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I am trying my best to meet the individual time or specific-interest needs of various readers in order to make reading this book a worthwhile experience. Hence the following tips in this section.
This web page is quite long. Rarely, but occasionally the whole page may not load. Just to be sure, please click on the link End of Page. If you landed at the end of the page, the page loaded properly. Otherwise you may need to re-load a second time to get the whole page.
Despite the longer load time, I decided for now to leave the book intact as one gigantic page so that people can print it easily, search through it, jump around within it, and to facilitate contiguous paragraph numbering (see the check-box at the top of the page to turn that on).
For ease of reading, all links (except in the table of contents) are shown in green and without the commonly-seen underline.
Key insights that I think of particularly important are highlighted in red for clarity.
In case you don't have much time to read or don't enjoy reading long passages, please take 15 minutes to jump ahead to my 6 most important insights:
If you want to home-in right away on certain specific topics, please use the interactive Index for guidance.
In case you have about 1/2 hour of time to read, I encourage you to focus on all the remaining passages that I highlighted in red as well because they encapsulate key insights.
In case you have about 1-2 hours of time to read, I encourage you to focus on all the remaining passages that I highlighted in blue. These passages are still embedded in the surrounding text and you can explore their context, but they still stand on their own in many instances.
In total though, you probably need several days to read this book. Just like any book, any novel, it takes time. And I will repeat certain insights here and there, but embedded in different contexts.
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Dear interested reader.
I am creating this potential treasure trove of ideas and illuminations in order to do my part towards promoting urgently needed change in how we are in this world.
Among all the many documentaries I have seen, books I have read, I have not seen any that attempted or managed to take a comprehensive inventory of different areas in our life's systems along with their interconnections while also providing pointers to hands-on solutions. I am not saying that that kind of work might not exist, but at least I have not found it so far.
This book is my personal journey towards trying to achieve exactly that and empower you with choices you did not think you had.
In order to provide viable tools to transcend ourselves - both individually and as a society - I am seeking to cover the major hangups, mind traps and look deeply into the apparent hopelessness of it all.
Ignorance may be bliss, but that bliss won't last long till reality hits you in the back. Knowledge is scary but finally empowers you and thus makes you feel a lot more blissful. Because now you feel you can do something. But is it that easy ? How do you not fall right back into depression when your efforts falter ?
The root cause of depression - that can easily set in you face the hopelessness of the world - is brought up by Marshall Rosenberg. In Nonviolent Communication, Page 172 he quotes Ernest Becker who attributes depression to "cognitively arrested alternatives". That means that we are stuck because we are not connected to our most fundamental Needs. Without that, we tend to get stuck in our heads about all the things that cannot be done, because we are stuck in strategies before we get to the needs. Being connected internally with our needs we can celebrate those needs and connect creatively with ourselves and one another. Then creativity flows and new solutions emerge.
A lot of people do not want to face the reality because - while they are not that depressed yet - they are understandably afraid to get more depressed from delving deeper into the world's issues. They anticipate depression to occur because they have not seen that there another way out of this depression than avoiding the issues.
Another reason, I believe, for depression is that people read the newspapers that are full of factoids but almost never ever get to the root cause. At best people are confronted with intermediate causes, like "gun violence is caused by the gun lobby and intransigent politicians" and understandably, when they see that the intermediate cause has further causes still (that are equally difficult to address), they get frustrated.
I think that, deep inside their gut, people are smarter than they know. They intuitively have some inner knowledge that they don't have the root causes in their hands. And so keep on toiling and searching in circles. But their frustration has been telling them all along that something powerful must be missing. Because shouldn't an identified root cause give us then a powerful feeling of an actual possibility to tackle those issues ?
With some positive results, the activists amongst us focus on battling the certainly important - often times intermittent - causes. That does at least for a while, and triggers a sea change in outlook (such as the occupy movement). But for fundamental reasons I will try to illustrate many of those issues appear at least for now destined to remain an ongoing battle. Because without addressing the root causes, the same intermittent causes will keep re-surfacing like a Hydra with its many re-growing heads.
Without a doubt, the world is teaming with immensely useful and illuminating expert articles, books and publications many of which try to prove a certain point and/or disprove or diminish another person's point. Human beings have - with various degrees of success and personal sacrifice - been actively engaged for some time in tackling the world's challenges. Let me just randomly name a few:
Saving our biosphere, protecting natural treasures, human rights, social justice, education, democratic representation, global security, health, food justice, energy security, raw materials security, personal spiritual awakening and inner peace, animal rights, personal freedoms, historic preservation, understanding the cosmos, institutional and individual violence, corruption, spiritual freedom.
However, looking on the one hand at this amazing wealth of wisdom and activity, and on the other hand seeing this "stuck-ness", I am asking myself:
Why then is it that, with all that incessant human activity, humanity is still so stuck on the most important and pressing areas ? Why are we still fighting many of the same battles as 40 years ago ? In fact some battles around our economic system have been going on for over 100 years. Why is virtually every society on earth still so fragmented ?
To me, this fragmentation is of crucial importance because as long as society is that fragmented, how can we ever have any hope to get anything done ? The winner-takes-it-all mentality at least has not worked, certainly not for all. Even for those for whom it had the appearance of working, it will be only for the short term. Because when the world goes down the drain, it will be everybody, even those with a life boat.
So, is it really just the media, economic system, inequality and all the other reasons you frequently hear ? How come that a lot of other countries with better media and less inequality than the USA, still suffer qualitatively pretty much the same problems ? It is all too easy to think that one's own society problems are the result of the own society's idiocyncratic items like political system etc while other countries are idealized. Many in the USA idolize Western European countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Germany, as though many of the same mechanisms - even if to lesser degree - are not also at play there. It is easy to forget that many of the same root issues are at work there too, because to even uphold the fought-for status quo in those countries is a constant battle.
So let us, for example sake, pick the media as one of those candidate causes for the mess we are in: We can see how media promote divisions within society via polarization and simplification. We can also see how the resulting or at least maintained divisions within society on the other hand prevent concerted political action to reform the media. Because if the population speaks with conflicting voices only those voices will be "heard" that the media want to hear.
So we have: Media oversimplify -> Public remains divided. Public is divided -> Media keep over-simplifying.
As you may have discovered, the above is what one calls a self-reinforcing feedback loop. In a such a feed-back loop, just like in the chicken-and-the-egg problem, you cannot really identify a root cause. Of if you wanted to put blame on who was first (chicken or egg), it would not matter because either way, by now you would be stuck in this loop. Fighting over who is to blame - the chicken or egg - is not going to change the loop. Just like going back 50 years to sort out who started a conflict is unlikely going to stop a present-day tit-for-tat war. So, could it be that the root cause lies outside that feedback loop ?
Could it be that there is a deeper scientific reason why "being stuck" and "going in circles" have come to mean similar things ? Language beholds forgotten secrets of wisdom. Look at the word "responsbility". It can be deciphered to mean "response-ability" - the ability to respond. Isn't that beautiful ? Therefore, by conjecture, it means "Whoever has the ability to respond is responsible." That is actually quite empowering, as I will try to convey later on.
Just from this little example about the media and divisions, you might understand how I am getting quite intrigued as to what may lie underneath the apparent intractability of the ongoing divisions running through the world's societies.
It is my belief and hope that searching for the deeper causes may get us closer to a solution. Or even if we know the root causes but no mechanism can overcome them fast enough, then at least consider it a fun exercise in understanding the world - and the human mind within and connected to it - a little better.
My gut experience is telling me that most root causes lie hidden beneath the surface of our conscience. If they were to have lain bare, they would likely have been harnessed long ago with at least some success, because there was plenty of time to go around in the last 500 years. A lot of those root causes have caused humanity immense pain and suffering long before global warming appeared on the horizon. Even modern psychology seems to have faltered at addressing the logjam of our complex society, or it has not made it from the ivory towers into common knowledge.
I am thus leaving no stone unturned looking at our predicaments and Gordian Knots. Denial rarely provides an answer. Honest and all-encompassing analysis has at least the higher probability of success.
In that process I am connecting you to a lot of philosophical insights and articles that you may find exciting. There will be a few sources that will feel sobering. But this is not an exercise in hopelessness. The fresh insights or their interconnects are meant to fuel curiosity, empowerment and a better sense of understanding the grander picture.
While I will bring up a lot of "facts", the underlying current of my book is to overcome simplifications and expose mind traps. Because without doing so, I fear that we will just be stuck in the same old game.
Even if the insights here could, if embraced by 95% of the people on earth, could save us, the unsolved question is how to get people to embrace it. Furthermore, my insights may not be the best ones, nor do they have to be "the best".
One thing that is just as important as knowing is the admittance that one does not know. Because then you start searching.
When Donald Rumsfeld stumbled around in his June 2002 Press Conference at NATO Headquarters about the "There are things we don't know we don't know.", he was up to something. Except...
He focused mainly on external threats, not the ones lurking in his and many other's brains. I wished he had instead given the following press statement:
"Honestly, Ladies and Gentlemen, we don't know how to solve human conflicts in a sustainable manner. With all the sophisticated weapons systems at our disposal, I and my advisors don't have a clue. What I have come to realize is that all of human history is littered with the corposes of in-vain attempts to settle conflicts with the use of force only. Thus, I am proposing that we start a new program that aims to take a closer look at this un-known. That un-known is ourselves. I now know what I don't know. Thank you."
Isn't admitting what we don't know one step closer to the solution ?
Eventually I want this website to offer a lot more than this juicy article. I eventually plan to offer a wide range of services that will make it easier for you to make new choices that are life enriching and integral to creating a world that we can still call habitable and worthwhile living in even 100 years from now.
It is a very ambitious and lofty goal. But I am very confident that I have the inner potential to achieve it. But one gotta start somewhere, so this book is my running start.
The thoughts have come from my own intuition, my upbringing, conversations, key inspirations from the sources I am mentioning in this text, and countless alone-time of thinking about the world.
I am quite convinced that you have here in front of you a substantive body of insights and possible actions that it takes to transform the world to help sustain human civilization for generations to come. I am not guaranteeing success nor that this is as comprehensive as you envision. As I see it, knowledge is always collaborative and dispersed and never unified in one single place. But I am trying my truly best to touch on all aspects I can conceive of of the human condition insofar as they pertain to the question of making life beautiful for everyone, including earth's wild plants and animals.
Some might ask: Really, for everyone ? This, I believe, will become qualitatively possible once a substantial part of the population lets go of the widespread mantra "this can't be done". You hear it all the time, this sentence "sorry, we can't do this !". Of course, there are limits and I spend time on those. A lot of limits are mental though. A lot of it is fear and negative anticipations. When people are stuck in mental images of scarcity, then they don't think creatively enough. I will try my best to show you what types of intention can greatly expand people's creativity.
I also would like my vision to be about much more than just the bare survival of the human species. Yet survival itself is critical and we may truly just barely make it. So why is it worth aiming for going way past the vision of bare survival ? Aren't we starting to think too much in "luxury" terms that we cannot afford at this needed time of downsizing ?
Let me put it this way: When I hear people pose the question "can we feed 7 Billion people for humankind to survive", I utterly cringe. Because even if we could do so, this ought to be about much more than "feeding"! And who is the "we" ? Eric Holt-Geminez, the director of Food First rightfully asks this question in Global Struggle for Food Sovereignty: A Discussion with African Food Leaders & Farmers.
When I hear "we", I have images of 'first world' handing out food to 'third world' and deciding about what is eaten. Is there someone handing out food to people in troughs ? Is some big corporation or aid organization going to come in and feed us, as though we cannot have some sovereignty over food ? Is this institutionalized food ?
I think that food sovereignty is hugely important. It should not only improve food security but also maintain food quality and diversity and freedom from chemical pesticide-dependent fossil fuel dependent agriculture. Therefore no doubt, food is critical. And healthy beautiful food is a major source of our happiness, especially if enjoyed communally.
Yet, when I hear the phrase "feed the world", I am feeling anxious for another reason. Because to me, life is so much more than just about just feeding. And the world is not just there to feed us but all the other creatures as well. But it is about much more than food. We, and the other living creatures as well, we all need space, wild nature, rivers, streams, beautiful views, food security (not just barely) and variety. We need peace among people. And if there is a chance for real peace at all, then social equality will lead to real peace.
When I mean equality, I am not talking about soviet-style sameness and rows of uniform appartment blocks. But equality in terms of rights, opportunity and dignity. It is a term not easily captured in a couple of laws or behaviors. But you know it when equality is missing.
And equality is not only missing w.r.t. what we typically consider marginalized people. I found that it can happen that one is considered "not quite fitting in" into a group even for just making one comment that suggests a slightly different political view, which can lead to ostracization or unequal treatment. When you are distrusted without checking-in with the person (who is distrusted), you are not treated as equal. I find that to happen also in some self-described liberal or progressive circles.
Equality as a right does not mean to me that I am supporting entitlement-attitudes that run amok. I am talking about a system that assures equality by focusing not just on "rights" or legal entitlements, as important safeguards they represent. But my inner focus is on genuine empathy and recognition of another person as human. The idea that everyone, within reason and within means (no system can assure perfection) is treated as equal as having their own dignity. Or that the genuine attempt is made towards that. I support the notion that equal access to opportunities also asks for responsible use of the resources it provides. And let us not forget that a sense for equality or need for dignity includes not just humans. And I think that is all too often forgotten when people insist on their rights.
Thus, what this is about - much beyond just food - is what I like to call the good life. For everyone who wants it, not just people in the rich countries or those from the middle class upwards. And it does not mean, it is free. Because nature will tell us very soon that we have to live in cooperation and support of nature. Nature has been a free giver for too long and has not been actively asking back anything in return.
In order to not just be focussed on "feeding", we need to re-establish conditions on this planet that allow us to have "the good life". Not a marginal life. Not a life where we can consume virtually nothing and have virtually no technology (at least for those who want to have some), no interesting basic research, no technology-based fun stuff (not that I put too high of a value on it but I like to use computers sometimes create interesting music for instance), or where even 95% recyling would make us run out of raw materials within 150 years.
No doubt, on a personal and institutional level we have to cut back on waste and senseless consumption for sure and change our economical system of wasteful inhumane incentives. But there got to be room for other forms of bounty and beauty. A step back into a world of 200 years ago or further back is something that would be worth in certain aspects but not in all. The focus on "feeding" in many global sustainability disussions seems too marginal for me, as critical food obviously is.
Good life by the way does not mean 'pain free' to me. Every life has pain. Some more some less. Acceptance of pain transforms that very pain so it is easier to bear. Acceptance does not prevent you from acting on behalf of changing the outer circumstances and makes your actions smarter. Regarding acceptance of the current moment and pain I have been greatly inspired by Eckhart Tolle, whose book A new Earth to me is the perhaps second-most important book.
The good life means fulfillment, joy and beauty in those amounts or time frames where it more than makes up for all the inevitable pain of life. A life experienced as truly worth living.
When I am saying "all", I realistically mean for the vast majority. Yes, there will be likely some exceptions where tragically someone cannot, for limitations that are beyond even the most empathetic society's support potential, reach fulfillment or constructive cooperation.
Even if we were to assume that any one person's or group's ideas were indeed sufficiently comprehensive to help save the world, the one missing piece of the puzzle that noone appears to have figured out yet is: How do we get the wisdom that might preserve human civilization and the planet's healthy ecosystems into as many heads as possible and inspire people's hearts and minds to come together behind this goal, across all cultures and belief systems ?
Nobody has solved yet how to actually overcome in time to avoid catastrophe the formidable barriers to worldwide education, disemination and eventual embrace of such knowledge. Or maybe someone solved it but it is still sitting seemingly forgotten in that person's drawer. Because if it were so, we should already be so much more on a trajectory for positive change than we currently are.
I don't have the answer to that either. But what I believe I can greatly contribute here is to illuminate most of the important human pitfalls and apparent intractabilities that lay in the way. To name just one such pitfall is the unfortunate human tendency to think in either/or categories (dichotomies) which likely contributes to the prevailing right-wrong, us-versus-them and competitive mind set.
Even though I don't proclaim to have a solution that has built into it the virtual promise of widespread enlightenment of humankind, the first step of most solutions is the illumination of any roadblock. Because if one can't see a roadblock, one would have a substantially lower probability of transforming it.
Because our world is teaming with people who proclaim what the truth is and/or believe to have found it, and because I have seen how much strife and understandable resistance happens when people proclaim to know the truth, I am attempting to be modest when making statements that I feel strongly about and see as self evident, because what seems so self evident to me is not to every other person.
If you want to delve further into how others have defined truth, I encourage you to read more on wikipedia about scientific and philosophical theory and application of Truth.
While I also think there are some more "crisp" truths, there is a lot of room for Fuzzy Logic where truth is on a sliding scale. I see the allowing and giving somewhat like Will you Meet Me in the Field by Rumi. It is possibly by no coincidence that one of the originators of fuzzy logic, Lotfi A. Zadeh is from the same part of the world and/or culture as Rumi was.
Therefore I want to start off with talking about what 'truth' means to me and how I define it for myself. I hope that my insights will help you on the path to reading everything that follows.
When I am using the word truth-proclaiming word "is", I am either leaning on definitions that are descriptive (the dress is red) and are thus shared by a very large part of human population, or I use the word "is" because I am subjectively very convinced of it having a good portion of the ascribed nature. I am however attempting my best to not presume that you or the majority of people will or have to see it the way I see it.
That may seem trivial, but I mention it because I can empathize with others by seeing how my own need for autonomy raises its voice when I am hearing other people making "is" statements that stimulate judgments or questions in myself whether they see their statement somehow absolute.
At the same time I do not want to use at every turn the word "may be" or "could be" since that would start to sound awkward or it would put into question that I stand behind my convictions that my own personal truths have relevance for others as well.
Very interestingly some languages do not have an equivalent to the word "to be". And that in turn creates a different and perhaps more modest-appearing concept of truth in cultures that use such language. Here is a very interesting article on E-prime, which is one such language. The Wikipedia on E-prime article mentions other languages and cultures that also avoid the word "is".
Yet another way I see truth is via its opposite that often seeks to cloud truth:
Thus, when the above are absent, there is usually a higher probability of having access to more truth.
By the way, I see that as being very independent of the question how the truth is being used. There are cases where the truth is used by certain people in such ways that ends up severely harming another person or even society at large. For instance if a person truthfully admits to a certain infraction but then suffers a highly disproportionate cruel and unusual punishment. The widespread application of cruel and unusual punishment likely harms an entire society.
It seems to me that we are still far away from the ideal where society would more consistently reward truth. We also appear to live in a world that too much incentivizes non-truths. That by the way happens not only on the institutional level but even on the inter-personal level, in ways that we may not be aware of:
When we react merely with anger rather than also feeling and expressing genuine gratitude towards someone who tells us the truth, then we unknowingly promote the idea in others that truth is something to be avoided.
It is freeing for me to search for the truth, a major component of which is the acknowledgement of a challenge and/or limitation. A limitation is more or less "soft" or "hard" because a limitation has a theoretical and a subjective probability ("hope") associated with it that this limitation can be overcome. Once you recognize a limitation, you can either try to overcome it or you can sidestep it by looking in other places where there are fewer limitations. Sometimes the latter is more promising because otherwise you end up frustrated with expending a lot of energy on something that has a low probability of being overcome.
I see it as immensely empowering and with immense value for our well-being and survival when we dare to look into the abyss of our own human fallacies and traps that currently appear to steer this civilization towards collapse if business as usual prevails.
As if to look into a bright light, I recommend us to gaze with courage and unyielding curiosity at all the facets of this seemingly intractable world. It is scary, but what else than acknowledging "what is" could empower us more ?
I don't think we can escape the consequences of these intractabilities by looking away because they will catch up with us if we don't catch up with them. Running away or putting the head in the sand provides more hoplessness to me than to take an investigative and outright curious look at it. That feels life affirming and empowering to me.
I recommend that we approach our own individual and collective limitations with empathy, rather than with guilt or self-flaggelation, the kind of guilt tripping that we have been taught for 5000 years.
Looking at each other's and our own limitations with empathy, I believe we stand a higher chance to start transcending them together. It is also easier to ask each other for help. This is not a promise of certainty but a great first step that reaps rewards at this very moment, even if in the end we cannot avert all of the disasters that may await us.
Discovering the truth of all those challenges is only dark if we turn away and don't illuminate it with our attention. Discovery spells hope. At least this is my personal truth. Truth-seeking, love for inquiry and openness may very well get us towards this truth. That is my hope and the source of my intentionality behind my endeavor.
Even though truth seems certainly partially subjective, the truth - as I define it - is also embodied in the obvious and less-obvious workings of the world, which includes the workings of ourselves, in all our interconnectedness and feedbacks, limitations and currently unrealized potential. Some truths or hidden rules will likely remain unrevealed to humanity by the cosmos. Yet I encourage us to discover the most powerful and civilization-nurturing truths, even if we can never know them all.
The above may sound somewhat new-agey to some, but as I hope you will discover, I come to it from also a deeply analytical and logical perspective, not just an emotional idealistic one.
I encourage you to embrace the pain that comes with facing the apparent hopelessness of our world. After facing that pain, it does not fill me with depression any longer but with the joy of discovery and hope. Because truly, there is still a lot we don't know, or else we would have solved all of those problems long ago.
The not-knowing makes me feel increasingly hopeful because it means there is still discovery to be made. I find the discovery process exciting and stimulating and nurturing. Digging around in our human limitations is just as exciting as enlightening ourselves to our vast potential. The two are intertwined and not exclusive to one another, the way I see it. And all the more so can we feel stimulated if we can engage in it collaboratively rather than remaining lone wolves.
Think of it as a metamorphosis to come out of it at the other end of the tunnel. I feel joy in face of the potential behind truth seeking even though I subscribe to no religion or am making any assumption about the after-life. I leave that free for the universe to decide, the very universe that I find as humiliatingly beautiful, mystical and loving as any religion-ascribed God could be for any deeply religious or God-loving person.
My own spirituality is not in conflict with the fact that I strive to be a realist and at the same time a warm-hearted idealist. While I am an idealist, wanting so much a better world than the one we currently have, I seek not to be invested in any particular ideology (as I will define it later on). But I do feel married to the ideal of investigative and collaborative truth seeking.
Truths are not just cold facts that proclaim stark absoluteness. Insofar I understand that truth seeking is sometimes seen as absolutist and dismissive at times when the truth is also experienced as subjective. One nature of the truth is that it has both objective parts and subjective aspects to it. Some aspects of the truth can perhaps never be object-ified and will always be subjective and even time varying for any one individual, such as feelings, sensation of comfort, sleepiness or even seemingly objective things like color perception.
I define "truth" here to also include the human elements of insights, such as the sensation of understanding something ("getting it"), lightbulbs going off, gotcha moments, human embraces of understanding each other where we feel "this rings so true for me too". I like it when the sensation of "truth" is paired with a sense of modesty so that we do not get carried away with "truth" but instead keep seeking and questioning and inquiring, keeping us alive and connected.
Truth, the way I define it, is not static, but something that evolves out of an engaging process. Engaging with oneself and engaging with the universe around oneself. Static truth slips into the absolute, stark, non-timely and dusty and ossified. Truth is an evolution just like evolution itself.
The truth is a moving target. what rings true today may not ring true for you tomorrow. Because any decision can be seen as disastrous today and beneficial tomorrow, depending on the time frame you take and depending on what date you take the evaluation on. The Fable of the Taoist Farmer is truly one of my favorite parables because it illuminates so much the temporal nature of truth, which actually gives rise to so much hope.
In fact, the temporal nature of how any one personal situation is viewed, can be generalized to the fate of perhaps entire societies or the fate of humanity itself. What comes to mind is the phrase "history will be the judge". Except that the judgment (in the wider non-human sense) will never truly have any finality until the universe itself ends (if it ever ends). In fact if the universe were to disappear, who would be left to judge whether the universe as a whole was a 'success' ? Unless I were to speculate on an independent forever-living diety.
Thinking in more concrete time frames, consider this current evaluation of our economic system: about 150 years after early industrialization, many to this day think that capitalism was a great idea as it brought properity to at least some share of the world population over a finite amount of time. The same evaluation will possibly not be made 50 years from now when the people alive then will realize that its benefits were short-term and that over-consumption led it into a dead end of biospherical and mineral resources and a whole lot closer to civilization collapse. 250 years from now a new human civilization may see that the intermittent collapse of large parts of the human population was good for the planet as a whole and, despite the pain involved, did thrust humanity forward. If 1000 years from now humanity did actually not survive, earth itself may judge the demise of humanity as a good thing a million years later when the biosphere restored itself from all the damage.
How might earth itself possibly judge something, even if there are no humans present any more ? I see that type of judgement as being more indirect, expressed via its internal state of happiness, even though it would not be human happiness. When the biosphere would have returned to a new equillibrium towards a vibrant recovered "state of mind", once again teaming with rain forests full of singing birds and creatures, you could come to see it filled with many corners of bliss and joy. Even if that bliss and joy were to be unconscious by human standard. Just like you might be able to indirectly infer an animal's likely state of internal happiness not just by its body language but also by measuring its dopamine level, perhaps the biosphere (akin to the brain) has its own internal state of happiness too. We humans are - in the wider sense - not the only judge of how things unfold on earth or the universe. The universe, the biosphere may have their own needs and degrees of satisfaction and may thus very much have their own sort of consciousness, even though it would not be the kind of consciousness humans can as easily relate to from a first-hand experiential level. Given how much de-naturization of our biosphere has already happened at the hands of humans, I would propose that the biosphere's overall state of happiness is currently lower than it was 10,000 years ago.
By the way, here again we have a connection with those who believe that the universe is God. Because if the universe or biosphere has its own sort of judgment, then religious texts would start to correspond. Although I would then believe the universe's judgment not to be of punitive intent. Or if punitive then only in the sense there are consequences by virtue of the laws of nature, but not in the human-judgment good/evil sense but more in the "harmful to human civilization" sense. I have challenge with the idea that the universe itself levies a human-like moral judgment on its inhabitants.
Back to the question of consciousness being reserved to humans: We certainly know by now that animals have some level of consciousness, even though probably not one that is aware in the conceptual sense of a cosmos. The ape probably does not know that that white disk at night represents the moon going around the earth, even though the sensory information is there for the ape. But perhaps there is a distributed consciousness across the eco system, like a hologram. Distributed consciousness is not foreign to us at all. It is all within our body. For instance none of the neurons in our brain is likely to be aware of the grand total consciousness it gives rise to. Because if it would, why then would one need the whole brain for awareness ? Yet the grand total, in what I think is a miracle, our brain, is capable of giving us consciousness, at least if you are a philosphical materialist.
We don't need to believe in the super-natural to believe in miracles. To me at least, nature as it stands, is already a miracle. In its current capabilities as well as its coming into being at all. In fact, perhaps this human dichotomy of splitting the totality of the world into a material "non-super-natural" part and a "super-natural" part, may make us far less in awe of nature and thus give us less of an impulse to preserve it. Whereas, if you see nature itself as devine, you are less apt to violate it. You can see how people revere devine dieties with great respect but appear to treat with far less respect that which they see as non-devine. Thus, like many incarnations of dichotomous thinking, this one too may lead us further from the true nature of the world, perhaps with disastrous consequences. Would any creation or creator want us to have an image of itself that is far removed from its own nature ? I would like to ask a theologian that question.
Given how well nature has worked for millions of years, I tend to find it a miracle enough so that one could assume a distributed consciousness or "order" that is unlike any human conscioussness, but perhaps has its own "intelligence". If the definition of intelligence is broadened to include all the amazing innocent beauty of wild untamed nature, then how can one not think of it as imbued with intelligence ? It may be more, by our measure, sub-conscious or pre-conscious intelligence.
The truth also seems to work a little bit like a Hologram, with the truth not being localized in one spot but being captured by capturing the object from different angles. Just look at the story of The blind Men and the Elephant that just shows how dispersed the truth can be and that quite often no one human being or - perhaps even broader - no one part of the universe holds or perhaps ever can capture the truth.
In fact, if the latter would be the case, it would mean that if God were to be defined as the one entity that can capture the entire truth, then the entire universe is God. It would mean that God is inseparable from the universe and that there is no God outside or separate from the universe. I dare to believe that some spiritualities or religions are more comfortable with that image than others.
The above speaks to me insofar as it shows that the entire truth is perhaps strictly speaking not reachable than by the universe as a whole. If you define God to be the universe the preceding insight would then likely be found in many spiritualities. The consciousness of the entire universe of itself would only be contained in its whole self. For those who believe in a diety, the universe would perhaps then constitute a combination of the visible universe (as far as accessible to scientific measurement and scientific modelling and extrapolation) and that diety combined.
We should not forget that there is a nexus of science and spirituality. Cosmologists are looking for an ultimate root cause of the universe. Dieties in many, if not most religions, are seen as the ultimate root cause of the universe as well. Why then, I ask, does there need to be this frequently perceived antagnism between science and religion ? One needs to look no further than many Christian denominations or Intelligent Design (Creationism) that believe that scientific explanations of this world run counter to their own belief systems. Is it because you cannot worship a scientifically explained root cause for this universe because science does not ascribe human attributes (such as judgment, love, caring) to any such root cause ? That may not be science's job because it is speculative and non-measurable. But does it prevent us from doing so ? (the answer obviously is "no"). And if it does not prevent us from doing so, then is there a continued reason to maintain this schism between religion and science ?
I consider myself to be an agnostic and doubter as far as the existence of any physically verifyable personable diety goes. That however does not mean that I experience the creation itself or who/whatever created the universe as impersonal or impersonable. I feel that the universe, by merely being there unconditionally and in its unconscious unfolding, is the ultimate giver and thus in itself a giver of love. Even if the universe were to have had no consciousness at the big bang, it has brought about consciousness as an emergent property. The universe may have consciousness sometimes (through intelligent civilizations within it) and sometimes not (prior to any formation of intelligent life). Because the universe is so much bigger than any human being or even this tiny (yet incredibly special) earth, I don't believe that "whichever created this universe" is anything like a human being, judging like a human being or thinking like a human being. But I experience that "something" as Love.
Hoimar von Ditfurth talked brilliantly about the idea of consciousness being an emergent property of the cosmos. He talks about this in this intimate interview from December 23, 1987: Was eine Ameise von den Sternen weiß - Über Naturwissenschaft und Religion (English: What the ant knows about the stars - about natural science and religion)
He gives an very deep yet accessible perspective on how science, philosophy and religion might all intersect at the most fundamental questions about our cosmos. He illuminates why spirituality and science are tragically misunderstood as though they have to be in conflict with one another. He sees organized religion tragically stuck in the past and thus in some sense contributing to this what only appears to be a conflict.
Hoimar von Ditfurth proposes the view that evolution is identical with the moment of creation. The world is still being created. The cosmos is still in the process of creation. The world is not yet fully created. The process is still unfolding.
He believes that as a scientist you will sooner or later come upon the question of our all origin and that of a creator (even if in the metaphysical sense) of some sorts. He illuminates the question of where we humans in our cosmo-genesis come from and where we humans and the cosmos might go.
He exposes our common world view as anthroprocentric. That human history is a small speck and would seem difficult to be considered as the sole or only purpose of cosmological evolution with its billions of billions of stars. But that, on the other hand that the increasing complexity and evolutionary development of matter led to the emergence of consciousness within it, at least here on earth.
As such, the cosmos may have the tendency to essentially "spiritualize" more and more. He also proposes that more intelligent species may likely come after us, be it here on earth or somewhere else. That we humans are unlikely to be the end point of this cosmological evolution. That to assume so would be quite anthroprocentric.
I mourn that this brilliant analysis is not translated into English as of yet.
So much for what I consider 'truth'. The next part of my introduction is my hope that people can unite to help save this special place in the universe that gives the universe an eye onto itself, which is our blue marble, the earth with its amazing human civilization, that has the duality of being able to understand much about itself and the universe, but also the ability to destroy itself and much of the biosphere. There may be other civilizations out there, but even if so, it does not make our planet any less special or any less worth saving. And for all we agnostics know, this is for now the only place we know to have this level of consciousness.
After speaking to a lot of people, I find just how futile it is to fight over who is right or wrong if the fight is done on mostly ideological grounds. Because on ideological grounds there is too little overlap. Maybe there even is some element in ideologies and religions (or in how they are applied by people) that makes it so difficult to find unity.
On the basis of fundamental human needs however there is near complete overlap for required global consensus. Because all humans share those very same needs. Everyone needs love, security, food, understanding, physical comfort. So, wouldn't it be more promising to look here ?
If there is one book I would want you to get that made all the difference in my life and outlook, please get the Marshall Rosenberg's book on Nonviolent Communication. The title is A language of Life. I finally come to understand why some people refer to their spiritual text (e.g. Torah, Quran, Vedas, Bible, Guru Granth Sahib) as their most important key stone of wisdom.
Most libraries or bookstores will also carry the book. To me it is worth its weight in gold, but only costs about $20. Please recognize that this is not about merely communicating differently. It is especially not about communicating nicely in the sense of having to obscure the truth. I think that is where it is often mis-applied as to having to walk on eggshells. It is about authentic connection with others and yourself through awareness of what we share. It is about expanding choices, because for any given identified need you can free yourself (and others) from being stuck in strategies (which are specific actions to meet needs). Coming from a place of needs promotes constructive creativity - to think outside the box. What has helped me personally to succeed is also an optimistic inner commitment towards constructive creativity.
Without broad consensus humanity will be stuck in an adversarial society that functions according to "the prerogative of the stronger" (German: Das Recht des Stärkeren). Some would call it the law of the jungle, but the jungle actually seems to me a lot more peaceful and joyful than human society. I cannot prove it since I am not an animal. But whatever you call it, that type of human society eventually spells doom on civilization and therefore even on the temporarily victorious ones.
Creation of widespread (perfection not needed) consensus is difficult and requires giving and consideration on pretty much all fronts, but what is the alternative ? Difficult or not, reachable or not, at the very least one needs to start the drive of leading ourselves towards consensus.
I am not saying that consensus has to be absolutely unanimous, because that is so unwieldy and low-probability that any attempt for a large population will take perhaps more time than any person's life time. But widespread consensus, perhaps the 90% mark or so, would already be phantastic.
Contrary to popular belief, consensus does not need to lead to mediocracy if those involved in consensus finding stay focused on fundamental human needs. The challenge and task at hand is to spread this wisdom to an increasing mass of people so they realize the benefit and are joyfully engaged in this process.
But let us try to be clear: Widespread consensus is important, if not outright critical for survival of a humane civilization. But such consensus is not sufficient. Any proposals for solutions need to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Beliefs and intuitions are not wrong. But they are not sufficient. Nature does not reveal its laws only via intuition. A lot of relevant laws of nature (e.g. relativity theory) are highly counter-intuitive. So are exponentially increasing processes.
I have empathy that for some "science" is an understandably loaded word with technocratic associations because a lot of questionable results have been created in the name of or with science.
The ultimately deciding question for our survival is how much our concept of the inner workings of this world is in line with the physical reality and the biosphere's responses to any given input and humanity's likely response to any given action. After all it is such concept upon which we tend to base any proposed solutions.
I would currently know of no better tool than scientific research with integrity and transparency. In order to not give the "experts" too much power, substantive trust needs to be established. There needs to be "citizen-based" research. Research that is done by ordinary citizens alongside with experts. We don't need these ivory tower walls between the experts and the laypersons. Not on questions this important.
To balance the analytical with the "human-level" intuitional (the two do not need to be exclusive to each other) I propose such research needs to be combined with dialogue that is empathetic, soul-searching, need-conscious, self-inquiring, curious, spirited, spiritual, giving, allowing, generous and truly open minded.
The inner working of this world include of course us humans as well. Because our image of this world exists in our brains. And that image feeds back into the world via our decisions that are based on that inner image of the world. Therefore we cannot leave out our own psychology and its pitfalls, both individual and collective.
Let me give you an example of a human pitfall: I find too many political activists, even or especially those with high credentials, believe that their proposed solution will be largely sufficient to solve the world's problem. It is what I call the single-issue mind trap. You can rightfully question whether I am not free from it either, after all I am here stating my own proposed favorite solution which is: that we consider or solve all the major contributors to our predicament as fast as possible in order to maximize probability of success. In a way I got trapped in a Tautology here. Will you please let me off the hook of being a hypocrite here ?
I guess that nature will be the final arbiter whether we can afford to ignore any critical root-causes in multiple-root-cause scenarios in which you have to address all relevant root causes, not just focus on one of them to the detriment of the others. But can we afford to risk not doing so ?
The biosphere is not a laboratory with a reset button. Just take a look at even something as simple and controlled as a laboratory chemical reactor. In order to achieve desired results, you usually must consider multiple variables and meet multiple conditions in order to achieve a desired result. Humans can accept this requirement easily for a controlled experiment but for some reason many humans falter when asked to consider the entire biosphere, especially when one of the "knobs" is an aspect of one's own beloved actions. We don't have all the knobs, but we must find the main ones that matter and then decide to turn them all (collectively) to where they need to be, not just one of them.
But I hope you can see where I am coming from. The intertwined-ness between how we think about the world and the ultimate consequences on the biosphere (which again includes us too) is an all-to frequently under-examined feedback relation. It is perhaps too complex for some to appear tractable, but I cannot see how we can solve the human predicament without looking at that corner of the human condition.
I consider the following statement as the perhaps most important statement in my entire book because this encapsulates the root challenge, no matter which political or spiritual affiliation you may have:
If our individual and collective concept of the world - the inner psychological world, the outer physical world, our spiritual world and their interrelationships - is too far out of line with how the world actually works, then we will remain frustrated and will not get the results we want. Or we will not get them fast enough or not with the probability we envision.
Sticking our heads into the sand or putting on blinders is not going to be helpful. Trying to spare people emotional pain by refusing to discuss sensitive but critical issues prevents urgent rational debate and enlightenment and ultimately deeper connection. Those who avoid debate on politically correct grounds must trust that there are ways to be sensitive and speak and analyze with clarity when everyone listens and speaks with connecting empathy and allows their own vulnerability to lay bare without judgment.
There exists a point beyond which the human model of the world becomes so incongruent with the world itself that it will lead to humanity's man-made perishing and that of countless innocent species. Where exactly that point is, we may never know nor do we need to exactly know. We need to try our best to stay conservatively below that point if we truly care and want humanity and the beautiful animals and plants to survive. And for humankind to survive in a way that we consider worth living.
Hoimar von Ditfurth concludes his 1978 TV show The Branch on which we sit with a stern warning and choice facing humanity if we don't reign in our population soon: "Nobody in the big cosmos will register that we perished. The only question is whether we want to accept that our history ends this way". I encourage you to watch it, even though it is in German. You will likely comprehend a lot of it from the images alone.
Given the complexities and inherently difficult-to-intuit non-linear feedback relations of the real world, we need to be both humble and modest and yet all the more all-encompassing in our scientific study. We need networked thinking rather than linear thinking, whole-systems reasoning rather than silo-based reasoning. Almost never is any phenomenon the consequence of just one or even two system variables.
For any truth-searching study to have a wide effect, it requires people to withhold premature judgment and trust that collaborative scientific study will be enriching and truth-illuminating and consensus-building. If people abondon their belief in scientific study and discovery, they will fall prey to ideological "reasoning" that all too often ends up divisive and paralyzing.
A population divided against itself is vulnerable to manipulation and renders itself and its governing bodies paralized and subject to special interests.
Jared Diamond in his youtube video Why societies collapse mentions this brilliant yet simple wisdom that I truly cherish:
The most important thing for people is to forget that there is any single thing that is the most important thing to do. Any one of the twelve or so time bombs with decades-long fuses on them can do us in, so we must solve them ALL in order for civilization not to collapse.
The knowledge to help the world to become a better place is already there. Perhaps not in a totally comprehensive and easily accessible manner. But it is there. So far at least, it lays sparsely dispersed and across many wise people's heads. This dispersed state of wisdom has only helped partially so far.
To make wisdom less sparse, we need to foster a culture of meaningful conversation. The opposite of truly meaningful conversation to me are: Gossip without analysis or empathy, long extended monologues while being stuck in your head and not your heart, competitive talk about things whose meaning is very short lived, such as latest fashion, sports trivia, what celebreties are up to. I would even go further and include "competitive talk for competition sake".
I have trouble seeing any other wholesome road than to find widespread consensus on what are the best approaches among the many and to convince a large share of the 7 Billion people on this planet to get behind one or several of those approaches. Those chosen approaches should obviously be compatible and in harmony with one another. If they were at loggerheads with one another, they would end up un-implementable or cancel out some or all of their benefit.
So, how do we get a critical mass of people motivated and inspired as possible ? I am not the one who has that silver bullet, or it just might be (don't bet the farm on it) that this text happens to be this magical wisdom.
Or it may be one of several holistic pieces wisdoms, as it probably is. Rarely (if ever) has any one person written any all-defining piece of wisdom. In fact those who proclaimed to have done so usually became gurus or were die-fied. Some were crucified. I am trying not to aim for that. The question can on the other hand remain un-answered. We truly won't know till we try.
What seems certain is that, you would become indelible part of that magic potion because without disemination, the most well-written piece of wisdom will be a lead balloon. You (and me) are the one who can help transform this balloon and let it fly. I am truly just one humble man with similar power that you have.
Perhaps more of people-power needs to be dispersed and yet united. Because gurus have proven dangerous and vulnerable. Let wisdom be the guide, not the guide become the wisdom. We already die-fy too many important speakers as though they are heroes or messianic gurus.
Dispersion and unity - this seems a contraction to those who think within the existing prevailing hierachical systems. Yet few countries with direct democracy like Switzerland have therefore also more dispersed power. Can you join me (and all other joiners) in making this apparent miracle of Dispersed Unified People Power (DUPP) work ? ( Say Yepp to Dupp ! ) I am not promising that it works. I am a realist after all.
Power is also what you make of it. Even though we may have variations in our inate strengths, we virtually all have unrealized inate power that lays dormant and awaits to be realized. Whatever degree of victim we think we are, most everyone has unrealized inate power. Power is response-ability, the ability to respond. And it calls for responsibility. The two go hand in hand.
I could only validly say "I have a silver bullet" if I knew already right now that this text (and/or any one referred to by me) were some day to become a primary contributor to a shift change. But I cannot fortell the future. Plus, you cannot really ever fully quantify just how much you contributed to a shift change (should it occur), since the world is chaotic in nature. Sometimes small changes, unintended even, make a huge impact.
For instance have you heard the story of how the tiny wing flap of a butterfly can determine where and when the next thunderstorm hits days later ? That trait of our world is at the focus of Chaos Theory, very fascinating stuff indeed !
Thus, if there is to be any chance at all to get as many people involved in this transformation as possible, then you or another reader close enough to you would be part of the solution. You are not merely someone who may make new personal choices (that is very critical of course as well).
You are, what I call an information multiplier. Thus, you can help me to redistribute this information to as many people as possible if you like what I wrote. You can add your own ideas and inspire your friends and relatives.
I am convinced that much of our future will rest on creativity; and on deviation from the usual worn-out paths, the same-old stories we are told, the conventionalism that surrounds us.
The world is all the more exciting when we leave the paths of conventional wisdom and enter new territory. So far humankind has been on a spree of creativity, but that creativity was limited too much to the technological realm. Bigger, better and more powerful tools to extract ever more from nature at an ever efficient and breakneck speed.
But social, emotional and communal ingenuity has severely lagged behind. We are still talking about the same issues as in the 1960s, hell we are talking less about them than we were back then - take for instance overpopulation. We have made great strides in terms of civil liberties, but we still fight the same fights between left and right and the political landscape is as entrenched and immobile as ever.
Our pollution has not disappeared. It has merely been oursourced to China. That is why we no longer have headlines about rivers on fire etc, but the problems are not only same as 50 years ago, they are worse.
They are more insiduous because they happen out of sight and in a creeping fashion. Like the sprawl in the cities, the rising rents, the pockmarked lanscape from gas wells in the far flung wilderness. The bee colony collapse. The rising gas prices. The rising number of failed states due to increased food prices, the rise of extremism due to youth unemployment and due to the power vacuum created by toppled autocratic regimes that ruthlessly hold on to privileges, too afraid to fall into the abyss as well.
I would not even need to mention global warming because even without global warming we would be well on our way to exstinction. But global warming, like many other developments, are creeping and not like a smoke stack in your back yard. You don't smell it, don't see it. But it is those creeping developments that are more dangerous.
They are also less likely to inflame people's hearts and call people to action and change of habits en masse. Because till the incontrovertible realization sets in among the vast majority of the population, things will seem just all-too normal. And by the time the proverbial shit hits the fan, things have progressed so far as to unleash vast disruptions upon social fabrics worldwide.
Even in Europe, rivers are still polluted, though less than in the 1960s, but there are still tons of pesticides, chemicals etc in them. Just read this recent German article Europe's waterways strongly polluted with Chemicals (in German). A link to the abstract to the English source study is here: Organic chemicals jeopardize the health of freshwater ecosystems on the continental scale.
We are not out of the water yet, not by a long shot. We cannot keep going the way we have. We need a paradigm shift. We need it fast and furious. But with love and intention and perseverance.
Let me back up for a moment before I continue. I will keep updating this article. In case the time you are reading it is close to the "Last edited" time, you may want to not reload the page while you are reading it because I may be in the middle of an edit. You see the date of my last update at the top.
Get a cup of coffee or tea before you start reading. It is probably best to print out this article since on-screen reading can be tiring and it will need some time to absorb what I am writing here. Also, it is easier to make notes or highlight certain passages.
I truly hope that you see the whole picture more clearly what we are up against. And then, as a result, that for you a picture emerges on what we as a world must focus on. And therefore what you, as an individual may need to focus on. I value the time you are giving to those ideas that I am imparting here.
I will now zoom all the way out and will start from a larger time-scale perspective. You don't need to know quantum mechanics or any of that sort. But these very meaningful questions need to be discussed in order to put our current time in our joint human journey into perspective.
My above-stated goal is to provide a comprehensive outline that could help us sustain human civilization for generations to come - provided of course that it is embraced and followed by a sufficiently large number of people. But I truly believe, based on my intuition and logic, that many of the ideas and perspectives here would also be found some day in any promising grander policy work put out by some wise group of so-called experts to save our civilization.
I have recently found a few authors that are touching on fundamental questions around civilization mentioned in this article Is Civilization A Bad Idea? . From my superficial research on what others have written about this issue, I am at this point wondering if some of the more radical writers such as Derrick Jensen are focused on proving that civilization is fundamentally unsustainable and is likely to crash, without sufficient suggestions or vision for a gradual transition or what to aim for.
I admit that I have not read Derrick Jensen's book, only read reviews by those who read it. But in general I see that those authors who might revel in predicting the idea of catastrophic collapse, provide often too little suggestion for a constructive approach. While those who offer constructive approaches often are too rosy in their predictions and leave out important limits to human capability that we need to see eye to eye with in order to have a chance to overcome or compensate them. Such as human challenges to comprehend and intuit feedbacked systems.
I certainly do have empathy with those who think the world is so far down this path that it is beyond reformable or beyond repair. But part of the non-reform agenda of many is also rooted in ideological either/or thinking. This gloomy prediction of collapse - as though collapse is the only or most likely scenario - can easily stimulate feelings of hopelessness in people rather than rousing them to constructive action both personal and collective.
Just because an analysis may set off feelings of hopelessness, that does not mean that the analysis itself is flawed. My intuition however tells me that cynicism and other premature assumptions stir up feelings of hopelessness that paralyze people more than positively calling them to communal, cooperative and largely non-violent action. Raising hopelessness is just as destructive (if not more so) than raising false hopes that are based on unrealistically positive assumptions, leading to complacency. The political ruling class world wide tends to rely on the latter in order to preserve calm, law and order so not to disturb the orderly business cycle - insofar as they are "in the know" and do not act out of naivete. It may very well be the calm before the storm. So, let us then prepare for the storm.
I opt for brutal but constructive realism. When people take a more realistic look at the current state of affairs they can answer with and/or respond to constructive and non-violent visions on what to do about the situation. Solid and reliable information, even if challenging in content, is actionable information. As a result people tend to respond with more inner peace and therefore an intelligent response rather than an angst-driven panic-like blind actionism. While the human condition requires very urgent action indeed, panic or reactionary imposes are not what is needed here.
Taking an inventory of what is the current state of affairs needs to include what is possible and what we need to aim for. Without such guidance on what to aim for as a civilization, there is little chance for consensus. Without consensus, people are understandably floundering in hopelessness.
Based on what I see missing in at least the news media, the research on what constitutes a realistic long-term-sustainable civilization is sparse or highly incomplete. Usually the analyses are tech-heavy and overly optimistic or highly pesssimistic and catastrophe-mongering. The best I think I can do here is to attempt a not-too-complicated, yet interconnected analysis of what is possible under what circumstances.
Back to Derrick Jensen who is one of the authors mentioned in Is Civilization A Bad Idea ?:
While I agree that collapse is a very real possibility if business as usual continues, I most certainly disagree with Derrick Jensen's Premise Ten and Premise Fourteen. Furthermore, the following premises seem highly speculative to me: Premise Three and Premise Six. I find many of those premises coloured by the idea that violence is inevitable. There is no talk amongst those premises of the vast potential of de-escalation and human connection frameworks that could transform the human mind and give us very powerful tools. Instead, many of Derrick's premises paint a very pessimistic gloomy picture of the human mind, leaving out a lot of wonderful potential that lays unexamined.
However, I do very much do agree with many (not all) points in Derrick Jenson's contribution in Onion Magazine The Tyranny of Entitlement. I so wholeheartedly agree that idea of perpetual growth reeks of entitlement thinking. We are dealing with explicit or implicit entitlement on our biosphere and on other human beings who will have to live in inhumane condition because of the resulting resource overuse. We are as a human species enacting an entitlement on all the other species to please yield to our human demands. It is important to raise awareness to those implicit entitlements that people are not aware of.
I disagree with Derrick Jenson's statement that Science too is like a religion. Science indeed takes on religion-like aspects if it is incomplete and manipulated, myopic and full of hubris. In my opinion any kind of endeavor that deserves the label "scientific" should ideally extend its analysis to the long term and interconnected effects of its creations. A tall order indeed but no less necessary because all systems are connected with one another. The prevailing reductionist approach has been good enough to provide us with gadgets, high tech health care and insights into how the cosmos works. But the reductionist approach that leaves out the consequences upon human and non-human ecosystems is ultimately out of touch with the reality of our biosphere. By that definition most scientists throughout world history fallen short of that lofty requirement. But that does not mean that science itself is wrong. To therefore discard or discredit scientific analysis seems even more very dangerous. Because the word "science" is derived from the latin word for "knowledge", we need not less science but more science because we need more knowledge rather than less knowledge. But the proper kind of knowledge, a different quality of knowledge, one that is illuminating our connectedness and dependence upon the living systems we inhabit. Thus we need a different quality of science, not just more of the same reductionist type of science that we have been engaging in for 500 years. That is not to say that science ultimately always is bound to simplify on some level. It has to. The map is never the territory. But we have reached a point in our human endeavor where we cannot afford to ignore long term feedback consequences of our scientific creations. And therefore the profit motive as well as the currently largely uneducated impulse-driven consumer or over-whelmed government agencies are an insufficient gate keeper for making the choices on what should leave our laboratories into the real world and what should not.
Scientific inquiry, when done on a whole-biosphere level is what we need in order to reach consensus and guidance. Science for me also encompasses the integration of human psychology into the process of transformation. Such reformed science will no doubt slow down the breakneck speed of technological progress, cutting profits in certain sectors and shifting jobs to other sectors. But it will something that I think has potentially huge ancillary benefit because a fair chunk of so-called progress is of questionable long-term value to the needs of human beings once one considers the flipside risks. One needs to look no further than the increasing array of profitable but utterly useless life style drugs, binding important research capacities and leading to resource waste. Or the rolling out of ever more genetically modified organisms that so far failed to deliver on the touted promise of a "no pesticide" agriculture. As a result of that slow-down of scientific progress society will be required to prioritize what scientific endeavour is likely to qualitiatively benefit long-term human well-being. Insofar society will become more lean and efficient. A new unit to measure efficacy could be something like: Delivered human well-being per invested calorie.
