I told someone that I will weep with joy when industrial civilization crashes. They said they might weep when industrial civilization crashes because "it's not going to be fun at all."
Yes, it's not going to be "fun" to get weaned off of our addictions. It's not going to be "fun" to stop poisoning our landbases and killing 200 species to extinction every day. It's not going to be "fun" to stop poisoning ourselves through our food and water supply. It's not going to be "fun" to start living within our means. It's not going to be "fun" to stop raping the land. This kind of thinking is poison. People seem obsessed with perpetuating the machine/system that brought us to this low point. To this place where we are killing off 200 species a day, where we are changing our climate for the worse, where we are adding 5 billion people in the last 100 years. This way of life is horrific, unequal, and killing us all. Yet they want to perpetuate it.
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When we look at the world most have a tendency to unconsciously assume that "this is the way it's always been." When we take even a cursory look at history though, it becomes clear that what we mistake for normal is completely abnormal. The implications are stunning.
People do NOT want to recognize that they are utterly screwed.. and that their entire lifestyle is about to radically alter. We as a culture are way too addicted to our smartphones, cars, grocery stores, etc. To tell people that all of that is going to go away one way or another is to tell them the world is literally ending. They freak out. Too much cognitive dissonance.
Many times, the deniers shift the attention to those who talk about it. They accuse them of hypocrisy. Ecologically-minded people can’t complain, they say. After all, they use the internet, they have homes, they drive cars. According to these people, even writing a book about the environmental destruction is hypocritical, since books are written on paper and delivered by truck. I’ve noticed that otherwise well-meaning people who are aware of and outspoken about these problems our world is facing have a habit of blaming the Christian creation story as the root cause of our issues. As a Christian who seems to think more unconventionally, I feel I should say something about this and explain my understanding of it.
It is the typical Biblical creation story. Genesis 1:28. "And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”" The fall of industrial civilization will not be pretty. Looking for a culprit, many claim we are running out of oil. The "we are running out" line is old news. It's a classic bait line by deniers that has no merit. No one is saying that we are running out.
The future is going to be far different than the past. The next decade is going to look vastly different than the last decade. This blog is about the transition.
What I am concerned with is the collapse of industrial civilization. "The way things are" is built on a narrative of exponential growth, which by definition eventually hits limits of resources - in terms of money needed, ecosystem destruction, pollution, destruction of landbases, etc. These limits are far more complex than simple population size. In this blog I will talk about why we are hitting limits, how it will play out, and what we can do about it. But make no mistake, the coming years will be marked by shocks to the system. And it won’t be long until our way of life looks decidedly different. Decline is certain. But we can empower ourselves and our communities to become more resilient. |
The future is going to be far different than the past. The next decade is going to look vastly different than the last decade. This blog is about the transition.
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