StillKim

  • Will the Kids be Alright? 3 of 3

    Will the Kids be Alright? 3 of 3

    This post is the final and third in a series reviewing the book Life After Doom, Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart by Brian D. McLaren. 

    ***

    Were you able to answer the question I posed at the end of my second post – to describe your preferred life situation if the world was ending?

    Are you panicking and sequestering yourself with your supplies behind a barricade? Or, are you holding hands with your loved ones, sharing space and time with your family, neighbours,  and/or with close friends?  Perhaps you are sitting around a dining table, maybe at your cottage by the water, or possibly just in your own backyard enjoying nature. 

    Are you satisfied that you tried to do what was right by the Earth, and by your descendants? 

    Perhaps you are still trying to fight the ending, to find ways to preserve a world for the human race?

    As I continued to read through the difficult chapters of McLaren’s book, I began to feel that although our world will undergo some profound changes, that perhaps there is a path forward, one of resilience in community if enough of us understand that what we can do, matters.  And for that, we must hold onto one another.

    In the final chapters of his book, McLaren asks us to “let come” (after we “let go” and “let be” in the first two sections) – that while we can’t guarantee what the future world will be, “we can commit to work for justice, peace, and compassion wherever we are in this world, as long as we live.”

    Climate justice is a key part of this picture. 

    It won’t be easy, because we live in a world with people who are happy with the status quo, in part because it is so tied to our economic wealth.  Remember, we are addicted to our cheap fossil fuels. 

    We can see the beginnings of what McLaren describes will be a “bumpy” ride.  I can already identify with the seven different conditions he highlights in the book that we can expect to encounter as “the drama of overshoot continues to play out.”

    Consider how susceptible we are to misinformation (1) in our social media curated lives. It’s more important than ever to be savvy consumers of the media we read and watch, always checking sources. Don’t fall prey to memes and comments that simply reinforce your opinion in an echo-chamber. 

    McLaren suggests that mean-spiritedness (2) will increase and we will need to develop the moral courage to speak up for the marginalized – the immigrant, the LGBTQAI+, the racially and culturally different, the poor.  People are afraid that if someone else has rights, they will lose their own. That’s not how it works. This is what makes comedian Steve Carell’s commencement address about kindness to Northwestern University graduates so compelling (and funny!). A simple, timely message delivered in true comedic form. 

    Dishonesty (3) will abound and we will need to strengthen our character. As Michelle Obama famously said, “when they go low, we go high.” McLaren notes, “When others stoke fear and resentment, we (must) radiate courage and grace.”

    Our world, our country, indeed even friendships have become fragmented (4). When others will be tempted to divide and conquer or become dependent upon “autocrats or cult leaders,” we must “develop the skills of interdependence.”  There is strength in numbers, particularly diverse numbers, McLaren stresses. Don’t discount the scientists, the lived wisdom of Indigenous peoples, and the educated as you inform yourself.

    It will become increasingly difficult to go high when others go low, and we may experience despair (5), but we need to develop the skill and “the courage to differ graciously,” even as we state our position. 

    My father was a fan of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and Dad used to tell us we would continue to see rapid change (6) in our lives. I wish I could chat with him now. I’m sure even he would not believe the speed of change we see today.  We must be agile to adapt to the continued multiple changes in our lives. McLaren says “Some changes will feel like losses; others will bring surprising gains.”

    Finally, we may begin to feel disconnected (7) from life as we witness the changes. McLaren notes we will need to nourish and “discover new depths of the human spirit,” whatever you call it, religion, spirituality, centredness, or contemplation.  

    It’s an understatement to say the world is undergoing tremendous change and no longer looks like the industrial-age era that brought in and provided prosperity in the century before this one. Well, prosperity for those of us who bought into the European, colonized definition.

    People are afraid. 

    And fearful people are susceptible to messages of quick fixes, regardless the stripes of the tiger. 

    Find your people is the essence of one chapter. “It only takes two or three to build an island of sanity in a world falling apart,” McLaren writes.

    But he isn’t talking about a cult. If you envision a future often seen in apocalyptic movies where someone amasses food and ammunition and then builds a wall to keep others out, that’s a sure-fire way to speed-up the ending. 

