Are Humans Obsolete?

2012.12.12

Note by Michael Dowd: A week ago a colleague sent me a link to an obscure blog that had “gone viral”:

“How Doctors Die — It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be"

Tremendously moved, I decided to do my part in spreading this sobering news and vital perspective. One of those who received my email was a young nurse, newly certified for working in the Intensive Care Unit. Below is her response (slightly modified for confidentiality).

Her story brought me to tears of joy and gratitude when I first read it. May there be ever more nurses with the training, the courage, and above all the heart exemplified by this unheralded young hero.
_____

Response by a young “Intensive Care Unit (ICU)” nurse:

Thank you so much for this timely article. Only two months ago I participated in an "End of Life and Palliative Care in the ICU" class, where I was genuinely moved/tormented by the suffering my fellow nurses and I are surrounded with in the ICU.

A peaceful, gentle death is so valuable — and so rare.

I recently cared for a young adult cancer patient at the end of her life.  She came to the ICU after having a bone marrow transplant to deal with the "pre-leukemia" she had developed, owing to an aggressive chemo regimen initiated several years earlier for her breast cancer.

By now, her whole body had deteriorated to such an extent that she required a mask that forced air into her lungs in order to oxygenate.  She spent two weeks in our hospital’s ICU, with her lungs progressively worsening.

All the nurses knew she was not going to leave our unit. But her oncologist kept telling her to “fight it out!”

Finally, and this was on my shift, with her parents at her side, “Gloria” (the name I'll use) finally said that she just wanted the pain to go away.

Suddenly, everything changed.

I had just brought into her room her evening meds — literally thousands of dollars worth of antibiotics and anti-rejection medications.  None of it mattered anymore.

I took down all the unnecessary tubing, started a morphine drip and administered Glycopyrrolate (which dries secretions and softens the "death rattle").

This felt massive to me. I remember this mix of emotions: sadness, relief, and an overwhelming sense that I was a part of something huge.  I still cannot wrap my head around it.

I was able to help transition one profoundly suffering human being from a regimen of “Come on! Power through! Endure, endure, endure!” to, “It’s okay, Gloria. You fought so, so hard. Now close your eyes, let your pain fade, and rest.”

It was beautiful.

Gloria died the following day — not on my shift, but I felt so happy that I had been able to share the transition with her and her parents.

To think of everything we had put this woman through in hopes of an inaccessible cure is just ... sickening.

Medicine has gotten to the point where we've gone as far and as invasive as we can go. I wish people — both we professionals and the public at large — would begin to prioritize a dignified death above all.

Family members need to know that there is far more beauty in spending quality time (rather than simply a quantity of time in the hospital) with their unalterably disabled and ultimately incurable loved ones.

Sadly, when family members must make medical decisions, too often those decisions are influenced by a subconscious need to palliate our own emotional suffering. As well, an irrational fear that we will otherwise be guilty (or at least will feel guilty) spurs good people to say “yes” to absolutely every intervention that forestalls death.

Though I wish everyone could die at home surrounded by love and comfort, I know it is the nature of those battling cancer to often push themselves far past their ability to survive the journey home.

It is my duty to honor this incredible fight and allow them to pass peacefully, without pain — and to let them know that accepting death is the greatest victory.  

~ by an ICU nurse, posted by...

Compared to our 13.7 billion year history, not much changes in a single year, right?  While that’s true, we can place the changes we’ve seen in the context of an evolutionary perspective - that grand saga of life, which has given us our world. 

On the grandest scale, the Universe continues to expand.  The most distant galaxies are rushing away from us at a blistering speed of over 100,000 miles every second, putting them 3 trillion miles farther from us than just a year ago.  And while we don’t know of any life outside of Earth yet, we have discovered many hundreds of extrasolar planets, most of them discovered in 2011 by the Kepler mission.  Much closer to home, our Sun has become more active, ramping up into the coming solar maximum, and sparking huge Northern Lights this past October 25th.

Our Earth is a planet that has brains, eyes, and the internet, and is a planet that has intentionally launched parts of itself into space.  In November, the most advanced probe to Mars ever made (the Curiosity rover) lifted off flawlessly, showing our continued advancement.  Also advancing, our global connections have greatly increased with at least tens of millions of new internet connections and new wireless hotspots in 2011 (if we have millions of both in just Great Britain, the worldwide total is easily in the tens of millions).  Whether or not this qualifies as a global brain yet is another topic for another day, but our progress is rapid, and who knows what the results will be in the future?  One possible result of our interconnections so far has been the 2011 Arab Spring.  Another has been the information explosion, with as much text written every few days now as humans had written in their entire history up to 2003, and more text written in 2011 than in any other year in our history.  Hopefully this information processing will help us handle the problems of the future, both expected and unexpected.

