Unfolding Hellscapes
Last weekend, terrorist group Hamas violently attacked, massacred, and kidnapped Israelis in an unprecedented set of coordinated and heinous attacks across the Israeli landscape. Everything seems to have exploded since then… but it’s also quite possible we’re just at the beginning. War sometimes works that way, and nothing about the current situation in the Middle East is de-escalating. Not even a little.
Each day we’re seeing fresh scenes of horror from the weekend’s attacks. Each day we’re seeing Israel and Gaza attack each other with rockets with varying degrees of destruction. Terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon has gotten involved in attacking Israel from the north. There is violence in the West Bank. Hamas may or may not still be hiding Israeli, US, and other hostages seized in Israel over the weekend in Gaza or elsewhere depending on how much of Hamas and its infrastructure have survived the week’s bombing. Israel has cut off critical infrastructure and supplies to Gaza’s confined population of about 2.5 million Palestinians that impact food, water, fuel, electricity, and communications. Israel has also cut off the remaining exit out of Gaza that went to Egypt.
It gets worse.
Overnight, Israel “ordered” Gaza to evacuate 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza to the south within 24 hours.
You can’t move 1.1 million people in 24 hrs in most cities on a good day with operational infrastructure… let alone in a war-torn city.
Gaza is experiencing destroyed infrastructure such as damaged roads and collapsed buildings. Gaza is experiencing missing infrastructure such as electricity, media, and communications capabilities that would be necessary to communicate with 1.1 million people. There’s no fuel access.
How are these 1.1 million people supposed to know about the evacuation? How are 1.1 million people supposed to move? Are 1.1 million people meant to walk?
All of that would take way more than 24 hours even in a location without missing critical infrastructure and widespread war damage.
The United Nations has already pushed back on this “order” on humanitarian grounds; asking Israel to essentially rethink this direction. As part of this, the UN had been advised by Israel to move its staff and its refugee centers.
Naturally, the master-terrorizors that are Hamas have advised the Palestinian people of Gaza not to leave the targeted area.
For real. Hamas is telling Palestinians that what Israel is saying about ordering people to pull off a mass migration in 24 hours is disinformation. This is the same terrorist group that uses civilians for human shields but this takes that to a whole different realm..
Meanwhile, on Thursday we had a chance to see/hear more of the godawful terror committed by Hamas over the weekend in Israel. It’s breathtaking in its horror. Absolutely unspeakable — yet we need to speak of it. That said, I don’t need to link it here because we have the Google and because the details won’t help with this post.
These are hellscapes. That’s what we keep seeing. What Hamas left are hellscapes. What Israel is doing is creating hellscapes. More are coming.
Meanwhile, a former Hamas leader put out a call for global terror on Friday the 13th (today) in support of the Hamas attack on Israel; asking for a “global day of anger,” a “Hamas day of rage,” or just for a “day of terror”… so that’s nice. We don’t get nearly enough of that — terror. That last bit is sarcasm, by the way. The fact that people think we need a special day for extra terror in the world is unfortunately just a fact.
In response to the global day of terror threat, law enforcement (LE) across the US are further stepping up security postures and protocols. Many LE agencies had already increased security and other activities due to the increasing anti-Semitic sentiments around the US and also due to pro-Hamas activities. As a reminder, terrorism is expensive — causing governments to overspend on security and to spend less on the strength and resilience of societies/countries is a key feature of terrorism.
Meanwhile, there have been stories of pro-Hamas supporters dismissing reports about the horrors Hamas committed over the weekend in Israel as fake, as lies, or as propaganda — or worse: laughing. I believed it but hadn’t run across it myself until Thursday evening; when one of my now-former Facebook connections had a whole collection of laughing hyena humans on a post in reaction to Hamas’ “success.” Another woman made a comment with empathy asking for recognition of the trauma and tragedy from Hamas’ attacks on Israelis; there were a shocking number of laugh-reactions to her empathetic comment. My “care” reaction to that comment got me blocked within seconds. I didn’t even have time to move from mouth-hanging-open-because-people-were-laughing to deep-seated-nausea before it was over.
That apalling run-in fit the week. I’m sure it’s been similar for thousands of others. In my own little world, I spent a chunk of time Thursday trying to have reasonable conversations about aspects of this whole fraught thing… just when I’d think it was working it would blow up again. On the one hand, it was more time than I should have spent. On the other, it’s worth sticking up for certain things. And on perhaps a third hand, I talk a big game about connection and community. In these super intense moments I think those things matters a ton so I invested some time Thursday in hoping I could keep a couple of long-time online connections. Yet tensions are high, anger is high, fear is high, rage is high, sadness is high and so on… and it’s hard to punch through all of that.
