“If we want this earth to provide for the needs of its inhabitants, human society must undergo a transformation. The world of tomorrow must be fundamentally different from the world as we know it [today].” UNESCO Report 2001
Following on from my article ‘Insolvent Apocalypse: Why Money Isn’t Real But Is Destroying Us and the Planet’, this is a rewrite of an essay I originally wrote back in 2013. The world has changed a little since then and not necessarily for the better (Donald Trump as President? Brexit? Couldn’t make this stuff up!).
A Stark Warning
Most people don’t like to face the fact that our civilisation is teetering on the brink of collapse. Who can blame them?
Instead of analysing the problems we collectively face, most of us would rather read celebrity gossip, scroll through endless Facebook feeds, play games or chuckle at the latest memes (see ‘Why the Internet is Making us Dumber’).
Even if we do seek out information, there’s always the danger of getting waylaid by a plethora of conspiracy theories and fake news masquerading as knowledge.
That’s why it’s helpful to see what the experts are saying. What do the planet’s greatest minds make of our current predicament and our hopes for a better future?
Alas, they don’t paint a good picture.
In 2014, a NASA-funded study warned that the collapsse of human civilisation will be “difficult to avoid”. These aren’t tin-hat conspiracy loonies! The scientist ran a set of four equations representing human society. Each came to the conclusion that human civilisation is essentially doomed unless we make immediate and major changes to the way we’re living.
The main problems outlined by the study are essentially twofold: the unsustainable plundering of the planet’s ecological resources and the “economic stratification of society into elites and the masses”, in other words, the rich and the poor.
This divide is only set to grow. Experts warn that poverty and famine in the working classes will eventually lead to the collapse of society unless changes are made now.
The Problem of Greed
Multiple studies have concluded that if we don’t act now, we’re headed toward ecological, economic and societal collapse. It’s sobering stuff. But awareness is half the battle and once we acknowledge a problem we can begin to look at solutions.
The basic problem is greed and a monetary system based on flawed and unsustainable principles.
Our obsession with perpetual growth lies at the root of the problem. Symptomatic of this is the rapid depletion of natural resources, escalating climate change and the gross suffering caused by poverty inflicted on billions worldwide. Other effects include the disturbing rise of fanaticism including radical Islam and a new wave of xenophobic, ultra-right-wing super-nationalists.
It doesn’t take a genius to see the magnitude of the problems we face.
It does take a genius to find ways to tackle them.
I’m no such visionary, although I’ve studied the problem from numerous angles and found a number of thinkers, economists and social scientists who do perhaps qualify for visionary status.
Here’s a little more insight into the main problems the world currently faces and how we can solve those problems or at least begin to steer ourselves in the right direction.
The Illusion of Perpetual Growth
French philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin, now 96 years old, has some insightful things to say on the subject.
Our culture, he warns, is being propelled by the “uncontrolled engines” of profit, economy, technology and science toward a “series of probable catastrophes”.
He offers some possible solutions, however.
Morin agrees that the main problem is greed and an economic system propelled by the notion of perpetual growth. Let’s call it growth-ism!
In the post-war years, the drive to perpetual growth did indeed help our economies thrive. We enjoyed an unprecedented improvement in wealth, living standards, health, well-being and scientific and technological development.
However, (and this has been noted by a number of eminent economists) once a country has established a reasonably stable economy, growth no longer ensures an increase in happiness, well-being or life expectancy. Due to something called ‘hedonic adaptation’, people tend to return to their original baseline state of happiness in spite of changes in fortune.
All our craving for more does is put a strain on resources and continue to deplete the environment.
The environmental collapse we now face is caused by the unsound economic principles of growth-ism. Even a child can see the fallacy of our current economic model. How can there be infinite growth in a world with finite resources?
Morin argues that we need to re-evaluate the notion that growth is either inevitable or boundless. The fact of the matter is some growth is good and some is bad.
In the words of Edward Abbey, “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” A cell growing without limit becomes cancerous and threatens the survival of the whole organism.
