Welcome to the School of Unavoidable, Catastrophic Knocks (Sucks)

This morning I woke up very early, during a thunderstorm, and as I slipped back toward sleep I found myself thinking, oddly, of the hackneyed phrase “the school of hard knocks.”

Only, my devilishly diabolical (at times) mind focused on the “s” and the “k” and wondered, “Hmm… those are the exact letters that start and finish the word ‘suck.’ Wouldn’t it be cool to come up with a descriptor for our crazy, dangerous times that condenses into the acronym ‘sucks’?” As in, “Dammit, this whacked-out BS really SUCKS!”

And voila, as I drifted off, the phrase “the school of unavoidable, catastrophic (hard) knocks” entered my brain. I vowed to remember it when I woke up. And I did.

It’s not exact. Nope. There’s no “s” at the end — unless I add “and shitstorms.” But that’s way too long: “the school of unavoidable, catastrophic knocks and shitstorms” is a bit much. So, I’ll leave it as “the school of unavoidable, catastrophic knocks,” and still impishly use the full acronym SUCKS. Ha! Suck on that, grammar and control freaks!

Humanity’s endless “school for lifelong learning”

Diabolical humor aside, the phrase “the school of unavoidable, catastrophic knocks” is a useful mnemonic device. Every letter (well, except the last) of its acronym SUCKS correlates with an essential aspect of our current, dire ‘reality.’ And I will explore each correlation in depth.

First, there’s school. Many spiritual teachers have stated that our life on Earth is a kind of “school,” with a curriculum focused on learning how to love, share with, and lift up our fellow human beings. Sadly, most of us suck at doing this, or living this way. Most of us have a lot to learn about loving, giving, and sharing — and it doesn’t help (at all!) that our “modern” societies focus so much on individualism, greed, and personal wealth… all while denigrating or mocking altruism and sharing as “socialism.”

This upside-down approach to life is especially evident and powerful in the US. Here, brutal, unrestrained capitalism reigns, and individual “success” and vast wealth are glorified while community-mindedness and sharing are suppressed and vilified. It’s truly a crazy-making, antisocial ‘society,’ and the craziness it engenders is growing and metastasizing like a spreading cancer.

We can’t go on this way. Rather, we can (short-term), and still seem quite determined to continue our weird, destructive ways. But if we do, we’ll have to face intensifying, accelerating negative consequences. If life is, in many ways, akin to a “school,” then modern humans are mainly failing. We are not learning our crucial lessons. In some respects, we are backsliding and reverting to older, more primitive beliefs and behaviors.

Fascism. Racism. Ethnic hatred. Misogyny. Cruelty. Oppression. Deepening ecological destruction. All on the rise, now.

Folks, we humans are not learning our most vital lessons. Which brings us directly to the “unavoidable” part.

Facing hard, unavoidable truths

The original phrase “the school of hard knocks” expresses a major truth about most humans: we learn most and best from hard, painful personal experiences. Even further, most of us only learn from intense, painful experiences that directly impact our lives. Anything less is far too easy to gloss over or avoid, in our endless quest for safety and “stability.” Usually, we’d rather stay stuck and stagnant than risk real change and growth.

But over the past few decades, humanity as a whole has entered a new and dangerous reality: the realm of human-caused ecological, climatological, and societal deterioration and collapse. We have entered into serious ecological overshoot, meaning that humanity is both overpopulating the planet and consuming our way to complete ecological destruction and collapse.

Get this: over the past 55 years, world population has steadily increased by an average of 75,000,000 people annually, or about 750,000,000 every decade, like clockwork. Plus, over that same period, billions of new, voracious ‘consumers’ have entered the global economy, to the extent that today we are rapidly draining dry the earth’s ‘resources,’ exploiting and often wrecking vital natural processes, and wreaking havoc on our planetary ecology.

All these facts point to a grim, inescapable conclusion: humanity is totally out of control and is creating worldwide destructive results that are also spinning out of control. That’s the exact reason why the next phase of our “earth school” will consist of a hard, painful series of unavoidable lessons.

We humans couldn’t — or wouldn’t — learn things the ‘nicer,’ easier way, so what we’re now left with (and condemned to) is learning in the hardest way possible: through vast, unending pain, disruption, and deprivation that we ourselves have made inevitable.

Our allegiance to greed, endless desire, and voracious consumption has led us straight to this horrific juncture. We did it to ourselves… and now we will face the unavoidable consequences of our foolish actions. I’m not saying we ‘may’ face them or ‘could’ face them. I’m saying we WILL face them, and in truth, that’s already happening and intensifying. Now. Today.

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Disruption, catastrophe, and collapse

Next, we come to “catastrophic.” Scarily, this word is not hyperbolic; it merely describes the exact level of pain, difficulty, deprivation, and collapse that is fast approaching. Humanity blew it, badly — and we’re about to experience the full extent and full, catastrophe-laden results we’ve been busily creating for the past half-century.

For example, for over 30 years, the nations of the world have gathered annually for COP (conference of parties) meetings, ostensibly to find ways to collectively limit CO2 and methane emissions and reduce the level of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. The overall goal was to limit or slow climate change/disruption.

But we didn’t do it — any of it. We didn’t reduce emissions, which have risen steadily over that period, nor did we reduce CO2 or methane levels, which have also risen steadily. Not once did we meet our supposed “goals” — and this sad fact tells us all we need to know about humanity’s capacity to learn, grow, and change. We simply won’t do it, unless and until dramatic external issues/problems force us to make drastic changes.

We can’t seem to control ourselves or “grow up” in any meaningful way — so the universe is now supplying us with much-needed, potent kicks in our collective asses. And the kicks keep coming, and also intensifying. They are just starting to reach true catastrophic levels.

We’re in for a wild, dangerous, and often painful ride, folks. Buckle up. We’re fully enmeshed in the sweeping ‘new curriculum,’ now — and it truly SUCKS.

The school of VERY hard and painful knocks

Now for the last word, “knocks.” It should be quite apparent, from all the above information, that the West and most of the world, in general, are about to experience a cascading series of failures, major disruptions, and ecological, economic, and social collapses.

There is no way around it, and no way to avoid it — because we ourselves have set it up this way, and are still firmly committed to our greedy, destructive ways. The hard knocks are coming, though, and they’re coming fast. We are going to be knocked on our collective asses, and we are going to suffer the consequences of our endarkened attitudes and actions.

Why? Because that’s the way our “earth school” works, for whatever reason, and there is nothing we can do about that. Not a damn thing. Nor should we want to. If humanity is ever to learn, change, and “grow up,” we need to learn some deep and crucial lessons. And if we refuse to learn them easily or voluntarily… well, the compassionate, obliging universe has provided us with other viable ways to learn and grow.

Thus, the “school of hard knocks.” Thus, our current, intensified version, abbreviated as SUCKS: the School of Unavoidable, Catastrophic Knocks.

This is not a school you can play hooky from, or just skip entirely. It’s all-encompassing and compulsory.

Humanity will learn its lessons, even if it takes many decades or even many centuries. We will learn and evolve… because that’s what we’re here to do.

That’s the only reason we’re here in this “earth school,” after all. Lifelong learning and growth are truly… everything.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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