    Instead, he writes of connecting with others who care about our future: “we need people reaching out and building huddles of sanity and mutual kindness, preparing to share and support each other when turbulence comes and we’re all tempted to be sucked into collective stupidity.”

    An excellent example of this connecting can be found on a recent episode of CBC’s What on Earth with Laura Lynch. The program features stories from around the world of people trying to fight climate change. 

    The recent episode that caught my attention featured listener Adrienne Crowder who took a free university course on climate change that the program had promoted. 

    Adrienne tells Laura that the course “fuelled my fire – realizing, ah,  I am not alone. I’m not the only one trying to fight the world. There’s a whole group of people in their own little sectors doing their thing and when we band together, we become this beautiful mosaic of people doing great work which inspires all of us … and we feel good and when we feel good we do good…. It is so easy to get utterly overwhelmed and depressed if you feel like you are alone trying to combat climate change and big oil and whatever…But when you learn there are other people who are not only similarly concerned but who are actually doing some really cool things in their part of the world, that’s inspiring … it keeps me going.”

    Western University offers this free course and you can register here or sign up to be notified when the next course runs.  I’ve signed up to be notified for their September 2025 course offering. The University website describes the course “Connecting for Climate Change Action is a course that uses a storytelling approach to bring Western and Indigenous Sciences together to educate, encourage discussions, and motivate action on climate change. This innovative, experiential, online learning opportunity engages and stimulates learners to action to mitigate climate change.”

    Do you know your neighbours? Do you maintain connections with former colleagues? Do you have a church or club or group that you meet with regularly? In any emergency, including the impending changes we are witnessing due to climate, we are better when we work together, not every person for themselves. If you have such a group, you might consider reading this book and discussing it together, or signing up to take the free course. 

    As adults who have lived a good piece of our lives already, we might be susceptible to thinking it’s too late or we know it all, but McLaren has a special message for us: “if you don’t keep maturing in wisdom, you will not remain at your current level of awesome. Like an egg that doesn’t hatch, your awesome level will, I’m sad to say this – decline along with civilization.” 

    In the face of the despair we may feel, it is important to realize that what we can do does matter. 

    McLaren introduces readers to musician Michael Franti who sings in one of his songs, ”There’s a billion different people doing a billion different things to make a billion places better today” and ”We can be part of the change.” The title of Franti’s song, “The World is so F*cked Up (But I Ain’t Never Giving Up On It) delivers a message worth listening to in an engaging tune. You will find yourself smiling and perhaps even singing along after listening to it.  In fact, McLaren devotes one chapter to the importance of art, music and poets in our lives. 

    McLaren entreats the reader to light their own candle and to consider this is a great time to be alive. Borrowing the line from the song, he suggests if a billion of us do a billion things then maybe in the “dance of life,” there will be a way forward in a world that is going to look very different some day. 

    McLaren’s book does not outline a plan for everyone to follow, but he does have a lengthy list of suggestions for us to develop our own plans, based on our own areas of interests and strengths. One of these is the “plan to use your voice and exercise your right to not remain silent” and thus, I decided to use my blog to write about McLaren’s book and attempt to provide some sort of summary of what he has to offer to the discussion about climate change. I plan to use some of my future posts to celebrate some of the “billion things” that people are doing to make the world a more habitable place.  I am giving thought to another, “Your plan to improve your diet for your own health and planetary health” because listening to Sidney Smith’s video has strengthened my resolve to eat locally and seasonally rather than supporting industrialized farming practices.  Small steps. I continue to keep the book close and review its messages along with taking the university course. It’s part of my plan to keep learning about overshoot.

    Will the kids be alright? It’s where I started my reflection and the question the title of this series asks. The answer: I don’t know, but I am committed to do what I can to contribute to a better future for my grandchildren choosing to believe that what I can do, will matter.  

    In the meantime, can you share the ways that you preserve our Earth? How do you contribute toward the billion different ways people make the world a better place for future generations? Please use the comment section below so we can all share with and learn from each other. 

