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 (ecosophy), 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 work 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 demonstration 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, sporadic updates here.
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 ultimately 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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The Sacred is precisely that which we experience as being of real value - of intrinsic value - inspiring of awe and reverence, and being worthy of protection and sacrifice. The sacred is the inherently beautiful, meaningful, and good. It is what makes life worth living. It is not supernatural or “unnatural” in any way, it is inextricably imbued in the unfolding of the natural. It is exactly 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.
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 pseudo-values are created by converting the living organic reality into inert, lifeless objects. This has become the main activity of our culture, and the result is an increasingly hollow world.
Fundamental to our civilizational healing process - our regrounding in organic Reality - is a realignment with real Value. This is the cultivation of organic, non-abstracted, culture.
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Being grounded in and living in alignment with organic reality is a prerequisite for a good healthy life, for all living beings. A good life - one that is deeply and fully experienced as right, is one which aligns with the ancient and inherent expectations for life by which we evolved, and in continuum with the greater Lifeworld.
Our creation of a hypo normal environment around us has turned our living conditions into ones that are inherently unfulfilling. A vicious cycle is formed where we ambitiously seek fulfillment - real value - but only find pseudo-values. As being separated from Reality means our motivations, desires, and sense of Self have also become distorted, the only apparent solution is to increasingly destroy the organic reality to create evermore pseudo-values. The result is an ever diminishing access to intimate contact with Reality - the only thing that creates actual fulfillment.
The perhaps most describing word for this experience of disconnection is starvation or, collectively, famine: We are starved for Real Value, for rightful attachment, intimacy, belonging, meaning, environment, nutrition, activity, stimuli, and rest. Our lives then take the form of a lifelong search for unfulfilled needs.
We all experience this separation but with various awareness.
For some people it is experienced as deep anguish and despair based on the obvious suffering in their lives. For others it is experienced as boredom and numbness from a life focused on paying the bills and infinite scrolls. Others again may feel pretty stoked, but their lives are focused on fairly narrow ambitions.
Very few people are actually regularly brought to tears of joy and in awe.
We all should be all of the time, and we all could be, if we actually paid attention to reality more.
And very few of us are dedicating our lives to solve the problems of the world, which we would be doing more, if the sacredness of the world was moving us more.
To any nonpathological human, it feels inherently wrong that environmental destruction, toxic pollution, species extinction, factory farming, mass crime, for-profit prisons, terrorism, warfare, torture, slavery, corruption, systemic injustice and inequality, authoritarian suppression, human trafficking, rape and sexual abuse, pandemics of chronic disease and mental illness, an indecipherable and lying infosphere, broken families, and poisonous food, medicines, and basic consumer products - are now directly or indirectly part of the daily life for the majority of people and somehow considered normal, even inevitable.
And being malnourished, medicated, addicted, poisoned, chronically stressed, anxious, exhausted, overwhelmed, disconnected, numb, and lonely - feels inherently wrong to any human being.
In the same way, it feels inherently good to be in 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, when tasting nutritious food, when getting proper rest, when being in deep concentration. It feels inherently good when we care for others and when others care for us, and when interactions are mutually beneficial, when we feel like we belong and our belonging and our sense of identity is inherently connected to others. It feels good, as it does for all life, when we interact with and contribute to Real Value.
Your heart knows that a better world is possible. Your experience of unhealth, unfulfilledment, and rebellion against what is being presented to you as normal, is a sign of health - it means you are still alive and connected to the Sacred.
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The sense of existential loneliness from living as outcasts from our own reality is a historically recent phenomenon. For the vast majority of human history, the organic Reality was the only perceived and obvious reality.
One fatal idea in our manufactured culture is the 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 historically 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.
Butt we are very far from alone. Our kin is everywhere around us, right here. This world is immensely alive and awake and intelligent. 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.
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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.
The reality you have been taught is so much smaller than what is actually present and available.
When realigning ourselves to reality, we enable an inherent possibility space of human behavior that truly makes a viable future possible.
Just as a vicious cycle brought us here, there is a virtuous cycle that will bring us there.
When you start paying attention to reality more, you will start feeling actually fulfilled, which in turn will inspire you more to protect and serve what is sacred.
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, healing, and Life is created.
Our shared reality as Life on this planet is so infinitely precious it is worth literally everything imaginable to protect. Your participation matters. Every tiniest act, of callousness or compassion, has repercussions through the entire web of Life. Your life will contribute to how the story goes.
For the sake of everything we care about, everything that has ever mattered, and everything that may ever come to be, I ask you to break open your heart to the world, so that you never close it again.
