The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
–Albert Einstein

We live in a time of rapid and complex social and political transformation, characterized by an increasing short- and long-term existential threat to the life and future of the species. This threat is posed by a Republican U.S. President, Congress, and Senate promoting legislative and policy directives based on values ultimately destructive to Mother Earth and all our relatives. Recent Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders (I -VT) aptly summarized the degraded political situation since Donald Trump took office: 1 Bernie Sanders, “No One Can Sit on the Sidelines. Not Now.” In Reader Supported News, 4 April 17. Retrieved at http://rsn.org/opinion2/277-75/43035-focus-no-one-can-sit-on-the-sidelines-not-now 

Sanders summarized the bad news:

The bad news is that Trump’s agenda – huge tax breaks for billionaires, enormous increases in military spending, massive cuts in health care and programs that protect the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor, horrific attacks on environmental protection [emphasis added] and scapegoating the immigrant community – constitutes the most reactionary set of policies in the modern history of our country.

With so many urgent problems to address, it’s easy to lose track of the existential threats posed by Trump’s Administration. For example, as I write this, 2 This essay was authored in May 2017. an imminent threat looms as Trump attempts to save his failing Presidency by attacking foreign enemies like Syria, where he has brought us to the edge of armed conflict with Russia, the only country on earth with more nuclear missiles than we possess. But a graver, more imminent threat is represented by Trump’s nuclear-sabre rattling with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the belligerent, volatile madman intent on building the capability to strike targets on the U. S. West Coast with nuclear-tipped ICBM missiles. As I write, an “armada” of U. S. warships, on Trump’s orders, allegedly steams toward the waters off North Korea. One mistake on either side can result in many millions of deaths, even if nuclear weapons are never fired.

Yet even if we are able, with good fortune and skilled statesmanship, to avoid this looming nuclear catastrophe and all it implies, the long-range existential threat to Earth’s sustainability remains and, under Trump, has become rapidly worse. Senator Sanders views Trump’s “horrific attacks on environmental protection” as part of a worldwide threat, over the coming century, of degrading the environment to the point of no return. We are on a slippery slope leading inexorably to our species’ increasingly bleak and dystopian future, struggling to survive on a planet that is no longer habitable.

A series of recent articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle 3 See Front Page, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday Edition, April 23, 2017. detailed the damage done to the future during Trump’s first 100 days in office, future threats enacted mostly under the radar of mass media consumed with Trump’s alleged ties to Russia and a host of other developing scandals. According to the Chronicle, beginning with the lead front page story “Trump gains, science loses,” Trump has already issued 8 Executive Orders targeting the environment, proposed 18 environmental rule eliminations under the Congressional Review Act, and introduced 58 Republican anti-environmental bills, with a proposed $2.6 billion budget cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, a massive 31% reduction. The cumulative effect on the natural environment indicated by these recent federal policy directives will be devastating for Americans of this and future generations, massively destructive to the quality of air and water throughout our country, and utterly eroding the capacity to objectively monitor the effects of global warming at the time when we most need it. To add insult to injury, on June 1, 2017, Mr. Trump cynically announced his decision to withdraw from the historic Paris Climate Agreement, abdicating America’s global leadership role in combating climate change.

These grave concerns for this government’s existential threats to the environment and the prospects of species survival are echoed in a new book by iconic public intellectual and activist, Noam Chomsky. For readers familiar with Chomsky’s work, the apparent disconnect between public opinion, the interests of the commons, and actual policy decision-making is hardly a surprise. What may be surprising is Chomsky’s recent conviction that the current Republican Party, under the leadership of Donald Trump and Congressional leaders, has become the “most dangerous organization in world history.” 4Excerpt from Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth by Noam Chomsky (Seven Stories Press, 2017). Published in AlterNet, 26 April 2017. See Chomsky’s website: www.chomsky.info.  

In a section titled “Survival of the Species,” Chomsky addressed these two existential threats to the species underlying his admittedly grim view of humanity’s future—the increasingly imminent threat of nuclear war, and the long-term, trans-generational threat to survival posed by escalating environmental destruction:

There’s one thing that should not be ignored—we’re in a stage of human history for the first time ever where we’re facing literal questions of species survival. Can the species survive, at least in a decent form? That’s a real problem.

This problem, said Chomsky, has gotten much worse with the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, putting “total control of the government” in the hands of the “most dangerous organization in world history.” This claim, he admitted, may sound outrageous to some, but evidence suggests that the Republican Party is “dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to the destruction of organized human life.” Pointing to Trump’s assault on the environment, he added: “We are heading, eyes open, toward a world in which our grandchildren may not even be able to survive. We’re heading toward environmental disaster, and not just heading toward it, but rushing toward it.” This current acceleration of environmental destruction under the leadership of Trump and the Republican Party, Chomsky concluded, is a “death sentence for our descendants.”

