We are saturated with exposure to the world’s problems on a daily basis. By now, there are sufficient volumes of critique on the social, cultural and moral belief systems that propel modern society onward towards the collapse of our host ecosystems, no matter how many voices raise the alarm call. While critique holds value, alone it is constrained in its ability to affect meaningful change. Instead, it should co-arise with vision and method. Post-modernism – in essence a critique of modernism – is an alright beginning, but without providing vision and direction, despair can set in as we recognize that, on an individual level, there is little we can do to alter the momentum of our energy and resource hungry socioeconomic juggernaut.
My intention here is neither to re-examine the grim outlook of more knowledgeable academics, nor is it a hubristic attempt to provide a vision of a worldview that would allow for greater human flourishing and the long term viability of complex life on earth. Rather, I am concerned with orientation. What are the fundamental questions that humans alive at this particular moment in time should ask of themselves? What conjectures should we spend time pondering in order to realize a framework by which we may live hopeful, meaningful lives in the Anthropocene? By finding the right questions, we can inoculate ourselves to despair and focus our energy on the more productive pastures of vision and method.
Vision, in simple terms ‘where we want to go’, will always be contested. The domain of our agency is inherently local and we should be encouraged by the fact that there will be a plurality of answers to these questions. However, the more pathfinding we do for cultural concepts that could form the foundation for a human civilization in stable balance with the carrying capacity of our ecosystems, the more tools and blueprints future generations will have to chart their course through the world we leave for them.
To give the biosphere, humanity included, the best possible chance of surviving and flourishing through deep time, we must acknowledge limits to growth and re-learn our being in this world through cultural concepts that (re)couple our future to that of all living things.
How then should we approach the task of pathfinding for cultural concepts that could form the scaffolding for a more balanced and meaningful way of life during and beyond the carbon pulse? Is this all just some high-minded meander down philosophy lane with little real world applicability? My hunch is that making sure we are asking the right questions is an important starting point. If we don’t do so, we get hosts of bright, well-intentioned young people dedicating their lives to the work of the energy transition, without questioning the fundamental premise. It is important work, but it is not the work. The work is cultural change founded upon a shift in the way in which we view ourselves in relation to other living things.
In no particular order, here are the questions I have come to.
- How can awe and wonder in experiencing the natural world be restored as a central aspect of being?
- Is it our duty to protect, maintain and serve life?
- How can we, acknowledging the limits of our abilities, work to protect some of the beauty in the world and bring it forward into the future?
- Can we re-write current cultural narratives that separate humans from other forms of life? Stories are expressions of culture, but also feed into culture. The stories we tell ourselves shape our capacity for empathy. As a writer friend of mine eloquently puts it:
“The stories inside us carry wisdom that can care for our tender, unformed questions and desires. And when we receive stories from others, they too can bring meaning and hope. Like telling a shy girl who liked to daydream but was afraid of the real world that there was a place for her too, and that she would one day find it.”
- To restate the central question of the Consilience Project’s recent article Development in Progress, what constitutes authentic progress? Progress for whom? Can something that is bad for nature still be considered progress? Can betterment that is not distributed equally still be considered betterment? Defining progress is significant to how we orient ourselves individually and collectively. Advancement should not be equated with betterment.
- Can restraint be restored as a core value in our current cultural precepts? Restraint is a key tenet of most traditional conceptions of wisdom.
- Is our current conception of technology as values neutral a key problem to address? To change culture at scale, technology and what it predisposes must be given serious consideration.
- Can the educational system be reimagined to clearly prioritize the public good across the entire educational curriculum? Current educational systems are a reflection of a competitive, growth-oriented geopolitics. Instead of telling young kids that the world is facing many crises which they maybe be able to help fix once they’re grown-ups, can the doing of real, meaningful work within community become a vector for positive cultural change?
By taking the time to formulate and examine questions that probe the nature of genuine human betterment, we can orient ourselves with greater clarity towards individual and collective action in service of authentic progress. Words carry meaning and I have found the words of author Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) to capture a rare and inspiring lucidity:
“To use the world well, to stop wasting it and our time in it, we need to re-learn our being in it.”
We would do well to heed her advice to rely more courageously on the power of narratives that reveal to us a reason for hope and a path towards other designs for life.
