Barny: Got it.
David: Hello everyone and welcome to collapse club, how are we to live in the time of collapse with me. Today is Barny Wong, my colleague from the Deep Adaptation forum in the old days. Hello, Barny.
Barny: Hi. How you doing, David?
David: Good, thank you. How are you?
Barny: Good
David: Where are you in the world?
Barny: I’m in Portland, Oregon, not Portland, Maine.
David: Just down the coast from me in Seattle.
Barny: Yeah yeah yeah that’s right
David: Well we’re here to talk we are here to talk philosophy and I think you have a very deep philosophy. Before we get into the depths of it though, let me ask you this simpler question: Why is it important to examine the human psyche in the context of collapse?
Barny: That’s an interesting question, David, why should we look at the human psyche and how is it connected to planetary collapse or the climate collapse. So much of my work looks at cause and effect. It looks at what is the most elegant place that contains both the original problem and also the most elegant solution. And if we did not have consciousness-if we were not aware of our surroundings, our behavior and of our interactions with our surroundings will be greatly… uh will be radically different. So that itself you know it’s an indication is that our ability to perceive, or inability to perceive reality, determined so much of uh what’s our inspiration and motivation in having this relationship with our reality.
David: Do you think there’s a problem with how we perceive reality? Is that right?
Barny: Yeah yeah. It’s a problem you know. You know in a nutshell…I just finished writing a trilogy on my working theory and the…what I’m proposing is that the coordinates for climate collapse have been…have already been written in stone by our inability to read reality. Continue reading “‘Blowing away the smoke, but never putting out the fire’-an interview of One Tiny Drop with David Baum”