Coming back to the issue of entitlements, let me give you an example for implicit entitlements by people upon nature: Every time a person buys a new house in a sprawling suburban subdivision that further gobbles up nature, that person is enacting more entitlements upon nature. The same is true when a couple gives birth to more children than is necessary for replacement level. In fact, un-doing past population-based entitlement by shrinking our population would be even more called for. Because statistically a good many of us should not even have been born, given the already pre-existing current population overshoot. It does not matter who should or should not have been born. It is an entirely impersonal statement. Most regions of the world are well beyond carrying capacity. That encompasses both poor and rich countries alike. The middle-east, as poor as it is in many places, is at least 5-10x overpopulated based on its natural carrying capacity due to its desert climate and limited water resources. I don't see how people in Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq can cut back their personal consumption levels much more. They all need food, renewable fresh water (aquifers don't count), fertilizer, rain, building materials, basic health care.
I guess that the preceding statement that many people alive today should not have been born will sound offensive to many. However, I am not at all thereby advocating for people to take their own lives in order to achieve population reduction. If I did, I would obviously would have to take my own life in order not to be a hypocrite. Instead I advocate for what each of us can do now that we do exist in this world: One immense step, far more effective than even any of us alone can do in terms of personal cutbacks, is to have far fewer children than our ancestors in order to start undoing the damage upon which our very own existence has rested. And to ask our own children to do the same. That is not to say that we should not also cut back our own footprint. It is both. Not either/or.
I am thankful if you are willing to reflect whether I am truly asking for too much here. Am I asking too much to give future generations the glimpse of a possibility for the good life, that they otherwise may never have ? That instead of having many babies now and in a short time span, we will have many more babies spread over a longer time with much more quality of life. Not a single person would need to die from those measures if we voluntarily de-populated and thereby reduced our entitlement upon our biosphere. Whereas many more people will die if we fail to do so.
I am finding it a both scary but immensely important visualization in Der Ast auf dem wir sitzen, Part 1 of 2, t=7:24 that our biosphere that sustains us all really only is a very thin layer on earth's crust that is habitable about 6 km (4 miles) above and below sea level. Please don't feel discouraged to take a look at this clip, even though you might not understand German.
What we call "the world", is not playing out in the volume of our globe. In terms of scale it is merely a hair thin layer on which all of that we call "the world" or "the earth" unfolds. It is all that we ever had and likely ever will have throughout earth's and human history. The molten internal volume of the earth is something that we have no influence on and it does not contain any biological life, as important as that internal volume is to sustain life. That insight to the small volume of our biosphere should help visualize to us just how fragile our climate and natural resources truly are.
Quite often I find it is visualization that really makes us comprehend something on a deeper and intuitive level than just skin deep. In our so head-heavy society we are losing the connection to intuition, which is another form of intelligence through which nature may correspond with us about its own internal rules.
By looking at the problem in terms of resource demands upon nature, I am not at all dismissing the notion of many socialists or capitalism-critics that a substantial part of the inequality results also from our economic system. The current economic system is flawed because of all the wrong incentives to consume and to socialize costs (externalities) and privatize profits. Mother nature is the unconditional giver and the biggest loser and victim in this pyramid scheme.
The fact that the currently prevailing worldwide brand of capitalism has raised living standards here in the developed world and appeared to work for a - however shrinking - middle class for several decades says very little about its long-term ability to satisfy human needs. In fact its short term success deceives us into thinking that this was the right system to begin with. History will judge much harsher whether or not this was the best possible system. One must evaluate an economic system not by its short term benefits to humanity or one will make tragic extrapolations that do not work in a finite world while placing expanding demands on it. Thus any claims that capitalism is the best possible system are unscientific because any such examination has not been done with respect to its long term consequences. To buy into the notion that capitalism is IT, means to discard the notion that there is something much cooler and more satisfying out there, even if it has not been found yet. Step number one is to start searching.
However, as necessary as the change to our economic system may likely be, it is not going to be sufficient. Because no matter what kind of economic system, every person still needs to eat, drink, takes up habitat space and creates bio-waste at the very least, and places entitlements to basic necessities, many of which few of us want to part with.
It is necessary to change our economic system. But it is not sufficient. Too many people pay too little attention to the difference between necessary and sufficient which is the kind of logic flaw that leads to confusion, misunderstandings and silo-based thinking. And vice versa - silo-based thinking further promotes the ongoing confusion between necessary and sufficient.
Even this relatively simple example shows how the human brain is frequently overwhelmed with analysis of complex systems because people are by and large good at linear thinking but not adept at feedback-based thinking. Even someone as intelligent as Germany's equivalent of Carl Sagan, Hoimar von Ditfurth, admits at faltering at intuiting the solution to a fairly simple feedback experiment he is showing in the below-mentioned TV episode of Querschnitt (english: Cross-section).
For an excellent example look at Hoimar von Ditfurth's show Vor dem Menschen stirbt der Wald (German for "Before humanity it is the forests that will die"). Unfortunately you would need to know German for this but perhaps you can get the intention even without understanding every word of it.
When you look at minute 21:00, you will see simple examples of linear versus nonlinear causation. You will see how humans can easily comprehend linear causation but falter at even the most simple examples of immediate feedback relations where cause and effect are instantaneously and nonlinearly intertwined.
To give you a taste how much more intertwined and seemingly intractable human-nature systems are, Vor dem Menschen stirbt der Wald shows at 26:20 a real world example of a computer simulation of a hypothetical African region named "Tanaland", a simulated community that test persons are supposed to help improve this relatively simple community where people have survived on meager subsistence levels for hundreds of years before outsiders intervened. Tanaland was modelled, even though crude when measured by today's available computational abilities, on real world data of an actual real-world community regarding items such as soil, water, vegetation, climate.
Only 1 in 10 test subjects were able to recommend actions that did not lead to utter collapse after running the simulation for a couple of simulated years. The remaining 9 of 10 did recommend interventions all too typical for most aid organizations to this day. The frequently made mistake was that test subjects failed to think of population feedback relations and ultimately in terms of the land's carrying capacity.
The are really looking at the interface between a) nature's unassisted "unconscious" decision making in untamed systems that are based on instincts and b) human being's interventionist "conscious" decision making that is based on reductionist abstraction and oversimplification. That interface turns out to be a precarious one where the human's conscious agenda-driven world and the biosphere's unconscious worlds are meeting each other. We have long left the balance of nature and we have very little left of natural spaces that are still in balance with themselves that are not needing constant supervision and care by human beings, such as agricultural lands or monoculture forests.
This very instructive psychological study about Tanaland was created by Dietrich Dörner which is discussed in this fascinating summary The Logic of Failure. It illustrates just how intractable natural or long-term adapted processes are to the human mind. And how destructive and out-of-control things get when humans start to tinker and intervene in systems that have achived a natural balance. That insight runs diametrically counter to the human hubris that we can always control the negative consequences of our actions with even more interventions - a deeply and highly dangerous technocratic point of view.
Perhaps a good many capitalist and socialist-leaning people do suffer from that same entitlement thinking upon our biosphere. The biosphere is not just chiefly to serve us, but for the last 6,000 years humans have treated it that way. I come to that conclusion (regarding the entitlement thinking) from my own first-hand conversations with people on either side of the political spectrum, but even in the middle of the spectrum as well.
Any time people want to mainly use technology (rather than downsizing in sheer numbers and total resource demands) to hold on for dear life to the current resource-extravaganza, it appears like a "me first" upon all the other beautiful creatures and wild spaces that have needs of their own but no voice. The biosphere has needs of its own that are not subserviant to human needs.
One socialist-leaning person who I recently debated with told me with a straight face that "perhaps we can, even if we were to need to abolish agriculture, use the wildnerness so that it serves most human needs". To me that comment went to show me just how profoundly ingrained, despite all professed social justice and pro-environment leanings, the idea is that we humans can justly foist our will upon the biosphere and that nature is supposed to be subservient to society, be it a worker paradise or a consumer paradise. This internalized paradigm appears to transcend most cultures and traditions, with a few exceptions of any remaining indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that face rapid extinction.
Rather than using the word "nut job" used by Derrick Jensen in The Tyranny of Entitlement, I would say that the economists' hubris of infinite growth constitutes highly wishful and unscientific thinking by single-issue linear thinkers regrettably sit in influential positions. I mourn the position they are inhabiting because in those positions these people are capable of a lot of damage through their persuasive powers and lop-sided access of main media information channels. That is just one more reason why we must think for ourselves before we blindly trust highly paid experts in places of power or in those places where doctrine of subserviance and submission to domination might be spoken from the pulpits.
But I do not only warn of people in positions of high influence. I also advise the same caution towards well-meaning grass-roots persuaders who - driven by well-intentioned single-issue-based ideology - are driving away connected multi-faceted scientific inquiry and connecting debate. Many, if not most, do so in the tragically misguided belief that this might diluate their own message and distract from the importance of their undoubtedly important issue. All these issues are immensely important, but which issue is so important that it merits the discreditation of other, just as important issues ?
Let me pull apart prioritization versus discreditation here:
If someone were to tell me "We think overpopulation is also a very important issue, we just will not focus on it, since we have to pick our battles. But we are interested in linking up with those who want to lobby for a lower population foot print since our needs are the same.", then I would not be in disagreement with them. They are merely putting their effort closest to their heart as most of us will and must do.
But if instead I am hearing someone say "no, they got it all wrong. It is not overpopulation. It is capitalism. The populationists are racist and there are enough resources on this planet", then I am becoming very fearful of the divisions that are created unnecessarily. The last thing we need at times of urgency is more divisions based on people's inability to truly listen to one another and take each other seriously. Because we all humans do share the same needs for life, nature, well being of the next generations to come. Virtually nothing in this universe is mono-causal. And therefore almost no phenomenon can be ameliorated by removing only one cause.
Talking about needs shared by all humans: I even venture to say that the bulldozer driver who cuts down the rainforst has a need for wild nature and beauty. Or the CEO of the lumber company that employs him. In their misrecognition of needs they have been cut off from more wholesome ways to satisfy their needs. The poor bulldozer driver has probably fewer choices, but he too could - if conscious of his actual choices - make a better bid. Or, if he has 4 children to feed, to perhaps do child sharing with some other family that has none. Creativity is in short supply. Not so much because people are not inherently smart. But because social conventions and stories that we have been told for millennia are standing in the way of life enriching non-conventional solutions.
Just walk into any cafe. Would you start up a conversation with a stranger about politics ? If you are in Seattle/USA, you might not, because people are hunched over their "smart" devices instead and social convention tells you that those people don't want to be engaged. Especially if you are a man and talk to a woman, the woman might frequently think that "you want more than just a conversation". Well, and so it goes. Social conventions hold us back. Other societies have even much more draconian consequences in store for you. I would not recommend men to talk to unacquainted women in Saudi Arabia. Many conventions have "good reasons" behind them, but societies do not renew and re-think conventions to make or keep them alive to address both "old needs" and "newly arising needs". Such as the need for all our collective survival (including that of our other species that we share the biosphere with).
What many single-issue campaigners of all stripes at times do perhaps not sufficiently heed is this: That the interdisciplinary exchange and solution finding widens their exposure and contribution to the world wide dialogue that must happen to change course world-wide, across cultures, sub-cultures and continents.
This starts to happen when the socialist talks to the main stream environmentalist who talks to the immigration-wary environmentalist who talks to the immigration-wary libertarian who talks to the christian envangelical libertarian who talks to the neo-convervative banker. They certainly can learn from each other in a pair-wise fashion. But then later on, you put them all in a room. You will be surprised that they have all of those human needs in common.
I have experienced just a glimpse of that quality during a meeting of the Transpartisan Alliance. On most issues we agreed 80% or so. That is not to say that there is a self-selecting component at play here. I am sure there is. But the lesson was learned for me that there is more commonality than the beneficiaries of the current political landscape want us to believe. In the USA a more nationwide organization might be the Transpartisan Center.
But let us look beyond politics too. What would happen if we were to make it a deliberate practice to hang out with people of a different religious faith ? What prevents an evengelical to walk into a mosque ? Not to envangelize them (which they will probably resist) but to connect. What should prevent a person of Islamic faith to walk into a Synagogue to seek dialogue ? Or why should an atheist or agnostic not connect with people who are of any of those faiths ? On the basis of that we are all humans and on the basis that we are all sitting in this same space ship earth together.
Rather than treating "the other" with a sense of dismissiveness, we need a spirit of engagement and collaboration. Any single-issue campaigner also falls prey to the hubris as though they could not also learn from another single-issue person from the other side of the isle. As much as I have a distaste for unrealistically thinking economists or technocrats, I would still want to listen and talk to someone because I am sure they can fill in information in places where I myself tended to over-simplify or have out-dated information. Or perhaps my enemy images overall were outdated and maybe by now that same economist has had a change of heart. How would I stand a chance to find out if I kept my blinders on ?
I know how this seems an insurmountable task, when seen from an individual's perspective and when looking back at how much remains yet to be done. But let us not forget that no-one can do this alone, not you nor me. But that there is an ever-widening pool of millions of people who have more time than money who can contribute to build upon, extend, harness this knowledge. What we need to do is to not throw in the towel but get active, much in the same way as I am getting active here with my ongoing writing.
We must not forget that being and getting active fills us with empowerment and hope, rightly so. Because if there is any hope to be gained, then it is through community and connection, which is incidental to collaborative problem solving but is not merely accidental. We are by our nature hard wired to be social beings and collective problem solvers.
I agree that collective problem solving is more messy and takes longer at times. But do we truly have an alternative ?
As long as we keep in our heads thinking of such process as merely necessary, then it becomes a dead concept and burdensome to us. Probably that happens because we remember many dreadful political conversations with family members and friends that went nowhere and left us even more frustrated, right ? Or it is even harder after such incident to convince anyone that there is a life enriching way that is fun and generative.
I do agree that it takes a leap of faith that collaborative problem solving can in fact come from an energy of making life more beautiful for everyone. It requires faith in not only another person but also in oneself, namely the ability to change one's inner posture and faith. One also needs to be able to ask for help from others on that very path. "Can you, fellow human, bear with me and help me on my path to become a better listener ?". Who would not want to help with such a request ?
The first step is not to wait till one is anywhere near perfect. The first step is the intention. We as a world cannot change if we do not also change ourselves. Waiting for the "system change" is not enough. Even fighting for the "system change" is not enough. There is also a frontier within ourselves. It is both. System change comes from both within ourselves, which then feeds back to others. System change comes also certainly by pushing back against but also engaging those in powerful places. Seeing those who do spread massive harm ( as well as their collaborators) as evil monsters is too simple. We have been on that bandwaggon for a long time and where has it led us ?
When we engage in collaborative solution finding, we would be watchful that we do not go onto ego trips but engage with genuine inquiry into what makes the other person tick and what is going on in them. That is a process of inner transformation in itself. It would not be the often experienced as over-burdening "let me tell you what is good for you and how to do it", but genuine inquiry such as "hey, how do you feel about entertaining this option here, which I hope will just as much take care of your needs as well as mine and the rest of the living community - including many other beautiful members of other species ?".
Due to the practical or perhaps even theoretical near-impossibility to find the optimum solution, or to have one's own favoured solution happening to be the one that everyone loves, people invested in this process need to give up their vestedness in a particular solution or strategy, but be open to all solutions that may fit their own personal needs.
If we keep the eyes on the prize to always to find a way to make life most wonderful for as many people as possible, then we no longer must find the very optimum solution. If everyone is searching in this spirit in a giving and allowing way, the optimum solution is one of many optimum solutions and thus easier to be found. The more we become invested in just one solution, individually or even collectively, we narrow down the pool of possible solutions and thus reduce the probability of finding any solution at all.
Does this seem fairytale and overly optimistic to you ? I do empathize with you. I am drawing my optimism from my observation that we have not even tried as a world society to even come close to it. Because so far we have not widely used such processes (for instance NVC) that could conceivably get us there. Never mind that some people use those processes as manipulative tools to get "their way" rather than to truly connect.
After all those above juicy digressions, let me now backtrack to my original point regarding the catastrophic vision of civiliziation collapse:
Rather than focusing on the possible yet not inevitable eradication of our civilization, I am trying to stay focused on the - for me at least - more life-affirming and scholarly question on how long a civilization could survive at what population level. I admit that this kind of analysis is certainly not easy and requires additional quantitative research that I do not yet offer here. I am writing to the Club of Rome to receive pointers to quantitative research - should it exist in this form - that I can bring into the picture here.
For now, I am starting off with trying to ask the right questions to provide the ground work for such research. Because, if we don't even ask, much less answer, those question, how can we ever expect to achieve any form of consensus on what to aim for ? We would be like blindfolded humans walking on a cliff ledge not knowing which path might even lead to safety.
The success of any research is based on what questions one starts off asking. Before working out all the details, it may already be a good running start when more people start thinking about those questions. The quantitative answers can follow later. In fact, this process could enable a more collaboratively arrived-at answer that in turn may be more widely adoted than an answer provided unilaterally by a few experts. The process at which to arrive at an answer may be just as important as the answer itself.
However, many societies do not readily give us enough time - in the form of more vacation, better pay, fewer work hours - to even brainstorm collaboratively. Thus, the lack of non-work time appears as one of those ticking time bombs that need to be defused as well.
In addition, our so-called civilized society provides us with so many dangerous distractions such as sports on TV, fashion idolization and hero worship, gossip-filled social media. These distractions are dangerous especially because with every additional opportunity cost owed to those distractions we edge closer to the abyss.
But I do not only see the responsibility on the outside, "the system" as many refer it to. We all make personal choices to take away time from us. I can empathize with some people on the political right who question that we only look at "the system" and not also at our own responsibility for our own actions. We are all, to the degree we can respond, at the very least partially response-able for our own actions, thoughts, diagnoses and therefore feelings. And thus we are at least partially responsible for our own personal predicaments as well. It is neither only the system nor only the individual. It is both. Exactly what percentage I leave to the lawyers to decide.
Here are some examples where personal choice in the past narrows people's options in the present moment: People may have one pet or one child too many when one would be sufficient, taking away time for activism and solution search. That is just one example of certain unexpected feedback relationships even upon one's own small ecosystem. Often times we don't know even ourselves well enough to predict the effects some decisions have on ourselves later on.
People chain themselves to a mortgage that chain them to a job, even though alternatively they could buy a house in cash with 4 other people. People basically tend to over-leverage themselves. A good many, sadly so, cannot save any money at all from their already meager income. But there are a good many that could save money, but instead spend it like there is no tomorrow, with all the resulting distractions and worse consequences.
Contrary to what some in the social justice movement who I encountered think, reminding people of their personal response-ability is not the same as "blaming the victim" or "absolving the system". There are a few people who use it that way, but by far not all. It is neither only the individual nor only the system that contribute to any given situation. The binary thinking rears its head in many places.
The reminder of one's own responsibility instead constitutes an offer and call for self-empowerment and respect for a person's actual choice autonomy. To what degree people have choice and free will at all, is of course a deep age-old philosophical question, but here I will use "free will" as the presence of a choice that does not externally force you into a life-or-death decision or life-or-limb decision. The presence of injustice and certain biases and enticements in itself does no doubt narrow down choices at the current moment. But it does usually not abolish free will and choice altogether. Nor does it prevent people from, ever so slowly, digging themselves out of a hole, even if at personal investment of intentionality. Yes, many people are enslaved by the system, having to work 60 hours a week for a pitance. And organizing against the system in many countries comes with death threats or worse. But even in those narrow alleys of choice, people still make choices that can get, even if statistically by far not assured, can lead them slowly out of their predicament. The important part is to link up with others and not to do it alone. And to talk to those who you hate and distrust most. Framing people as hapless victims of the circumstances alone is too simple and seems not even in their own best interest because it robs them of the vision for the options they do have, as narrow as they might be at this very moment.
In reminding people of their own responsibility and choice, I am not absolving those who do have more choices from the opportunity and calling to help those who have less choices. (To see it that way would again be a sign of binary thinking). I am not absolving society as a whole to collectively build a safety net that is comprehensive in helping those who cannot help themselves, be it temporary helplessness or permanent helplessness. I do believe that more of those who have a wide array of choices can indeed be enriched to help those who have currently less choices so that they too can come to a point of more choice. In a way, what you do for one person, you do for the world as a whole. And I am sure many humans have reached similar conclusions.
Once a person has more choice, it is then incumbent on them to of course use that choice wisely. But even then, psychological factors may prevent them from doing so. While the time or in some case physical resources on the ground may certainly seem limited, depending on the society you live in, there is no fundamental reason why there should be shortage of empathy. Empathy does not cost money or even much time. Sometimes empathy is all we can give at a given time. But even that is better than no empathy. To suggest that empathy in the face of non-action is hypocrisy is to implicitly suggest that empathy now cannot be followed by action later on, even if on a different person in the same situation.
So much on the issue of personal choice. Let me come back to the issue of expert-knowledge and the healthy distrust of one-size-fits-all solutions that are non-collaborative.
I have empathy with those who take caution when so-called experts tell us how to run the world in a grander scheme since many of them I find very much invested in a silo-based expert knowledge. Insofar, I am trying my best, even if not perfect of course, to stay close to the ground, and cover as much interconnectedness and territory as possible.
But obviously, I too have favorites in my own body of wisdom and cannot be entirely objective. In fact what, if anything, meets the standard of near-perfect objectivity ? Even science is not absolutely objective even though it at least strives for this lofty goal.
But even if science were or could be made near-perfectly objective, the choice of how scientific to be in one's outlook is ultimately again a subjective choice. Many people base their understanding of the world on religiously informed spirituality, some of it can become doctrine by telling others on how to live.
It is a very difficult and thorny question on whether scientists, when recommending behavior changes, can be seen by some as indoctrinating as well, even though I see a qualitiative difference to religion because their wisdom is more rooted in measurements, logic and the observable universe than religion is. But I can see where some people - especially in the government-wary religious strata of society - are coming from, even if I disagree with their ultimate conclusions that such recommendations are an imposition, taking away freedom in such a way as to be destined to make their life less beautiful. As long as they believe that their live is going to be less beautiful, it is going to be subjectively so. Thus, this ties back to their own perspective.
What gets lost in the quest to preserve one's positive need for autonomy is that we still need to get to a place of collaboration, and that collaboration and autonomy are not, as often presumed, mutually exclusive. That perhaps radical point of view is rooted again in conclusions I draw from Non-violent Communication.
Therefore we would be collaborative beings ideally voluntarily and happily so. Our needs for autonomy can still be fed when we do recognize that the place from which truly well-meaning recommendations come is not from a place of demand but from a place of wanting a better life for everybody. Sadly though not all places of recommendation come from an altruistic place that have the wellbeing of everyone in mind. And therefore such distrust is not automatically misplaced as such. But here is the antitote that works better than simply dismissing people's advice as coming from a "selfish place".
We need to sharpen our inner radar to see through the clouds and ascertain whether someone comes from that life enriching energy. And when our radar throws a red warning, then to ask further questions as to where that person is coming from. They often need enlightenment to their own motives since many of a person's needs lay hidden behind layers and layers of strategies and preferences they are invested in (the difference between strategies/preferences and needs is highlighted in Non-violent Communication and one of the most powerful distinctions I know of). But even so-called self-serving agendae come from personal needs that we all share. What we then need to do - when we recognize it - is to open that poor person to the vision there are more wholesome ways for that person to meet their needs that will enrich both themselves and everyone else. That again is a collaborative process. But we all, in our original being, enjoy the act of giving, when it is not a demand or when it is not received as a demand. I am thankful once again for Non-violent Communication to have given me that powerful insight.
Tying back to my original point about subjectivity, as great as my desire is to present a holistic and scientifically compelling piece of contribution here, it remains ultimately subjective in nature. And even if it were all objectively 100% water-tight, it does not matter in the real world as long as there are other humans that subjectively choose not to embrace it because it conflicts with their own understanding or desire for a specific type of understanding of the world. Yet, one has to try. One got to try. If the world is to come together and cooperate in a more interlocked and interdependent and empathetic way, there got to be more unity, despite the enrichment that diversity brings. In any solution there needs to be plenty of room for the pluralistic expression of diversity, because individuality and autonomy are also undisputed human needs. But we also must be bound together by a common thread that weaves us all together in the quest for making life beautiful for everyone and not just a selected few. And also for not just humans but for wild and untamed animals and plants as well as unadulterated landscapes and oceanscapes. They have their own needs too.
In my quest for being all-encompassing, I have to admit that my current proposals, as far as the practical aspects of what you can do (which I address further down) are somewhat more complete for people in developed countries. In part that is obviously because I am living in one of those countries and thus know them best. Eventually though, I would like to make my proposal compehensive enough even for those who currently live in conditions that are inhumane, fearful, impoverished so that they can get themselves out of it.
For instance some of my proposals are not readily possible to put into practice for anybody living under a brutal dictatorship. Because there you could be thrown you into jail and do horrible things to you if you were to try to implement some of my ideas that are perfectly legal in a democracy that honors free speech and free commerce and right to free assembly.
My proposals thus may fall short as an allout practical guide for everyone on this planet because I have not yet researched sources that tell ordinary subjugated citizens how they can successfully overthrow dictatorships or break up corrupt government structures that hold them back severely. I am almost certain that some books have been written on that and that is where we do need some experts indeed.
But at least for anyone living in a halfway democratic country with free speech assurances can make relatively free personal and group choices. And those are the ones I am outlining here.
I am starting off with a fundamental question that has been going on in my head for a while now: whether any technological civilization of sizeable population can fundamentally survive for any appreciable length of time. By appreciable length of time I mean 10,000 years or longer. Because really, even 10,000 years is just a blip in human and geological history. And I do very much wonder if, say 10,000 years is possible even if that civilization were to use the most environmentally friendly technologies that we can currently realize or that are even ever possible to realize based on fundamental physical and resource limitations.
I find that question very interesting and vexing, because how in the world can we intelligently answer all the questions pertaining to our short-term survival if we do not also take a much longer perspective ? After all, what happens even if we narrowly avoid utter disaster through the next 200 years ? Will our choices we make right now not also influence what happens after the year 2222 ? Or should one not say "first things first" ?
My intuition tells me that we will not able to adequately address the short-term problems without looking at the long-term. Or, more positively speaking, we can address them much better if we take the long term view. The long-term view (10,000 years) will give us the guidance towards the short-term view (200 years). The universe, or some will call it God, will reward us for taking the long view. That is my deep inner conviction.
I will come back to the issue of over-population several times and thus I will expand on it later. But let us imagine that the peaceful and voluntary reduction of the human population were indeed embraced and followed-through by humanity: then one quandry we'd face is that high technology - and the high societal complexity it imposes and depends on - requires also a pretty high minimum population to sustain it. For any complex system you need a minimum number of specialized parts. And here, you need a minimum number of highly specialized people and institutions.
Almost certainly, the number of people involved would at least be pretty high compared to what the human population was a million years ago. The Gaea Times article There were 18,500 humans in the world 1.2 million years ago gives you a surprisingly exact estimate, so I would take it with a grain of salt. It may have been as many as 18,600 humans.
So, my point is that we would not want to get near such low population numbers again if we ever want to hope for a technological civilization.
I would go as far as doubting that any human civilization with for instance a global population of about 100 million people is large enough to simultaneously build big jetliners, atom smashers for basic research, space probes, GPS satellites, rockets, rocket launch facilities, a complete supply chain for making microchips of all sorts, electrical grids, power stations, digital cameras of the kind that Japan produces, high speed trains, wind parks, solar panels, big infrastructure projects like underwater tunnels, big ships and terminals, iron smelters of all kinds, chemical industry, pharmaceutical industry, medical equipment industry, and all hightech and low tech businesses for making everyday goods from home electronics, building materials, clothing, food, recreational equipment, all the speciality medical equipment and services.
And we would also have to maintain a complex political and judicial system as well as service industries like insurances, banks. I am by the way not suggesting that in the future we would need all of those institutions, but even if we were no longer need banks in the way we have them right now, we would still need some sort of institution that replaces it.
Even a if a 100 million strong world population were to mostly be clustered in a region like Germany (with currently about 82 million people and with great infrastructure, short and thus efficient distances) it would probably not be able to build all of those above modern trappings because they collectively are of such an immense complexity. You see that it takes, at least currently or at the current pace of technological progress, a larger population than that. You could however legitimately question whether we need that pace of progress in the first place. In that case a lower number might suffice.
Even Germany, which is still a major exporter and builder of many of the above goods does not singlehandedly build an airbus plane (which is a major cooperation between several European countries), space station, super computers, fabricate all of the microchips, microchip-making machines, lasers, PC-boards, smart phones. Just even because raw materials or all the varieties of imported food that flow into Germany are extracted or made by millions of people all around the globe. Those are the often invisible yet just as essential people that keep such a high tech economy running. We often tend to forget and under-value that.
So, let us say, we need perhaps more like 300 million people. If those 300 million people were strewn across the world without clustering, that could also impede the viability of technological civilization. In fact, many of the countries where our most complex goods are manufactured - Japan, Germany and also China - have high average density. In a way it would be good to cluster. It would open back up more wide open spaces for the life sustaining systems of our planet, the lungs of our planet that let our lungs breathe as well.
Here is also a scary consequence: If indeed any technological civilization requires a minimum population or population density, then that civilization is doomed to collapse if nature takes matters into its own hand and de-populates us not on our terms, but on its own schedule and quite possibly even far below the mark at which a technological civilization is sustainable. When collapse does happen, it can happen very fast and overshoot the threshold of viability. It has happened to countless other species, why should we be neccessarily exempt ?
Nature will down-size and right-size our population for the long-term. Why ? It has to. It has no other choice. Nature only knows long-term when it comes to long-term consequences. Maybe this seems utterly obvious and trivial but if you really think it through, nature will prevail one way or the other. It has the longest staying power. Even if human activity has turned the planet into a desert wasteland with dead oceans, earth will still be here in 100,000 years. Earth will downsize its life sustaining systems because they are being exhausted from over-use and pollution and de-forestation. In the process it will by neccessity right-size our population as well. It is not possible any other way.
Hoimar von Ditfurth gives this very clear warning in Hoimar von Ditfurth : Der Ast auf dem wir sitzen 2/2:
We should now remember that earth's surface is littered with the fossil remains of exstinct species that did perish for no other reason than their inability to adjust their behavior to the changing environmental conditions. All those previously exstinct species are excused because they had only an instinctive nature that controlled their behavior. They did not have an actual choice.
We however are the first species on earth that has a Cerebrum (large brain). We are rightfully proud of the fact that we are not merely biologically determined but that - even within a frame of biologically set limit conditions - we can make free and autonomous decisions. We must make use of those abilities. We must decipher the instinct that steers us into the abyss in order to overcome it, as mindful and freely acting beings that we are.
Over-use, just like a stock-market-run-up, can only happen for a short while. But because this is on a time scale that is long w.r.t. to a human life time, we keep thinking that this can keep going like yesterday. Except this run-up, unlike a stock market crash, may lead into a very very long depression. As fast as nature can reclaim human made structures once left alone, the feedback mechanisms set in motion by global warming and deforestation may take millions of years to reverse into an equillibrium that once again is hospitable to human beings on the scale that sustains a civilization. The fiercer the run-up, the deeper the crash. If we humans have not found a way to get along with nature, then nature will have found its own way to get along with us, even if that means mass-elimination and collapse.
Another movie that has made a very strong impression on me is There's No Tomorrow (peak oil, energy, growth and the future).
There is a particularly interesting, vexing and scary aspect that I had never thought of but that is ingrained in the human psyche and in our market-economy that is mentioned at There's No Tomorrow, t=28:00:
If some people cut back on oil use, the reduced demand will drive down the price, allowing others to buy it for less. That right there, to me, is an indictment of our market economy. The law of supply and demand does actually not guarantee resource conservation because lower prices from conservation will erase the benefit right there !
And to me that shows that even in a wonderful wind-mill studded, all-electric car economy, people will always consume as much as they get away with until it is all used up. Unless there are laws that expressively set aside and lock resources for future generations so that they cannot be gobbled up by the current generation, no matter how low the price falls from conservation. I think Norway is somewhat trying to do that with its North Sea oil supplies, but I know of no other country having any such long-term policy.
The movie clip continues to say something just as seemingly hopeless:
A machine that uses less energy will paradoxically lead to greater energy use. That was in fact already discovered in the 19th century by economist William Stanley Jevons. This apparently brilliant economist was, unlike many economists today, also a logician. Maybe that explains why he does not fall into the mediocre category of current-day economists, those who adhere to the ridiculous and patently illogical notion of infinite growth.
What that means is that we have to cut back voluntarily long before we run out of resources. The price of a commodity will not guide us to preservation, nor will appliances that save resources. Look at how many people have more lights on in the house because they now use energy-saving lightbulbs ! Because it takes the guilt away, it so seems.
Here is to prove that people have a hard time to cut back voluntarily when there is no price pressure. Imagine you won the lottery and won 10 million dollars. Wouldn't you then buy a new car, buy a second home or go on plenty of trips ? Why wouldn't you ? I probably would too ! Because price is no longer an issue when you are that rich. So you likely would. Now you would say "well, not everyone is a multi-millionaire, so it does not make a dent in the world's resources". Well, but in a larger sense we are ALL millionaires here in the developed world, based on our resource usage and in comparison to those who would live a life style that is sustainable and in harmony with nature, with much lower resource usage.
Even the poor peasant in Brazil who has to chop down rain forest land to find land for growing food is over-using nature. He is not like the millionaire because of his own low consumption. But in his collective situation he is. By being with too many other people who, by their sheer numbers, force even him to move ever deeper into the rain forest. I don't disount that it is also big corporations, but not originally so and by far not always.
What does that tell us, really ?
It tells us that, just like a lot of animal species too, we have, as a species, not shown to be able of doing a voluntary reduction of our appetite when there is the appearance of plentifulness, even though that plentifulness is in fact only a mirage because it is not built on sustainability.
Take a look at the Mountain Pine Beetle whose infestation, even if due to climate change, shows that certain animal species too often know no limits. They will expand in population territory whereever they can.
In our hubris that we are better than the animal, we forget how much of our legacy we still have yet to overcome. Be it physical territoriality, intellectual territoriality or the never-ending appetite for more. And that is by far not only the rich 1 percenters. That is in virtually each of us if we are honest with ourselves. It is just that the rich have more means to fulfill this appetite, but even for them it is rarely ever enough. "My super-yacht is not big enough yet !".
It tells us that, just like a lot of animal species too, we are mostly not capable or willing to think of future generations, on what's left to them. There are exceptions. The Iroquois, also known as the Six Nations, practiced Seven generation sustainability.
Sadly, due to the more resource-intensive technological superiority of the Europeans, they were wiped out. A more differentiated answer can be found in Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. The human "eco-system" did thus apparently reward such life-sustaining attitudes. Or could it be the rules of the jungle itself that are destined to make it so ?
This begs the question: Is any civilization doomed from the start once it reaches a certain degree of technical and destructive capabilities ?
The more I think about it, the more I start to wonder. We humans think we can think ourselves out of this, because we are supposedly "conscious". Yes we are conscious on an individual level. A lot of people, like Jared Diamond or Hoimar von Ditfurth and lots of unnamed people are thinking about it. But collectively, can we do so ?
So far, at least collectively, most societies have not managed to, except perhaps some small ones such as Buthan.
But be careful here to idolize. Even the all-so enlightened country of Buthan, with its touted Gross National Happiness is expanding in population quite rapidly. Look at the Demographics of Buthan. And will they not also fall into the trap that they can engineer themselves out of the carrying-capacity with more technology ? Rather than making stark choices on their own behalf as to who should have how many children ?
Why is it that people always look at technology to get them out of these limits that will catch up with them much later when it is too late to turn back the clock ? When it has by then become utterly difficult to move back to traditional ways of living because by then, the high population no longer allows it to move back to simpler lives ? I cannot see at least how in China or Japan people can ever move back from their mega-city's 50 story beehives into the country side. The countryside could not possibly absorb all those people. At least I cannot see that.
The same predicament, to a lesser degree, is the case in Europe, USA and other parts of Asia. We thus have left behind a life style that was at least somewhat sustainable would we have been able to maintain stable populations. But we sidestepped that question, like most societies, in the name of personal autonomy and lack of foresight that technology comes with a high price tag, especially when coupled with a large population.
And as far as awakened appetite for technology, the western influence on Buthan by the way of - even though restricted - tourism fuels new appetite for gadgets, TV, etc. And the information channeled through those devices ignites the appetite for more of the same - status, fashion, fancy travel, sophisticated city life, sophisticated "culture". And who could blame them ? For them it is novel and people are curious.
Unrelenting curiosity is one of the traits that fuels human spirit and aliveness. How could anyone blame even the most enlightened people that even they think "I must check this out" ? And of course, as in most advertisements, people are shown as very happy and smiling with their high fashion and gadgets in hand. What is not shown in those advertisements is how those same supposedly smiling people sit at work, coming home late from work, all to fuel this madness.
How come that I see the most genuinely smiling faces in those countries where people live simply and where community is what sustains them ? Are we missing something here ?
My stress is on "genuine" and radiant smile. In our sophisticated manipulative societies we often smile because it gets us something. Politeness, approval or whatever. But too often the smiles here in the developed world seem forced. Like 'I have to force myself to be happy' or 'I have to say that I am doing fine because I am not supposed to be not-fine. I am not supposed to burden others with my burden'.
So even when we look at Buthan where even there younger generations may more and more, gradually so, be swayed by western ideas of happiness, that the more resource-conservative and expectation-conservative ways of prior generations are not passed on to younger generations. Is it merely that prior generations did not have the technical means to do so ?
Probably so. Because much of human progression has been done on the back of nature and with the idea to tame or manipulate nature. That is not a new thing. Look how the Romans chopped down all the forests of the Mediterranean 2000 years ago. None of that can be regrown. We have become used to the idea of those landscapes being beautiful, but really, they are man-made denuded hillsides that used to be lush with coastal forests.
This book review mentions that forest destruction has been going on for a long time. Check out Los Angeles Times - Of World Forests and World History. In fact, there even appears to have been local climate change due to this large scale deforestation. We don't even need any modern-day CO2 emission to get the ball rolling. If we just cut down enough forests, that alone can do us in ! See the paragraph in above article:
John Perlin's new book, "A Forest Journey," is like some Greek epic poem spanning 4,000 years of civilization. The refrain is inevitably tragic. It begins with the "Epic of Gilgamesh" about 2000 BC. Gilgamesh penetrated the primordial cedar forest in the mountains south of Mesopotamia to acquire timber necessary for building his city-state of Uruk. According to Perlin, the "Epic" recounts droughts that plagued southern Mesopotamia in the aftermath of deforestation.
It seems to be, with a few exceptions of indigenous tribal societies that eschewed "progress" (as we define it), built into our fabric. Thus, contrary to what many economists say standstill - at least in those societies - is progress. In our case, progress would be actual regress. Downsize. Downsize population and downsize resource usage, greed, accumulation, hording. Upsize instead our expectation on community, wild nature, simplicity, health - but not with the idea that we must live to age 80, but that age 60 may suffice. Do we really need all that high tech, high resource medicine ?
While we may be as "greedy" as many animal species, there are differences between us and the often equally voracious animal, both in our embeddedness in the biosphere and in our internal makeup.
The first difference to the animals is: Animal populations will eventually be reigned in and downsized by nature, without nature taking a huge beating. We humans will also be reigned in and downsized, but we may do so by nuclear war in the worst case and even if not so, then by ravaging the entire biosphere, dragging down everyone with us. Instead of being just downsized (as some other animal populations that overfeed and then die back) we might very well perish altogether.
The second difference to the animals is: While we too are still rooted in old animal instincts and in many ways still very close to the animals regarding our brain patterns, we have at least acquired the consciousness and thus the ability to think scientifically and to foresee consequences. However, that ability is not used on a large enough scale. Or even if a large amount of people sees it, it acts like deer in the headlights due to the insurmountable challenges. We also have built a system, especially in the developed world, from which it is difficult to escape. The entanglements are too great, there is no alternative other than to jump off the cliff and change our living standard very rapidly.
Another difference is that we don't kill just for food. At least not as of yet. That may change as future wars are fought over bare necessities like water and agrarian lands. And in our subconsciousness we may always have that in the back of our heads when we fight over "loftier" things such as oil, minerals, that are not as much for bare survival but for feeding our high tech civilization.
Humans kill to uphold their high living standards. They kill for power. And they don't just kill. They maim, torture, enslave, rape, sell people, pillage, destroy entire cities or cultural monuments. All of that animals don't do as much. Or if they do, then it seems to us, it is only for their bare survival. But I may be wrong. Maybe all of that capability is already inside some animal species too.
And why is it that it is so hard to change our way of living in a the kind of rapid sort of fashion that may possibly be needed ?
In the developed world, there are legal boundaries in place. Who would give up their jobs that support this system and still be able to live in their home without the bank reposessing it or the landlord kicking them out on the street ? So, these even very simple entanglements right there show that, without an outright questioning of those laws that keep us here, there is little chance that people will jump off the bandwaggon. It seems that some external event will have to do it for us in order to compell us to coordinated change of habits, be it voluntary or involuntary.
I ventured, above, into an important topic that begins to touch more on over-population (which I come to later), but let me come back to minimum population:
I don't have a conclusive scientific proof regarding the minimum population required. We certainly could cut away a lot of wasteful duplication and some technologies we don't need. But let us just say that the probability seems low that we would be able to sustain a considerable technological civilization with less than 100 million people. And also remember the low cost labor we currently depend on in the third world. That work would all have to be done by those 100 million people as well. Especially since we would want social justice and the good life for everyone involved. Thus, ideally, the menial, boring, dirty and hazardous jobs would either be the best paid ones and/or many more of us would or should have to do them, thus spreading the pain thin and amongst the many. A mandatory social service year for all citizens could be one of several approaches to distribute some of the load and also deal with an aging population.
It likely would have been possible in the early days of industrialization 100 years ago to have a technology-based civilization with less than 100 million people when infrastructure, industrial and consumer goods as well a research tools were still fairly simple to make. When things were made locally. Remember when houses were made of brick and mortar and wood, when there was no plastics, no synthetic fertilizer, when there was just perhaps 5 car models worldwide ? When the corner store was the main place to go for all your needs and there was perhaps 2 brands of kitchen appliances at most ? When businesses and government were smaller and less reliant on huge complex bureaucracies. But for today's complexities you need probably more like 300 million people, I would say, especially if you want to give everyone in the world a fairly equal and dignified living standard - a goal we ought to strive for in the name of social justice. Because many of today's problems are a direct result of social inequality and the current wasteful systems are only possible because of social injustice.
But here is the catch: A cushy technological life style for everyone of the 7 billion world citizens over a life span of 10,000 years is, by my rough estimate virtually impossible. Unless technology were to come around that, by today's standard would border on a miracle. Even if we get all of our energy from renewable energy, we cannot renew raw materials with 100% recovery rate. The rate at which earth itself replenishes rare materials is glacial compared to the consumption rate imposed by a 7 Billion strong population. And I will try to provide more detailed proof in my forthcoming chapters as to why this is. Thus, I hope I have captured your interest so far in reading on.
Next, let me come to one of my favorite topics, one that I think forms one of the corner stones for a long term viable civilization: The addressing of Over-population.
You might wonder why those above 3 things should be intertwined. So, let me take it one step at a time and start with my favorite one, over-population. I feel very strongly about wealth disparity, but over-population is close to my heart one because it has been seen as irrelevant by too many over the last 40 years and because I see it as perhaps the most dangerous dismissal or under-valuation.
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote his signature book The Population Bomb (1968). I have not read his book but I can read and listened to Paul Ehrlich's more recent contributions Optimum Human Population Size (1994), Interview on Australian Radio (2011), Transcript or the more complete Interview on Australian Radio (2011), Audio-File.
Here are some free professional youtube videos to watch: To get a feeling for what population rise is doing to the USA, watch National Geographic Channel - Collapse. To get an impression on what population rise and inequality are doing to poor countries, watch Manila - 20 Million and Rising.
I am finding myself curiously running into one person after the other here in the USA, who think that the world is not over-populated. I find that to be particularly the case on a socialist or social-justice-minded segment of the political left. That felt unsettling to me because I was disappointed in my expectation that most people would think in complex and "holistic" terms and thus be interested to debate rationally and scientifically about the future of the biosphere. Perhaps worse than the denial itself I find the unwillingness to analytically debate the issue in depth. This unwillingness bears the hallmarks of religions or cults.
Here is a brief summary of the Left-wing critics's perspective. Particularly Barry Commoner was an early proponent that the only way to end overpopulation is to re-distribute the wealth among nations and within them. Barry Commoner at least does not deny over-population to exist, but merely says that you first have to overcome inequality.
However, I keep running into so many people and groups who outright deny that it is a problem. I have talked to representatives from 350.org and Food First as well as Naomi Klein told me that overpopulation is not a primary problem. You can see her response in the video of a Seattle Townhall talk on Sept 28, 2014: Naomi Klein - This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.
So, to say the least, I have become very curious as to the root cause of this all-out denial.
Here are a number of assumptions that I believe are implicit in her response and in similar responses I have received:
Several the above assumptions are dangerously out of line with how reality actually works. For instance, the rapid destruction of rain forests actually scales a lot more with population when the destruction happens at the hands of peasant farmers burning down rain forests. A differentiated treatment of the issue is given in Deforestation in Brazil.
But even when the rain forest destruction happens at the hands of mining or logging companies it still scales with population as well whenever there is an increase in domestic consumption under way (such as in Asia or Brazil).
Why is that ? Because an increase in domestic consumption is driven by ordinary people wanting the same gadgets that we have (smart phones, electrical appliances electrical infrastructure, cars) and for that they need hard currency. And thus they need to sell out natural goods. That is the nature of the current day world economic system. And we can wait till it disappears, but that may take longer than time permits. To think "it should happen" does not make it so. A dose of realism is healthy so that we don't put our eggs in one basket that may take a while to hatch.
But it is not only for harder currency. New appetite for larger homes plus an increased urban population fuels local consumption of rain forests for logging or for making way for soybean or palm oil production.
Now anybody tell me the above does not also scale with domestic population. Add to that the moral quandry whether we can even legitimately tell people in poverty that they should not also benefit from the advances that the first world has had, often on the backs of poor countries.
It is schizophrenic to on the one hand want the good life for also the citizens of poor countries and at the same time prevent them from making the urgent choices that will get them there in such a way where they don't wreck their own habitat for good and keep them entrapped in poverty.
In fact Hoimar von Ditfurth could not have said it clearer in Der Ast auf dem wir sitzen, Part 2 when he discusses the number-relations in conjunction with per-capita energy use.
Using actually similar energy facts of energy multiples (1 American uses as much energy as 2 Europeans, 60 Indians, 160 Tanzanians, 1000 Rwandans) that overpopulation-deniers are using, Hoimar_von_Ditfurth is however showing that the number-relations are stacked against this reasoning because those in poor countries will rightfully clamor for a better life too, thereby at least by some good degree, leading to a manifold increase in resource consumption.
The energy multiples of above have likely become smaller since 1978. But the point is that you would not even need to get anywhere near the 10-fold or 30-fold (depending in which developing country you live) energy resource increase that you would need to match USA's per capita energy consumption. To get even a modest living standard with a modicum of modern emenities that we all take for granted and see as a basis for dignified existence for all those currently in poverty, an increase of 3-fold till 5-fold would seem required. Of course, it is a valid question what the people themselves think of as dignified and that level may be more modest indeed. But given the number of people, any modest increase in energy usage that amounts to a huge increase in resource consumption overall, with all the pollution, un-sustainability and eventual collapse that then threatens there as much as in the developed world.
But more importantly and much more basic, regardless of any rise in living standard, an increasing population by necessity means that each person still must have have food and water, all of which will force the conversion of more and more natural habitat to agrarian land. Even when you farm organically and traditionally (which is, as I am hearing, more productive than chemical agriculture and certainly more sustainable and social-equity friendly), you will reach a limit. And that limit may be way closer than people think.
"The American or European could save till they starve, It wouldn't help the people in the poorest countries", he says. I can see how this point is often not seen by global social justice advocates. Because in reality you cannot just transfer real wealth that easily from a developed country to another. What is useful in one country is not useful in another. Enough local per-capita food and land for agriculture will still still needed in Africa no matter what. That requirement would still hold if all of Europe and USA were to suddenly take on low-energy African living standards and resource usage. How else can one have anything like food sovereignty ? And insofar I do fully agree with the food sovereignty movement. But what many in that movement appear to ignore that even there you will hit limits.
Of course, what Hoimar von Ditfurth did not mention sufficiently is that drastic cuts in the first world would make a difference in world pollution and resource extraction such as mining, including or increasingly mostly in the third world. Those cuts then, if everyone participates (including China) would cut exploitation through rich countries exploiting poor countries. I dare to think that he failed emphasize that point because in 1978, with far less neo-liberalized "free" trade, that dynamic was far less at play than it is now. Or even he fell victim to over-simplification too.
But to be clear, Hoimar von Ditfurth not only harps on the third world as being the main "issue" here. He takes very much issue with the the out-of-balance nature in the developed world with its polluted air and rivers and over-developed tracts of land. That therefore equally in the developed world we must of course reign in our population and consumption. He was saying that in 1978, before the advent of SUVs, China's middle class. He would turn in his grave if he saw much bigger the weight of developed countries is now.
But the original premise still holds. People in developing countries will understandably want a better living standard but, like everywhere else, have only so much land and resources to divide up for agriculture, water (most water goes toward agriculture) and housing. They, in the best interest of protecting their local micro climate and global climate as well as biodiversity, they need to protect the globally critical last stretches of rain forests and intact wild lands. that equally contribute to global warming and particularly contribute to the demise of species. The biosphere is not just there for us.
And of course the rich countries have to protect their own wild resources as well. It is not only the poor countries with their remaining lungs of the planet. It is not either/or. Especially USA and Canada with the remaining old growth forests and roadless areas need to protect the natural resources that are rapidly dwindling. Those are all under attack by the energy infrastructure of fracking gas wells and oil wells as well as clear cutting from expanded need for more housing. But also from a record incidence of forest fires, likely due to lower rain fall from climate change.
And Europe, if they can, need to cut back population so they too can hand over tracts of land back to nature, transferring mono-culture back to wild nature. I would love to see a currently highly developed but fairly densely populated country such as Germany with 30 million people rather than the current 80 million so that vast parts of the countryside could be turned into national parks with wolves roaming, ultra cheap housing and plenty of locally grown food and plenty of space for any wind or solar energy we might want to create, but not plastering the entire countryside with asparagus-like wind towers.
The long-lost forests of the mediterranean can probably never be re-created. They were lost 2000 years ago to the Romans, the top soil gone. Nature will perhaps require millions of years, if ever, to re-create the conditions that allow forests to re-appear naturally.
The only way I see to make this work without utter biosphere collapse (except for perhaps microbial life, rodents or insects and simpler plant life) is that people in those countries as well as the developed world reduce their birth rates and modestly increase their living standard while we reduce ours. You cannot engineer yourself out of the basic physics of a biosphere. That is technocratical thinking without any scientific basis. Science and technocracy are different animals.
Rather than the either/or dichotomy, the situation requires both - cutbacks in the developed and poor countries, just in different ways. The first world no doubt has to drastically cut consumption and population.