And we moved toward some of those problems in 2011 as well.  With 134 million new babies born in 2011, the world population continued to increase.  That many births means more mouths to feed, as well as a billion or more new mutations in our gene pool – most being neutral, some harmful, and some beneficial.  (Estimates of the mutation rate per generation in humans varies widely, so I used a very conservative number of around 10.  Some evidence suggests average mutation rates well over 100 mutations per birth.)  With natural selection reduced by our technology, the harmful ones are more likely to increase healthcare costs, and the beneficial ones may fail to spread to everyone.  It will be another challenge for future generations to figure out the best way to handle this constant mutational drumbeat.  That issue won’t really need to be faced for a while, especially compared to our unsustainable energy habits.  In 2011 we burned enough fossil fuel to add about 10 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere, carbon that has been buried underground for millions of years, and now will contribute to global climate change.  Similarly, the rapid extinctions we are causing continue, with both headline losses like the Western Black Rhino, and the loss of at least hundreds of species in 2011, many before they could even be named by science.  Religious based hatred continued in many incidents, including the slaughter of dozens of teens in Norway by a person who wished to “return Europe to its Christian roots”.  Worst of all, I suspect that the majority of humans on our planet are unaware of the threat all of these are posing to our future generations, among so many other threats as well.    

There are also reasons for hope.  The information explosion mentioned earlier may bring the powerful force of our collective creativity to bear on these problems, before they are insurmountable.  The Arab Spring may have helped millions of people move from tyranny towards democracy.  The occupy movement in the United States may be partly driven by concern for future generations, and in 2011, the level of human concern for future generations appears to already exceed that at any point in our history.  Our circles of care continue to expand in many areas, one of which was shown by the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.  Human action in 2011 also gave us a higher use of sustainable energy sources, like wind and solar, than has ever been seen.

Of course, this review of our evolution toward a just, peaceful and sustainable world surely misses a lot, even the most important points.  In addition to the events I simply forgot to mention, many of the most important events of 2011 are likely unreported in the news.  For instance, did millions of teens begin to see our place in this Great Story, and their role in crafting the future, in 2011?  Were there elementary kids who learned the basics of science in 2011 who will go on to use that understanding to find a cure for cancer, or a new solar cell technology decades from now?   We can’t know, but we can trust that this pulse of life, which has overcome even deadlier threats in the past, continues to surge now, in us, at the start of 2012.  May we each do what we can to live up to our potential, for ourselves and for future generations.

In hope - Happy New Year!

~ Jon Cleland Host

A fabulous end-of-year anthem!

by Connie Barlow

A year or so ago a colleague suggested that I submit an article to an excellent magazine to which he regularly contributes. I responded along the lines of,

“Why would I want to do that?!  The magazine has no free online presence. At most, my article would be read by a few thousand subscribers and then utterly lost to posterity. Meanwhile, the trees cut to produce the paper would add to my ecological footprint. No thanks!”

As the author of two books and two anthologies ushered into print by respectable publishers over the course of a decade (1991 - 2001), I have been responding in a similar vein when asked whether I plan to write another book:

“Why would I want to do that?!  At most my book would be read by a few tens of thousands of individuals over perhaps a decade; I’m not famous enough for a publisher to produce an audio version; and I wouldn’t be allowed to keep updating the content.  Besides, the publishing industry has crashed; there is no money anymore for my class of writer, so I might as well keep creating, posting online, and updating my own stuff for free.”

Ten years ago, all I could do on my computer was type, save, and print a text document. That was a marvel, of course, compared to the IBM Selectric typewriter on which I composed my first book (published in 1984). Today I still type in text, but now I convert that text into html and upload it into one of my websites, or I convert it to pdf and link it into the Internet. Or I might post the text as a blog, as I plan to do here.

I enjoy creating audio, too, using the recording, editing, and music-making software that comes with my Apple computer. I convert the final product to an mp3 file and upload it onto a commercial podcasting site, for which I pay a small monthly fee.

