"How can you be happy if you think we are facing disaster?"

(One of the many questions raised by my new book. Please read through and follow the links – you could save £8)

I am human, therefore I am very good at putting bad things into various bags that we all carry round with us: "not for a while yet" "Won't affect my family" "won't affect where I live" "I will be dead by then" - all tried and true methods for not looking at inconvenient truths. This is your primitive brain speaking - the bit concerned with immediate survival. Many of us are quite happy to leave it at that and get on with our lives.

Unfortunately for me another bit of my brain keeps asking questions, and what answers I can find to the most urgent of them lead to an awareness that the threat to our species is real and imminent. Surely that is enough to cast anyone into a state of deep fear and depression? 

For some people of course that is true. There are some who own a whole cloud of potential disasters which follow them everywhere, blocking out the warmth and the light. I feel very sorry for these people, but I am not one of them. It takes a bit of effort sometimes, but I can usually see the promise of sunshine somewhere up ahead.

I have a technique which works well for me. Whenever I am worried about something I say to myself:

 "Worry is a form of fear. What am I afraid of?" I then stare the beast in the eye:

"Right Worry, what's the worst that can happen?"

Supposing I'm worried about the world running out of food (a disaster I believe to be increasingly likely). Being human, the primitive side of my brain has little concern for something which might happen in 10 years’ time, and not very much concern for the mass of humanity - only for those closest and dearest to me. Since I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren I discover that I am very concerned for them. The next step is to say to myself:

"OK the worst that can happen is that the younger members of my family might starve."

WHAT?! That would certainly be horrible, and I am upset for a while. Then I look in my bags and convince myself that it won't happen very soon, won't affect where I live and probably will not happen in my lifetime. I am human after all, . . . .

 BUT . . . I'm also a very rational human being and the inconvenient truth keeps coming to the surface again. This calls for the next level of worry management:

"What can I do to prevent it happening?" Well, a perfectly logical answer would be

"Nothing - it's going to happen, and we must do what we can to accept our fate." 

Not being a natural pessimist I reject that and I now see two opposing ways of dealing with a threat like this. One would be to grow our own food and encourage a much greater degree of self-sufficiency. This is the inward-looking bunker mentality. We saw a lot of this when I was at school and the threat of nuclear war was ever-present. 

The other would be to support techniques to make more food available to everybody. This is the "technology will save us" school of thought. It stems from a confident assertion that our human super-brains can solve all the problems they have brought upon humanity. 

No!  . . . Neither of those will do, but I still want to do something about it.

My research shows that we could prevent this disaster if we can persuade enough people to organise their lives differently. But how on earth can I persuade people? Except for my vote, have no political clout. I barely register in the social media. I don't have the academic abilities to do original research and to write well-documented papers, and my track record at serious writing hardly inspires confidence.  

Perhaps I can tell a story? Perhaps my story will give my grandchildren and their contemporaries some hope?

This was the impulse which lead me to undertake my first ever book. It's taken 4 years and a huge amount of learning about the art of fiction writing. The chances of it becoming a best-seller are vanishingly small, but I've done it. This is my contribution and even if it becomes just another distant twinkling light in the enormous firmament of published books, it will make me feel better. I've done my bit and I can allow myself to be happy.

 

THE VANDERVELDE DOCUMENTS

 

SPECIAL BOOK LAUNCH OFFER WORTH EIGHT POUNDS!

 

Welcome to the launch of my book series The Vandervelde Documents published by Cambria Books.  

The print version is a compilation of three books: The Carbon Brief, The Phoenix Nation and The Warden, all available as e-books through Amazon.  

The launch offer is £5 off the PRINT BOOK and FREE SHIPPING worth £3. Your checkout coupon is vander01. There is a limit of one per person and the offer expires at the end of April. Anyone buying the print version will also be able to claim free copies of the e-books.  

One more freebie: If you would like to do a review of The Carbon Brief you can download the e-book free.