The fallacy of either/or logic should become clear as follows: Each region's foot print is the product of average per capita consumption and number of people. That still holds under socialism as capitalism, since I am using the average. When you have a product of two numbers, which one is more pressing to reduce ? Would you say that the area of a rectangle being A x B, that A is more important than B ? Or is B more important than A ? Answer is that it is neither. You would do both if you want to get the area down as quickly as possible. For the above rectangle example, I give credit to the talk Paul Ehrlich - Population, Environment, and the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere : t=14:00. Paul Ehrlich aptly says that in a multiplication of two factors, you cannot say that only one is responsible for the product of the two.
Now there is another reason why some propose that consumption is the lower hanging fruit. And in many ways they are right. We can reduce consumption quicker than population. However because population has a longer lag time, we must start earlier because the over-shoot takes longer to correct.
We thus tend to under-estimate the population momentum because its effects lie far in the future. But with controlling slow moving processes, it is like trying to turn a large super-tanker. You have to turn the rudder way early in order to make the turn 20 minutes later. Or with a mortgage that you better pay down early rather than later or else you pay a lot of extra interest.
So, change in consumption is possible quicker, but still with pain. But it is possible. Look at what happened during World War 2.
Paul Ehrlich mentions in his talk Paul Ehrlich - Population, Environment, and the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere that during World-War 2, no (civilian) passenger cars were produced in the USA, Japan, Germany for 4 years. Gasoline, meat were rationed. With the right incentive (to win a war) you can change people's habits.
But be careful with such comparisons. One must consider that the car factories just shifted their employees straight to the production of the military hardware. Today we don't have that luxory. We are already militarized enough and there is no world war as of yet.
So, I think, a lot of us will have to become food growers again in the long term. Because the oil-based fertilizers and pesticides and perhaps even tractors will perhaps have to go. I am not sure if there will be electric tractors or bio-fuel fuelled tractors, but bio-fuels are a no-no as well. Without tractors, it would have to be manual labor. So, many young people might want to go back into farming. The problem is that there are not enough farms left and the big agro businesses may hold on to their land till it all collapses. Maybe consumers asking for more organic food will help. But that requires resolve and the willingness to pay increasingly high prices, at least until we have converted most of the farmland. But that implies that we have no ferocious droughts or water shortages. The safest bet here is to downsize our own population in the developed world as fast as we humanly and humanely can. A one-child policy and social service would seem the safest way. Radical global dangers require radical global and local steps.
Can you downsize a consumer economy rapidly ? You still have to make spare parts for all those complex cars or everything will collapse pretty much right away. You cannot just pull the plug without provoking economic collapse and a hemorrhaging of jobs. Everybody talks about downsizing but people are not doing it because everything is so entangled in the current web of inter-dependencies. You can simply not just jump off the cliff when you have 3 children to feed and a mortgage and no savings and no education that prepares you for the jobs that will be needed.
Also to be considered is that during World War 2, even with civilian car production out of commision, you could keep a car running and repair it in your garage. There were far fewer people, car models, and the totality of spare parts was managable. Now cars are so complex and models so manifold that a rapid ramping-down of consumption, even if just spare parts, seems impossible.
While the third world has to worry about keeping the population in check it also must put on the brakes in order to not chase down the same rat-hole that the first world has. The latter is hard because everyone wants what they think of "the good life" with all the "cool" gadgets.
Fighting economical inequality is critical to that kind of poverty that is attributed to inequality. Not all poverty is, but a good share of it is. As the theory goes, people will get fewer children, although that also requires women's rights, thus fighting gender inequality is just as important. My contention is that people need to be somehow convinced that it benefits them to get fewer children even while they are already poor. That is a tough one, but is enough being done to get at the underlying needs (old age security) to address them differently ? Time and again I come back to Nonviolent Communication as the differentiaton of needs and strategies opens up new strategies for the same needs.
Paul Ehrlich mentions other good reasons for lower population. Higher population (and population density) promotes the spread of new viruses and pandemics. He also mentions that steady-state economics is increasingly considered, even though only by economists mostly not from Wall Street. Watch here: Paul Ehrlich talking about Pandemics and Wall Street Economists Another interesting argument is that lower population is better for democracy. The founding fathers of the USA were very worried about population growth. Back in the founding days, there was 20,000 people for one representative. Now there are 750,000 people for one representative. How can one hope for adequate representation ? Watch here: Paul Ehrlich talking about how a lower Population is good for Democracy.
My above analysis is meant to highlight all the dead ends we are facing in order to illustrate that over-simplification is an avoidance pattern so not to face what we are having to stare into.
Let me be clear. I am all for equality, human rights, women's rights and they are equally important. I will illustrate that below:
Giving women more rights is one important avenue because it promotes the embrace of family planning resources. Thus social justice in terms of more gender equality and women's reproductive rights is of course a major promoter towards a stable population. It is not by chance that those countries with stronger gender equality have lower birth rates, even when the overall living standard is quite a bit lower than ours, such as in parts of Eastern Europe, where birth rates are low but living standard can be low as well, shown in Demographics of Ukraine. Abortion is legal in many (not all) parts of eastern Europe, as shown in Abortion in Ukraine.
Back to the question of rain forests and local population carrying its share of the response-ability. There must be lurking in many people is that of outside big corporation's bulldozers tearing down rain forests. Perhaps it is because you see the name of western heavy machinery makers on those trucks. Or because you hear of Chinese and Japanese logging companies buying up raw logs (which is true) to feed the appetite of the burgeoning middle class.
However, a lot of logging companies doing the dirty work, in places such as Indonesia, are owned locally, often operating illegally too. Of course they do sell the logs to overseas logging companies. But it does not mean that the local population is just a victim. Not if you look at it through what the local population could do or could have done long time ago in terms of taking charge of their own destiny.
The local grunt work is often or mostly done by locals. This may be a different ratio for oil companies in Nigeria who have to operate expensive sophisticated machinery and would let locals mostly do the dirty job of policing etc. But it does not take that sophisticated machinery to chop down trees. It is the local people, usually poor, who need to feed their own family. When you need a job, no matter how much it may ravage our planet, you will get the job.
Exascerbating the poverty, there is ferocious competition, especially among the large young population that comes with an increasing population. Employers benefit from poverty because it holds down wages. Educational institutions cannot keep pace with that young population, and thus the doors remain closed to better paying jobs, insofar they even exist.
However, the following illustrates how a root cause (of young people not finding a job which leads to poverty) is being dangerously clouded in non-scientific reasoning, with all the best intentions. I asked the question of overpopulation at Global Struggle for Food Sovereignty: A Discussion with African Food Leaders & Farmers. You see in the response that no connection is made between the high unemployment of young people and a rising population.
It is a well-established scientific fact that any country with a rapidly rising population by necessity has a much larger share of young people than a steady-state population. Unless the economy and educational institutions expand (which again requires more resources), or unless you redistribute the existing work equally (thereby each person having less money and again more poverty) a large share of them can not find a job or a place to study. You can hopefully see that this is just another dead end.
You can attempt to apply remedies to the symptoms (more money for schools, that again need more resources), more education that again will drive more sophisticated life styles as it implies more sophisticated infrastructure. You can redistribute wealth, but what if there are no jobs even after you redistribute wealth ? If mostly everyone is a farmer (which for a very poor country is a good way to preserve autonomy) then what happens if you have too many people ? You go out and log the remaining wild land. That is the answer to your dead end. But it will be "dead" very soon, since the death of all the remaining forest eco systems, in conjunction with ocean acidification, will be the death of the atmosphere's oxygen production systems. Then it is "Aus die Maus" (German literally "the mouse is dead", but figuratively "end of story" or "lights out").
So, it is this sort of scientific ignorance that I consider as incredibly dangerous. It runs rampant in the most intellectual corners. No different in their un-scientific ways than the wall street economists who postulate and predict never-ending growth. This unscientific thinking belies that we are up against all kinds of dead ends that have one common denominator. Fighting in-equality is very important but not good enough.
That above-shown unwillingness to look at the issues analytically - free from preconceived notions of right and wrong - is maintained in place by victim identity. I have learned to pay attention and develop awareness this identity by reading A new Earth by Eckhart Tolle.
Likewise, Nonviolent Communication embraces the notion of personal responsibility for one's feelings and diagnoses, absent of which you will assume a victim identity by staying trapped in the "blame game". Instead we need to talk about fundamental human needs to have a fertile and connecting dialogue. Victim identity divides us with all the side-effects of invisible turf wars, in-fighting even within well meaning organizations, political paralysis and so on.
But I start to wonder if a deeper reason is at play even inside the most social justice identified people: territoriality. This territoriality may - very legitimately so - say something like this: "We the poor people don't want to be invaded by rich countries". So, yes, there is safety in numbers. At least it seems so.
I can fully empathize with this feeling of fear of invasion. Because I listen to how outside corporations are coming in to poor countries, I have that same image. There is safety in numbers, but only to a degree. That breaks down when you destroy the biosphere and thus your long term food source.
Safety in numbers held true in our distant past. But nowadays, what good is it ? We have national borders that still are, hopefully by and large, respected. No multinational company just comes in without being invited by someone. Of course, I don't deny that this someone may be a bribed politician and the often rather disconnected upper crust of a poor country. That crust often aspires to western life style, hanging on for dear life onto their privileges, not having the long-term interest of the public in mind. Or it is a combination of that with naivete that is exploited by multinational corporations. But whatever it is, I at least doubt that you can enter a country illegally and start a major operation there.
So the possibly lurking idea of being "overrun" by scores of outsiders seems understandable but not in sync with today's actual situation. The world has changed. Also remember that the strength of each tribe member relies on adequate resources. There is strength not only in numbers but in per-capita strength. And that goes up if your numbers go down. Each person has more resources, food, eats healthy, and has a higher probability of access to educational resources. An more affluent society has more ability to provide resources. But only to a degree, because density will catch up with you there too. Why ?
You don't have to look further than developed Asian countries. China is desertifying slowly, water resources contaminated, smog is killing people. Plus, is anybody asking for how much longer that can be maintained ? It worked so far, but how much longer ? Just like the non-sustainable consumer mania, we all know at heart that this is impossible to continue. In Asia, how much longer do we have before social order breaks down ?
When are even the most density-adapted people going to be stressed to the breaking point ? Is that what we want for Africa as well ? A continent projected to grow by 2 Billion people ? I somehow cannot see main stream Africans want to live in skyscrapers. Nor would I want them to if they are happy with more traditional life styles. But is that the future ? What if they run out of space ? Are the slums of Manila a better prospect ? Has anybody thought that through ?
And back to territoriality: even if there was an outside invader that threatens your population, the idea of a tribe only is useful if you are helped by your own tribe. If you have an army bigger than the attacker. When things break down, there is no tribe large enough to help you. As bitter as that sounds. So, as a precaution, shouldn't we do everything to avoid that it comes to that point ?
So, my theory from observation is that territoriality looms everywhere in our psyche. Even in the idea of intellectural property. "It's mine now!", people say. Again, Eckhart Tolle brilliantly talks about it in his works how our ego identification keeps us entrapped in a kind of personal territoriality.
So, I am asking how can one fight effectively for social justice if one holds on to victim identity ? Should victim identity be the driving force ? I doubt it.
The price of such perspective is manifold. Equally important factors (such as population increase) that also cause poverty, are ignored. As a result the feed-back cycle continues that maintains poverty and upholds the social unjustice because capitalism feeds on poverty. The weakest will usually always be baited for any kind of job. Why is there so much corruption in poor countries ? Is it because of the lack of people who want social justice ? It is because poverty breaks solidarity. All it takes is a handful of people who want to guard a militia person or a dictator who sells out to a mining corporation. If you downpopulate, you have at least the theoretical chance to offer alternatives for those corruptible people. More subsistence farmers can survive on their plot. They may have to die without the help of their children, but therefore you have an extended family.
We need to be both social engineers and scientific systems engineers. The politically correct mind-cap is pitting the social scientists against systems/demographic scientists. That is a dangerous corrosive force that prevents solution finding.
Another answer given at Global Struggle for Food Sovereignty: A Discussion with African Food Leaders & Farmers further shows how rational dabate on the issue is suppressed through ideological blinders. The answer given here was: We need to turn the question around ... towards social inequality. That is part of it, but the answer deflected from personal choices. It is the preferred stress on outside forces that are (at the very moment) still somewhat outside our control. It is the abdication of personal responsibility, probably for fear of victim-blaming.
In that above answer is the fear that a piece of information or fact is "too dangerous" to entertain or discuss because it might be misused or because it was used in the past in dis-ingenuous ways.
Of course we need to take care of those fears that a given line of reasoning is mis-used. But there are alternative ways to take care of those real fears without clouding the issues. One powerful alternative way is to have an open discussion of the underlying Needs. Then we can choose different strategies. That is why Nonviolent Communication is so powerful.
Then we can disentangle the "engineering" or "rational" kind of issues from the assumed and feared-for motivations. We then address the fears separately without clouding the root causes.
I do have empathy for those who may question my stressing the importance of scientific treatment of the situation. I am showing in other chapters in this text why I think scientific reasoning has attained a negative reputation in many circles, particularly in the USA (as I believe).
Another thought-trap I noticed in a discussion after the event is that some people use global limitations to characterize locally varying limitations. The idea that local limits can be much more stringent than globally averaged limits.
During the event Global Struggle for Food Sovereignty: A Discussion with African Food Leaders & Farmers the idea was promoted that the world can feed 10 Billion people, according to UN data, which are summarized in World Population to 2300. And that globally, we can feed 1.5 x as many as currently, which amounts to about 10 Billion people. The 10 Billion mark is an estimate for 2050, but the longer-term projections to year 2300 are at worst-case hitting 36 Billion and rising. Are we planning for the worst case ? The year 2050 is basically just around the corner.
During that event I had posed the question about local carrying capacity, how it varies and how one must take care not to overshoot it locally. That global food projections have only a partial bearing on local variations. My question was not answered by any of the panelists. Maybe they forgot. But maybe none of them answered it would have forced them to come face to face with population issues after all. Here is why:
In the Sahara, the middle East local carrying capacity may already way beyond the ability to have local food sovereignty. The global calculation that there is food for everyone, up to 10 Billion may very well the existence of food redistribution because Europe and the USA currently are major food exporters. I admit that I am guessing here but when people are arguing using global numbers, I am at least concerned that redistribution of basic foods are an implicit assumption. Because if currently we did not have to redistribute food, then there would be no need for food aid or large scale food transfer even between developed nations. Of course the more luxurious foods such as coffee, almonds or oranges are not going to grow in northern Europe, so some food transfer will always be part of normal global trade.
Thus, if such transferred were silently assumed, then that actually implies the absence of food sovereignty. It thus implies the continued dependence on foreign food shipments. In a twist of irony, wasn't Food Sovereignty supposed to be the main topic of that presentation ? Or was Food Sovereignty only narrowly defined as the absence of chemical agriculture, but not the absence of food shipments ? The issue of food aid was spuriously absent from that discussion. So, I am wondering if local carrying capacity is just simply overlooked for ideological reasons or out of neglect.
To summarize my point about global versus local limits: When global limits are rosy but local limits are already exhausted now or close to exhaustion, then we must, at least locally, be much more conservative with carrying capacity projections. Global carrying capacity only works to feed everyone if we have globally open borders or globally free-flowing food. But especially the latter implies giving up food sovereignty and the first one implies that people, when migrating to other countries, can do so without disrupting their possibly near-capacity food systems once they converted it to all-organic sustainable agriculture. We are basing the success of all of this on perilously non-conservative idealized assumptions, driven by an ideology of implied entitlement to another country's food sources based on past abuse.
Furthermore, is the current-day amount of food, if redistributed to feed 7 Billion people, not actually based about 30% based on chemical agriculture ? The kind of agriculture that we rightfully want to get away from ? Eric Holt-Geminez, the director of Food First gives the following answer in Global Struggle for Food Sovereignty: A Discussion with African Food Leaders & Farmers: 70% of worlds food comes from peasant farmers. So, the question is the remaining 30% of food. That is then, by extension, grown maybe in the first world. And I truly hope that this is so.
I certaintly think that traditional agriculture, labor intensive but more biosphere compatible and sustainable, is the way to go. We have no choice since the oil-based fertilizers are going to run out with oil. But where are the safety buffers ? I see none. Crops can still get infested with various insects and fungi. Even organic pest control can and will falter. Crop failures are still going to come and go. Climate change will have locally varying impacts, a lot of them are highly adverse. Are the UN projections taking that into account ?
Let me come back to poverty. Poverty is one of the root causes as to why people cannot make moral choices on behalf of the environment. That holds even in so-called developed countries such as the USA. That is why poverty is at least an intermediate (if not root cause) of why the general population has trouble enforcing moral choices on 'the system'. And that very system, via inequality, maintains poverty. This is a re-inforcing loop. To step out of it, other key factors to poverty must be leveraged.
Moral choices are limited when there is no adequate social safety net or when people make so little that they cannot save enough money (or when people have an entitlement attitude towards consumption), people cannot make moral choices as easily. Therefore, the root causes of poverty must be addressed very quickly. But, as morally questionable that may sound, the way out is not to get more poor people hooked on modern day living standards that create more pollution, unless you also decrease their total numbers. The way is not to only focus on revamping the wasteful consumer-based economic system. The wasteful economic systems are going to collapse sooner or later anyways because they are condemned to expansion which is unmaintainable.
Inequality is not only an invention of modern-day capitalism. Jungle style capitalism of course certainly exascerbates those inequalities. But not all capitalist societies are alike. Sweden is a capitalist country. Just less so than the USA. It is time to think in gradations.
Even traditional societies, monarchies, caste systems re-inforce inequality. Inequality has deeper roots than only capitalism. It is rooted in the human mind and ego-identification that lurks in each of us as well. Eckhart Tolle has spoken at length on the idea of ego-identification. In-equality exists in the animal world. The alpha animal ruling over its tribe. In-equality may have roots deep inside our brain that we are just beginning to decipher. Without looking there, we will be stuck in the same old non-root-cause discussions that get us some results (such as the attainments of western european ameliorations of capitalism) but do not get to the root cause. The root cause still lies within us, more than we want to think. The brain is very clever to protect itself from self-examination.
Poverty uholds capitalism (at least the kind of capitalism we have in countries with a lack of a safety net) just like that kind of capitalism upholds poverty. It is a self-re-inforcing feedback loop. The probably only way to break the cycle is to also focus on causes of poverty outside capitalism because otherwise we stay entrapped in this feedback loop. That is where the reality-disconnected type of human thinking gets us into trouble.
We as outsiders are indeed in a moral quandry whether we even have the right to remind a dirt poor logger that they are not supposed to find the next best job to even feed their children. But what good is the best allyship if it does not offer the full breadth of choices out of this dilemma ?
There are of course the horrors of past and still-existing colonization the world over. The long ago undermining of local life styles in, say for instance Papua New Guinea has of course been a big contributor in current-day conditions such as Mining in Papua New Guinea and Sexual violence in Papua New Guinea. And of course all that violence-poverty cycle is keeping people down.
However, is it useful to leave above analysis with letting people think of themselves as victims of past colonial abuse and not to remind them that they have response-ability to make personal and community-based choices today that could help them ? Yes, the choices to climb out of such cycles are tough and hard. And allyship from outside is still critical. But not in a way that forsters victim-identity.
Anytime we foster victim identity in others, we imply that people absolved of the urgency to make full use of the array of possible choices in front of them. In fact in order to avoid doing so, we must first accept that there even is something like a victim identity. To be in denial about it or to squelch discussion about the existence of a pain body seems another form of hidden patronization because one wants to spare others the look into the abyss of their own entrapments.
By the laudable and in itself wholesome need to protect and help a victim, we in fact often cloud the choices they have because we want to protect them from emotional abuse that might (but does not actually have to) come from such reminders.
There is also the assumptive attitudes creeping in: Is anybody actually asking and taking surveys around African countries whether some individuals might perhaps might agree with overpopulation problems ? Aren't well-intentioned social justice organizations making implied choices "for them" just as much as the vilivied aid organizations ? And when you ask, of course one has the moral obligation to first provide people a rational unbiased analysis.
But this is not rocket science. You don't need more than basic math and intuitive logic to comprehend the issues. Even a peasant will understand that, when you subdivide the land further for more people, that you reach a limit.
Thus when I am using the word "scientific" I am not talking about high science or ivory towers. I am talking about "street science". Even a blackboard and chalk markers suffice to teach a peasant farmer about the aforementioned mind traps of linear thinking and dichotomy thinking and victim identity. Has anybody even tried ? And if not, then it is worth soul searching as to why nobody has tried.
People on the ground are a lot more savvy than first-worlders think. They survive in places that I certainly could not (not without training from them). Victim mentality is too simple. It implies that the assumed victims cannot think for themselves or think in differentiated ways.
That assumption in itself is a form of - even though unintended - arrogance by first-world helpers. People are a lot smarter than one may think, even if they don't have academic skills. Because people still have the power of intuition that guides them through their every life.
Intuition is another, complementary form of intelligence that is frequently under-rated in our head-heavy world that is infatuated with degrees, diplomas and attainments. Our sometimes outright belittling first-world attitudes therefore tend to under-estimate the inate abilities of poor people to comprehend intertwined issues.
At the current economic systems, the over-population maintains a willing army of impoverished people that, by bare survival needs, must take on any job they can. There is no time or room to think about long term issues if the next meal depends on your next pay check and if you have a family of 4 to feed, without any safety net like food stamps etc.
What parts of the political left often does not see is that poverty also keeps the existing structures in place. It is again one of those feedback-loops that our linear-thinking brain has challenges with. And when have a feedback loop, everyone has the responsibility to intercept that loop, even those who are the main sufferers from it. And one such intercept is to get the population down to a level where people can live comfortably off the land, not having to sell their labor.
The victim-identity tends to over-simplify issues and prevents multi-pronged solutions because it prevents rational dialogue and cooperation.
Those who feel in the position to help poor countries are doing those countries a disservice by keeping them entrapped in victim-identity and the idea that their own destiny rests in their own choices.
The promulgation of victim identity leads to the near-exclusive focus on inequality, leaving out other equally important key issues that further in-equality and loss of food sovereignty, choices that are in the hands of the local population. But those choices are downplayed because maybe there is fear that it would interfere with the heartfelt and equally important issue of social justice and neo-colonialism. But it leads to the same ultimately dangerous either/or dichotomy thinking. The world itself does not operate that way.
The identification with someone who is a victim is not the problem. Empathy is hugely important. To discuss which needs are or were not met is critical. But the often subconscious promotion of the idea that someone is mostly a victim masquerades as a wholesome kind of empathy. But it is anything but wholesome. Because it is laden with the antagonistic mutual-exclusion taboo that empathy cannot also come with the empowering message of response-ability. As though the two are in a conflict with one another. Thus conflicts are mind-created where they wouldn't need to be.
None of that prevents us from talking about past abuse and colonialism. But if we lead people away from personal or collectively owned responsibility, we stay engangled in the web of right versus wrong, leading us away from the full potential that awaits to be harnessed towards a better life especially for those who endured past and current hardships.
Victim identification also undermines much needed urgent collaboration because key questions that need to be asked are beset with guilt and fear by those who ask them. And those who ask those questions are implicated with untested motivations. That makes an open dialogue very difficult. That is something we cannot afford at this late stage of our crisis.
The perils and persistence of a strong victim identity is discussed in great detail by Eckhart Tolle in his book A new Earth. Victim identity prevents all sides, including the victim itself, from moving forward. It does not mean to forget or to deny responsibility on the part of the perpetrator. Far from it. But that is how it is frequently interpreted, again through untested assumptions and binary thinking.
Especially in the USA, victim identity could also be rooted in the way our society rewards victim identity. The louder you lament in a one-sided fashion (i.e. not take responsibility for your own contribution or your own empowerment in getting-out-of-it) the more you will be compensated for. 'The squeaky wheel gets the grease', the popular saying goes. Thus the stronger someone stresses their victim status, the more they believe they will get in recognition and restitution.
Less surprising perhaps I find a denial around overpopulation also in parts of the political right. For instance amongst those who think that we still have plenty of gas and oil to go around or that, if we down-populate, we will be over-run by non-whites or aliens or the United Nations will take over the country. Of course less surprising is the staggering family sizes among Mormons and like-minded Christian envangelicals.
Particularly galling is the hypocrisy amongst those who rail aginst taxes and government debt and yet happily happily take taxpayer-financed child-support for each of their 10 or so children. Again, all of that despite the professed ideals of being "conservative".
I thus believe the definition of "conservative" has long been co-opted and sold out to the religious social conservatives or the government-wary who are "conservative" on making new laws. But it all has very little to do with being resource-conservative. Modern conservatism is pre-occupied with intangible resources like money, morals and laws. As you can see, "conservative" means to people whatever their favorite thing they wish to "conserve", but least of all it seems to be about conserving resources of minerals, energy or biosphere (old growth forests, oceans). That by the way was not always so.
In 1872 the creation of the first National Park in the USA was signed into law by Ulysses S. Grant, who was a Republican. I therefore guess that "conservative" may have had more of that resource-conservative meaning back then than it has now. Because the word "conservative" has become so muddled, it has become a dirty word on the political left. In my opinion natural conservationists should be considered "conservative" very much so. There is nothing problematic with calling oneself "conservative", no matter what political color one is. But one better define what exactly one wants to conserve. Any time you want to protect something, you are a conservative in that regard.
When I refer to people on the right end of the political spectrum, I like to avoid the word "conservative". It is misleading. In one way or the other, "conservatives" can be found in all corners of the political spectrum, each having their own idea of what should be conserved.
The word "liberal" is also squishy. What are you "liberal" about ? Let me intentionally muddle things further: A person who thinks we have enough oil and gas to squander is actually liberal regarding consumption. Someone who thinks they should be allowed to do anything they want with their property is "liberal" w.r.t. property rights. They would call themselves "libertarians" so not to be lumped in with the politically left "liberals". But in strict the sense of the word, they are "liberal". The question is what they are liberal about.
Insofar, I myself could be called a biosphere/raw-materials conservative. And since I have an aversion to debt, I am also a fiscal conservative. And because I also like people to become conscious of their own personal contribution to their own situation and feelings, I think I am having that part in common with some on the political right who think that personal responsibility should not be de-emphasized. To me it is too simple to keep saying things in such a way that suggest that we are hapless victims of the system. We are and we aren't. Sure, the system makes certain choices very difficult indeed. Like when you don't have public transportation near you. It is to me, as most things in this world, that it is both the individual and the embedding society, and not either/or.
The distinction between the individual and society seems a simultaneously useful yet perilously simplifying abstraction because they are so intertwined. Just how individual and embedding society interact shows the pervasive nature of instantaneous feedback relationships that occur virtually everywhere in nature. The complexity is already difficult to grasp and thus much less easy to manage.
Thus, this should give us all reasons for humbleness, caution and nature-conservatism when we tinker with our natural systems, of which we are an integral part - until such time when the biosphere will no longer be able to support us. It is not our biosphere in the sense of property that can be utilized, disposed of, sold to the highest bidder, even though we take it for granted as our home.
The labels (conservative/left/right) go only so and so far and have the danger of distracting us from thinking in more differentiated ways and keep us from connecting with one another. Labels can point to some truth but can at the same time obscure it at the same time. The over-use of labels make people or circumstances look stagnant rather than opening or trusting in opportunities for change.
On the political left, the prevailign sentiment about over-population and resource management appears to be that all we need to do is to change out our economic system and that there is enough to go around for everyone. I hope you are willing to indulge me and present a more differentiated picture on that.
Thus, before you read on, I encourage you to watch this professionally made 24 minute documentary Manila - 20 Million and Rising, because it just shows that the poor countries are severely struggling. And if they yet barely cope right now, they will not much longer. Remember, we talk about near-exponential growth patterns where the last second the glass is still half full.
And even population growth is not quite exponential and supposedly slowing down worldwide, it still is growth. Slower growth does not mean that growth has stopped or is about to stop. I hope that the overall consequences of population-growth become clear to you here.
After watching this video, I admit that I become all the more scared. I am feeling very alarmed when I see how people make poor choices even in the face of what should be utterly visible consequences. That scares me to the bone.
And when I see what this all brings about in terms of raw consequences, I just cannot see how socialism or a reformed market economy, or any utopian mono-religious wonderland (be it christian, muslim, jewish, hindu, buddhist, you name it), can forestall or correct those problems if the population were to rise, even if they were to rise slower under a new economic system. In fact, for instance socialism might even set incentives (if done poorly) to further increase population, even if consumption is discouraged. After all most proponents of socialism scoff at the notion that one should institute any freedom-abridging population measures.
To pretend that we can go "business as usual" on the population question is virtually the same as going "business as usual" on our per-capita resource usage. To me overpopulation-deniers are another incarnation of climate-change-deniers, except that over-population-deniers are also on the political left (perhaps even more so) than just the religious political right, even if people on the political left get fewer children personally.
What tragically and ironically unites the two "denier-camps" is the overly idealistic view that individual choice on certain areas of human life is seen as sacrosanct, even when the final consequences of such unfettered freedom might be disastrous for all of human civilization. The ideal of personal freedom is held up strongly in the USA, but ultimately is widespread everywhere when it comes to the right to bear children. It transcends all cultures, except probably hunter-gatherer indigenous cultures that live off the land.
But let's be cautious with believing that all indigenous cultures lived in balance with nature. Even past indigenous cultures disappeared due to over-population. If you watch this National Geographic Channel - Collapse you will see that long exstinct cultures suffered from resource over-use due to population explosion, as hard as that may be to fathom by today's resource-usage levels. Tragically though that movie is, like so many well-intended documentaries, missing a great chance by only indirectly or very cautiously mentioning the issue of overpopulation here. It mentions other causes much more prominently and directly. That bothers me. Why is there such a widespread caution or such a widespread optimism that we can somehow weasel ourselves out of that problem ?
What is not being sufficiently discussed these days is that, even if at best case scenario we could feed 7 Billion people, how we could feed the people that are coming on top of the 7 Billion we are as of 2013, as though we would not somehow have to decrease our population levels. And please consider, this is not just about feeding people. Whenever you hear people talk about the overpopulation question they use the word feeding. That goes on my nerves, because life is about so much more than feeding. Are we cattle ?
What is not being sufficiently considered is that the total human footprint is unlikely to going down quick enough even if you give everyone in currently squalid living conditions a condominimum (or equivalent), a living wage job and enough healthy food. And birth control.
I define "total footprint" as follows:
(total number of people on earth) * (average per capita usage/share of ...)
A lot of the above mentioned "allotted" spaces for dumping stuff into land, oceans and atmosphere have room for reductions. But any human civiliziation will have dumping grounds. Even indigenous societies had dumping grounds, even if the materials were harmless to nature. The question is how quickly nature can de-compose and recycle them at a steady rate. We are way past the natural recycling or de-composition rate. Some plastics may take hundreds of years to decompose all the way into harmless substances or harmless particle sizes. See Great Pacific garbage patch. Pollutants such as mercury can perhaps not ever decompose into entirely harmless forms. Because most mercury compounds are toxic. Once you take certain chemical elements from the mine shafts into the biosphere, they will remain in the biosphere for a long time, recycled by life form after life form. Same with long-lived fat soluable substances such as certain Flame retardants and Organochlorides.
Why do I see birth control as almost as essential as healthy food ? A large share of people who enjoy regular sex will very much need birth control to have control over their family size. It is in their best interest. I am aware that it sounds over-bearing (even to me) to think that something is in a person's interest even if they may not see it that way. But that is where education comes in. You don't just come in to merely prescribe it. In the spirit of Nonviolent Communication you truly listen to what the other person's needs are behind their current strategy.
How do you scale that sort of intentional communication up to an entire country ? You can do the same perhaps on a country-level: What are the society's needs and how is it currently being met ? Talk to people who represent the average person on the street. What are the personal needs of those who are in power ? In the Philippines like everywhere else politicians want to be re-elected (a strategy, not a need). In the Philippines those in power do not want to lose the catholic vote. They want to hold on to their privileges and life style (still a strategy). They want to put their own children through college and thus they need the money. They want first-world creature comforts (a strategy). Their underlying needs might be a) well-being for their own children to have their needs met for self actualization, b) personal safety (in this case from access to top notch health care and living in a gated community). Can they meet those needs in a different way and not possibly sell out the country's interest by withholding family planning resources ? If you enlighten them to their other need to do good in the world (a need which inately most people have even if they don't succeed), they may be willing to look for better strategies to meet all their needs, perhaps in a less lopsided balance. I would bet that, if the Philippines had started 60 years ago to reign in population growth, even the politicians running the country would have a much happier life now. Much of their rain forests would still be there, the cities much cleaner and less crowded. They could then have based their economy on more sustainable footing like eco-tourism than exporting raw logs. Those politician's living standard would probably not be that much less even if they were to have lost an election due to the breaking of entrenched religious taboos.
I truly wish this "presenting choice" to any one person or society not to be mis-construed as a first-world person telling a third-world person what to do. I do recognize that during colonialism that sort of over-bearing motivation was very pervasive. A good example would seem to be the missionaries that told and still tell so-called heathens what to believe. The missionary mindset I find tragically misguided, self-delusional (blinded by the unquestioned belief they are doing good) and it has done a lot of damage that lasts to this very day. Without missionaries most of Africa would not be christianized and therefore possibly not in this mess.
The other kind of modern missionary is the kind of third-world aid organization that provides misguided short-term help without helping societies to achieve long-term sustainability in harmony with their surroundings and actual future independence from such help. That is a tall order indeed and is far more involved because it questions some very basic premises upon which most aid organizations operate - that one needs to save as many lives as possible right now, without conditions attached, instead of looking at the long term number of lives saved or misery (of not-even-born humans) prevented.
And - without implying deliberate intent - it seems to also be a built-in conflict of interest, just like that between a patient and his/her counselor. Why would the counselor want the patient to get well too quickly ? Aid workers too are only people that may subconsciously fear eventual obsolescence. After all they made many sweet human connections in the communities they helped. And then there are the modern-day multinational corporations that come in to get the minerals, with often empty promises of prosperity and leaving a toxic legacy after paying a pittance to the local population. Unlike missionaries or aid organizations, those corporations don't even intend to do good in the first place, although they may come like wolves in sheep clothing, pretending to be like missionaries of prosperity. Often someone in high places has sold out to them, with little regard to their own constituency or out of sad naïveté as to the callous cynicism behind the faceless interest of "shareholder value".
Back to those likely few who - in their best intention - might advise poor countries on the perils of over-population: is a colonialist motivation to be suspected in nearly all people that point to the benefits of lower population footprint ? It is healthy to be skeptical, no doubt. But is it valid to suppress rational debate or an open mind ? Especially when you look at what is at stake ?
By fearing to be labelled as over-bearing neo-colonialist should we (who are asked to tread lightly) now cease to help poor countries on any kind of advice, from sustainable farming methods or healthy food ? And if it is supposed to be okay to help with sustainable farming methods, then why should it not be okay to help with advice on the benefits of a sustainable population ?
When I see just how contrived a mine field any such discussion has become over the last 40 years, I see that political correctness has become a serious and dangerous impediment to tackling these ever-so-urgent problems. Way too many defenders of political correctness assume nefarious motivations even where they are unlikely to be present. Instead of asking actual questions with genuine curiosity, an open heart and mind, I witness the use of diagnoses and un-tested assumptions that brand people with supposed unwholesome intentions. It is good to be on the lookout for sure. But to not ask questions and simply assume is even worse. Two of Don Miguel Ruiz' The Four Agreements speak to me so clearly: Don't Make Assumptions and Be Skeptical but Learn to Listen (Agreement 5, added later).
In the process the politically correct protagnists are undermining good will and implicitly ask people to walk around on egg shells to not arouse any unpleasant feelings or offend anybody. This cautiousness appears to be aimed at saving one's own face should someone indeed get offended. What is forgotten is that truth is quite often offensive at first sight. Because it confronts. It shatters long-held assumptions. Truth is not something that comes along with a silky smooth texture. But later on, much delayed, the sweetness of comprehension sets in when one "gets it". But the pain-averse Mimosae keep stifling insightful debate and analysis and in the end contribute to the prevention of actual solutions. Instead humankind keeps getting stuck in an endless circus of remedies that are focused on curing symptoms. Like a doctor who lowers the fever without looking at the underlying disease. Curing symptoms is bound to cause ever new side effects in entirely unexpected places. There is no way around the hard labor of addressing the root cause(s). But for now, it seems that humankind is largely incapable to dinstinguish between symptom and root cause, be it due to ideological blindness or errors in logical thinking.
As we talk about societies and their respective responsibilities, we must also recognize the whole concept of national boundaries drawn around those societies. Those national boundaries have their own grave problems.
A predominant portion of the worldwide rain forests, as well as a vast share of the oceans, should ideally be nobody's property because they are the lung of this biosphere that sustains us all, virtually all currently living beings on this earth. We need both the functioning oceans (which are being acidified by CO2 as we speak) and the wild forests. Without them, the oxygen level will last perhaps a hundred years and then we all may very well die. National boundaries around a vast ecosystem-sustaining rain forest presumes that a fraction of humankind can lay claim to, legally exploit and even destroy that rain forest. International law and international climate conferences miserably fail to adequately consider the unwritten laws and needs of the biosphere that knows no boundaries. Human-made law flies in the face of implicit natural law that respects the balance of species and eco systems and that will strike out against humanity with a brutal yet deserved death penalty if we don't respect it. The issue is that human's respect written law but not unwritten law. That was not always so. Hunter/gatherer societies had very little, if any, written laws. And they were less into the abstract thinking as today's humans. They were much more connected to the NOW and to the immediate natural response and as well as unconditional giving by nature. Nowaday, nature appears to be giving only when we plow the fields and earn our bread with hard labor. We do not see the behind-the-scenes giving of nature to us. We think we have to "earn" a living. Back then, nature was seen as the giver. You had to earn it too, but you saw first hand how nature gave you this or that fruit or animal, even though the animal you had to hunt. The psychology of a hunter-gatherer is a different one than that of a much more sedentary "gimme my milk shake" agriculture society citizen.
So, by declaring national boundaries as sacrosanct, mankind has in effect created a corset of immensely tragic proportions. Our whole political and economic system and even identity is based on national boundaries. We root for our national champions, exchange national currencies and compete to be the best nation in this or that. Languages fall alongside national boundaries too. Resources are asserted based on national boundaries. The violation of national Sovereignty is so serious that it will precipitate the harshest military response possible. Even if it means nuclear war that would annihilate us all ! The world is obsessed with national boundaries, all the while ignoring that this very concept could be our un-doing.
I am not downplaying that national boundaries have so far managed to achieve peace in certain areas or have and helped keep conflicts local. But for how much longer will that hold true once the whole world becomes one big disaster zone ? Then finally we will see that national boundaries no longer matter for either nature or humans. If in our fight over the last remaining resources we start fighting wars, a nuclear becomes a real possibility once again. All it takes is a regional nuclear war to plunge mankind into mass starvation from nuclear winter. In an ironic twist, a nuclear winter would come about from a hot nuclear war which is brought about in part by the water and food shortages of global warming.
At the same time, leaving or declaring any region a Terra Nullius would have its own problem as well. After all, it would be up for grabs for any nation. That quandry shows that we need an enforcable treaty that preserves certain regions as "world parks", not just "national parks", zones that would be ultimately "un-ownable" and "un-harvestable". So far, humanity has not proven itself capable of having that level of global citizenship where a country would give up claim to an entire swaths of nature and entrust it to the care of humankind as a whole. You can see in this New World Order conspiracy theorist sentiment just how sensitive even just a largely symbolic yielding of national control to any world-governing body is when it comes to national parks. Never mind that I am not sure if much of those statements are factually correct. But even if they were, it just shows the sentiments that are alive. Giving up national control is seen as dangerous even if it were to benefit the whole of mankind.
At the same moment that I am seeing a problem with national boundaries, I do see on the other end very real problems with any free-for-all immigration at this point in history when certain populations over-populate their own countries into poverty and then spill over into countries of more modest birth rates, expecting in a sense to act as buffers. I am in many ways an immigration-conservative. And I do not even need to elaborate on the consequences for local cultures, social support systems, increased resource usage foot print of the destination countries. I see amongst those who advocate the tearing down of all border fences an wholesale abdication of a society's responsibility as a whole for their own population foot print and management. Individuals have responsibility, so why not also societies at large ? Individuals are responsible for their own societies which in turn have responsibilities - even if in a somewhat more abstract sense. After all just like corporations are not people, countries are not people either. But representative leaders of countries are people. And in a way, the responsibility of a country might essentially be construed as the diffused responsibility of all its individuals.
I thus wish us to not lose focus of personal or even a collective responsibility. I do not believe in collective punishment. But I believe in collective responsibility, at least to a good degree. That means that I, as an individual, am also marginally responsible for what the whole of society is up to.
I believe when one is presented a well-educated choice after a truly connecting conversation, then I question whether the surrounding world is always under obligation to insulate people from facing the consequences if they choose against the well-being of their (or world-) society.
When entire societies make conscious or un-conscious collective choices to not even permitting dialogue or enlightenment of their own population, must the rest of the world therefore rescue them from their consequences ? If the answer were "no", then I still recognize that in the very end, the suffering of any sizeable population will affect the rest of the world, whether we want it or not. So we cannot turn a blind eye, and shall not react in scorn but with empathetic mourning. But it is my personal belief that it does not mean that those on the outside need to bear all the consequences and become enablers and repeated rescuers. It is sad but very often people or entire societies only come to learn when things do go bad. And sometimes, just like a child that does not want to learn the soft way, will unfortunately only learn the hard way. But sometimes a hard lesson learned earlier is better than a soft lesson now (that is not really learnt from) that turns into a hard lesson much later in life with finally much more amplified consequences.
Still on immigration, I do recognize that poverty is multi-faceted and certainly not only a result of over-population. Mexico's poverty for instance has other reasons as well: drug cartells, corruption, weapons coming in from the USA (and the USA probably not doing enough about it), drugs being purchased by USA citizens because the USA does not legalize them in their own country, the increased poverty among farmers in part due to NAFTA.
So, poverty has other reasons for sure. But let us face it: Most of these above problems would have likely never appeared in nearly as drastic ways (if at all) if Mexico would have stopped growing in population in, let's say 1950. There would have been enough land for all the farmers, enough territory for all who want to grow drugs (not that I approve of them, certainly not the hard drugs) and yet have enough rain forests and wild lands for everyone to have the good life. Mexico City would have a fraction of its pollution and poverty. The country as a whole would likely have far fewer water shortages and it would have enough land for people to move from arid areas to more lush ones. I am not ignoring that climate change brought about by high-impact societies like USA, China, Russia, China would not also contribute to some of those hardships such as water shortage. But the more conservative any country is regarding the carrying capacity, the more buffer they have regarding any kind of natural disaster, be it man-made or not. Most countries have no such buffer left.
Of course we can rightfully assume that the Catholic belief played a large role here too in shaping the absence of family planning. Yet, at least in the last 100 years, it seems unlikely that anybody point a gun onto anybody's head to adopt Catholicism. People and nations get brainwashed and also conquered, but different cultures appear to be more resistant to physical or mental conquest than others. I am not at all un-empathetic to any society that has suffered at the hands of another society's agenda. But to say that societies are only a victim and never also collaborators without choice is making it way too easy and ultimately ignores very real contribution and choice that exists or existed. To the degree that there - philosphically speaking - is something like choice at all in this world. We may never know and it may ultimately be a matter of human definition.
Let me come back to sex education. Part of sex education should in my opinion also include talking of the different forms of sex which don't require birth control. I know that here too, one must overcome many taboos that have been erected in domination structures of various societies. I believe that when people think negatively of family planning in poor countries, they often think of sterilization drives that use people's poverty in a co-ercive way. But it does not have to be sterilization at all. Why not talk about different forms of sexual expression ? I don't want to go into detail here but as most sexual/sensual people know there are many equally pleasurable ways to be intimate. And yet, even if you don't want to use alternative ways of sexual expression, a tiny fraction of our worldwide military budget would be enough to virtually blanket the earth with free harmless contraceptives that do not require sterilization or even hormones (that have their own side effects). We are the first species that could gain conscious control over procreative sex and yet have great sexual pleasure ! Why don't we make use of our brains ?
Some people say that certain regions need a high birth rate due to a high infant mortality. That even the poorest of the poor have a right to have children. But if living conditions are that poor that, say, 80% of your children die, wouldn't it then even be time to look at the possibility that at least the currently available carrying capacity of your local region has been exceeded ? Wouldn't it be better to do everything possible, as a society, to bring one's region's population levels down voluntarily, in the best interest of the people themselves ? Even if that means to possibly end up with no children of one's own ? Even if the carrying capacity has been diminished or impacted by vicious international corporations or corruption or whatever, it does not change the facts on the ground as they currently exist. Down the road one can strategize to increase survavability, but any increase in living standard is short-lived if one does not live in balance with the long-term local conditions. A desert does not support as many people, especially with shrinking aquifers.
Of course when you do rapidly and voluntarily de-populate then society would age rapidly. That society would then would have to create new ways of caring for the old, that are no longer just mediated through established family relationships. It would be a momentous shift for many traditional societies. I am not saying this is going to be easy. What what are the choices ? Is total collapse easy ?
I advocate for a mandatory social service year for the young in most societies. Germany has had mandatory social service years for conscientious objectors for many years. It worked very well. Now it is made voluntary but still many people sign up. Obviously it is an enriching experience for them. I would in fact advocate a mandatory 2 year social service for all people of an aging society. With room and board and a modest stipend. If you expect to be cared for at old age, then you too need to do your part. Even when you come from a rich family. Does not matter. It is good for you to be immersed with old and wise people who have lived their lives. And to come face to face with very basic human needs. The profit motive would be taken out of vast parts of social service providers and many people who, fresh out of highschool, don't know what to do, may very well find that caring for old or disabled people is their calling.
I want to come back now to the earlier stated idea that I want a "condominimum" for every person on earth:
I was using the word "condominium" somewhat facetiously. I am not talking about first world luxury condos with concierge, parking garage or elevator or even air conditioning. I am talking about the kind of living space that each of us would consider a humane, enriching space, shared or not, that allows us to satisfy our needs for solitude, quiet, sun light, fresh air, relative cleanliness, space to organize, cooperation, preparing food (together or alone), study, sleep, privacy, sensuality, some hobbies and creativity. In Thailand that space will look different than in France. Better than even a condo would be a place that offers some green space to grow food or have plants. How many places in the world with beehive-like condo-towers do even offer that, at even current population levels ? In the countryside, a condo would be a small hut that would have running water, shower or similar, electricity or at least heat in the winter and sewer or some way to eliminate human or food waste in a responsible manner. A "condo" as I define it would always have enough personal space for each person and the amenities to satisfy the most basic of human needs to make life wonderful, not just to barely survive and make it through the next day.
Thus, if you wanted everyone currently living in squalid conditions to have their "condo", then in the short term (say, the next 40 years) that above foot print would need to skyrocket, without any doubt to the further detriment of the planet. Try to build condos (or equivalent) for the, say 2 billion people living in poverty with all the infrastructure that is needed. Also would you or could you move a substantial part of the people back to the country side if you thought of the cities as un-sustainable ? Then where do you fit them ? Cut down more rain forests ? Move people to Siberia or Greenland or the Sahara ?
Should people move back to the land and re-occupy the ever-more scarce arable land that is supposed to feed all people ? Do in many poor countries people leave the countryside for the slums of bigger cities because the countryside is vast and beautiful and peaceful to live in ? The arable or life-sustaining countryside (I am not talking about deserts or tundra) itself is already crowded to the point where there is water shortage, contaminated wells, lack of employment due to the lack of arable land per person. I can see how <some degree of social engineering can help remedy some of the issues but certainly not remove the most basic resource constraints of a physical system.
By the way, even in the first world, cities get ever less worth living in. If you live in the USA or certain European cities you have noticed skyrocketing rents at stagnant wages, smaller and smaller appartments at the same rent, more traffic. Now car traffic - I agree - is certainly a political problem, not merely a resource problem.
But even such issues of "political will" are not black and white either. Re-tooling our whole transport network in itself will, at current population levels, require huge materials-investments. Look at all the dilapidated bridges. It does not matter whether the bridges carry cars or buses. Buses, just as trucks, do wear down pavement and bridges. Nothing comes for free.
Or look at the cost of upkeep: In its frenzy to have one of the best infrastructures in the world, Germany has built so many roads and freeways that they now face a major shortfall in money to maintain it all. A freeway once built demands huge upkeep from hereon out. Read Germany's Ailing Infrastructure: A Nation Slowly Crumbles and you will see that even a highly developed country even at currently stable population will run into this problem. How much worse is it going to be at an expanding population ?
Therefore roads, once built, must be fixed and maintained constantly (unless you abondon them outright). Cracks and potholes must be filled with tar, an oil product. Roads are not 100% recyclable.
Whether it is sprawling suburbs or high density skyscrapers, all of it must be maintained, fixed, painted and re-painted, kept mold-free, upgraded to newer energy standards, re-insulated (even insulation does not last forever), re-roofed, etc. How in the world can any economic system overcome those problems if population increases as usual ? Even if some sort of planned economy can conserve resources better, the eventually running-out of resources is pre-programmed, no matter what social engineering you throw at it. It certainly is pre-programmed at increasing population levels.
A planned economy might be able to conserve resources better than a wild-west capitalism, even though I must mention that the Eastern block countries had huge challenges with planned econonomy and wasted resources through inefficient processes. But that should not detract from the value of doing longterm national planning and goal-setting, much like post-war West-Germany and Japan have been doing. Or as unified Germany has done with incentivizing regenerative energies, though not without flaws, as it destroyed its own solar energy sector in the process. One simple reason that some countries do more planning than others, is also that these countries have a lot fewer natural resources to squander. The key is a culture of cooperation and pursuit and trust in solid science and a culture of frugality in the population, both of which Germany and Japan have, though they are being near-constantly criticized for it as of year 2014. Ultimately even the most capitalist economies' governments attempt to employ economic planning even if they do it by using tax incentives rather than decree. That at least makes it obvious that some form of forward looking planning around resources is absolutely critical.
And the same, one would then seem to think, should go for population. Isn't population itself a resource ? Currently, population is treated as near-free and a free-for-all, even though each human being commands considerable amounts of resources over its life time.
Those asked-for-resources by one person over its life time are huge even in a poor country. One has to set it into relation to the overall available and dwindling resources of that very country. We first-world people all too easily think of it from our own perspective as though yet another 'poor' person were to have little incremental impact. But when a poor country's own resources are already over-stretched, then even this little increment becomes huge. Especially because children don't die young anymore before they could bear children themselves. The amount of intact green and lush wild and life-sustaining area per capita in poor countries is rapidly shrinking. Please look at this article Deforestation in the Philippines. Soil erosion from deforestation and severe weather events are creating irreparable damage, in addition to expanding farm land and cities and townships that forever pave over wild spaces.
Note that the cultural inclinations towards desired family size (religion or fear of old age or a simple love of a big family) do not at all change overnight even when contraceptives are widely available. To blame it only on the suppressed use of contraceptives or missing family planning resources alone is too simple.
Nonetheless family planning is hugely important. Especially in the Philippines the catholic church and its political supporters have done huge damage to the population, as have early missionaries. And they have and still are exascerbating the problem. But the population has been expanding in Vietnam too, which is not catholic. It is still expanding in China which is mostly Buddhist or Atheist.
Desired family size has to do with more than only family planning resources or only religious beliefs. Often times people get many children simply because they can (or think they can) afford it. They love children and they want to be cared for at old age. Thus the lack of a social safety net at old age has also to do with it.
Often times poor people or farmers want their own children to work for them. How come there is so much child labor in poor countries ? How many parents in South-East Asia sell their children just to overcome their own poverty ? Can redistribution of wealth alone take care of all of those instincts ? Is it that easy ?
