Global Terminal Agitation

A few years ago I learnt from my cousin that patients in paliative care often show symptoms known as terminal agitation. This is when a patient is dying and in effect is facing up to how he or she lived his or her life. It can be quite traumatic and maybe it is the suppressed traumas coming to the surface before the spirit goes from the body.

I cannot help but draw a parallel with what is going on in the human world right now. It seems to me that human society is going through terminal agitation as the current way of living is dying and all the wrongs of the human way of life are coming back to haunt us. It also occurs to me that human society is being given multiple signs from nature and from its own kind that we need to change our approach to life on Earth. So what do I mean by this?

Firstly the signs are coming from nature to point us to the change required if we are to continue to be part of the ecosystem called life. The signs are:

• covid telling us we should value bio-diversity
• floods, drought, fires telling us to reduce carbon emissions
• changes in sea level which are threatening small low lying nations
• weather pattern changes which cause crop failures in poorer regions of the world
• ecosystem and bio-diversity loss as well as extinctions which are yet to hit our consciousness

Secondly human signals that things are not good in the human realm

• transport shortages indicating that we should move less stuff around the globe and country
• price rises pressing us to use less goods that rely on oil
• obesity telling us we should eat a healthier diet
• human rights indicating that people are not happy with how we treat each other
• climate protesters who want to have a secure future for themselves and their children

The human race seems to react to these signals by either ignoring them and carrying on the abuse until somebody screams or they deal with the symptoms and not the cause.

For instance

• vaccines for covid rather than any action on bio-diversity or even building resilience in the population
• better early warning for storms that cause floods rather than tackling carbon emissions
• better fire fighting equipment and more fire fighters
• better irrigation
• better weather forecasts
• campaigns to save the large animals whilst the vast majority of creatures are left to fend for themselves
• more truck drivers rather than less transportation of goods or less consumption
• subsidies for US gas firms so that we can have carbon dioxide in our drinks and packaging, which is in any case cause pollution and climate change
• better drugs for treating obesity and diabetes rather than preventing these diseases in the first place
• less immigration
• more policing to control civil disobedience

The causes of the problem are not what we are dealing with in these actions. The causes are:

• bio-diversity loss is causing an imbalance in the order of nature, leading to diseases and surges in parasites and pests
• emissions of greenhouse gases because of the waste of over consumption and over use of private vehicles, planes etc.
• destruction of soils which lead to death of the diversity of organisms within them
• consumption of processed foods which have the nutrients stripped out of them and which require preservatives such as carbon dioxide to enable us to ship them around the globe
• global population in excess of the capacity of the Earth to support it
• lack of human diversity, not just in terms of discrimination but also in terms of acceptance of alternative ideas are not dictated by the system
• a health model based on disease, disability and death which is dictated by profits rather than

So what can we do about this terminal agitation?

Well we can do what people in palliative care do when they experience it terminal agitation. We can oversee the death of the systematic, social and cultural life which is killing us. We can each of us do this in our own lives and we need to do it collectively as well:

• invest only in actions that build diversity
• give up our gross waste of resources, namely our cars, our flights, our fashions, over consumption of energy
• boycott farming that does not re-build the soils that are dying
• prepare our food from scratch from fresh seasonal and local sources
• embrace death rather than fear it, see it a part of life
• invest our efforts and money in building our health and resilience through preventative measures like nutritious food, exercise, time in nature ( blog article on resilience)

We should take heed of the signals and start to be honest with ourselves about what it is we are doing to the Earth; and therefore directly to ourselves. We are NOT separate from the Earth but are a part of its web of life. There is a common cause of the symptoms that I have listed so far and that is that we humans are exploiting nature at an unsustainable rate. We are a global population of 7.9 billion people and we are consuming Earth’s resources at a rate of 2.4 times the rate that Earth can replenish them. So in order to continue to live, the human race must reduce it’s consumption by more than half and we must be radical in both our methods and in our speed.