Honestly, I’m not sure what it was. To be fair, I didn’t give it a thorough look, but will say I was turned off by seeing the names Marianne Williamson and Michael Mann. But beyond that, I think for me, is the idea of another course, another group of talking heads, another attempt at solutions with esteemed guests. Information overload perhaps? I’m currently immersed in several books and several substacks and feel a bit at my limit. Also, I’m moving more and more towards this feeling that the solutions aren’t out “there”, but instead more local, starting with myself and then filtering to my local brick and mortar community. Just some thoughts off the cuff.
Hi Daniel. I don’t often comment here, partly out of shyness but more often because I feel to share my thoughts properly would take hours. Since I viscerally feel your despair here, I’m stepping out of my comfort zone to answer your question as truthfully as possibly while also trying to be brief (which as we all know is harder than answering at length!)
The short answer, as far as my resistance to this type of program exploring our global catastrophe, is busyness (which I confess with a forlorn kind of shame). As a working parent of two kids, I just don’t ever feel like I have even one tiny crack in my schedule that is available. I am also grappling with changes in the economy and in my industry that are concerning and that require extra bandwidth to cope with and pivot around. When I see your programs, I read about them with huge interest - almost delight - and then I feel the familiar sense of overwhelm (the most intense type of overwhelm when considering the global scale) and then I just close the screen and go back to my parental, household and professional obligations. It is simply paralysis, which I suspect is felt by many.
But after reading your missive here I thought, perhaps I can just - to paraphrase Woody Allen - simply show up. I began thinking perhaps I could totally take myself off the hook by saying, “You don’t have to DO anything. Just show up and listen,” I started to feel perhaps I can do that.
I also know if I stop looking at it globally but really focusing on just my own little corner of the planet (i.e. my household), I suspect I might be inspired to “do” at least one or two small actions. Again, I don’t really feel that would make any difference, but at least it might be right dharma.
Anyway - you asked about what is happening on our end, so that’s my little sharing of what is happening with me. Thank you as always for your deep and broad thinking in all these difficult areas, and your gumption in responding. xx
I was also turned off by Marianne Williamson and Michael Mann. They both seem played to a certain degree. Jem Bendal would be exciting!
I was initially excited by the idea but I think it’s more than a course—it needs to be a community, a turning point (or at least a turning of the wheel). What are people bringing to this course more than we can hear on a podcast? How are we invited into true participation with the ideas, and not just blankly receptive faces on a zoom screen? How do you make this reciprocal?
This is not meant to be snarky—I genuinely world like to know. I’m in a year long program with Gabor Maté which is asking a lot of us but as a result is t transformative in that reciprocal sense.
Actually, Gabor would be great to have in the course…
Dear Daniel- for me, and knowing what I know about humans- it’s in the title. The nervous system can be either regulated, hyper aroused (fight or flight) or hypo aroused (freeze). One can be in fight or flight all day or all week (“must” behaviors, seeking safety through action- anxiety, ADD, keep busy, OCD..) and then go into freeze at night or the weekend (“can’t” behaviors, seeking safety through dissociation- numbing addictions i.e alcohol and the like, depersonalization..)
Embracing emergency is a title that suggests a fatigue of the first, sending humans into the latter.
I very much appreciate your voice and at the same time would never opt for a course with such title.
Surprised that was the chosen title. I may be wrong as for others but that is my 2 cents for me. Hope it helps.
It's not just the "1% psychopaths"; Humanity needs to change. When gas prices go up, everybody bitches, when we should have greatly reduced our fossil fuel use (or maintained what we were doing in the 70's), quit flying so much, quit polluting waters and air, quit killing soils. It's hard for me to be angry with Monsanto (though they're horrific), they think round up and animal insecticides are necessary. I know really bright people who think GMOs are okay, yet we haven't had time to see their negative impacts (not all of them anyway). People who are really good people fly 20 times (or more) a year, arrange luxury travel for others. We have little choice when we try to eat decent food. Don't get me started on Big Pharma, they're killing us. Your neighborhood pharmacist has bought into their story. People, in general, are ignorant. That doesn't mean stupid, they just don't know. As horrible as it sounds, I wish the economy had collapsed years ago. Think back to the aftermath of 911 or the things that happened when COVID first hit and everything shut down...the air got immediately cleaner, animals came out of hiding, things were quite nice for those of us who weren't hiding at home. I could write a novel about it, but I often think, why bother? It's all been said.