The USA is a prime example that family planning, primary education, relatively cheap contraceptives are widely available and cheap compared to poorer parts of the world. At least condoms are cheap. You have to be dirt poor to not afford some condoms in the USA. Yet the USA are growing by leaps and bounds (especially if you figure per capita energy usage) even without immigration. And one needs to be realistic that even a 50% personal energy usage cut is very hard to achieve in society whose processes, entitlements and economy has become so dependent on all of those resources, including human resources (population), and not just oil.
Yet, in the USA, the almost eerily unanimously regurgitated answers I hear time and again, are the following:
The first misconception is easily refuted by looking at the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Clock. When you juxtapose births and deaths in the USA, the growth from the domestic birth-vs-death overhang is much larger than the growth from net international migration. Even if we had no immigration, we would still grow by leaps and bounds. It does not render immigration thereby as harmless because many immigrants these days come from regions of the world that are culturally inclined to have large families, thereby increasing the domestic birthrate further.
But I want to mainly devote more consideration to the second misconception that I most commonly hear from the political left is that "it is just a redistribution problem". I want to pick it apart NOT to discredit the need for more social justice and equity. I want to make sure that we don't fail to achieve the good life for everyone by overlooking other causes that, if ignored, will prevent us from getting there.
The proponents of the "it is just a redistribution problem" argument tend to back up their point with statistics such as "50% of the assets are held by the top 300 people in the world". And therefore, so they argue, if we just redistributed all those assets, everyone could be fed and have a decent life. That the main thing required would be a worldwide change in our economic system and everyone could be fed and everyone would have a decent standard of living, that there would be no more or only very little poverty. Never mind that a world-wide change to our economic system seems even much more of a formidible task than to blanket the world with contraceptives and family planning services (which in itself would be a very ambitious undertaking). I agree that a different economic system would likely also bring more family planning to those who need it. But why not start today with the relatively-speaking easier and low-tech, low-complexity solution while of course also working, in parallel, on a more equitable economic system ?
I do share with the social-justice minded a strong sense of indignation at this rampant disparity. In fact, from my own experience, even some people in more mainstream nonprofits who are well-read and well connected in the corporate world, start to critique, even if privately so, the incredible wealth disparity. People start to realize that the party can't go on like this.
Thus, before I will attempt to pick apart the over-population denier's rationale, I will now proceed to give consideration by expressing my full support for all those who share my indignation regarding the wealth and salary disparity.
While wealth has been a huge economic driving force and wealth prospect acts as a huge incentive for those who help create new jobs, there got to be even here a law of diminishing returns, if not outright vanishing returns. There is no dispute in myself that this disparity is losing reasonable or scientific or even economic justification when you look at it over longer time spans and out into the future. Even history of collapsed systems (Roman Empire) may give us some guidance.
A lot of the justification is resting on assumptions that are insufficiently questioned or re-examined by bringing novel and creative solutions to the table. While many economists and market makers like to press the point on how technological innovation is the golden goose that must not be slaughtered, they seem utterly afraid or unimaginative around innovation or creativity around alltogether new arrangements that could take power out of their hands.
Instead, the status-quo is cemented with tired and old rationales that are ultimately based on a lack of creative thinking or willpower or courage. Let us take this rationalization for instance: The common rationalization put forth by top managers and their entourage of economists is that the rare talent commands a fair market price at whatever level the market is willing to pay. That the invisible hand of the market will right-size the amount of talent via the high price that society is willing to pay and thus provide the right incentives. I consider this explanation to be disingenuous on the following grounds:
For one, talent was just as precious and rare in the 1960s when the economy was booming and capitalism's engine at full throttle. Back then not as many people went to college, so talent was even rarer than today (although the argument could be questioned as today's economy requires also more engineers and scientists than the economy of the 1960s). But I am sure talent was certainly not more plentiful as it is now. Yet, a top CEO made perhaps ten times what the lowest worker made. Now the ratio is more like 300:1.
It seems to me a fabricated story based on a fabricated situation that talent is rare. It becomes a story because something is omitted from us: That highly-paid talent is artificially kept rare. Or, if not an outright conspiracy, then at least a shortage nonetheless man-made by ill political will and not some sort of immutable bell-curve natural distribution of talent or happen-stance condition.
It is tragically comical how people in one sentence will gladly describe in highest praise the omnipotence of human technological prowess and in the next sentence lament the apparently inescapable absence of talent that can only be roped in by ever-staggering price bidding.
I would say, if we had a functioning free market - as we are told there supposedly exists - then - especially at those salaries or renumerations - shouldn't there be a virtual stampede of people into those kind of top-paid positions, leading to a talent deluge that would drive down prices from sheer competition ? In other words, shouldn't the market magically self-regulate itself back into a reasonable equillibrium via demand and supply ? How come the supply side is not kicking in even at 300:1 salary ratios ? Weren't we told that a free and functioning market would free us from the shackles of shortages (unlike in the much-cited communist block without its free markets), be it the shortages in the food line or also the shortages in talent ? Talent after all is a good just like things. So why then, with material goods, they appear to get cheaper (which won't last by the way !) but talent seems to get ever more expensive ?
One possible explanation I have is that there are gate keepers that keep the talent pool artificially low. For one companies no longer train people adequately and therefore rather want talent served on a silver platter. In a way they outsourced training to the public sector and socialized the costs, but not wanting to pay for them either via taxes, if they can get away with it. But more so, those who stand to benefit from the talent shortage have understandable incentives to keep it that way. Highly specialized knowledge is closely guarded, for instance on how to take a company and make it go public on the stock exchange. Very highly specialized legal knowledge indeed, but it is not rocket science now and nor was it back in 1960. Of course the laws have become ever more complex, so perhaps a law degree really should take twice as long as it did back then. That could beone solution, but I don't see any attempts to make such knowledge commonplace. And it makes sense because nobody loves competition as soon as it drives down their own take-home pay.
Furthermore, higher education is getting ever more expensive in the USA and also in many other countries, thus further constricting the talent pool. And you cannot help but to think of this as a hands-in-glove fit - perhaps conspiratorially so - that the tax policies that favor the rich do further plunge the state coffers into deficits and force universities to raise tuition and thereby restrict the talent pool further ! It is a marriage-of-circumstance made in heaven for those who want to cling to their privileges that are all precariously based on the notion of supposed talent-shortage.
The other cause that is not even debated at all is that a considerable part of this talent shortage is owed to the increased complexity and increased structural aggregation of our industrialized world. Look at how complex financial transactions on wall street have become, requiring ever more specialized and rare hands-on experience. It does not have to be that way if we had a different system and/or regulations that would dis-incentivize overly complex business processes. And ever bigger conglomerates and super corporations of course restrict the talent pool since only a handful of CEOs can claim prior experience at another similarly large firm. If the economy's main engine was primarily made up of small to mid-level size companies, then there would be a lot more interchangeable talent out there that would keep prices in check. But there is little political will to break up large companies or prevent the aggregation into ever bigger quasi-monopolies.
So, next time an economist tells you that this system embodies the free market, then just tell him that we actually don't have a well functioning market because a well functioning market should not lead to such sharp bottle-necks. The market of goods and services is only functioning if another, equally important market functions well: the market of ideas. And that market takes place in the political realm, our democracy. And that system is clearly dysfunctional. We have in the USA a two-party system, based on the outmoded principle of the winner-takes-it-all district voting. No small party can ever win a seat. Contrast that with a system such as New-zealand, or Germany or many other proportional-vote parliamentary system where you have many more than 2 parties. Without a half-way functioning market of ideas you don't have a truly free market. But unlike Milton Friedman , I would not advocate the notion that less government is more. It depends who the government is by and for. And if the government is ruled genuinely by the free ideas of the people, with more direct democracy and better representation, I would expect the results to be as, if not more favorable for the well-being of all people than Milton Friedman would have hoped for. Some aspects of neo-liberal ideas are basically chopping off an entire entity (government) off our society, that too represent a market, except right now it is dysfunctional. But just because government might be partially dysfunctional, it is not therefore in need to be abolished. It just needs to be reformed on a very deep level to where it is accountable to its people. Interestingly though, as this article on Milton Friedman shows, he also advocated a negative income tax on low income earners, which which can implement a Basic Income system, something advocated more by the far left. That side of his ideas was probably obscured due him serving as an economic advisor to U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
So, to - finally - make my point, I do agree with the over-population-denier's argument that there seems something utterly wrong with the wealth disparity in this world. And I also agree that the wealth disparity has brought us scores of big mansions and superyachts and private jets that are incredibly wasteful indeed. And not just in terms of their undoubtedly high material-resource usage when you add up all those luxury goods and the waste that goes into their production. But also the waste in human labor resources, because the jobs that are involved in the creation of those luxury goods do bind a lof of valuable skills needed elsewhere. Because the kind of skillsets the manufacture of those luxury goods do promote, are relatively useless to retool for even a halfway sustainable economy.
Remember that during the United States' WW-2 effort, people did build hardly any McMansions or luxury yachts compared to today. They put all their energy into combating what they saw as a grave threat to all of humankind. And our situation now is really no different.
I would see it a little differently if luxury items were communally owned and shared like a time-share apartment. Then 100 x more people could enjoy some part-time luxury, offsetting it by lowering consumption elsewhere and making maximum use of luxury assets and probably lowering their total number, especially at a lowered global population.
In the hands of the rich, a yacht sits around unused and mostly empty of people for much of a year. Even their wealthy owners would get bored to death to ride on their yacht for most of the year every year. After all, most wealthy people want to stay busy protecting and even expanding their wealth.
Wasteful by the way are also the many travelled miles by some of the wealthy and influential people from one important meeting to another. Why are we not questioning more just why we need all those all-so-super-important people that subsume and concentrate so much decision and knowledge-power in one head ? Because our culture is full of stories that we buy unquestioned. And our education system all too frequently failed to adequately equip people to question conventional wisdom.
So far I have talked about personal tangible assets of the wealthy people, such as yachts and big houses. But the totality of wealthy people's assets - personal tangible and financial - are much much bigger than just the tangible ones alone.
The disparity in assets (real and financial assets) is in general much bigger than the annual-salary disparity. So let us further focus on the asset-disparity to address the population-denier's argument's fallacy.
Bill Gates may have financial and ownership assets of about 50 billion, give and take a couple. But his private home is "only" 50 million or so worth, that is 1/1000 of his assets. Bill Gates as a private person probably wastes on a daily basis perhaps 30 x the average citizen in electricity, gas (from travelling by airplane), etc. The per capita net worth is shown in this article World Distribution of Wealth, and it is $ 26,000. For simplicity let us say $25,000. His total assets are therefore 2 million times that of the average world citizen !
I postulate that the personal tangible assets are what generates the personal waste of the rich people. Not just the super rich, even just from people that make more than $ 150,000 a year. When we discuss wealth disparity, we should not even only focus on what we call wealthy people. We need to start at the level where a person's wealth starts to considerably exceed anything that appears to be sustainable for the vast majority. But for the sake of illustration and for the sake of taking on the over-population denier's argument, I am for now sticking to the upper 1% in my line of reasoning.
So, let me go back and continue to use Bill Gates as an example. If we were to re-distribute his financial assets to a poor people, we would obviously give them money to help them out of poverty. That would seem like good news and that's why the overpopulation denier seemed happy with redistribution. But here is the bad news:
The super rich or lesser rich could certainly sell the assets on the open markets for real dollars and therefore the poor can now afford themselves a better life style. But the fallacy is this: The transfer of money assets to poor countries still means that the assets still need to be created locally that the poor will require: energy efficient housing, roads, infrastructure, education, just to name a few.
Those assets still need to be created from earth's harvested resources. Those tangible assets are not created by mere financial asset transfer. They are also not created by dismantling Bill Gate's house and shipping it to a poor country. All that monetary paper-wealth does not simply create those things that the currently poor need. Money is not the same as natural resources, food, water. And especially when you consider that you want those resources to be harvested at a long-term sustainable and bio-diversity-compatible way.
The goods that the benficiaries of the envisioned wealth transfer are to receive still will require massive amounts of resource extraction, energy consumption, people and machinery. During the transfer of financial assets not a single house in the USA has been vacated in favor of those poor people to move in. Nor has any mcMansion house been put on a barge to ship over to the poor country. Never mind that, if we did, the transportation costs would probably exceed the energy saved from moving a house from one continent to another.
So, when one really starts to take a closer look at all those hidden assumptions, the financial asset-transfer looks no longer like the zero-sum game it looked like originally. When those financial assets get converted to real assets, they no longer are a zero sum game !
And that is the fallacy of the arguments put forth by many, often well-meaning overpopulation deniers who think that wealth redistribution is the simple answer. It again shows that people need to think things through and think scientifically rather than ideologically.
Given our education systems and special interest dominated media however, it seems no wonder that this ignorance is so persistent. Worse even, one could almost believe that this ignorance is intended. Because over-population is likely welcome by those who want ever more expansion and consumption and a working class that is impoverished and ready to do any job for any salary offered. Even today most economists say that neither growth nor overpopulation are a problem - a fatal ignorance of the actual circumstances that we face as a species.
Now, to give the poor people a decent living standard you must still fell trees for wood siding, wood floring, drill oil for roof shingles, tires for public transport or build roads, mine minerals for pipes and concrete, create more arable land etc. If the financial assets are transferred to the poor it does not matter who owned those financial resources in the first place. It could be Bill Gates or it could be a more social government. A social government would obviously not tolerate such a wealth disparity, thus reducing waste in the wealthy countries. But as far as the currently poor population goes, it would not really make a difference. The poor still want and need to be lifted out of poverty regardless. At least that is the supposed intention voiced by those social justice advocates that base their reasoning mainly on the wealth disparity.
Money is just a mechanism for exchange. In the end, it is earth that has to deliver those material assets, and as always, it has done so seemingly for free without asking back anything from mankind.
In the final consequence though, earth is asking us for something in return. But earth is not doing so with a loud and clear and umambiguous voice. Earth is giving us many clues, but mankind as a whole is apparently still ignoring them.
That ignorance includes even those well-meaning on the political left who still engage in silo-based thinking, thinking that it is capitalism and consumption alone that are to blame. In a way that silo-based thinking is qualitatively no different from technocratic thinking that believes that technology can get us out.
It does not matter what kind of engineering it is - social engineering or technological engineering: Without reducing our total numbers and our per capita consumption of non-renewable raw materials and non-renewable energy, non-renewable wild spaces, agricultural land, ocean space, rainwater, river water, well water, land fill space, safely pollutable fraction of the biosphere, without all of that, mankind as a whole, and certainly human civilization as we know and cherish it, is doomed at a very high probability. And even if the probability were just to be 50%, it would still be too high for what is at stake here.
The ownership question of financial assets of course does matter in some way. I am not saying that it is irrelevant. Because many wealthy people are not going to give them away to the poor, whereas a more social state might. In that point, the population denier was correct.
But it would not be enough. People need to understand logically that whatever may be neccessary is not sufficient. That is a frequently made error in reasoning. One of the seeds of the age old dichomoty thinking.
Never mind that in our current economic system, disposessing those who are in power and have the money, would indeed lead to grave instability with all its consequences of breakdown of social order and possible takeover by radical powers that do not represent the majority either - see Arab spring or Syria.
Because no parallel system has been created to help create jobs that do not appear to depend on people with big money bags, there would be temporary misery and instability that our cushy first-world countries have yet to experience and cope with.
But when we talk about overpopulation we have to talk about whether this envisioned asset transfer is neutral on the basis of natural resources.
The financial-asset-transfer is neutral. The rich give up , the poor gain financial assets.
When we transfer financial-assets, then the real-asset-transfer remains non-neutral. The real-asset transfer would only be neutral if the rich give up real-assets and the poor gain use of those very real-assets that were given up by the rich. And those assets would then have to include not just their private residences. It would have to include the wholesale liquidiation of financial assets in the form of buildings, computers, etc. Thousands of Microsoft employees would lose their jobs so that the poor can move into the Microsoft campus and live there, use their computers. And even if so, they would not posess the skills to work there if they were simply moved here. I hope that this shows the absurdity of the argument.
The transferred financial-assets will create entitlements to create and wrestle from the earth new real assets that need to be created to serve the poor.
And therefore Microsoft still has all the buildings and their employees still toil in those buildings, using the same amount of resources as before.
Therefore the totality of resources per capita worldwide is still going to increase even if we give all financial assets to the poor.
I am not saying that the rich are off the hook regarding the need to share more wealth. Giving up financial assets could be one right step. But only insofar as the assets purchased with them by the currently disposessed are going to be low in energy and resource use in their totality with respect to the planet as a whole. The current economic system however relies on wealthy people to incubate new companies that in turn create new jobs. Thus re-distributing financial assets from a rich country to a poor country is a doubtful proposition that, even if realized, would not be resource neutral.
Wealth redistribution however has a place within a country. When government is increasingly in debt from wars, mandatory programs as well as too low taxation it sacrifices the entire country's long term prospects by slashing access to education and in the end eroding its know-how to the point where it can no longer compete. Wealthy people can move whereever they please, ordinary people can't. The increasing wealth disparity thereby furthers the lack of allegiance to the society that nurtured the wealthy to become rich. To withhold enough tax money to assure a well educated population is the duty of a government that is concerned for the well being of all people. In fact the word "re-distribution" is misleading. The wealth has already been re-distributed from the ordinary to the rich. It should be called "re-re-distribution" or "un-re-distribution". The true class warfare is found in the entitlement allures by those in power, asking for ever more based on their presumedly rare-to-find skills and their white-knight-on-a-horse job creator hero status. The story we are told is that the breadth of ordinary people cannot create our own jobs. I agree that, in the age of globalization, that this has become ever harder, especially as a small business man. But free trade too is all too easily accepted as an immutable circumstance. Does it have to be this way ?
I hope I have thereby made clear that there is no side-stepping the over-population question, but also exposed in the process some of the common misconceptions around asset transfer.
A rich person, like Warren Buffet, who supposedly lives in a modest 3 bedroom house has virtually nothing to transfer in real assets to the poor. All his assets are financial instruments. If he gives those to the poor, the poor will buy new goods on the world market, but those will mostly be newly created rather than used or recycled goods. Especially if you talk about things that have never been there before, like water systems, sewage systems, irrigation systems, toilets, electric lines, lamps, furniture.
But beware, the "new items" are not only limited to things. They are also newly created wants and needs which at first sight appear non-materialistic, yet down the line will require even more material resources if those wants are not managed or directed in a sustainable way.
A prime example for me is the call for "Education" - a very noble and at first sight undeniable inalienable right which appears to have no negative consequences. We keep hearing from aid-organizations that the poor people need more education because that supposedly is what lifts people out of poverty. That they need to learn is math, reading, writing. By the way, I never hear them talk about teaching conflict-resolution, money management, relationships, parenting, environmental stewardship, local control, critical thinking etc. The glossy brochures usually show a teacher writing 2+3=5 on a blackboard in front of a class of impoverished but happy-faced students.
Insofar as those are basic day-to-day skills, I do agree that they are indeed useful and needed. Because even for the most basic ability to handle money, to start up a business, to communicate, you need those basic skills. However, for centuries for many of those kids those skill did not use to be day-to-day skills. They are considered very basic skills for us, who live in the developed world ! For those kids however, for millenia, what was taught in school was about living in balance with the nature around them and live off the commons. That was until the white men showed up and told them that their life style was inferior and inefficient and that they needed to worship their gods.
There is no denial that in this very world we have been creating, math and science and reading and writing are, at first sight, going to increase the chances of an individual to make more money than otherwise. Or to be able to read and think critically by reading books that further your horizon. That is all well and good, as long as other practical skills for sustainable life are not neglected. The dynamic will however certainly change and become more questionable once those soon-to-be basic skills become the foundation for by far more-than-basic skills. Now frehsly equipped with new math and reading and science skills, an increasing number of kids will now say "I want to become an engineer", "I want to become a surgeon" or a lawyer, or a leader of a big business.
It won't take long that scores of those newly educated young people will of course clamor for attending higher education institutions and then, when they graduate from those, they will clamor for jobs that use more technology and more resources. Never mind that many poorer countries have an overly young population and there are most likely far fewer high-education jobs than people dreaming to get one of them.
Here is the moral dilemma of this question: Who could deny them that right to follow their dreams that many of us here were allowed to follow ? We would be morally corrupt if we did not also give those people that very same right, wouldn't we ? After all, we in the developed world were able to enjoy those privileges. How can one possibly tell someone else that they can't ?
Yet, if 2-3 billion additional people are jumping on the techno-civilization bandwagon then by necessity you will draw a large portion of them into the same high-tech and high-resource-use-economy that we have.
When people tout education as the anti-poverty elixir, the question all too often omitted is: What truly does lift people out of poverty ? What kind of education ? What kind of knowledge does empower people to become self sufficient, resilient to abuse and economic strangulation from outside powers ? How do people attain a sense of stability, inner peace and enough food access to nature and open spaces, and basic health for everyone at a level that allows long-term persistence of those values. And how do people overcome civil war, male domination, war lord domination, child labor, abuse of women, religious domination ? How do communities, regions, countries also take responsibility for their own decisions and path forward, in spite of past abuse by outside powers ? Rampant corruption in poor countries is not only an imposition from outside. Nor is overpopulation, even though religious evangelization is certainly partly to blame. But not solely. Thus accountability is also something to be taught yet probably seen as politically incorrect given past colonial abuse. However, isn't that the kind of education we need ? And doesn't science and math play second fiddle to those skills that truly matter in their indiosyncratic environments ? And should life expectancy by itself be the only yard stick by which we in the western world tend to gauge societal well being ? Or is there a better measure that gauges how happy people are and in sync with their natural surroundings ?
What would be a glimmer of a possible solution ? We need a new type of liberation education, just like there was liberation theology. It must transcend the entrenched positions of the political left and right and instead be highly pragmatic rather than dogmatic. And I would very much want it to be accompanied by family planning and a clear message that populations everywhere in the world must adjust their numbers to a level where they no longer live beyond the local long term carrying capacity that is in line with their now sought-after modern life style. If that message is not put foreward, it will lead to utter disaster on a scale never experienced by mankind.
Furthermore, I believe that we here in the developed world have over-indulged far beyond long-term sustainability in a type of education that has gotten us away from the basics. I am not advocating going back to the stone age or a life 100 years ago. But I am advocating that our so-called advanced societies become less infatuated with "higher education" on a mass scale. Education comes in many flavors.We have become over-infatuated with academic education. In part because the resulting jobs pay better - though in the USA that is increasingly doubtful, given the student-debt slavery that chains you to a well paying job yet claws back a sizeable chunk of your hard-earned salary. Instead, learning basic hands-on skills, apprenticeship skills, food-growing skills and pretty much any skill that allows us all to live simpler, more sustainable and to rebuild our economy to be less resource-intensive.
It is really not so much the amount of what we cram into the next generation's heads, or the amount of complexity or technology. But what to do with that technology and how to transform it to meet the long term needs of our civilization. There are so many technologies or inventions that are just utterly useless and pointless when it comes to assuring the long term survival of our species.
If our lifestyle were already sustainable and were to make us (and other species as well !) happy, I would be less wary of it. After all not everything we do must serve the purpose of survival. That is in fact an aspect of our advanced civilization, that we can engage in pursuits that are not about daily survival.
However, we live in a time where we need a worldwide effort that easily would dwarf the WW-2 effort against Nazi Germany, the Apollo program or the build-up of the unfortunate cold war machinery. And therefore, much of our senseless toiling become dangerous diversions from what actually needs to be happening right now. There is a silent yet huge opportunity-cost every time we keep engaging in business-as-usual, as though the world can just keep going day after day as it did in years past - a highly dangerous yet widespread pattern of human behavior indeed.
Those technological and educational diversions are just as dangerous - if not more so - as the pointless over-indulgence in professional team sports and fanfare and the associated waste of public and private resources (private resources are no less precious because their waste too incurs just as high opportunity-costs).
But whenever resources are billed as "Education" then they therefore appear to automatically to be benign. "Education is good", people say. But education is a buzz-word. The question is what is taught and for what purpose and to what end result. Much of that education furthers the race for ever more senseless complexity and non-improvements that are sold to us as "progress". Instead that so-called progress is becoming an ever-growing hindrance to deeply restructure virtually every aspect of our world economy towards a long term harmoneous co-existence with nature and long-term enrichment of all people - and many more generations - on this planet.
Don't get me wrong. I love technology. I like to use it and marvel at its potential. Used responsibly, it is empowering and fun and makes life easier and frees up time. But its alleged or even perhaps real potential to create a more balanced life, to get us the 25 h work week and to create sustainable energy sources while also assuring sustainable raw materials usage, all of that has so far eluded us. The reasons are complex, but infatuation with throwing more technology or a lop-sided education at the world's challenges is certainly one of the mind-sets whose promulgation needs to be countered with a contrarian message.
So, to complete the arc of my argument, I am going back to developing countries: we want to educate kids in poor countries, let them learn the skills that it takes to survive better off the current land they live on. Better organic farming methods, building cisterns from renewable and locally available resources, use of condoms to prevent STDs and pregnancies, respect for women and their rights, so that the man cannot simply force themselves onto women. They also need to learn to build a social democracy that fits their own culture. But yet in a way that fits their culture.
I do not see it as wise to transplant our western democratic top-heavy structures on the currently "less-developed" societies. Top-heavy structures lead to more waste. Small scale village councils with direct democratic structures will be better suited, as they might in some way ultimately even for our own society when we reach a time when we too will need to severely shrink our own foot print. Larger scale assemblies would happen on the next level up, but again not using many high tech means. For many that may smack of quasi-socialist societies with very basis-democratic structures that will be slow to maneuver and inefficient. Yet, I propose that a slower pace of non-essential innovation is good. It is heavily unsustainable and the faster the pace of innovation, the faster it will also run out of steam or be crushed under its own self-created complexity.
The kind of output we must accellerate instead is the amount of per-capita-innovation that sets us on a path towards deep sustainability. Some of it will undoubtedly be technological (e.g. LED lightbulbs, less power-consuming computers, decentralized power generation) but more than we like to believe, it will likely involve simply the expanded use of tried-and-true technology: For example Bus Rapid transit, car sharing, electric bikes, having bike racks on buses. In other areas it involves new kind of communal arrangements, resource sharing, some of them do involve technology (e.g. new ride share services) and some of whom don't: living in intentional communities for instance.
In some sectors such as healthcare, we will need continued use of technology. For instance to create more targeted and less devastating cancer treatments. But here too I recommend just as much energy to be put into healthier and more balanced life styles that will lessen the likelihood of cancer in the first place. Prevention is the best cure. In many ways, we need to also become less infatuated with the fear of death and make it possible to die with dignity and at a time when people choose to. Much of our energy is consumed with fear of death and fear of not having lived our lives, which again is due to the fact that the current frenetic pace of our technological societies makes us forget to truly live our lives now and not defer that into the future into retirement age.
In some sectors we will need to perform a de-volution from too much technology, away from genetically modified crops and going back to farming organically because fertilizer and pesticides depend on the ready availability of cheap fossil fuels. There are other risks with genetically modified crops such as resistance, interbreeding and also making farmers modern slaves because they can no longer save their seeds. Farming techniques used still by the Amish people may be a good example for us. If we were to scale this up, it would without doubt involve way more farmers than we currently have or are currently educating. But that is where we may need to go, and soon, because fuel or resources for tractors and other fancy machinery may run dry and become cost prohibitive. There will be a massive shift of jobs from one class of sectors to another class of sectors, all based on a shift in the availability of natural and energy resources.
When people say that this will lead to job loss, I believe that the counter-argument to this is that there will always be jobs, plenty of them. And a lot more manual labor jobs too because we need to go back to more manual labor in an economy where energy and energy storage become increasingly expensive. It will be all the easier if we share evenly and cooperatively the work amongst us all. And provided that we don't create more shortages from an ever inreasing domestic population. Here too, even in the USA, we are already far beyond carrying capacity. Yet no politician dares to raise the issue, neither on the political left nor on the right. All for fear to appear to be denounced as anti-family or anti-immigrant or to be on collision course with procreation-happy religions.
We will likely benefit from and possibly be forced - if we don't do so voluntarily - into a more conservative notion of technology usage or technological progress (e.g. software upgrades at a frenetic pace with questionable productivity benefit). After all, technology should not be there to become a management- or dependency-nightmare. Technology is there to serve us and not the other way around.
When technology ceases to genuinely empower us, and instead ensnares our lives in an ever more unwholesome and big-brotheresque way, then every one of us, the consumer, as well as businesses and government are called upon to pull the emergency brake, step off the bandwagon for a moment and ask us "what is this all good for ?".
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, people need to read and write because those are basic skills that empower people. They are important no matter what path you want your life to take. Especially in a democratic society an informed citizenry is critical. Probably most useful information is mediated through writing, especially since TV has more and more degenerated into an entertainment device and continues that downhill slide pretty much in most parts of the world.
So, reading and writing and basic math are skills that every person around the world should know. It is however when those educational resources gradually grow an ever bigger appetite and entitlements for ever more technology and natural resources that it becomes questionable. It is not an either-or question. I am all for advanced education and would love everyone who loves science to become a scientist and engineer. But it is simply not possible when there are too many people on this planet. It is also not sustainable for the already-developed world. Higher education raises entitlements to jobs that create more unwholesome dependencies.
Am I therefore against higher education ? No. But we need to have a plan as a society as to how we employ that knowledge that is imparted here. No doubt, knowledge is power. But if that knowledge is one-sided and incomplete and if it comes paired with a one-sided agenda that does not take a whole-systems approach, then that knowledge takes on an unholy dynamic of its own. It creates new entitlements to riches and resources, which have plunged many populations - not only in the developing world - into debt and virtual slavery.
Therefore any widely available access to higher education in the engineering or business fields must be accompanied by a voluntary drop in population to a level that allows them to live sustainably with that technology for the next generations. I want currently impoverished countries to grow into more autonomous players on the world stage, not into yet another population enslaved to a another population's agenda. Just because the world has left behind the formal phase of colonialism, it has by far not left behind its informal and less obvious incarnation of it, much of it through national debts and lop-sided trade arrangements that bypass much of the population in either countries.
Part of that enslavement comes about because those poor countries are not for themselves producing the high tech goods they is using. And because in dollar value, high tech goods are more expensive than natural resources, they cannot sell enough of their own natural low-cost resources (food, minerals) to cover those costs and thus need to take on international debt. Or even if they could cover the cost by selling out their natural riches and land and their pristine environments, it would still hamper their autonomy.
And they really would be wise to not do so. They need the food and arable land and rapidly dwindling natural wild spaces for themselves and also for possible eco tourists that may provide a sustainable long-term income base. And also the minerals that are harvested and carted away they actually do need for their own economy if it is to become at least moderately modernized for the long haul. It is this lopsided exchange and the debt-service that form the basis of continued enslavement. Watch this interview with John Perkins.
For a poor country to sell its minerals at a high rate spells doom. Just watch this excellent film about Zambia: Stealing Africa. You will likely be shocked and enlightned.
Poor but resource-rich countries could sell those at a small rate so that they can purchase those technological goods that allows them to eventually harvest the minerals for their own economies when they get a little more affluent. After all they need those minerals if they want to build their own, even modest, infrastructure. Thus, rather than to sell out their mining interests in order to acquire high tech goods they should attempt to make it themselves.
The country that appears to have done it the smarter way was China. China, after it opened up to the west, did not tend to sell out its mining interests to outsiders, as far as I know. China instead went on a quest to first acquire knowledge from the west on how to manufacture stuff at home. A lot of Chinese went overseas to study at foreign universities. Education was such a precious good in their society. And also there was stability at home (rather than civil wars) and of course an infrastructure of heavy industry that was erected during communism.
Thus, even though much maligned in terms of human rights and the destruction of ancient wisdom and cultural heritage during the cultural revolution, the Chinese communism did accomplish one very important thing: it helped China lay the groundwork for prosperity without relying too much on foreign loans or selling out their own resources. And that is a great accomplishment. Could it have been accomplished any other way ? Maybe, maybe not. We probably won't know.
Not only did China refrain from going into foreign debt. In fact for quite some time now, the USA is owing huge amounts of money to China ! And increasingly, with that education in their pockets, over time, they knew to make high tech stuff as well. They did not mass-purchase foreign goods and get into debt. They gradually ramped up their industrial machinery until they could make more and more high-value goods themselves right in their own country.
Rather than mineral rights or tropical forests they traded cheap labor for dollars. The cheap labor did not hurt them as badly because cost of living was low in China and they used that labor to acquire new skills. Chinese diligence and work ethic played a huge role in that as well. You can say whatever you want about the Chinese, but I truly do admire the Chinese people for that feat.
The fact that this labor made value-added goods inside their own country is what was the key that helped the Chinese acquire the skills to eventually build factories and machinery of ever higher quality. That was the process that lifted them out of poverty.
So, the lesson here is: When you lift yourself out of poverty, you must not make a pact with the devil in such a way that leaves you on a track to continued or increased poverty. If you make pact with the devil, make it so that you acquire the devil's skills and then overtake the devil at their own game! That is what China did and is still doing.
By the way, I thereby do not condone that China at times plays at times fast and loose with intellectual property and still appears to employ questionable price dumping strategies. And I also believe that the environmental and life quality costs of this breakneck speed industrialization are coming to roost and will be staggering. But the Chinese are learning and ramping up their investment into solar and wind power. And it is because they have a strong one-party leadership, that forward-looking as well as unfortunate decisions happen fast.
The lack of all-out democracy is a double-edged sword indeed. But in times of great challenges, an autocratic system can maneuver much faster than at least those democracies that are hopelessly mired in destructive party politics and really get virtually nothing done anymore. I am therefore not advocating dictatorship as a generally worthwhile system. However, there are many gray areas. There are not just dictatorships on one end and the ideal democracy on the other. There are many systems in between. Some are more successful in making life great for all their people, some less so. There have been few instances of what one could call benign autocracies, such as Singapore, which have widespread public support and appear to greatly invest into the public good for all people.
I would say that a good many of the current democracies have lost their vision and thus lost a good deal of their maneuverability. That may not simply be because they are democracies. A democracy is just a system filled with people. It is how the people use the system and what they make it into.
It may be something about the disunity and splintering of the electorate. When societies fail for some reason to unite their own people in a common vision for the common good, a democratic system that is ineffective under those circumstances can render a country ineffective to address urgent challenges. When the electorate does not speak with one strong voice, party bickering takes over.
A system which imparts a higher degree of direct democracy could certainly help to sidestep an ineffective legislative body. Because when it comes to decisions that do have long-term consequences for generations to come, the population often speaks with much more unity than any legislative body does. Because members of legislative assemblies have their own personal agenda and their own privileges make them all too often disconnected from the common folks that have to endure their decisions. I am therefore all for direct democracy for high impact decisions that are difficult to reverse once set in motion. Not that the general population is always right, but the process (and the philosophy behind it) is just as important as any given end result. More often than not, the general population's wisdom and intuition appear have been better than those of the rulers, who are anything but neutral or impartial.
The introduction of the european currency, the Euro, has only been possible to push through (with one exception, Austria) in those countries where it was not put up for public vote. And it was not put up for public vote in those countries because it was known by polls that it was unpopular. That to me is bad Karma. And, as we know now, it has certainly shown to be a divisive quagmire of epic proportions that had not even an exit strategy built into it ! Any Euro member country lost thereby its ability to freely self regulate their money supply, an important tool to make one's country's goods cheaper and more attractive and to climb out of debt. As Greece is having its debts denominated in Euros it had to sell off many of its public assets. Of course the rich Greeks were unlikely ever really asked to pay their fair share. But even then, the problem remains clear: The people knew instinctively that handing control over money supply to an essentially foreign agency was a very perilous thing. Had the people spoken, we would not have been where we are now.
As far as the disunity in any society, I put a lot of responsibility on the education system which increasingly fails to teach basic civic values that could unite a people. The cause for that may lie in some ill-conceived fear to be seen as ideological or one-sided if it were to teach specific values, especially values that bring a nation together.
National unity is understandably seen with caution because a more severe form of it, an arrogant form of nationalism, has caused and still is causing a lot of needless pain and suffering. And a call for national unity under the wrong guises can lead to a faux kind of unity that is more based on a kitschy notion of national imagery than true philosophical and spiritual unity that does not just stop at the border either. Because in the end, we all, in some form are united as world people and may strive for eventual world solidarity (accompanied however by also worldwide responsibility as well).
What I see missing is a society-wide dialogue on what types of nationalism to avoid and what types of national or regional unity to strive for, if any. To the degree that any education system currently panders to some vague national ideal, it is too often not sufficiently filled with tangible actionable items and useful philosophies but usually some disneyfied whitewashed idealistic image that is incomplete and usually operating on the premise or claim that one nation is better than another nation in most aspects, not just a few. Or that domination or out-shining another society is some sort of virtue to strive for just in and of itself.
Instead I would say that any virtue that any country has to offer to the rest of the world can be shared and celebrated with the rest of the world in a non-evangelistical and non-imposing sort of way rather than making it a "better than you" sort of thing. Because what is good for one country is not necessarily good or befitting for another. In any case, I would not want the world to become one big carpet of sameness.
I wished that we as a world society could just find a system that satisfies people's need for autonomy and personal freedom, yet one that assures fast maneuverability, unity in purpose and true and genunine democracy. If at all, then anything even close to it appears to me currently only realized in small countries with direct democracies. Switzerland comes to mind as one example. Unity in purpose is easier in small societies that are also fairly homogenous in purpose and value and geography.
It seems though that a lof of people are highly suspicious of any idea of homogeneity because it raises images of nationalism or a striving for racial purity or fear of foreign cultures. What societies have yet to work out is to be simultaneously inclusionary and exclusionary.
To include those who want to support a vision that carries the society forward with stability in both population numbers and cultural makeup to a degree where cultural and demographic shifts do not tear apart society and threaten its cultural heritage and long-term vision. Such a vision is often not formulated because especially in pluralistically identified societies, that seems a no-no. I wished however that those in power would entrust the common people to have the ability to differentiate between racism or xenophobia and a society's legitimate desire for stability, a cultural home and unity in purpose and support.
As a society with a unity in purpose that makes us maneuverable to address the challenges of the future we may unfortunately need to be discerning and exclusionary where people fall too far out of line with that vision. People who really do not wish to integrate and whose vision may be to overthrow or subvert or transform that society into something that fits their own personal desire but is ultimately rather alien to either the cultural backbone or the majority of that society. Integration does not mean that one cannot bring one's own cultural background to the table. In fact it is and can be an enrichment. But one important aspect of integration is to strive to learn the language of a country one immigrants in. Parallel societies are not what I would call success in integration.
Integration is desirable provided that the influx by numbers is not too large and as long as the birthrates by newcomers are not too high to upset the population balance or to create too high a number of non-integrated 2nd generation immigrants. Here too, on the immigration debate, there is not enough of a middle ground or rational debate, unfortunately. All too often those who bring up those questions are immediately tagged with the label of being racist. And if one were to cite a need for some cultural continuity that is possibly under threat from too rapid an influx, then one is accused of nationalism or cultural hegemony, while in the same sentence immigrants' origin countries would never be questioned as to their own entitlement to preserve their own cultures.
That is a double standard. It seems to be based on the notion that countries who have ruled the world stage through colonialism and neoconservative policies have lost their right to preserve anything worthwhile about their own culture. Or that there is nothing worthwhile to be preserved in the first place. Even though I agree with many of those sentiments that many western cultures have engaged in deplorable conduct w.r.t. other countries or continents, it does not mean that one needs to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Many other countries or empires of bygone eras too have done horrible things over the course of world history, and it is not limited to western cultures either. I am not seeking to trivialize or downplay what western cultures have done. But to suggest that cultural baggage or dark spots are the domain of western cultures alone seems utterly ideologically blind. In fact even the often revered native Americans fought wars and were not just nature-loving peacenicks.
My main point is that countries and cultures can reform and can and even should preserve that which is dear to them. Provided that it is done in an introspective and truth-seeking way, that sorts out that which is dear cultural tradition and which is questionable. Preservation of cultures is not like being in a dusty museum. It contributes to the variety and diversity of our global culture. A mosaic or salad bowl or kaleidoscope or whatever you name it.
That is not to say that some cultures, not just western cultures, have questionable elements in them. And in the name of human rights as well as the rights of all people, cultures need to enagage in an introspective journey that is ongoing to see what is worth preserving and what is worth re-evaluating. Yet, most cultures or sub-cultures have things worth preserving and hanging on to, and other things that it may want to throw out or re-adapt or rejuvinate or re-evaluate.
One key guiding principle I am coming away with from studying Nonviolent Communication is whether or not most needs of all the people can be met by that society and its culture. Or at least, whether or not it sufficiently and consciously strives for that ideal. To the degree that any given culture deprives a subsegment of its population of the chance to thrive it is deficient by that measure.
That is not to say that it cannot set rules or guidelines or limits. And it also does not mean that any subpopulation cannot be held accountable for its own responsibilities. But to the degree that any population is entirely cut off from chances or the playing field made intentionally very biased against success, even when people do their best, then it is not engaged in a participatory and inclusionary process that creates unity.
Here is the key though: A strive for unity has to happen from both sides - the majority culture and the minority culture. Both are or need to be empowered to embark on that journey together. Thus allyship with those who are currently at a systemic and structural disadvantage is the key.
That is where I believe to differ from some left-leaning social justice advocates that I have encountered: I believe that responsiblity comes from both sides alike. To be stuck in enemy imagery and stereotypes is something that needs to be overcome by both sides, not just the majority culture. But many social justice advocate deride that as "blaming the victim", I have found. As I am learning from Nonviolent Communication, it is not useful to diagnose and imply intent (the intent here being to blame the victim) where no such intent is present. The untested implication of intent undermines rational and constructive debate. And I am finding myself frequently in a conflicting position with certain types of either self-identified or real social activists who jump to untested conclusions about what is going on in someone else's head. I am glad that not all of them are that way but a good many, based on my personal non-representative small-sample statistics. In all fairness I have to say that the unfortunate habit of diagnosing someone - as defined by NVC - is very widespread throughout humanity and appears on all sides of the political spectrum. I am just holding those to an even higher standard who proclaim to be balanced and identify as open minded or progressive, and then don't sufficiently live up to those proclaimed ideals. Although on the religious right, we have plenty of similar examples where people invoke a creator's love but preach fire and brimstone and engage in hate speach or conduct themselves in conflict with their preached doctrine.
So, I left off where I was talking about China having an autocratic regime which may have made it more maneuverable to escape the debt trap and to face future challenges. But that worldwide democracy, in conjunction with a populace united in purpose is still a worthwhile goal.
Continuing on that point, no matter what political system it has and no matter how maneuverable it may be, the environmental challenges that China will now face have every bit as much to do with overpopulation as anywhere else.
Had China introduced a one-child policy even before 1979, it would likely be in better environmental shape. Had it never introduced a One Child Policy, it would now be utter disaster. And that highlights the immensely important question as to where individual human rights need to be trumped by the rights of the society at large.
This article Why China's One Child Policy Hasnt Really Changed proclaiming to be politically "conservative" derides China's one-child policy without any scientific arguments and says that "utilitarianism isn't bad, it is not necessarily good either", but bases its main opposition to utilitarianism pretty much solely on the notion of personal freedom. It just goes to show that those who are infatuated with individual rights, have irreconsilable problems with the idea of population control.
It is somewhat comical that those who are politically conservative and ideologically most removed from the ideal of anarchy , embrace total anarchy when it comes to this very topic. And they also implicitly embrace anarchy down the road, because when human population starts to crash involuntarily and in a hard landing scenario, then the end result may very well be total anarchy. As far as population control, we currently and effectively live in an anarchy. In fact even worse, government rewards people through tax credits to have as many children as they please. Anybody, no matter what their means are, can have as many children as they wish, and even if it falls to the government to place them into foster care or if they fail to get an even basic education, the basic right to bear as many children as you like, is unabridged and unquestioned. Even on the political left as well. There it is seen more as a human right and a desired non-interference with woman's rights for bodily self determination. If a woman likes to have 15 children, please do not interfere with her right to do so.
Never mind that for the greater part of human society, we always have and had some sort of covenant, norms and restrictions on individual behavior for the greater good or survival of the tribe. In fact when people still lived in tribes, it would be hard to imagine that there was not some sort of population control exercised within a tribe. Either by choice or because an additional mouth could simply not be fed. I would think they opted for self control instead, just out of love for that unborn child that otherwise would have been sent into the wilderness to fend for itself and likely die.
It seems absurd and highly irrational that this idea - while common when people were predominantly living in small tribes - should not also exist on the scale of the entire human tribe. Has the human tribe reached too large of a number that the resulting complexity has become unmanageable and unity an elusive phantasy ? I tend to suspect that size matters, and in this case it is not good.
Going back to the idea of personal freedom, I do not believe that an individual has the natural right to have as many children as they wish. Not at this stage and perhaps it should not have had that right when humans started to break through the 300 million barrier. Imagine if humanity were to have imposed population restrictions when the human population was 300 million. According to this World Population Statistic that was around 500 AD. Imagine world societies would have decided to cap population then. What a wonderful world would we possibly have now. With plenty of open spaces, wilderness and yet quite possibly a great technological civilization of some sorts. Or if not now, then perhaps 500 years later due to slower progress.
The scenario of coordinated population control seems admittedly far fetched in the year 500 AD. Much of the world's populations were disconnected from one another by today's standards, and the world's resources seemed so inexhaustible that people continued to multiply without worrying about what consequences that would have 1500 years later. I wished they would, but you can't blame them now. After all there was still a lot of wild territory to conquer, settle and cultivate. Unity was obviously shattered by wars and population itself may have been used as a weapon as well. All the more so when you did not have weapons of mass destruction was it important to have large armies to outcrowd any other army.
But despite global abundance, any local scarcity that resulted from too large of a local population created new wars. That in turn of course furthered the divisions that precluded unity in purpose towards the greater good of world society. When you look how scattered into fiefdoms and kingdoms and counties the world was back then and even the later centuries, then it is no wonder that the world has almost always been far away from any worldwide unity to control population. Wars and conquests made it imperative to maintain or grow populations. Thus, much of humanity's population odyssey may be rooted not just in sexual appetite (as more population-wise animals have that too), but in wars (which only some species seem to fight) and religion. And never mind that religions also spawn wars. Human's inability to forge peace has endured to this day. As such I have little hope that the population crisis can be solved without conquering war itself.
So, the vicious cycle is as follows:
Nowadays we have fewer wars among the developed countries. And there is more interconnectedness and interdependency through global trade and international relations. But especially where you have war torn areas, population growth is rampant and the above cycle continues unabated. In Israel you have a population race between orthodox Jews and Arab Israelis. And let's not lull ourselves in the belief that the looming scarcity in energy carriers and raw materials could not create major wars where they currently seem implausible or even civil wars within countries that have enjoyed stability in recent memory.
Part of that population explosion stems from religious conviction or cultural inclinations. Sometimes ruthless leaders sought to expand population by preaching via religious doctrine to provide a way to expand into another country's territory or to provide many helpful impoverished servants and cheap labor. I wonder if many present-day rulers have similar designs but wrap it neatly as personal unalienable rights to make it palatable for the uninitiated.
No doubt, partially it was necessary in the past to have many offspring because of high infant mortality. The necessary adjustment commensurate with greater survival rates has however not been made. But what is equally damaging is the unquestioned idea of personal freedom when it comes to having children. Here too, it seems for many on the left, to contradict the idea of the right to one's own body and what to do with it. For those on the political right it is more about religious freedom or infringement by government on basic human rights or fundamental freedoms.
Irrespective of where people come from, it is the lack of society-wide consensus regarding population balance and population self-management. In that climate the primacy of individual rights can survive unchallenged. Without more unity in society, that is unlikely to change. The question is only whether we want to leave it to mother nature to do it for us, which will be brutal and possibly a death knell for human civilization. Is that the choice we want to make as a society ?
If you ask me personally I think that as much as people do not have the right to pollute the common air with as much CO2 as they wish, they cannot beset the common earth with as many children as they wish. Children that come, at least in our society, endowed with a fresh new set entitlements for resources, anything from healthcare to infrastructure and education and other social services, a claim for a hopefully well paying job, a house or appartment, and of course consumerism. And their job is likely to depend on continued consumerism by all those of their generation. And even in an ideal modern sustainable wonderland without fossil fuels and with social justice and all, that too will too hit a brick wall, possibly later, or possibly even sooner. Because a lot of density can only survive because of the ready availability of cheap high density fuels. Once that is gone, all bets are off whether we can return to non-pesticide manual labor heavy agriculture at the current population levels. And even if, what will life quality be like and how much open spaces can we preserve then ?
One could establish a child-carbon credit scheme where perhaps one can buy the right to have an extra child from someone else for adequate compensation. But that too would be problematic for several reasons as well, genetic variability being just one. Incompatibility with basic social justice would be another. Why should only the well-heeled be allowed to accumulate enough child credits to have, say, 10 children while those who are poor should therefore have none because many sold their rights on the open market for basic survival ? Although, one could argue, that those who have very little money to begin with would be illequipped to raise a child, at least in a society where the basic needs are not met in a comprehensive way. To many this will seem classist. I will say that I would prefer that we did not have these economic divisions in the first place that in part lead people to be poor in the first place and to face those kind of choices. But when we will enter times of severe scarcity due to overpopulation, poverty may no longer be a determinant of the economic system. Once we run out of oil and mineral resources before having rebuilt and retooled our economy, any kind of economic system would struggle to maintain an even basic living standard for all.
When it comes to fostering society-wide unity to tackle those issues, it all seems to come back to education for me. If we don't start to educate people to collaborate on a society and world-wide level and to think scientifically and sustainably, without falling prey to religious fanatism and non-scientific reasoning, how then can we hope that people can make choices that are rooted in how reality truly works ? Ideology and religion alike are proposing solutions (if they do at all) that are rooted in wishful thinking and under idealized assumptions that may not come true. Scientific evidence based reasoning seems to have the highest likelihood to form the basis of a unifying vision. And yet, especially in the USA, scientific reasoning is increasingly under attack from religious fanatics and some well meaning but idealogically blinded left-wingers alike who think that scientists are mostly technocrats and lack the right profile. The scientific field has thus retreated into the ivory tower or the clandestine laboratories of companies that want to bestow upon us new wonderful technologies against our will, such as genetically modified foods or neighborhood drones or yet another bloated operating system version. Is there in the USA much of any visible and transparent and high profile public research left that is reported in the media and subject to public discourse and that pays a tangible benefit back to society ? Or has it all been cut in the name of budget cuts ?
As far as the non-scientific realm, I will say that religions or any spiritualities that fail to embrace world-wide unity and preach division are taking down humanity along with them, leading us down a dark path that is likely to end in utter disaster. Maybe that is even their unspoken intent. The vision of apocalypse has something epic about it that seems to meld well with many religions.
Despite many religion's claim to represent all of humanity and having humanity's well-being at heart, is in the very DNA of most religions to distinguish themselves from others in such ways that imply irreconcilable incompatibility. The idea of a religion's success is almost never a complementary solution by melding with another religion. How many times in history have we seen churches unite ? If at all, it would be few and far between. More often churches and belief systems the world over have split apart, seeking further differentiation. And since neither religion is going to allow itself to be dominated out of existence, and each religion vies for maximum membership, it is an apparent anathema to have ecumenical unity.
