August 2023 Note: This Post is Under Construction…expect changes…
If we stay on our current course, we will end up where we are heading.
Look at the trendlines. How are we doing? If we continue on this course, where will we end up? To understand where we are headed, we need to understand where we came from and why we are on the course we are on.
Human population is growing and is expected to continue growing. As a result, every year human civilization consumes more products and services. Our current way of producing goods and services is linear and produces waste products that impact our ecosystem. When human populations were smaller it was taken for granted that earth had practically “infinite resources” and “infinite regenerative capacity”. But, human civilization now has grown past Earths capacity to supply resources and process wastes sustainably. As a result, Earths climate is being impacted, and we are in the 6th Mass Extinction.
Without changes in how humans interact with the planet, within our lifetimes humans will most probably face massive food shortages, economic, social and political upheaval. These problems were anticipated as long ago as 1798 by Thomas Malthhus, but have been widely ignored even though modern projects like the 1973 Limits to Growth report show we have other options.
There is fear that some systems may already be collapsing and this may even cascade into a poly-crisis where multiple interconnecting systems collapse in succession, potentially leading to chaos and/or oppression. Ideally, this can be prevented from happening. To what extent we can avoid collapse is unknown, but the sooner we take corrective action the better our chances will be to minimize damage. We should use this an opportunity for a rebirth; an emergence into a new, better, more healthy way of being (like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis).
How do we reset our course? How do we repair the damage we have done? How do we change the human systems that are in place driving us in the wrong direction?
I’m proposing that we need to understand the core values that took us on the wrong course, and replace those values with ones that will take us on a better course. I am proposing that we can apply these values to a small subset of the population (3.5%) and in doing so, plant a seed that will grow to change the entire global culture. We can do this by starting with a small group of people working together in an enterprise to demonstrate it works, and then by cloning the enterprise and making it spread like a virus.
Our present course was set 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece when we accepted dualism as our worldview and began to see ourselves (as humans) as separate from nature. We saw ourselves in competition with nature, and began to treat nature as something we could and should subdue. This began our journey of raping and pillaging our eco-system for financial profit. This mindset expanded to enslaving everything (even other humans) in the pursuit of more. More money, more power, more control, more stuff. Ironically, more past enough, provides less and less fulfillment…less happiness. We have pursued more to the point that our ecosystem is starting to collapse. We have taken too much, and now can see that we’ve been on the wrong path.
Here is an example of some of the core values we might put into the DNA of our enterprises:
1. We are all connected. The honey bee, the tree, the ocean, the air, the animals, the Sun…We are all sacred and one. We depend on each other and thrive when we help each other thrive. We are family and we care for each other. We do not take advantage of each other. We give and share freely. When another has need, we give, when we have need, others give to us.
2. We are all equal. We don’t attempt to hoard more than we need. We are satisfied with having enough for our needs of this day. When we have excess, we give it to others. Whatever we have we share fairly.
3. We do not poison or pollute or destroy our habitat as we know that to do this would be to do these things to ourselves. We nurture our habitat and help it heal from the damage past generations of humans have done.
4. We do work that makes our hearts sing. We live in communion with each other and with all that is.
This seems like a crazy notion. A utopian fantasy. But, what is the option? To continue doing what we have been doing is the crazy thing! To have different results, we must be different.
But, how can we survive? How will we pay the bills? One answer lies in community. We all have different gifts and abilities, and the same amount of time in a day. The answer lies in what we accomplish with our time. If we live in community, we have enough resources already to live a different way, especially if we are content to live with ENOUGH. I propose that a group of like-minded people living and working in close proximity to each other (within walking distance) can live in community. In the community, we need enough diversity in passion, competence, and character to support each other and to self-govern and not too many as to become bureaucratic (approximately Dunbar’s number).
Another answer lies in our ability to envision and implement a interdependent economic system that is in balance with our habitat. i.e. Circular or Regenerative economies.
We need to move from a Take->Make->Waste lifestyle to a more circular lifestyle:
Drawn with system inputs Source: Doughnut Economics, by Kate Raworth:
But, what will we do to make money to survive? We may still use “money”, but it won’t be our master (it will serve us instead of us serving it). We will break the chains of debt and do what we must to live in accordance with values that support the thriving of life within regenerative balance with the Web of Life. We are not alone, we are surrounded by the Web, and we can and must reconnect with it to survive. Consider the lilies of field…We don’t need money to survive. We need air, water, food, soil, love…these things in a free world are freely shared. It’s time to escape the bondage of the private capital system and rejoin the Web of Life.