Best of all is the opportunity to create and publish in video format. Not only is video the richest, most emotionally compelling and artistic mode for communication, but the final product enters an arena that is as close to immortal as anything humans have yet devised — and it costs me nothing, thanks to YouTube.


I’m not sure whether Google is God, but I darn well know that YouTube is my ticket to eternity.  And Google is godly enough to have provisioned YouTube with the best indexing-and-finding system yet imaginable.

If a video truly has merit, if it offers something unique, and if I have done a satisfactory job of embellishing it with a text description and keyword tags, then ultimately it will be found; it will be appreciated. That may happen long after I am dead. But it won’t moulder in some descendant’s basement and be tossed into the trash during a move. It won’t stand idle on library shelves, where my four books now repose. (And I’m not convinced there will still be bricks-and-mortar libraries in a hundred years.)

Note: Just this moment I discovered a website that lists all the libraries in the world where each of my books resides, in order of distance from anywhere in the world. My 1997 book, Green Space Green Time: The Way of Science stands in 698 libraries, the furthest being Botswana.

As to most digital forms of legacy projects, long life and accessibility is, at present, far from assured. Consider: If my husband and I were to die today, within a year or two our websites would go down, for lack of payment to the server and for nonrenewal of domain names. Within a few months, all three of our podcast channels would vanish, archives and all — again, for lack of payment.

YouTube not only freely accepts all my videos. It requires zero upkeep on my part.  At this moment, it is by far the best bet for immortality.

Google Scholar is also as close to immortal as anything gets. But it is decidedly undemocratic. It preserves and makes available only scholarly texts, and then, if there is a copyright issue, only in bits and pieces. Portions of two of my four books are preserved on Google Scholar.

Bottomline: if you haven’t attracted the attention of a real publisher, Google Scholar is unlikely to be interested in your immortality project — however dear it may be to you.


Ernest Becker, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Denial of Death (1973), popularized the notion of “immortality projects” — portraying them as the offspring of our human awareness of death and our consequent attempts to overcome it. When Becker was alive and writing, people (other than brilliant scholars like himself) had few opportunities for immortality projects other than producing offspring or excelling in business, arts, politics, or war. With the Internet, all that has changed — and that is great news for our species and our world, as well as for aspiring individuals.

Consider these shifting opportunities for leaving a lasting legacy:

1. GENETIC LEGACY: Opportunities for leaving a genetic legacy have vastly improved in the developed countries, thanks to the virtual elimination of famine, malnourishment, unsanitary public water supplies, and plagues, and by turning childhood death from a fact of life that nearly all parents experienced into a rare and shocking event. Whether our genetic legacy will be something we can be proud of is another question.

Youth are launched into a complex and often unfriendly world in which they must find their own way. No longer does the eldest son simply inherit the farm or the hardware business. No longer is the second son, while barely a teen, apprenticed out to a shoemaker in the next village. No longer do young women expect that marriage will come soon, last until death, and adequately provision themselves and their children with life’s basic necessities.

In just my lifetime, industrial and manufacturing vocations for securing a spot in the middle class have collapsed, and even a college degree no longer guarantees a living wage and a fulfilling career. And marriage for young women? Dream on. Young men no longer need marry to obtain legal, emotionally nurturing, and recurrent sex. Thus, what began in the 1970s as a welcome and exhilarating choice for women like me, has now become a near necessity: virtually all young women now need to scramble for a living wage and fulfilling career — no less than the young men.

Meanwhile, our stone-age instincts all too easily succumb to the escalating temptations of modern life, notably the “supernormal stimuli” of addictive foods, psychoactive substances, gaming, gambling, and internet porn.  Hence, good people do not necessarily die delighted in their offspring. 

2. MEMETIC LEGACY:  Opportunities for passing forward a memetic legacy, no matter how lowly one’s family of birth, have long been improving. In the USA, public funding of primary education blossomed in the early 1800s. In 1883 American business tycoon Andrew Carnegie began funding free public libraries in the USA, Canada, and elsewhere, so that even the poorest kids and adults could self-educate with Great Books. The 1930s ushered in compulsory secondary education. In 1944, the G.I. bill made it possible for working class war veterans to attend college, thanks to public funding of tuition support.

In my lifetime, the cultural release of blacks and women to compete equally as generators of valuable ideas and arts (“memes”), as well as businesses, will surely go down in history as a great leap forward for our species. I am a grateful beneficiary of this cultural shift.