Meanwhile, the US already had a far-right extremist authoritarian political threat and a far-right domestic violent extremist (DVE) threat along with that including some seriously hyped-up bigotry in all the ways and an accelerationist crowd (more here) that would like to push the US into an apocalypse by taking out the electrical grid because then they could rule everything their way with their giant basements full of guns.
Meanwhile the US Congress is not functional as there is no active US Speaker of the House; the third most powerful person in the entire US government. The US is now backing allies in two major wars (for now), our own government could shut down in a few weeks, and our military is being led by people in “acting” positions because of far-right Republican political blocks on Senate confirmation hearings that the party won’t work together to remove to help our own military be more functional. Plus, our military was already pretty heavily committed; supporting Ukraine in addition to our normal worldwide national security stuff. Adding a huge commitment (“the US has your back”) to support Israel further stretches US capabilities and increases our vulnerability.
We always hear that our enemies may well be waiting for us to be vulnerable and that’s when they might well come after us. Yeah. Perhaps we’re there?
To what end would these enemies come after us? To weaken this major superpower of a country; the world’s police force. If they could get rid of the US, damage it heavily, or destabilize it more — the dangerous shenanigans of many would-be dictators, pilferers, oppressors, and so on could go on unfettered and could occur very fast.
History & This Moment
What’s written above is a teeny, tiny bit of what’s going on up in this complicated world. The reality is that we’re not going back to the world as it was before this weekend’s Hamas brutal attack on Israel. We’re not going back to before Russia’s war on Ukraine. We’re not going back to before Trump. We’re not going back to before-COVID.
We are going forward into some pretty huge choices for us as a species and in the very long arc of human history.
Only we’re not even bothering to deal with those choices yet. How can we? There’s so much else.
Yet even as we speak, rapid nonlinear changes are happening within the climate systems that we live within on this planet. It is happening spectacularly fast.
Not making choices is a choice, though. Plus here we are collectively having wars that are destroying invaluable and limited human infrastructure even as the critical needs for that infrastructure intensify by the day with rising risks.
I’m trying to do the short, short version of this long-arc-of-history bit, but if you’d like to get more fundamentally alarmed listen to Paul Beckwith talk about our unraveling civilization. Yikes. I’d like to think we can keep society from totally unraveling (see the rest of this post plus our About page) but the unraveling risk is real.
In sci-fi (science fiction) movies, whenever there’s some existential threat to the planet… lo and behold everyone pulls together and saves the planet and all of humanity. Even though in the movies… usually there are a lot less people around in existence by the end of the film. We sort of brush past all that fictional tragedy because in the fictional movie end, humanity gets saved and we all feel better. Because: movie.
In the last chapter of Timothy Snyder’s nonfiction book Black Earth, our actual earth reality would look a whole lot more like what we’re living right now: a rise in authoritarianism, hate, bigotry, division, and “othering” that will help the rich and powerful hold and seize power and resources even as those resources become increasingly limited and as resource competition, war, violence, death, disease, and population overshoot/collapse occur.
In Paul Gilding’s book The Great Disruption… as resource competition, war, violence, death, disease, and population overshoot/collapse occur… at some point humans might could decide to get together and essentially do the sci-fi movie thing and decide to turn things around. But — humans tend to wait until the last minute to take any huge big grand action, and they also have to see a certain amount of death and destruction before believing that seriously huge big (and courageous) decisions are needed.
I think the moment we’re coming in to is the point in the very long arc of human history where all hell is starting to break loose, where there are all kinds of signs of that, and where most everyone is still in some denial about that.
In the sci-fi movies, this is the point where some eccentric scientist tries to get managers, politicians, or the general public to see the threat… but the eccentric science person gets run out of the meeting/room/government specific to the plot of each sci-fi movie.
I think we’re there.
I think we’re there — and we’ve got a whole lot more folks than just one eccentric, plucky, scientist warning us.
I think we’re there — also because we’ve still got most of the entire population and the governments all over the planet in denial that we’re facing existential threats and that we need to think and act very, very differently if we want to get through what’s coming with at least some of our civilization intact.
That’s where the science is.
I don’t know where you are, but you can put me on the eccentric scientist type cast list (or close enough) for this real-life sci-fi movie. I’ve been coming to understand that this moment is coming since I first started learning about system science in 1992 — and more so since I heard the system science warning in 2012 that humans have already overshot the carrying capacity of the planet and that there will be a corresponding population collapse at some point likely five to 50 years or so from 2012. It’s been 11 years already. Of critical note: a population collapse (adjustment) is not equivalent to a collapse of civilization. There will be choices. Strategy will be critical. Getting going on options now can help.
You can see why I say I’m super fun at parties. When I go, that is, because I still don’t usually want to hang around with large groups of humans indoors and risk picking up covid again in our society-denying-that-we-should-do-public-health-along-with-everything-else-we’re-denying.
