The most common reply I get when I ask, from the heart, ‘how are you doing?’ is ‘exhausted’ or something very similar. Other options are heavy, tired, buggered (this is Oz, after all) or variations of that. More sensitive folks express sadness  grief, disillusionment and things along those lines.

My thoughts are that we are viscerally experiencing the great dying of the life on our planet. We are experiencing the 6th great extinction event in our very bodies, in our very souls, even those who don’t ascribe to such things. The loss of life and connection is a loss of access to the energy and power that resides in the natural world.

As with global heating, some folks reply ‘but extinctions have happened before’. They neglect the fact that humans in our present form were not around in any of the previous events. Maybe some long ago gene survivors in us, but as the beings we are, we simply  weren’t there. Another thing folks neglect to think about is the speed at which it is happening. Under a thousand years this time – even the death of the dinosaurs took hundreds, if not thousands, times longer. Contrary to the usual story, the asteroid didn’t wipe things out in an instant; evidence shows a slower species death from associated reasons.

The last thing folks don’t seem to connect with is that this one is our fault. Even some of the best things we’ve in done-agriculture, medicine and energy production have contributed to the death of many a species  As individuals, most of us aren’t to blame directly, nestled deep within  systems of exploitation as we are. And, of course, all of this deals with just the species we know about. Many were wiped out before we even consciously knew they existed. We feel them too, even if we are not conscious of their lives and deaths. We feel the loss of their energy.

We all evolved together through several false starts, grew into the complex, interconnected web of life that we take for granted, and that some folks think belongs to us. Even a human body has only a relatively small number of purely human cells. Others are more closely related to fungal, viral, and even plant cells. Humans cells themselves are thought to have come about by through a combination of bacteria and possibly viruses. I read once that, even that wonderful organ, the placenta could possibly have come about as the result of a virus. Interestingly, if you look at the evolutionary tree, we are more closely related to Fungi than we are to animals!

If we assume that similar relationships occur in other beings beyond human, where do we truly start as individual bodies and where do we finish, if in fact, we ever do?

We feel death, not just of humans but of others. Not only that, but we feel the death of systems, of ideas and ideals, we feel the end of love and we’re feeling it all – way down past a cellular level, to our sense of connection to life itself.

Over the last century or so, we have become disconnected from the world, in such a traumatic way that in some places now, acts of care and support have been criminalised. Protesting on environmental grounds, social justice causes and even just feeding the needy and giving an unhomed person a place to rest have all become criminal acts. We are seeing not only the extinction of life, but of our own humanity.

Are there solutions? Answers? There are multiple extinction level events happening, climate tipping points not just crossed but leapt over back and forth, a massive rise in fascism within the most powerful militaries capable of wiping us out many times over, headed by unstable despots. And underlying it all, the steady killing of our biosphere. I say ‘killing’ because we as a species know exactly what we are doing and what the repercussions are.

I hope this little ramble goes a little way to explaining my take on why we’re so tired. There are other layers but after much contemplation, I feel that this is the stratum that underlies it all.

What are your thoughts. Not many people comment on the posts on this website and I’d love to get more.