Finally, opportunities for creating a worthy memetic legacy (I’m not talking about “celebrities” and psycho-killers who briefly secure facetime on what is sometimes called “news”) have taken another great leap forward — and beginning only about ten years ago. Thanks to the Internet, no longer does one need to acquire a graduate pedigree, an impressive resume, or a famous mentor in order to get a hearing in the intellectual marketplace of ideas. For the first time, virtually anyone with the intellect and the drive can (a) self-educate and (b) self-express.

That is what I mean by the democratization of idea generation and exchange.

We’ve all seen it. We’ve all marveled at it. We’ve all benefited from it. And yet it goes largely unheralded.

Some obscure individual gets a great idea, launches it via a blog or video and the thing “goes viral.”

Here’s my favorite example. His name is John Boswell, and I first heard about this newly graduated econ major in September 2009.  He had just posted a video on YouTube that emerged from a combination of his musical talent, his veneration of Carl Sagan, his delight in the cosmos, and his tinkering with some fun new software.

Just three-and-a-half minutes long, this music video (titled “A Glorious Dawn”) garnered a million views in just one month. (As I write, in December 2011, it is now up to 7 million views.) More important, a scan of the comments reveals that the video is still powerfully affecting — even to the point of tears — viewers young and old. (Check out one of my blogposts to read some of the over-the-top comments that were posted on the video’s YouTube page.) Or listen to me and my husband jam about it on our podcast episode titled “Symphony of Science.”

I’ve kept in touch with John Boswell by email. He continues to post more music videos in this genre — still for free. He’s got a donation button at the bottom his webpage, symphonyofscience.com, and I have donated twice. Somehow he keeps himself alive financially.

Boswell is an example of volunteerism unaltered by fame. Here is a passion to produce something that matters, that uplifts, that just might inspire a 12-year-old to pursue a career in science and maybe even to discover something that will astonish the next generation of 12-year-olds.

Call it a yearning to be noticed and respected. Call it a desire to make a difference. Call it an immortality project. Call it what you will. But you need only dabble on YouTube to get a sense that, right here, people of little or no stature are posting results of intense avocational pursuits that ultimately (in many cases) will serve the world.

YouTube’s free outlet for creative sharing has made it possible for just about anyone to launch into the world their memetic legacies. All one need do is acquire some basic geek skills (which is no more difficult than breathing for our youth), hone a fascination, and persevere in self-education and exploration of their topic of choice.

When the video is finished, it is uploaded and the waiting and watching begins. Alert your Facebook "friends" to your new video, and the “views” start to rise. As soon as one person posts an appreciative comment, you get a dopamine hit. What remains and grows is a sense of accomplishment and the warm feeling of knowing you are valued and respected.

An avocation is thus nurtured. More projects will follow. Gone are the wasted hours, the boredom, the existential angst, the fear that “I am nothing.”  Sure, for some lucky souls their fascinations may eventually yield a paying vocation. But for most of us, we are not only content with volunteerism; we are drawn more and more into it.


Thanks to the Internet, the democratization of the flow of information and the exchange of ideas is prompting a surge of volunteerism and a push-back against consumerism in the western world.

This is very good news, as both trends bode well for our culture, our society, and the community of life.

Thanks to the Internet, more and more individuals — and at astonishingly young ages —are discovering not only outlets for their creative energies but also the joy of giving away their gifts, of volunteering their time, of participating in the democratization of cultural progress.

Those of us besot with an avocational passion need no monetary draw to keep us producing and giving, producing and giving. More, we begin to start structuring our lives to free up more time to “play” in this worldwide and open exchange, this supremely democratic form of meritocracy that with no hesitation gives all comers a platform to prove the value of their projects.

For the still-in-school, this always-available creative outlet is a reminder that we do have worth and that life is not just confusion, boredom, and a set of rules and timetables not of our making. It is a way to gain respect and a sense of accomplishment.

For those who have launched into the adult world of earning a living, we learn by experience that if we really want to pursue our passion, then we have to cut back on what we buy, what we consume, what we think we must have and must do. We thus shed the default foundational value of our culture — that is, the goal to get, to spend, to acquire. Consumption as an end in itself.

For those who have fared well enough and long enough in life to no longer need to earn income, here is an outlet for putting wisdom to work. We happily volunteer time and energy toward projects of our own making — not just what our local community may offer. And, here too, the drive to consume diminishes. There is “something more” and that something more is a way to grow our legacy — to attend to our “immortality projects” — in this final phase of life.