The catholic church in particular would unlikely ever give up its opposition to contraceptives or population restraint. Ironically though, if the major religions all take humanity down with them, they will all die with them too. That prospect however does not appear deter many religions either. Because most of them believe in some sort of after-life and once judgment day arriveth, and the good go to heaven and the bad go to hell, the planet's future is really secondary. This is mostly the Christian religious model and is not representative of all religions. But too many spiritual systems as of yet do not embrace population control and thus, implicitily or explicitly treats the earth's future as secondary. Any religion that considers earth's demise as essentially collateral damage in the plot to birth as many people into existence seems to me highly unlikely to represent the true will of any living creator (should it exist) that so lovingly created earth with such beauty and splendor. Imagine a diety that would spend 13 billion years waiting to finally have humans to appear on earth and then to impart to them an image of oneself that would lead them to trash earth relatively shortly after appearing on the world stage and all in the name of that very spiritality. A spirituality devoid of any clear and unambiguous message of sustainability and population control. What kind of diety would do that to their own creation ? Why would they not want humanity to survive for another 100 million years to birth way more babies into heaven or give pleasure to the creator ? It seems absurd even under the assumption that a living creator exists. I would expect more from a creator. Thus I have trouble believing that any of the major religions truly reflects any creator's intent regarding the preservation of earth's beauty and wholesomeness.
I now have made a huge discourse regarding overpopulation, education, religion, wars and all, one that I hope you enjoyed. I kind of want to go back now to where I left off, which is how education might need to be approached in developing countries so that they at least stand every so much of a chance to escape the poverty and dependency trap.
Coming back to the question of how the poorest nations should invest into higher education: Now you might say, by lauding China for investing in higher and technology-relevant education, I am contradicting my earlier point that currently poor countries should be cautious to over-invest in technology-driven education. Actually I am not. As I mentioned earlier, while China looks like a huge success story, I do not think that China's path of breakneck industrialization is sustainable and good for the country. The pace and unquestioned ferver worry me. If, while industrializing more gradually, China also were to have cut its population in half (along with other parts the world too), then industrialization would seem to have been a lot easier to handle in a manner beneficial for humans and other species alike.
With China we must consider the immense pollution that the USA and increasingly Europe are essentially outsourcing by producing much of their goods in China. Just like everywhere else on this planet, education got to be about attaining sustainability and a population balance that is in line with carrying capacity and per-capita resource usage. That has so far failed in pretty much most societies, be it developed countries or under-developed-but-aspiring-to-be-developed countries.
Only if we de-populate in the developed world, could be send recycled homes, recycled metals to the poor countries. But then, you might as well send real assets right anyways, when the time comes, and not bother about the financial assets in the first place.
Thus, if we want to help the poor, let us depopulate at home. Then we can in fact send real assets without taking more from the earth.
But even here, the proportional discrepancies between the overpopulated poor and the fewer rich citizens will still catch up with us: But even if we depopulated (in the USA) from 320 million to 100 million (which will take a while) and give away 220 million people's worth of old houses away. What happens with the other 5 billion people that live in squalid condition ? I am saying 5 billion because, by the time the USA has depopulated, the number of citizens living in poor countries will have further mushroomed unless they instituted effective family planning regimes to even stabilize their population. Or unless horrid famines finally stop their growth.
As you can see, even the poor countries need to de-populate too. Or else, there is going to be a net increase in the resource usage on the planet if they ever want to attend even a halfway "developed" life style. The other alternative would be to go back to living in harmony with nature. But how many wild spaces are there left that could accommodate that life style ? How many people can live wild in the amazon rain forest ? It would be a tiny fraction of the population that currently lives in much of the developing countries, with wild spaces rapidly disappearing. It seems we are in a dead-end street no matter what. Therefore, the only way out I see is to either continue in poverty, lift people out of poverty but with low resource usage but some technology use or to return to living in the wild. In all of those scenarios, a lower population seems the only way forward to avert possibly irrecoverable disaster and population crash.
The error in the reasoning of many over-population deniers is that in reality the currently existing asset-disparity is not the same as consumption-disparity.
We can lower private consumption of the rich by outlawing mcMansions or too many airplane trips. But the saved resources would never be enough to feed and house the billions of the poor. Plus, the poor need different resources. The rich people may give up gas and some high quality building materials and high tech gadgets but the poor need very different types of basic items such as modest but efficient housing and fundamental infrastructure like water wells, sewage systems, electric grids, public transportation. And they are often idiosyncratic to their own geographical and cultural zones.
We can redistribute the much larger financial assets that the rich have. Those represent controlling stakes in corporate buildings, intellectual properties, factories, mines, mining rights, power stations, apartment buildings, etc. They are paper-money assets such as stock options (which may or may not be realized) and fancy financial instruments that may pay a divididend to the poor if they are handed over the the poor.
The transfer of financial assets to the poor will not change the real assets that are underneath. The Microsoft campus is still going to be filled with employees that have the same resource footprint as if the company was owned by a nonprofit. The apartment buildings are still going to be filled with local tenants that drive their cars to work every day. It does not matter whether the poor or the rich hold those assets.
The transferred financial assets are allowing the poor countries to build new things. That effect is what led the the population-denier to think that the transfer is necessary. However while it may seem necessary, it is not sufficient. Because the poor now will use those dollars to buy new assets, there continues to be a net-increase in resource use. The assets have to be new because you need to increase the world-total of houses, infrastructure etc because you are not going to tear up the houses and infrastructure of those who already live in the rich countries. The transfer of financial resources from a rich country to a poor, thus does not prevent an increase in world real assets and thus is not resource neutral.
The over-population denier falsely implied that the re-distribution of wealth leads to a resource-neutral exchange of resources that therefore supposedly makes population-decline un-necessary.
Therefore, the asset transfer that the over-population-denier so demanded, is only going to be resource neutral if the poor countries reduce their population (and of course we in the rich countries must do the same). Because the idea is to give EVERYONE in the poor countries a dignified living standard, not just a tiny fraction of their population. And as you can see, the current situation is just that. Only a tiny fraction of the poor countries' population actually benefits. And on top of that, it is usually their own upper crust and not even the grassroots people.
Even if the USA and Europe de-populated their nations to make room for 500 million people, that would be barely a dent because probably 2-3 billion (and in the future even more if population increases) will live under undignified living conditions (slums, hunger), especially when the affects of climate change start to increase the deserts and lead to repeated crop failures.
Can you see how complex our world is ? You see how much it took just to convey this one little aspect of our complicated world.
I believe that the over-population deniers in the USA are as misleading as the climate change deniers. Except that over-population deniers on the both political left and right fringes as I found.
Because the USA brand of capitalism demands a particularly high growth rate to keep it afloat, it seems almost plausible that the wrong line of reasoning is deliberately perpetrated. Another false myth that I find endlessly perpetrated and repeated is that the USA is not overpopulated. That without immigration we would shrink. The US-census website however shows that even without immigration we would still grow, from domestic births alone. Thus, I wonder if there is an agenda to keep perpetrating this nonsense. So that people think of high birthrates as okay. And immigration is not resource or carbon neutral either if it comes mainly from low resource use countries.
The previous argument about financial versus real assets can be used here as well. Philantropy is the transfer of financial assets to buy new assets in poor countries. Bill Gates is not using his foundation to move the office buildings held by his financial assets into the small countries. Instead, philantropic money is used to buy new real assets. Those again create a net-increase in world resource depletion. That depletion may seem small at first because we only help a small fraction of the 3 billion poor people around the world. But if we wanted to give EVERYONE a dignified life style, it would have a huge resource impact. And again, the rich countries would still not change their resource footprint because we are not shipping houses, rails, sewage pipes from the USA to Africa.
I am not saying that philantropy is bad. But without an accompanying population decline both in the developing and developed world, it is going to wreck our planet ever more.
Before I went into my rather long chapter about the over-population deniers, I was leaving off with the idea that 100 Million people may not be enough to have a modern society with most of the comforts we have today. I want to further develop that side of the population question now.
You might say that I need to do more quantitative research first as well to prove that. I agree. Especially if we cut out a lot of excess technology a smaller number might be plausible. If a world population of 100 lived mostly in a region like Germany, we would after all no longer need airplanes. The rest of the planet would be left back to nature and we could travel to the vast regions of the planet by sail boat, river boat or balloons (that need no energy to float and could use the winds) or glider planes. Travelling would once again become as slow as it was 200 years ago, though more high tech. People would have to have more time and thus our whole pace of innovation would have to slow down severely, which is good.
Yet, I think that 100 million, even with a streamlined economy, would seem like a healthy minimum population. There is also some safety in numbers from the type of natural disasters that strike once every 10,000 years. But let's not get bogged down in numbers. My reasoning is qualitative and the exact numbers (100 million, 130 million) do not matter. But the other point I try to make is this:
We will not know until we get there, but if we are wrong, irreparable damage has been done, in many ways irreversibly so. The cost of being wrong is going to be immense and possibly final. Therefore I recommend the precautionary principle. To rather be conservative in one's estimates because the cost of error is very high. More detailed scientific analysis is still prudent and important. But no matter what, we have to first of all just even start to comprehend the challange at hand. The details would be left to quantitative analysis later on. My question is: Is any think tank or serious academic research even devoted to working on this question at all ? I guess that no valiant effort is currently under way to address this question.
On the other hand, too high of a global population, even if only 300 million, will eventually draw down our limited raw materials that cannot be replaced or grown (unlike e.g. oil for plastics that could in principle be made from algae or composted organic waste) because even the best and most energy efficient recycling process will eventually dump a small non-recapturable portion of the precious metals into the oceans where they become too dilute to ever recapture. Never mind the irrecoverable every-day amounts lost to rust, abrasion, dilution by accidents or war.
War or even a huge peacetime standing military are a huge drain on material. The good news for a small popluation of 300 million living in relative proximity would be that they would be condemned to peace. Because 300 million people must work together to uphold any technological civilization, or they will totally go under. The interdependencies are too strong. Europe could hardly be where it is if their member states were still fighting each other. In fact Europe has flourished since the end of the cold war, more so than the USA.
I hear too many people fall into the following trap: They say "there is way enough energy hitting earth from the sun", "there is plenty of wind energy to be harnessed to power much of mankind". Therefore there is no real limit we will run up against.
What they fail to think about is this: In order to harness those energies, we need raw materials. We need rare metals to create high efficiency magnets to turn movements into electricity. We need rare metals for hard drives for our information economy. We need rare metals for all the analog electronics to get the electrons from the wind turbines or solar plants to our households. We need homongous amounts of steel to build all the wind towers, and if those wind towers sit in the ocean, the steel needs to be very high quality to withstand the onslaught from salt water. Even concrete and steel rebar are not unlimited resources. But those are needed too for building the bases of those wind towers. In other words, even the most regenerative energy infrastructure we can think of will require immense amounts of raw materials.
Also, even if we never build another skyscraper or office building or private home, we still need to fight against decay, wear and tear. No building or wind turbine electric generator or solar cell lasts forever. Things need to be recycled, remelted, and there will be irrecoverable loss. No machine that fabricates solar cells will last forever. And we surely will have to build massive amounts of those machines in order to ramp up solar cell production to cover all of mankind's power. And in order to keep the infrastructure going for thousand years. No building can be recycled 100%. No bridge or railway line lasts for good. They all eventually leach out some amount into the soil and oceans. Can we just take the soil itself and extract all the minerals from it ? if so, the expenditures in terms of energy will be huge and I am not sure if it can be done. But that would only go for ubiquitous materials such as iron and magnesium and so on. For steel though you need coal. In a past-coal era you would need to make coal from organic materials. But that would be hugely expensive and require us to reserve vast forests for harvesting organic coal. Those forests will take a long time to regenerate. Our rate of uptake would have to match nature's rate of regeneration. With our current population we have vastly exceeded the rate of natural replenishment of those materials that we would not become too dilute to retrieve.
So, my point is that a technological civilization appears to run out of its critical non-ubiquitous raw material sooner or later. No recycling process is 100% and there is always some fraction that is irrecoverably lost.
You might say that in 10,000 years we might have come up with some magical nuclear synthesizer reactor that allows us to create any of earth's elements we want and in large quantities to replace the above described loss. But I dare predict that the energy needed to do so may require us to plaster the entire earth (including oceans) with solar panels or wind farms. Not something that I want for our planet. And it would likely create lots of radioactive byproducts.
It may indeed be the case that, for humans to survive for another million years, we have no choice but to go back to how we lived 7000 years ago. Because that life style was what allowed us to exist for the previous million years. I will elaborate on that later on and I am saying right here that I do not see that as a worthwhile scenario that all people should go back to live like in the stone age. Perhaps the majority of a much down-sized world population could live where it is nice and balmy and where there are lots of easy-to-eat fruits and vegetables. But also take a lesson from the Amish people who to this day live largely without the use of chemical fertilizer, electricity or modern appliances. It is possible to step back from high resource usage. But the Amish don't live in cities. And their rural life style is only possible because of low density and therefore relatively low population. If their population were to mushroom, they would find themselves under pressure to move into high-resource usage cities and to thus abandon their life style.
I do like a civilization that has electricity and technology. Not just for creature comforts and medical technology. I also really want it because I like there to be some advanced technology to be around for the fundamental understanding, knowledge and insights that it has given us - like telescopes that can help us figure out where we all came from. Technology and science have allowed a great many of us to free ourselves from superstition and break the monopoly of the religious institutions as the only game in town to explain the inner workings of the world.
I like that we have had access to highly advanced telescopes, atomsmashers to give us all the answers we have gotten so far. We know the universe expands, we can appreciate how the universe has gone through amazing expenditures of all kinds to bring about this teeny tiny blue marble called earth with intelligent conscious beings on it. And most likely there are many other planets with intelligent life out there, although I think it is still very rare as a percentage of the total number of planets and stars. At leaest it is rare at any given time. Since even our modern era just occupies a blip on the cosmic time scale.
We have expanded our senses via technology to see x-rays, measure radio, microwave, infrared, gamma radiation to get a much more complete image of the cosmos. We x-ray stars, radio-wave emitting pulsars, black holes, quasars, etc. We found billions of galaxies and thus we find spiritual humbleness in the evidence that intelligent life may be out there but is also not the norm. There is no man in the moon nor on mars. I find cosmology very spiritual because it has given us many important answers that have formed our image of the world and thus also our cultures.
But here is my word of caution: I doubt that we can ever find all the answers. That there may be an "enough is enough" point even in fundamental inquiry into the workings of the world. At some point, some fundamental philosophical insights that is passed on like old wisdom from generations past, may offer us just as much insight into this world. The answer to the world's questions is not 42 (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).
The quest for the world's most fundamental questions may finally lead to some sort of fundamental discovery or mathematical/philosophical theorem that once and for all proves that the final answer itself is and perhaps even must be fundamentally elusive. In fact, on the mathematical level, this has already been achieved, it seems, via Gödel's incompleteness theorems
It would not be surprising to eventually find similar proves or hints within the material world. Maybe we find that within each and every atom there is an infinite regression of more hidden particles, which we can never all discover because of the energies required. The laws of nature may by their very nature of a kind that is not capturable in one grand theory. It could mean that the complexity of matter is infinite and thus escapes mathematical description and therefore would be untractable by logic. That any model we can build would perhaps practically valuable but fundamentally incomplete and inaccurate. After all, physicists have yet to fully understand gravity.
The final answer to how this world works and how it came into being then would be that there is no final answer. That every new phenomenon (such as a new particle) discovered will pose at least two new questions.
And I dare to propose that many of the most fundamental questions about our existence lead to tautologies like "the answer is that there is no answer". Or intrinsically oxymoronic questions like "What was before time ?". Is the "before" even possible to ask without time ? "Who created the creator that created us ?". Interestingly these are all questions that always lead to infinite regressions.
These questions starkly point to the limits of our imagination. And just like infinity is incomprehensible, so is global finiteness. Because if the universe has a boundary, then what is behind it ? Time-wise and space-wise global boundaries face the same quandry. Every boundary asks what is behind it. But bound-lessness leads to infinity. Infinity suggests infinite energy or infinite time. No creator of finite dimension or means could create something that is infinite.
Maybe at the most fundamental, the universe escapes even logic. Just like measurements of time and space work within the universe, they fail us at its boundaries. The same may be the case with logic itself. Logic works very nicely to describe what goes on within the universe. So, not only space and time break down near the big bang. Even logic itself may falter. At least our human logic.
For instance we don't even know the nature of the laws of nature. I mean, where do those laws live ? Would they exist even in total emptiness ? Or are they attached to the very things they govern ? And if those laws live in total emptiness, then is it still total emptiness ? Of course, inside the universe, there is no emptiness anyways. Even the vacuum of space is flooded with photons from distant stars.
Instead of mere vacuum I am talking about the kind of absolute emptiness that would have had to exist before any universe existed. If there was this absolute emptiness prior to the universe coming into existence, then there must have pre-existing laws that permitted something to come out of nothing. But the laws themselves are not "nothing". They are "something".
That insight then leads us to a startling conclusion: In the strictest sense there was never ever anything like "nothing". Because if there had been, then no thing ever would have arisen. No universe, no consciousness.
And another, perhaps even more amazing conclusion is: If something always existed, it also would mean that there never was an absolute beginning. There always was something, even if it was just the laws that made existence possible.
Many religious people would find the aforementioned statment heretical. That the world had no beginning. However, the astonishing part is that most religions too make the implicit claim that something always existed that had no beginning.
They claim that it was God who always existed. Every religion in fact must claim this, or else it would leave you with an incomplete picture of the world. That is after all what the purpose of most religions was prior to the advent of modern science. People have been asking these fundamental cosmic questions for eons. If by contrast, any religion ever were to claim "God was born 1 Trillion years ago", the inevitable question would be "who created God ?" and thus the picture would be incomplete.
So, in a way both science and religion come to the same conclusion. Something always existed. So, at least at the nexus of these fundamental questions, are science and religion really as far apart as the religious fundamentalists claim ? I think that religions have made the mistake of seeing a conflict between science and religion. And therefore religions have battled scientific insights ever since and of course science has therefore also fought to discredit religion.
On more earthly day to day questions, religions do conflict with science. Some religions (or let us say, over-zealous interpreters of 2000 year old texts that actually make no mention of "abortion") claim that a fetus is a living human being at conception. Science deliberately takes no clear stands on that. Because, while you can measure "life" on a cellular level you cannot objectively measure when something is "a living human being". The conflict is that religions purport to provide an absolute answer whereas science deliberatly sidesteps it because science is modest enough to know that no objective definition can be found for the exact transition point at which something becomes "a living human being".
Religions therefore need to become more modest. And they also need to update themselves (Bible 2.0 or something like that) to fit the conditions of modern life. Contraception must no longer be frowned upon by any religion. It spells collective suicide by the very community that is meant to be saved.
Science as well must become more modest. For the above meantioned reasons science has to stop making claims about observations that aren't observations. Scientists talk about dark matter or strings as though they existed. In reality dark matter started off and still is a correction factor in a cosmic equation, without which, that equation does not adequately account for the universe's rate of expansion. But that correction factor may just as well point out a flaw in the original theory rather than being anything "real". String theory describes 10-dimensional strings with curled-up sub-dimensions that are so small that nobody ever can observe them. There is nothing to observe on that microscopic scale. String theory is a way to describe the inner workings of a black box without being ever able to actually open that black box. Thus science has to learn humbleness as well But that is a good thing. This way a meeting of the minds between science and religion can happen.
The bridging between science and religion has immense importance. Because if we want to get everyone on board to help save our civilization and the beauty of the planet, we have to include religious people too. Right now many religious people are far removed from scientific world views and thus cannot adequately appreciate the steps we need to take jointly in order to save Gods or the Universe's creation. If science and religion can meet on the basis of mystical origins of our universe, then we have an access point perhaps to bridge many other religion-science divisions as well.
I just love to delve into those kinds of questions and tease out answers without needing the help of complicated physical equations. I hope you find that equally fascinating.
Our deepest questions can be perhaps not solved by technology, by hunting for more observations. After all we cannot observe the pre-big-bang anyways. We can only extrapolate from our observations, using fancy theories that may or may not describe the actual universe. So, the most fundamental questions perhaps be only solved by going back to philosohy.
Technology as a vehicle to unlock those 'final' answers (they may never be final) to this universe may ultimately prove of increasingly limited use. It got us very far, but maybe there is a point where even technology can no longer bring us much closer to the final answer. Asymptotically so but at ever greater cost. You have probably heard of the law of diminishing returns.
My intuition tells me that we possibly can only approach but never reach the final answer. Just look at the cost of atom smashers. The dollars per atom smashed seems to go up every year. They are already looking at building the next generation atom smasher with a 60 mile (100 km) diameter. Will the answer it may (or may not) provide be qualitatively meaningful for the vast majority of us ? Or only for an increasingly elite few ?
Compared to ever more expensive atom smashers, how much is spent by contrast on creating and promoting a new scientifically-rooted philosophy or evidence-based spirituality that can perhaps equally satisfy our thirst for those answers ? Creating such a philosophy may be cheap, promoting it is expensive because the media want to be paid handsomely. But it would possibly be much more powerful and useful. Because the existing religions do not provide us with survival tools. Most religions do the opposite. They remove us from spirituality because they do not look for the truth in an objective or free spirited manner. They tend to indoctrinate so that they bind their constituents to their own church. Churches, just like businesses, need to survive after all and their leaders have strong egos.
You may cringe at the idea of scientific Spiritualities. But the reason you cringe is exactly because of the aforementioned wedge that respective adherents to religion and science have driven between each other.
I will use the term "techno-civilization" from hereon out to describe a civilization that uses technology such as microchips, advanced fabrication methods that depend on materials that are not not replenished by nature at a rate that the civilization must use up to stay technological, even when using the best recycling method possible. I am not talking even about oil (as a raw material, not energy source) here, which can in principle be substituted or synthesized from organic matter. I am talking about metals such as nickel, platinum or gold deposits may replenish themselves over 100s of millions of years or perhaps never. Because some deposits may only have come into being when the earth was still a molten lava ball and thus may never be replenished. I think it would be highly speculative to think that we could ever build a high tech civilization using only or mostly organic matter. By which I mean microchips, resistors, transistors, capacitors, cellphone antennas, lasers, from mostly organic matter. Or trains, bridges, electric motors. Although at least we start to build airplanes from carbon fiber. And carbon is surely in plenty supply. Except, once we burned even all the coal, then you will find it in the atmosphere. The question of course is how to get it back. Plant many trees, right ? Seems logical. But well, if the planet has been turned into a desert with 10 F (5 C) above the current average temperature, not much may grow anymore to do that. So, we have to assume that we saved our planet's climate to afford us carbon in whichever form as a raw material and easily accessible.
I made my point earlier that ultimately that understanding the world may be a losing battle beyond a certain point. But I am glad that nowadays we know enough about the universe to have freed many of us from the jaws of religion and superstition. What worked in the past may not work in the future.
The cosmic insights we have gained so far have even resulted in some practical things: my GPS system that gets me from A to B that in fact needs to use the insights of Relativity Theory to be as accurate as it is. So, yes, understanding the universe has some real fringe benefits. But from hereon out, I am guarded.
Technology is great in medical sciences too. We have grown accustomed to fancy medical care. It alleviates pain, elongates our lives so that we can grow old at higher quality and grow wiser. That is one reason why I like technology.
But the reason why we need all of the fancy medical equipment for instance is also our fear of death. Fear of death thus is huge business. It figures into almost everything we do. Even trying to impress people is more than just about finding, say, a mate. It is fear of a non-lived life. Fear of dying nameless.
Technology is about comfort too. Especially in the colder climate zones. And I don't want to miss it. But we could, with low enough population, all move to some tropical islands and live pretty cushy without much stuff.
But the other reason why I like technology is that it can help fend off the next asteroid or detect early on when the next super volcano might blow. Or help us survive a 100 year nuclear winter from an asteroid we failed to catch
Even if I had to give up all its other benefits for the sake of a long lasting low-usage "techno-civilization", this benefit alone would be worth it.
My point here is: Even if you strip away a lot of reasons to have high technology, then there are still some that appear absolutely worthwhile to have technology.
Every civilization will die eventually. Ultimately earth will be swallowed by the sun. 500 million years from now, the earth is predicted to leave the habitable zone and all life will decline from there (if life still exists by then. maybe a giga-asteroid has smashed into earth by then to permanently exstinguish even microbial life).
If our civilization makes it through the next 10,000 years as a techno-civilization, then perhaps we will have devised ways to survive all future disasters. From a small asteroid to yellow-stone blowing up. Or we can fend off those asteroids that would otherwise truly do us in. I don't know if we can cap a volcano though. But we can build enough of a food stash for 100 years.
But we can only survive if our population is small enough and thus altruistic enough. So that, should Yellowstone park blow up that a pre-selected cadre of people is willing to march into caves and the rest is willing to die. And inside the caves we have all the ingredients to rebuild the technological infrastructure quickly once the disaster is over.
As you can see, it requires to retool our minds on a fundamental level too. You may think that this scenario is so far out, we have plenty of time. But I beg to differ. Here is why:
That very same type of altruism is actually required today. The altruism of large populations to be willing to forgo having a child or certainly more than one child. Nobody has to die and wait outside for the asteroid.
But on some other level, maybe there is sacrifice in terms of shorter life spans. Because affluent countries and up-and-coming countries would have to curtail their energy and raw materials usage and - most urgently - their fossil fuel usage. And in the short term that may lead to some cutbacks that affect longevity. But that is in the service of longevity of mankind in the long term.
The other sacrifice required is one jobs. People do not want to give up jobs so that some other country can have it. A lot of waste comes from duplication. But both Europe and the USA and Russia and also China want to have airplane factories. It is a symbol of status and knowledge and national security. And national security is needed because there is no world peace.
As you have realized by now, a techno-civilization requires minimum population and also a maximum population. Where is the sweet spot ? Can we keep that sweet spot over long times ? Can we as a society be cooperative enough to have a worldwide population management that everyone adheres to ?
The past million years the population management was taken out of our hands. Because we were limited in our population simply through our lack of technology. Maybe we had bow and arrow, but that right there probably gave us already the edge that made the population curve slope upwards ever so gently.
Those inabilities appear to have in a way saved us from ourselves. We were subject to the same eat-and-be-eaten logic as all other life forms. But those same dangers made it imperative to cultivate an urge to procreate. Because child-mortality was rampant back then. That same urge is still ticking in us, too much so. Some of it masks as being religiously or culturally based, but ultimately it may come down to be psychologically rooted in the fear of being be crowded out by "the other guys over the hill" and thus would be rooted in fights over hunting territory hundreds of thousands of years ago.
But then, why do animals, that have that same territorial thinking, keep their populations in check ? Because they never had the big brains that we have to make tools smart enough to ultimately outsmart all other species.
The problem is that the advent of human consciousness has not also been accompanied with the same degree of social (and thus altruistic) consciousness. We are a hopelessly individualized society. And even Asia with its less individual-based norms appears to be incapable to control its population.
Will we be able to overcome for that urge for good ? We would have to. Population stability is a must for long term survival.
If we survive the next 10,000 years as a technological civilization (which I doubt is possible but I am not ruling it out) we will have developed the technology to live on Mars and cultivate that planet (as long as it is cultivatable) for the time when the sun expands 500 million years from now.
If we our technological civilization here on earth runs out in the year 12,000, then at least our child colony on Mars can perhaps help out. Perhaps on Mars we find new rare earth minerals that can help us here on earth to survive much longer. And then, when year 500,000,000 comes, then we would be ready to all move.
But again, that too would require huge amounts of technology and resources that we are currently gobbling up at a frenzied pace. We are thereby gobbling up our chances to ever save humanity in the ultra long term, be it from asteroids or from the expansion of the sun.
If humanity survives next 300 years in a halfway intact state - which in itself will require a huge shift in consciousness and global solidarity - then it will from thereon out need to find way way simpler ways of surviving. And past the 10,000 year mark, if we run out of raw material needed for a high tech civilization, we need to go back to live much like our ancestors did. But at least we will do it with much more wisdom.
We will be wise enough to not repeat the same mistakes from the past. We will tell each other at the camp fire from that a past civilization 10,000 ago that miserably crashed because people tried to rely on unsustainable weird technologies like smart phones or satellites and rare earth materials. And on weird woodoo cults like forever-expanding economies.
They will point to old tunnels dug into the granite filled with materials that, if you touch them, you will die of cancer (nuclear waste) and that you should not ever go there. And they will point to other tunnels that once lead to missile silo command centers. Or those ring-shaped tunnels that contained atom smasher rings.
Humans are very ingenious. But even they cannot abolish the laws of supply and demand or the laws of physics. The laws of supply and demand are far more than just economic logic. The earth can only supply what it has. If we demand more of it based on the type of civilization we have, it will run out !
As plain and simple this is, most economists and politicians and even a good many in the academic ivory towers engage in rethoric that appears to suspend even the most basic laws of logic and scientific reasoning. This is highly irrational, assumptive, non-questioning and therefore bears all the hallmarks of religious doctrine and belief in the supernatural. People have a propensity to believe what they want to believe and what they want to become true according to their own set of values and preferences.
And that is where human's implicit arrogance lies - in the apparent inability to acknowledge and abide by those truisms even after they have been exposed to them. Or the arrogance of thinking that, as long as I have the good life, I don't really have the energy or time to care about the next 300 or perhaps even 15 million human generations to come, generations of people and animals that also would like to enjoy this planet.
The purpose of this chapter was to get us thinking about the possible fundamental resource limits to our technological civilization. Unless we have a 100% recycling process for irreplaceable minerals or we can build a technological world from organically growable replenishable resources, our access to technology is doomed over the very long run (e.g. past the 10,000 year mark).
We need technology to further our ability to understand the cosmos but with diminishing returns. For that we may eventually need to let go of technology to find new answers to those questions. Ever bigger atom smashers are not an option. Even just due to immense resource waste. We are not going to build a 3000 mile long atom smasher that extends under the sea bed (since no continent is big enough to host it on land). And if the unlocking of the universe's secrets were to depend on such an atom smasher, then that right there would prove on a practical level that we cannot find the final answer, unless we want to kill our civilization doing it. We would repeat the fate of Easter Islanders, except that we don't build stupid looking statues that gobbled up their resources. We would build atom smashers that gobble up our resources.
However, to even make that understanding accessible to future generations through other than just books, but instead via real world experiments and telescopes, we need technology. Fundamental science must stay alive with real world instruments instead of old dusty texts.
Both science and religion need to become more humble and approach each other. That may be possible once people realize that they fundamentally arrive at the same answer to the most pertinent question of all: "Was there a beginning" ? Their answer is the same: Something always existed. The universe (if God were to be included in it) always existed.
We need to to detect and deflect the next asteroid or to survive mega-disasters like a supervolcano or an asteroid that got through or a mega-pandemic that may eclipse even the great plague or the spanish flu.
We need technology to have all even a fraction of the trappings of modern life we cherish. Even if I just think of relatively basic things such as operating a broken limb or getting novocaine or pain relief. Or to extend our lives so that we can have time to grow wise and mature.
I am simply not hopeful that we can build circuits out of replenishable materials within the next 100 years, which will be a time of massive decline in raw materials, even if we were to be on fast track to reduce our population. Because population reduction is not instantaneous.
And even if we were to find that magic bullet some day - until that day comes we have to stay on the path of conserving technology-enabling materials. The Chinese are very clever. They are curtailing the sale of rare earth minerals.
With a drastically declining population we could at least recycle technological waste to buy us time. Drastic and voluntary population reduction is paramount. Involuntary reduction will happen via imply massive resource wars, civil wars, civil unrest and mass starvation from a breakdown of social order and the effects of climate change.
For the time being, any excess use of high tech materials far above what we truly need for day to day survival will eventually endanger our long term survival.
So, I have tried to show in the previous section was that a techno-civilization may not be possible for more than 10,000 years. That after that we return to an advanced stone age. Unless perhaps we can get to Mars where there may be some extra rare minerals lying around
But it seems plausible that we can have a techno-civilization for the next 10,000 years. IF we do everything right and do everything to conserve non-replenishable technology-relevant metals.
Even the best prophet cannot accurately predict the ingenuity or stupidity of large groups of people. We obviously will need travel that road in order to find out. A prophet can at best warn of possible road blocks along the way.
But when we are attempting to envison a path that our current human civilization into the next 10,000 years, we are staring into an abyss right in front us. I don't know about you, but I certainly see one.
I have difficulty at times to muster hope. Because right now there appears to be a high probability that on a global scale we will keep qualitatively the same things that we have been doing that got us into this mess.
We are starting to make quantitative tweaks and some local qualitative adjustments. But even then, it is usually just one aspect that is changing in any given local region. There are transition towns in the UK that try to become all-integrated and all-self sufficient. Reason for hope, no doubt. But usually changes remain partial. Germany builds a lot of wind farms, but people still drive too many cars, build ever more roads and autobahn miles, and they still have massive coal fired plants and it is still a consumer oriented society, even if less so than the USA. Most of the changes are piece meal.
On a global scale the image is much bleaker. Africa is the next region to be ravaged by environmental destruction on a massive scale. So are remote regions in Asia and of course South America.
We keep riding on this high speed train while we have various disparate opinions on where the emergency brakes might be. Most passengers don't even think that we need to pull the emergency brake. But even those who do know that we need to pull the brake, and even those who think that they know how to operate it, even those do not know how they can get the other passengers to cooperate. Because on this train, it unfortunately requires everyone to cooperate. Some of us try to put their foot down on the rail (which hurts but makes a small difference) but the rest of the passengers see that they got their feet burned and back off, since it only extracts too much personal cost. So, the party goes on, people have a glass of wine in the dining car and we are all rolling downhill towards the entrance of a long tunnel that has a dead end. Because the tunnel has not been finished digging yet. There are people digging inside the tunnel, hoping to dig through the mountain. But the time is ticking as the train is hurdling towards them.
There seems to be no real well throught-through "emergency kit" for world society as a whole. Usually not even for any given country. You have heard the TV shows or newspaper columns that regularly admonish us to have an emergency kit in their house or car, right ? But do we have one for world society as a whole ? If at all, then the emergency kit consists of vast weapons stashes to secure access to much needed resources, border fences and more prisons, more gadgets for the police to keep the discontented masses in check. Or the emergency kit consists of tar sands, coal deposits, deep sea oil rigs, shale oil, shale gas (fracking) or more nuclear reactors.
But let's not fool ourselves. Many alternative technologies that people hope to gain large scale application are also used as a backup emergency kit for society. Even though they have yet to prove their scalability. I am all for it, for sure. But if we believe in it to be our great savior in and of itself, we will likely find out that we ran yet into another dead end like we did before.
Take for instance electric cars that have yet to prove their viability on a large scale and that at least currently rely on rare earth materials. That not only goes for the lithium batteries. Even their high-efficiency electric motors use strong magnets that likely may use rare metals. Unless the power from which they are powered is green, it is not going to be the panacea that saves us.
Or consider the yet to be planned/financed/approved intermittent generative energy sources (wind/solar) with the required large scale energy storage and smart grids. It certainly is the way to go. But to assume that that alone is going to be the big thing that saves us is again akin to using that as our only tool in the emergency kit.
Wind and solar have yet to prove themselves on a scale where they will make a huge difference and where we can have it available for all people on earth, not just us privileged in the developed world. And at a capacity where it would replace fossil fuels and in a densely populated country or region you have to plaster the landscape with those asparagus-like wind towers and deal with all its noise and blight-effects. And do I really want to see pristine African or South American landscapes dotted with wind towers ?
Then there is the exhaustion of prime sites. With wind power, we know that we need reliable wind. We know we can harness wind energy on a small scale because we started off with the best sites. But what when you scale them up ? The best sites that supplied the proof that it works on a small scale are now taken. Now we have to move on to the second and third best sites. The energy balance may look not as good then. Predictions may falter. It is just like with oil. We got the easy-to-get oil. All that is left now is the increasingly hard-to-get oil.
And then there is climate change. Areas that currently have wind, may not so in the future. Areas that had sun, may get prolonged overcast weather or they may get battered by storm systems that damage those installations. I am not saying we should not try. But I am illuminating that at the current resource-use levels and the current population, we may still run into grave dead ends.
There are plenty of folks who I talked to who think that the next science fiction technlogy (zero point energy or driving with water - LOL) is just around the corner and it is just the CIA who withholds it from us. And that all it takes is to blow that cover-up and all will be fine. There are some who hope for geothermal energy (probably one of the most promising yet too little realized technologies) and those who hold out the hope for nuclear fusion, which - even if we get it to work- is probably no less than 70 years away from large scale deployment, if ever. And it too may rely on rare materials (Tritium which is very rare and usually is created in nuclear reactors, which also use irreplacable resources such as Uranium or Thorium) and other rare components to make the required lasers or containment vessels etc, all of which will wear out and cannot be fully recycled.
On a private level, the emergency kit is your own kids (some believe that you should get a lot of children that can form sort of a family clan and can support you when you get old), your own extended family, your own intentional community, your local church community, your friends, or some lone plot of land (a "life boat") with a greenhouse on it, or your own cache of weapons and ammo to defend it. The rich and powerful of course will have their own fortresses built by the time the crisis comes. Their private yachts more and more resemble fortresses already now and we haven't seen the end of it.
Developing countries think that they can continue to engineer themselves or enslave themselves out of their own current misery or forestall upcoming energy crises by building dams or nuclear power plants. They understandably are hoping for more affluent living standards. Yet, if it were in the name of resilience, it is utterly absurd because especially when their still wide-spread simple close-to-the-land life-style is as resilient as you can get when the effects of climate change, deforestation and soil erosion and dying oceans converge.
I dare to predict that if or when the full brunt of the devolution of civilization comes home to roost, that those who still live in harsh conditions - like their ancestors have for hundreds of years - that it will be those "poor ones" who will have the last word. Didn't even the Bible say something that the poor will be the last ? Maybe there is a hidden message there. Because they know how to eek out a living with very little water, poor soil, harsh weather.
Even for those who are already accustomed to the harshest conditions, that will only be possible when their population density remains low. Unfortunate for most of those remaining simple societies, even if they eschew modern life, they are under constant pressure of development or resource extraction and people moving into slums in search for work.
The causes of poverty are manyfold (civil war, corruption, international debt) but in most cases, even without those other factors, overpopulation is still the final straw.
We see in land after land, like dominoes, that their own population has mushroomed to the point where the land can no longer support their scant population. At least not if they use traditional low-impact methods without artificial fertilizer or without pumped water from acquifers. Just look at north Africa and the middle east.
In a bitter twist of irony (in the light of the post-9-11 military campaigns) , maybe the ones living in the caves in Afghanistan may survive us all. Or people living in harsh remote mountain ranges in Iran or the nomads in the Sahara or in Mongolia.
And it would be no surprise, really. Because that life style is the life style that humanity has lived for longest time over the last million years and thus, by merely its duration, has shown to be the most sustainable. Before people became farmers and became settlers, there was no reliance on expansion, not-naturally replenished materials or particular seasons or the absence of particular plights. But also remember, that their population numbers were tiny compared to now. Perhaps a couple of millions.
But it is exactly that reason probably why they were able to endure for about a million years. But let's not kid ourselves. 7000 years ago the world population was 7 million according to the Wikipedia article World population. There is no return open to us to that life style, nor would I or most of us want that for all people in this world. Because at least a good part of that technology has given us a deep understanding on how the world works, and is continuing to do so. Even if we wanted to, how can we with 1000 x more the population that existed 7000 years ago ?
I am talking about political power but also electrical power.
Iceland is quite an anomaly because it is blessed with geothermal energy that is so easily tapped, and they would have been beyond stupid to not use it. But even iceland made some financial mistakes at least. But now it appears they are destroying their beautiful nature to serve other countries' aluminum smelters because they have been so successful at creating cheap electricity. The blessing of abundance has turned into a curse with all its usual consequences and dependencies.
Their political elites sold out the interests of the country. But I dare to say that it was possibly a fair share of the country's otherwise tight-knit community that seemed to buy into this fallacy. I am perplexed how even a small, homogenous, energy-rich society can still sell their soul to the mighty dollar.
Iceland could have done a lot better. Even if eco-tourism may be not enough just to bring in enough income to import products they cannot make themselves, it seems that they did not even try cultivating it enough. They could have become a high-tech hub but instead sold out to voracious resource-mining operations that do not really provide high quality jobs. Jobs that after all would be more sustainable than operations that eventually will run out of raw materials to process. Those jobs are destined to be temporary with huge externalities to their environment.
Perhaps what is at work here is that most political leader-shaping processes are flawed. Because they tend to impose such a burden on any truly altruistic person to rise to the top, that only non-altruistic image-conscious self-identified people will be spewed out on top. Most democracies suffer from this. Even near-socialist economies may suffer from it too. The only answer may be direct democracy that keeps any power in constant check and can override their decisions. I understand better why there are so many countries, including many European countries, that impose severe limitations on direct democracy. The elite is afraid of losing their privileges. They are not truly executors of the people's will. They are part-time dictatorial bodies.
So, long story short: there is no emergency kit for the world or any particular nation currently in place that is constructive, sustainable or realistic.
Any such emergency kit would have to include
Instead, people are just tinkering on a regional level. Societies are milling about in their own circles. This country dabbles in solar energy a little bit, that state tries a little bit wind energy, another region goes for nuclear (which is a dead end), and others build a couple of dams. Some countries are close to having comprehensive long term visions, but so far I mostly see only Iceland, Denmark and Norway that have viable integrated visions.
Pretty much all countries will have to undergo major shifts, no matter where on the affluence scale they currently are.
To even stand the chance for global society to build such an emergency kit, we all have to participate and re-think the lives we currently live. And that effects how and where we work, our living situation at home, how we spend our freetime, how we move about, and how we make or borrow or spend our money and even what kind of money we use (I will propose alternatives to our current money that you can start using right now).
Now, I don't want to be only gloom and doom here. I do give credit to promising hopeful developments, as much baby-steppish they appear in the face of the sheer immensity and intractability of the world-wide situation. But we get that hope by looking at the babysteps in our own country (the USA), which look relatively positive in at least some of the west-coast states with their energy sourced from water and their comparably "liberal" population or some other states that are trying to make strides. Some European countries too appear to be headed in the right direction, though even some of them face tough lobbying efforts by coal and gas and nuclear.
But when you look worldwide, you can't help but despair at the situation. It just seems so protracted and entangled and mired in this morass of national interests ! We have a much tougher time influencing things abroad than we do even here with our already heavily compromised political system.
There are corrupt officials that sell off resources to international mining operations, there are corporations that bribe governments, there are privatization drives imposed by international debt collectors and there is simply abject poverty that will find anybody willing to do the dirty job of cutting down another beautiful rain forest tree.
That apparent intractability (at least intractable to us humans where we currently stand as human society) is on a meta-level due to the lack of democracy here and elsewhere and the economic system with its agenda to leave us uninformed citizens and brainwash us with all the wrong values. And ultimately the economic injustice with the huge self-perpetuating gap between rich and poor. And the arms manufacturers that help fend off anyone that poses a serious threat to those who cling to their often unearned (rather than hard-earned) privileges. But I wonder if many on the political left make it too easy on themselves to leave it with that explanation.
Why am I doubtful that the meta-level explanations are sufficient ? In part because we have known these things for a while now. The political left has warned of those developments for the last 45 years. The knowledge of the greenhouse affect has been around for even longer.
Take for instance Hoimar von Ditfurth, a well-known German scientist and an equivalent to the US-American Carl Sagan. If I were to have any hero at all then it would be Hoimar von Ditfurth. I owe a not insignificant part of my early interest in large scientific questions to his amazing TV shows. I wished he was still alive, but he died I believe in 1989. In general I am not into hero-worship. I don't worship pop stars or politicians or famous athletes. But those teachers that truly enlighten you and have the fate of the earth at their very heart and are deeply spiritual, those I feel a deep admiration and kinship for. Hoimar von Ditfurth also wrote countless amazing books that are as pertinent as ever and attempt to answer timeless questions that humanity has been trying to grapple with for a long long time.
He warned in his TV-series "Querschnitt" ("Querschnitt" means "Cross-section") of all the things we see unfold now. You can see the 2-part show "Der Ast auf dem wir sitzen" (translated "The branch on which we sit") at these two links on youtube. Here are Der Ast auf dem wir sitzen, Part 1 and Der Ast auf dem wir sitzen, Part 2.
He truly knew how to convey the complete picture in his engaging style and was able to make complex processes accessible to the common folks without overwhelming them and without compromising the message via unwarranted simplification.
I wished the episodes suggested above had an English subtitles in it. But perhaps even if you watch it not knowing German, you will get some sort of idea even of the quality of the program. That particular episode aired in 1978.
Back to my original point: We have known the dangers for 45 years now. People talked about overpopulation and the Club of Rome in the 1960s. We had Earth Day in 1970. We had the knowledge back then. We knew who the protagonists of doom were - the same special interests we still talk about 45 years later.
So, could it be that we are still scratching our heads because the political left has been and is still just scratching the surface ? If the ever quoted reasons like "the big evil corporations", capitalism, colonialism, racism, greed, consumerism were indeed just meta-reasons that lie at the surface, then it would only make sense that we have failed to make significant qualitative progress over the last 45 years. Because then those meta-reasons would merely be symptoms of something more fundamental.
Because then you only treat symptoms without addressing their underlying cause. Then you'd behave like a dilettantish doctor that sends you home with a box of pills to alleviate symptoms without actually treating the root cause of the disease. And the pill of course having its own side effects that then require yet more pills.
Could it be that the deeper reasons for the difficulty to turn things around - despite years of efforts by scientists and educated people - are deeply rooted in complexity itself ?
The main complexities that come to mind are:
Could it be that it is beyond our own incapability to adequately deal with those complexities ?
Let us start with Earth's systems. Earth's systems are highly under-estimated in their complexity and delicate balance because they so gracefully appear to have forgiven us for so long for our misdeeds and they seemed by and large have provided us with a stable climate since the last ice age. We have taken it for granted because it seemed so easy to work with. You put down a seed into the ground and - poof - months later a plant emerges. How beautiful, how easy ! But when you watch Hoimar von Ditfurth's 1982 Querschnitt (engl. Cross-section) episode For dem Menschen stirbt der Wald (Translated: before Man dies, the Forest will die) about the immense importance of the world's wild forests, you will see an interesting experiment at minute 21:30. He illustrates that the human brain can easily comprehend linear causal effects. But then he shows a very simple weight-apparatus that, despite its apparent simplicity, totally defies human intuition. It shows that even very simple and seemingly easy to understand feedback-based systems do not actually function as human intuition would predict. If you have the two 1-kg weights pull on the same force gauge, the resulting force is not 2 kg but only 1 kg. And it shows how hopeless such prediction is in the infinitely more complex natural systems.
Next, let us take a look at human-created systems. We have created those hugely complex man-made systems that have a life of their own, like a gigantic organism that dwarfs any individual cell within it. And therefore no-one individual human nor a subgroup can adequately control it anymore, since it is the giant's brain that is in control. Hoimar von Ditfurth addresses that too in the same film Vor dem Menschen stirbt der Wald at minute 26:30 by showing the example of test persons who are asked to interact with a fictitious computer-simulated African village called Tanaland by recommending improvements much like an aid organization would. The simulation was created by theoretical Psychologist Prof. Dr. Dietrich Dörner. The results show that well-meaning intervention can lead to ultimately devastating results that are not in line with what human intuition would have predicted. In this concrete example the test person recommended that the villagers get more grain to get more cows, invest in a local hospital. The first several years the population expands, thrives, but then suddenly crashes and, after being broke, everybody in the village dies.
Fortunately only a simulated village, but nonetheless a warning shot to all of those who think that development aid's long term consequences has fundamentally positive outcomes. The test person's well-meaning intervention did not take into account the land's finite carrying capacity for humans and other species alike. But even if the test person did take that into account, a major wild card is still the human behavior of those villagers. Remember also that this is a very small human system by modern standards and even that one eluded human intuition.
The complexity of the human brain further eludes us even more so. And even if we could some day fully decipher the human brain, and reliably predict and manipulate human behavior, possibly with the noble goal to use it to align everyone in this world to make world peace and save humanity, we still would now know how the actual application of that knowledge would feed back into the system of human society. Perhaps that knowledge would also be used by tyrants to create willing slaves. And even if we could predict to what extent that were to occur, it would lead to the need to predict 2nd order effects of in turn that knowledge, and then 3rd order effects and so on. A never ending need to predict ever higher order effects of the knowledge created by the next lower order. In the end we would have to model the entire earth, which no computer, not even the size of earth itself, would be able to do in a faithful fashion. Computer models can perhaps extract qualitative results but even those are crude and have often, when it came to climate models, yielded wrong results. Often the climate change predictions were actually less devastating than the reality, thus further showing us the difficulty of modeling complex feedback systems.
But let us assume that we were able to manage those three complexities, then it could mean that we could adequately "re-program" our own minds both individually and collectively to assure the long-term survival of our species. How long would it take until we settled on an instutition to administer such a worldwide program ? And wouln't that process in itself already require the much needed unity that this program would actually intend to achieve in the first place ? It's the old chicken-and-the-egg problem. Or the catch-22 problem. To achieve unity we already have to have some unity it seems. Never mind that it is also questionable whether it would be desirable to be able to do that, again because in the wrong hands, that knowledge would be highly dangerous.
But instead of even attempting to tackle this problem, we collectively steer the ship of our civilization off a waterfall-cliff while standing on the bow while showing one or more of the following psychological responses that all result in inaction or lack of action:
Probably all three of those (non-)coping strategies can be found depending on your personality.
That "re-programming" of the masses has so far at least only happened on the regional level. And so far more often than not with disastrous consequences. One only needs to mention the dictatorships of Nazi Germany and North Korea. People were re-programmed there but not in a way that was life-enriching, much less so for the sake of all humanity. Yet people were seduced because those dictators proclaimed to their own people that they were showing them the promised land. And people fell for it.
All utopias have failed so far because none of them was able to address all needs of all people in actually do-able ways and showing a navigable way to get all people to come on-board.
"re-programming" has so far also happened in other insiduous way and it is ongoing: The stories we are told that we have to consume many of our goods in order to be someone. To be happy. To impress. To save our face. That kind of re-programming seems to work quite efficiently. Does that mean there is hope for other kind of re-programming ? Why does this kind of programming work so well but the kind we need appears to fail ? Is it really just the media ? I am sure the media are part of it. And better media are definitely part of the solution, no doubt. But you cannot force people to watch stuff that is pertinent, even in the best media landscape. .
I see it in Germany where you do have lots of really good programming on public channels. I love watching some really good shows there wheras here in the USA I stopped watching TV. But even in Germany, people, especially younger ones, flock increasingly to the horrid programming on private channels, where the same kind of crap of soap operas and reality TV is shown. People appear to lap it up.
Why ? I think in part it is because it pretends to be "not in your face". On a soap opera or reality TV show people don't tell you what to buy. They do it surrepticiously. They show you who is the cool girl or the cool guy. They don't lecture you. The other reason is that people don't enjoy listening to over and over dreadful messages that our planet is dying and our resources dwindling and our political systems inadequate to deal with it. There is evidently an overwhelming drive on the part of the people to shield themselves from those messages rather than joyfully delving into them to solve them. In part because people already feel overwhelmed and hopeless ? Why do they feel hopeless ? Because they shudder in front of the sheer complexity and immensity of it. And also the personal sacrifices they would have to face if they take all of that serious and therefore having to jump into action. Also it is the multitude of different, often incongruent messages.
One way to inocculate people against these hidden messages that you are inadequate is to read Eckhart Tolle (I will mention him several times through my writings). But who would diseminate that information ? Our education system ? Do teachers anywhere in the world tell young people to find new ways to self-identify ? Nope. That knowledge is not part of our school culture. Instead, in many countries, it is sports. There we are told we have to be cool and athletic to be someone. Or how to become a better engineer. We also do not learn conflict resolution in schools. We also do not learn holistic thinking. We also do not learn to differentiate between idealism and ideology. We also do not learn in schools that we should be wary of any ideology, including religions, for as long as those religions preach doctrine rather than embrace the mystery of this world and allow for uncertainty and open questions. Because on the level of mystery, science and religion could very well be One. But no,none of this is taught in school. That is also one reason why people fall prey to indoctrinative so-called spiritual movements. Indoctrination, absolutism do not mix with spirituality.
