Wonderful! I loved how your essay originated from staring at a mollusk shell. I too can see the closing of the circle just up ahead. Always have in fact as I grew up with an "eco-Dad" extraordinaire. As we come back to the beginning, I think the scariest and most damning aspect of our lethal hubris is the eminent failure of all the nuclear facilities (440 in 32 countries) world wide. As collapse descends into utter chaos, who is going to prevent their failure and subsequent meltdowns? This is a topic that always seems to hide from intelligent discussion as it's just too big of a nightmare to look at. How are the pockets of humans that hopefully will survive the impacts of the polycrisis going to deal with an irradiated world? Joanna Macy wrote years ago about the importance of creating a "nuclear priesthood" that would see to it that these poisonous places be forever looked after. A pipe dream I suppose . . . but, and I know this sounds twisted, is there anything more sacred that containing a crazy-long-lasting poison with the ability mutilate and destroy all life? Ahhh . . . maybe a subject for a future essay my friend?
“One thing that’s for sure is that large-scale societies, anthropocentric subsistence modes and authoritarian social organizations will disappear.”
Are you SURE that’s for sure?
Most likely, when (or if) SHTF and we all have to go back to the land, people will form groups (aka tribes?); and in at least some of those groups, tyrannical leaders will emerge. Some groups will truly believe they’d like to have “strong” leadership—though they may later (and probably too late) regret this choice. Then, groups (each led by a warlord or council of same) will fight or try to conquer each other, and the winning group will rule or incorporate the losing group. Some groups may try to isolate and avoid conquest or absorption—but in almost all cases, as throughout history, that will be a losing battle.
As groups consolidate, something resembling city states may emerge. In other words, history may repeat itself.
Or at least, human history up to the 18th or 19th Century—assuming (as you do) that the new technologies of the past 200-300 years or so will vanish, and will never be revived—nor replaced with others that will enable a way of life similar to that of the current century.
Which by the way is a VERY big assumption.
Yes, that assumption may turn out to be correct.
OR we may get the bugs out of our current and nascent energy sources, and/or discover or invent new ones, AND figure out how to make it all clean (enough), sustainable, and scalable. I wouldn’t bet ALL my chips on that scenario—it’s best to be prepared for anything—but neither would I assume it’s impossible.
Is believing that we’ll be able to “invent our way” out of our current challenges, and keep living as we have, too optimistic? Maybe.
But ALSO overly optimistic is the certitude that a world of small hunter gatherer or agrarian societies won’t—sooner or later—turn out exactly as it did the first time around.
As fine and perceptive as your critique of civ may be, you've let in MacGilchrist's spiritualist reverie and lifted off into "perfection" and "c;losing the loop" and "beautiful" talk, which cannot apply to the species that is now enduring non-perfection in Gaza, the Sudan, Pakistan, the ethno-religious hellholes everywhere, giant globe-straddling fossil-fueled tech corporations. etc.
Yes, I'm afraid you have a point here. I don't present *the one solution that works for all people and heralds in a Golden Age where there is no suffering or death* - but nor did I ever suggest something like that even exists or is possible. I merely propose that all those of us who still can try our best to create beauty among all the chaos and misery, care for each other, and do what we can, *where* we can, to avert the worst.
I have no control over what happens to people in Gaza, Sudan or Pakistan (nor do I even wish to wield that sort of power). The best I can do from my current position is to try to be as small of a part of the system that enables all this as possible.
So yes, I talk about beauty and perfection. Finding meaning in a lost world. But what else is there left to do?
And what would you propose we do instead? Should we endlessly wallow in despair for every human (and no human) that's crushed under the systems weight? Would that make a difference?
Also, if there is any objective (and not a human-centered) perspective on what "perfection" is, it must surely be the existence of the Universe itself - which, unfortunately for us, doesn't care too much about our well-being.
Comments sections can be dull, dispiriting affairs, either gushingly sycophantic or one-note headbashing, which, yeah, maybe I too have done a little of both, but sometimes the urge to engage with the text becomes bigger than the memories of how unfulfilling or salty the previous unequal exchanges have been. I don’t think that’s the case here, but I doubt there can be much turning of either head.
No, to “endlessly wallow in despair” would be hard-ass work for any human, Sisyphean, but there could also be a bifurcated consciousness to deal with the burdens of social knowledge in an extinction-headed world that may bestow unearned privileges on the individual. You are not “responsible” for the daily or historic horrors humanity exacts on the world and on its own kind, but any kind of foray into larger issues like truth or beauty or justice should have an outside awareness component.
Social reality is terrible, and it is getting regressively worse on to way to unbearably bad. Private reality may offer some counteracting beauty and temporary “meaning,” but these are going to be, most often, small consolations against the slow-burning, low-key terror grind of the outside backdrop of the universe - and it’s all conjecture as to what could be “greater” than that. I don’t see it - maybe you do, but this world can also be approached on its own, quotidian level.
Very happy to have found a like-mind in you, friend. Well said.
