Upbeat title, eh?
All out of planet | About me | Bleeding earth | Why a serial? | Why subscribe?
It’s Latin for the death of the Earth. Is the Earth dying? Maybe. Is it already dead? Don’t know. It may be that this planet will die, is dying or has died—but we don’t know it yet. She may right herself without help or interference from us. I hope so. Or if her life is in danger she will let her children die without sentiment so that she may live.
Ecological activism, reducing waste, and reports on climate change are all fiddling around the edges, slant ways of talking about what cannot be said. We are killing the being that gives us life and in twenty, fifty, a hundred or two hundred years this planet may no longer be able to support life. But there is little space in the collective to think the unthinkable. The forces against—religious, financial, political, and psychological—are legion.
So these scribblings are about the spiritual and historical ancestors of this profound contempt for matter, the fallacy of optimism, and the psychological children (grief, nostalgia, melancholy, depression, suicide, and loss of memory) that have been born from this chronic, monotheistic, and possibly terminal, illness.
All out of planet
We’ve run out of planet. Humans have exhausted the gifts that the Earth provides. A whole 1.7 planet’s worth. The Great Barrier Reef is dying. The great dying will gather pace until we hit rock bottom. Our grandchildren’s children will be bereft, left only with dust and diesel.
The trees have nearly given up. The animals have done what they can. 9/11, the GFC and Covid have tried their best. Monotheism has abandoned the earth for heavenly rewards. Indigenous peoples are now only 5% of the world’s population. 55% of the world’s population lives in cities. And our relationship with beauty has been lost.
There are mountains and oceans of evidence about the perilous state of the planet. There’s no need for more and we must ask, “What forces compel us to continue to deny the obvious?”—other than the obvious political and financial ones. We think we have time. Maybe we don’t. So let’s begin to make space within ourselves to entertain the thought that this planet of infinite beauty may die.
Now stand back and watch the reactions, your own and others, to such a notion. Then read on.
About me
I am a clinical psychologist in private practice in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I am a Member of the NZ Psychological Society and formerly a Member of the NZ Association of Psychotherapists. For more see here.
After a first degree in Zoology, I led residential and wilderness therapy programs in Canada for high-needs children and adolescents. I have led wilderness retreats for adults in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Botswana. Over the last 40 years I have worked with indigenous elders in Canada, USA and South Africa. I am profoundly grateful for their continued wisdom and presence.
Bleeding earth
The picture on the welcome page is of a poster I bought in Vancouver BC in the 1980s. It has a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Mark Antony stands over Caesar’s body, slain by Brutus:
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
It has travelled with me all these years and it seemed right for it to come out of its tube and show its face. And it seemed right as an expression of the destruction already caused and the rage of our children’s children that will come. It’s a photo of clear-cut logging in BC, late winter or early spring I would guess. I have tried to track down the provenance to no avail and would be glad to be advised.
Why a serial?
Terra Mortis: The Death of the Earth is a serialised non-fiction book. My other books have been traditionally published or self-published. Do I want to submit a proposal to a publisher, and wait? No, time is short. Do I want to wrestle with Amazon, Indesign or Affinity again? Ditto. They drain my tank. So three years after my first try I am back here at Substack.
The chapters are a nuisance of cats, loosely herded, that have I have written over the years—some recent, some over thirty years ago—all metaphorically mixed and interbred such that their parentage and pedigree is murky and mongrel. Some of the material has been presented at various workshops over the years and more recently to the NZ Association of Psychotherapists Conference: Te Ipu Taiao, The Climate Crucible, March 2020, and to the Vancouver Jung Society, March 2022.
Why subscribe?
If the pace seems to have quickened of late with flood, fire, wind and quake (the elements will have their way with us), if most seem blind to how big the problem is, if there’s no instruction manual on how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, if you think naive optimism and dim denial need a robust counterweight—then I ask for your support. Over the last forty years my “day job” has supported my writing. If you find that my words have value then I ask that you add your breath to my breath, add your work to my work, and perhaps tell your friends. You can subscribe for free to get posts by email (at least weekly, I hope), or get a paid subscription (monthly, yearly, or founding) to support this work.