So, people do not want to be lectured but evidently love to be influenced with subliminal messages wrapped in eye candy. Because see the overt being-lectured-to as dangerous and as running counter to their need for autonomy and choice. And particularly those on the political right see images of evil state-based dictatorships that tell people what to do. So, I can see why people understandably are wary of being "re-programmed". People are afraid to mass-submit to being told by a central authority what to do. Because so much central authority is corrupt and is not having the well-being of all people and creatures at heart, much less for the long term. So, that wariness in a way is healthy. But it is only healthy if you see it through the light of the current type of governments.
Yet, on the other hand, we hear that our individualized society that is so set on autonomy and personal choice is driving us away from solidarity and community - traits that we learned to be essential for a global movement towards saving our species. Self-described left-wing anarchists for instance seem to be just as obsessed with individual choice as right-wingers. When I talked to anarchists, they seemed to have striking resemblence to those who love to carry guns and want to live on a plot of land somewhere out there and they dislike government and taxation just as much.
So, what is going on here ? Is there a way out of this conundrum ? You turn towards individual choice and you seem doomed. You turn towards where large populations are submitting to someone who leads them to the promised land and that too seems destined to fail because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely (I don't know who originated that quote, but not me).
I can see that we may not want to rely on some centralized largely anonymous and often corrupted leaders to tell us what the right path is. Unless perhaps those leaders represent in an ongoing fashion 95% of their constituents and are easily and immediately recallable and fully accountable. But why not then have direct democracy for pretty much all decisions anyways ? Is the whole idea of representative democracy possibly fundamentally flawed ? If so, then we would have to have massive civil dialogues to form educated opinions and broad consensus on difficult topics. Is that possible ?
My intuition tells me that we need to connect horizontally and build trust in some sort of massive self-organizing neighbor-to-neighbor interaction that acts like a bunch of fat droplets in a soup bowl. There is a point when the fat droplets merge into one solid layer. Hoimar von Ditfurth used that very imagery in one guest lecture I was blessed to attend. In fact he said that he gave mankind no more than 200 years if things keep going as they are. That was 1986 when he said that.
Such a massive network requires much more of people's personal time. Time in fact is maybe the commodity that is most precious and that is wasted on ultimately dumb and unfulfilling pursuits at just as high percentages as are our material resources. Waste of time goes hand in hand with waste of resources. But how do we even begin ?
We need to free up time already now. How in the world do we do that ? We need to start changing the system a little by little to give us more time. And then re-invest that extra time again to change the system some more. It would be a positive feedback cycle. It may have to happen somewhat adiabatically (i.e. without generating too much intermittent over-pressure) so that the system does not blow up like a pressure cooker. A blow up would be marked by civil unrest, revolutions and the resulting internal wars, such as in Syria right now.
So, we are in a conundrum. We must change the system very quickly, yet not too quickly to render the existing life support system inoperable and leaving society to disintegrate. The higher the population density above the sustainability threshold, the more likely is there going to be mass unrest. At a time of massive restructuring, people must have the basics covered: food, housing, basic health care, civil security, cooperation and democracy. Thus, the single-best and most low-tech and most surefired thing that anybody at child-bearing age can do right now is to use this low-tech item called "contraceptive" and to only have one child at most. And to tell others to do the same and spread the message. To share children instead of having them all to yourself. No high tech needed here. Some of the most effective solutions are low tech. Low tech solutions got us through 7000 years of civilization and a million years of human existence. Why should that suddenly be different ?
Natural processes are self organizing. From a termite hill to an ant colony to vast networks of mushrooms. There is no grand dictator in natural systems. I do not believe in a God on a throne that tells each animal or tree what to do and doing so over million of years. I think God would be utterly bored.
Could it be that our manmade systems have become so far removed from nature because they are so centralized ? And haven't we built up those centralized systems in order to sustain or deal with the exploding complexity of our societies ? If you just look at the ever larger super-corporations or super-states like the E.U. or the growing United States federal government, you may find that this alone makes us ever less nature-like and thus ever less able to behave in a self-organized way. And it may be this self-organized non-localized power and decision making that will hold one of the keys. But it could be that our existing structures stand in the way of those mechanisms because they would be highly challenged by delocalized decision making. I mean, does any existing country allow that you create a parallel democratic world congress of grassroots people that acts in unison to abolish much of the encrusted national structures ? I am sure you already know the answer.
The evil corporations, special interests and undemocratic structures that are portrayed to be the root enemies for the last 45 years, they may just be meta-explanations. There may be a deeper reason why those structures have not been abolished or radially reformed despite the drumbeat of activists and scientists.
The deeper reason may be that it appears that the human mind is currently not yet capable to deal with the complexity of earth's systems, manmade systems and the human brain itself. It does not mean there is no hope. It may require the right message.
Re-programming ourselves via quasi dictatorial "leaders" seems dangerous. People are naturally and understandably resistant to it because of past abuses of power.
The right message may need to simultaneously build and then travel through a network of horizontal connections between people. A mind-meme that can travel fast enough through the human population body to save us from calamity. It has to be a message that is universally understood and embraced. It would have to travel like a virus, more powerful than other mind-memes like religious cults or ideologies.
The mind meme would have to travel along neighbor-to-neighbor connections or local clusters of ultra-democratic groups of people. The mind-meme would itself have to make people build those clusters and interconnections. I have not found the right mind meme yet. Maybe exactly this message I have written could be part of such a meme. Or maybe you have another meme that might work. It does not have to be just one meme. But they all should work towards the same end result.
Whoever finds that meme that works will help save our civilization. But since there will be many memes that are similar and potentially effective there is the danger that people shout "go with my meme, because I invented it !". People are still ego identified. I talked to people who started their own alternative to Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Their system is called "Empathic communication". I find NVC more powerful but empathic communication had some items that I liked as well. So I said "why don't you link up with the guys from NVC ? They are doing very similar work, and you could combine your strenghts to synthesize the best of the two and get behind the effort together !". But no, they did not want to do that, even though they were invited by the its teacher (Marshall Rosenberg) to join their efforts. They were invested to eek out their own niche. Thereby not giving their own constituents the powerful benefits that NVC had to offer.
Do you see how ego-traps keep even the most community minded and enlightned of us from joining together ? Or the idea that differentiation makes you get more income. But people must be willing to yield work together and sometimes yield their own special personal preferences for the greater good of synthesizing something greater. Synthesis is good because you combine the strongest aspects of isolated approaches.
We have yet to develop the ability as a species to overcome our apparent wide-spread inability to react in a clear-headed, rational and emotionally mature way on both individual and certainly on a collective level. Take just as a small example: You know how difficult it is not to procrastinate things in our daily life that we full well know are important. We go for our immediate needs and postpone the dreadful stuff.
You see how difficult it is to manage for virtually every person in our industrialized world to get their lives organized in a holistic kind of way where you feel that all things are in place and working out for you. There is always something that is not lining up. And it seems, people in more complex societies have more of that than in simpler, so-called "poorer" societies. That's why perhaps they seem to smile more despite their often harsh lives.
Yes, you can say that it is because of external factors, for sure. Like the employer who does not give you enough time, the mortgage you must pay off, etc etc. Those alleged external factors. Yet, you can see how difficult it is to maneuver this difficult and complex world. It is not only complexity. European societies give people more freetime and work life balance, despite their complexity. But I am finding a lot of people there too suffer from the same ailments. Complexity seems to fill whatever space you give it. And the lesson here is: Even when you know what is wrong, you still have trouble overcoming it.
I believe that most people have some kernel of good motivation in them. So, what holds for you or me, the procrastinator, may hold for those so-called evil-doers as well. Many of them may on some visceral level know that they are heading in the wrong direction. But somehow, they can't envision how to get out. It has not risen to their consciousness yet. They have entrapped themselves. They tell themselves "well, but if I stop doing this job, someone else will step in. And, plus, I will need to feed my kids and give them a good (i.e. expensive) education".
So, this was to highlight how intractable even the human mind itself is and how, even if we were to understand it well, we still would not quite understand how to change it. Nobody has invented a machine or mind-meme that can re-program us in the right way to save our civilization. We have seen, by contrast, many mind memes in action that have been used to reprogram us, such as religions and cults. Such as the consumer-cult or the sports-team-cult. For some reason those appear to turn out to precipitate more radical mind shifts. The Seattle street celebrations for the super bowl victory churned out much bigger numbers than any demonstrations for saving our species. It seems absurd and is therefore, on a collective level, highly irrational. On the individual level, the person can still rationalize it that they want to have some fun to celebrate. But when you look at the collective phenomenon, it is just plain absurd.
No one person can even begin to comprehend any of the tools we are using day to day or their future long-term effects on ecology or society, nor does anybody fully understand anymore how they were created. And the same holds that not even 100 or 1000 people are enough to understand it all. About 200 years ago, all the knowledge needed to run a small town self-sufficiently and sustainably was held by probably less than 100 people. As beautiful as complexity can be, its shadow side is that it becomes less and less controllable and it creates huge inertia. Now, things are changing fast. Technology is ever acellerating and changing by the minute. A new piece of software (or revision thereof) is released probably every few seconds. But ironically, the global qualitative change that needs to happen (and it needs to happen fast !) is somehow no match for the intransigent behemoths of corporate networks and affiliations, ever inefficient bureaucracies and monstrous bodies of laws and ever increasingly paralyzed government assemblies that more and more appear to mostly tweak laws here or there and increasingly rarely enact truly visionary and ground breaking laws. Or if it is ground breaking then only to serve the interests of a few.
So, what we see here is fast change on some level and slow change on another level. And they seem to be polarized in exactly opposite directions as they need to. We actually need on the one hand fast adaptability on the business, education and government level (direct democracy is one of the answers I believe) and slow change on the complexity and therefore technology front.
"But hold it", you will say, "don't we need fast technological change to lift us out of the polluting inefficient technologies ?"
Damn yes, we do. But I postulate that that is the very primary focus we need to expend complexity on. And fortunately, much of the sustainable technologies will reduce complexity in its wake if we do it right.
That alone rules out nuclear energy as green or sustainable technology because it is way too complex. Never mind the unsolved waste problem that burdenes thousands of generations to come with untold costs and risks. a highly immoral choice just for that alone.
Major coal or hydropower power stations or off-shore wind parks require huge grids to transport the energy. Never mind all the pre-existing over-land grids. Regenerative energies can be decentralized, which cuts out huge complexity right there.
Wind turbines and solar panels and energy storage are deserving of complexity. By the way, I was wondering - is it just by chance that those technologies were originally mostly built by smaller midsized companies, as I believe ? Or is there a kinship between decentralized solutions and decentralized businesses ?
Contrast that with the wasted complexity. Because do we at this point still really need faster personal computers, a new smart phone every 2 years, ever bigger databases and supervision and financial products, fancier TVs, fancier chemicals, genetically engineered plants, fancier cars (except for their efficiency), more TV channels, fancier social network sites ? I mean, I am truly thankful that we are off windows 3.1 or even window Vista. But I am reaching a point where I am not longer upgrading nor wishing to upgrade. The same with various software packages. I have reached a complexity-overload point. I am happy that I can compose my electronic music on a fairly fast computer, but that computer is, believe it or not, 10 years old and it works beautifully even with fairly recent software. In part also, because I keep the complexity of the music I compose in check. You do reach a point of diminishing returns for added complexity.
And it is that complexity that I see not only as utterly wasteful. It eventually becomes a drag on our nimbleness that we so desperately need. We must utterly slow down the technological rate of change. I don't know about you, but I dread the idea of a windows 19 or an iPhone 15. We are past the sweet spot of complexity now. And you may be noticing that desktop PCs are not really getting that much faster anymore anyways. But companies are continuing to force us into upgrades (unless we use freeware products) because their employees want to stay employed. Software-as-a-service is starting to take off so that you are forced into upgrades with no choice to back out. Which will force you to buy ever faster hardware down the road.
Smart phones are cool enough now (aside from their negative side effects). But without new products, you will ask, companies are going to have to lay off thousands of engineers, what would they all do ? The answer is not all-or-nothing. I would rather have an iPhone 6 five years from now that is completely recycable and can be repaired even 10 years into its life time without having to throw away its whole electronics board. Now that is qualitative improvement and that still requires ongoing engineering. We will always need jobs and always need engineers as long as our technological civilization exists. But jobs and civilization are not, as many believe, dependent on ever more features and excess complexity ! I propose a new age of "smart simplicity" rather than "dump complexity". Smart and complex are truly two different animals. Smartness constitutes a specific kind of complexity that keeps other excess complexity in check. We need a new emotional intelligence to be added to our technological prowess.
Finally, I am noticing a disturbing trend. Concomitant with an increasing array of networked features come immense volumes of smart but intrusive data. The more these features are made to be user friendly, the more they are having to collect ever more person-specific information. Because user-friendliness is increasingly created by having the device adjust to your personal preferences in order to allow you to maneuvre through all that amazing complexity. Or to give you back the much needed time that you lost by having to manage all that technology in the first place.
Take for instance the SIRI feature of the iPhone. SIRI lives in a cloud. So, somewhere there is a server that understands (and thus transcribes) all your voice commands. That sounds not too personal, right ? Well, some day, SIRI or something like it, will probably be able to translate everything you are saying from one language to another. In fact that technology already appears to exist, but is probably still fairly limited compared to what will be possible. So, somewhere out there a written record of everything you are saying can be compiled and obviously shared with intelligence organizations. Or hackers get into the systems and get a hold of it and can use it to impersonate you.
But not only that. A machine that can translate languages or understand complex commands will truly comprehend what you are saying. It can therefore automatically infer intention, emotion and action. It could send a warning message to an national security center that you are up to something. It could send a message to your favorite store that you are thinking about buying a new dress. The same evening, and you don't know quite why, a message pops up on your phone, casually telling you of special offers. Maybe you don't mind, but it is manipulative. Most price specials are artificially made to look rare, but truly are not.
Technology is starting to move far beyond what is basic-needs functionality into dangerous territory. Just keep an eye of technological "advances" over the next years and you will probably agree.
Complexity can be kept low by keeping things local and small. We all know that a small business is much more nimble than a big one. A small country (such as Denmark) or one that is fairly large but low population (e.g. Norway) has been able to implement ample sustainability measures much faster than any large country. You will ask "well, isn't it their culture too ?". Yes, I am simplifying a little bit. Small size is neccessary but not sufficient. But they are intertwined. With small size comes more homogeniety which again influences culture. Denmark and Norway are a fairly homogeneous countries. Thus collective decisions are easier to make.
In the USA we have a huge federal government that governs over a highly diverse population of 315 million people. Ethnic diversity is not the problem. It is diversity in spirit. That diversity can be rooted in diverging cultures. Those cultures are not only falling along ethnic lines. They also fall along religious lines or social strata of different education level. Those differences can make alignment behind a common goal difficult. I mean, why is this country so seemingly paralized and more and more so ?
If those different cultures are regionally clustered, then it is less of an issue. But only if we give more local control over what these individual regions (or states) could do, Then we would be in a better shape.
We would also be in a much better shape if we could curb distrust between ethnic or religious groups. Without it I have little hope that we can successfully align behind major goals. Trust needs to come from all groups. White people have to build trust towards Black people and vice versa. That is an essential part of reducing racism. Remedy programs that merely act as reparations for past misdeeds are not enough. It needs to be mutual trust on a grassroots level. That is where I believe at least some social justice groups may be falling short. Because many of them are stuck in focusing on entitlements rather than also trust building. At least that is my impression from dealing with certain white people that saw themselves as spokespeople for targeted minorities.
By the way, I am not maligning that we have different cultures within our nation. It is life enriching and wonderful. It is an indeligible part of this country's identity and strength. But it comes with an increased effort attached to it that must be made in order to unify people. That effort must be invested by society in order to succeed.
Those more homogenous smaller countries or regions that manage to forge ahead will not escape the big crunch because we are all connected. But at least they serve as beacons and laboratories as to where we must head. Small is beautiful because small is nimble and small is less complex.
Our current world has become so complex that it has escaped our control. Let me use the following image:
Imagine a ship with 5000 passengers on it. The people on the bridge are in the fog and cannot see the iceberg ahead. The passengers on the lower deck can see the iceberg. The few ones at the windows do warn the people on the bridge. The captain on the bridge says "let us steer the ship, we know what we are doing". Or the captain does not even appear to listen at all. The door to the bridge is heavy and is locked by the captain from the inside.
The passengers in the lower decks are compartmentalized. They are separated by doors. Those doors are invisible to them because if they saw them, they would break them down. Those doors prevent the people from acting in unison to finally break down the big door to the bridge or to surrepticiously get into the machine room directly in order to intercept the steering signals from the bridge and get the machinists on their side.
We are these passengers. The invisible doors on the ship are our culture of not talking to our neighbors or not talking about politics at parties or our being lulled in by value-free and information-free so-called "information". Taking over the bridge would be akin to either violent overthrow, but it could also be a drastic reform of our political system, something I would prefer to violence. The breaking down of doors is like working at the local level and also drastically horizontally linking up with other local levels.
The machine room is the powerhouse, where the actual work is created. The employees that provide the core services in our civilization. The infrastructure that powers our civilization. Not the situation rooms in the high towers of political or economic might, that the bridge represents.
Taking over the machine room is to create a parallel economy that does no longer listen to the corrupting inputs from the bridge for the time being, before someone breaks down the door to the bridge. One should first give the captain the option to open it voluntarily though after some heavy lobbying. The parallel economy could, if enough participate, replace the current structures that no longer work for us in order to serve us the next 10,000 years. The existing structures can no longer survive. They will not survive. Either they will take us all with us in their short-sighted stupidity or arrogance and thus die anyways. Or we can do it hopefully peacefully and through education.
We are in the majority. What divides us makes us weak and paralyzed. We thus have to engage in horizontal massive communication. We have to transgress cultural norms to do that. We have to be willing to be embarassed and rebuked and ridiculed. Remember, all those mormon missionaries who are probably facing ridicule every single day, when they go door to door. They manage to face ridicule. Because they have a strong unyielding faith. They appear to succeed using their tactics - one person at a time. Can we not learn from them ? And hey, we should even talk to them as well ! When you go door to door, you will run into them, I am sure. If you are a secular humanist with liberal values it will certainly test your resolve to connect with those who you least agree with. That is exactly the skill we have to learn.
Back to the question of doom and gloom versus hope: There seem to be some promising developments that appear to give us reasons to cling our hopes to. At least amongst those who are already open to alternative life options, there is an increased consciousness setting in, about what makes life meaningful and about what no longer really seems to work to make us happy. And their ranks are probably growing. Whether it is fast enough, is a different question. One such indicator would be retail sales or new home sales. As long as those do not drop significantly (which would be a good thing), there is no real shift in consciousness. And then there is the occasional new wind farm and solar energy plant that gets inaugurated with great hoopla. Or another technological fix you read about in the newspapers. Or the occasional news that less rain forest is cut down this year than last year in some areas (while in others it is regrettably still increasing, especially if computed as a percentage lost of whatever currently remains. That percentage is ever accellerating even if the absolute annual loss remains constant. Just do the math).
However, despite the occasional positive tidbids of news, collectively we continue to run into all kinds of different directions. And too many countries or strate of society just keep repeating or emulating the same old and mad behavior.
The world is not short on suggestions, and each have their own favorite recipe: Some people want to abolish capitalism, some believe that wind and solar power and smart growth will save us, some think that it is only a matter of wealth distribution, some just focus on getting us off fossil fuels and some believe that overpopulation is to blame. Others think it is the evil corporations or our election system. Or the banking system. Some think it is the devil's work or God's punishment and we have to wait till judgment day.
Some think that worker rights and economic justice will straighten it all out. Or there are those who think that it all must go to pot before humankind will wake up. More often than not people see the culprit in some greater systemic power, apparently beyond their control and with huge inertia attached to it. The larger the entity the larger the inertia. It is no wonder that people lose hope for change when being up against such monstrous obstacles in the road. And in the developing world people still believe that technology and huge infrastructure projects will afford them the good life and lift them out of their misery.
Some say we have to go inwards. Take a yoga or mindfulness class. Or screw in a energy saving lightbulb and drive a hybrid car to work, listen to NPR and call that good enough.
There are many answers and all have some truth to them. But I will try to show here that we likely have to tackle them all. Simultaneously. And we would have to eliminate those suggestions that contradict each other and cannot be simultaneously implemented.
How can we do that ? We have to to go to the needs level because all human beings share the same fundamental needs. On the level of needs, there is no contradiction. I learned that from NVC (Nonviolent communication). And once you have all needs on the table, then you can charter strategies that work for all.
We can for instance create an immigration system that meets the needs of both convervative minds and social justice liberal minds and their representative constituencies. What are their needs ?
Well, for the conservative it is might be:
Well, for the liberal social justice person it is might be:
You can see that both sides have the same needs: Accountability, Fairness, Community and Sustainability and Stability. Now, once the two sides would acknowlege each other's heartfelt need and build a true connection, then the highly creative process would begin. But it would not be emotionally charged because both have the faith and goal to work out a solution that addresses all needs
Here is my attempt in proposing a solution for the sake of this little example: Accountability towards the law of the land could be reconsiled by asking those who are here illegally to be willing to wait longer than those who are here legally. Accountability towards our past trade policy mistakes could be given by allowing those farmers who lost their jobs due to trade policies to be either given a lump sum to help re-build their own farm back home and/or to give them a work permit that allows them to work here, either for good or a set amount of years. Long-term we would help countries with knowledge and true (rather than fake) development assistance (including much needed family planning resources) to lift themselves out of poverty. At which point then, at a much later time when the country has done its best to and as an incentive, they would eventually gain permission to come over just like between European countries. Family planning is important in any country, including the USA, because almost all regions of the world are beyond carrying capacity for the good life.
The magic of finding common ground ain't going to happen until those people sit at a table together, put all their needs on the table and gain empathy for each other's needs and then develop strategies that work for 90% or more of those concerned (I am cautious to claim 100% satisfaction rate, but 90% is damn good).
That feat alone requires so much more communication on both higher level and grassroots level. As long as the grassroots is divided, their respective representatives will as well. And vice versa. It showcases that one of the most important commodities needed for global change is communication between apparent opposites.
When I say "apparent" I say so because in reality we all share the same needs and are only divided in strategy. But communication requires time. And time is what our current complex society is affording us increasingly less so. Thus, again, it comes down to complexity. We need to devolve out of complexity. It suffocates us.
Let's say that we reached a point where most people on earth even knew NVC or something like it (which obviously is a very first step in itself). And we are all aligned that we need to do something. Then the question arises "who does what ?", "Who coordinates as people jump into action ?", "How do we avoid duplication of efforts ?"
You see that currently there are tons of non-profits that work on the same or similar things, often duplicating efforts. On the one hand, I said earlier that small is beautiful. Yet, on the other hand, on some other level we have to be large and coordinated. How, in the world, shall this work ? Do we after all need a world dictator that tells everyone what to do ?
For a Vision that reconsiles local and global control, please look at this Yale University Lecture Video Earthland: Envisioning a sustainable civilization. The vision talks about the problems of fragmentation and lack of unity and offers a glimpse of a solution.
I am attempting to get people out of this same old silo-based thinking. Some organizations, such as 350.org focus on one idea or message such as "we need to get away from fossil fuels" but they utterly fail to mention e.g. the overpopulation issue, at least as far as I can see from their website or from talking to some of their members. One member I talked to about my concern about overpopulation thought that overpopulation was not the problem and that we can give 7 Billion people a reasonable, though simplified life. When I asked him what he meant by simpler life, he more or less passed the ball into my court and did not want to commit to any answer. "Do the math" he said. That is all he said. He really did not even bother to think it through. He did not appear to take my concern serious.
As you can see, people often seem to be married to their own preferred solution in such a way that they think that the other solutions are not also equally necessary. People seem to be in love with the idea that their preferred solution is almost the sufficient solution and the other ones at best ancillary. That's why, after all, people tend to pick a particular area of interest ! But it is a widespread human fallacy to think that one or two solutions will suffice. People must be interested in an idea, yet not married to it. That is part of the misguided ego-identification that Eckhart Tolle talks about.
I myself am probably not entirely free from it either. I am married to the idea that we need to see things holistically and that we need to implement a whole plethora of ideas to get things moving, because they are interlocked. However, I am also willing to be challenged and would listen and take seriously what someone else has to say. I have nothing to fear by being challenged.
Other organizations say that the root cause is capitalism and that socialism would solve most of today's problems. That anything short of it is to acquiesce and promote capitalism, even if it were to reform it. That capitalism cannot and should not be reformed. That it is beyond repair.
They fail to mention though that that alone would not reduce our internal urges to consume in order to impress others. We would still need to reduce our population and get our internal life in order and be communal beings not only on the state level but down to the family and neighborhood level. Therefore even socialism or some sort of planned economy would still have to do the hard work of implementing all the other things I will mention here.
I have talked to socialist organization members. Some of them reacted with some skepticism and found quaint my idea that you may want to start off with enacting your values first, such as to start a worker-owned cooperative. Those individuals appeared to think that, if we create insular solutions within capitalism, then we are therefore indirectly helping capitalism. Rather than to think that worker-owned cooperatives could be a way to inspire people to re-think and test out for themselves new models corporate ownership. It has been done before, see this article about the Mondragon Corporation.
As you see in this film Earthland: Envisioning a sustainable civilization there are solutions that would offer something for everyone - the socialist and the capitalist (although, the kind of capitalism he talks about would be a softer, gentler and highly regulated one that does not abuse people or the environment). And obviously, only those who would want to live in a capitalist region, would move there. There are also socialist regions in his model. In other words, the world would be divided into regions that offer something for everyone. Because we as individuals follow a bell curve. We are not all identical. That's why it is unlikely that any utopia that imposes uniformity will ever be willingly and democratically embraced by all. A utopia that is pluralistic will address the variances between people. On that level, capitalism has offered us the element of choice. But it has also led to huge disparities in wealth, social unjustice, military-industrial complexes, war, environmental disaster and ultimately shortsighted policies that we are now coming to see. The so-called communism of the USSR was not true socialism anyways. Real socialism would be fully democratic. However, if a subgroup of individuals wanted to carve out their own gentle-capitalistic region, would they be prevented from doing so if it was all democratically legitimized ? That is an answer that the socialists still have to answer. And insofar I can understand the concerns of those who think that, once socialism is instated, it cannot be rolled back in any given region because the system will not allow it.
So, the problem is: Too many organizations are invested in their own silos.
Single-issue campaigns happen because people believe they cannot focus on all issues. So they pick one. It sounds reasonable. We cannot focus on all issues to the same degree.
However, the weakness of that approach is that they deflect from the complexity and deflect from all the things people can do. The least one can do is to mention "Here is what else you can do".
To many of those organizations I want to say:
Put a list of all things people can do on least one page of your website or at least on one slide of your talks. And then refer (via links) to other organizations that specialize in those issues. If you fail to do that, you lose huge opportunities because you are talking to a lot of people every day. People are hungry for solutions. They want to participate. But if they get a different message from every organization, they get confused. If instead every progressive organization were to also tell them for instance "get fewer children, live communally, etc etc", it would eventually sink in.
Organizations that promote change need to draw cross-connections between different areas. They should not oversimplify things as though one or two causes are sufficient to remove to get us there. We as humanity must simultaneously tackle all of these issues. And we need to do if very fast. Earth's life support system is changing to where it will not support our current life style any more. Not for that many people.
Over-simplification equals Mis-representation.
And Mis-representation equals misguided ineffective solutions and precious time wasted.
People must think scientifically and not be trapped in ideology. Ideology creeps in when people assume that certain preconditions for the success of their ideology are already met, even though they are far from being met at this very moment. Example: Someone may say "open all national borders, because we want worldwide peace and equality". Granted, the need for equality is not an ideology. It is a simple fundamental need of all humans. The element that turns the sentence into an ideological statement is the assumption is that somehow magically equality will appear (rather than utter disruption) when we open all borders. Whereas in reality, you first must create equality and then you can open all borders. Because currently people are not so tolerant to allow such a disruptive free flow of people to happen without strife. The ideology however assumes that "whatever should be" (i.e. people's tolerance) is already in place to make it succeed. But it actually is not in place. Ideological thinking often assumes that "what ought to be" already is or is assured to be in place to make things work. There is no scientific analysis as to what the probability is that those assumptions are going to become reality. And as far as the immigration argument: It is as though you open the gates of a ship lock before you have equilibrated the water levels. Just like you cannot combat the laws of physics, you can hardly combat the hidden laws that govern the behavior of large numbers of people.
Same with communism. It works if you have a sizeable un-corruptable portion of the population that is already highly community-minded and altruistic to begin with in order to use communally owned resources responsibly and share power willingly. But you first have to lay a substantial ground work for those attributes to be fostered. And then you can begin to phase in such a system. The two will actually go hand in hand, but you surely cannot put the cart before the horse.
Well, how then do we lay the groundwork for the undoubtedly needed societal changes to give everyone the good life so to speak ? The answer, at least in part, will lie in the list of things to do that I have further below in bullet items.
A large swath of the population clings to religiously based moral solutions. The fundamentalists among them see religion in conflict with science and as a threat to it. Certain movements like the intelligent design movement try to drive a wedge between science and religion. It tries to undermine confidence in science in a very insiduous way: By abusing science's intrinsic beneficial trait that it is always willing to question itself and be open to inquiry and challenge. Science cannot be absolute. It therefore phrases its insights as "Theories" even when they are based on observation. Science is by nature modest. I would make an exception where scientists cease to practice science: in the laboratories of some selected for-profits when scientists are pressured to create biased and incomplete safety assessments. That is no longer true science then.
Many religions, if not most, are a form of ideology. Buddhism is an exception, but is more of a philosophy anyways. In most monotheistic religions (religions that have only one allmighty god), the paradigm is this: God should or must be good (how else could a God be a moral authority without being hypocritical ? Therefore he/she is good. For if God were not good, then the whole teaching would lose its footing. Believers appear to behave according to the adage: "whatever is not allowed, cannot possibly be".
So, we must get away from ideology; Desperately so. Idealism, by contrast, is very important. I see idealism as different from ideology. Idealism is an emotional drive and a heartfelt exuberant desire for a better world and a relentless hope and belief that it is possible, even in the face of adversity. And especially that quality "in the face of adversity" is more important than ever ! Idealism is not naive wishful thinking, as many people think. Although some people let their idealism get the better of them and do slip into nonsense-thinking.
I can illustrate this with some person experience. I lived in a community where there were 2-3 people some of whom appeared to have strong ideological views on social justice. If you even accidentally failed to use the right gender pronouns a couple of times (even if you used it correctly most of the time), you were quickly seen as disrespectful. And after I apologized, I still did not ever get on good terms with them. There was no true forgiveness even after apologies were made. Forgiveness, so it seemed, was diffcult for them. Maybe they mixed up forgiveness and condoning. Building bridges to someone with possibly different views was problematic or unnatural to them. They even admitted that they do not relish having conversations with people who (at least they think) have substantially different opinions on emotionally charged topics. Even though my views were not that different, they saw them as insurmountably different. If you pointed victimized people towards their own response-ability or accountability to participate in their own betterment then you were at risk to be labelled a victim-blamer. You were not allowed to speak on behalf of the victimized. If you were not in their same class of victim, your attempts to level with them were seen as imposing or presumptuous. Negative interpretations of my motives prevailed over positive interpretations. I could sense that there were strong convictions and very legitimate human needs for respect and equality there. But because there were virtually no attempts to give space for a non-judgmental conversation after even just very few slip-ups, I felt isolated.
I could certainly sense the presence of ideology there. But I am not sure if there was this welcoming, all-inclusive idealism there. At least certainly not the way I was being engaged by those specific individuals. For me at least, idealism is characterized by a fresh openness to be engaged and not being afraid to be challenged. Or to still see the human in the other person even when you disagree. Even if you severely disagree. I can talk to anyone with any view. At least I believe so based on my past experience. I can engage people and have a debate that is calm, civilized and aimed at building a rapport. To me that is at the heart of having idealism.
Clinging to an Ideology however quite often tends to divide us. Those who are with us and those who are against us. Therefore let us not mix up ideology and idealism. They are very different from one another. Ideologies need to be treated with caution and one needs to pick the best of an ideology and integrate it into a larger holistic framework.
Capitalism in its more extreme form too is an ideology. It does not tolerate socialism on a larger regional scale within it. Just like (as I believe), socialism is not going to tolerate capitalism on a larger regional scale within it.
I mean, would the USA allow any of its member-states to turn to socialism ? I very much doubt it. All kinds of federal laws would very quickly come down on that member-state. The national guard might take over the state-capitol or the Fed may turn off the money supply.
The reason why it is not seen as an ideology is because it has in fact been implemented successfully for what it was intended to be. Whereas socialism has not been implemented in the way it was intended to be. Quite often only those systems that have not worked or are not implemented are seen as ideology.
Our brand of capitalism is mistaken to be pluralistic because it touts the free markets of goods and services. And, no doubt, to its credit it has given us a plethora of goods and choices, in many areas dizzingly and dazzingly many choices. And due to its top-down structure of corporate governance, it has worked quite effectively towards an ever-repeating goal: Increase profits by supplying goods that people want. And great goods it has given us: great computers, airplanes, life-saving medical machines that let us detect tumors and treat them.
To its credit, that "voting with your dollars" mechanism has worked quite well. Whether any "true" socialism could accomplish the same is yet to be tested.
But I want to assert this: The flood of goods and services with too little regard to the environment or lack of work life balance (2 weeks vacation is not enough !) is coming with a very high price tag. And that "externality" has not been figured into the dollar-price. And therefore it is not appropriate or scientifically accurate to call it a "free market". And that misrepresentation and refusal by many to admit to it, that makes capitalism an ideology as well.
It is a skewed market with hidden price tags for which the bill will come due much much later, but it sure will. Even the top echelons of power are starting to talk about the fearful effects of climate change. Something is shifting. But I hold my breath whether they will ever question the whole system.
During the cold war, capitalism and democracy were skillfully intermingled by using them almost interchangably. But the truth has now clearly emerged. Capitalism compromises democracy. But not everywhere to the same degree. Much less so in a country like Denmark where their brand of capitalism is "soft" and the people inocculated via a culture of critical thinking and probably more warmhearted altruism and social contract. But in this country it certainly does. Corporations have such a disproptionate access to political power that the will of the people at the grassroots level is drowned out. I can attest to the fact that conservative voters have very similar sentiments. It is no longer a left-wing issue.
Because of its corrupting influence on democracy it actually runs counter to one of its own supposed promises: the free market place !
Why ? Because democracy is the free market of ideas. Except in this market the medium of exchange is not the dollar. It is the ballot vote. Dollars you can accumulate and thus you can disproportionally increase your vote. Ballot votes you cannot accmumulate. In a true democracy everyone has the same weight. One person, one Vote.
As mentioned earlier, idealism is phantastic. Anybody's idealism however needs to be paired with scientic analysis. Or else one's actions will not be in harmony with how reality truly works. It does not make sense to propose solutions for a world that works according to law X whereas the world really works according to law Y. Some aspects of our world are in transition and for some solutions to work, the transition must already have completed for the solution to work. That is another fallacy in many proposals that leads to silo-thinking.
Emotions, ideals and yearnings do very much count, as they reflect our common human needs we all share (needs as defined by NVC) but we must look at things scientifically and from the perspective of human needs. A list of fundamental human needs is defined in Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication teaching (www.cnvc.org) and is of superb help to differentiate between needs and strategies to meet those needs.
What I will address here is what you can begin to do right now. Today. Because individually we have by far not at all harnessed enough of the true potential in each of us. And with each and every step, we can wrestle more time from our lives in order to invest even more time into this great journey. It does not have to be an arduous journey. The key is community, love, fun and sustained effort and mutual support.
What I am writing here is a hopefully inspiring list of ideas on how each of us can improve the world. And of course improve your own life while doing it. So that we do not just wait or hope or pray that some politicians or othe influential people or some organizations will finally hear us. We may wait for a long time. At least if we don't also do our own part. Or let's say, they may only act when things are far too progressed into disaster and mayhem. Our "leaders" may act when disaster is so self evident and imminent that then they knee-jerk react in all kinds of irrational ways. It is the people who have to speak with one voice. Currently they don't. And the people in power love it that way. One must not confuse pluralism with dis-unity. Pluralism can be beautiful. Dis-unity in where we need to go as a world society is not beneficial. Therefore I am calling my site UNITENOW.US. It is about US. Not just the "United" States. But "us". All of us. World wide.
And my intent is to illuminate the inter-dependencies between different things we need to do. There is no one silver bullet. In fact even what I am writing may not be the silver bullet. It may just be a very sketchy blueprint to a silver bullet.
Please disseminate these ideas. They are written and authored by me. Just don't claim credit for them if you use them verbatim and unaltered. You can put a link back to this site if you want to credit me and make it for search engines to find this information ever more easily. I will keep expanding those ideas. Good powerful ideas that need to be embraced by many, those ideas should be free. Like a cure for malaria should be near free. Because ultimately anyone's ideas are not created in a vacuum. I am inspired by others or by the education I had the provilege to get. Intelligence is a gift to be shared without always asking for something in return. Your intelligence is something to be thankful for, because a large share of it comes to you without you having to have worked for it. Thus, please share this knowledge.
In the following paragraphs that are devoted to each idea, you will find that I will digress a lot from the original idea that is featured. To some that may seem like rambling. I will even repeat some of the things I said earlier.
I certainly still need to organize many of those sub-thoughts into separate sub-bullet items. So, if you get bored quickly, then come back some other time when I have rewritten those items.
But I defend at least their long-winded contents as follows: These things are all connected. My digression is a necessary reflection of the fact that these things are not separate from one another. They interlock with one another. And people need to understand how they are interlocked. Thus, when I am digressing, it is really that I am highlighting why these phenomena are so entrenched. And how, in isolation, none of them can be changed in and of itself. But also, how these changes therefore complement each other and thus re-inforce each other when they are all happening gradually but simultaenously. Maybe that will be one of the big takeaways for you. To realize that you cannot expect that one change will be the big silver bullet.
So, here are problem areas and suggestions for changing the world. It is our world. It is your world. You can change something today. Please do not wait much longer. There is not much time left.
Reduce fossil fuel consumption
Do your best to help us get off fossil fuels and save enough as raw material for all the materials any half way modern civilization depends. The most ridiculous thing is that we burn this raw material that forms the basis for much of our modern appliances and also for modern materials for our many yet-to-be-built energy efficient homes and infrastructure.
Take the bus even if it takes an extra ½ hour. If you currently use the car, then start slowly if the change seems too daunting. Sometimes pretend that you don't have the car available and plan appointments accordingly by allowing more time. I notice that I still take the car sometimes even though I could take the bus. Because I plan around the availability of the car. The way to get around the dependence is to pretend that it is not available. I know, it is not easy. But it is the first step to ween yourself off that dependency.
Start by taking the bus perhaps only once a week. Then ramp it up to two days a week. Get used to the new rhythm. Integrate that rhythm into your life. I did it. It worked. I now enjoy riding the bus and leaving the car behind. You will also meet some interesting people. If you dare to talk to them when they are intently looking onto their 2 by 2 inch screens.
Share a ride with friends to an event. Use a car sharing service instead of owning a car. Co-own a car with your community members or neighbors. Find people who have done it before.
I have given rides to people on longer trips and met great people. But make sure you stay safe. Don't be afraid or ashamed to ask for their address, their friend's phone number (where they may stay) and call them as reference and even see their ID to make sure they are who they say they are. Those are reasonable measures to make it safer. Ask already on the phone that they agree to pay upfront for any money they might want to contribute. It is best to say up front what sort of safety measures you ask for in order to take out the awkwardness.
Share a ride for commuting. If you live too far out, think about moving into town. If that is too expensive, live communally. I have lived in the best area of an expensive city by moving into a community. It means scaling down, but you will quite possibly find it freeing. Obviously you have to find the right people to live with. I recommend two books by Diana Leafe Christian.
If you want to start a new community, I recommend the book Creating a Life Together, which I have.
If you want to find an existing community this book might be even better: Finding Community. I have not read this book yet but I am interested in getting or borrowing it to see whether my own personal insights into what makes a great community are reflected in her book as well.
If even living in community close in is too expensive, consider moving to a different city/town. Easier said than done since you may be tied to family, friends and job. And your significant others, including children may be too. So, that would obviously be a long-term choice. However, it may be one with longterm benefits that make up for the difficulty of this task. The big cities are becoming too expensive, crowded and polluted.
When we reduce population, real estate will become dirt cheap. There will still be very desirable places that will always be more expensive, but if it happens everywhere, it still will take the pressure off. Real-estate prices are not just because of inflation, but due to overcrowding.
See what is happening in Detroit when depopulation happens. In Detroit it was not through low birth rates but due to more inclement reasons. It was due to companies folding, downsizing or leaving town, and perhaps a reputation for crime. Such reputation tends creates its own self-reinforcing dynamic because of the built-in inequality in our system.
Money-rich people leave town because they fear crime, leaving the rest to fend over the few lower-paid jobs left. Poverty promotes small-time crime or serious gang-violence while - if at all convicted - big-time white-collar criminals get away with light or virtually no penalty.
Although I am not buying into the notion that high crime communities are only victims. That would be too simple. After all poverty per se does not need to lead to crime. There are other cultures (e.g. in the Philippines) where it seems that people live side by side in the most squalid conditions in comparable peace that would be unthinkable in many developed societies.
So, there are other cultural factors and the burned-in pain from abuse over generations, police-violence, questionable images of male-hood, re-inforced by pop culture, movies and the easy availability of guns that suggests that the final word goes to the person with the biggest caliber.
It goes to a justice system that is not under-funded (at least if measured by the amount of prisons are built) but funded with questionable priorities. The focus on merely deterrent, penalty and locking up people as the only working model which does not work in a sustainable way.
Nothing wrong with locking up truly dangerous and/or un-repentant repeat offenders that don't even respond to restorative justice. But we have not even tried the latter on a larger scale. The most important question is: What happens inside the jail. And what happens after the jail ?
Justice systems don't work if too many become repeat offender in the first place because it has not provided restorative justice. And that requires resources. A fraction of our military budget would cover those and the back-end savings would be in fewer jails to be maintained and staffed.
I am not liberating people from their own responbilities and their own choices. Virtually nobody is only a victim. Not at all. Nor are communities that people are embedded in. I am a staunch advocate of reminding people and communities of their choice. But also to give them tools to help themselves. But the ultimate choice comes from one's own sovereign choice (or that of a community) that no outsider (or outside community) can or should impose.
Without a restorative justice the "justice" system is cycling people through jail where people learn more violence rather than managing conflict. Jail helps some to find the path back, and it serves as a deterrent for a good many. But there got to be better ways and I am confident there are.
But I far digressed into this, though immensely important, topic. As far as Detroit goes, de-population does not have to unfold this particular way at all. But also see that Detroit is now becoming a magnet for artists and other folks who dare to live in a new social experiment unfolding. People are now farming in Detroit. Check out Urban Roots.
If you want to make your bus communite easier and less arduous, demand that the buses in your cities have bike racks. Like Seattle does. It makes all the difference to me and lowers the bar drastically to take the bus. Then you can bike+bus.
That gives you the best of both worlds: easy to get to the bus, yet you are not sweating too much in case you need to get to work. You are more safe later at night being on a bike than walking
Ask the city to use buses that are all electric and use overhead wire like e.g. in Seattle. Less pollution, less upkeep, and potentially less fossil fuels if the electrons are from wind/water/solar.
Avoid unwholesome corporations
Corporations are not persons. Money is not free speech. These un-real constructs are travesties that serve those who concoct them. If you watch the extremely well done Canadian documentary The Corporation, you will see that many corporations have become behemoths that have the traits of a psychopath.
However, I would like to differentiate. There are many corporations that act responsibly.
And there are ones - responsible or not - that have built us goodies that we like or rely on. Such as airplanes, smartphones and MRI machines. Thus, it is really not only what corporations produce. It is HOW they do it.
Of course it also matters what is produced. I could do without GMOs or bovine growth hormone, or without asbestos, action-figure or military toys that corrupt our children's minds, movies and real-world macho guns that corrupt grown-up's minds, gas guzzling SUVs. The ones on the political right will say that this amounts to spoon feeding. I can empathize with this in part. But here is what is missing, no matter whether we retain customer choice: The intent to inform with integrity. And any visible struggle with those questions on the part of those who either make those items or regulate them. It is not only about the outcome but how it is arrived at. Struggling are the wounded communities that deal with the aftermath of violence. But all the other protagonists return to 'business as usual' shortly after. There is no internal struggle that moves anything. Just shoulder shrugging in the face of the overwhelming interests and the indominable idea that choice trumps everything.
At the very minimum consumers should have choice via labelling, if we at all want to speak of a so-called "free market" economy, that truly isn't anyways because there is hardly any adequate labelling as of yet on qualities that truly matter.
I compare many corporations ( even those that produce useful things ) to a ship. The ship itself is not morally corrupt. The people who are on the bridge of the ship very often are. Or their share holders that tell them which course to take, with no regard but for profit margins. Or the law makers who demand corporations to maximize profits.
Many of us own shares in those corporations in our retirement fund. We silently let them do their thing and do not cast our vote.
Is the ship itself to blame ? The ship is the corporation. It is inhabited by people. IF the ship is to blame then only in that the ship is constructed in a shape that enforces sometimes an inhumane work place. Such as a very top-heavy un-empathetically acting hierarchy. Hierarchy by itself does not have to be in-humane as there are also many great companies or entities that have hierarchy. But in those extreme cases the desk chairs on that ship will not suffice to be re-arranged. Often times the whole ship needs to sink or be rebuilt from scratch. But even a bad ship is not bad as such.
A ship is just a thing. A corporation is just a shell within which people work. It really is the people who run it and maintain it. And the customers who feed it.
However, even people are not bad as such. That is often too simple of an image, except perhaps in the extreme cases. But even then, NVC at least takes the radical view that our labelling of bad, good, etc furthers violence. But bad, good, or whatever you name it, it is their decisions, their actions and the motives behind them. Even a person is could be conceived as a shell, a body that can do things, positive and negative. The question is what does that person do or plot to do ?
Look at the actions that come from a lack of empathy or lack of commitment towards integrity. Let us take the enemy image of that of a vile despondent CEO that, from their decisions and words, cares mostly about shareholder value or their own pocket book.
Despite their mental impairment as to the ability to empathize with or even have a vision for the plight of those who have to bear consequences of their often self-serving decisions, some of the most vile CEOs are probably loving to their own children and family.
They are indeed capable of doing good things. Just not to everyone. Most people have a genuinely good streak in them. There just is not the 100% bad or destructive person.
If we see people as monoliths, we only vilify them and blanket-label them. This way however, we will not gain their attention. We will not gain their empathy and we will not feel comfortable to even approach them. We need to speak up against their actions and motives and point them to their own inner emptiness that keeps them clinging to their power and status and their huge McMansion houses.
Speak to their psychological emptiness that makes them want yet another helicopter-padded submarine-equipped Super-Yacht or their 50th vintage collector car. Now, when all of that good will does not help, yes, then other pressure needs to build as well. Some people do not yield to appeals from their fellow citizens. Because they are so stuck in their own ideas about responsibility. They may think that they are not responsible for their decisions as far as what it means to others. People over-simplify. They outsource or socialize the consequences of their own decisions to the public. As though such decisions happen behind tinted glass walls (which indeed they often do) that don't let through the sound of those who they affect.
Society's duty is to show limits to decency and moral corruptness and not to condone behavior that is bound to harm us all. To see the good in a person does not absolve them from being corrected and shown their limits.
Let us not forget that it is also that the structure and system and the values (which the system imparted on them) that keeps them entrapped. Not just them. All of us. It is almost never just the person. It is the person plus the environment that we are all co-creating or silently acquiescing to that created the person as they are now. The so-called evil is not as localized in one person as we wish to see it.
Other countries and societies have kept the lid on CEO extravaganza much better than the USA has. That shows that societies as a whole have made different choices. Therein too lies collective responsibility. Ordinary citizens of those societies maintained a broad-based culture of both modesty and healthy outrage over decadence and disproportional compensation that did not even let them get away for as long as we in the USA have.
Until 2008 we as a society have relentlessly celebrated whoever raked the biggest bucks. "Good for them", many of us nodded approvingly. Again, over-simplification removes us from seeing things as they are and from seeing our own complicity and thus removes us from our own empowerment opportunities and from realizing our own response-ability.
The word responsability comes from "the ability to respond". And most people, unless they are tragically physically or mentally impaired, have the ability to respond. And that ability imparts the so-called response-ability.
I am not victim-blaming. I am victim-empowering. To point to someone's responseability is to point to their power to respond. Responsability and empowerment thus go hand in hand. Not realizing your power is to give away power and yield it to others who will gladly take it. Also, when it comes to corporations, the many goods we have come to rely on and purchased from them made them powerful. A large share of those goods were ultimately dispensible if one made personal life adjustments. But we bought into it. Or collectively we chose the cheapest, not the most visionary maker. Rather than buying nothing (for lack of money), we buy something.
We made those rich and powerful people powerful. But not only. We also their employed their employees. We as consumers gave them jobs. So, it is not all bad.
We are frequently exhorted to "think critically". But do not forget that it is equally important to look at the "good side" just as much. BOTH. It is not, as often seen, an antagonistic thing. Look at both the good and bad stuff. That also keeps you honest. So, in this case, the good thing about supporting companies was that it gave many ordinary people jobs too. Your money did not only support the super-rich.
It is the overpaid decision makers and the lack of accountability for their sometimes foolish actions. We did not know back then what we created over time. But we know now.
So, should I now stop flying airplanes because I do not like the airplane maker's politics ? Or the over-sized tax cuts despite lavish corporate profits ? To no longer fly airplanes would be a tough choice for too many.
Instead here is what you can do: you can "offset" your support by counter-actions, such as starting a calling campaign to the airplane maker's headquarter or state legislators in the state where the company plays hardball with jobs.
We cannot be perfect in each and every one of our choices. The system, the way it has evolved to this point with all its interdependencies, makes that very hard indeed. But you can do something to turn the tide.
We can offset the actions that are still incongruent with our values (such as flying an airplane) with other actions that may undo the effect.
On the political level, if one airplane maker were to leave town, invite the competitor to come in. There are many ways things can play out. OR fly only with airlines that use airplanes from the perhaps more responsible competitor. There are things you can do. Flying less is good anyways though. Instead take longer vacations in one piece and one place. That brings me to the next topic.
If you own a business, don't sell out easily.
If you own a small successful business, reconsider whether you want to sell it to a big corporation that has a questionable record. Or even to sell to anyone at all. Unless it has a key technology that is so important to the world that only a big company can bring it out to the masses quick enough where it would truly help the planet.
As mentioned in my introduction, big corporations tend to be behemoths of complexity and often therefore inflexibility, at least when it comes to retool for a sustainable economy. At least if the past is a guidance.
Try if you can, find people who fund your idea in a way that you can keep it independent. I have seen very cool ideas go down the toilet and lose its luster once they were purchased by a big company. I am not a hater of big companies. Some very complex products, like airplanes or smart phone or flat screen TV cannnot be produced by small companies, much less in large numbers.
Large and important infrastructure components like bridges, tunnels, dams, large construction cranes, and offshore windparks require also at least a pretty critical size. Thus, as long as these are companies that make products that our society truly will need, large companies are not automatically bad.
You can debate whether we truly need for instance airplanes in a future sustainable world, but at least right now we need them and cherish them as long as there are no viable alternatives, which I hope will come. We cherish airplanes because we have been accustomed to them and have family members strewen across the nation or the world and don't have the vacation nor the capacities yet to get there by ship or high speed train.
Our cherishment of certain products comes from the strategies (to meet our needs for connection) that our current society imposes on us. With more vacation we could take a sailboat across the oceans and would quite often find that way more enchanting than an airplane ride. The cost may be higher but only in the age of cheap oil, which is coming to an end soon.