Thank you! Very glad you enjoyed it.
Wonderful! I loved how your essay originated from staring at a mollusk shell. I too can see the closing of the circle just up ahead. Always have in fact as I grew up with an "eco-Dad" extraordinaire. As we come back to the beginning, I think the scariest and most damning aspect of our lethal hubris is the eminent failure of all the nuclear facilities (440 in 32 countries) world wide. As collapse descends into utter chaos, who is going to prevent their failure and subsequent meltdowns? This is a topic that always seems to hide from intelligent discussion as it's just too big of a nightmare to look at. How are the pockets of humans that hopefully will survive the impacts of the polycrisis going to deal with an irradiated world? Joanna Macy wrote years ago about the importance of creating a "nuclear priesthood" that would see to it that these poisonous places be forever looked after. A pipe dream I suppose . . . but, and I know this sounds twisted, is there anything more sacred that containing a crazy-long-lasting poison with the ability mutilate and destroy all life? Ahhh . . . maybe a subject for a future essay my friend?
“One thing that’s for sure is that large-scale societies, anthropocentric subsistence modes and authoritarian social organizations will disappear.”
Are you SURE that’s for sure?
Most likely, when (or if) SHTF and we all have to go back to the land, people will form groups (aka tribes?); and in at least some of those groups, tyrannical leaders will emerge. Some groups will truly believe they’d like to have “strong” leadership—though they may later (and probably too late) regret this choice. Then, groups (each led by a warlord or council of same) will fight or try to conquer each other, and the winning group will rule or incorporate the losing group. Some groups may try to isolate and avoid conquest or absorption—but in almost all cases, as throughout history, that will be a losing battle.
As groups consolidate, something resembling city states may emerge. In other words, history may repeat itself.
Or at least, human history up to the 18th or 19th Century—assuming (as you do) that the new technologies of the past 200-300 years or so will vanish, and will never be revived—nor replaced with others that will enable a way of life similar to that of the current century.
Which by the way is a VERY big assumption.
Yes, that assumption may turn out to be correct.
OR we may get the bugs out of our current and nascent energy sources, and/or discover or invent new ones, AND figure out how to make it all clean (enough), sustainable, and scalable. I wouldn’t bet ALL my chips on that scenario—it’s best to be prepared for anything—but neither would I assume it’s impossible.
Is believing that we’ll be able to “invent our way” out of our current challenges, and keep living as we have, too optimistic? Maybe.
But ALSO overly optimistic is the certitude that a world of small hunter gatherer or agrarian societies won’t—sooner or later—turn out exactly as it did the first time around.
As fine and perceptive as your critique of civ may be, you've let in MacGilchrist's spiritualist reverie and lifted off into "perfection" and "c;losing the loop" and "beautiful" talk, which cannot apply to the species that is now enduring non-perfection in Gaza, the Sudan, Pakistan, the ethno-religious hellholes everywhere, giant globe-straddling fossil-fueled tech corporations. etc.
Yes, I'm afraid you have a point here. I don't present *the one solution that works for all people and heralds in a Golden Age where there is no suffering or death* - but nor did I ever suggest something like that even exists or is possible. I merely propose that all those of us who still can try our best to create beauty among all the chaos and misery, care for each other, and do what we can, *where* we can, to avert the worst.
I have no control over what happens to people in Gaza, Sudan or Pakistan (nor do I even wish to wield that sort of power). The best I can do from my current position is to try to be as small of a part of the system that enables all this as possible.
So yes, I talk about beauty and perfection. Finding meaning in a lost world. But what else is there left to do?
And what would you propose we do instead? Should we endlessly wallow in despair for every human (and no human) that's crushed under the systems weight? Would that make a difference?
Also, if there is any objective (and not a human-centered) perspective on what "perfection" is, it must surely be the existence of the Universe itself - which, unfortunately for us, doesn't care too much about our well-being.
We are but a part of something much greater.
Comments sections can be dull, dispiriting affairs, either gushingly sycophantic or one-note headbashing, which, yeah, maybe I too have done a little of both, but sometimes the urge to engage with the text becomes bigger than the memories of how unfulfilling or salty the previous unequal exchanges have been. I don’t think that’s the case here, but I doubt there can be much turning of either head.
No, to “endlessly wallow in despair” would be hard-ass work for any human, Sisyphean, but there could also be a bifurcated consciousness to deal with the burdens of social knowledge in an extinction-headed world that may bestow unearned privileges on the individual. You are not “responsible” for the daily or historic horrors humanity exacts on the world and on its own kind, but any kind of foray into larger issues like truth or beauty or justice should have an outside awareness component.
Social reality is terrible, and it is getting regressively worse on to way to unbearably bad. Private reality may offer some counteracting beauty and temporary “meaning,” but these are going to be, most often, small consolations against the slow-burning, low-key terror grind of the outside backdrop of the universe - and it’s all conjecture as to what could be “greater” than that. I don’t see it - maybe you do, but this world can also be approached on its own, quotidian level.