After years of pitching his vision for a film about ecological concerns, my good friend The Don Quixote of Fish Biologists (DQ for short) had a rude awakening that maybe, just maybe, his quest to make a difference must be expanded up to bigger – and not better – things. He started to follow a guy by the name if Jonathan Rowson and the group he founded by the name of Perspectiva. This article written by Mr. Rowson titled Tasting The Pickle spells out what The Don Quixote of Fish Biologists and others are up against in their efforts to make a difference. Here’s an excerpt:
There is a process of reckoning going on around the world, heightened by the conditions of the pandemic and the palpability of our fragility, inequality and interdependence. There is a climate emergency that requires urgent action, but the precise nature, cost, location and responsibility of that action is moot. There is a broader crisis of civilisational purpose that appears to necessitate political and economic transformation, and there are deeper socio-emotional, educaional, epistemic and spiritual features of our predicament that manifest as many flavours of meta-crisis: the lack of a meaningful global ‘We’, widespread learning needs, self-subverting political logics and disenchanted worldviews. These different features of our world are obscured by their entanglement with each other.
DQ has long said the Homo sapiens (i.e., “the wise ones”) must get in charge of yourselves psychologically, and it’s apparent to people like Mr. Rowson that that applies to most every aspect of the human existence.
Here’s the entire article for those admirable souls who thought they had a handle on the big picture. (Highlights have been added to quickly find important sections)
Tasting The Pickle Ten Flavours Of Meta Crisis And The Appetite For A New Civilisation 1