Fools and the Science/Silence of Climate Change

The sacred geometry of Sandy

Mother Nature wants us to listen. For centuries we’ve ignored her. So she’s having to speak up louder and louder. Are we listening yet?

Yes weather fluctuates and comes and goes in cycles, but when the unpredictable forces are becoming stronger and wilder, it’s time to pay attention. After the vast amounts of evidence presented us, in the form of melting ice caps, holes in the ozone, severe nationwide summer droughts, so called 100-year and 500-year floods within a few decades, record temperatures, and now the Superstorm Sandy, I’m upset why this is still being questioned. But I’m really not surprised.

artwork by Faviana Rodriguez (www.favianna.com)

As a child when I did 4-H presentations about what was then called Global Warming, about CFC’s and methane gas from livestock, about water conservation and the like, I was quickly dismissed by several adults as just some silly kid sharing some silly alarmist stuff. Most people wanted to ignore it. And most people are still in denial and/or shock. Our human nature makes it hard to admit when we’re mistaken. We hate being wrong, we hate having to confess that what we do and what we have been doing for most of our lives is deemed wrong and bad. We have to try and forgo much of the judgment and blaming in order to move forward.

We’re all products of this culture which taught us how to be this way. It’s hard to recognize that the modern lifestyles we’ve come to know and love, that of consuming vast amounts of energy and resource, which  produces vast amounts of waste, could possibly be so utterly terrible and so absolutely necessary to make changes to. We’re addicted to our unsustainable lifestyles. And it isn’t easy to break an addiction. But we need more than just an environmental 12-Step program - we need a vast overhaul of our entire belief system, our education system, our business models, and the list goes on and on. The problem isn’t a simple fix. It’s a vast and complex issue that is definitely going to take a lot of genius to figure out. Or maybe a lot of Fools.

That’s right - now more than ever we need a lot of FOOLS. And I’m not talking about the lower-case, stupid, idiot fools, I’m talking about capital F, Divine Fools, as in the archetypal Fool, who does things considered foolish and outrageous and so out of the norm from society. We need Fools to shift the paradigm, to challenge the way things are, to uncover new ways of being that to the status quo seem so strange but eventually will become the standard. History is full of Fools who did things so outside of the box that they were considered crazy, but eventually the path they blazed opened up new ways of being that changed the world and became the norm. Everything is a cycle. Every new venture is considered strange and unusual at first. It’s how evolution works, on both physical and metaphorical levels.

Naturally Fools are going to make mistakes. They’re going to stumble and fail from time to time. Some of what they do will just be plain foolish, but every so often what they uncover will bring such gifts. Fools by breaking through the boundaries are going to do things that shake up the way things are so much that they are bound to disturb the peace. Jesus was quite the Fool before he became known as a Savior. There are many instances where scientific breakthroughs came about totally by accident and Foolish mistakes. Over time the actions of the Fool become status quo. It’s a cycle; what is fresh and new eventually becomes old, and the system keeps turning and chugging along. The problem is that in a super creative society like ours, new technologies bring new advances AND challenges to our life. The systems and structure of society can actually halt progress and create stagnation, like a wheel spinning in the mud. While holding on to certain customs and traditions is indeed important for survival and identity, there are also certain elements of our culture and belief system that need to adapt in order for us to survive. The actions of the Fool are needed to break through that stagnation. Thinking outside of the box may come up with some wild and fantastical ideas, some terrible ideas, and some simply Divine ones as well.

The promised Hope and Change hasn’t manifested in the past four years as many of us would like, but is that really surprising given the fact that we’ve lived most or all of our lives in this unsustainable consumer culture and that there is so much resistance to do anything truly progressive to amend the situation we find ourselves in? Did we really think we’d get out of the situation in a mere 4 years? Life grinds on, bringing new complications and challenges. We definitely built ourselves a massive hole, but we won’t climb out of it using the same methods we got ourselves into it. And we won’t get out of it without collaboration and Fools to help pioneer the way toward new methods.

So if you find yourself in a situation where you hear of something or see something that seems so utterly outrageous, crazy, and downright FOOLISH — try to recognize that you are merely in the part of the cycle that is used to doing things a particular way, but a new Foolish way is required to get us out of the hole we’re stuck in. And if anything is to be done to put us back in connection and balance with the forces of nature, and allow us to live out a more sustainable life, it’s going to require giving a lot of Foolish endeavors a try until we find a way that works.

To find out more about the archetype of the FOOL keep checking online for more posts to come, leading up to  THE HAPPY HAPPY REBEGIN DAY CELEBRATION on Saturday December 29 from 7-11pm at the Spirit Studio Silverlake. The event will include video presentations and live performances by your Foolish hosts April Hava Shenkman and Jason Jenn. It will be a fun-filled exploration of the Fool archetype, paradigm shifts, calendar dates, the turning of the wheel, duality and much, much more!