While I’ve gleaned much from you over the years concerning the limits of materialism, I feel like I’ve gone down the path so far that I am only interested in subjects that talk about God. I don’t think a generalized spritituallity has the power to change us nor hold my attention. I think this is the only potent solution to materialism that is comprehensive, including practices, theology, and worship(proper orientation of attention and gratitude). I don’t expect you to go down this road but that is where I am at. I do recognize that we need economic and political strategies but I think we need a sturdy and robust theology to defend our souls from nihilism and AI.
With absolute honesty, since you asked, I'm inclined to pass because: 1) I just haven't the availability, 2) I've been in some real dire financial straights lately, and the big one, 3) climate change is not at all on my radar anymore. Civilization will be tanked long before it ever becomes a real issue—any of us paying attention can see society's free fall. And, if I'm to be really honest, I have zero trust anymore for the scientific community—they have been bought and corrupted just like medicine, education, and of course government. Many scientists emphatically state there is no climate crisis and others say we are doomed. What I do know, because I can see it with my own eyes, is that society as we've always known it is collapsing. Can you even imagine Western nations that will still be Western nations in 20 years? I'm rather concerned that, whether by international conflict or Islamic invasion, we will be sent back to the Dark Ages. That is the pressing peril I am concerned with. That said, I applaud you for your involvement with this event, it is just not of interest to me in my current state of disillusionment. I hope that you don't become dejected in any way but continue to pour your passion into this project. At the end of the day, we all still need to be thinking more sustainably about the long-term and that I can always get behind.
Hey Daniel, take what I say with a grain of salt because I've often found that I enjoy learning at my own pace as opposed to online courses, and only really sign up for an online course if I feel there's someone I really admire that I want to learn from directly.
I'm honestly sick of courses that are just a collection of 1 hour seminars by different speakers. I find each person often just presents an intro to their ideas, and we never really get deep.
This is great if I want a broad intro to a topic, but these days I'm decently well versed in these things and courses only appeal if I feel there's going to be real depth.
This is why your esotericism course appeals to me more. It's not even the topic so much as the way you present it, you are structuring it in a way that I feel I'd learn a lot.
This particular course doesn't feel that way to me. I'd be more interested in you or you and one other person doing something thoughtfully structured and focused than an assortment of people each doing one hour stand alone seminars.
Again this is where my interests are and not necessarily representative of others. And again I am a self motivated learner and it's rare that I'd sign up for anything at this point, though just signed up for a Buddhist Geeks course on The Second Turning as I love the teachers and it's clear they are going into depth on topics that really interest me.
I do toggle between feeling hopeless that we can effectively prevent collapse and just sort of trying not to think about it. To be honest I found the doom-sayers in the last seminar to be more on-target but depressing, and those with plans/ideas for how to live in accord with nature, etc to be kidding themselves and so that stuff frustrated me. It’s such an overwhelming thing for most of us to contemplate. I loved the talk you did with Jared Sexton. I think he’s dead on-target when he states that capitalism has sort of destroyed our ability to even imagine a better way of being in the world. I will think about signing up for the course some more. I’m most interested in the spiritual/mystical aspects of what we are going through. Somehow that resonates more to me than practical strategies for survival. Peace!
This may not be useful but the number of “summits” and conferences of all kinds, with highly knowledgeable people, is staggering. I don’t have time for any of them. My first thought is always the same: just send me the transcript. I can go through it in a fraction of the time.
