I recently completed my PhD (Wisdom University, 2012), my dissertation being Acedia and its Transformation. I came to believe that acedia — an ancient word, almost obsolete in our culture — accurately describes our difficulty in dealing with global warming. For those who want to fast-track many (but not all) of the ideas of this blog, I suggest my book Acedia: The Darkness Within, and the darkness of Climate Change.

So what is acedia? In the fourth century C.E., a desert monk Evagrius described the eight thought patterns with which his fellow monks struggled in their attempts to live their relationship with God; these patterns later became the Seven Capital Sins of Christianity. Consistent with the writings of Evagrius and because of my therapy background, I have formulated modern acedia as a combination of laziness, fearfulness, and self-righteousness — the patterns that stop clients from doing the work needed for emotional maturity. Subsequently, I came to believe that acedia is the emotional existential-spiritual pattern that blocks us from dealing with global warming (as well as many of the other problems of our modern civilization).

As part of the research, I explored the determinants of acedia, highlighting them similar to the Force Field of Change mentioned in Part 1.

I also explored how acedia develops in any given instance.

As illustration: Something painful happens to me (or you). If I have enough wisdom (as possibility: the Greek word is sophia), I then act to resolve the issue by action — practical wisdom (the Greek word is phronesis). If I am not wise enough, likely I will have an internal conflict: I want resolution, and I want to avoid the pain. If I am disciplined (discipline), I may again move into resolution, possibly complaining about how much work it requires. If I am still caught, and I have authentic hope of a good outcome, the hope may motivate me to more effort, and I again move to resolution. If none of this works for me, I move to acedia as a way to avoid the pain, and likely  cycle back into more pain eventually. In all of this, my ability to relax and play (playfulness) is vital — a friend of mine once said: “There is much evidence that life is painful; there is no evidence that it is serious.”

Given the above, it is then a simple step to outline the directions of this blog, and the needs of our civilization — IF we are to become a more mature civilization. I hope we have this capability as a species. (Part of my own entry into acedia is that I am not convinced that we are so capable — but for me to act into the ensuing despair is unacceptable.)

The transformation will be massive for our culture. For probably 30,000 years, we have principably been a dominator culture, a culture characterized by the seeking of power. In 1947, C. S. Lewis wrote: “What we call man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by.” As such, for thousands of years, we have traumatized each other (and ourselves), the most extreme example being war. And many/most of us are at war with ourselves, in how we push ourselves to “succeed,” and how we fight with our neighbours.

Yet we are also a great species. Throughout history, there have been numerous examples of our ability to cooperate. Cooperation, in fact, may have been the factor that allowed us to survive as a species.

Are we capable of the next step? I hope so.

Thus, the categories of this blog are explorations of:

• how we got here: the features of a dominator society.
• where we want to go: an effective vision of what kind of culture we want. (Vision is what provides the energy for us to move into the future — effective vision activates both conscious and unconscious forces. A ship needs both rudder and sails.)
• the oppressive forces (acedia): its patterns and mechanisms. Especially we need to understand, and stop, the processes whereby we traumatize ourselves and each other; we need to build cooperation into every aspect of living.
• the motivating processes, the processes of practical wisdom (phronesis), especially wisdom (sophia), discipline, hope, and playfulness. (Each one of these factors is disparaged in our society.)

Subsequent posts will explore each of these in turn.