Even the computer-phobic among us can manage to write (and with help, post) an Amazon (or Google Books) review. Old folks have a special role to play in this regard. Just tally up your favorite books of the past, find them on Amazon or Google Books, and post (what may well be) the very first review!


Let’s take a look at what the Internet era means for the folks who have long stood at the helm of idea generation and exchange at a societal level. This is the arena of “public intellectuals.”

Many in this category are scholars employed at colleges, universities, and privately funded think-tanks, whose ideas and communication skills launch them into public view. A rare few make their living as columnists with the top tier of newspapers and magazines. Others are entrepreneurs who must generate their own paycheck, by way of published articles, books, and speaking fees.

In September 2011, best-selling author Sam Harris posted on his blog ruminations on the dismal future for both the publishing industry and “public intellectuals.” Entrepreneurial public intellectuals, like Sam, have grown accustomed to earning their living by writing books and articles and giving the occasional invited talk.

Sam titled his essay, “The Future of the Book.” It begins,

Writers, artists, and public intellectuals are nearing some sort of precipice: Their audiences increasingly expect digital content to be free. Jaron Lanier has written and spoken about this issue with great sagacity. You can purchase his book here, which most of you will not do, or you can watch him discuss these matters for free. The problem is thus revealed even in the act of stating it.  How can a person like Lanier get paid for being brilliant? This has become an increasingly difficult question to answer.
       Where publishing is concerned, the Internet is both midwife and executioner. It has never been easier to reach large numbers of readers, but these readers have never felt more entitled to be informed and entertained for free. . .

After a fascinating tour of his own experience in print and recent forays into ebook self-publishing, blogging, and vlogging, Sam concludes:

One thing is certain: writers and public intellectuals must find a way to get paid for what they do—and the opportunities to do this are changing quickly. My current solution is to write longer books for a traditional press and publish short ebooks myself on Amazon. If anyone has any better ideas, please publish them somewhere—perhaps on a blog—and then send me a link. And I hope you get paid.

As a “public intellectual” and author, I too am feeling the financial pinch. For ten years my husband and I have been travelling the USA in our van, giving talks — mostly at no charge. We do, however, routinely set up a book table at each venue, where we sell our own books and dvds along with a selection of books by others — meaning, we earn our living more as booksellers than as idea-makers. With the crash in the economy, fewer people are buying books and dvds. To be sure, audiences enjoy the free lecture. Individuals may even be moved and remade by it; and they tell us so.  But most leave without purchasing anything.

I cannot fault them for that. I do the same. As Sam Harris pointed out, “audiences increasingly expect digital content to be free.” I would add that audiences increasingly expect to find all forms of content online (and for free), including the most alluring format of all: free videos on YouTube.

Indeed, over the past decade of this ongoing “major transition in evolution” (in the way information is stored and passed forward), software and hardware technologies for all three modes of communication have become increasingly available to those of even modest means — limited only by one’s drive to self-learn and persist in internet empowerment.  (See also Kevin Kelly’s superb blogposts on this theme: “The Major Transitions in Technology” and “Evolution of the Scientific Method”.)

And so, while I continue to love thinking and writing and talking (on audio and video), I am no longer doing so with the hopes of producing a salable product.  No more books!  (And beginning three months ago when YouTube eliminated the 10-minute limit on video uploads, I now also declare, No more dvds!)

More and more, I am drawn into volunteerism. More and more, I look for ways to reduce my spending so that less and less of my time needs to generate income.

The game has changed utterly, irrevocably.

Halleluia! . . . (I hope)


Let me be clear: Facebook pages that survive the individual’s death, along with the plethora of self-focussed and fluff YouTube videos, will of course pass forward in a memorabilia sort of way.  One’s great-great-great grandchild might someday thrill to catch a glimpse of what life was like for an ancestor in the days of digital deprivation, when there were still places where one had to purchase Internet access — indeed, when there were still regions lacking optical fibers or satellite feeds. As well, all such digital memorabilia may serve some function as part of a vast and easily accessible database for future scholars of cultural history and transformation.

But there are growing numbers of us whose creative and volunteer energies are sparked by a chance to pass forward something of lasting value — something that might actually improve a life (maybe a million lives) or help preserve the planet.

And we are willing to invest time in learning about that which captures our heart, our mind, our imagination, so that we truly will have something of value to post.

