TRUTHTELLER
Manhattan May 9, 2014
So where are we headed?
I wanna go over to the river.
And we'll go down right to the water.
Okay, so you wanna go to the beach? Yeah, I wanna go to the beach.
So we're going to one of the only sand beaches in Manhattan, right?
Yes, it's one of the few places
you can actually put your hand in the
East River. -Which is essentially the ocean.
Which is essentially the ocean. It's an estuary.
It's gonna depend on the tide, though. If the tide's a little high there ain't no getting down.
We'll take our chances. Just like real life.
You can only imagine how beautiful this used to be.
This area here is landfill.
It was a sea marsh -- a salt marsh,
full of reeds and beautiful plants.
Also, this was all flooded during the hurricane--
which is an example of who's winning in the long run.
That being? -Nature. Not us--
and our arrogance.
So what have we here?
This is how we use nature as decor. -Hmm--nature as decor.
Yes.
There're these swallows flying around here.
Somehow a species beyond pigeons and sparrows has
managed to survive this ecological brutality.
So, seeing a more nuanced species that's not just generic
always gives me hope. There goes one now!
You're actually 66-and-a-half, right?
Yes, and I'll be 67 soon enough.
I'll glad I can still be functioning and growing
and exploring life's odyssey,
and raising my own consciousness
and I hope to actually raise the consciousness of the world,
so that we don't just
continue engaging in this mass suicide.
I think that people who commit suicide can't deal with their inner world.
Why would we engage in mass suicide? -As a species, you mean?
As a species, yes, because we are terrified of looking inside ourselves
essentially because we will see that our parents and our ancestors have hurt us.
And this is very painful for anyone to witness and admit and grieve.
But if we don't we will engage in collective suicide--
as we sit comfortably watching TV as the world collapses around us economically
and ecologically.
And one day we'll wake up, it's like, "Oh my god--we're in a huge catastrophe!"
"There's no water, there's no food."
"But there is Channel 5!"
I'm sorry to joke. But, it's so far gone in some ways.
I think it's why a lot of people can't look at it.
They're so far gone in their own lives,
they've had children they've destroyed, and they can't admit it.
Their children are having children.
It's like collective insanity.
But some of us stayed single, didn't have children, and dare to be honest.
There's always someone who's a truthteller in the world.
I'm part of that collective of truthtellers, people who,
for whatever reason, were born with a greater capacity to be honest.
So this is what we've done to this idyllic, scenic place.
We've used it and abused it for our own purposes.
We think this can go on forever.
But the fact is the earth is limited,
not only in its resources, but in its ability to absorb our pollution.
And our external pollution mirrors the pollution we deny within ourselves,
which is a collective, ancestral, parental trauma.
So, over there we've built more high-rises just to pack more
people into Queens. A great view of Manhattan.
I mean, human engineering is spectacular. But when it's linked
to a rapacious, wounded inner child,
and not a conscious being,
a conscious adult and a conscious species,
it becomes very destructive.
So it's really not an ecological crisis but a moral crisis.
A crisis of conscience,
that a conscious species would engage in its own annihilation.
It's hard to fathom.
So I use myself as an example: of maintaining my consciousness
in the midst of this
very challenging city.
And now I'm a voice for truth in this place.
But I just feel consciousness and truth
and evolution and nature are stronger than our limited humanity.
We're so anthropocentric that we think
the way we rule and the way we destroy
have more power than nature. And I disagree.
I don't know--I can't say how this mass extinction will end
but I know that nature will go on and my hypothesis
is that a conscious some of us will continue.
Thank you to Fred Timm
A film by Daniel Mackler