Stephen Jenkinson: Post-doom with Michael Dowd and Barbara Cecil

Stephen Jenkinson interviewed by Michael Dowd and Barbara Cecil in an episode of Dowd's "Post-Doom Conversations, filmed September 2019. Title: "In a Time of Trouble." Time-coded list of topics:

00:18 Preview followed by introduction to Jenkinson

05:29 MD (Michael Dowd) - story of attending Jenkinson talk ten years before.

07:07 BC (Barbara Cecll) Q - your experience in the "death trade" and how that informs these times

07:32 SJ (Stephen Jenkinson) - recounts lack of civilizational wisdom in basics of death at existential level, despite highest tech

10:53 SJ - how lack of wisdom in individual death manifests regarding societal death, including unwillingness to "face what's coming" (both "tragic and truant")

14:42 SJ - how an "insane idea" is at the root of our inability to face what's coming; e.g., looking to more technology to solve the problems caused by technology. "Subway" story.

17:21 SJ - human-centered perception and assumptions are pervasive in this culture (and how that manifests in lack of attention and action to climate warming)

21:22 SJ - Interpreting "7th generation" dictum: "There is a way to do this (so that we don't just feel bad all the time) and it's to put yourself in the middle of something and not at the beginning. Rather than seeing yourself at the beginning of 7 subsequent generations — as if you were a kind of moral architect of the world in time to come — you could understand yourself as standing in the midst of 14 generations. ... My obligation is to carry myself as if I'm the consequence (unintended or otherwise) of the way life has been lived until now. It's only my ability to see myself that way that gives me the capacity to govern myself differently and understand my fundamental rsponsibility will be to people I'll never meet...."

24:01 SJ - Civilizational death is not the same as naturalness of individual death, because "death of this civilization is suicidal." "Endings, limits, frailties ... are enormously important practices." "Real mercy" in seeing endings in others before we have to deal with our own, so that we "come to these things not as a rookie but as an informed observer." We are in a kind of "living arrangement that is properly finding its ending." "The greater act is not sabotage but seeing down what you have been trying to restore and to love."

33:08 SJ - reflects on history of fall of previous civilizations (how peoples forget fragility of their expanding ways of life and population in their homeplace). Need to "reimagine what loving this place could look like now. ... write a love letter to this place, which is a love letter of farewell." A conscious choice to "stop being so successful." The "willingness to accept the possibility of catastrophe needs to inform how a group proceeds."

38:04 MD - Edward Goldsmith book "The Way" for distinguishing sustainable cultures: life-centered measures of well-being.

39:55 SJ - Key for a culture is "Where do they place humanity in the story?" Crucial to see ourselves as "dependent — not a co-conspirator, not mandatory." "We are the beneficiary [of other life forms], not the benefactor."

43:50 BC Q - elderhood question and your "farewell letter"

44:39 SJ - "a love letter of fare well: wishing goodness upon that which you are leaving." "Your real good fortune is having come to your collective senses and decided to depart." "To belong, but also primary purpose and station in life." "Longing, not desire." "involuntary gratitude" arises.

51:00 SJ - "As long as the place lasts, your way of life remains comendable." Summarizes his message as aiming for "soul-stirring but not reassuring.... the animating force is grief." "What is it about daily life that makes living seem so impossible? ... How about imagining our children to be entitled to much less than we had when we were their age?"

54:10 SJ - "Two questions to expect young people to ask us: (1) When you were my age, did you know what was happening? (2) So what did you do?"

57:38 SJ - When he was young, "the sense of possibility was palpable, personally" and also "a sense that large things could be taken on." In contrast today, "there's not even a shred of that understanding available today to people in their 20s. And their sense of betrayal by a generation who sought principally self-expression, self-healing, self-understanding, self-aggrandizement is unspeakable." ... [Speaking to his generation]: "If you do not begin with the poverties that are the current order, then solutions just carry the germ of what generated the poverties in the first place."

The audio version of this video is available through Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/michael-dowd-grace-limits/stephen-jenkinson-post-doom-conversation
• Jenkinson's website, Orphan Wisdom: https://orphanwisdom.com/
• 10 minute audio of his presentation at Simon Fraser University, Canada: https://soundcloud.com/orphan-wisdom/orphan-wisdom-stephen-jenkinson-on-grief-and-climate-change

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