References
Hagens, N. (Host). (2024, June 26). Jonathan Rowson: The Flip, the Formation, and the Fun: A Metamodern Framework for Human Futures. [Audio podcast episode]. The Great Simplification. https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/129-jonathan-rowson
Reimer, I. (2024, October 22). Growing the Canon of Literary Heroines. Counterparts. https://ilanareimer.substack.com/p/growing-the-canon-of-literary-heroines?r=3e74s3
Anonymous (collective author attribution). (2024, July 16). Technology is not values neutral: Ending the reign of nihilistic design. The Consilience Project. https://consilienceproject.org/development-in-progress/
Anonymous (collective author attribution). (2023, July 3). Technology is not values neutral: Ending the reign of nihilistic design. The Consilience Project. https://consilienceproject.org/technology-is-not-values-neutral-ending-the-reign-of-nihilistic-design-2/
Final quote, regrettably I cannot recall the exact page number:
Le Guin, U. K. (2016). Late in the day: Poems, 2010-2014. PM Press.
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I agree with this concept. Although I would focus on a different question: What is wrong with our world and its governance and culture/s today and how did it get that way? What is the source of the mistake? I think if you don't seek for the cause of ill health, you are likely to be offered a palliative that suppresses the symptoms but likely causes side effects and, not solving the underlying problem, it may pop up in a different form. Isaac seems to have ideas similar to my own about the source of the problem: a culture thousands of years old that is based on domination and clings to an adolescent rejection of limits. Indigenous cultures with long histories of harmony with their ecosystemic bases were trampled underfoot and often eradicated by this culture, which is continuing to appropriate any parts of the Earth it has not already swallowed.
The thing is, I can't see a transition into a healthier culture to supplant this extremely destructive and violent one, except through cataclysmic breakdown, because the culture has built failsafes for itself, means of protecting the power of the powerful from any challenge. Key is the control of information and discussion. The problem is not government or corporations but a corporate-government-media complex, and the media wing has become expert at protecting the other two wings from challenges.
But because it prioritizes the further enrichment of the wealthy over all else, it can't solve problems; we passed the red lines and shrieking alarms a long time ago. Breakdown is surely fairly imminent, though the form and trajectory of breakdown can't be predicted. And breakdown is the one thing that will destroy those failsafes, terminate the hypnotic noise from myriad forms of media manipulation, and let the survivors confer lucidly about how to rebuild, how to create a sane culture and a religion in harmony with the actual world we live on. Discussions likely to be local, and vary widely from one to another.
Hi! I agree with you that seeking a deeper understanding of the underlying root causes of our current cultural trajectory is an essential part of this exercise. I believe that this kind of reflection is best paired with more proactive questions such as the ones I've attempted formulate above. 'Where did we all go wrong' reflections and acknowledging the likelihood of breakdown are entirely valid points of discussion. In many ways, they come hand in hand with attempting to understand the meta-crisis. Regardless of the forecast for the future, I thinks its important not to wait around for the world to hurry up and fall apart already as there's plenty of beauty still in the world. This does not require optimism, but I do think it requires empathy and, to the extent that we possess agency, action. To that end, I think formulating some action-oriented questions as a basis for our moral belief systems is an important counterpart to reflecting on how we got ourselves into this almighty kerfuffle.
The fundamentals of human behavior and culture are the same as they have been for thousands of years. What turned those fundamentals into a mistake was their amplification by the huge energy surplus afforded by fossil fuels. The mistake is industrial civilization.
You are correct that only "cataclysmic breakdown" will derail industrial civilization. That breakdown is inevitable, long warned about, and fast approaching. It is up to families and small communities of people to prepare for adapting to the breakdown, which can only be done in a rural context.
But as you noted in your comment about Read's post, the political context, at least in the US, will mitigate against success because there will be zero support for the kinds of policies that would encourage people to prepare. Indeed, anyone professing that America isn't being made great again will be seen as a traitor by the majority of the populace.
Still, preparation for a world in which industrial civilization breaks down and also leaves a legacy of worldwide environmental destruction is the only sensible approach. Those who are able need to leave their city and prepare to live without modernity. Those who can't, or won't, are doomed. The number of "survivors conferring lucidly" will unfortunately be very much smaller than it might have been.
I agree with most of this but not the first paragraph. The mistake began long before industrialization–that just sped up the damage. Many societies lived for thousands of years in the same place without degrading it–because their cultures were based on respect for, and being part of nature, not owning it, having contempt for everyone who isn’t human, and regarding this word as a stopping-off place or trial ground. Human nature is the same, but cultures vary a great deal, and the one based on domination is causing all this pain and destruction–it didn’t start with the discovery of fossil fuels. Already it had ravaged landscapes with unsustainable agricultural practices and the clearcutting of forests, slavery, the Inquisition, etc.
Lots of cultures, including many (most?) indigenous ones, were based on domination of territory. But even those that eventually grew into empires rarely had the wherewithal to destroy more than a small area of the earth at a time, at low a enough rate to allow for recovery before the next empire took over.
It's only the industrialism in the fossil fuel era that caused the destruction to become so widespread. The pre-industrial world of 1700 would seem like a fairly intact natural paradise compared to the one we live in now. If only we could start over then.