This is the fifteenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. Having received a metastatic cancer diagnosis, how do we react to the news? What emotions and responses are appropriate or productive?
As is the custom for the series, I provide a stand-alone companion piece in written form (not a transcript) so that the key ideas may be absorbed by a different channel. The write-up that follows is arranged according to “chapters” in the video, navigable via links in the YouTube description field.
Introduction
This is the usual short naming of the series, of myself, and the topic of this episode (reacting to the cancer diagnosis) as part of our effort to put modernity into context.
The Bad News
In the last episode, I compared modernity to cancer: a glitch in our programming that took us far from our ecological context and began a campaign of ecological ruin. Modernity is terminal. Unsustainable things just are.
Okay, sure: in the final analysis, everything is terminal: increasing solar intensity will evaporate the Earth’s oceans in something like a billion years, and the universe itself will run out of juice to make new stars, eventually fading out. But these developments operate on exceedingly long timescales compared to modernity’s lightning-fast 10,000 year run. For me, the relevant timescale is a million years, plus-or-minus an order-of-magnitude—because this is the scale on which species evolve and inhabit an ecological niche.
So, yes, even though everyone will die someday, a cancer diagnosis that gives a 20-year-old one month to live still comes as a bit of a shock. Likewise, learning of modernity’s rapid approach to a terminus can knock us off balance.
Just as metastatic cancer is pervasive in the body, and can’t be extracted without causing fatal damage, modernity is so deeply woven into the fabric of human life that its compulsory failure is bound to bring pain and suffering.
But it’s like having the wolf by the ear. It’s an unfortunate situation to find oneself in, with no easy answers for how to get out of it.
The Five Stages of Grief
It is completely understandable that anybody would react to this news in one or all of the five stages of grief. For each, I offer what I think would be typical reactions in the vein of each stage. Maybe you’ll recognize some. I can say that I have spent time in each stage, although I did not dwell long on the first two.
Denial
This can’t be true. I mean, look around us. Things have never been better. Moore’s Law. High literacy rates. The Concorde. The Space Shuttle. Advanced medical care. Smart Phones. AI will solve our problems and usher in a golden age. We will soon have Mars and other planets to expand onto, like a reset button. It’s just not as bad as they say. The human mind has infinite potential, and we are just starting to unlock the secrets of nature—perhaps soon to achieve immortality.
I could go on, because we are swimming neck-deep in this viscous cultural mythology. To me, it reeks of delusion. I mean, the sequence above started off real enough, but suffered a tunnel vision that ignored the necessary ecological flip side and the rapid, temporary nature of “now.” That’s denial for you.
Anger
Anger could take at least two forms, depending on how the denial resolves. If keeping one foot in denial, the anger might be directed toward the messenger—often laced with insult. If appreciating the general veracity of the case, anger might be directed at the system.
How could they let this happen? Why didn’t my sources of news alert me to this reality? Who’s fault is this mess? It’s those damned Liberals. It’s those damned Conservatives. How can so many smart people be so wrong about this (see denial, above)?
This sort of anger is not unjustified.
Bargaining
Bargaining is the final stop for many, living comfortably under the hope of poorly-evaluated options that seem possible when paired with typical levels of ignorance (primarily of the ecological sort). Why can’t we switch to solar power? Why can’t we recycle everything? Maybe if we all had our own water bottles… What new things can I buy that will set things right? I’m prepared to make a big sacrifice and practice Meatless Mondays. If closer to acceptance, the bargaining offer might be to revert to 1850’s lifestyles, which weren’t so bad.
It seems to me that bargaining involves a tacit acknowledgement that things can’t continue as they are, but the focus becomes offering meaningless trades so that the real prize (modernity) need not be sacrificed. It’s another form of delusion.
Depression
Those who see the pointlessness of denial and anger, and the emptiness of bargaining, might well sink into depression. All is lost, then. What’s the point in going on? It’s all been for nothing. The dream is dashed. We’re doomed.
It may, in fact, be avoidance of this state that keeps people in the bargaining phase: they want no part of depression and doom, understandably.
Acceptance
On the other side of depression is acceptance. It could not be any other way. And all is not lost: lots of good things are left in the absence of modernity. The problem is in believing that modernity was the point, the correct dream, what brought meaning to this world. I see now the narrowness and misguided nature of that view. I can find awe, wonder, amazement, gratitude, laughter, meaning, love, and community in other ways.