After weeks and months (even years) of soaking up the wisdom of others, one day an idea for a new project arrives unbidden. It may even be something we feel uniquely positioned to offer the world. So we get busy, taking great care that our text or audio or video baby will have a decent chance to capture the scarcest resource of all: the attention of other Internet surfers, public intellectuals, and immortality project creators.


Within the last few months, not one but two now-elderly creators of information-rich websites have sought to bequeath their digital babies to my husband and me. We are both in our fifties, so we are still a pretty good bet.

The websites are superb and uniquely valuable. Nonetheless, we declined. Both of us have a backlog of creative Internet projects we are aching to pursue. Assuming responsibility for somebody else’s website cannot compete with our existing creative To Do lists — no matter how worthy we regard those projects as contributors to the public good, to cultural progress.

Who will take those websites over?

And who (or, more likely, what) will take over ours in another few decades?


What new digital emergent will assure that these painstaking contributions are accessibly archived — maybe even periodically updated so that their worth not only maintains but grows?

Sure, I could take all of our audio podcast episodes one by one and laboriously turn each into a black-screen or minimal-jpg video and post them as a distinct playlist on my YouTube channel. But that is a cop-out. There really ought to be a way to keep ideas-rich audio as audio, while securely passing forward and superbly tagging each mp3 with a description and keywords, in YouTube fashion.

And there really ought to be a way to secure the continuity and accessibility of educational websites when their creators and caretakers give up the ghost.


I am certain that among the wealthy of the world are benefactors who have already secured in elaborate bunkers digital records and instructions for rebooting the Internet after a civilizational collapse (see update, below). That would be the greatest immortality project of all! Here is why:

We can direct our human ingenuity to perhaps safeguard the world from nuclear and biological terror. And it is well within our reach to nudge the flight paths of asteroids coming our way, if only we are willing to fund the effort.

But there is nothing we can do about our planet’s half-dozen civilization-destroying supervolcanoes.

So maybe digital “immortality” is a physical impossibility, even for the likes of Google.

Nonetheless, I am content to believe that at least some of my digital babies will live on — and continue to make a positive difference — until Yellowstone blows.
____________________

UPDATE 12/20/11: Kevin Kelly (author of What Technology Wants) directed me to one of those “bunkers” online, known as the WayBack Machine. It has a simple enough url: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php. And yes, indeed, my thegreatstory.org website is fully on there. It hasn’t yet connected the podcast archive pages of mine with the actual mp3’s, but finding a way to do that myself will go onto my long-term To-Do list. (BTW: I made a financial donation to the archive.)

Kevin’s email also said,

“YouTube will die some day. This is a certainty. What we need is a pan-civilization, non-profit record for all time. This is technically possible —even safe from Yellowstone supervolcano. We at The Long Now made a "backup" of 1,000 language versions of the same text (Gen 1-5) put it on a nickel disk (optical readable), and it is on its way to land on an orbiting comet right now. See the Rosetta Project at Long Now.  We could put the entire library of earth there if we wanted to.”

____________________

Connie Barlow’s immortality projects (in text, audio, and video formats) can be accessed through her main educational website: TheGreatStory.org, especially this page.

by Jon Cleland Host

Though I mentioned some resources for Evolutionary Parenting in my previous blog post, I never meant to suggest that it is easy – it’s not (heck, good parenting of any kind isn’t easy).  Like so much in life, however, that extra intentional effort is very rewarding.

Right now, at the beginning of December, many of us are indeed spending effort – preparing for the holidays.  But which holidays?  From the many available, nearly all of us are celebrating the holiday our parents taught us, perhaps including minor tweaks from our lives or our spouses.  That’s not a surprise, given that holidays are one of the most common ways that values are passed on to the next generation, answering our human need for both celebration and meaning.

Why “No Holidays” Is Not an Option

Our involvement in holidays, in terms of both time and money spent on the kids, is especially clear for many of us at this time of year – showing that we care about them.  After all, it is where we spend our time and money that shows what we really care about.  Children know this.  They see us with more unvarnished honesty than we may realize, constantly learning from what we actually do, nearly heedless of what we say.  Children see through hypocrisy like a picture window, especially as they get older.

