What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire Page #13
- Year:
- 2007
- 123 min
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that is polluted, the air they can't breathe.
And they say, "Granddad,
did you let that happen?"
And they're angry when they get there.
I think they're going to look back
and shake their heads and say,
'what happened to those people?
How did they lyse sight of such basic things?"
There is a new story arising in the world.:
the story of the Great Turning,
the turning away from a culture of domination
and death, and the turning toward a culture
that is life-sustaining and life-renewing.
All over the planet, people
are now telling this story.
The Buddhist scholar and deep ecologist
Joanna Macy tells this story in her workshops.
The writer and activist David Korten
tells it in his book by the same name.
It's a story to be told by our descendents,
looking back on this present time.
Will we be the monsters of our great-
grandchildren's nightmares?
Or will we walk, as the story of the Great
Turning says, as heroes and healers
in the epic poetry of those still-unborn voices?
Will we be reviled for our
entitled, destructive ways?
Or will we be lovingly remembered
in the songs of our descendents
as they recount the story of this lost and very
wounded tribe that stepped back from the abyss
and found its way home to the
community of living souls?
We get to choose.
Who are we going to be?
Part of me still wishes that someone
would just take care of it, you know.
That it's their job. That's what we pay them for.
They're supposed to be the wise parents of us.
it's going to come as a really rude
awakening when people realize that
a) they can't and b) they won't.
I don't think life for most Americans, despite our
affluence, is all that it's been cracked up to be.
And people are afraid to talk about that.
they're afraid they're the only ones that
are experiencing deep dissatisfaction.
it's really so sad, you know.
You look at - and particularly American
culture is emblematic of this -
go to a typical shopping mall and
and the environment around you.
And the utter shallowness and
hopelessness of it all is profoundly depressing.
Look.
Is this who are we?
Consumers? Shoppers? Workers? Voters?
Does our identity lie in Nielsen numbers and box
office receipts and the Gross Domestic Product?
Are we on this Earth to sell cheeseburgers
to each other and yell at our children
and drive around in clown cars
and fall asleep in front of the tube?
Are we destroying the planet, as
Dmitry Orlov asks, just "to be somewhat
more comfortable for a little while"?
I keep having to remind myself.:
this culture is not humanly.
It is only one culture out of the tens of
thousands that used to exist on this planet.
Only one culture out of the
many that are still hanging on.
That it has overrun the world means nothing
about its rightness, its greatness, or its destiny.
It means only that we live in a system of social
evolution that selects for short-term power
rather than for compassion, or for
sanity, or for long-term survival.
I think we are much more than
we've ever been allowed to believe.
Denied the connection and meaning that
nourishes us, we've grown small and
stunted in the shallow soil of this culture.
It's time to revitalize that ground of our being.
What really is important, and what
adds value and what adds... you know. . .
what does a life well-lived look like?
Humans have a history of living much more in
touch with the natural world, with the planet.
Much more sustainable.
Much more spiritual.
Much more communal.
That's why we are.
As of all this starts to shift and
change and disintegrate and collapse,
there's the opportunity, in fact,
to come back to ourselves.
To grow up, fundamentally,
as people and as a culture.
We're in a time of initiation, folks.
A mass initiation at the level of culture itself.
A vision quest for the collective mind.
this culture's arrogance, its adolescent
sense of invincibility and entitlement,
must be sloughed off to make room for a
more mature sense of interdependence with,
and responsibility to, the community of life.
this is the work of initiation.
Stepping into this cultural maturity, we will
take our rightful place in the community of life.
And we will fall back in love with the world.
We can do this. But only if we choose to.
Only if we lay down our weapons
in this insane war against the world.
Only if we surrender control and
move back into relationship.
You want unlimited growth? You can have it.
All you've ever wished for and more.
Growth in relationship and experience.
In self-awareness and spirit and love
and community and connection.
Growth in purpose and meaning.
Growth in vision.
When we step back into the
community of life, we will find out
immediately what has always been true.:
all of life's on our side.
our team. And elm trees.
dragonflies and plankton.
We'll walk with the wind and the water, with
mountains underfoot and stars overhead.
The tiger's blood will course through our veins.
The horse's breath will fill our lungs.
We'll be more connected to real power
than we've ever dreamt possible
in our sick fantasy of domination.
"Power with." Not "power over."
The power of a species that has passed
through initiation and into maturity.
I think we need to look at what is it we want
and see if civilization as we've
created it is giving us that.
And if it's not, what might give us that?
What does it mean to dismantle civilization?
What it means is depriving the rich of the ability
to steal from the poor and to destroy the world.
I can't give a better definition than that.
There's no real reason why the entire country
of the United States couldn't face reality.
You just have to drop the idea of capitalism.
You have to drop the idea of
corporations running things.
You have to drop the idea of economic growth.
It could be done. it could be done.
There was a great tradition
among the Cheyenne dog soldiers
called the picket pin and stake.
called a dog rope, and a picket pin,
that's used to stake horses to the ground, and
they would attach the picket pin to the sash,
the dog rope that was attached to them.
And then in battle they would drive
the picket stake into the ground.
And that was done as a mark of resolve.
Because once it's driven, you can't leave
until either you're dead, or you're
relieved by another dog soldier, or
the battle's over and everyone is safe.
so the question i ask people is,
you know, at what point,
you know, where will you drive your picket pin?
Where will you stake yourself out and say
"i'm not going to retreat any more"?
Our descendents are watching us.
How will we be?
It's time to be thoughtful, coming together
to learn about the world as it really is.
Reading between the lies. Doing the math.
Studying the world situation.
There will be a quiz.
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"What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Nov. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/what_a_way_to_go:_life_at_the_end_of_empire_23260>.
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