Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We’re taught that without rigid legal systems society would collapse into chaos. But for most of human history, people relied on communal norms, not codified law, while the rise of written rules, hierarchy, and possessions cleared the way for today’s sixth mass extinction.
Why do people with access to the same facts arrive at radically different conclusions about the future? Physicist Tom Murphy reflects on an impasse with Dave Murphy over modernity, ecological limits and humanity’s place in the living world.
Modernity (even if defining starting 10,000 years ago) is a short-lived phase that will self-terminate—likely starting this century.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I lean toward the conclusion that modernity was inevitable. My position is reasonably strengthened by the observation that we are, in fact, where we are.
Graeber and Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything keeps coming up in my life—especially as I dip an amateur toe into trying to understand human prehistory—so I thought I had better take a look.
So here’s the thing: Modernity is an axe murderer, and we’re—unfortunately—married to it. It isn’t hard to see modernity’s fatal flaw of being constitutionally unsustainable, and that it’s on a violent rampage.
One of the most important steps we can take is in realizing that we are not civilization: humanity is a bigger and more versatile concept than the current mode we’ve stumbled onto (become trapped within).
We might now wish to slow things down, but modernity was built on a lie; a fatal flaw. If we voiced the command: “Slow down, Hal,” we’d get the response: “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
It seems quite clear that the track we are on does not lead to the stars, but to ignominious self-termination of this whacky mode called modernity.
If plunged overnight into the end of civilization, we would have a rough go of it. But given time to adapt and shed the trappings of modernity, those who are willing to let go and embrace new (old?) ways of living will stand a decent chance of being satisfied with life.
As more people become disillusioned with the relentless march of modernity—no longer buying into its deluded destiny and suspecting a mindless march toward a cliff edge—they may simply stop participating in the expected ways.
While the many philanthropies of the world address social injustice, gender discrimination, and countless other issues, there is one topic that is off-limits to most of them: changing the capitalist system itself, the source of many problems that philanthropy aspires to solve.