Is that enough? In brief. My wife and i spent over twenty years building an off-grid school based in Devon in the convivial style of illitch.... When parents came i said we could teach children how to spell consciousness but it may be more helpful to show and explore what that word may mean. We built a crucible (after Findhorn the early days, certainly not now) where everyone was welcome, where all had a unique gift to share and we said "yes" to almost everything. We held space to explore and experiment in a place of connection.
Daniel, after 20 odd years it was time to move on. What did i learn in that time? far more than this brief post will allow., but ..Well we learnt magic is real and we created a charming enchanted place of learning. We also gleaned that folk often want to use "your" crucible to place their stories in...a place where they can play at taking some weight, some responsibility (after vanessa andriotti and Stephen Jenkinson) but in reality. No not really. "No I dont really want to relinquish any of my stuff ,my money or privilege. In fact i dont even want to pay for your services because; "i am an artist" and a forest of other strange reasons to fracture and fragment.
We now find ourselves back at Findhorn (after 40 years) and its as messy and full of hubris as the rest of the planet. The community here is trying to buy the land from the effectively bankrupt Findhorn Foundation.
A few holding fast to the center. "can it hold"
Well who knows, perhaps not... but it has to be tried because we need to leave at least a sense or some small echo in the atmosphere for those that follow... a sense that someone gave a damn.
Yes, another course by more "thought leaders," authors and political activists. It's overwhelming. And yes, everyone listed has done a tremendous amount of good. I applaud them, especial you, Daniel. I've "raged against the machine" since before the first Earth Day. I'm exhausted. I still try to give because I still receive. For me, though, I just want to chop wood and carry water. I don't need a course for that.
You assembled a great line up and I’m interested but, like many have commented here, I’ve been following these ideas for years. I started with Greer in 2006 and broadly accept his thesis that a slow, sporadic decline, punctuated with crisis is the future. Well, actually it’s the present and therein lies the issue. It feels like the time for talk and exploration is done- now we’re working on practical solutions. I realise I have a tenuous future in Communications now that AI has arisen. I know our politics in the UK is headed into authoritarian territory. I know wealth inequality is intensifying and what we have may yet be lost. I know we have all the solutions but we’re not putting them into action because there is scant support. Who will create a mutual society to cushion each others financial needs? Who will join a grassroots trade network to support our artistic and agricultural endeavours? We need to birth a new alternative.
I'm 80 years old and have lived and observed, in real time, through what I consider to be the most acceleratingly destructive period in the history of our democracy. Daniel, I believe that I have contacted you about this before, but in your course description didn't notice any reference to my primary concern, that being humanity's handicap -- which is now, and always have been, those 1% of us who are psychopathic. Until we rapidly utilize the new technology that, for the first time in human history, have at our disposal -- we are certainly doomed!
sponsored by Tribes in Nevada in mid April....survival, ...ceremonies APRIL 14
..It's FREE it's networking there's a raffle 😘🍀..people are fed .and it plans to call into ACTION....protests against lithium mines, out West, on native lands ...perhaps start with what we can DO....refuse to buy into for instance " electric cars are GREEN"...etc xo
I felt sad when I read your message Daniel, about the lack of response to this course, and I just signed up. I hestitated yesterday because I'm trying to save money, and I very much appreciated the discount. I have a lot of admiration for the work you and your colleagues are doing in bringing this together, and in my capacity as a climate journalist, I have had extensive interactions with several of your speakers. I'm excited about the sessions and plan to write about them for my newsletter Resonant World which seeks to bring a collective and inter-generational trauma lens to the climate crisis, and our crises more broadly. (I also loved How Soon is Now, which I can remember buying in Watkins Books in London when it came out). See you there!