    ***

    1. Life After Doom, Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, Brian D. McLaren, St. Martin’s Publishing Group, New York, 2024

    2. Facebook post, featuring Steve Carell https://www.facebook.com/reel/1907663633317980; original posting @cspan. 

    3. CBC Radio, What on Earth with Laura Lynch 

    https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whatonearth

    4. Western University, London, Ontario. https://geoenvironment.uwo.ca/undergraduate/course_information/new_course_connecting_for_climate_change_action.html

    5. Michael Franti and Spearhead, This World Is So F*cked Up (But I Ain’t Never Giving Up On It)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrPQfNjeHlo

  • Will the Kids be Alright? 2 of 3

    Will the Kids be Alright? 2 of 3

     This post is the second in a series of three reviewing the book Life After Doom, Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart by Brian D. McLaren. 

    ***

    In the first section of his book, McLaren addresses our natural tendency to turn a blind eye to climate change. He also encourages us to take care of ourselves, particularly our mental health, in the process of waking up to reality. Then he invites the reader to “let be” – to reach a place of insight. 

    Our civilization has created much good: think of the surgeries that now save lives, the medicines that allow people to live fully, air conditioning in the summer heat, the eating of fresh fruits in the dead of winter,  the air travel that allows us to explore our world – I could go on and on listing a multitude of ways our lives have been improved to the point we enjoy longer, healthier lives than ever before.  

    But, as McLaren outlines so well, there’s the human cost of all this progress. Children mining coltan for our smartphones, increasing asthma and cancer rates due to air pollution, and the ongoing over-heating of our world destroying homes, industries, and lives as wildfires rage like never before. This documentary on the fires in Los Angelos explains how our warming climate feeds fire. 

    Closer to home, think of Newfoundland and Labrador, and Halifax.  Read this news coverage detailing the most recent devastation there. 

    We are in overshoot, McLaren explains. We take from the Earth more than we repair or return and we spew more pollution than the Earth can detoxify. And Earth is letting us know. 

    Intertwined with the causes of climate change is our current civilization’s economy which has become so complex it is also fragile and ultimately, not sustainable. Consider how our economy relies on infinite growth in a finite system.

    We live in a complex civilization, and it is very difficult, even  overwhelming, to decide what needs to happen or whether we can even avoid these crises. We are not the first civilization to face the ending. Consider the Roman Empire, the Mayans, or our own Indigenous of Turtle Island. In fact, McLaren devotes an entire chapter to what we can learn from our Indigenous peoples. Consider that the collapse of our civilization, which has been shaped by the domination of colonial exploitation, might be viewed as a liberation by some. 

    One of the many, many resources that McLaren recommends to his readers is Sid Smith’s How to Enjoy the End of the World series on You Tube. I listened to this and it gave me a whole new perspective on the use of energy in the creation of past cultures and the astronomical trajectory that led to our current complex civilization. While Chapters 1,2 and 3 are an academic review of the laws of energy and thermodynamics (I have forgotten my high school physics classes, sorry Mr. Finch), and what is actually meant by a “complex” society, I found them a fascinating base for understanding his later videos on energy in the creation and fall of civilizations. In particular, his final chapter at the time of my posting this blog is Chapter 5 and it clearly explains ecological overshoot. If you pursue this, be sure to listen to his Prologue: Why You Shouldn’t Let Collapse Get You Down, first and his next video entitled Whaddya Mean Collapse?  

    Back to the book, McLaren explains our addiction to cheap fossil fuels as something that we will find very difficult to eradicate. Even our industrialized food production relies on fossil fuels (which is explained very well in the above video series). 

    McLaren compares the process we need to follow to what Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) asks of its members. The first step for a member is to admit addiction and that life has become unmanageable. McLaren declares,”Our civilization is powerless over our cheap energy addiction; our civilization has become unmanageable and needs to be restored to sanity.” 

    It’s unmanageable because in overshoot we are caught in a vicious cycle; we need to remove resources from the Earth to support our economic growth and for food production, but that growth will “intensify and hasten ecological collapse.” Put another way, we use up farmland to build new industry (to provide jobs which give us the income to purchase food) which results in damage to water sources and precious eco-systems, and less farmland to grow our food.

