Review
Time's Up is a call to change our perception of our role on Earth, and so to change the way we live by reconnecting with the world. Keith Farnish first explores the Earth's intricate ecosystems, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, and our impact on them. Then he suggests how we can restore balance, living in such a way that the Earth's natural systems can once again function normally. We must look at what we have in ourselves, and what remains undamaged on the Earth, and think, We can do better.' The Solution is that we wave goodbye to our unsustainable 'civilization', the cause of our disconnection, and learn once again to be ourselves, connected with the real world. Farnish urges us to spread his Eco-Meme - short bursts of 'why?' and 'how?' information - and shows how we can simultaneously breathe new life into our own lives and the Earth's.
256pp, 156mm x 234mm, illus. in b&w, softback, 2009

Extract
Being Ourselves
Find a patch of sunshine or a place where it is warm and still; sit or stand, whichever is most comfortable. I want you to shut your eyes and imagine what it will be like after civilization has gone. If you have ever been somewhere truly wild, even just for a camping trip or a long walk, then this will be an easy exercise; if you are dependent upon Industrial Civilization to provide you with everything, then it will be hard, maybe impossible. Imagine no cities, no paved roads, no pylons, no offices or factories - imagine having to grow everything, make everything, do everything for yourself.

Now close your eyes and go there for a while...

****

Mixed feelings. Loss, emptiness, a sense of solitary isolation. Tough work, endless toil, dirt, disease and death. Rubble, dust, twisted metal and poisoned water; constant battles, tribal rivalries and extreme hostility between people. Distance; a depraved past and a promising future. Cleanliness, fresh air, fresh water, open to the elements and a feeling of raw, real living. Richness, fulfilment, connection, freedom.

Most of us are not mentally or physically ready to cope with the loss of something we have been made to believe is so important to us. Take away civilization tomorrow and we could fall too far to save ourselves. We have to start thinking like survivors again because, one way or another - suddenly, through this culture's self-destructive behaviour, or more gradually, by our own caring hands - that is the world we will be seeing in two or three generations, possibly only one.

If you are prepared for it, then the journey and the eventual destination can show you what it is really like to be human. Prepare, and your existence outside civilization can be something that you can only find outside civilization: something real and truly good.

Preparing
Civilization has taught us that there is only one way to go, and that's forwards in a straight line - always increasing, always renewing, always disposing of the past and reaching for something 'more'. We rush headlong into the future with overwound enthusiasm, trusting our survival to the blind faith that keeps us moving forwards with the current, getting faster and faster, pulling us towards a place that has not been made, yet one that we are told is the only place to go. We are stuck in a rip current of our own making; sucking us into the open sea, out of control.

It's surprisingly easy to get out of a rip current: just swim sideways.

We rightly look to the past as a way of understanding how we got here, and also so we can learn lessons about the right and the wrong way to do things; but we are bound to our temporal life - we have to live for the future, rather than the past: it's just that there is more than one future. As a good friend of mine wrote: 'What we do in the future is what counts. And I think we need to become something new, not return to some earlier state. Now we have to use our brains and our knowledge to change ourselves in deliberate ways.' Step out of the rip current and step into something else: a more docile, less urgent flow of time, one that understands how we relate to the natural processes of the world, that allows us to grab hold of a branch or a piece of weed as it drifts into our path and see what it has to offer.

From Time's Up!, 2009 by Keith Farnish, published by Green Books.

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