Honestly, I’m not sure what it was. To be fair, I didn’t give it a thorough look, but will say I was turned off by seeing the names Marianne Williamson and Michael Mann. But beyond that, I think for me, is the idea of another course, another group of talking heads, another attempt at solutions with esteemed guests. Information overload perhaps? I’m currently immersed in several books and several substacks and feel a bit at my limit. Also, I’m moving more and more towards this feeling that the solutions aren’t out “there”, but instead more local, starting with myself and then filtering to my local brick and mortar community. Just some thoughts off the cuff.
Hi Daniel. I don’t often comment here, partly out of shyness but more often because I feel to share my thoughts properly would take hours. Since I viscerally feel your despair here, I’m stepping out of my comfort zone to answer your question as truthfully as possibly while also trying to be brief (which as we all know is harder than answering at length!)
The short answer, as far as my resistance to this type of program exploring our global catastrophe, is busyness (which I confess with a forlorn kind of shame). As a working parent of two kids, I just don’t ever feel like I have even one tiny crack in my schedule that is available. I am also grappling with changes in the economy and in my industry that are concerning and that require extra bandwidth to cope with and pivot around. When I see your programs, I read about them with huge interest - almost delight - and then I feel the familiar sense of overwhelm (the most intense type of overwhelm when considering the global scale) and then I just close the screen and go back to my parental, household and professional obligations. It is simply paralysis, which I suspect is felt by many.
But after reading your missive here I thought, perhaps I can just - to paraphrase Woody Allen - simply show up. I began thinking perhaps I could totally take myself off the hook by saying, “You don’t have to DO anything. Just show up and listen,” I started to feel perhaps I can do that.
I also know if I stop looking at it globally but really focusing on just my own little corner of the planet (i.e. my household), I suspect I might be inspired to “do” at least one or two small actions. Again, I don’t really feel that would make any difference, but at least it might be right dharma.
Anyway - you asked about what is happening on our end, so that’s my little sharing of what is happening with me. Thank you as always for your deep and broad thinking in all these difficult areas, and your gumption in responding. xx
I was also turned off by Marianne Williamson and Michael Mann. They both seem played to a certain degree. Jem Bendal would be exciting!
I was initially excited by the idea but I think it’s more than a course—it needs to be a community, a turning point (or at least a turning of the wheel). What are people bringing to this course more than we can hear on a podcast? How are we invited into true participation with the ideas, and not just blankly receptive faces on a zoom screen? How do you make this reciprocal?
This is not meant to be snarky—I genuinely world like to know. I’m in a year long program with Gabor Maté which is asking a lot of us but as a result is t transformative in that reciprocal sense.
Actually, Gabor would be great to have in the course…
Dear Daniel- for me, and knowing what I know about humans- it’s in the title. The nervous system can be either regulated, hyper aroused (fight or flight) or hypo aroused (freeze). One can be in fight or flight all day or all week (“must” behaviors, seeking safety through action- anxiety, ADD, keep busy, OCD..) and then go into freeze at night or the weekend (“can’t” behaviors, seeking safety through dissociation- numbing addictions i.e alcohol and the like, depersonalization..)
Embracing emergency is a title that suggests a fatigue of the first, sending humans into the latter.
I very much appreciate your voice and at the same time would never opt for a course with such title.
Surprised that was the chosen title. I may be wrong as for others but that is my 2 cents for me. Hope it helps.
It's not just the "1% psychopaths"; Humanity needs to change. When gas prices go up, everybody bitches, when we should have greatly reduced our fossil fuel use (or maintained what we were doing in the 70's), quit flying so much, quit polluting waters and air, quit killing soils. It's hard for me to be angry with Monsanto (though they're horrific), they think round up and animal insecticides are necessary. I know really bright people who think GMOs are okay, yet we haven't had time to see their negative impacts (not all of them anyway). People who are really good people fly 20 times (or more) a year, arrange luxury travel for others. We have little choice when we try to eat decent food. Don't get me started on Big Pharma, they're killing us. Your neighborhood pharmacist has bought into their story. People, in general, are ignorant. That doesn't mean stupid, they just don't know. As horrible as it sounds, I wish the economy had collapsed years ago. Think back to the aftermath of 911 or the things that happened when COVID first hit and everything shut down...the air got immediately cleaner, animals came out of hiding, things were quite nice for those of us who weren't hiding at home. I could write a novel about it, but I often think, why bother? It's all been said.
