We sit at the feet of the gigantic questions of our time. We hear how systems are broken, but the systems are purring and doing precisely what they were built to do. And so perhaps what needs to break is our loyalty to fixing.
THE CLIFF's EDGE ~ HOW WE SITUATE OURSELVES.
Meeting the Elders of our time.
There are three terms we have found navigationally helpful. They are often used interchangeably, but the longer we spend with them the more particular each becomes. We have begun to suspect they might be teachers. Elders. Rough gods.
Polycrisis knows about entanglement. A ball of yarn. A quilt. A spaghetti bowl. A drought becomes a harvest failure becomes a bread price becomes a border closure becomes a fracking license becomes becomes becomes and keeps becoming. The solution to one becomes the problem somewhere else. We build the seawall and change the current. We plant the forest and drain the aquifer. We electrify the village and open the mine. Polycrisis brings its medicine of relationship.
Permacrisis knows all forms of time. Often a ‘crisis’ gets us to hold our breath until we get through it. But Permacrisis has no interest in interruption. It drifts like smoke. It permeates. It has continuity and perseverance. Permacrisis brings the medicine of stamina.
Metacrisis goes underground. It is the root, of the root, of the root. Underneath the spaghetti bowl is an assumption that we are separate. Separate from the nitrogen in soil, from the fish, from the permafrost, from each other. “If I am not of a thing, I owe it nothing” is the foundation and a whole architecture of extraction rests on it. Metacrisis keeps asking the question: What if the way we have learned to relate the world is at the root of the crisis itself?
And then there is another presence at the cliff’s edge
The planetary boundaries we have crossed, the IPCC reports, Amnesty International's State of the World's Human Rights, and the many, many more reports are all evidence and testimony, but perhaps most importantly they are also receipts. Five hundred years of receipts not only of what is happening to our world but of a particular way of being in relationship with it.
We meet these elders at the Ecotone where our certainties no longer work. They destabilize us and show us their powers. Are they elders? Are they gods? Are they elementals?
Thunder!
Whoever they are, they are not gentle. They are fierce, and they will teach and teach and teach until we learn, or die, or both.
And so we gather at the Edge of the Cliff not looking for better diagnoses. We come to apprentice ourselves to these elders, with all we know and all we don't. Join us?