Helping — We Have Options
As fun as I can be at parties (or not), I do have something to offer that a lot of doom-sayers do not… and that’s a workable approach for making big change in society in this time of big acceleration, fast change, unfolding hellscapes, and disruption. That includes this time of war, terrorist threats, domestic violent extremist threats, intensifying disasters, a fractured society, and so on.
We’ve built a whole nonprofit here called Shift the Country that’s set up to help catalyze large-scale change and also just to help us navigate this tough moment in human history.
This is set up to help us “catalyze widespread public pressure to move the US toward healthier democracy and away from far-right extremism. We can reach and energize Americans with action and civic engagement to get people talking, making change, making news, and voting.”
Yep.
So here in this scary, overwhelming, terrible moment… like we could get together and actually ramp this nonprofit up in serious ways.
We start by getting our own volunteer groups together:
Sign up for the Tuesday volunteer group call — this Tuesday, 8 pm Central, and every Tuesday all fall.
Sign up for the Friday volunteer group call — next Friday, 3 pm Central, and every Friday all fall.
With even an initial small motley crew of volunteers, we can start reaching out to existing political and nonprofit groups or teams or just friends who want to do something to get things rolling. We work our own 5 Things approach. We get invites to other groups to invite us in to share ideas (invite us!). We mobilize people to do some good in relation to all this war and threat stuff and bigotry and everything else.
There are options. We could dig into this. I can’t do it alone, of course. Neither can you. But we can pull off some amazing stuff together. And we’ll invent it as we go.
For example, we could find ways to get local Democrats or allies or nonprofits or just people we know to help with security or solidarity or support for targeted groups or institutions such as temples. We could bring pressure on institutions, politicians, businesses, or others to support various positions — or to support things as basic as funding the US government or addressing national security concerns. We could champion our humanity. We could teach and talk about empathy. We could have town halls or other events on any of this, and get all kinds of news coverage. We can have support groups to help each other just get through this. We’re going to need that.
That’s the gist of this post.
By this Tuesday’s volunteer call, we’ll have published a Big Shift Guide to help with all this, plus a starter Big List of Ideas — so we’ll have both of those things to work with on the Tuesday call.
Invite your friends. Share this in groups and with your people. Ooo! Send money too! We need all that.
Post-Script — Breaking Out & Taking Flight
This nonprofit has basically been sitting around a staging area like a big heavy helicopter ready to go fight a wildfire… but we’ve been out of starter fluid or something. Or gasoline. Fuel. Whatever runs a powerful huge helicopter.
We have tried to roll out this nonprofit a few times but it’s always been missing some pieces, some traction, funding, and I think: the right moment.
I think the moment is here.
One of the missing pieces is that we’d set everything up to ramp up action for the 2024 political race… but the deeper intention of this work has always been bigger change than this country is likely to pull off in one presidential race.
The deeper intention here has always been more like:
“We can get government, institutions, infrastructure, and our economy to better serve all the people of this multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy. We can demand and create more agile, adaptable, resilient, sustainable, inclusive, and equitable systems so we all have greater chances to survive, prosper, flourish, and thrive in this time of great challenges to the planet, to humanity, and to the US… Together we can be courageous and take creative action to shift the zeitgeist, the conscience, the character, and the reality of this country.”
So. Hopefully we can get this metaphorical helicopter off the ground this time. We’ve done some tweaking. Edited the statement above to be clearer. Fiddled with the engine. Got the whole aircraft in better alignment with playing the long game here.
That long game is the long arc of human history.
Are we going to make big pivots in these moments of crisis and opportunity and change? Can we get enough traction and motivation and inspiration out there to mobilize for transformation?
I think we can.
Step 1 is pulling out of denial and joining the eccentric scientists from the sci-fi movie, working together to find big solutions, and advocating for them in big and small ways. That’s what we’re fixing to do here.
Might as well dream big. Might as well plan big. Might as well go all out. Time to fly.
What are the other options? Giving up? Yeah: no.
Democracies are meant to protect and look after humans so that we’re not living in nature “red in tooth and claw;” so that we’re not living in societies run by the most powerful with the most guns and the most brawn.
Let’s keep our superpower of a democracy — and let’s help it drive change through this moment in human history.
Israel will invade Gaza for one simple, disastrous, reason: because it must. Because Israel's manhood was insulted and mocked on 7 October, as the US's manhood was mocked and insulted on September 11. The only way to recapture Israel's manhood is to invade Gaza.
It will cost many precious Israeli lives. It will cost many more precious Palestinian lives. It will harm Israel forever in the international community. It will change very little, and even that, probably for the worst.
As a man, I understand this need. I wish there was an alternative that a man could understand. Or, I wish there were an alternative leadership, NOT led by men, who could conceive of a different approach.