continuing to reflect on 'Life after Doom' by Brian McLaren

Brian McLaren paints four possible scenarios for the future of what is now a world wide civilisation.

Collapse/avoidance

Collapse/rebirth

Collapse/survival

Collapse/extinction

Apologies if my outline is too simplistic. 

The first paints the possibility that humanity manages by immediate actions to mitigate the worst of climate change brought about by human activity. It does recognise that the damage already done to the environment will continue to have an affect as the time lag is such that the damage caused builds upon itself. 

Then we have the possibility that avoidance is too late and we might best hope for a rebirth of civilisation following on with a lot of re-thinking about how we live. 

Thirdly it's all a bit too late, and the best we can hope for, is we and the planet survives in some way, but it will be a very different world. 

Finally we don't avoid what we have created and we could in the process of protecting ourselves in a very selfish manner totally destroy everything.

Part of Brian's premise is that we have lived through a time when continued progress has been promoted so that we believe it will always be the case. In this sense he is writing about  materialistic progress. There are of course those who believe a technological fix will be found. But any technological  fixes don't get around the fact the earths resources are limited, so we still require civilisation to do things differently. 

We hear all the time governments, including our own, talking up the need for growth which is very much linked to continued prosperity for all. This is the capitalist/ consumerist world I have grown up in, and fortunate to live in apart of the world which has benefited the most. But you can't keep buying more stuff that you don't really need. Yet we are told we do, and our desires are played upon to try and make that happen. Any one who has ever gone on a camping holiday, will most likely have thought, I can live very well actually without so much stuff. Yet once home we fall back into consuming more and more. 

Increasingly we see wealth and power being focussed in fewer and fewer hands leaving large swathes of the world population in poverty. Clearly something is fundamentally wrong, and unless this is addressed you build up problems down the line. People will want a share of the good things, the powerful will use their power and wealth to protect what they have, but for all their wealth and power, it cannot protect them from the inevitable collapse of civilisation and extinction. 

The continued progress model means the consumption of the planet and pollution of the planet is not sustainable. This fact is ignored because it's unthinkable or unbearable  to contemplate or because some parts of humanity are so selfish they are unwilling to change, so now, without regard to their children and grandchildren's future, let alone the ecosystems that sustain all life, they participate in the planets destruction. 

In reading the book I did not strangely enough find myself depressed. The sheer honesty and openness of someone naming these issues, not claiming any answers, and in fact still able to offer Hope, all be it as he writes 'hope is complicated' means you don't have to become so overwhelmed that you become inactive. 

To live well in the face of what ever comes is really important, even if it means we wipe ourselves out, and maybe all life on planet earth. In a strange way the book to me is a call to action in whatever small and  large ways we can to make a difference. It's a call to live out a humanity that is not rooted in greed and selfishness, rather its a call to love the planet and all life. Whether it's too late or not to avoid the worst of the possible outcomes is irrelevant. What matters is how 'we' live in relation to the very earth. 

Where ever we have lived we have sought to make a garden even when with small children and we didn't have the time. A garden is a place of sanctuary within which our children could play and enjoy a green environment. Its a place where insects, birds etc could thrive. It's a place of joy and delight and a reminder we are part of creation and we need to work with it and not against it. We are privileged to have had gardens. Each time we created a garden we were aware that we would be moving on by the nature of my itinerant ministry, and could only hope, that whoever follows us would  want to garden as well. There was no guarantee that what we had created would be built upon, nevertheless we have continued to create gardens. For me Brian McLaren invites people to live life well in the face of whatever may come. For me as a Christian that is a deeply rooted ethic, but it is found in many of other faiths and no faith.

So just a few more thoughts with more to come as I re read the book.