Man was born to turn the world into paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.

Daniel Quinn in Ishmael

Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, Washington D.C., wrote, “A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations.”

Our most fundamental problem is that almost eight billion people (10 billion by 2050) are addicted to the consumption of our alive planet. We are consuming our biomass. We cannot sustain this growth.

Two immediate existential threats to life as we know it overshadows population growth.

Climate change has battered our denial for a long time. America’s president denies its existence. The loss of lives and the destruction of property from climate change continues and grows.

Today, we are consumed and quarantined by the COVID 19 pandemic, which spread over the planet in about eight short weeks. Our president denied that too, while the virus spread freely. People got sick and died while the president dawdled.

But this time is different: Coronavirus is in real-time, and we watch it unfold in front of us. The president cannot hide behind lies, distractions, and scapegoating. As COVID 19 silently spreads into the nooks and crannies of the planet, our president undoes environmental regulations that help us fight climate change. What goes on in his mind?

A “Call” is a summons to higher consciousness. America has come to a stop: a significant pause. What we see on our nightly news is our new America. The future is unknown.

Rollo May wrote in Freedom and Destiny,  “In the pause we wonder, reflect, sense awe, and conceive eternity. The pause is when we open ourselves for the moment to the concepts of both freedom and destiny.” I hope we use this pause to think, reflect, and ask ourselves what matters in our lives. John Stuart Mill wrote that no significant improvements could take place in the lives of people until a dramatic change takes place in how they think.

We need to think of our planet as an alive, interconnected, intertwined, and interdependent whole. We need to gain the humility to see that we are but one species more powerful but no better than any other species. We need to live in harmony with nature, not be at war with her. We need to mature. We need to learn how to live.

If we change, we will defend against the virus that threatens us today and those on the horizon, reinvent our economy, value diversity, restore American global leadership, and help save the planet from climate change. We will feel alive. We may experience a new renaissance of ideas and an indefinite future. If we don’t change how we live on our planet, the momentum that carries us to possible extinction may become too great to overcome.

Without change, nature will continue to try to get our attention. Each call will be more destructive than the previous one. Within 200 years, after unimaginable suffering and destruction, we may perish as a species or a few islands of prosperity and privilege may survive surrounded by a sea of misery and violence.

Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” It is past time to fundamentally change our relationship with nature, not by changing her, but by changing ourselves.

We need to listen to the calls of nature. We need a spiritual awakening, a moment of metanoia, a shift of mind. Scientist Rupert Sheldrake said, “It is like waking up from a dream. It brings with it a spirit of repentance, seeing in a new way. This conversion is intensified by the sense that the end of an age is at hand.”

We are responsible for our collective fate. The significant threats of climate change, deadly pandemics, population growth, species extinction, resource depletion, inequality, and global poverty have called for change for a long time. Are we ready to listen and to change how we live together on this planet?

The change will be difficult, but ease or difficulty is not the issue. The question is: are we ready to change or not? If we are ready, we will create a new vision for how we live on our planet. Let’s not go forward led by crazy people, those stuck in the past, those who profit from America’s decline, or those invested in failed ideas. That would be disastrous.

Whatever we do, something dramatic is going to happen. We will experience an evolutionary bounce or an evolutionary crash. We can choose to act or to be acted upon, and our choices will determine our destiny.