The declaration by 36 US psychiatric doctors that the US President is mad and constitutes a ‘clear and present danger to the world’ understates the case.
"It is time humanity started to think beyond the fossilised structures of wealth and nationality that are destroying us, and into a future for one people on one planet."
Fair enough. That's a good example of WHAT should be done but the madmen and their billionaire supporters who run the world have no interest in seeing that anything like this happens.
We are left with the forever question: HOW do we achieve a state of 'one-planet living', i.e., of humanity living more equitably within the biophysical means of nature?
There is a vast gulf between the sometimes obvious WHAT that needs to be done and the ever-elusive HOW to get it done when it comes to reining in overshoot and gross cultural dysfunction.
Well, Bill, you know better than me. There are many possible pathways to a sustainable world, but most of them entail passing through Hell on the way. The precise nature of Hell has yet to be revealed but clearly entails resource collapse, mass extinction, famine, war (probably nuclear), hothouse Earth etc. The HOW thus depends on which particular path we find ourselves. A million years of human prehistory indicates that we are quite an inventive species when it comes to survival. I put my hope in that!
But we've never had a world this degraded before. And, as I understand it, the general well-being afforded by a certain level of societal affluence fosters more democratic means of social structuring. As the climate collapses, resources deplete, waste piles up, and ecosystems break down, human social structure will typically become more competitive (and less cooperative), more violent, and more tribal.
Bad leaders with bad policies promoting bad intentions. Yeah - it hard not to feel hopeless.
Let's start with an assault on the corporations:
The corporate mindset does not allow for sharing, it only cares about profit. I’ve written it many times in the past and will reiterate it here – the only way to gain any real traction in our desire to save the planet and our species in the process is to outlaw the corporation as a business structure because what would you expect from an invented business entity that doesn’t have a beating heart and never dies?
Yes, good points that leaders and CEO’s have strong dark triad traits. Modernity is the result of historic and current violence and extraction in the South by the North. Perhaps we should help in a slow decline? But as I commonly say, who wants to give up 24-hour ice cream to do that?
"The transfer of power from nations to corporates is of significance to the nuclear arms race since, for the present, only nine nation states can afford to bear nuclear arms, and so imperil the future of all humanity." Yes, quite terrifying, and if we dare to challenge it we risk getting squashed like a bug.
However, I still believe that we can take steps as communities to nurture and care for each other in spite of this backdrop. Taking part in the 'Pacific Peace Pilgrimage' recently in Canberra was a powerful reminder how sharing stories, advocacy to those who will listen, building relationships and networks can empower and energise us - sprinkled with song, laughter and tears!
Profound Article Julian. For me this all goes back to what Eric Voegelin developed, that in our earliest beginnings as Homo sapiens we were invited to discover a transcendent meaning of existence. He terms this an upward pull of transcendence. He goes on to say that humans have always felt the need to explore their capacity for mythic imagination by which they respond to the pull of transcendence. However, when they resist this upward pull, they create symbols of deformation in which they fall prey to the lust to dominate.
We have the capacity to open to an experience of transcendence and the realization our self as earth citizens who profoundly care for the Earth for each other, for all sentient beings.
I find personally that cultivating the mind to enlightenment is the one best thing that I can do. And of course, there is the hope that many people can open to this sacred vision of life and humanity and the Earth.
I wish you may be right, but I suspect the pull of greed (desire to occupy resources and use them to consolidate power over others) will transcend transcendance.
Even if nations are inherently unsustainable, there will be some peoples embracing the concept for as long as they can.
Only in the far future, if humanity is miraculously still around, when energy and material resources are fully depleted and it’s back to muscles and firewood, will nations be impossible to maintain and necessarily abandoned. The road there will be unimaginably grim, because the entire world will never have the necessary simultaneous paradigm shift of mode of operation - many nations, corporations and religions will happily engulf their weaker neighbours. It’s an unsolvable game-theoretical predicament.
I think that when money and food collapse, then so will most nations and larger entities. I agree some people will cling to the idea, just as some cling to monarchies and theocracies, but once nations are gone people will discover they can survive perfectly well with local self-governance, as they have these past half million years...
I wish you may be right. But a contracting economy does not mean loss of the structures that comprise it - merely the shrinkage of their size. At the moments people are so obsessed with the delusion of wealth, that the machinery for 'creating' it (ie stealing it from others) is rather durable. But when the wealth vanishes, so too will the machinery.
That’s a 3 Pinot conversation! Probably by Collapse, initially, precipitated by a global famine and consequent mass migration, war and nation failures. However, we could have a science based global currency tomorrow, if the UN had the guts to establish it. As to getting rid of nukes, it’s possible because we have already largely abandoned chemical and bioweapons. See Trish’s comment above. But the will to do this does not yet exist in eg, the US, Russia, Israel etc. so they will probably have to fail first. Suffice to say there are a number of possible routes…
Julian, you conclude:
"It is time humanity started to think beyond the fossilised structures of wealth and nationality that are destroying us, and into a future for one people on one planet."
Fair enough. That's a good example of WHAT should be done but the madmen and their billionaire supporters who run the world have no interest in seeing that anything like this happens.
We are left with the forever question: HOW do we achieve a state of 'one-planet living', i.e., of humanity living more equitably within the biophysical means of nature?
There is a vast gulf between the sometimes obvious WHAT that needs to be done and the ever-elusive HOW to get it done when it comes to reining in overshoot and gross cultural dysfunction.
