The Quest: Vision in an Age of Crisis. Jungian Psychotherapy

This is the final episode in this miniseries. It covers the following points.

1. A tipping point has been reached in the climate crisis past the 1.5 degree centigrade threshold and the planet is now in a stage of unpredictable runaway effects.

2. Climate defiance is in the ascendant and there is crisis, confusion, and perhaps despair in the Green ranks. The Green agenda will, however, make a come-back as the true damaging costs of fossil fuel dependency hammer home.

3. The climate crisis has to be gone through – quick fixes are not possible. It is useful to view this whole period as a rite of passage. This does not mean humanity will necessarily get through it. We might fail or not get through intact. But what is required is a total paradigm shift in human values and in global political and economic organization. 

The green climate agenda is going backwards. Fifteen examples from across the world are given. Preparing for survival on a degraded planet should be a policy with the status of a national emergency.  Practical policy responses are put forward for rising seas levels.

The climate crisis and the ecological catastrophe are an existential threat to Homo sapiens especially when combined with other crises of the 21st century. This is of immense evolutionary and even metaphysical significance. As our species gained in technological power the exploitation of nature became more extensive and under business civilization this has become a world wide phenomenon.

The competitive state of the world economic and political system prevents adequate international cooperation on climate matters. Psychiatry and psychoanalysis have provided diagnostic terms that are useful when describing negative aspects of business civilization such as psychopathic, addictive, manic-depressive, and schizoid. They have also provided insight into climate denial as a defence against anxiety. But the more obvious source of problems is in our values systems, our beliefs about ourselves, nature and even the cosmos. There is in the human psyche a combination of opposites – god-like powers and a demonic destructiveness.

The COP commitments are critically scrutinised.  Even if all its  pledges were kept concerning GHG emissions, the tripling of renewable capacity, and energy efficiency  improvements - and that is a tall order - the world is heading for a 10% increase in emissions by 2030, instead of the 43% reduction required to keep global warming under the 1.5 degree threshold.

Following further research post Cop28 I see no reason to change my central warning: prepare for survival on a degraded planet.

A new attitude on the global scene is noted - climate defiance. Arguments for climate denial are also examined and dismissed as contrary to the evidence. 

The episode ends with a beautiful song The Turning of the Year by Mark Dunn of The Bringers of Change whose music albums can be found on Spotify etc. and as CDs at www.fallingarecords.com

This episode is being released a few days early in the breather between Christmas and New Year. The next and probable final episode in this mini-series  will be Feb 1st 2024. Its subject will be the spiritual, mythical, and spiritual dimensions of the climate crisis.

A free meditation programme following the Secret of the Golden Flower starts Jan 2  2024. Contact me at [email protected] if you wish to join - up to 2 weeks late start is OK.

The Quest Lecture series (as distinct from these podcasts) starts in April 2024. Syllabus on my website www.alanmulhern.com

This episode gives a review of Cop 28 which confirms the view that despite strenuous efforts of the United Nations, the IPCC, and many other institutes and organizations the world is politically and economically unwilling or unable to avoid climate catastrophe in the decades to come.  Mankind’s economic short term interests triumph over reason and common sense. To prepare for a severely degraded world is a task totally other than what we have contemplated so far. 

This is the fourth episode in this miniseries on the ecological catastrophe of our age.

The GHG emissions targets are not being reached on time.

We need to prepare for survival in a degraded world.

There needs to be a spiritual vision to give us insight into the climate and other crises of our age.

This episode identifies the other elements of the ecological crisis aside from climate:

Biodiversity loss

Chemical pollution into land, air, rivers, and oceans

Particle pollution of the atmosphere

Deforestation and land use

Freshwater scarcity

The phosphorous and nitrogen cycle

# The episode continued by identifying Business Civilization as the immediate source of the contemporary ecological disaster.

# Next it introduced the Dasgupta Review with its investigation of the contemporary trauma of global biodiversity reduction.

# Finally it explored Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind.

There are now some changes to the structure and timing of these podcasts.

Firstly, the Spanish language podcasts, which have explored the life and work of Carl Jung, have now ended. For the forseeable future there will only be the English speaking podcasts.