One big question regarding support for big companies is also how companies are run and that is not indivisible from the overall economic and/or political system and people's priorities and value choices and to what degree people enact them (like, do I want to work for this big corporation if I only get 2 weeks vacation or no sick leave ?). Even under a socialist regime we would still have companies. They would be run and organized differently. And even in a socialist regime you would have, even if deeply democratically legitimized, hierarchies, even if they are fluid by virtue of how people are elected. There would still be people who make decisions on the behalf of others. Systems of total unanimous consensus become unworkable with too many people. On some level every complex system has representation and thus hierarchy.
But in general, I stick to the assertion that reduction of complexity comes from having fewer closely tied and hierarchical structures in our society, big corporations being one of them, no matter under what regime or system.
Another one being large centralized governments (like the European governemnt that gets bigger and ever imposing by the day) that impose much more harmonization than is necessary to achieve sustainability and a just and fair society.
Keep local what can be kept local, keep small what can be kept small, even if it is more inefficient. Efficiency is not everything. One of the world's largest online retailers may have created 60,000 jobs by virtue of its efficiency model, and it has made purchase of certain goods more efficient. But it also has probably eliminated 600,000 jobs, exactly because it is more efficient. Efficiency is not everything. It comes around in other ways. Make global what is necessary for our global survival and well-being for all.
Buy from small companies if you can.
Try to be picky as to what type of company you want to buy from and work for. For the complexity reasons above, I also advise to prefer small companies to big ones if you have the choice. Both in terms of where you work and and what you buy.
At least all other things (pay, compensation) being not too dissimilar. There are many reasons to question large structures, even just for the denuded uniformity they tend to create.
Big companies can be nimble, but often times that is achieved through a quite stressful hierarchy. And of course, at least under our current system of incentives, big corporations pay their top executives often times exorbitant compensations which promotes decadence and waste.
And strict hierarchy again implies lack of democracy and that decisions are in the hands of a few. And often times those few have shown to make rather foolish and self-serving decisions that do not have a long-term benefit to society. Especially if those decisions are rewarded with golden parachutes. Therefore this hierarchical decision making appears to look efficient, but it often is not because the collective wisdom of those lower in the hierarchy is not harnessed. I find people at the grassroots, even though they are not "experts" often have more common sense than those who rule over them.
Even under existing hierarchies, I recommend that one strives to increasingly separate the roles between expert and ruler. We need experts, but they should not necessarily be the ones who make the important decisions. Too many rulers believe they are experts and thereby ignore the inate and gut-based wisdom of non-experts.
Fight for vacation and work life balance.
Please ask lawmakers and employers and unions for more vacation and work life balance. If you are in a union, ask your union to not single-mindedly to focus on more money. As far as basic needs, money counts, no doubt, but what truly fulfills your life and makes you a stronger citizen ? Do you need your own house with your own mortgage ? Do you need that new car all to yourself ? Can you buy it with someone else ? If you have kids, do you need to send them to an expensive school or college ? Have you asked yourself if they cannot get a better, more well-rounded education outside existing channels of education ?
In much of Europe they have more vacations because the unions asked for that. In the 1950s Germany still had 6 day work weeks, 50 hour weeks and 2 weeks vacation. Now they have 4 or 5 weeks minimum and often times 37 hour work weeks. After a few years you easily have 6 weeks.
What has happened here in the USA ? Why did we get the short end of the stick ? If Germany can compete against China (at least for now) with 6 weeks vacation, shouldn't we also ? Without any doubt we need more time. For family, children, and to be active well informed citizens.
Time is not just money. Time is life fulfillment. If you can take longer vacations in one piece, you need to fly less and again save resources. Longer vacations make you regenerate a lot more thoroughly. You truly relax and kick back and regenerate your soul. Check out The Happiness Initiative.
In the USA it seems most people get to do that only if they are between jobs or if they are contractors between contracts. For that though people need to save money. And that is the next topic.
Build up Savings.
Build yourself a stash of savings. So that you don't have to take on the next best job. Even with a modestly paid job, you likely can do SOMETHING. The modest savings scale with your already-modest expenses, so they still will last you longer than for someone who lives an expensive life style.
Those businesses that treat workers poorly would likely hate it if we all had enough savings to be choosy with our jobs. They implicitly love it if we have to take on the next best job and live paycheck to paycheck. That's why they do not like to pay a living wage. Because if they did, we could squirrel away enough savings.
So, it is a vicious cycle if you are trapped in it. Getting paid too little disempowers to leave your job (because it can be risky) and you continue to get paid little because you don't leave your job.
Savings translate into freedom. I am not saying that money is everything. But when it comes to having a safety stash, it buys you freedom to make choices.
How would underpaid workers even begin to build one ? Well, do not buy on credit card. Or pay it off every month. Save on rent. Move in with others so that you can build up some savings.
If you own a house, rent out your other rooms. And then, once you are ready and built up a cushion, then look for a better job. By moving in with others you are already incrementally helping reduce rents because some other rich landlord has a lower probability of finding someone and has to lower their price. HOWEVER I recognize that this argument breaks down in popular cities this does not work because the demand pool is relentlessly backfilled with new people moving into the area. Another reason to down-populate on a national or global scale.
Build your ancillary skills so that you can maybe start your own business on the side. One with little up-front investment. A lawnmover and garden tools allow you to start a landscaping business. A pressure washer can help you make some extra money as well.
If you learn some carpentry, you can build custom furniture. Become an apprentice at some practical business. There are lots of ways to get started.
I do recognize that usually the limiting factor is time and it seems at first like a catch-22. It is not easy but here is how I envision the free-ing mechanism: Imagine a plant forcing itself a first path through a small crack in the pavement. Over time you too tend to widen the crack in your life bit by bit because, like the plant, you get ever more oxygen and sunlight and that again makes you widen that crack again some more. You start with small modest improvements that over time build up an exponentially increasing potential. That process is often under-estimated. People usually under-estimate feedbacked exponential systems. In this case the feedback is a positive one that works for you towards personal freedom. Just like other feedback loops can work against you if you let them.
Sometimes the big city is too expensive to get started. There are small towns that need fresh blood and motivated people. You can recreate yourself and create a new life for yourself.
Once you have some good savings, you can go out and buy a house with 9 other people. As investment or to live in. Dont buy one in the big city. Buy one in a small town. In cash. No mortgage. Because if anyone defaults, you lose the whole thing.
Or buy the house with 20 people if you must. You dont have to live in it. The rental income will further set you free. If you are a socially responsible landlord/landlady.And eventually you can buy each other out and eventually have a place to live and do the whole scheme all over again.
And since your savings are then not sitting in the bank, you are not supporting the debt spiral and the mechanism by which most money is created: From debt. See the incredibly enlightening movie Money as Debt.
What if you have to raise children and simply don't have the time for all of that ? Have you thought about co-parenting with some close friends or neighbors ? Have you looked in your community, your church, your circle of friends ?
Maybe some of your friends or their young adults want to test out what it means to have a child and thus would glady help out with pitching in. It would be a win-win situation. By the way, perhaps everyone, before they decide to have their own children, should do some co-parenting.
Try co-parenting in order to see what it truly entails to have kids. The implications of having children do not end when they become adults. For many it is incredibly enriching, but by far not as many as popular culture wants to make us believe. Especially not in the kind of world children are being born into with all the distractions and enticements and even expectations foisted upon children. But children can be enriching for sure. It just requires careful consideration.
Many may say to co-parenting "I am glad I tried it. It is not for me". Others may say "I would love to do co-parenting as a sustainable option". It may well be worth it to try. As a society we must get creative and think up new solutions.
Reign in your consumption of things.
Get off the typical consumer bandwaggon as best as you can. Some people say that the only solution is to quit capitalism. Certainly, by all accounts, it seems our current brand of capitalism needs to go. It increasingly fulfills the needs of fewer and fewer people and increasingly is tilted towards the top.
A recent New York times article from January 2014 said that more appliance makers now cater to the upper crust and leave the middle class in a lurch. That is where we have arrived now.
But even Sweden has some moderate form of capitalism. But according to many happiness surveys people there are a lot happier. I am sure the answer is not as simple as though an abolition of capitalism is sufficient for making us all happy. Other things have to happen as well such as the inner concepts of makes us valuable and worthwhile. An economic system alone will not change that, even if it may take away toxic kind of incentives.
It seems certainly neccessary to make serious adjustments to our system here. Blind consumerism and the accompanying value system got to go. Even in a socialist, communist or social market economy we would need to drastically reduce consumption. A planned economy may be better at directing resources towards certain key societal goals with a long term vision that wall street certainly does not appear to have. But it would be complex and not without faults and mis-projections. We are not all-knowing.
No matter whether a planned socialist economy or planned market economy or whatever hybrid we can think of - our internal values got to change where we define ourselves or our own value less through what we have or even the attainments we have. Read Eckhart Tolle's book A new Earth for instance, because he speaks of that at great length with eloquence.
And furthermore, we need to go back to making things that can be repaired and that have a high longevity. Here too, the consumer is not completely off the hook. If you buy something cheap, you will not even have the incentive to repair it.
But also make sure that any appliance you buy, has a repair network behind it. Before you buy your next kitchen mixer, ask the manufacturer if they do in fact repair things and what it costs. And if they repair it locally.
Way back when things were made locally, they did cost more. Remember when a TVs used to cost 2 month's income ? As a result, at that time it was economical to fix it. Keeping things longer also implies a slower innovation-growth for consumer goods. Would that be so bad ?
Only if the old systems are huge resource wasters (such as old polluting cars or old heating systems) is it time to throw them out. But what good is it to replace them with efficient but non-long-lasting appliances ? So, they got to be both efficient and long lasting.
People would then keep their computers for perhaps 10 years rather than 2 years. My 12 year old computer still runs fine and I keep it in good shape and don't fill it up with too much useless stuff and turn it off when not in use.
A slower innovation curve is good. We have to break through the story that this means fewer jobs. It may mean shorter work weeks, if we get it right. That is a political choice but also how much people keep asking for it. In order to be able to ask for lower work hours, you must obviously already live a more modest life style and have some savings perhaps. Slower innovation thus would mean less salary but also lower prices. Because prices keep pace with salary. So, they would equal each other out over time. But here is a second benefit:
At lower consumption rate prices drop even further. The lower depletion of raw materials ! No economist tells you that. How come even oil prices go down in a recession ? There is some caution though to this rule. If lower raw materials prices therefore enable higher consumption elsewhere around the globe, then this effect is at least dampened. So we have to differentiate between locally sourced resources that are more protected from international markets versus those that can be readily bought up by someone who has an insatiable high demand that exceeds when the price drops. So, I am making sure I am not over-simplifying here.
A slower innovation curve is good because otherwise we get so overwhelmed by the accompanying explosion of complexity, that our mind and our social fabric will collapse under its weight. It is already happening.
I mean, it is already a drag on productivity to have to learn a new operating system every 2 years. And software gets every slower and unwieldy, with ever more complex features. There is a point where more complexity only incrementally delivers more and eventually it turns into a liability.
And on top of replacing your gadgets less often, people can share resources, further cutting consumption rates. I recommend you to not upgrade your operating system unless it really delivers a real improvement since the upgrade in turn will usually demand more hardware resources. Unless it truly makes you more productive and frees up time to use in other important enrichting activities.
Buy as much as you can used if possible. It is not as cool and sexy but why do you have to have the latest gadgets all the time ? Wait till you buy the real cool gadget but buy it when you really need it.
Ride behind the technology curve, at least for some good chunk of the time. I find that the old stuff often works better. Like my operating system from 10 years ago seems more nimble and less bloated to me. Simpler to use. Less trying to be sexy.
And buy things that last and can be repaired. Usually, locally made things are easier to be repaired since you can drive up to the manufacturer (if a small manufacturer) or at least you can put more pressure on them since as that one single customer you have more personal relation to them and more per-customer power. For a huge company with millions of customers you may more likely going to be just a speck.
Consume things that last and lower your energy consumption.
If you do consume, what shall I consume ? Wouldn't the economy collapse if we quit consuming ? We will always be consumers in some capacity. Even if we kept the same items for good, eventually they break down or need to be repaired. Even a repair entails consumption of spare parts. Repair is not as sexy as buying something new. But it is sexier for the earth.
If we replace our roof, install an energy-efficient heating system or double-pane window, we do consume. Insofar there always will be consumption and there always will be jobs that will be created from that consumption.
The big question is not if we consume. It is what we consume and how much we consume. The what we consume needs to be guided by the question whether the item will save energy in the long run and be of long lasting value.
And whether it serves a very fundamental need, such as housing, heating, safety (e.g. a new electrical system) or health (a new electric bike). Over-consumption is material consumption that goes far beyond our core needs.
If I fly to a far vacation destination 3000 miles away four times a year for one week back and forth, that too is over-consumption. In terms of fuel costs. Fuel is material too. If instead I fly once for 4 weeks, I would be far more challenged to call it overconsumption.
One vacation a year is a core need. At least the way I see it. It can even be a vacation at or near your home. But vacation it must be. It does not need to be 3000 miles away. As long as I don't stay at a posh wasteful resort hotel that puts a new bar of soap in the bathroom every day, 4 weeks vacation is not over-consumption per se.
Stop giving useless unwanted gifts.
Stop the gift-giving madness. I am not saying that you should stop making someone a gift when you truly cherish them or when a special occasion arises. But boycott the madness that is orchestrated by the outside world.
Boycott the gift giving orchestrated by retailers via Valentine's day, Christmas, Mother's day, Father's day. This is entitlement-mongering of the most inciduous kind. At least birthdays are more personal, but even there. In keeping with the philosophy of Nonviolent Communication, avoid giving out of duty or obligation. It is a toxic gift. Both mentally and often for the environment.
You can obviously give a non-material gift. There are many such opportunities.
Such as a ticket to a local small scale theatre production. Or a night at a family run Bed and Breakfast on a romantic nearby island or in the mountains. Or at an organic restaurant.
You can gift your own actions. Those are the most empowering quite often and they give something to you because you are involved. Those are the gifts that give back. Material gifts often do not give you back, and there is a reason. Because often times they do not make the receiving person not that happy. At times they might, but unless it enhances their life truly, it won't last long.
As far as action-gifts go, you can offer a friend with a bare backyard that you will plant an herb garden or a tree. You can offer them to spend time with their aging parents once a week. That frees up time for your friends so that they in turn can enjoy something that they could not otherwise.
If you do buy things, then buy them used. There is a huge stigma associated with it it seems, but what is wrong with it ? I feel better if I receive a used gift because I know it does not harm the environment or the person's pocketbook.
Why not buy a used scarf or music CD for someone from a charity-run store ? Would you be seen as a cheapskate ? Or perhaps admired as a responsible consumer that starts a new trend and dares to break through conventions ?
Isn't it the thought that counts ?
Or make something personal. Something crafty with a personal meaning that you know the person will likely appreciate and has long lasting returning value. I made my mom a photo album with photos from the outgoing year. She was delighted ! It was something personal. Whenever she has friends over, she shows them the photo album. So it has returning value.
The photo album was something that did not use many resources (the photo album was bought used at a charity store).
Some of the gifts I received I have not used [yet] and may never get around to. Such as books I did not request that have time to read. If at all a gift then one that you know the person will use and one that is truly enhancing life.
And in any case, isn't the biggest surprise for a gift when you least expect it ? So how about giving just somewhere outside christmas or Valentines or Birthday ? When your loved ones least expect it ? Then you also will get the biggest smile.
Don't give because someone on TV tells you that now is the time to give. Other countries, like Japan, also have gift giving madnesses. If you go on a trip, you are supposed to give everyone a gift when you come back.
I don't mind bringing perishable consumable gifts, such as sweet treats if they are made in a healthy manner. Little sweet things like high quality marcipan from a far away land, artisan honey or maple syrup. I you bring tea from a local tea shop. But it becomes very questionable when people give nicknacks that will just end up in the trash. Maybe you can re-gift the nicknack you never wanted instead of throwing it in the trash.
By re-gifting at least it becomes a zero sum game as far as your own consumption is concerned. You got something and handed it off. But you have a human gyre of forever-re-gifted items going. After the 5th re-gifting, they will start to look a little bit "used" and it will still end up in the trash.
You can stop the gyre. Tell the person that next time you prefer no gift or only something personal that you and they know with high confidence that you will cherish. They will thank you for saying so, even if they don't say so openly. Because they will rather want to give you something that you need. Nobody truly enjoys giving things that the other person does not need and only becomes a burden.
By bringing it up to them, they may quite possibly change their whole gift-giving philosophy altogether. Because no-one every talked to them honestly yet empathically about it.
Help narrow the gap between financially rich and poor
Help narrow the gap between rich and poor. Drastically so. And it is not only about the income gap. It is even more so and more importantly about the asset-gap, which is wider than the income gap.
A huge asset gap will usually be able re-create the income gap. Thus, fighting the income gap, as important and laudable it is, is always going to be a long-term ongoing battle and ultimately still a losing proposition. Unless you tax assets as well. The only assets in the USA that I know are taxed is real-estate and inheritance (although often times not enough as I see it).
The perpetuation of income gap from asset gap comes because ultimately it is assets that create income. Rich people consume quite a bit more than a person needs. Not so much in terms of food perhaps but most other consumption areas. And in terms of resources that are only of finite amount such as land.
Why does any one person or family need more than two houses or 3 cars or 2 bedrooms for their personal consumption ? Most rich people are rich because the claim that they alone created this or that company, idea. That perception is very widespread and an endless story we get told by the media.
But it is not so. For instance Microsoft was initiated by the initiative of Bill Gates, but Bill Gates did not create Microsoft as we know it. It was his creativity and initiative that created the first and ongoing spark. But really, the 100,000 of his employees did create what Microsoft is and has been for much of its existence. Bill Gates is ultimately replaceable and has proven to be so since Microsoft was doing pretty fine even after Bill Gates left. Apple is still doing fine after its visionary has died.
Even visionaries are replacable. But if we make them look irreplacable then in a way they become irreplacable because we think that nobody else would have that vision. Vision sells products for sure. Society that pays a high premium on having vision unified in one person. Just look at the net worth of Bill Gates and you see what that premium is. Never mind that the Bill Gates foundation that has been built with that wealth is doing some work that is being seriously questioned by some. So has that money been doing real good in the world ?
Why can a company's vision not be held by a group of people ? Why this hero cult ?
We should not forget those who are the unseen supporters of such companies as Microsoft: It is the consumers of the products that paid for the products with their hard earned money. Or those companies from which Microsoft may have taken or purchased their ideas. Those unseen companies contributed with their own man/woman power.
Thus, if you can, think again when using technologies from companies that support a high wealth disparity even if they pay their employees seemingly well. Because if the top people make off with immense billions, that unifies too much power in them even if that money goes towards philantropic uses. Unless the philantropy was put up for some sort of public discussion that is deep and participatory. I like when philantropists use money to save and purchase rain forests to be set aside. But how many do that ? I am not saying that this would change thing too much, even IF everyone were to use, say, Microsoft products. We would obviously lose thousands of jobs. It may change very little if just someone else steps in who does the same thing.
But ultimately I would hope that jobs will be absorbed elsewhere in a more sustainable economy. I agree that this would require a deeper change in many other areas of our system. It is not so easy. None of this is easy and I don't have all the answers. But I intuit what I wish people to think about: What do you support every day ?
I am not suggesting that consumer boycotts are a surefired way. I still think that connecting with those who you disagree with is just as important if not more so. But at least try not to over-support those who raise the wealth disparity or do things with their philantropic money that are not in line with your values.
Use free (but safe and virus free ! At least more virus free than the paid for technology) technologies if you can. By doing so you vote for participatory creation that is more democratic in nature.
As laudable as philantropy is at times, philantropy is not the answer either. The necessity of widespread philantropy to fulfill basic needs is a serious sign that the political system itself has failed to meet even the most basic needs in too many people. Philantropy, as I see it, is the icing on the cake. Or for incubating something visionary that the public has not seen or has no extra money for.
And it can be used and often may be used as guilt-washing on the part of those who in their hearts sense that they made off with so much money that there is something inherently questionable about it. That the money is missing somewhere else even if one paid one's own employees well. I am not saying that Bill Gates is guilt washing. He may very well not. I don't proclaim to look into anybody's brain. I am just afraid that a good many philantropists use it in order to legitimize their accumulated wealth to begin with.
Don't get me wrong. Wealth can be great and enabling if generated based on wholesome principles. When you pay people well and make products in a way that does not pollute too much and products that are not of highly questionable side effects (Asbestos, slasher movies, highly unhealthy foods) or market them with highly questionable tactics (e.g. guns marketed to young people). When you pay people a living wage and let them share in your own success.
Even control can be of value if you have a great vision that is meant to be life enriching for a lot more than yourself. It is of course a personal and subjective choice for any visionary as to what constitutes a great vision. That is one quandry.
One thing that is increasingly clear to me is that just all-too-often and all the more so as we are approaching earth's limits, more and more things that are incubated by wealth money are not just utterly useless towards the survival of the human species. They constitute an opportunity-cost on what the consumer's money should be spent on. Like to insulate our homes, etc. I know that sounds like spoon feeding towards consumers, but consumers are already spoon fed by the media anyways.
If a philantropist were to found a think tank that truly thinks these things through (e.g. because government failed to) then all the better. Or if a philantropist buys up huge tracts of rain forest or national forest to be protected in perpetuity. Or if you fund an invention that has potential to lower our energy consumption drastically, and keeps it affordable.
A lot of those inventions are not sexy but seem boring. But they are the ones that matter. Just like some of the best political leaders do not look sexy and may even be a little more boring in their appearance.
Yet, philantropy still puts too much power into the hands of a few, and undemocratically so. High income earners claim that their skills allegedly are "rare" and that the market must determine the worth of those skills. The problem with that argument is manifold, but one stands out: the shortage is artificial.
If we were to have free education, more business school tracks that churn out people with CEO-like skills, and if we were to have more cooperatively run enterprises that allow skill sharing within corporations, then we would not have this skill shortage.
The other problem is that we have created complex monsters of corporations that make it more difficult to find someone with just the right skill set. Why does the top power have to be unified in one single person anyways ? If we had different types of company organizations, such as replacing one CEO with a panel of 3 lesser paid but together more capable people, the skillset would be much less rare.
Skills of the top earners in society are to a large part as rare as the system makes them. Some skills cannot be learned, I agree. You cannot teach someone to be Mozart. But most business skills can be learned. Or you can set up businesses in such a way that you don't need those all-round talents. You can split up the tasks and jobs.
But it is not only about how the current system often too handsomely rewards allegedly rare skills that don't have to be scarce:
Look at those people who own 100 homes or 10 apartment buildings. They are not posessing a particularly rare skill. They have business savvy all right. But it is not really a skill where I would say that it merits their annual income.
If you rent from them, you make a millionaire even more of a millionaire. Not all, but a lot of them raise rents even though they don't need to. Even though they already have more than enough. So there goes the rationale about how high income is always needed to retain skills. That was not so in the 1960s when top tax brackets in the USA were a lot higher and wealth disparity a lot lower. The USA had enough skills to get people to the moon !
So, if you don't want to support people to get ever richer even though their skill is essentially not that rare, then try to rent a room from some retired old folks who desperately need some ancillary income. Rent a room from someone who is just getting started with their first house. Rent a room from a nonprofit that also offers low income housing in addition to market-rate housing, so that your rent is a subsidy to those who need it most.
Rent an old house that is beautiful and deserves protection, rather than an ugly new building. Whatever you choose, you are implicitly voting for. If you hate ugly new buildings, then do not live in one, or otherwise you support the expansion of just that. If you can, do not work for corporations that mistreat, underpay their workers or don't offer overtime pay or paid sick leave for their hard work. Or that are stingy with vacation even for long-serving employees.
So here comes the quandry: if all people did what I just suggested, it would not work. Because there are only so and so many single family houses or nice old homes. At some point the pricing becomes so that you HAVE to move into an ugly building if enough people vie for an old single family house. But if one would boycott certain groups that abuse tenants, then one could drive those out of business. But that requires widespread solidarity. And that we are still far away from. Under the existing type of profit-based system scarcity is created artificially. It is difficult to unravel for sure. But at least each person can try not to nourish it further.
Create a complementary social safety net.
Don't only rely mainly the state. Enable others to not mainly rely on the government. Not because I would be against social safety nets. But because a personalble safety net is just as important. And the state may not always be there for you. Especially in the future.
If friends want to leave their crappy abusive jobs but cannot afford to, help them out. It does need to be financial at all. You could help them to find a new job or help them with ideas to create one.
If you have an extra room, a mother in law, that you are not really using much, let them stay in it if they lose their job. So that they can build up savings and not need to take the next best crappy job. This helps change our job landscape if people no longer take the next best job.
Use and promote bartering or alternative currencies. That allows people to trade skills without having to beg our companies to give them that coveted job they so badly need.
When you help others, do not do it alone. Ask your friends to help out. Share the load. It also starts a conversation and makes people think.
With every safety net comes responsibility and accountability. When you offer someone help, do not shirk away from drawing out agreements or covenants when taking on such things. Putting things in writing provides clarity for yourself and the other person. It makes sure everyone is on the same page as to what their capacity is to help.
Because every disappointment or abuse will dissuade you to help someone else. Every safety net can only support and bear up to a certain percentage of people who are not in the process of sustaining it. And over-use of a safety net will demoralizes those who put in all the hard work. Thus, use any safety net, by government or your friends, responsibly.
Avoid regular money. Create local money.
Help create a new money system by supporting many of the new local time dollar systems. This helps local economy which creates more connections between people and is in many ways more resource efficient. Our existing standard of efficiency is too much around "maximum production of goods for the lowest dollar". But that definition got to go. The most bio-efficient processes like organically grown food are not efficient when seen from old-theory economists. Economists tend to be stuck in the "economy of scale" idea. But that is not what helps gross happiness or long term happiness through species and human survival.
Most current-day money is created based on debt that accrues interest that can never be paid back. Even nations never pay their debt back. They just keep piling it on and on. Name me any country that has no national debt. Very few if any. And of those that have debt, which ones are actually managing to pay down the debt ? Why can't they ?
Fiscal conservatives will usually say "because the government spends more than it takes in". Yes, correct. But that is not the whole story. The government cannot get enough tax dollars anyways because of the interest attached to the debt ! If the government were to pay back all the debts, it would pretty much leave nothing to give back and the economy would collapse. You might ask "how come ? After all government debt-interest service is only part of the monthly debt payments ?".
The problem is that government went into debt in the first place long time ago. But now that they are already too deep in debt, they would have to raise taxes and/or also spend very little in order to actually pay down the national debt with interest.
On an all-systems level it is not at all clear where the interest supposed to come from. The near-inability to pay back all the interest is virtually built into the system. Unless all the money in circulation efficiently recycles back to whoever is under the pressure to service the debt - be it an individual, a business a government, it is almost assured that a certain percentage of people will default based on temporary bottlenecks. For individuals that is a loss of a job. For business it is the loss of a few important clients, or even just one client. For government it is the loss of an important share of the tax payers. Or more structurally and persistent: when policy makers, in order to get re-elected, are afraid to raise taxes in order to pay debt service. After all debt service does not build roads, schools. It just "vanishes", so it seems, into a black hole. Even though in the long run it would seem good to keep debt down at all cost, but our politicians are elected for the short term.
To make matters worse, when government spends way too little, that also de-stimulates the economy the way it is currently structured. Government services that support low income earners do support real jobs. Those jobs would all fall away. When you cut social security, social services, health care, you eventually have fewer consumers, buying less, leading to a deflationary spiral with fewer jobs. And then of course with ultimately no tax income ! You cannot tax anybody who has no income !
That is one of the reasons why economist prefer inflation to deflation. Inflation makes debt cheaper, but it does not make it smaller. Deflation that would come from government saving money would make it smaller but only for a short time, until you suddenly have too little tax income and your debt interest is still increasing all the while. Countries with good credit rating like Germany get money still very cheaply at low interest. But how long is that going to last ? I am not an economist and only superficially and more intuitively "get it" that this is teetering on the brink of collapse. Just look at the helpless actions by the European union to make money even cheaper.
The film Money as Debt says it all and it makes mathematical sense.
Some form of global or national money will of course persist. But it is best to try to move to a community based currency. One with no inflation and no debt. Something that does not lose value. Where one hour of one's time will always be that. Non-locally non-replenishable materials are a different story and evidently a problem. Local money systems are at least more based on actually creating things (rather than wallstreet vaporware financial products) and on the goal that promotes a living wage.
Systems like Fourth Corner Exchange in Bellingham/WA are at least a good beginning. But there are many, especially in the United Kingdom.
Also put some chunk of your savings into a safe deposit box (don't use the mattress). That alone reduces the bank's ability to issue loans. Because for every dollar in the account, the bank effectively loans out ten dollars, because of the fractional reserve system.
Why would one want to reduce a bank's ability to issue loans ? Because too easy loan money inflates the value of money and gets people hooked into jobs they don't like or into consumption. The debt and mortgage bubble of 2007 showed that too easy loans drive up home prices beyond sustainability and make in the end life more miserable. Boom-bust cycles are not fun. Banks love debt. Debt is big business. Even when people default, the banks get to collect your house. The question is whether you want to support that.
Much better even than putting your savings into your safe:
buy a house or piece of land together with others. Don't do it alone even when you have the money to get a mortgage. Or do it only alone when you have plenty of secure cash flow to pay it off fast.
Most people don't have that luxury though. They over-leverage themselves and barely make a dent in paying down their house for the first half of the lifetime of their loan. That is how it works out mathematically.
What people bank on most is that the house will rise in value. But when it rises in value it can also fall just as much later on. Or even below your purchase price. But what rarely comes down significantly is the property tax. Once that goes up, it rarely comes down to meet the original value of the house.
Whatever you buy, buy something real of long lasting value. Something that produces something or helps others to do so. Something that enhances life but is not a consumption item but a production item. A production item helps produce something else that you consume. But something that hopefully nourishes you or others.
A piece of land that grows food or has wilderness on it produces something from sunlight every day. It produces joy for the animals that inhabit it, large and small. But also something you will use and do not pay too much taxes on. Buy it in cash. Do not use a bank. Own it outright. With others.
Support Transition Town Movements.
Join many of the Transition Town movements that are cropping up. Or create a new one in your neighborhood or town. The concept originated in the UK but is gaining popularity elsewhere.
Create and support new ways to invest money locally.
Create a new way to invest locally or at least according to sustainable values. Example: Your 401k does likely not offer a local real estate investment fund that saves old beautiful brick community buildings from gentrification, development or tear-down, right ?
Well, there likely is no such fund in your 401k. You can create one. Don't do it alone. Be the initiator but band together with others. People who are motivated and will deliver their time and effort. Remember, Trillions or Billions of dollars are sitting in people's retirement fund, giving other nameless entities unchecked powers to use your money in ways that likely violate your values.
That is where we each and everyone of us support stuff that we would often rather not want to support. And that is how and why money is missing locally that could be used to save artists spaces from being sold to developers.
The payback would be perhaps less in dividend than in terms of providing for your local community. But you own something that is brick and mortar and something you can drive by every day. We need to evaluate investments w.r.t. a social dividend, not just a monetary dividend.
Lobby against the costly system of Free Trade.
Get rid of unfettered free trade. Free trade pretends we all earn the same wage. But we don't. We erode our own social safety nets by buying abroad. When your dollars support abject working conditions elsewhere you are supporting that system which exists elsewhere. And you neglect the local support network that has sustained you (public schools, etc) or will hopefully sustain you when you get old.
The benefits of having a smart phone for 1/2 or 1/3 of the price because it is made in China are short-lived. It will all come around. In terms of pollution, perhaps even social unrest that may some day come in China. Who knows ? What if we no longer get our microchips, memory chips from Taiwan and China ? Or when a war breaks out on the Korean Penninsula ? Who makes our flat panel displays then ? We would be up shit creek ! Or what if China some day wants it for all their expanding middle class ? At a time of ever-tightening raw materials ? Do we still know how to make that stuff at all ?
The consequences have in fact already have come around in invisible even now. Lack of manufacturing jobs locally. Having to stay soft on human rights in China because they make all that critical stuff that we buy.
We widen the gap between rich and poor by increasing profit margins for the rich.
And free trade erodes consumer prices too much so. Contrary to economist, is NOT a good thing because then we do not tend to repair things or keep things longer. You would certainly insist, as a consumer, that a $1200 smart phone would be repairable and last 5-10 years. You will not apply that logic to a $400 item. "I can always buy another one that is even fancier", you will say. Even I would be tempted to think that way. Upgrading is cool ! What was clunky 5 years ago is now sleek ! It is hard to not get mesmerized by technology and the latest gadgets. I can very much empathize with it, even though I am not a gadget freak on the consumption level. But I see how much of a draw it is. This is kind of items that was the stuff of science fiction movies/novels 50 years ago.
But what is the result of all that rapid fire consumption from low prices ? We are depleting resources for future products and future generations. We may in fact very well live to see that day coming. How it will unfold exactly I don't know. Part of it may be how much we recycle those rare earth materials and not throw them in the trash. But a lot of this high tech gadgetry relies on rare earth minerals that are bound to run out. Or they will get so expensive that some day only the super rich would afford one of those. And then of course nobody would build them because you need the economy of scale to build anything that complex to make it worthwhile. Because the development costs are probably very high.
Never mind, free trade also lowers consumer protection (see genetically engineered foods/seeds). Free trade is anything but free. It seems free and good as long as the party goes on. Low-priced high tech goodies, etc, all sounds so great. But the free trade agenda of the agricultural sector is a different story too and more sinister. In either case, because free trade offers huge profit margins because of the wage differentials, it is all too many times (even if not always) a free-for-all for the rich and powerful. But there truly is no free lunch.
Free trade also leads to hemorraghing of locally sourced knowledge. We no longer know how to make a lot of stuff. That is also a national security issue. I am not a nationalist by heart, but in this current world we live in (rather than the utopia we want to create) things are as they are. Wars will likely happen, ties be cut between nations. I am not saying that we should plan for it so that we can even easier fight a war.
Free trade outsources pollution. When you make most things in our proverbial "back yard" then you will know very quickly when the factory spoils the air and rivers. And you will have to deal with all the waste within your own society.
In a way the interdependency between nations makes wars way too costly. So that seems to be the good side of free trade. But knowledge is very precious to have at the local level. It means empowerment. Knowledge is power.
When you send too much knowledge off-shore, you lose that power. Thus, buy local if you can. Even if it costs more. Instead by less quantity and pay more for one piece. By the next kitchen mixer "made in the USA" if you live in the USA. It may cost a lot more but there are some good high quality brands that hopefully still make it here.
Or buy the next one used in order to offset the cost of the new locally made one.
And even if you had to buy an item that is made offshore (maybe because the locally made lacked quality, design or a certain feature). Then call that company and tell them that you would have loved to pay more for it if you knew it was made locally. Let them know that the demand is there and that the spending potential is there to move production back home.
To not raise your voice regarding the cost of free trade is to acquiesce and support the status quo.
Consider new ways to raise a child.
Institute, promote, create and live new ways to raise a child. Share a child by having co-parenting arrangements. It reduces your expenses, frees up time and risk and again reduces population. New legal arrangements may need to be created by governments to allow for that and to streamline the process. It frees up more time for everyone and gives the child more love and exposure to more than one pair of parents. It makes things more resilient.
If one couple breaks up, the child has the other intact couple to fall back onto. Divorce thus beomes less traumatic to a child. Communal living offers one such possibility. It has been done before. It is not new as such. It is only new if we enact it on a larger scale.
It alone could transform society in so many beautiful ways. Contact those who have done it and have done so in a way that has greatly enhanced their lives. You can find many intentional communities where that is happening right now. Go to www.ic.org
Consider new ways to meet your potential need for biological destiny.
To even use the word "biological destiny" may be a taboo for some. But I hear that this does exist, usually it is assumed to happen more in women but not necessarily only. If biological destiny is the force for reproduction, how can we address that ?
You tend to hear - true or not - that a not insignificant share of women want to have a child because if they never had one, they would not get to experience the miracle of birth in their own bodies. It is an understandable urge that cannot be dismissed. Because if it was simply about experiencing what it is like to raise a child, people would likely be more apt to adopt one (except perhaps the urge to pass on one's own and your partner's genes).
For those people it may not be at their forefront as to what raising a child truly entails. As someone who is for population decline, that kind of attitude seems misguided to have biological destiny as a primary driving force. However, for those who feel they must have experienced birth in their life time, yet do not feel prepared to raise a child, there is the option to become a surrogate mother.
Why do I bring this up ? I had talked not to long ago to a woman that has phantasized about doing just that. To become a surrogate mother. I was struck by surprise and first somewhat judgmental. To give birth in full knowledge that this baby is going to be separated from you ? Don't you have any attachment to that baby ?
Anyways, that is what I felt and thought at first. But when I heard how she wanted to help a couple that could never bear a child but wants to rear one, and how she wanted to experience their own body giving birth, it dawned on me how much of a driving force that was. But also how a creative solution emerged for her that made that work for her. Or she wanted to be perhaps a co-parent to those parents, but not bear the whole load of raising a child herself.
My main point here is that we can find surprisingly creative solutions to various very fundamental urges and needs that we first may find deplorable because - absent any creative solutions - they would appear vain and harmful. That is why creativity is such an immensely important and precious good.
Adopt a Child.
Think about adopting a child if you want to become a parent. The child is already born. It is searching for love. If instead of getting your own, you adopt one, it seems better for the planet.
Some may adopt a child from a poor country that needs love and that might otherwise die. Children even in the developed world too that desperately need love. Children stuck in foster homes, their parents on drugs etc. Without that love they may become destitute, unstable and pass on the lack of love to others with all the impact to society that come with it.
No matter where you adopt from, with your love they can flourish and pass that love on to others.
Lobby for the precautionary principle.
Demand the precautionary principle in all new products. Not merely in terms of safety. That is just one aspect.
Demand a proof that a new product or chemical in its final consequence truly improves life quality and is not introducing harm to society, health or nature. Way way too much stuff is made just for novelty effect. Be it new cosmetics, new pharmaceuticals, new cleaning products. But novelty can be dangerous.
If not outright striving to outlaw it, insist to law makers and the maker of such products that some sort of offset or compensation regime is in place in case there is a chance that a product or asset might do wide spread harm. Quite often though, with high risk technologies, the harm can spread to where there is no recall if things go wrong.
Do that even if the envisioned harm seems limited to some moderate local harm (such as a new high voltage power line to a wind farm) and where it helps society as a whole. It is not about being perfect but about being clear and upfront about risks and put the all on the table. It is about human needs, one of which is integrity.
As a consumer I do shy away from buying brand new products, like brand new medicines, cosmetics, cleaning products. I rather buy the tried and true. Unless the tried and true has shown to have serious drawbacks or the new product truly is better. I recommend reading test reports or user online reviews first.
Too much innovation is sham-innovation for the sake of patent protection/renewal or to wean you off your hard earned money for the novelty effect. When a product is re-engineered, new assemply lines need to be created, a lot of waste is created.
Why ? Because our economic system condems companies to innovate for the sake of innovation. Because the economic system we have cannot survive without expansion. But the individual is not off the hook. It is also because consumers want the newest thing. They are sold on the idea that newer is better because better engineered, etc. But not always so. All too often, "newer" means "more complex" and thus unfortunately "easier to break down" or "more expensive to fix".
As a consumer you can vote NO on that. If it seems reasonable, buy the tried and true. I buy the boring looking shaving cream brand that has been around for perhaps 80 years rather than the newest fad. Coincidentally it also has no fragrances.
Plus, it is cheaper too. Sham-innovation is a drag on human ingenuity because we need all our smarts to re-engineer our economy. Not to waste the brains on stuff that pretends to be useful. Thus vote with your dollars. Every day. Day by day. Even though by far not your only vote, your dollar-vote is one of the strongest votes you have. Without consumer's money, only those companies can survive that either provide utilities (water, sewer, garbage, internet) and/or have no local competition, or companies that are hired by the government and not by you, the consumer.
Reduce support for undue complexity.
Reduce society's ever-growing complexity. That is a tough one but not impossible at all. I love technology. I marvel at the latest digital camera or gadget or high definition flat screen. But I exercise great restraint from actually buying those. I am a slow-upgrade person.
I love nature too. Nature is even more complex but we take that complexity for granted. We think of it as simple and something that we can take for granted. Well, we can't. We are messing with a system that is more complex than we can ever recreate in our computers. I love innovation, but also am fearful the increasing complexity it entails or neccessitates. Nowadays machines build machines that build machines. Like the machines that build our microchips. Nobody can make such a machine with their bare hands. And the machines that make those microchip machines have microchips in them.
The old knowledge that got us there is disappearing. The US government one time threw away treasure troves of old notes and documents away that chronicled that early invention of radar (it was some newspaper article somewhere I read several years ago). That is still in my mind. We are losing the path that got us here.
We are removing the bricks at the bottom floor of a tall brick building while we are still adding floors to it at the top (this image comes to me from the documentary film "what a way to go", a must-see). We must therefore have a sort of safe-keeping place for all that knowledge that got us to where we got. Otherwise , if there is a collapse of civilization, we will not be able to backtrack.
We would be dependent on technology that just collapsed and we cannot even recreate it. We would not start AT the stone age. we would start BELOW the stone age, because we do not even have the survival skills of the stone age people. Perhaps I am a little bit too dramatic and doom and gloom here. But hope is an iffy companion. Hope is not sufficient. Hope is dangerous if that is all you rely on.
Hope is the energy force that should get you going and acting, not to sit and relax and just watch more TV to inform yourself. If you watch something worth watching (like a documentary), it is useful to watch it with others and then discuss about it.
So, we need to simplify laws rather than making them ever more complex. Supposedly complexity gets us a more just society. I doubt it. The more complex the law is, the fewer people understand it and the costlier it is to maneuver and traverse. And the more it is left up to the well-heeled to use it to their advantage. Ask your law makers to simplify laws. Get rid of excess technology in your daily life. Some technology is utterly useful. like the internet I am relying on here. But some is utterly stupid and wasteful. Like a leaf blower for instance.
Ask your government to simplify technology if possible. The German city of Munich has switched to Linux several years ago. It saved them probably tons of money, but also the frenetic pace of upgrades prescribed by their previous for-profit client whose operating system they used.
Help reduce earth's human population.
Reduce our planet's over-population. That may possibly, depending on your situation, be the single-most effective and simplest thing you can do. Get two children at most or consider getting one child. Or have one child and adopt a second one. Or get none (as I do).
And talk to others about this very taboo-laden topic. It is my personal belief and intuition that need to get down to about 1/2 billion for an even halfway sustainable technological civilization. Perhaps even for just a non-technological one.
But this is not just about mere survival. Think of how wonderful life would be for those 6 generations out. When there is enough food, water, nature for everyone. When nature starts to recover from all the onslaught from humans. There would be abundance of nature and beauty. And enough living space and access to beautiful nature.
People would not have to live in bee-hive like skyscrapers or office towers. Unless they wanted to. But a lot of people already now are not very happy with the way they live, even in the developed world. There would be far less traffic, congestion, pollution.
Much of the world's farmland could return to become wild nature. That would help re-absorb much more of the carbon dioxide that has been pumped into the air.
All those questions of resource over-use would either vanish or at least be taken care of for a while. Because the garbage, recycling heaps from previous generations would last some time to recover precious metals insofar they don't corrode out of existence and back into the soil or oceans.
There could be peaceful side-by-side coexistence of various political systems that are no longer fighting over precious resources. See Earthland: Envisioning a sustainable civilization for more of that vision.
We can get there in 5 generations (150 years) with a global 1.5 or so child policy. I need to do more research on what the exact numbers are. It is doable in principle at least, that is for sure.
It could happen without a single person needing to die. It is all by natural attrition. Nature is aching under our feet. Especially from our over-consumption and resulting pollution. But also from land use, agriculture and sprawl, simply human activity in wild spaces. Truly wild and intact nature is rapidly disappearing. A different economic system (socialism ?) or reduced technology consumption can solve this to some extent but likely not in time and never completely. The projections as to when population peaks are just projections. If via socialism and reduced consumption we were to make room for even more food, population may very well grow back into its upper limit. We must make room for wild nature. Not just for esthetics or bare survival. But because other species have the right to untamed nature too.
In fact, because we give space to nature, fewer people will die young. Thus it saves lives. By technological civilization I do not even mean that we are overly tech-heavy and a nation of geeks. But a civilization that still has advanced research to understand the universe, modern materials for building energy efficient housing and public transportation and modern materials that last so that we can build sail boats that transport us across the oceans and that do not rot like the old wooden boats. We may still have airplanes,b but probably fewer of them. If we have only 1/2 billion people, we could all live on one continent and no longer need to fly or sail.
The other continents could be left for nature or for people who want to live in complete unison with nature. Like indigenous people still do in the remaining rain forests. Most of us do need some technology for comfort. In ways most of us are not even aware of.
Most of us do not want to go back to life as it was 200 years ago. I do want my teeth drilled with novocaine and a medical emergency treated with high tech means. I want access to an MRI machine or CT scan if that saves my life or rectifies a broken bone. I want it for coming generations. But it is not going to be possible for all or even a sizable fraction of our population and for generations to come if we do not get down our population to a small fraction of what it is now.
Rare earth materials are going to run out. Even copper or steel or nickel are going to run out. Such as they are used in hard drives, cell phones, MRI machines, basic research. And no recyling process is complete. It cannot. Thus, these efforts will probably not preserve a technological civilization forever. But perhaps for the next 10,000 years. And then, perhaps we have found substitute materials or have harnessed fusion energy so that we can perhaps even breed new elements.
But to even have a crack at that, we must shrink. Peacefully so. Earth will otherwise do it for us and force us into resource wars and it will be bloody, messy. And it will destroy our civilization. Not only super markets but also museums, hospitals, scientific institutions will be looted if social order breaks down , just as has happened in Syria or Egypt or Iraq.
Violence seems pre-programmed into our heads because are not enculturated as of yet to willingly die for another person so that they can survive. We ourselves cling to life dearly enough. When there are looming food and water shortages, people will hoard, further exascerbating the shortages. Once everyone stops going to work, society will decend into chaos.
We have seen a glimpse of it after hurricane Katrina. But that was on a local scale and thus ultimately controllable. Supplies and law enforcment came in and belatedly got the looting under control. But what if an entire country suddenly falls irreversibly into a mass panic ? When we have reached that state, then it is too late. We must not get even anywhere near that possibility. At least not by man-made disaster.
If an asteroid looms overhead or if Yellowstone national park blows its cover, then it seems somewhat okay. Then we are all doomed anyways. Then nature made the choice. So, the only way it seems is to curtail one's urge of getting more kids than the planet can bear long term. So that those kids we do have are going to have the good life. I love kids. But only if there are not too many.
It just seems dangerously naive and arrogant to think that on the one hand we want the good life for ourselves but not for everyone else in this world. To ask the poor countries to live romantically like tribes in the rain forest but to cling to our own nice living standard. What a double standard. Not that people should not be allowed to live in total harmony with nature like they did 10,000 years ago. Yes, for those who want it, definitely. It should be a choice. There will be enough open wild nature for people to do so, once we reduce our population. There will be wild open spaces even in Europe and Asia if we get down to 1/10 of our current population.
But that equality in choice is only possible if we get our population down. We need to start as soon as possible. When civilization breaks down, it may very well be too late to save it. The consequences could be not unlike after a nuclear war, just that it unfolds in slow motion. Never mind that resource wars will increase the risk of an actual nuclear war manyfold ! Thus all of those who are anti-war cannot afford to not also talk about overpopulation.
Thus, ask your politicians to incentivise a shrinking population via tax policies or carbon credits a low birth rate. Start a new party or an initiative process in your state. Start a new media channel dedicated to that issue. We can get down to perhaps 1 billion in 3 generations and then further down from there. The earth will heal in time, climate change will reverse gradually. Fish populations will return, resource shortages will ease up. Real estate will be dirt cheap and nobody needs to take out a loan and chained to any bank. As result things will be cheaper, because businesses have far less debt or rent to pay. No additional person would need to die if we had fewer children.
That gets easier to manifest if we have a social safety net. Because then people won't have children just to avoid getting old alone. But for that, we probably need some sort of mandatory social service year so that old people are taken care of when the population ages precipitously during the population downsizing. If we want to avoid that only rich people can buy themselves into having more kids, then we need to tackle the entire income and asset disparity.
As you can see, it is all connected. Education is key. Also sex education and family planning education would be good to be standard and even compulsory. Please understand that for-profit businesses want over-population. They hate decline. Over-population also creates a steady supply of low cost labour because over population breeds poverty. That is all wanted by those in power. But nobody mentions it. It almost seems like a dirty secret. I am not into wild conspiracy theories, but it all so fits hand-in-glove. Because virtually nobody in power wants to talk about overpopulation.
And because wild misinformation is diseminated about it, such as "The United States would shrink in population if not for immigration". Almost everyone I talk to has fallen for that falsehood. The US census site proves that they are wrong. And fundamentalist religions are conveniently used to promulgate that message. At least they are unwitting allies. That's why nobody talks about overpopulation on the air waves. The current economic model cannot bear decline. It would collapse from sudden decline. Remember the 2008 crisis. But it will collapse anyways. Oil is running out. Coal is running out after that. Raw materials are running out.
I strongly recommend the youtube movie There's No Tomorrow (peak oil, energy, growth and the future). This is one of those defining documentaries that truly opened my eyes as to all the dead ends we are facing. But again this movie too does not mention population reduction as one of the main solutions. But it does talk about carrying-capacity at minute 25:30. It shows very starkly we cannot engineer ourselves out of the predicament by throwing more technology at it. My takeaway is more gradated. At the current population levels we will run out of all the raw materials. At a much lower population at least we could conceivably make them last for thousands of years, but even then will face eventual barriers. But at least then we would have have time to adjust.
And we have barely begun to develop alternatives. Our civilization will crash like a high speed train crashing into a concrete wall. IF (!) we continue as before and do not make rapid changes to our economic system. Market economy has so far proven incapable of far-sighted solutions. Because profit needs to be reaped NOW and not in 30 years. And the market is not even free and functioning anyways either because consumers dont have the complete picture. Attributes like "benefit to society" cannot be easily wrapped into one convenient score. The world is too complex for that. Who would determine how to calculate such a score ?
And if you have enough people who make minimum wage then those people cannot afford to buy with their conscience. Even if they wanted to. Thus an impoverished class serves to uphold the status quo. There are ways to ease out of it, such as communal living, which is another one of my suggestions. Externalities (costs to the environment and resource depletion) are not listed on the product label and are not figured into the price. The profit motive disallows that.
The question is HOW we want it to collapse and whether the collapse will be accompanied by a gradual transformation. Or whether it will be followed by a decent into chaos and lawlessness and destruction. It is our collective choice. The knowledge is there. Dispersed among many intelligent heads. The problem is how to get that knowledge into as many heads as possible. Nobody has figured that one out yet. If they did, they would probably also have created a dangerous mind-control machinery. Anything so powerful as to reprogram an entire population's mindset would also be very dangerous.
I think the way people will get "re-programmed" (not by someone's agenda) either by disaster or by community-building, one person at a time. Not to leave it to some central media outlet or government. It probably needs to be door to door, person to person, friend to friend, coworker to coworker. It is dangerous to leave it to some centralized power to tell us what to do. At least if that power is not highly democratically legitimized.
Do people get to vote on their media outlets and what is shown on TV ? We see the results of centralized messages and media outlets in the negative sense right now. The change probably needs to happen via tedious ground work. Door to door, person to person, friend to friend. Or by what some call Civil Informationing - standing on street corners with a big board and handing out fliers, engaging people one by one. It is not easy.