I am reminded of Chomsky’s reply to a question I put to him many years ago. I asked him why our government continues to make policies destructive to future generations, rather than pursuing the moral philosophy at the foundation of traditional Native American decision-making, concerned above all with the effects made by decisions on the succeeding 7 generations. Chomsky replied:

We know the factors that have led to it, but why they are sacrificing the lives of future generations for short-term profit is not easy to explain. Unless the West can gain something of the sensibility of indigenous people throughout the world, and soon, we’re probably doomed [emphasis added].5 Personal correspondence, 9 October 2012.

The following year, Chomsky publicly developed this idea in his address to Canadians at the University of Montreal on October 26, 2013, 6 “Indigenous People Are in the Lead,” by Michael Keefer. In Two Row Times, 5 November, 2013.   a speech in which he addressed the decline of American power and its increasingly marginal influence in the Western hemisphere on discussions concerning destruction of the environment. In his speech, Chomsky “underlined the importance of indigenous resistance” to the devastation being caused by the Canadian government. He specifically cited Canadian mining operations destroying “large parts of the world.”

Canada is trying to take the lead in destroying the possibility of decent survival: that’s what it means to exploit the tar sands, and the gold mining in Colombia, and coal mining, and so on…. That means destroying the world in which your grandchildren might be able to survive [emphasis added]: that’s the Canadian idea now.”

In spite of the threat, he added a hopeful note:

There is resistance: in Canada it’s coming from First Nations. But it’s worth remembering that that’s a world-wide phenomenon. Throughout the world, the indigenous populations are in the lead. They are actually taking the lead in trying to protect the earth [emphasis added]. That’s extremely significant.

Chomsky made the argument for long-standing support for this indigenous cultural and political resistance embodied in the Magna Carta, one of the oldest documents of English law:

In addition to asserting civil rights like the presumption of innocence and the right to jury trial, the Magna Carta included a “Charter of the Forests,” which “had to do with protecting the commons”—all of the commonly shared things in nature that sustain human life—“from the depredations of power.”

After praising Canada’s First Nations people for taking the lead in combating climate change, Chomsky observed the irony of aboriginal societies leading the effort to protect humanity’s  future:

It’s pretty ironic that the so-called ‘least advanced’ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

I was recently reminded of Chomsky’s comments over the years while watching a keynote speech by another public intellectual and leading dissident, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Chris Hedges. 7 See Chris Hedges’ speech “After Trump and the Pussy Hats” on YouTube video. Hedges’ speech, which occurred on unceded Canadian territory, was introduced by Cecilia Point, a spokesperson for the Coast Salish Tribe—the Musqueam First Nation—welcoming the audience to her lands.

“I usually don’t pay attention to colonial politics, but there’s some very outrageous things taking place,” she began. After a short appeal for greater tolerance of diversity, she echoed Chomsky’s concern for the traditional First Nations moral imperative:

So many of us I see in this audience, we’ve been on the front lines fighting for our environment and this beautiful place. Now you have to fight for the children [emphasis added]. So that’s the message my ancestors are giving you today.

Subject as they are to occupation by colonial powers, including the invasion of corporate interests exploiting natural resources in indigenous lands all over the world, aboriginal societies have historically functioned as the canaries in the mine shaft of global environmental destruction. To cite a single example, the Shuar tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon has only recently encountered modern societies for the first time in their ancient history. Within a single generation, oil companies, logging, and mining operations in the jungles of Ecuador have threatened to destroy not only their ancestral habitats, which according to their traditions, stretch back to the beginning of time, but their entire way of life, including their culture, traditions, and languages. Shuar youth cannot rely on their contaminated rivers for livelihood or water, and instead drink sodas from plastic bottles, which now litter the local countryside, transforming their primordial garden paradise into a dump yard within a single generation. Unfortunately, this kind of destruction of indigenous culture and habitat has been happening all over the world for the last five centuries.

Ironically, these traditional societies are poised for extinction at the very moment when post-modern industrialized societies need their wisdom most. An unprecedented need exists today for traditional wisdom-keepers and sustainable life-practices to constructively influence and shape the post-modern dialogue, offering wise guidance to contemporary efforts within political movements involved in grassroots resistance to public policies destructive to the Earth and the future of our species.

For all the dangers posed by Trump’s governance, there exists a silver lining of unprecedented collective opportunity. As I proposed in an essay penned prior to Trump’s inauguration, 8See Ronald L. Boyer, “The Importance of Gandhi in the Age of Trump: A Citizen’s Call for a Moral Equivalent of War.”  it takes a great catalyst to mobilize the masses, and Mr. Trump has not disappointed in this regard. The myriad dangers to civil liberties, human rights, decent access to healthcare, etc. posed by Trump has awakened millions of concerned Americans, rallying the masses as nothing has since the civil rights and anti-war/peace and justice protests of the 1960s.