So, what then are we teaching them with our chosen holidays, which speak to our children more loudly than anything we tell them?   What is all our holiday effort working to build?  Because honesty is one of the most important aspects of good parenting, my wife and I carefully chose which holidays to celebrate, and how to celebrate them.  Like a culture’s origin story, a culture’s holidays also must be both meaningful and real (or believable).  Real, for a holiday, includes being both fun and factual.  Holidays that aren’t fun backfire, leading to resentment that only teaches avoidance or antipathy towards the parents as well as whatever idea is otherwise intended.  Conversely, a holiday that is fun, but has no basis in reality or fails to teach good values, is little more than rank consumerism, teaching children greed and gluttony.  Does that sound like some holidays we have in America today?  Is it a surprise that so many Americans have grown up to be greedy, gluttonous, and empty of deep values, having learned exactly what they were taught?

What can be done?  Jettisoning all traditional holidays without replacing them is like having holidays that aren’t fun – especially when all your children’s friends are having a blast with those traditional holidays.  Do we have any choice other than empty holidays based on consumerism and superstition?

The answer is yes.  We do have another option, one which draws on the love, creativity, and effectiveness present in today’s parents – we can craft holidays that are meaningful, real and fun.  How that’s done will vary from family to family, and so what follows are just the solutions that Heather and I have found to work well for our family.  These may be a useful starting point, but ultimately it is up to each parent to find their family’s solution themselves.  For many, some adjustments to their old holidays may be all that is needed, and any holiday solution must be sustainable in today’s modern culture.  Too radical a departure will become an effort to maintain over the years, especially if they are celebrated on significantly different dates from traditional holidays, and are thus more likely to be abandoned over time.  The rest of this already long blog post describes our family celebration.

The Cleland-Host Family Approach to Holidays Around the Winter Solstice

Obviously, our whole year of family holidays is beyond the scope of a blog post, so this will cover only the Winter Solstice, which is December 22nd this year.  In this darkest time of the year, the returning light and the hope that light brings has been enough to make this time sacred for literally millions of your Ancestors for thousands of years.   Our modern understanding of the Universe gives us many other ideas to celebrate as well, and we have chosen stars (our Sun and other stars) as a central theme of our family Winter Solstice celebration.  Included in that theme are also supernovae, the stardust that makes our world (and us), the winter season, and connection to all humans that comes from realizing that ancient people on all continents celebrated the Winter Solstice millennia ago.  The Winter Solstice is, after all, the reason for the season – both meteorologically as well as culturally!

Holidays (and family cultures) must also have practices.  Our traditions for the Winter Solstice are similar in many ways to practices our kids see their friends doing.  They include a decorated Solstice Tree (with a star on top). Solstice lights are strung indoors and out (we point out to the kids that the different colors of the lights are like the different colors of the stars, and talk about star colors and types). Stockings are hung, as well as decorations with stars, evergreens, and snow.  We open a door in an “Advent” calendar every day, counting down the days to Solstice with small surprises, and tell the stories of stardust and of Kabibonokka (the north wind) over eggnog and cookies made in the shapes of stars, snowflakes, and evergreens.  See here for related resources.

This all of course culminates on the Winter Solstice itself.  After weeks of anticipation, we eat a decorated ice cream Yule Log on the night before Solstice, pointing out that our bodies’ metabolism will be burning that Yule log all night.  The next morning, the kids usually wake up before sunrise, and are allowed to go through their (now filled) Solstice stockings.  Soon, we gather up the kids in the dark blue of morning, trekking out to see the Sun return, victorious after its long decline.  The rising Sun is greeted with songs and poems, and then we take some time as a family to enjoy wherever we are — which is often the Lake Huron shoreline, as our home is in Midland, Michigan.

The kids are jumping with excitement by the time we return home, reminded that love from the Universe can make wonderful things happen.  They rush out to our family’s sacred space, a stone circle in our wooded backyard, to find gifts for all.  The gifts are brought into the house and opened one at a time, to start a sacred day with no work, instead having a party, visits with extended family, or other family time.  If asked, we truthfully answer questions about how the gifts got out there, if those questions are supported by evidence and good reason.  We never lie to the children, and they know that.  When a child uses their own reason to discover that we put the gifts there, we point out that what we told them first was true, because we parents are part of the Universe, and that they are not allowed to tell their siblings, who must also figure it out themselves.  So far, only our oldest child has figured it out, though his brother came very close last year, and I expect him to figure it out easily any day now.

How ever you choose to celebrate the season, our family extends the warmest wishes to you.

Happy Holidays!

~ Jon Cleland Host