There is no promise for ultimate success. But the journey by itself is already a form success. Because you got up and did something. Because the journey itself speaks integrity and purpose and community. The opportunity cost of doing the same thing and expecting different results are enormous. Don't wait till the store shelves and ammo-shops are emptying and then wonder what you could have done to prevent this. By putting all of these thoughts to paper, I am already doing at least something. So can you.
Call politicians outside your district.
Do not only call your political representative. Call 20 or 100 of them. I did it when the government was shut down in 2013. I called 100 republicans house members across this land. Because the issue effected everyone in the entire country. The vote by a representative in Michigan mattered just as much for anyone in Kentucky or California. Only few of them (or rather their aides) asked where I was calling from.
With cell phones these days, they cannot tell by the phone number anyways where you live. So they ought to ask, right ? They did not ask. They listened to me and even thanked me for caring even though I called from out of state.
If, say, only 1 in 30 call their representative on any issue, then your call has the weight of 30 people. If you do that with 100 representatives, your weight is that of 3000 people. For any voice not heard, your voice will take over for them.
Why do you think that relatively small but utterly vocal groups such as the anti-abortion folks get so much attention ? Because everyone else is comparably silent. It is all about relative weight. Via silence you enhance someone else's vote.
Lobby for a social service year.
Ask our so-called leaders to institute a social service year. File an initiative on the state level to mandate it. And the social service year might be voluntary or, if not enough volunteer, then it may be made mandatory for anybody capable.
If mandatory, then best after high school. Instead of joining the military. Rich and poor need to do it. No way to buy yourself out of it. The privileged will then finally learn how things look at the bottom strata of society and learn to see what their decisions lead to and what changes need to happen. Or even make it two years if the population ages very rapidly or if we need to plant a lot of trees.
In return you may get a voucher for some additional education. Part of social service year will be education anyways. In return for giving to society and serve in retirement homes, hospitals or help people in need, you will get the same care when you get old. Free of charge or at an affordable price. Right now, if you live in the USA, you have medicaid. But what kind of service can you expect in most retirement homes ? Are there people who take you for a walk, who drive you to some fun activity , etc ? Maybe the retirement home would be cheaper (all based on non-profit status of course) if there would be staff to help in the kitchen or basic cleanup. Anything that does not require a professional degree but that enhances old people's lives.
During your social service year you get free room and board and a small monthly payment. A social service could also provide services similar to the civil conservation corps of the 1930s. It could help plant trees, re-establish wet-lands, help salmon to come back, etc etc. This process will help with the aging population that we will face during population downsizing.
It also makes you a little bit more of a whole person. Many young people do not know what to do after high school. In those countries that do have a social service year (Germany had it for conscientous objectors) it worked beautifully. It is a matter of political will. But those in power will certainly not move from their butts if the people will not demand it in masses and vote accordingly.
A social service year also teaches your heart to be compassionate and giving. Do we learn that in our education system ?
A big share of social ills come back to our education system. And education is not just academic facts. It is also education from the heart. Which schools teach that right now ? Only a minority of schools.
Consider Immigration to be linked to Sustainability questions.
In my humble opinion it seems wise to rethink immigration in the light of coming challenges. It seems to be good to reduce it until we have reduced our own resource consumption, our own population growth and when origin countries have adjusted their population growth rate. Wait until such time there is more equality between countries.
We can and should promote equality between countries since we are the biggest resource-suckers by far. But not by opening the flood gates or by promoting illegal immigration. Promoting and letting illegal immigration pass is just another way of opening the flood gates, just slower.
Instead help poor countries to help themselves. Many poor countries have deserved such help because of past abuse from colonial powers or rape of their natural resources. Mass migration from poor to rich countries is not the answer. Especially not if we are such a poor model as far as life style. Why would people want to move here other than to assume that same life style ? Unless they join an active movement that has the same goal of living sustainably. But one does not know that. Because people in their origin country lived more sustainably by their original resource intake, it does not mean that they will when coming here. They may or they may not. A lot of immigrants start driving SUVs, and take on the same life resource-rich style as the average US citizen.
Or if you do want to have an orderly flow of legal immigrants, then base immigration on reciprocity so that there is a flow in both directions. Some sort of international visitor exchange mechanism. A border that is porous but bi-directional. At least for people who do no harm.
Why does immigration matter in the resource equation ? We in the USA are still consuming much more than developing countries from which most of our immigrants now come. Population growth by immigration is just as problematic as population growth by domestic birth. When immigrants move from a low-per-capita-energy-use country to high-per-capita-energy-use country (e.g. from Guatemala to USA) their energy use likely goes up manyfold because they adopt the american life style.
They virtually can't avoid drawing more energy when moving to Europe, the USA, Russia. One reason almost universally overlooked is this: People from the global south live mostly in warm countries. The land mass that is in cold southern climates is small compared to the land mass in the cold northern climates. Since most people therefore migrate from warm countries to the north, they will now often heat in winter. Heat is a huge energy draw.
The other issue is: When people immigrate, we cannot even legitimately tell them in any one-sided fashion not to consume. And after all, how could we legitimately deny immigrants the same living standard once they live and contribute here ? We should. To do otherwise would be morally repugnant, once they are here and work their butts of to work in jobs that ordinary citizens don't want to do.
But ironically, for that very same reason we also need to limit immigration from poor countries. We are living a moral lie if we want to let millions of immigrants from poor countries in and let them all have a car, an energy-efficient house, and all our trappings of modern life while also talking about sustainability and giving more space to nature.
Many of the gains from energy and resource savings would be more than erased by new influx of more people. Remember, it is not only about energy shortage. It is also about raw materials shortage, pollution from producing various goods we depend on. And it does not matter whether or not we pollute in the USA or in other countries from outsourcing our production.
Most of OUR pollution happens in OTHER countries. The pollution from our consumption happens not here but in China and other countries that produce our goods. That's why, contrary to the 1970s, when we lived next to smokestacks, we no longer talk about overpopulation. The problems that came with overpopulation have been moved beyond our horizon. Quite literally. Off-shore.
Thus, to blame China for its pollution etc is very hipocritical. Because China makes most of our consumer goods now. They pick up all the horrible side effects (pollution, energy, inhumane jobs) that we would, at least in part, have here in our country if we produced all those goods ourselves. But don't worry, it will all come around back to us. The oceans and atmosphere are all one.
Back to immigration: To many people on the left my reasoning reasoning will sound racist or xenophobic or like a travesty. It will sound like as though we want to keep our cushy living standard and not share it with everyone else on the planet. It will sound selfish.
Of course, we too, in the USA, must get our consumption way way down. But it takes decades. While that process is under way, it does not make sense to let more potential consumers in while we even still need to assimilate and give the good life to all those who are already here and slaving their butt off.
To give credit to those on the left who fear xenophobia: To some immigration opponents, xenophobia may indeed be the underlying motivation. But not for all. And even xenophobia is not that simple or monolithic.
However, is it racism when there is - in my opinion legitimate - concern rapid cultural change concomitant with large migration ? People rightfully fear too rapid of a cultural shift, the loss of traditions (especially in Europe) and ways of doing things that are dear to them. To make it just a racism thing is too simple. If a country such as Buthan were to restrict immigration from westerners, we would see that as okay. So why the double standard, I wonder ? Because racism plays or at least played a role in shaping foreign policy towards immigration-origin countries, does that mean that now the only fair remedy is to open the flood gates ? Or is the only fair interpretation that it is all about racism ? That is just too simple and does not account for some legitimate questions around what rapid demographic and cultural shifts may bring for any society.
I also have empathy with people who rightfully fear parallel societies evolving that are not absorbed into a greater whole. For society to act in unison for all the coming problems to be addressed, we cannot afford a splintered society that runs in all kinds of opposite directions. I support plurality and multitude of cultures. I would prefer that the rate of absorption is be gradual, akin to an adiabatic physical process.
But even all the cultural tensions aside, my main point here is sustainability. Many immigrants from high-birth-rate places continue their patterns once they are here. Because high birth rates are religiously and culturally ingrained and not just motivated by high infant mortality. If it was only about infant mortality then birth rates in developing countries would have stabilized when medical care started to become better. But it did not stabilize. People have continued their long held patterns. One does not change long-held beliefs quickly.
The following gets into more dicey territory: There is a deep-seated concern of overpopulation even when it comes more in the form of fear from being crowded out by people other than themselves. I cannot deny that fear. I cannot deny fears that could have something to do with fear of people who look and act very differently. I recognize that this fear needs to be confronted and spelled out and put out in the open. I am sure it is shared by many. But to just slap the label "racism" on it is too simple. It squelshes dialogue and an empathetic way to connect on the issue. It is also false to suggest that people in immigration-origin countries such as Mexico don't have similar fears, which by the same token could just as much be slapped with the label "racism". Racism exists in a lot of places, even the most unexpected ones. But to leave it at this labelling this without any dialogue that is connecting and ultimately about human needs, is harmful.
If we were to have population stability nationwide as well within various demographic ethnic groups, most people would not be so worried. After all we define ourselves as a multicultural immigrant nation. In Europe it is understandably less so because cultures are more well delineated between countries and cultures as of now.
But even in the USA, it is the speed of the shift, faster than ever before, that must be taken seriously. Plus, as far as the rights of the working people go: instead of importing low cost slave-like labor, we should instead increase farm labor wages so that any person already here is willing to do those jobs.
Food is too cheap anyways as far as the percentage of people's monthly income. 100 years ago the percentage spent on food was a lot higher. In return, obviously, the percentage spent on rent or mortgage was lower. Higher wages for those that pick our food would also benefit all of those who already are in the country already. We need more small scale manual labor farms anyways. Have farms that people love to live at, make it a life style worth living. Mega farms are not worth living at and the denuded countryside is not worth living at. Mega farms are not long term sustainable because they are highly mechanised. But with fossil fuels on the way out and organic farming being more labor intensive, mega farms probably will be dinosaurs.
The countryside thus needs to be re-invented, re-imagined and revitalized so that people want to live there and work there and perhaps can work there part time since many people dont want to work on the farm all the time.
Start by communally buying or donating money for buying land from big farms to start new small scale farms. Farms that use manual labour and sell to local towns. Farms that are cooperatively owned by people who live in the nearby towns. The other reason is brain-drain. The brightest and smartest are weaned away from those countries that need them most. Much better would be to support those people in their own countries to flourish and thrive.
And then finally let me bring up this thorny issue of accountability:
Each country or region is responsible to keep their population down to a level that their local area can support. That holds even if a country has in the past or even presently still is impacted by colonialization patterns from the west (or increasingly by China too). Nobody, except perhaps radical fundamentalists from ISIS, put a gun to anybody to bear children for them. The choice to get children is a personal one. It is made much more difficult by lack of women's rights for sure. The fact that women are the victims in this does not mean that the embedding society as a whole now needs to be rescued from their grave mistakes.
We can promote, support human rights and must do so. In fact we don't give the right kind of help. We give the wrong kind of help, not enough resources on conflict-de-escalation. By focusing solely on military intervention we provide a poor example for anyone to follow.
We have to kind of "enforce" local carrying capacity where people learn to live within their own areas and within their own means. At least to a degree. I am not oblivious that climate change will give us the moral obligation to help others and let people from climate-changed countries move to more habitable areas. Especially because we in the first world have largely helped cause it. But not only.
The deforestation of rain forests in the global south and thus poor countries has not only been at the hands of evil corporations. Many poor peasant farmers have chopped down and burned down rain forest for grazing. That has been going on for a long time. Again because of expanding out of control population. The story that it is only log exporters is true in certain parts of the world, but not everywhere to the same degree. And deforestation is just as much of a contributor to global warming as that of industrialized nations. Even if you never had industrialization but chopped down all rain forests of the world (in which case they would go up in flames and release lots of previously bound carbon into the air), even then one might have global warming. It would be slower, but it may very well still have happened. So, it is too simple to lay the blame 100% on the developed world.
Quite honestly, I don't know what will happen if populations start to collapse in the global south. I hope it can be avoided. In the global south, population growth rates need to decline, and in the global north, populations need to decline even quicker AND consumption rates need to collapse voluntarily. But nobody is free from culpability. Maybe some people(s) are. Those who have lived peacefully with nature and kept their population in check. Perhaps the nomadic tribes in the Sahara or Namibia. Or the people of Buthan, who may have lived in harmony with nature and who kept western influence at bay. But pretty much everywhere people have to downsize something. Be it population or consumption or both. I would say BOTH. It is safer that way and in everybody's interest, including that of all the other species who have a voice that we don't hear.
The long term vision cannot be that large shipments of food crisscross the oceans or continents to support people living in areas far beyond their natural carrying capacity. The middle east has grown by leaps and bounds far beyond their natural carrying capacity. That goes for instance also for both Israel as well Palestine. There is a population arms race going on for political reasons. Are those people to be spared the consequences of their actions ? Those are morally very vexing questions that we have not even begun to openly discuss.
This is what so worries me. The lack of discussion on those thorny issues. No open debate, no TV shows (certainly not in the USA) that truly and honestly talk about those questions and have open debates without throwing back and forth label-accusations of racism, xenophobia, etc etc.
It will be silent avoidance patterns of the "business as usual" that will cause calamity on a scale not seen. And we are all part of it. Even those self-appointed activists that don't dare to venture out of their comfort zone and operate with the same old labelling that makes the world just all-too simple-looking. An us-versus-them world that just replicates the same thought patterns that our more or less appointed leaders have. Appointed maybe, but certainly dis-appointing !
The population arms race will end in catastrophe for everyone involved because water resources are probably dwindling. Even de-salination takes huge amounts of energy. Yet ultimately, if not now, then later societies must be held accountable for their own population management.
But is this seemingly un-yielding apathetic or closed-door way of seeing the world really the world I want ?
No, I don't. When I look in my heart then this is not what I want.
I cannot see people turned back or gunned down at international borders because they want to flee mayhem. I want a world that is ultimately one where we don't have to have borders. Where eventually there is a good and balanced life everywhere in the world and people can move freely.
I know that is utopian stuff. I admit I don't know how well that could ever work. I have that a probably similar dream of this future world as those persons in social justice movements who already now demand open borders.
So, that was my inner idealist speaking. But here comes my inner realist. My inner realist is cautious, conservative and gets very upset when idealists operate on idealized assumptions that may not come true or are not well researched.
So my inner realist does not have as much faith in people to make adjustments voluntarily. He thinks that people must learn the hard way that they first need to be stewards of their own area before they can move to other areas in large numbers. Otherwise they just shift the problem around.
Both my inner idealist and my inner realist want the same longterm outcome, just by different means. The realist thinks that it all turns to pumpkins and mice if the idealist scenario blows up. The idealist in me is more focused on the end result and sees the inhumanity of implementing harshness on people even if it could go wrong.
I have to say that I find it very liberating to view myself as having those two sides in me (my inner idealist and my inner realist), because I can give them both room. None of them is wrong. Maybe they can work it out together ?
On the solution level it is not an either/or question either. As so often, it is about the degree of something. I (probably the realist) am not proposing an immigration stop altogether. But one that is based on a conversation within our nation(s) and between the nations that is honest, transparent and not guided by power-interests but by what the people want.
What is very educational to me is that I am faltering at that question on what to DO about it on the implementation level, both morally and strategically. And maybe that is meant to be. Because the lesson I am learning from this inability is this:
What I deeply know in my heart is that we need conversation. We need it soon. We need it world-wide. And it will be that conversation that is much more likely to bring about the solution. We should not approach such a conversation with pre-conceived answers in our mind. Instead trust that such a conversation is the most likely to bring about an "organic" answer.
Nature (or the universe or God) has given us that ability to have and build empathy when we talk to one another. Such as conversation will turn the tide from becoming adversarial to cooperative. That conversation, across nations, cultures, boundaries, ethnicities is what I envision will be the most likely process that leads to a congruent solution. Then I am confident the solution will emerge.
I am not confident that we get to such conversation given what people have been taught for 5000 years on how to solve conflicts. But IF the conversation happens, and with the intent to make life beautiful for everyone, I am confident. Any solution that emerges only from power-interests or from a "me-first" perspective on anybody's part is bound to fail. Period. That is my unyielding belief and intuition.
The reason why conversations are very thorny is because people see people's motives as illegitimate because they cannot see past the veneer and look at the underlying needs..
Like the legitimate questions whether countries that do manage their population well should become overflow areas for those that don't. Is that a fair and sustainable expectation ? Rather than anybody, including me or right-wing talk radio show hosts to simply purport to give the answer, we must have a dialogue. I can see why people think in those terms because I am stuck in those areas myself. But without dialogue there is not going to be peace or justice. It will be the rightwingers against the leftwingers. One side may win, but if one loses then in the end everyone loses. We will lose our common humanity because we did not talk before reaching a solution. We did not even try to strive for a common solution !
To just jump to a total open border policy would not even help those countries as it would lessen the pressure to get it under control. But before we keep talking about strategies, I see it ever more clearly that even I am stuck in strategies.
Rather than making statements, opinions, assumptions, let us convert our statements into questions. I converted the below ones from internal convictions into questions that I think we need to discuss amongst all countries (and not leave it to only the powerful):
So, basically, these are but a few questions that I am not so sure if they are ever discussed with clarity and non-judgment in a worldwide forum and face to face and with scientific underpinnings. Because certain research is too hot a potato. Reputations and careers may be in peril when people are labelled this or that.
That dynamic happens when people start to see inhumanity rather than humanity in those who bring up and struggle with those questions and want them resolved.
Reduce religious fundamentalism.
That is another one of those really tricky questions. The working assumption is that "that you cannot even talk to those people. Don't even bother". Or if they are even violent or border-line violent fundamentalists then "you should not even talk to them because you would give them legitimacy".
While I don't proclaim to have all the answers, I kind of intuit what might work and what I think has certainly not been tried on a sufficient enough scale. And scale, as in so many cases, is what it may take.
It may require that that people with some guts, and certainly pluralistic values go into more or less conservative churches, mosques, synagogues or whatever spiritual place you think you find challenging but worth connecting. Your spiritual journey will be to talk to those who we least feel in common with. But as I am starting to realize and will try to show you, it is about much more than "talk".
I want to search for a dialogue with another human being. Those of us who are pluralistically minded should obviously not barge in there with the idea that "they have got it all wrong". The moment you come in there with that inner energy, it is not going to work. By "to work" I mean that the connection is not going to happen. If you have any agenda other than the connection, it is already going to be tainted and even be noticed by the other person. Of course, your larger agenda is going to be the humanity of us all and how that may hopefully contribute to all our well being. But in the moment with that person, you are letting go of any such expectation or plotting. This is about finding actual humanity behind even someone who behaves in ways that your judgmental part thinks of as irrational or outright crazy.
You are clear that a dialogue never ever legitimizes their actions or their often very harsh, discriminatory rhetoric that may have happened in the past or may even come up when you talk to a person of intense beliefs. You are in touch with your own feelings and mournings when people go into their headspace and talk about strategies and things that are challenging for you to hear. In that inner space you are consciously and presently vulnerable but you are fearless at the same time. What is there to fear ? Nothing can hurt you emotionally when you are present to their feelings and needs.
And in time we need to make that clear to ourselves and possibly verbally to the other person that our wanting a connection is about just that: making a connection on the heart level beyond all that muck and judgment.
I would call it a form of curious and caring presence. Where one asks the person in front of you what is going on in them. "What are your values ?". "What is your vision of this world ?". You listen. You don't talk much. You give them space. And you intercede with questions that are going deeper into their vision. I envision such a space to be quiet. The exchange of words is not too slow, not too fast but carried by intention. You can slow down the other person in their rapid fire thoughts by being in presence, silence and listening. At some point they may well notice that you are truly listening and that they don't need to keep that rapid fire words going in order to gain your presence. But listening does not mean that you listen to each and every word. You listen to their needs, their heart.
I have not yet done the above activity much yet either. But I would guess that when people are asked to freely dream their vision, they may perhaps realize all by themselves, while they are talking to you, that you too have your own dreams. And that they may take joy in your vision too. Maybe. I am not promising anything. But as long as your vision is not exclusionary or threatening to them, they may start to shift and embrace yours. You may start to get excited about some beautiful aspects of their vision. Not all of them, but parts of them that speak of beautiful vistas, joyful peaceful people. Can anybody think of someone's ultimate vision that does not have that element in them ?
Let me be clear. I am not talking about people's strategies. If you talk about strategies than it will all disintegrate. If you were to talk to an extremist about their strategies you would be in horror (rightfully so) and get sickened on how they want to achieve their visions and dreams. And some of what looks as dreams may still be strategies to meet a deeper need. So, sometimes the two (strategies and needs) are not clear even to us OR to them ! If we use Nonviolent Communication, we will be clearer about needs. But our person across the table does not need to be schooled in NVC in order to understand your intent to truly get towards their needs. To truly be present with it. To truly delve into their world. Together with them.
So, in other words, in a way you would go on a journey with them. An inner journey where they take you into their heart as to what truly matters to them. It is an ultimately very personal journey. And I think that that is where the connection happens. We are all on a journey. We are all wanting on some level a wonderful life.
Some seek it mostly in the afterlife and really don't seem to care about this life here on earth. Yet, it seems then curious why some people so fervently are invested in all their activity on earth if they are not actually caring about this life here. But I would say don't let that distract you when people talk about their visions. Even the visions in the afterlife.
I admit I must sound like someone who is in spiritual new age lala-land. And on some level I know that there is absolutely no guarantee that this works. But remember, this is not about manipulation. If this is about manipulation or if the other person thinks that it is, it is not working. It is about connecting. Once you make a connection, the other person is much more likely going to be taken on your own journey. On what kind of life you dream. Or you could be the person who starts talking about your vision.
Eventually, when you have a connection, there is at least a chance (no guarantee) that there is a recognition of mutual humanity and needs that people will transform and re-think of the strategies to meet their needs. But that cannot happen until one has heard each other's needs and visions.
That is where I am having an epiphany. In conventional Nonviolent Communication texts you read about communicating feelings and needs. Here however, I wonder, especially when talking to people of profoundly immersed spiritual beliefs, I think this is about not just feelings and needs. Needs seems to be too insular. I would say it is feelings and needs and dreams and visions. All of those.
Once those connections are made, and when someone is ready to truly embrace the creation of a world (in the here and now) that is for everybody, then we can strategize together. We will not vilify one another. When a strategy comes up that does not meet your needs, you can communicate it. But always with the focus that has both the other person's and your own need in focus. On the need level we are all the same. That is a major nut to crack, but that is the essence of needs. That we all have them. All human beings.
Of course I am still struggling with questions like: A reduction in fundamentalism also requires that people home school less and will want to send their children to public schools that teach pluralistic civic values and basic essential life skills (conflict resolution for instance, peace making, communal living etc).
But suddenly when I envision myself that I can perhaps transmit that wisdom to someone in ways that does not require all this "strategizing". When you make a connection it has a sweet quality to it. When you make a connection, then this may give that other person such a big epiphany that they will tell their own children or they may suddenly have a different energy about how they teach their children to be more empathetic and connecting with others. It would not come through direct words but their own inner transformation. I have that faith that this might be the path towards connecting with those who we previously saw as "on the other side of the isle". On some level we need to let go of that metaphor as soon as we enter the space in which we want to have a field of connection. Again the wisdom of Rumi comes to mind: Will you Meet Me in the Field ?
I previously thought that "If you want to talk to people in communities that are quite opposite from your own views, don't do it alone". I would say now that it depends. Certainly join a group such as the transpartisan alliance. Join a group that practices nonviolent communication (NVC). There are tons of free practice groups.
But I am now starting to think whether the truly spiritual unfolds in a one-on-one dialogue. Nobody else in the room. The intentionality, the silence surrounding you. No background music, no distractions. Just you and that who is "the other" person. I really believe that the surroundings you meet someone in matter a lot as they set the stage for what I call "presence".
It certainly seems to me to be of great value to learn NVC first. It gives you that awareness on how to develop empathy for those that you don't agree with. But perhaps more, you start with yourself first. Empathy for your own needs and yourself. Because that is where it flows from. When you empathize with yourself and connect with yourself, that is when you connect with others. It is a spiritual practice and much more than a mere "tool".
Change the media landscape and ownership
Help change what is shown on TV. Call your TV stations and ask them relentlessly to no longer show trash on TV. They need to hear from us. It is in their best interest to know that a lot of what they produce no longer meets our needs. Why should they put all that life energy into something that people no longer find life enriching ?
Have call-in campaigns that bombard the media outlets with criticism of their shallow coverage. Avoid TV in general as much as you can. If you watch it, then in order to criticize it or to support the few shows that ARE thoughtful, such as Democracy Now.
It may be helpful to stay away from professional sports events that make those media outlets richter. Avoid goods that are advertised on TV. Unless their ownership were to offset the bad effects (e.g. perhaps a hybrid car advertised on TV). Because a portion of those goods goes towards advertising dollars that again pay those TV stations.
Avoid political candidates that spend too many TV advertising dollars unless those candidates are truly outstanding. But any candidate that oversimplifies or just plasters the air waves us a 'no no' for me.
If in doubt, support those that run a grassroots, internet based, print-media based campaign. The current media must be starved if they cannot be transformed. They are seemingly incurably ill and unlikely to be reformed.
Even call Christian TV stations and ask them to change their message into one where Gods creation deserves protection and healing for future generations. Otherwise Jesus will arrive and nobody is here to greet him because everyone is already choked from pollution, dying fish and the oxygen all gone.
Roll back our sports culture.
This professional sports culture is a huge resource and mental drain on society. We do not need stars to admire. We need real role models. But down-to-earth role models. How are unreachable stars supposed to be true role models ? Many of them live in a different world from yours in aspects of income, life style, perspective.
We ourselves can and should be the best role models. Not some sports mega star. I mean, really, what makes those highly overpaid people good role models ? Those who throug their million-dollar income likely tend to live life in decadent luxury and who pose on magazine covers or advertisements for overpriced wasteful products that are all too often made off-shore under questionable working conditions ? Are those our role models ?
Is it enough to be a role model just because they perhaps overcame adversity and great odds and are now a millionaire ? Is that the trajectory we should then aspire too as well ? And if we don't make it to where they are, wouldn't we feel small already ?
We all overcome adversity and great odds every day. Take for instance everyday people who lie in cancer wards and those who care for them. They are heroes in their own right. More so than some of the biggest sports star perhaps.
People who care for the elderly, being paid a pittance, often times without their own health insurance. Your waiter or waitress that brings you food and may never get to own their own living space. Therefore please tell your friends how misleading and vain professional sports has become and how little it contributes to society.
It appears to contribute to community, but there are much better option that are real. Maybe 80 years ago, it was different. It was modest, it was truly communal. Players played in modest arenas and had side jobs to make an average worker's income.
That modesty is long gone. It is just a phantasy show. Also boycott the Olympics. And question highschool team sports. Because it all seems to be imbued with those similar hero images that flicker over our hollywood movie screens that make us feel lesser and so we buy stuff to counteract that feeling.
Why are American students doing so poorly in comparison to several other countries ?
One reason is that other countries do not have sports teams in their schools. Germany for instance does not, nor does Finland or most Asian countries. Team sports in those countries happens strictly outside schools and is pursued in sports clubs that are voluntary in nature.
Suggest that your school drops their football team in favor of education that has a higher likelihood of building community and healthy self-awareness. At least start the conversation. Athletics is different. It is still okay to focus on that kind of sports since that is truly healthy and also everyone can participate, not only the sports champions that the cheer leader girls then supposedly go for.
As such, the current sports culture even corrupts values by formulating a rather one-dimensional idea about what bodies are considered the most beautiful and attractive. Leave team sports a voluntary pursuit that those who love it can engage in. But don't spend tax payer money and resources on it.
Change the political system.
Not only how elections are financed. Not only that corporations are not people. That too, but it is not enough. Start on for instance on the state or county level. File an initiative that creates a proportional representation system, much like Germany or New Zealand has. That system will allow small parties (green party, etc) to get actual seats and challenge the dominance of the do-nothing-parties such as the democrats and the republicans. Proportional representation reflects the will of the people much better. And it forces compromise via coalition building and at the same time does not force big parties into pandering to extremists such as Christian fundamentalists. And institute direct democracy in those states where it is not yet happening. And eventually it might happen on the federal level. Therefore, every politician that counts him/herself as progressive MUST support these key longterm goals. If they do not, they are out.
Start a new political party.
Start one that addresses all of these concerns. One that is beyond left and right. One that straddles 90% of people's opinions and needs. One that speaks to people from the left and the right. That is a tough one. But has anybody truly tried ? A party that challenges those in power that are sitting on their butt and don't actually have a viable and worthwhile vision. Sometimes one just needs to start afresh. Republicans and Democrats just are too entrenched. And that entrenchedness is also visible in other countries with two major parties, even those countries with parlamentary systems. But at least in those countries, small parties do have a chance and will make life hard for the stablished parties when the large parties no longer listen to the people. Thus, a change in the political system itself seems needed to give any new party a realistic chance. Yet, you can start the dialogue about a new party today. You can interview people to see where the 90% consensus mark is. You will be surprised. Go to the transpartisan alliance and see for yourself how much you have in common with common people on the other side of the isle. Those in power, including the media, certainly do not want you to know that. Divide and conquer is the name of the game that is played here. With disastrous consequences for ultimately all of us (including the ones in power or at least their grand children).
Foster a culture of non-violence.
Educate yourself and others about Nonviolent Communication. Now, some may ask, how I the world can we combat institutional or individual criminal violence with non-violence ? Isn't that some peacenick's hopeless ballooney ? Isn't it that some thugs will only back down if they fear violence ? Don't we need to own a gun so that people will not take advantage of our vulnerability because the cost to those contemplating to attack us is too high ? I will say this: To dissuade individual violence, having a gun seems at certain times a prudent thing. If I live far out in the countryside far away from any nearest police station, I probably would have one gun. Not 20 guns. Not 1000 rounds of ammo. In a dangerous neighborhood, perhaps there too. But especially if I live in a dangerous neighborhood: Unless I am at the same time engaged in the community to actually counteract violence with messages of non-violence, I am implicitly increasing the potential for violence by having a gun. I am supporting gun manufacturers that profit from violence in the world and will gladly sell any gun to anyone. Thus, my defensive weapon needs to be counteracted by my helping out those who may otherwise fall into the hands of gangs. Also, if you do carry a gun, you are more likely to not back away from a dangerous confrontation. You are more apt to play hardball and verbally assault someone rather than to de-escalate by walking away or by not insisting on being right. How about institutional violence ? Violence by the state ? Look at what happened in Syria. The demonstrators started peacefully. The government gunned down peaceful demonstrators. Then at some point, the opposition started to resort to violence as well. Well, well, do we see what the consequences are now ? The country is in worse shape than ever. Not that the counter-violence was carried by illegitimate anger. Oh, the anger was legitimate. Anger at a horrible regime that tortures, maims, kills on a daily basis. A regime that is arrogant in its unyielding entitlement claim for absolute power. But there could have been perhaps different ways to challenge the powers. Like friends and family of police force members taking them aside on an afternoon walk to tell them that we wish for a better country and that security is not found in an absolutist state. Wifes of those who shoot at demonstrators telling their husbands that they need to quit their job. That they somehow will find something else and get through. That killing unarmed civilians is unacceptable. Do not have sex with a man that engages in state-sanctioned violence. Non-violent demonstrations are good. And yet, even then innocent people get killed. But nonviolent demonstrations are usually more for fostering community amongst those who demonstrate. They are for the media to show the rest of the country that there is a critical mass. Will those in power listen ? It rarely happens. It has happend in Egypt though. But I am not sure if the violent aspects of the demonstrations there were what made it work. If history is a guide, non-violence has worked more often than violence. One can threatend mass-strikes, mass-civil disobedience and that often does the trick too. But all of those are non-violent in nature. But as I say, simply taking to the streets has too much of this preaching to the quoir aspect to it. What really has to happen is that people reach across the isles. And that is much more work. It is tedious. It is day to day. But it reflects just how much we have to roll back (or roll forward, really) all the entrenched divisions that run through much of the world's societies by seeing that we are One in our needs. That is hard work. It is much more than just taking to the streets once a year or lifetime. And it is also internal work. To confront and talk and ultimately level with those who you disagree with - that is deeply Spiritiual work ! I would say, spirituality and mass-demonstrations came together on one of occasions when Martin Luther King spoke on the Washington Mall. If you listen to his words, you can see that he spoke of coming together as a people. I don't think there were burning cars or rocks thrown during that particular demonstration. The civil rights movement was by and large non-violent. And thus it was effective. Although the job is really far from over. Non-violent action is not free from danger. But if the action happens in one-on-one conversations, creating understanding and empathy for one another, walking in one another's shoes, then it seems utterly difficult for anyone to point a gun at you or turn you in to the authorities. Because you come from a place of love and connection. Yes, love is a powerful force and many fear it because it can transform people. But what alternative do we have that works better than this ? I don't see any.
Get off debt.
Buy a house in cash together with 5 other people. Since everyone has to have 20% down on their own house, why not pool the 20% and buy a house together, in cash ? Every dollar less in the bank means that the bank cannot lend $10 to others. That means even on a personal level you drastically impact the bank's ability to create more debt and unholy dependencies. Also help create new nonprofit banks that help you buy a share of a house communally. Currently, there is no such system.
Demand a better education system.
One that is free even at the university level as is the case in several other countries. Boycott expensive education where possible. If at all, support the community colleges by attending them. But even there, be choosy. Do not go to for-profit colleges or universities. Try to be a self taught person. And then teach others for free. It is like bartering. No money involved. No debt involved. Picket in front of university enrollment offices to dissuade people to enroll if they need to get into debt that will crush them later on. Tell them to study abroad where it is cheaper. Instead create your own alternative institutions, run communally. You can rent rooms in community centers for free or a small fee. Give away knowledge. Put it on the web.
Demand that the K-through-12 education system teaches civility, community, money skills, emotional skills, critical and complex thinking. Sex education, how to raise a child and what it entails. And a type of self identification that is not based on having to impress others, including when you look for a romantic partner.
As long as personal identity is based on consumption, people will flock to be consumers, no matter whether we live in capitalism or socialism. Thus, works by Eckhart Tolle ("power of now") are must-reads and standard texts, as well as Marshall Rosenberg (nonviolent communication).
Tell schools not to have soft drinks but instead serve local organic food. Have parents or grand parents participate in the cooking if necessary. Look at how some schools made it happen and learn from them.
Get rid of team sports programs that suck out money and mess with people's values. Replace team sports with other team activities, such as planting trees, volunteering in a retirement home, helping a disabled member of your community, etc. Or hiking, biking, camping in nature. One of my fondest memories was a 10th grade 2 week trip to Heidelberg organized by my public school.
Consider living in an intentional community.
Join one or create your own. It is worth a try. Plus you can afford to live in places that otherwise you could never afford. In a community you can share a pet (pets too command a lot of resources via meat consumption), a car, refrigerator, kitchen appliances, child care, cooking a meal, going shopping, share an internet connection, share a computer, a phone, a garden, etc etc. And you can recycle your clothes on a free pile. You share common space and thus lower your heating resources by a lot. You learn to get along with others. It also prepares you to have your own family some day. If you own the house you can share the cost of upgrading the house. Instead of upgrading 5 houses with moderate results and high costs, you upgrade 1 house with high results and moderate cost (since the cost is shared and you can afford even better windows, insulation, heat pump, solar system etc). If you rent, then rent from a responsible land lord with a community mind and one that has paid of his home (or is close to doing so) so that your rent does not support the banks.
Once the owner's house is paid off, the landlord can at least potentially afford to lower the rent drastically. You can also maybe buy a piece of land, put a bunch of trailers or used RVs on it and live in a loose arrangement, debt free, hassle free. Since you only need to make one trip for all people to get all the food, living far out is not as bad as it would be if you lived alone. And you always have buddies in the trailer right next to you. If there are jobs in the nearest town, you can drive into town together. With the money saved, you can later on buy your own house or workplace (e.g. a café ). People have done it. So can you. Grow old communally, raise children communally, own a pet, a car, etc communally. It will likely make you happier if you do it with the right people. And living communally you will find out what sort of people you will want to live with and with which ones you wont. Just like in one-on-one relationships, you may need to give it more than one try to get good at it. But when it works, it works beautifully. You will grow your skills and you will grow as a person.
Keep yourself healthy.
Mentally and physically. Dont smoke cigarettes. Don't drive drunk or recklessly or unsafely. Don't go about your day hurried if you can. Hurried people get into accidents much more. If you get sick and need to be in the hospital, that too gobbles up a lot of resources. And you prevent yourself from being an active citizen. Often times our workplace or our commitments do not make it easy to go jogging, biking, yoga, gymnastics etc. Or to keep stress outside our lives. But our long term choices, such as workplace, career, will set the stage for your future. Do you really need a high pressure cooker job ? Do you really need that promotion even though you will be under that much more stress from the added responsibility ? Thus we need to choose accordingly. Create conditions that may allow you to free yourself from a crappy job that does not allow you any work life balance. Save money so that you can risk asking for more and risk losing your job for a while. For that you need to reduce expenses such as rent or transportation. If you own or rent a house, rent out a room or two. Short term renters pay you more and are easier to get rid of if they don't work out. Cook at home if you have the time. Find neighbors to cook with and share meals with. That saves time. Ride share to save on gas and car upkeep.
Avoid organized crime
Do not buy drugs in such a way that it supports organized crime. Move to a state where e.g. marihuana is legal. Organized crime is a huge drain on resources because drug lords are part of the super rich class. They also kill and maim people and engage in people and sex trafficking. And organized crime is a drain on police resources and leads to its expansion.
Long-term, I'd love to say that we do not need more prisons or police power, but if organized crime expands, then, at least in the short run, we may unfortunately need prisons, just to protect the public, at least until such time when Restorative Justice becomes common-place and across national borders. We are still so far away from that, regrettably. Restorative justice can heal people so they don't repeat crimes.
And the thing I am still grappling with is the idea of Deterrence. Prison sentences have proven to be a deterrent but not reliably so, or else there would be no crimes. In some areas (white collar crimes) maybe the deterrents are not big enough, one might say.
But as we can clearly see, deterrence only works in a percentage of the cases. We truly don't know what percentage that is because we don't know how many people would commit a crime if there were no punitive measures. So, I am not on board with people who say that prisons don't work at all. And at the very least they protect the public from those who we currently don't know how to heal. And for many victims, prison is a way to "even the score" to give them a sense of "justice served", which must relate to some need that I have not yet identified. Is "fairness" a need ? But hasn't many a criminal already suffered in their own life as well ? Is it always that simple ? Those are questions where I have no answers and only pointers towards where the answers may lie.
What I know is that, long term, restorative justice would give people different opportunities. Poverty from social injustice and carrying capacity overshoot is again one contributor. Some of it is misrecognition of needs (i.e. what we tend to call "greed"). Long term, it is about all of those. Prisons are just a temporary band-aid because society has not thought deeply about those problems.
But what each and everyone of us can do is to not support "businesses" that use your money to do harmful things to other people. Yet, that is just one side of the coin. It is not the whole answer. And the War on Drugs just has been too much unilaterally been focussed on that question and not on restorative justice.
That just again shows that single-issue solutions don't cure a problem but just provoke new problems in unexpected places.
Be a mentor for a young person.
A lot of organized crime lures young people who have no future or think they have no future. Because they have not learned how to create a future for themselves. Use big brothers, big sisters or a similar network. Be a role model. It also helps you think about how you would raise your own child. You can lift them up.
Be a peacemaker.
Join a group that engages in grassroots peacemaking. Such as Israeli- palestinian groups. Why ? the military and the defense industry loves it when we keep being divided. They owe their existence to the conflicts in the world or a heightned potential thereof. If peace broke out world wide, they would absolutely hate it. The military's supposed legitimacy to exist rests on the existence of enemies. If you make peace with those who support your enemies, your enemies will get less support. Befriend someone from Isreal and someone from Palestine. Introduce them to one another. You can use online social networking tools to do that. Ask them to talk to one another. If online social networks wont do, use real letters. There got to be penfriend organizations that help out. Be a mediator. Be it locally or globally. Mediate between your friends. Your family members. Learn how to mediate. Many cities have free mediation courses for those willing to volunteer as mediators. Peace making starts at home and that also means learning how to react and engage empathetically with others. We have to practice it in our own lives in order to affect change on a global scale. It is a life long learning process. The idea of "I am done learning now" is not generally rewarded by the universe.
Reduce your energy usage.
If you have single pane windows and you rent or you cannot afford better windows yet, then use window foil to insulate your windows. Not just in winter. Do it once and do it right. You will hardly see the foil and it works wonders. Insulate floors too. They are a huge heat drain. Use LED lightbulbs. They are getting cheap now and the light becomes warmer. Do not use CFLs. Incandescent ones are okay in winter if the heat they give off truly helps heat your room. But that only works if your room is well insulated. Otherwise it is wasted heat. In summer put your clothes on a clothes rack or clothes line. At least big heavy things like trousers, towels, bed sheets. They last longer that way too. And it does not take a long time to hang them since you wont wash many of those at any time. The rest will dry a lot faster in the dryer if you take the big items out. When you idle your car, put it in neutral. Easier on your automatic transmission. If you must have a car and are about to buy another one, perhaps buy a used hybrid car with a good battery still under warranty (or if not, then at least at a much lower price). Moving into community house of course reduces your energy usage drastically. Fewer trips to the store. Buy the food communally. For that, have a common food fund. Cook together. That all saves lots of energy. Fly less. Make most of your friends locally if you can. Better even if they are in your neighborhood. You can also introduce your friends to one another, creating a more tight-knit web of friends. That too will save energy for all of them. Because you will go to events together as a group, socialize more as a group. That too reduces energy. Turn down the heat at night. Have some warm blankets instead or preheat your blanket with an electric blanket or a warm water bottle. That is less expensive than heating your room. It is better for your air-ways too.
Create a self help or meetup group or join one.
Why pay professionals for things like counseling, learning how to cook, grow or preserve food ? For counseling: unless of course it is a serious affliction that absolutely needs professional help. But first line is self help groups. You hear other people how they cope with their challenges. You network, you get references for professionals and you empower each other. All with little or no money. The less money the less you empower the rich. Because money can be accumulated. Bartered or free services cannot be accumulated. Or even if they could (via local money systems), they are usually closer to equitable compensation because the wage disparity in those networks is less than in the real world.
Be a knowledge multiplier.
Personal life style choices and personal wisdom only go so and so far. Wisdom that matters to you and you think is truly pertinent, that wisdom is meant to be shared. You received it as a gift, from inspiration or others. You can share it with others.
To get to where we need to go, every person needs to talk to several more people. Because only a fraction of those people may actually change. Overcome our enculturated reluctance to tell people what to do.
This reluctance is what those who benefit from the status quo just love you to feel. That we all sit in our individual silos and do not dare to recommend one another what we could do.
You also inspire by living your life successfully while also enacting your values. You can write to schools, teachers, media, nonprofits and ask them to disseminate your ideas.
Knowledge is power. If you disseminate your knowledge for free, you empower others. And it will come back to you eventually. Because the changes you inspire in others will help create a society that will eventually come back to benefit you.
Thus even if you were to disseminate your knowledge completely free and completely anonymously, it would still come around to you as a gift. I have benefited from free and anonymous publications and probably helped others which then helped the originator at some point. What you give comes around back to you.
Live congruent values of integrity and authenticity.
Live the change you want to see in the world. Do not support double standards along gender lines or sexual orientation lines or racial lines. And that goes both ways.
Just because males have collectively done a lot of harm, does not mean that the individual male person can be legitimately disadvantaged or distrusted as an individual just because they belong to a certain social, racial or genderwise group.
Stereotyping generates dismay and more injustice, no matter which direction. It does not lead to more empathy and understanding. Treat people how you want them to treat you if you were in their shoes.
Take responsibility for your own uncomfortable feelings if those feelings are created by unfounded or unsubstantiated stereotypes about another person.
Look at a person's actions first before you label their character as a whole. People are complicated beings. Stereotyping and labelling them is rarely truly congruent with their true being. Especially if they themselves would not agree with that label. So what good is it to label them ? It is better to inquire as to what their needs are. And you can label the actions/strategies as painful, harmful, misguided and tragic or ignorant of better ways to make life beautiful for everyone. That more connecting way of seeing it does not prevent you from taking measures to protect people from that harm. You can still take protective action by asking people to stop or, if physical violence unfolds upon someone who cannot help themselves, the protective use of force is still called for. But the energy would be a different one. Not anger but protection. Presence rather than re-active vitriolic anger.
Create a free Documentary Movie Night.
You too can do what the group Meaningful Movies has done. Show documentaries, invite panelists, film makers. But most of all, have a community discussion after the movie. And it does not have to be all sobering topics either. It is in your hands. The idea is spreading, at least in Seattle, and other similar groups have sprung up. If the main stream media fail to educate and bring the public together, we can take matters into our own hands. It is our ability to respond.
The particular event is free but based on voluntary donation. Obviously even they need screening rights and event space paid for. But it has been going on since 2003 and who knows how many people have carried that wisdom on into other places ?
If you actually read all those above suggestions, then I congratulate you and thank you from the bottom of my heart. I feel honored for my efforts that you took the patience and perseverance to read through this.
Now you have read these ideas, my hope is that you got something out of it and found something new and/or inspiring. What is your wish to do with this knowledge ?
You already may have an idea as to which area interests you most, then of course pick that one. If you are undecided where to start, or feel overwhelmed, then pick the easiest one. Or pick a random one and see where that gets you. Get a group of people together and discuss this list with them. Then you can work together and perhaps combine some efforts. Create a self help group around this list. And add to this list. Once I have my contact page up and running, then please use it to send me suggestions.
I thank you for all your efforts to help create a more wonderful unified world. It seems so far and aloof of a goal. But without a vision for it, it is not going to happen. We have to outnumber those that are dividing us.
The following will sound cliche, trite, kitschy or cheesy to some. But I mean it. As innovative and great some of my ideas might be (and countless others I am sure have had very similar ideas), the perhaps single most important intention and driving force behind it probably needs to be Love. Not the romantic love or the love towards a particular friend or family member. I mean the love that you sometimes feel when you want to be united or in unison with all people in this world. The yearning for trust, integrity, common purpose, respect, cooperation, authenticity with all people. It is that kind of love I am talking about. And it is that which we need to cultivate in ourselves before we move into action. There needs to be a spiritual basis to our actions that is driven by the search for unity rather than leaving it with the idea that we have to prove someone wrong. And Love does not mean that consequences for wrong-doers will not follow. You can and often need to imprison - at least temporarily - someone to protect the society from their actions or to dissuade others from similar actions. But you can still feel love for the wrong-doer as well. Because they did not know any better how to meet their needs. They chose a very tragic path that ended up tragic for all sides. If actions come out of vengefulness or self-righteousness, then it will just fuel more of the same. If actions or consequences are accompanied by love, more love with happen. And the often accompanying feeling of forgiveness that sets in never means condoning something or giving someone a free pass. As such, the word forgiveness is perhaps hazardous and misunderstood. I would say, people can develop Empathy for the basic needs that someone tried to meet when they did something outrageous that we disapprove of. It is very hard to develop empathy especially if the wrong-doer is recalcitrant and does not want to admit that their actions are destructive and worth regretting and mourning over. Those people have not learned yet to allow a sort of sweet pain of remorse to set in. They need to forgive themselves first in order to soften their own shell of defensiveness. Restorative Justice is one approach that fosters this and you can find a lot of material about it.
Needs by definition are always wholesome. It is the destructive strategies we need to question, reign in and dispose of. But that is as much as collective act as it is a personal one. To turn people around and show them constructive strategies, it takes large portions of society to participate. It is misguided and unrealistic to expect that people who were misguided all their life on how to meet their needs are suddenly going to change on their own. Some do. But many have built themselves castles around their life that makes their own fiction seemingly impenetable. But approach them from a place of Love when you seek to correct them or limit their power. That is one of the most difficult and seemingly incongruent places to come from when one is full of rightful indignation about what certain people in this world perpetrate onto others. Yet, I think it is the most promising way to get there. Perhaps even the only one (I can't prove it but my intuition tells me so).
Love certainly is not enough. You cannot just sit there and feel united with all the people in the universe and then do nothing. Actions must follow. And people and societies still need to be held accountable. Those items do not contradict Love. But Love is what changes hearts and makes people unite together behind a common goal. If the changes we demand come mostly from a place of anger or reluctance or compliance under threat of violence, then whatever change we do effect is unlikely to endure. When you approach the next person who is not thinking like you, see them with their own humanity that is searching for the same needs that you have. Their strategies may be problematic and harmful indeed. But their search, as tragically vain or in vain it may be or appear, their search is your search. Because we all share the same needs. We all are seeking to fulfill our needs and our needs to contribute, if we have not found it yet. In many people's horrid actions that is simply not visible and seems implausible to us. Everyone at any given moment is doing their currently best to meet their needs as best as they can. Sadly, many don't know any better to meet their needs than through tragic actions. Because they have not been taught about needs. Society is not teaching this in schools. (I am liberally quoting from Marshall Rosenberg's thoughts here). But this insight is one of the bases for feeling connected with everyone else on this earth. And then you can approach them without the dreaded enemy images and speak from the heart in a way that is more likely to reach them and ignite their own realization that we are all from the same origin and all go eventually to the same place.
The earth is in your hands as in anybody's hands. We are together on this round blue marble - the earth traversing through an otherwise inhospitable space. We can make life better than it currently is. Way way better. But this potential will remain unrealized if humanity as a whole cannot overcome its own mental roadblocks and if people sit idle, count on others to pick up the slack and don't act to link up with those who they disagree with and also change the physical reality by changing their daily behavior. That change on the ground will be a lot more long lasting and effective when it comes out of a place of cooperation and unity. As important as the action itself, I believe it also matters from what place it is coming from.
Changing course is not like going to church or activist meetings on Sundays and proceeding with business as usual on weekdays. It does not mean you have to suddenly quit your job or similar hasty action. It is a change in inner posture that permeates your life. You will more likely gradually yet intentionally transform your life and inspire others. You may later on quite possibly change your work place or transform the work you are in. Several years ago I used NVC to communicate my needs effectively at work and was then able to move to a 32-hour work week, having 3 day weekends.
You will be empowered towards that transformation because you will likely become courageous in your convictions because you speak from a place of needs. You will find new words and a new language that articulates what you need. You will understand that Needs are always wholesome and are never illegitimate. With that consciousness you will feel empowered to approach others of any political spiritual affiliation to talk about things that matter. Because needs matter. And all needs are shared by all people. Only the strategies differ. Because we all have the need for humankind to survive, there is no shame in approaching anybody about this. In fact we must approach this collective need collectively for all those reasons I mentioned.
Please trust me that journey there alone is worth it, irrespective of the degree to which we will succeed. The step towards undertaking the journey, that in itself is already a form of success. The potential to our success starts with you (and me) today.
If you have indeed read my contribution here, you may likely have some sort of reaction (pleasant, unpleasant or both) and as a result you may want to make commentaries, suggestions, submit questions. Maybe you want to help spread this knowledge. Or you may have a favourite topic that you would like to be discussed in more detail by me.
You can contact me via my Contact Page.
At this point I do not have a reader-comment section. For now, I would rather summarize reactions from readers in a to-be-created section. I will attempt to answer the most thoughtful, touching and insightful commentaries. It would also be complicated because I keep updating this book and it would not be clear which book version any comment would pertain to.
My intent is to always keep my knowledge free of charge for all who do not wish or cannot afford to pay for an important book of wisdom. The biosphere has no time left for keeping important knowledge privileged and expensive. In general the most important pillars of a well-rounded and well-grounded education shall remain free. They are too critical to have them only available to a selected few.
Even though my writing came from my own head, much of my inspiration is owed to the lucky circumstances of being inspired in so many ways throughout my life. These are influences that I cannot simply take credit for as though they were out of my own creation. Ability is a privilege and a blessing that I have been given unconditionally.
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