“We all hold to faith or hope in things that are no longer working for us. We continue to believe in systems that are not just broken but irredeemable. And our belief in those system and our hope in those things keeps them alive and prolongs the harm they do.”
Michael Dowd passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in October last year. He was only 64. He was staying in New York with a friend while his father was in hospice. And just two days after his own father died, Michael died in his sleep as a result of a massive heart attack. Michael had been, to me to and many people, an inspiration and a mentor, through his writing and speaking and his activism, but even more in how he lived his life.
Some of you may already be familiar with Michael Dowd. Depending on when you first encountered him, you may know him for different things. You may remember him as a Christian pastor who was passionate about science and wrote the book Thank God for Evolution. You may have known him a post-Christian religious naturalist who gave a TEDx talk about reconciling science and spirituality. You may have known him as a climate activist.
Or maybe you know him for what he was most passionate about when he died, and that was something called Post-Doom. Post-Doom was Michael’s term for a philosophy which started with a radical acceptance of some of the worst case scenarios for our civilization and species and combined that with an incorrigible love of life and other people.
Michael’s personal evolution roughly tracked my own (each stage building on the other): from Christianity to religious naturalism to environmental activism to Post-Doom. I first became aware of Michael through my work with the Naturalistic Pagan Community. At that time I knew him as aprogressive Christian minister and eco-theologian. He was an evangelist of something called the Great Story or the Epic of Evolution.
The Great Story is the history of the universe, starting with the Big Bang to the present moment. The Great Story teaches us that we are an interconnected part of nature. That our lives are a small, but integral part of the evolution of the universe. That t we are related to each other as one large family, not just human beings, but all animals and as well as plants, and even the earth and the sky. Michael’s work promoting the Great Story would be the foundation for his later activism and his development of Post-Doom.
In 2019, Michael’s focus shifted from away from mainstream climate activism, as he realized the depth of the cultural and economic transformation that would be needed to avoid a climate catastrophe, and he grew increasingly pessimistic about the possibility of that change happening. He was profoundly influenced in this by William Catton’s 1980 book, Overshoot.
Michael pessimism was not as radical of a position as it used to be in 1980 or even a few years ago. With the hottest month ever being recorded the past July and the Canadian wildfires turning the skies orange here in the Midwest, it was easier to imagine we are on the verge of an apocalypse. Scientists last year announced that we’ve now exceeded 6 of 9 planetary boundaries, all 9 of which are necessary tothat make the planet habitable to humans (up from 4 a few years ago). Many policy advisors are now saying that we need to focus on resilience and adaptation because a radically different climate is now inevitable. Meanwhile, academics and news sources are starting to take civilizational collapse seriously.
This message entered the mainstream discourse a few years ago with the publication of David Wallace-Wells’ 2017 New York Magazine article (and 2019 book) The Uninhabitable Earth, Roy Scranton’s books, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene and We’re Doomed. Now What?, Jonathan Franzen’s 2019 New Yorker article, What If We Stopped Pretending, and Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore’s 2019 documentary, Planet of the Humans.
Michael devoted the last years of his life to helping people to accept that our civilization is on an unstoppable downward spiral AND to move beyond both hope and doom to what he called Post-Doom. Michael taught that it is the very urge to cling to hope in progress and faith in technology that is driving us faster and faster toward our own annihilation. But he also encouraged us not to stop there, to move beyond the doom and gloom to what he called Post-Doom, which he defined as:
- What opens up when we remember who we are and how we got here [EPIC OF EVOLUTION], accept the inevitable [all civilizations decline], honor our grief, and prioritize what is pro-future and soul-nourishing.
- A fierce and fearless reverence for life and expansive gratitude—even in the midst of abrupt climate mayhem and the runaway collapse of societal harmony, the health of the biosphere, and business as usual.
- Living meaningfully, compassionately, and courageously no matter what.
As part of his work, Michael recorded conversations with over 100 people on this topic, some of whom you may recognize:
Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb), Joanna Macy (The Work that Reconnects), the permaculturalist David Holmgren, William Rees who coined the term “ecological footprint”, Richard Rohr, and many more, including yours truly.
Michael’s work paralleled that of others, like Jem Bendell, whose 2018 Deep Adaptation Paper has now become a movement. But where Bendell’s work is more policy-oriented, Michael’s message is explicitly spiritual.
A lot of people listening to Michael’s talks I think got stuck on the part about how it’s too late to save the world as we know it, and couldn’t really hear what he said after that. But all that doom was really just the preface to Michael’s real message, which was that it’s not too late to love the world.
