Climate Change

by Bill Ingle

No one knows with absolute certainty what is happening and what will happen — there is only opinion and belief, however well informed, or not, by credible data and analysis. Obviously climate change is not just a scientific issue — it is a political hot potato, thoroughly intertwined with economic, energy, lifestyle, and endless other issues.

Eventually any fact of significant climate change will be evident to all residents of the planet, regardless of causes, although it could be decades before this comes to pass.

Of much more immediate interest to me, personally, is climate change as symbol, both as a divisive and rancorous issue — with a potential for uniting humanity — and as possible genuine and major planetary physical change.

The fact that this is a planetary symbol is telling, and at a time when every nation and every person is impacted by the continuing effects of a global economic crisis.

This happens as increasing numbers of earth residents are connected, electronically, in a way that has never occurred before — this fact, too, is intertwined with climate change, as beliefs, opinions, and perceptions travel great distances, nearly instantaneously. (Is this external connectivity symbolic of an inner connectivity that has long been hidden as humans have focused on the outer world?)

This happens even as various forms of religion run out of steam in many places and minds, violence and terrorism erupting here and there, partly in reaction, even as the issue of climate change highlights the clash of science-inspired belief with religious belief. (Many point out the similarities between zealots of science and religious eschatological movements, each sharing portents of doom and injunctions to change personal behavior before it’s too late.)

Such a potent symbol suggests a range of scenarios; someone else may be better suited for calculating the odds of any particular scenario manifesting, but the highly charged nature of all of this suggests it’s approaching something, a bit like a limit in the calculus.

Note how less global versions of highly charged situations developed — for example, in that situation in which Christianity arose.

This symbol, and the situation it encompasses, is much larger, involving far greater numbers of people, in a highly connected world.

I’m given to understand that such situations attract particular concatenations of consciousness, beings for which no adequate words exist in present Western societies, vast psychological gestalt beings that include endless ordinary people in their constitution, emanating a

powerful “energy” not at all defined in present science, although familiar to practitioners of tai chi, whirling dervishes, and many others of various traditions and persuasions. Very likely someone like Simon Magus was quite familiar with it, if such a person ever existed.

So — what shall arise? Who shall appear? What kind of drama will develop and what shape shall it take, inspiring new science and religion spanning myth? Who will star in the drama?

This is all very exciting, once anyone looks beyond the cacophonous conflict of belief, the endless argumentation, the accusations and belittling, the usual them and us divisions.

Bill I.