A Glimmer of Good News
The sentiments around acceptance get at the crucial point:
Modernity ≠ Humanity
We tend to conflate these two things, modernity being viewed as the crowning achievement of humanity. Modernity will end, but Homo sapiens is not biophysically dependent on modernity. Rather, humanity is biophysically dependent on ecological health. As long as modernity leaves enough biodiversity and ecological function intact, humans may fare okay—in smaller numbers and modest, ecologically-rooted lifestyles. Unlike cancer, enough healthy tissue may be left after modernity’s failure for humans to convalesce.
Sure, it won’t be painless. Modernity has such a complete grip on most aspects of our lives that its failure will require lots of adjustment. But modernity is not intrinsic to humans—not part of our DNA. We know this because the vast majority of time humans have been on the planet has not looked anything like modernity.
The Self-Cure Plan
Modernity is an artificial layer that humans introduced to the world, and as such can be taken out. By “artificial,” I mean not vetted by evolution, not integrated into reciprocal ecological relationships, and still very new/experimental. If we recognize the futility and destructive nature of modernity, we can stomp it out by being vigilant and by practicing a reluctance to engage in the cancerous behaviors of our current culture.
Many Indigenous cultures operating outside of modernity rejected the notions of modernity, wanting nothing to do with it. It’s not because they were “dumb savages” or similarly ignorant, insulting, offensive epithets. Explicit practices to deliberately refrain from modernity-like behavior were common features. The perils of narcissism, power concentrations, possessions, and overtaxing the local ecology led to conventions like meat shaming (also here), demand sharing (community ownership), the honorable harvest, and loads of stories that reinforced positions of humility and gratitude. Such forms of wisdom would be beneficial to whatever modes of living we try after modernity.
Historical accounts indicate that many Indigenous folks who came in contact with European colonizers were alarmed by “fictional” constructs such as property rights and money. This wasn’t for lack of comprehension. I mean, really: how hard are these concepts to understand? It was more that they instantly saw the damage potential, shunning the practices. The jacked-up notions did not mesh with their ecologically-rooted cultural belief systems.
How would we defeat the cancer of our culture? We starve it of its blood flow. Stop engaging in the activities that feed it. Find value in other places. Turn our backs on elements of it—not all at once, but in progressive stages that may not be complete in our lifetimes. No harm in starting: baby steps. The most important thing is the attitude. Stop buying into the mythology. See it for what it is: empty delusion that is doing far more harm than good in the broadest sense. I’ll have a bit more on this in the final episode.
Death Throes
The optimal outcome would be a no-drama winding-down—perhaps driven by a natural demographic decline currently in the making. In this scenario, economies (somehow) transform from growth to contraction. The scale of our enterprise winds down. Population density declines and some areas are effectively abandoned. The community of life is given room to breathe, and bounces back—much as it has in Chernobyl.
That’s the fantasy version. Economies will not react well to compulsory contraction, and will probably go through convulsive fits. Efforts to maintain customary flows of energy and materials (i.e., money) may trigger wars. Supply chain disruptions on a scale much larger than what surfaced in COVID would cripple industries and could lead to a non-linear (opposite of no-drama) cascading contraction. Modernity will not cope well with such major challenges—especially if the guiding principle for the power players is that we must prevent modernity’s failure and restore its glory.
I believe that efforts to keep the wheels on the cart will prove to be futile, because it turns out we don’t live in a fantasy world of conjured reality. Biophysical and ecological realities are actually in charge—not notions or wishes in brains. The biophysical world just tolerated our foibles for a while. But unsustainable things fail, and modernity is not at all conceived on an ecologically sustainable foundation. Such considerations essentially never crossed the minds of modernity’s architects.
Starve the Beast
Modernity feeds on faith in the myth of progress. But it was never a viable dream. It was never ecologically vetted in relation to the community of life as a regenerative, reciprocal actor in evolutionary terms.
The best move at this stage may be to starve it of its fuel. Don’t fall for the false promises of utopia. These amount to a detachment from reality: the myth that we can achieve perfection in this artificial construct if we only change the nature of the world, of humans, of ecologies to somehow suit modernity. This is the wrong way around. The universe is bigger and was here first. The community of life—and humans as dependent parts of it—were shaped over eons, and are not about to suddenly conform to some notional half-baked, untested, and temporary “reality” of our mental creation.
