Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It is apparent that our focus should not only be on solving climate change, but should also address other planetary boundaries, and perhaps even democratic renewal, but in every case, we need the means of transitioning from an unsatisfactory system to a better one that focuses on our strengths, and mitigates against our psychological shortcomings.
Unless we recognize and recontextualize what we perceive as threat, our actions around climate change are going to be insufficient to prevent our demise as a species.
Self domestication, the process by which humans became a more cooperative and less aggressive species, paradoxically contributes to humanity’s overshoot predicament.
It’s high time we discussed power more honestly, compassionately, and intelligently. But first we have to understand what we’re talking about.
The transition from hunting and gathering to grain agriculture was a monumental change in our social/economic evolution where the structure and dynamic of economic life became something distinctively different.
Simultaneously husbanding and equitably sharing multiple global common resources is the ultimate social challenge to humanity’s survival. Today specifically, that means navigating the impending perfect storm of simultaneous climate change, soil destruction, and fossil fuel depletion.
For the foreseeable future, we will have our hands full getting past the ugliness of cultural disintegration. We’ll need whatever morsels of beauty we can preserve or produce just to keep ourselves sane.
Who are we? And where are we going on this tiny planet of ours, this bright sparkle of life in a Universe so ridiculously vast? It’s a question worth exploring, if you have five minutes in your busy COVID day.
Our biology equips us to understand not only what is, but also what could and what should be. We are ethical creatures; we are nature debating, rationalizing, and thinking with itself.
Can we use our opposable thumbs, our love of tools, our hyper-ability to communicate, and our unending need to conquer new challenges to reverse climate destabilization? What will it take for you to believe it’s worth trying?
Our very nature is far more caring, loving, and empathic than we have been educated to believe. While being empathic may have initially extended primarily to our family and tribe, our ability to empathize has continued to expand to include the whole of humanity, other species and life as a whole.
Collecting first into bands, then villages, then cities, then states, now humans form a single, giant creature – the superorganism – which is literally devouring the planet to keep itself growing. I