Michael encouraged us to stop denying or bemoaning our fate, and embrace our mortality—both individual and collective. He taught us by word and example to celebrate our place in Great Story, the Epic of Evolution, to honor the land we inhabit, and to be of service, however we can. He urged us to consume less energy, less stuff, and less stimulation, and to cause less suffering. He counseled us to express care, gratitude, regret, and compassion with everyone in our lives. And he challenged us to contribute to the well-being of others, both human and other-than-human. In short, he invited us, at the end of the world, to love the world.
And he didn’t just say it. He lived it!
In this work, Michael was supported, encouraged, and enabled in myriad ways by his wife and partner, Connie Barlow. In addition to her own work as a science educator, environmental activist, and leader in the assisted migration movement, Connie edited Michael’s videos to make them more effective communication tools.
Over time, Michael became a friend and mentor to me. He (and Connie) spoke at our congregation here on multiple occasions. He and Connie lived an itinerate lifestyle moving across the country to different speaking engagements.This enabled him to cultivate deep, meaningful relationships with people all over the country. And it allowed him to indulge in his love of wild nature. Everywhere he went, Michael made a point to swim in a natural body of water. When he visited us here and made a point go swimming in Lake Michigan.
Michael had a unique gift for lifting up other people and connecting like-minded folks. I think this was at least as important, if not more so, as his writing and speaking. I was one of many, many people who Michael encouraged and whose work he promoted. He even recorded his reading of my book on this topic Another End of the World is Possible. Michael had a voice made for radio, and he recorded audio editions of many, many essays and even full length books.
Michael had a contagious enthusiasm and one of the most generous spirits I have ever met. I don’t know of anyone else who could have delivered his message as effectively as he did. Michael embodied his message in the way he lived his life. And his death challenges all of us who knew him to embody that message as well.
Shortly before Michael died, I had put his picture on my wall along with about three dozen others who had inspired me in my life on a kind of ancestor tree. I put the pictures of the living in color on top and those who had died in black and white at the bottom. I had had a thought that the next person I might be moving from the top to the bottom might be Michael. My premonition probably originated with an email blast he had sent in May, just five months before he died. The subject line was: “I can die now 🙂 My core message will live on.”
He added in the body “…until the Internet or YouTube goes down for good, of course. ;-).” Michael embraced gallows humor. What Michael called his “core message” was contained in a video of a talk he gave to the Canadian Association of the Club of Rome, entitled The Big Picture: Beyond Hope & Fear. I think it’s a great blessing to have that feeling of accomplishment before the end of one’s life.
But I have to say, I don’t think Michael’s impact can be summed in that video or in any video. Michael’s greatest message was in how he lived his life. Like one big hug. No one who knew him would ever think he was a despairing person. Though he didn’t like the word “hope”, he wasn’t really a hopeless person either. I think he just had hope in different things. He didn’t have hope for capitalism or progress or civilization. But he did have hope for small acts of generosity and compassion. He had hope for love. And for life.
Whatever you think about capitalism or progress or civilization, whatever you think our chances as a species, I think Michael’s message still has relevance for us all. We all hold to faith or hope in things that are no longer working for us. We continue to believe in systems that are not just broken but irredeemable. And our belief in those system and our hope in those things keeps them alive and prolongs the harm they do. It may be a relationship. It may be a family. It may be a government or an economic system or a religion. It may be a church or a certain way of doing church. Whatever it is, there comes a time when we need to let go. When we need to stop feeding those systems with our life energy, so we can find a new faith or a new hope in something else, something more life-sustaining. Maybe it will be less ambitious and less grand than our earlier hope, but it may also more down to earth, more real, and in that way more beautiful.
The way Michael Dowd lived his life was proof of this.
From “The Gifts of Death” by Michael Dowd
Without the death of stars, there would be no planets and no life.
Without the death of creatures, there would be no evolution.
Without the death of elders, there would be no room for children. …
Without the death of plants and animals, there would be no food.
Without the death of old ways of thinking, there would be no room for the new. …
The gifts of death are wisdom, creativity, and the flow of cultural change.
The gifts of death are the urgency to act, the desire to fully be and become.
The gifts of death are joy and sorrow, laughter and tears.
The gifts of [the acceptance of death] are lives that are fully and exuberantly lived, then graciously and gratefully given up, for now and forevermore.
Amen!
Another End of the World is Possible 