A Christmas Message
from Phineas Dash

Here in far northern California it is sunny and warm, the air is like spring. There are birds everywhere, feeding for the oncoming winter.

It is getting warmer and drier here year by year. Short term it's good. An unusually good crab season offshore. But in the longterm the wildlife, the flora and fauna, aren't built for this. The place will change, and there will be traumas.

The effects of global heating, whatever they will be, are now inevitable. There is always the possibility of some mitigation, and though time may clarify the specific problems, its passage may also render possible remedies either impossible or beyond the resources and will of that time.

If global heating were all we faced, if we were a society up to that kind of challenge as it appeared even a few years ago we could be, then the future would be less bleak. But the election last month revealed to at least this observer that America is truly in the grip of something that transcends science and politics, and reason. Not even religious differences explain it. History is being shaped by psychological forces that perhaps only Jung approached understanding. He contended that the apocalypse of this civilization was inevitable, though he could not predict the form. But his dreams towards the end of his life weren't comforting. He was, however, reassured that his dreams told him that at least some members of the human race would survive.

I try to discount the waning of hopes inherent in my advancing age. But of course I cannot. Yet it seems to me the signs are there. The decline of civilization has been going on for some time. At the same time, advances in understanding were being made, and spreading to more people. Europe, the source of so much violence in the 20th century, moves awkwardly yet insistently towards a political unity based on reasonably sound principles, and should be the hope of the world.

But America's fall may trump that force. There have been many periods of crisis and troubles in human history, but there are a few things different now. First, the power over life is much greater, and is in a small set of uncertain but arrogant human hands. That's the life of individuals, of groups, of human civilization and of at least the "higher" forms of animal and vegetable life on the planet. Second, we are as individuals more dependent on interlocking phenomena that we don't understand. The grid. The system of food distribution. Water. Few Americans or citizens of other westernized countries are close to basic resources, or have any experience in obtaining them directly. Societal breakdown does not have to be very large to be incredibly extensive and costly in human suffering and human life. A house of cards is far too simple an analogy, yet it is apt in the sense it gives of a precarious interconnection.

What are we to do? Perhaps we will have time to work on the answers. In preparation, I'd say, tend to your psyche, learn to help each other---and this is perhaps the greatest threat to us as individuals, that we are so separate---and keep representing what you believe in. Perhaps our convictions and actions will help. Perhaps they will be remembered as an example to those who survive.

In my generation we've been expecting sudden apocalypse, instant karma, since the late 1960s. In a sense the last 30 years or so have been a bonus, and we may have 30 more, who knows? But the fact that some have cried wolf before doesn't mean the wolf won't finally come. The signs are here. It may be more of a slow motion apocalypse, though things do bend before they suddenly break. Hope is a committment, so we work in hope. But for those who are enjoying this Christmas in relative prosperity and peace, it's worth taking a moment to appreciate it more fully, more sharply. Because next year may be very different.