Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
And honestly, all of this leaves me wondering today what that “prophesy” might look like for the high school graduates of 2023 or those of my grandchildren’s generation in an even more distant future. I certainly hope for the best, but also fear the worst.
Going back to the alternative futures, Collapse is collapse, and both Growth and Discipline also lead to collapse, sooner or later. The only one that provides a route to sustainability is Transformation, and only then if it is not dependent on a technology transformation.
When the high-energy authoritarian political centres fail, which ultimately they will, my hope is that some of these ‘irrelevant’ places will have forged resilient material cultures and mature political institutions that will enable them to usher our descendants into the next chapter of human history.
The best we can do is have lots of ideas, lots of tools, lots of ways of thinking, all ready at hand when crises of whatever flavor come barreling down that hill.
I am always on the lookout for new tools to use in helping people to imagine a different future, in helping people to cultivate nostalgia for a future that turned out as well as it possibly could have done.
The time is now or never. Cooperation is fundamental to our success, and only by uniting as a human family, on all levels from local to global, can we hope to achieve an equitable and concordant future on our Mother Planet.
What would a city where people, children, goods, tools, food and so much more are moved around the city in a fossil fuel-free way, and in a way that promotes health, clean air, and conviviality, actually sound like? I’d always wondered.
Why is the financial community so complacent about peak oil and the relationship between increasing energy scale and growth? Can we make predictions about the future by looking back at history?
Diamond helps us imagine the future in an uncertain time. How can we create robust strategies to help us plan? How can we avoid thinking only of worst-case scenarios?
Set in the eastern United States in the late fall of 2040, the novels chronicle five crucial weeks in the lives of migrants fleeing climate-driven hardships and political leaders doing their best to manage America’s tumble into history’s dustbin.
The future will be a series of shifting baselines, where perhaps the gift of a spare bedroom will be an incredible act of generosity. But without members of a community working together, supporting one another, future wellbeing will collapse like a poorly made bridge.
The future on this planet depends on each one of us — alone and together — and our capacity to realign attention and intention on the level of the whole.