A mass resistance movement has formed and grows stronger every day. As Senator Bernie Sanders observed:

The good news is that the resistance to this extremist Trump/Republican agenda is growing rapidly. We saw that as millions participated in the Women’s March in January. We saw that as hundreds of thousands attended rallies and town meetings in February and March to successfully defeat the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act…. We are seeing that now as people across the country are mobilizing for Green Day events to take on the fossil fuel industry, combat climate change and transform our energy system to energy efficiency and sustainable energy[emphasis added].

Significantly, thanks to Trump, millions of contemporary Americans are finally joining the active resistance to environmental destruction that indigenous people throughout the world have led for decades and even centuries. Bernie Sanders concludes:

When we launched our presidential campaign two years ago, I told you that victory would require the active participation of millions of Americans in every community across the country. That it would require nothing short of a political revolution to combat the demoralization so many feel about the political process. That’s what I believed then. That’s what I believe now. And that’s what I am attempting to do.

Like I said from the beginning, our political revolution was … about creating a mass movement for real change in this country. That’s the struggle we began. That’s the struggle we’ll continue. No turning back now.

Chris Hedges’ recent keynote speech in Canadian Indian territory offered a stinging rebuke to the systematic lies of authoritarian demagogues like Trump and offered a recipe for our collective response:

To recover our mental balance … we must build communities where we can find understanding and solidarity … We must carry out acts of civil disobedience in steadfast defiance to re-empower others and ourselves.

This quest for personal and collective wholeness can be aided through truthful dialogue and activities including art, literature, worship, and finding solace in nature, Hedges advised, “activities that hold the capacities for renewal and transcendence. This is the only way [we will remain] psychologically whole.”

Hope, he suggested, comes from the numerous public protests we have recently witnessed, whether mass marches or active citizenry holding public officials to account at town hall meetings. These hopeful acts include protests “led by First Nations people,” at “flashpoints like Standing Rock.” “Now is the time not to cooperate,” Hedges warned. “Now is the time to resist. It is our last chance. The fanatics are moving at lightning speed. So should we.” We collectively have the power, he said, to “make any country ungovernable,” but warned that “we don’t have much time.”

Echoing the call from Chomsky and First Nations leaders for a social vision that preserves the future, he concluded with a warning that the days ahead may be “dark and frightening.”

But as Immanuel Kant reminded us, if justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.…If nothing else, let those who come after us say we tried. Let them say that we kept hope alive. Let our lives be an example of … empathy and justice….Let us love our neighbours as ourselves.

In another recent article, 9 Michael Moore, “It’s Time for Me to Make a Movie,” published on Moore’s Facebook Page, 22 April 2017. activist-filmmaker and dissident Michael Moore mused during Easter Dinner on what more he can do as a citizen, as the escalating onslaught of the warlike Trump Administration against everything from North Korea to Planned Parenthood moves forward at dizzying speed, including “eliminating all programs to fight climate change.” “I’ve had to ask myself, what else can I, Michael Moore, personally be doing – me – with my own creative energies….What am I doing with my job, as a filmmaker, as a writer, as an artist?” His answer should inspire every citizen concerned with the common good:

So, for the past few weeks, I’ve been on fire. Not the “strike-a-match-and-set-myself-on-fire” kind of fire. I mean the one where your mind just explodes with ideas, with creativity, with a sort of gleeful mad energy and you just can’t stop. That fire that gets lit under you when you no longer have any other choice.

He concluded:

Maybe I’m going to go do what I do for a living and do MORE of it because I believe art and humor and all of us unleashing every ounce of creativity we have within us is what’s going to stop this insanity [emphasis added].

Moore’s trenchant observation reminds me of a warning made decades ago, by Albert Einstein. “The significant problems we have,” said Einstein, “cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” The current Zeitgeist calls for bold visions, bold efforts, and bold solutions, for creative problem-solving, for thinking out-of-the-box and “unleashing every ounce of creativity we have within us.”

As Bernie Sanders warned: “That’s the struggle we now face. No one can sit on the sidelines. Not now.”

Reflecting on what more can be done to advance this political revolution, as Michael Moore has, I have come to a similar conclusion. Not everyone can make a movie like Moore can. But everyone possesses their own forms of creativity, and the creative forms of resistance are as many as there are individuals.

Perhaps this creativity begins, for me, with articulating a more profound vision for the future. In a recent article, 10 Richard Escow, “What Progressives Should Demand from the FBI,” published in AlterNet, 16 May 2017. writer and radio journalist Richard Escow correctly asserted that:

A political movement must do more than react to the day’s events with outrage….It should also offer the vision of a better world. We can create a vision so compelling that it brings new people into politics, encourages more activism, and compels our political leaders to fight for it.

