Half 2
In Half 1, I talked in regards to the poly-crises humanity is going through. I described Jeremy Rifkin’s new ebook, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Dwelling within the Universe and the way it expands the understanding of our world to acknowledge that our planet is primarily water somewhat than earth. I additionally mentioned the work of James DeMeo who traced the origins of a lot of our present issues to a specific time and place in human historical past–6,000 years in the past within the Center East–and what it may well educate us about our current predicament and how you can clear up it.
For many of human historical past, regardless of the numerous challenges of life, people lived in relative peace and prosperity. Of their ebook, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Form Our Brains, Lives, and Future, Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry, they are saying,
“For the overwhelming majority of the interval that the genus Homo has existed, nomadic foraging constituted the ever present human life-style.”
They go on quote anthropologist M.G. Bicchieri who mentioned,
“For greater than 99 p.c of the roughly two million years for the reason that emergence of recognizable human animal, man has been a hunter and gatherer.”
Eisler and Fry say our ancestors had been “The Authentic Partnership Societies” with the next options of partnership methods that embrace:
- Equality, respect, and partnership between men and women.
- A nonacceptance of violence, warfare, abuse, cruelty, and exploitation.
- Ethics that help human caring, prosocial cooperation, and flourishing.
As James DeMeo’s analysis demonstrated, this lifestyle modified 6,000 years in the past.
“With only a few exceptions, there isn’t a clear and unambiguous proof for warfare or social violence on our planet Earth previous to round 4,000 BCE and the earliest proof seems in particular areas, from which it firstly arose, and subtle outward over time to contaminate practically each nook of the globe.”
DeMeo goes on to say,
“A large local weather change shook the traditional world, when roughly 6,000 years in the past huge areas of lush grassland and forest within the Previous World started to shortly dry out and convert into harsh desert. The huge Sahara Desert, Arabian Desert, and the large deserts of the Center East and Central Asia merely didn’t exist previous to c.4000 BCE.”
There may be fashionable proof that the realm in query is what had been referred to within the bible as “the Backyard of Eden.” Of their ebook, Exiles From Eden: Psychotherapy From an Evolutionary Perspective, Kalman Glantz and John Ok. Pearce cite the work of archaeologist Juris Zarins. He believes this idyllic space of the world now lies underneath the Persian Gulf, downstream from the traditional civilizations that flowed alongside the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. Based on Glantz and Pearce
“Eden was not paradise. It was only a place—a spot the place human beings lived the way in which all people lived earlier than the rise of civilization.”
“The ‘Backyard of Eden’ myths, which exist within the historic literature of many Previous World cultures, seem like factually rooted on this early interval of socially-cooperative and peaceable social circumstances, when the Saharasia was inexperienced and fruitful,”
says DeMeo.
“Then got here the devastating local weather change in direction of aridity, which fashioned the huge Saharasian desert belt, and people had been actually forged ‘out of the backyard’. The remaining is historical past.”
DeMeo’s analysis exhibits that the drought that occurred 6,000 years went on for generations and impacted the lives of all who lived at the moment. Current analysis on the impression of “Adversarial Childhood Experiences,” demonstrates that the implications of childhood trauma are lengthy lasting and trigger bodily, emotional, and relational well being issues all through our lives.
“Famine and hunger is a extreme trauma from which survivors hardly ever escape unscathed,”
says DeMeo.
“Lots of people die, households are break up aside, and infants and kids are sometimes deserted, and endure enormously. Hunger impacts surviving kids in an emotionally extreme method. These attitudes and behaviors are deeply protoplasmic in nature, and are handed on to ensuing generations it doesn’t matter what the local weather, by social establishments which mirror the character construction of the typical particular person at any given time frame.”
Though this sort of trauma impacts each women and men, women and men typically take care of the trauma in numerous methods. The comic, Elayne Boosler, gives a humorous, but insightful reflection on this inherent distinction. She says,
“When girls get depressed they both eat or buy groceries. Males invade one other nation. It’s a complete totally different mind-set.”