While I’ve gleaned much from you over the years concerning the limits of materialism, I feel like I’ve gone down the path so far that I am only interested in subjects that talk about God. I don’t think a generalized spritituallity has the power to change us nor hold my attention. I think this is the only potent solution to materialism that is comprehensive, including practices, theology, and worship(proper orientation of attention and gratitude). I don’t expect you to go down this road but that is where I am at. I do recognize that we need economic and political strategies but I think we need a sturdy and robust theology to defend our souls from nihilism and AI.
With absolute honesty, since you asked, I'm inclined to pass because: 1) I just haven't the availability, 2) I've been in some real dire financial straights lately, and the big one, 3) climate change is not at all on my radar anymore. Civilization will be tanked long before it ever becomes a real issue—any of us paying attention can see society's free fall. And, if I'm to be really honest, I have zero trust anymore for the scientific community—they have been bought and corrupted just like medicine, education, and of course government. Many scientists emphatically state there is no climate crisis and others say we are doomed. What I do know, because I can see it with my own eyes, is that society as we've always known it is collapsing. Can you even imagine Western nations that will still be Western nations in 20 years? I'm rather concerned that, whether by international conflict or Islamic invasion, we will be sent back to the Dark Ages. That is the pressing peril I am concerned with. That said, I applaud you for your involvement with this event, it is just not of interest to me in my current state of disillusionment. I hope that you don't become dejected in any way but continue to pour your passion into this project. At the end of the day, we all still need to be thinking more sustainably about the long-term and that I can always get behind.
Hey Daniel, take what I say with a grain of salt because I've often found that I enjoy learning at my own pace as opposed to online courses, and only really sign up for an online course if I feel there's someone I really admire that I want to learn from directly.
I'm honestly sick of courses that are just a collection of 1 hour seminars by different speakers. I find each person often just presents an intro to their ideas, and we never really get deep.
This is great if I want a broad intro to a topic, but these days I'm decently well versed in these things and courses only appeal if I feel there's going to be real depth.
This is why your esotericism course appeals to me more. It's not even the topic so much as the way you present it, you are structuring it in a way that I feel I'd learn a lot.
This particular course doesn't feel that way to me. I'd be more interested in you or you and one other person doing something thoughtfully structured and focused than an assortment of people each doing one hour stand alone seminars.
Again this is where my interests are and not necessarily representative of others. And again I am a self motivated learner and it's rare that I'd sign up for anything at this point, though just signed up for a Buddhist Geeks course on The Second Turning as I love the teachers and it's clear they are going into depth on topics that really interest me.
I do toggle between feeling hopeless that we can effectively prevent collapse and just sort of trying not to think about it. To be honest I found the doom-sayers in the last seminar to be more on-target but depressing, and those with plans/ideas for how to live in accord with nature, etc to be kidding themselves and so that stuff frustrated me. It’s such an overwhelming thing for most of us to contemplate. I loved the talk you did with Jared Sexton. I think he’s dead on-target when he states that capitalism has sort of destroyed our ability to even imagine a better way of being in the world. I will think about signing up for the course some more. I’m most interested in the spiritual/mystical aspects of what we are going through. Somehow that resonates more to me than practical strategies for survival. Peace!
This may not be useful but the number of “summits” and conferences of all kinds, with highly knowledgeable people, is staggering. I don’t have time for any of them. My first thought is always the same: just send me the transcript. I can go through it in a fraction of the time.
Hello Brother
well what to say....sorry !
