he is the only one in his immediate surroundings who cannot turn into a rhinoceros, an allegory for fascists, like everyone else around him. Even though he seems to wish to in the end because he is now all alone.

I believe it is his strongly held believes and his North Star that do not let him and thus save him.

I am trying to come up with the ultimate courage as a climate warrior. To quit. I want to be like my hero, but as we all are, we are afraid of being alone, left out, behind.

To save the planet, after many years of seeing no change, watching others trying to use science and write books and hold conferences, using common sense, reasoning and pleading, little has moved. If we had another lifetime, maybe we could come around. But the system is too complex and time too short. Organization cannot re-balance the system, no matter how well thought through, or planned.

The system will re-balance, with or without us.

Without us looks like this: you'll not even notice, and likely it has already begun...you'll see more people pass in your life than normal, not shockingly many more, just maybe 2 instead of the regular one in a certain interval. But that increase is enough if it continues to reduce humanity to a fraction of what it is today by the end of the century.

Or...we could all just quit, this life style, drunken on glutton fossil fuel energy to make ourselves feel better -lives in economies where they tell us growth has to be limitless forever or we will all be poor and suffer. An economy with no limit to growth is irrational, a fallacy. We have been suckered in by insanity.

I have come to believe that the time is now and that the only way to solve this problem is by everyone making a decision. And it is a tough decision, don't get me wrong. It takes unprecedented courage and strength. And it has been a lifetime for me to work up this courage.

We all need to sign up for rehab.

I am there. I do not know what exactly that looks like, and it might not be what you expect at all, but the time is now.