Well, Bill, you know better than me. There are many possible pathways to a sustainable world, but most of them entail passing through Hell on the way. The precise nature of Hell has yet to be revealed but clearly entails resource collapse, mass extinction, famine, war (probably nuclear), hothouse Earth etc. The HOW thus depends on which particular path we find ourselves. A million years of human prehistory indicates that we are quite an inventive species when it comes to survival. I put my hope in that!
But we've never had a world this degraded before. And, as I understand it, the general well-being afforded by a certain level of societal affluence fosters more democratic means of social structuring. As the climate collapses, resources deplete, waste piles up, and ecosystems break down, human social structure will typically become more competitive (and less cooperative), more violent, and more tribal.
Yes it begins with overpopulation and overconsumption. However it ramifies into the Human Emergency. This is what we can do about it:https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/how-to-fix-a-broken-planet/767A862FDEAB8201E9B7C92E12760904
Bad leaders with bad policies promoting bad intentions. Yeah - it hard not to feel hopeless.
Let's start with an assault on the corporations:
The corporate mindset does not allow for sharing, it only cares about profit. I’ve written it many times in the past and will reiterate it here – the only way to gain any real traction in our desire to save the planet and our species in the process is to outlaw the corporation as a business structure because what would you expect from an invented business entity that doesn’t have a beating heart and never dies?
In uncharted waters in a storm with a madman at the helm. At least 700 survived the Titanic. We may not have a chance this time.
What's scarier is the iceberg will be alot smaller if it isn't completely melted this time.
One of your best, bravo!
To effectively DEcarbonize we have to.. DEtyrannize
As Earth 🔥
Yes, good points that leaders and CEO’s have strong dark triad traits. Modernity is the result of historic and current violence and extraction in the South by the North. Perhaps we should help in a slow decline? But as I commonly say, who wants to give up 24-hour ice cream to do that?
I doubt the decline will be slow. It will probably be a perfect biological collapse, as happens to most species when they outrun their resources.
Given the leaders and the weaponry, I think it will be nuclear war.
Example: Trump's niece Mary has said that if he thinks he's going down, he'll try to take everyone else with him. I believe her.
Excellent, thanks Julian.
"The transfer of power from nations to corporates is of significance to the nuclear arms race since, for the present, only nine nation states can afford to bear nuclear arms, and so imperil the future of all humanity." Yes, quite terrifying, and if we dare to challenge it we risk getting squashed like a bug.
However, I still believe that we can take steps as communities to nurture and care for each other in spite of this backdrop. Taking part in the 'Pacific Peace Pilgrimage' recently in Canberra was a powerful reminder how sharing stories, advocacy to those who will listen, building relationships and networks can empower and energise us - sprinkled with song, laughter and tears!
Great insight, Julian!
"..mad warlords and greedy scoundrels" - The heat🥵 brings madness and the madness brings more heat. Kinda feedbacks
Profound Article Julian. For me this all goes back to what Eric Voegelin developed, that in our earliest beginnings as Homo sapiens we were invited to discover a transcendent meaning of existence. He terms this an upward pull of transcendence. He goes on to say that humans have always felt the need to explore their capacity for mythic imagination by which they respond to the pull of transcendence. However, when they resist this upward pull, they create symbols of deformation in which they fall prey to the lust to dominate.
We have the capacity to open to an experience of transcendence and the realization our self as earth citizens who profoundly care for the Earth for each other, for all sentient beings.
I find personally that cultivating the mind to enlightenment is the one best thing that I can do. And of course, there is the hope that many people can open to this sacred vision of life and humanity and the Earth.
I wish you may be right, but I suspect the pull of greed (desire to occupy resources and use them to consolidate power over others) will transcend transcendance.
Even if nations are inherently unsustainable, there will be some peoples embracing the concept for as long as they can.
Only in the far future, if humanity is miraculously still around, when energy and material resources are fully depleted and it’s back to muscles and firewood, will nations be impossible to maintain and necessarily abandoned. The road there will be unimaginably grim, because the entire world will never have the necessary simultaneous paradigm shift of mode of operation - many nations, corporations and religions will happily engulf their weaker neighbours. It’s an unsolvable game-theoretical predicament.
I think that when money and food collapse, then so will most nations and larger entities. I agree some people will cling to the idea, just as some cling to monarchies and theocracies, but once nations are gone people will discover they can survive perfectly well with local self-governance, as they have these past half million years...
Corporations are also on the way out, fortunately. The global economy has already peaked and is now in decline:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/synopsis/
I wish you may be right. But a contracting economy does not mean loss of the structures that comprise it - merely the shrinkage of their size. At the moments people are so obsessed with the delusion of wealth, that the machinery for 'creating' it (ie stealing it from others) is rather durable. But when the wealth vanishes, so too will the machinery.
Excellent piece, yet how do you propose we get from here to there?
That’s a 3 Pinot conversation! Probably by Collapse, initially, precipitated by a global famine and consequent mass migration, war and nation failures. However, we could have a science based global currency tomorrow, if the UN had the guts to establish it. As to getting rid of nukes, it’s possible because we have already largely abandoned chemical and bioweapons. See Trish’s comment above. But the will to do this does not yet exist in eg, the US, Russia, Israel etc. so they will probably have to fail first. Suffice to say there are a number of possible routes…