I am an environmental moral philosopher, artist, and researcher dedicated to mitigating the Metacrisis: the total ecosystem of all global crises and the common underlying dynamics that generate catastrophic and existential risks to humanity and Life on Earth.
My background lies in global catastrophic risk, environmental philosophy, global sustainability, AI ethics, and fine arts.
I work for the Civilization Research Institute where we aim to seed the emergence of a mature global civilization - meaning to direct civilization away from the two future attractors of global Chaos and Oppression, and toward a Third Attractor of biospheric health and wise technological stewardship.
My role at CRI centers around creating Initiations to this end - to guide people through the deep personal transformative process of moving away from the Two Attractors and toward the Third.
I am also building and running a regenerative farm and outreach project together with my partner at the Northwest coast of Norway. Here we aim to create and demonstrate a Third Attractor way of life - for the synergistic benefit of all Life. *More info on this project coming soon.
The Metacrisis and Navigating toward the Third Attractor
— A reorientation to the Sacredness of Reality —
Contrary to what it may seem at the current moment, this world is a heavenly realm and we live in a sacred Reality. This Reality is the organic reality. It is everywhere around us, within every one of us, and within every being. It has always been and is the source of all there is.
And contrary to what it may seem, human existence is not inherently opposed to this sacred Reality - we are deeply, inherently part of it. We belong to it equally to all other beings that have ever been and will ever be.
But for some time now, the majority of us have lived, and therefore felt, as outcasts from this reality. We have learned to perceive the organic reality as something separate from ourselves, as “Nature”. We have come to treat it as secondary, of less relevance and importance, to a constructed reality - what we may call “manufactured culture”.
This manufactured reality is the result of a process of abstraction, exponentially increasing the distance to the organic Reality. True organic culture exists, where this abstraction does not take place and which is at one with the sacred Reality. But this is not the current dominant culture.
Living as separated from organic Reality simply means a lifestyle of self-termination.
All the symptoms of the Metacrisis are originating from this separation - we are living through a planetary scale separation conflict.
The sum of these symptoms now manifest as an accelerating ecosystem of globally catastrophic and existential risks to Life on Earth.
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Central to humanity’s separation from Reality is a cultural collapse of Value, where real intrinsic values (to be found in Reality) have been replaced with pseudo-values (constructed in Culture).
The perception of intrinsic value is a basic human capability. Just as our nervous system has evolved to perceive space and time and physicality, so it has evolved to perceive value.
The field of Value is an inherent part of the weaving fabric of Reality, as is our ability to perceive it.
Value informs us of what is good for us and what is not, and people (and all other beings) orient toward value as a given within the Lifeworld.
The category of the Sacred is precisely that which is by definition experienced as real Value, intrinsic to Reality Itself. It is through the experience of the sacred that pseudo-values can be named as such. The fake, inauthentic, evil, and superficial, all depend on their opposite.
A separation from Reality means our motivations, desires, and sense of Self have also become separated from Reality, and has fostered a culture where people searching for value only find pseudo-value. The consequential harm is necessarily complete.
Fundamental to our civilizational healing process - our regrounding in organic Reality - is a realignment with real Value. This is the cultivation of organic Culture. Luckily, because the field of Value is “there” in Reality, it can indeed be sensed and made the focus of civilization.
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One fatal consequence of this separation conflict is the modern misconception that humans are somehow ontologically, and therefore ethically, separated from - and elevated above - the rest of the community of Life. Some believe our level of consciousness explains and even justifies this separation - we experience being so different from all other life. We search outer space for signs of something familiar.
But this experience is new and counter-intuitive to our species. Manufactured culture has cast the organic Reality as dead, unconscious, without experience and agency, and thus drained our world - exempt from humans - of all real Value. We are left with a ‘common sense’ that rejects the very Reality in which we live.
But we are very far from alone. Our kin is everywhere around us, right here. This world is immensely alive and awake. And everything that is us, all that forms our experience of being in the world, is coming from the organic Reality. We are where we belong. And absolutely everything we consider part of the human reality, the manufactured Culture, is utterly a product of, and dependent on, the organic Reality.
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This historically recent phenomenon - this sense of existential loneliness from living as outcasts from our own reality, has caused unfathomable damage to everyone, and most of all ourselves.
We all deeply experience this separation, irrespective of our informed awareness of it.
That environmental destruction, pollution, species extinction, factory farming, mass crime, for-profit prisons, terrorism, warfare, torture, slavery, corruption, systemic injustice and inequality, authoritarian suppression, human trafficking, sexual abuse, pandemics of chronic disease and mental illness, an indecipherable and lying infosphere, and poisonous food, medicines, and basic consumer products - are now directly or indirectly part of the daily life for the majority of people and considered normal, feels inherently wrong to any nonpathological human.
And being malnourished, medicated, addicted, poisoned, chronically stressed, anxious, exhausted, overwhelmed, disconnected, and lonely - is experienced as inherently wrong to any human being.
In the same way, the opposite is true. We know inherently what is good for us. We sense it in all ways when hiking through an old growth forest and listening to the sounds of Life, when putting our hands in the soil, when letting our bare feet touch the grass. We sense it when tasting nutritious food, when getting proper rest, when being in deep concentration. We sense it when we care for others and when others care for us, and when interactions are mutually beneficial. We sense it when we feel like we belong and our belonging and our sense of identity is inherently connected to others. We sense it, as does all life, when we interact with and contribute to Real Value - the synergistic benefit of all Life.
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Humanity now stands knee deep in its greatest and most consequential challenge. The Sacred Reality is being undermined to the point where we're nearing complete and irreversible destruction. The entire story of Life on Earth - all that is beautiful, meaningful, and sacred - depends on what we choose to do next. A sense of total despair and futility is deeply understandable. But finding the ingredients for a viable future does not require magic - they are inherent to the reality in which we live, and in us.
We are close to being too late, but we are not yet. We can reground ourselves in Reality.
Humanity successfully navigating toward a viable future may seem like a miracle. But what is considered miraculous and what is within a sensible possibility space depends on your model of reality.
Regrounding ourselves in Reality involves enabling an inherent possibility space of human behavior that truly makes a viable future possible. In our time, this possibility space seems miraculous to so many, but is in reality inherent and available to the very beings that we are as members of the web of Life.
Our collective forgetting of the Sacred is a historically recent phenomenon. We can, and must, remember and recognize the Sacred that is right in front of us. Another way to understand this process of collective remembering is as reindigenization. We are all indigenous to the sacred Reality and must experience being so.
Our sense of Self can be inclusive of the entire Lifeworld. Our desires can arise from a place of nourishment and overflowing care for all Life. And when our motivations come from a place of abundance and an interdependent sense of Self, furthermore abundance, interdependence, healing, and Life is created.
This future is possible.
Your participation matters. Your life will contribute to how the story goes.
