Half 2
In Half 1, I talked in regards to the poly-crises humanity is dealing with. I described Jeremy Rifkin’s new guide, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Residence within the Universe and the way it expands the understanding of our world to acknowledge that our planet is primarily water reasonably than earth. I additionally mentioned the work of James DeMeo who traced the origins of lots of our present issues to a selected time and place in human historical past–6,000 years in the past within the Center East–and what it may train us about our current predicament and the way to clear up it.
For many of human historical past, regardless of the various challenges of life, people lived in relative peace and prosperity. Of their guide, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Form Our Brains, Lives, and Future, Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry, they are saying,
“For the overwhelming majority of the interval that the genus Homo has existed, nomadic foraging constituted the ever-present human way of life.”
They go on quote anthropologist M.G. Bicchieri who mentioned,
“For greater than 99 p.c of the roughly two million years for the reason that emergence of recognizable human animal, man has been a hunter and gatherer.”
Eisler and Fry say our ancestors have been “The Authentic Partnership Societies” with the next options of partnership techniques that embody:
- Equality, respect, and partnership between men and women.
- A nonacceptance of violence, struggle, abuse, cruelty, and exploitation.
- Ethics that help human caring, prosocial cooperation, and flourishing.
As James DeMeo’s analysis demonstrated, this lifestyle modified 6,000 years in the past.
“With only a few exceptions, there is no such thing as a clear and unambiguous proof for warfare or social violence on our planet Earth previous to round 4,000 BCE and the earliest proof seems in particular places, from which it firstly arose, and subtle outward over time to contaminate almost each nook of the globe.”
DeMeo goes on to say,
“An enormous local weather change shook the traditional world, when roughly 6,000 years in the past huge areas of lush grassland and forest within the Outdated World started to rapidly dry out and convert into harsh desert. The huge Sahara Desert, Arabian Desert, and the large deserts of the Center East and Central Asia merely didn’t exist previous to c.4000 BCE.”
There may be trendy proof that the world in query is what had been referred to within the bible as “the Backyard of Eden.” Of their guide, Exiles From Eden: Psychotherapy From an Evolutionary Perspective, Kalman Glantz and John Okay. Pearce cite the work of archaeologist Juris Zarins. He believes this idyllic space of the world now lies below the Persian Gulf, downstream from the traditional civilizations that flowed alongside the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. In line with Glantz and Pearce
“Eden was not paradise. It was only a place—a spot the place human beings lived the way in which all people lived earlier than the rise of civilization.”
“The ‘Backyard of Eden’ myths, which exist within the historic literature of many Outdated World cultures, seem like factually rooted on this early interval of socially-cooperative and peaceable social circumstances, when the Saharasia was inexperienced and fruitful,”
says DeMeo.
“Then got here the devastating local weather change in the direction of aridity, which fashioned the huge Saharasian desert belt, and people have been actually forged ‘out of the backyard’. The remainder is historical past.”
DeMeo’s analysis exhibits that the drought that occurred 6,000 years went on for generations and impacted the lives of all who lived at the moment. Latest analysis on the affect of “Adversarial Childhood Experiences,” demonstrates that the results of childhood trauma are lengthy lasting and trigger bodily, emotional, and relational well being issues all through our lives.
“Famine and hunger is a extreme trauma from which survivors hardly ever escape unscathed,”
says DeMeo.
“Lots of people die, households are break up aside, and infants and youngsters are sometimes deserted, and undergo enormously. Hunger impacts surviving youngsters in an emotionally extreme method. These attitudes and behaviors are deeply protoplasmic in nature, and are handed on to ensuing generations it doesn’t matter what the local weather, by social establishments which mirror the character construction of the common particular person at any given time period.”
Though this sort of trauma impacts each men and women, women and men typically cope with the trauma in several methods. The comic, Elayne Boosler, provides a humorous, but insightful reflection on this inherent distinction. She says,
“When girls get depressed they both eat or buy groceries. Males invade one other nation. It’s an entire totally different mind-set.”
