We are eager to cancel this event, and we at the Gauntlett Institute along with millions around the world are working to fight the exploitative corporations and financially corrupted Governments who are driving our biodiversity into the grave! However we can see a great need for a ceremony / festival to end the world according to the current trajectory. (more info below).
This is a way for us to express our loss, mourning and gratitude. We are expecting more than a billion people! The biggest event in history!
Timing?
The invitation is going out with plenty of advance notice for two reasons:
There are 7 billion people and counting, 9 million species. We'd like everyone and everything to be there so we need a few years to organise ourselves!
Given that no consciously aware guests will be able to attend the event post-mortem, we have decided to bring the memorial forward, prior to the event of hominid extinction. The exponential nature of the problems facing the Earth and its inhabitants make it possible the biosphere will no longer sustain mammalian life by the year 2045. The Memorial is therefore 6 years prior to an end to allow for discrepancies in the data and ensure we get an end time service.
CEREMONY / FESTIVAL
The ceremony could take many forms. Anyone who wants to should have the opportunity to speak, play, paint, sing, wail…etc. It is as yet unknown who will be present those who are will shape the event.
There could be a celebration of all that the Earth has been. A recap of the journey we've made together so far; 4.5 billion years of shared history and ancestry. From out of the waters, from the soil, from the air we have breathed together and died together. Feeding off each other's death and life. A perfect beautifil and gruesome circle. We may look forward too, and celebrate what this planet can do, what wonders will grow here when we are gone.
FAQ's
Where does my ticket money go?
50% of revenues will be directed into World Saving NGO's. The remaining finances raised via ticket sales will be saved for building the infastructure to support the multitudes, e.g. porter loos, stages, technicians. A small admin fee will be retained by the G.I. (You can risk showing up on the day and being ripped off by a tout! It's up to you).
What is the dress code?
Societies around the world will have broken down and the economy collapsed by the time of the memorial and so it's a case of come as you are. By all means brush down your glad rags, spit shine your shoes, give that sari a dunk in the Ganges, bring out your celebration turban, or just wear your birthday suit!
Will the Earth be put in a coffin or cremated?
Although a collaborative global project would be a wonderful, inspiring and ironic way to finish this adventure, building and engineering a large enough casket has been abandoned. The build time exceeds the estimated date of need by nearly 40 years, plus the resources required for the ambitious operation would only encourage more intense deforestation and mining, bringing the date for a total toxic overload closer.
Fitting the Earth into the casket poses logistical problems too. Unless teams of construction workers can be sustained in created biospheres there won't be anyone around to fit the corpse into the gargantuan box anyway.
Mourners are invited to create their own local memorials. Other suggestions have been the entire dusty rock of the Earth can serve as a tombstone to itself, akin to Mars. And the layer of noxious gaseous pollutants, - a shroud.
Cremation has also been ruled out for the same reasons although in the same vein as the above, climate change and desertification of the Earth can be seen as a kind of inadvertent cremation. (From a Christo biblical view point the Earth is being destroyed by fire, - possibly a fire 90,000,000 miles away as our protection is stripped away).
Also see note below *
Is the Gauntlett Institute profiting from the Earth Funeral Memorial Service Festival Spectacular?
Absolutely. We project healthy revenues as the host organisers, (merchandising, branding etc). However! Despite the potential profits, we are working to and will gladly cancel the Memorial in the event of a change in scientific forecasts. We believe it is still possible to extend the Earth's support for large mammalian life and secure the future for our own children. (see below). Nothing would please us more than a very short term financial reward.
*How will the Earth die?
This hidden gem of the MIlky Way Galaxy, a planet of life, 3rd by distance from the Sun in the Solar system being killed by a combination of Man Slaughter and first degree murder.
The cause could be described as a cancer inspired by the chronic ideas of humans. The driving force behind this cancer is an absurd economic system based on continual growth, with the fantastical notion there is more than one world's worth of resources. As well as polluting industrial activities of our one species, near complete depletion of natural resources, including abuse of the limited fresh water, deforestation, reduced soils to near zero nutrient value and over acidification of the seas, this total toxic overload made (and will make) many species extinct at the macro level of the system and disrupted the cycles of atmosphere, currents and balance of temperature at the global level.**
Some examples of recent and ongoing extinctions:
Eastern Cougar, Western Black Rhinoceros, White-chested White-eye, More than half of the Earth's rain forests have been burned up. Complete list of extinct species.
*The Earth won't be entirely dead and is presumed to continue supporting some life; cockroaches, bacteria, scorpions and many other unexpected creatures to out live the larger mammals, fish and birds through this period. Given the right conditions a stable climate able to support mammals may return to the Earth within 100,000 years or so.
**It's incredible to think that such a beautiful unique spot in the cosmos could be utterly destroyed by an illusory currency system; a kind of pyramid scheme that on the one hand appears to only benefit a few, while the rest of the populace buy into it living a kind of servitude to those at the top. All of them trapped in a psychosis to maintain faith in this ludicrous concept of exploitation, commerce, unreconcilable debt and waste, (of time/energy/resources).
How can I stop the Earth dying?
Let's take the Funeral Service out of the Festival Spectacular. Let's make it a party for generations to write stories about. A selection of the most useful and powerful on and off line communities, ideas, reading / viewing lists and actions will be coming soon.
Read our broad suggestions for Earth Funeral Service Festival Spectacular cancellation here:
A: Belief and understanding
I need to resuscitate my enthusiasm / compassion and breathe life into myself for a greater sensitivity, treading more lightly on the Earth. I need to examine the patterns I live while observing their effects on the natural world, and on my cousins globally. Learn to really understand that without a richly biodiverse and healthy eco system I am nothing, and no amount of technology can save us if we continue. I am a part of an incredible complex interaction of give and take. I should begin to believe the majority want the power to positively influence the outcome and we can take it if we try.
B: Personal actions
With A in mind I need to be willing to change myself, not just in how I live; using less energy, recycling...etc, but also to exchanging the feedback loop of excessive consumption for a richer more people / sense-centric lifestyle. I can no longer allow my cousins to be exploited. Achieve a Degrowth trajectory for the economy while gardening the natural world and allowing it to flourish should be my priority. To live creatively in a world that needs my imagination like never before. (The foundational three fold solution to my 'salvation').
C: Collaborative Resistance.
Along side my fellow citizen cousins, I need to confront the corporations and governments who are the 'ecocide practitioners' wilfully out of control on my behalf and currently with my help. These elites have developed a financially motivated psychosis along with a belief in their style of progress. The current fiscal mechanism flows money energy upwards to those in power, siphoning the resources in what can be described as a pyramid scheme of epic proportions. The pyramid also serves to maintain distance from those cousins beneath them which in turn keeps their life plans safe. This insanity has many brainwashed via the hegemony of ideas. I may be one of them. I have at least partially bought into it. I am allowing an apocalypse reality closer to my planet's story. I will no longer allow myself to be exploited. Read on or go back to A.
How can I get involved?
Although we will be taking advice from experienced undertaker consultants, masters of ceremony, party planners… etc, we're not recruiting for the funeral just yet. Until further notice the best possible use of our time and energy will be collectively stopping it from happening. We are inviting everyone to get involved with spiralling our collective trajectory into 'control'.
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