    Where and how do we get off this merry-go-round?

    McLaren quotes the Serenity Prayer used by AA: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” 

    The wisdom to know the difference is an area of much debate when it comes to what will reduce the impacts of climate change. He cites the examples of renewable energy, such as solar and wind, or electric cars and heat pumps, but then notes “massive amounts of copper, aluminum, cobalt, graphite, and manganese, along with rare earth metals, especially lithium” will be needed which will require “huge quantities of fossil fuels to mine, transport, and process these raw materials.” 

    Many solutions result in more ecological damage to our Earth – in other words, more problems. In addition, these resources are primarily on Indigenous lands. How will they be treated? “Other resources lie beneath forests and other delicate ecosystems; again you wonder how many will be sacrificed for our climate emergency,” McLaren asks. 

    Something I have been repeating to myself a lot lately is McLaren’s Chapter 10 title, “Maybe It’s Good, Maybe It’s Not.” I have used it when reflecting on the minor irritations and celebrations in life but also when thinking about the big issues. There’s talk of an east-west pipeline across Canada which would require extensive use of land, including Indigenous land, and cause significant damage. That’s bad..isn’t it? It would reduce Ontario’s reliance on U.S. gas and also open the opportunity to export gas to countries that could then replace their use of coal, a fuel which causes tremendous harm to the environment. That’s good… isn’t it?  An east-west electricity grid, supported by clean energy would benefit everyone…maybe/maybe not?

    In a world that is increasingly polarized in its opinions, we could all use a good dose of maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not. As a former colleague used to say, it’s a pretty thin pancake that doesn’t have two sides.

     And so, McLaren invites the reader to get beyond our bi-polar views, “this” is good and “that” is bad, and helps us to question what may be conventional wisdom for our current civilization. He asks instead, “Are profitable quarters and big returns for shareholders always good? Is a declining GDP always bad? Is growth in the number of billionaires always good?”

    I recently published a memoir of my parents and included a lot of ancestral history. It’s a story of multiple generations working to improve their lives and it haunts me to think that my husband and I, and our children may be the last generations to experience that upward mobility. Will a decline in circumstances become the norm for future generations? Is that bad? Is that good? How can we prepare them? In order to get ahead, do we need to go back? How far back?

    These questions may be more than academic in the face of the looming climate crisis. When we are prepared to question, to challenge what has been conventional wisdom, then perhaps we will open ourselves to the possibility of an alternate, more sustainable future. 

    There’s a lot of negativity in this reflection. I am writing about a book with the word “Doom” in its title and I am recommending you listen to a YouTube channel that suggests we enjoy the end of the world. McLaren takes this head on and leads the reader to what feels like an inevitable discussion about death. As a woman about to enter her 7th decade, I connected with the author’s description of life and death, that we must abandon our fear of death and instead realize we may have limited time here, and with that time we have a choice: keep destroying our precious environment or we can  “leave our descendants with a habitable world and the skills and virtues to flourish in it.” 

    With five grandchildren, I know what my choice is. 

    Here’s a reflection for you to consider as I bring this post to a close: If you were facing the possible ending of the world, and you had a choice, how would you describe where you are, what you are doing, and who you are with? 

    Next week: Let Come

    ***

    1. Life After Doom, Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, Brian D. McLaren, St. Martin’s Publishing Group, New York, 2024

    2.Inside the LA Firestorm – The Real Story – Documentary, PBS Terra, YouTube, Accessed August 13, 2025.

    3. CTV News, Thousands in St. John’s on evacuation notice as wildfires continue to spread, accessed August 13, 2025.

     https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/newfoundland-and-labrador/article/amid-nl-wildfire-evacuations-thousands-are-on-notice-near-st-johns/https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/newfoundland-and-labrador/article/amid-nl-wildfire-evacuations-thousands-are-on-notice-near-st-johns/ 

    4. How to Enjoy the End of the World, Sid Smith, You Tube http://www.youtube.com/@bsidneysmith/ , accessed Aug. 13, 2025.