In my latest ebook, Lengthy Reside Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Provide Hope to Humanity, my second chapter is titled, “Male Violence is Rising—From Faculty Shootings, to Home Violence and Rebel on the US Capitol. From Irritability and Anger to Melancholy and Suicide.”
I’m going on to say,
“Males are the ‘canaries within the coal mine,’ alerting us to the necessity for change. Canaries had been utilized in objective mines as an early warning system for miners. Poisonous gases similar to carbon monoxide and methane within the mine would kill the chicken earlier than affecting the miners. Male psychological sickness and breakdown are the world’s early warning indicators of impending disaster. Issues like Irritable Male Syndrome, male melancholy and aggression, and excessive suicide charges are alerting us to the poisonous nature of our present setting and existence.”
Our Moonshot For Mankind and Humanity
We consider man’s psychological, emotional, and relational well being is the important thing to empowering males to dwell lengthy and properly. Our mission is to assist males dwell more healthy, happier, extra cooperative lives—fulfilling lives of objective and productiveness, the place males are supported and valued as they make optimistic contributions to their households, mates, and communities. When that occurs, households develop stronger, communities prosper, and humanity takes its subsequent leap ahead.
In 2004 I learn a robust examine, “Sexual Choice and the Male:Feminine Mortality Ratio,” by Daniel J. Kruger, PhD and Randolph M. Nesse, M.D. They examined untimely deaths amongst males in 20 nations. They discovered that in each nation, males died sooner and lived sicker than girls and their shortened health-span and lifespan harmed the lads and their households. They concluded with various highly effective statements:
- “Being male is now the only largest demographic issue for early dying.”
- “Over 375,000 lives could be saved in a single yr within the U.S. alone if males’s danger of dying was as little as girls’s.”
- “If male mortality charges might be decreased to these for females, this could get rid of over one-third of all male deaths under age 50 and assist males of all ages.”
- “If you happen to might make male mortality charges the identical as feminine charges, you’d do extra good than curing most cancers.”
For me, this was a name to motion. I invited various colleagues who had been main organizations that had confirmed profitable in serving to enhance males’s well being. We launched the non-profit, MoonshotForMankind.Org. We invite you to hitch us.
We even have a further method to share data that may be useful. Come try our Substack, https://substack.com/@moonshotformankind and listen to what our founding members need to say.
There are clearly various biologically based mostly explanation why girls dwell longer than males. However we all know that even our genes may be modified by modifications in our life-style and beliefs about ourselves and the world.
The teachings I’ve realized through the years are these:
- We is probably not chargeable for the traumatic local weather change that occurred 6,000 years in the past, however we should take accountability for our current state of affairs. As they are saying, “Nature bats final.” If people aren’t prepared to vary, nature will power the change upon us.
- We’d do properly to take heed to our animal elders. Most species have been right here longer than us and are higher tailored to life on planet Earth. As historian Thomas Berry reminds us.
“We by no means knew sufficient. Nor had been we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins within the nice household of the earth. Nor might we take heed to the assorted creatures of the earth, every telling its personal story. The time has now come, nevertheless, once we will pay attention or we’ll die.”
- After we’re taking place the improper highway, it’s by no means too late to show round.
- We could not have the ability to flip again to the previous, however we will transfer forward to the long run. As Jeremy Rifkin says,
“We have to reset our notion of waters as ‘useful resource’ to 1 the place waters are seen as a ‘life supply.’ We have to adapt to the hydrosphere somewhat than making an attempt to adapt the hydrosphere to us. The following stage within the human saga is to rebrand our residence ‘Planet Aqua’ and be taught to dwell and thrive in new methods on a novel water planet within the universe.”
You may be taught extra about Jeremy Rifkin’s work and his ebook, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Dwelling within the Universe right here. If you happen to favored this sequence of articles and wish to learn extra about how we will create a wholesome future for ourselves, our youngsters, and future generations, I invite you to join my free weekly e-newsletter. You are able to do so right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/