Secondly, I am moving the podcast release dates generally to the first of the month - an easier date to remember rather than the mid-month timing. Hence S2 Ep89 will be released on October 1st 2023 etc.

The overall theme of the podcasts remains - the quest for vision in an age of crises. The current set of episodes are on the Ecological Catastrophe of our Age. As preparation for the coming episode you could read the highly recommended and freely available internet version of The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. You could start with the Headline Messages (just a few pages) and then read the Abridged version. The full text is for the highly motivated student - who knows this might include yourself.

This current set of episodes is placed within the larger context of our exploration of the multiple crises of our age (dramatically referred to as the Ten Horsemen of the Apocalypse) which, in addition to the ecological, will include the economic, financial, political, social, health, military, technological, clash of ideas and ideologies (including the Culture Wars, Woke etc. ), and spiritual crisis of our age. En route we will encounter extraordinary possibilities emerging in the 21st century - such as transformations of human nature, global totalitarianism. modification, replacement or even extinction of Homo sapiens, and spiritual transformation.

As you will readily appreciate this is an ambitious undertaking, will take a number of years, and has to be done at a pace which will allow me to complete this task. So I ask for your patience. I also ask for your support, which you can do in two ways: firstly, by telling others of this podcast series; secondly by studying the content of this freely available podcast series (and its references) as seriously as you can, thirdly by leaving comments on the series. If you can accompany this with a spiritual practice, so much the better. Logic, argument and reason are important, yes, but the vision of spiritual experience is the decisive factor in the type of knowledge or gnosis we seek. As a Jungian analyst I am also very much in favour of combining this with deep self-examination. 

 I also run periodically (say once a year) a 100 day meditation online programme based on the Secret of the Golden Flower. Also there is a parallel series of lectures and meeting (called the Quest) which takes place once a month online. For more details, including contact information, you may consult my website www.alanmulhern.com

Este es el episodio final de nuestra serie de podcasts sobre la vida y obra de Carl Jung. Este ha sido un proyecto conjunto entre el Instituto Venezolano de Psicología Analítica (representado por María Leonor de Planchart y Beatrice Rojas) y el Quest (representado por Alan Mulhern).

Terminamos, como deberíamos. con las propias visiones y pensamientos de Jung al final de su vida, tal como se cuentan en los capítulos finales de Recuerdos, Sueños, Pensamientos.

Estos incluyen: su experiencia cercana a la muerte; su posterior convicción de que la vida en esta tierra era como una caja tridimensional especialmente construida a la que llamamos "realidad"; sus pensamientos sobre la existencia después de la muerte; su conciencia de que esta vida era una proyección de una realidad más profunda; su convicción de que la civilización occidental necesitaba recuperar un ancla mitológica sin la cual estábamos perdidos; sus extraordinarias reinterpretaciones de la sabiduría, las religiones y las mitologías antiguas para reanimar el alma de la humanidad; y su creencia de que un amor profundo es la base del universo.

Jung escribió: “Hasta donde podemos discernir, el único propósito de la existencia humana es encender una luz en la oscuridad del mero ser”.

Life has always been dependent on and deeply interlinked with climate. The earth passes through great cycles of glacial and warming conditions with enormous consequences for the promotion or restriction and even extinction of life. Hominins, our ancestors, adapted to changing habitats and climatic environments. The genus Homo, of which Homo sapiens is but one species among others, had an even greater capacity to adapt. Nevertheless many of our hominid ancestors succumbed to extreme climate change. Homo sapiens with its higher level brain power, symbolic thought and language, wider social and trading networks, more complex tools and weaponry was the most able to manage the increasingly colder and extreme climatic conditions and consequent changing food supplies - so far.

However the extremity of environmental and climatic change continues to our own period and we are reminded of Toynbee’s acute observation that civilization has to continually manage its challenges or face extinction. The same applies to species. Our species, Homo sapiens, is now a global business civilization and despite all its creativity is in great danger.

Climate change, often very severe, quite simply has been one of the biggest factors in earth history. It has also been one of the most powerful influences also in human history.