In my current guide, Lengthy Dwell Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Provide Hope to Humanity, my second chapter is titled, “Male Violence is Growing—From College Shootings, to Home Violence and Riot on the US Capitol. From Irritability and Anger to Despair and Suicide.”
I am going on to say,
“Males are the ‘canaries within the coal mine,’ alerting us to the necessity for change. Canaries have been utilized in purpose mines as an early warning system for miners. Poisonous gases corresponding to carbon monoxide and methane within the mine would kill the hen earlier than affecting the miners. Male psychological sickness and breakdown are the world’s early warning indicators of impending disaster. Issues like Irritable Male Syndrome, male despair and aggression, and excessive suicide charges are alerting us to the poisonous nature of our present surroundings and existence.”
Our Moonshot For Mankind and Humanity
We consider man’s psychological, emotional, and relational well being is the important thing to empowering males to stay lengthy and properly. Our mission is to assist males stay more healthy, happier, extra cooperative lives—fulfilling lives of goal and productiveness, the place males are supported and valued as they make optimistic contributions to their households, associates, and communities. When that occurs, households develop stronger, communities prosper, and humanity takes its subsequent leap ahead.
In 2004 I learn a robust examine, “Sexual Choice and the Male:Feminine Mortality Ratio,” by Daniel J. Kruger, PhD and Randolph M. Nesse, M.D. They examined untimely deaths amongst males in 20 international locations. They discovered that in each nation, males died sooner and lived sicker than girls and their shortened health-span and lifespan harmed the lads and their households. They concluded with quite a lot of highly effective statements:
- “Being male is now the only largest demographic issue for early demise.”
- “Over 375,000 lives could be saved in a single 12 months within the U.S. alone if males’s threat of dying was as little as girls’s.”
- “If male mortality charges could possibly be lowered to these for females, this might get rid of over one-third of all male deaths under age 50 and assist males of all ages.”
- “Should you might make male mortality charges the identical as feminine charges, you’d do extra good than curing most cancers.”
For me, this was a name to motion. I invited quite a lot of colleagues who have been main organizations that had confirmed profitable in serving to enhance males’s well being. We launched the non-profit, MoonshotForMankind.Org. We invite you to hitch us.
We even have an extra method to share data that may be useful. Come try our Substack, https://substack.com/@moonshotformankind and listen to what our founding members need to say.
There are clearly quite a lot of biologically primarily based the explanation why girls stay longer than males. However we all know that even our genes will be modified by modifications in our way of life and beliefs about ourselves and the world.
The teachings I’ve discovered over time are these:
- We might not be chargeable for the traumatic local weather change that occurred 6,000 years in the past, however we should take duty for our current scenario. As they are saying, “Nature bats final.” If people are usually not prepared to vary, nature will drive the change upon us.
- We’d do properly to hearken to our animal elders. Most species have been right here longer than us and are higher tailored to life on planet Earth. As historian Thomas Berry reminds us.
“We by no means knew sufficient. Nor have been we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins within the nice household of the earth. Nor might we hearken to the assorted creatures of the earth, every telling its personal story. The time has now come, nonetheless, once we will pay attention or we are going to die.”
- After we’re taking place the incorrect highway, it’s by no means too late to show round.
- We could not have the ability to flip again to the previous, however we will transfer forward to the longer term. As Jeremy Rifkin says,
“We have to reset our notion of waters as ‘useful resource’ to at least one the place waters are seen as a ‘life supply.’ We have to adapt to the hydrosphere reasonably than attempting to adapt the hydrosphere to us. The following stage within the human saga is to rebrand our dwelling ‘Planet Aqua’ and study to stay and thrive in new methods on a novel water planet within the universe.”
You’ll be able to study extra about Jeremy Rifkin’s work and his guide, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Residence within the Universe right here. Should you appreciated this sequence of articles and want to learn extra about how we will create a wholesome future for ourselves, our kids, and future generations, I invite you to enroll in my free weekly e-newsletter. You are able to do so right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/