This suggests, to me, that we begin by defining the shape of that greater vision, and who better to articulate this vision than traditional and contemporary visionaries and wisdom-keepers?

Perhaps this is the kairos, the right or opportune time, to bring spiritual leaders of traditional aboriginal societies, with their profound wisdom and concern for Mother Earth and future generations, together with contemporary, post-modern wisdom-keepers and spiritual leaders of the world’s great religious traditions—along with progressive activists, political leaders, and media—mutually seeding and cross-pollinating the vision and formation of a more conscious, transformative, and united resistance effort. Perhaps these visionary leaders require a forum where both informal and formal alliances might be collectively envisioned, formed and shaped, as the wisest visionaries among us take their honored and rightful place near the head of the leadership table of a dynamic, growing, transformative, socio-cultural and political resistance movement in North America and abroad.

Perhaps this is how, in the visionary Jean Houston’s words, we can have a “kind of global ritual of illumining our transition.” At the very least, as Hedges suggested, we can “build communities where we can find understanding and solidarity.” At least we can support these wise, far-seeing Elders, acting in concert to transform self and society through creative acts of non-violent civil disobedience, deliberately undertaken for the future of humanity and the common good. At least, those generations that come after us might say we tried to keep their hope alive.

1. Bernie Sanders, “No One Can Sit on the Sidelines. Not Now.” In Reader Supported News, 4 April 17. Retrieved at http://rsn.org/opinion2/277-75/43035-focus-no-one-can-sit-on-the-sidelines-not-now
2. This essay was authored in May 2017.
3. See Front Page, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday Edition, April 23, 2017.
4. Excerpt from Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth by Noam Chomsky (Seven Stories Press, 2017). Published in AlterNet, 26 April 2017. See Chomsky’s website: www.chomsky.info. Retrieved at http://www.alternet.org/books/requiem-american-dream-chomsky-trump-republican-dangerous?akid=15477.198806.7Yi12E&rd=1&src=newsletter1076084&t=5
5. Personal correspondence, 9 October 2012.
6. “Indigenous People Are in the Lead,” by Michael Keefer. In Two Row Times, 5 November, 2013. Retrieved at https://tworowtimes.com/news/national/noam-chomsky-indigenous-people-are-in-the-lead/
7. See Chris Hedges’ speech “After Trump and the Pussy Hats” on YouTube video. Retrieved at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLaoJrg80JQ
8. See Ronald L. Boyer, “The Importance of Gandhi in the Age of Trump: A Citizen’s Call for a Moral Equivalent of War.” Retrieved at http://gtu.academia.edu/RonaldLBoyer/papers
9. Michael Moore, “It’s Time for Me to Make a Movie,” published on Moore’s Facebook Page, 22 April 2017. Retrieved at Reader Supported News, http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/43171-its-time-for-me-to-make-a-movie
10. Richard Escow, “What Progressives Should Demand from the FBI,” published in AlterNet, 16 May 2017. Retrieved at http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politic/what-progressives-should-demand-fbi?akid=15574.198806.K2Q4Yx&rd=1&src=newsletter1077005&t=7

Ronald L. Boyer is a scholar, teacher, and award-winning poet, fiction author, and screenwriter. He completed his MA in Depth Psychology at Sonoma State University and is also a graduate of the Professional Program in Screenwriting at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Ron taught his first university course, “Mythic Structure in Storytelling,” for his graduate Internship as a volunteer member of the SSU Psychology Department Faculty. He is a two-time Jefferson Scholar to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and two-time award-winner for fiction from the John E. Profant Foundation for the Arts, including the McGwire Family Award for Literature. Ron’s first short story was published in the horror anthology, America the Horrific. His poetry has been featured in the scholarly e-zine of the Jungian and depth psychology community, Depth Insights: Seeing the World with Soul (Issues 3, 5, & 7); Mythic Passages: A Magazine of the Imagination; Mythic Circle, the literary magazine of the Mythopoeic Society; and many other publications.

Ron is a doctoral student in the PhD in Art and Religion program at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, where he also attends classes at UC Berkeley. His scholarly research emphasizes archetypal theory applied to mythology, literature, and film, with a concentration on mythopoeic imagery in the art of Dante Alighieri, William Blake, and J. R. R. Tolkien. He is an associate editor/reviewer for the peer-reviewed journal, the Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology, and a referee and regular contributor to the peer-reviewed journal, Coreopsis: Journal of Myth and Theater. Ron has presented academic papers at the first Symposium for the Study of Myth at Pacifica Graduate Institution, the International Conference for the International Association of Jungian Studies at Arizona State University, and the 33rd annual International Conference for Ancestral and Traditional Wisdom, Healing, and Transformation at Dominican University.

A practitioner of shamanism, Ron has participated in numerous indigenous ceremonies and received initiations from shamans of many tribes, including the Mayans, Shuar (Ecuador) and Siberians of the Altai Mountains.