We are at a quantum change moment of Earth's history. All bets are off as to what's going to be our future. Because of the interaction of changes going on now, no one - absolutely no one - can predict what will happen.
In order to get some feel for the astonishing importance of this time we are challenged to live in, one has to think holistically - with the big picture in mind. Gone are the days when we could look at our little corner of the planet, observe the direction of individual changes, and conclude that those changes will proceed in the directions they are going at the speeds they are going. Now we have to consider a myriad of unexpected influences coming from outside. Filter out interest in what's going on in other parts of the world (on the grounds that what's far away doesn't matter) and you're making an assumption that's bound to come back and smack you. The world is one ecosystem, one part liable to have an impact on some other distant part with the same speed as our modern television. We are being called to be one family.
As illogical as it seems, some of the best philosophers and scientists think of time and space as if they were flexible. Now at this most amazing time we can begin to visualize what they have been talking about, just by looking at what's going on. The human population goes up while the jobs numbers goes down. Sudden weather events force drastic changes in priorities. New inventions disrupt what were thought to be stable business assumptions. Stunningly threatening new types of weapons bring dangers from formerly safe corners. Many species of life are dying off, while a relative few (such as humans, starfish, Japanese knotweed, water hyacinth, kudzu vine, rats, rabbits, deer, Asian carp, groundhogs, and varroa mites on honeybees) are experiencing disconcerting increases in population. Computers and robotics - by making instantaneous earthwide connections - compel us to try to hold on to what jobs we have left for dear life. High-speed travel solves old problems by making new ones. Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and carbonic acid in the oceans are increasing much more rapidly than predicted - because of feedback effects. Farmers have to consider weather AND upstream pollution events such as from the still leaking and still extremely volatile continuing nuclear disaster in Japan. Forest fires in Russia have been causing record ground-level ozone readings in Canada. We really are becoming one global village.
Predicting such changes as the rate of ocean acidification or atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulation require factoring in so many interacting possibilities that both rates and degrees are almost consistently underestimated. Years ago there were worries about rapid climate change that made these projections for thousands of years in the future. Now any thinker with a computer and a sense of history can see that abrupt climate change is here now, and right here in river city insisting we pay attention.
With a calm mind one can better work with these changes by freeing up the imagination to hold on to what is most dear from the past. Those who lovingly revere the good things we have lost - whether you're talking about a loved one who has passed on or a childhood memory of a part of nature that is no longer there - are playing their parts in the creation of a better future planet. No, we'll never get them back again, but the essence of what was good in them can be renewed. With this glass-half-empty AND glass-half-full attitude, we can navigate the fiery sea of changes of this time without losing a sense of effectiveness. You can't control many things, but you can affect your direction - by orienting your heart towards the good with the logical faith that (not knowing the details of our future) we can nevertheless assume that future will be good as long as we do our part.
I miss loved ones I've lost, a safer neighborhood, and frogs from my childhood. And I look forward to a regenerating environment and re-establishing the more carefree childhood I had (where people didn't even have to lock their doors at night) - a childhood many alive today can hardly imagine ever existed. And I'm getting some acceptance of the aging process - by recognizing that the memory of things past is a most powerful tool towards making (current crises notwithstanding) a really lovely future. Remember the good things. And the bad things. And share them.