Is that enough? In brief. My wife and i spent over twenty years building an off-grid school based in Devon in the convivial style of illitch.... When parents came i said we could teach children how to spell consciousness but it may be more helpful to show and explore what that word may mean. We built a crucible (after Findhorn the early days, certainly not now) where everyone was welcome, where all had a unique gift to share and we said "yes" to almost everything. We held space to explore and experiment in a place of connection.
Daniel, after 20 odd years it was time to move on. What did i learn in that time? far more than this brief post will allow., but ..Well we learnt magic is real and we created a charming enchanted place of learning. We also gleaned that folk often want to use "your" crucible to place their stories in...a place where they can play at taking some weight, some responsibility (after vanessa andriotti and Stephen Jenkinson) but in reality. No not really. "No I dont really want to relinquish any of my stuff ,my money or privilege. In fact i dont even want to pay for your services because; "i am an artist" and a forest of other strange reasons to fracture and fragment.
We now find ourselves back at Findhorn (after 40 years) and its as messy and full of hubris as the rest of the planet. The community here is trying to buy the land from the effectively bankrupt Findhorn Foundation.
A few holding fast to the center. "can it hold"
Well who knows, perhaps not... but it has to be tried because we need to leave at least a sense or some small echo in the atmosphere for those that follow... a sense that someone gave a damn.
Daniel Bless you for the work you do.
Yes, another course by more "thought leaders," authors and political activists. It's overwhelming. And yes, everyone listed has done a tremendous amount of good. I applaud them, especial you, Daniel. I've "raged against the machine" since before the first Earth Day. I'm exhausted. I still try to give because I still receive. For me, though, I just want to chop wood and carry water. I don't need a course for that.
You assembled a great line up and I’m interested but, like many have commented here, I’ve been following these ideas for years. I started with Greer in 2006 and broadly accept his thesis that a slow, sporadic decline, punctuated with crisis is the future. Well, actually it’s the present and therein lies the issue. It feels like the time for talk and exploration is done- now we’re working on practical solutions. I realise I have a tenuous future in Communications now that AI has arisen. I know our politics in the UK is headed into authoritarian territory. I know wealth inequality is intensifying and what we have may yet be lost. I know we have all the solutions but we’re not putting them into action because there is scant support. Who will create a mutual society to cushion each others financial needs? Who will join a grassroots trade network to support our artistic and agricultural endeavours? We need to birth a new alternative.
I'm 80 years old and have lived and observed, in real time, through what I consider to be the most acceleratingly destructive period in the history of our democracy. Daniel, I believe that I have contacted you about this before, but in your course description didn't notice any reference to my primary concern, that being humanity's handicap -- which is now, and always have been, those 1% of us who are psychopathic. Until we rapidly utilize the new technology that, for the first time in human history, have at our disposal -- we are certainly doomed!
Terry Sneller
www.nomoreinsanity.org
perhaps becasue it's a bit of an old template..Daniel..." big names", beaucoup $$ ....same tired " lecture type" format...?
perhaps THIS type of gathering...could inspire a bit more more..
this KIND of format...
https://peopleofredmountain.com/2024/03/14/protect-mcdermitt-caldera/
sponsored by Tribes in Nevada in mid April....survival, ...ceremonies APRIL 14
..It's FREE it's networking there's a raffle 😘🍀..people are fed .and it plans to call into ACTION....protests against lithium mines, out West, on native lands ...perhaps start with what we can DO....refuse to buy into for instance " electric cars are GREEN"...etc xo
I felt sad when I read your message Daniel, about the lack of response to this course, and I just signed up. I hestitated yesterday because I'm trying to save money, and I very much appreciated the discount. I have a lot of admiration for the work you and your colleagues are doing in bringing this together, and in my capacity as a climate journalist, I have had extensive interactions with several of your speakers. I'm excited about the sessions and plan to write about them for my newsletter Resonant World which seeks to bring a collective and inter-generational trauma lens to the climate crisis, and our crises more broadly. (I also loved How Soon is Now, which I can remember buying in Watkins Books in London when it came out). See you there!