The fundamental flaw is the conceit that the world somehow can fit into our heads under the banner of modernity. No: our brains are biophysical organs incapable of actualizing such grandiosity. We have no real, lasting choice but to humbly conform to the provisions of an ecological web of life. Modernity is so utterly ecologically ignorant that this all-important foundation is treated like an irrelevant afterthought. How many courses have you taken that spend the first week or two establishing ecological foundations before moving on to topics of modernity—always evaluating how the constructs can mesh into an ecological context? It doesn’t happen. Despite the extreme and ultimate importance of ecology, all our talk of how to “modern” completely skips any substantive discussion of the ecological factors at play. When they do appear, it tends to be in a naive and cursory manner. Ecological modernity is not a real thing.
Let me be clear: I myself am woefully ecologically ignorant. But my own ignorance only reinforces my point: modernity does not produce ecologically-aware members, while ecologically-rooted humans see right through modernity as a devastating mistake—while being powerless to oppose it.
Time for Hospice
When it is clear that a loved one has a terminal condition and nothing more can be done to extend life with any measure of quality, we often call Hospice. The goal is to make the process of dying as comfortable as it might be. It is still an emotionally difficult time—the sense of loss sometimes becoming overwhelming.
Hospicing Modernity
Vanessa Andreotti (also goes by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira) wrote a fantastic book called Hospicing Modernity. What a great title! I mean, bingo! That’s what we need. Rather than angrily dumping modernity’s dying body into a ditch, we can show it some respect, grieve for its losses, allow it a dignified passing—but all while accepting the unavoidable truth of the matter: modernity can’t be long for this world, and its continuance threatens the existence of the community of life upon whose health we ourselves depend.
Big Changes Afoot
Life will not be the same. A big adjustment is required. To the extent that modernity provided a sense of meaning or purpose in life, those things will need to come from elsewhere. But guess what: that’s totally possible! In fact, it’s modernity whose meaning and purpose are empty. Modernity is, after all, something of a sham: a patently unsustainable mode of living whose perks are more than outweighed by its ills. Keeping the perks was never a viable option, in the long run.
Where might one look for meaning? The guideline is simple. If it requires non-renewable materials, modern forms of energy (fossil fuels, nuclear, electricity from any source), industrial processes, or purchase with money, then it’s probably best to treat it as being devoid of meaning.
What could possibly be left? Almost everything in the universe! Think about relationships—between people, animals, plants, bodies of water, mountains, and the weather. Things like love, laughter, singing, dancing, awe, health and fitness are valuable to us without costing anything or demanding industrial backing. Because the trappings of modernity have displaced many of these more intrinsic appreciations—like a tumor displaces healthy tissue—our culture is sick now, unaware that we crave these things and as we try to substitute the missing sources of meaning by modern devices—which never fully satisfies.
At the end of our own life, we will likely not reflect on material aspects, but on moments and relationships that were powerful to us—and didn’t cost a thing. Let’s prioritize such things in life, while minimizing the industrial elements.
Floodwaters Quote
The prospect of shedding elements of industrial life may seem overwhelming, which is why I like this bit from Hospicing Modernity:
There is a popular saying in Brazil that illustrates this insight using water… The saying goes that in a flood situation, it is only when the water reaches people’s hips that it becomes possible for them to swim. Before that, with the water at our ankles or knees, it is only possible to walk or to wade. In other words, we might only be able to learn to swim—that is, to exist differently—once we have no other choice.
Vanessa Machado De Oliveira
In other words, don’t fret too much about the fact that your life, integrated as it is into a sick culture, requires a car and a house, or whatever. It’s not all your fault. Just falling out of love with modernity is a huge step in the right direction. Maybe resent being trapped in an abusive relationship. You can recognize that modernity does not pursue appropriate goals, and look forward to a changed world. That attitude shift alone will make you a driving force for a changing world. And that doesn’t sound too hard, does it? You can start today!
Closing
I’ll have more to say about personal response in the final episode. Next time, I’ll work to synthesize key lessons from the entire series in order to help hold the whole picture at once.