The same is true of societies, governments, institutions, corporations — and us! The idea that our economies can sustain perpetual growth needs to be challenged. This is something no mainstream politician is yet willing to do, and something the general public is oblivious to.
Growth should be encouraged and promoted in renewable, environmentally-sound soft industries. But the breaks need to be put on polluting, non-renewable, high energy-consuming industries.
Morin also believes that our education system is failing us:
“We have unprecedented access to information but we understand the world less and less.”
We need to be taught about politics and economics, and how the world actually works, our place in it and how must serve as its stewards.
We can’t rely on our politicians to make the right decisions for us, because as George Orwell stated in ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’:
“We are a family with the wrong members in charge.”
Politicians have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They’re adept at papering over cracks when they appear and, to a great extent, are puppets of corporate lobbyists. They’re part of the system and, as such, are part of the problem: cogs in the wheel with little power to control the wheel.
We Need to Be Citizens, Not Consumers
It’s up to the people.
(That’s us!)
But we first need to pull our socks up.
Andrew Simms, author of “Cancel the Apocalypse” warns that we’ve basically become consumers rather than citizens. Even the term ‘citizen’ has somewhat fallen out of use the past few decades. You’re much more likely to hear the government refer to people as ‘consumers’.
That has to change.
As citizens, we have a responsibility. As citizens, we have power.
We first need to take stock of how we’re choosing to live our lives, recognise our mistakes and correct them.
Are you on the wrong trajectory, as many people are?
Then change it.
Very often, our suffering is a kind of GPS that reveals the areas of our life in need of attention. Our depression, anxiety and neurosis are symptomatic of living in a sick society with warped values that are harmful to not only the planet but to the human spirit itself.
John Lennon once said that “our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.”
In unquestioningly adopting the values of a sick society and sociopathic leaders out to line their own pockets, we compromise our own truth, values and distort our spirit.
As a society, we have to rediscover our common values and cultivate greater insight, empathy and compassion for ourselves and others.
At present, this is not happening. Take a look around (or hop onto social media) see how people are treating each other. Tell me that we’re living at our highest potential as human beings.
Living Against Our Nature
Sometimes in order to move forward, it’s necessary to go back and retrace our steps. This is especially true when we’ve strayed from our path and found ourselves disconnected from our own essential nature, as arguably we have.
There’s a Swedish anthropologist named Lasse Berg whose studies of premodern cultures led him to a staggering and uncompromising conclusion:
Our current society is completely at odds with essential human nature. The way we’re living is not natural to us and it’s crushing the human spirit.
Berg found that, contrary to what many might presume, human nature is not essentially bad.
We’re NOT innately greedy, selfish and violent. These are distorted qualities caused by living in a cultural system we’re neither designed for nor adapted to.
Studies of premodern cultures reveal human beings to be essentially peaceful, curious, cooperative and keen to live in peace and harmony.
Older cultures hold the view that we are part of the world rather than being separate from it and that, rather than seeking to dominate and control it, we need to cooperate and live harmoniously with our environment.
Furthermore, it seems we are biologically adapted to live not in overpopulated cities of urban decay, but as close to nature as possible in small groups or tribes, with whom we cultivate a sense of kinship and community spirit.
That’s the way humankind lived for millions of years.
It’s only comparatively recently that we shifted from living as hunter/gatherers to an agricultural-based society. That’s when we began building fences and walls, creating the concept of ‘ownership’ and ‘money’, industry, politics and class division.
Greed and the ruthless self-interest we see all around us — in politics, industry and consumer culture — is not something that’s inherent to human nature. It’s created by living in a system that is unnatural and foreign to our essential nature.
Society is run and managed by the twin parasites of government and media. Both were created to serve the people, but in time ended up feeding off and controlling the people. (To understand the deleterious influence of the media, check out Noam Chomsky’s seminal film ‘Manufacturing Consent’).
The capitalist/consumerist machine running our society trains us to live with a mindset of ceaseless material acquisition. We compete rather than cooperate and we hoard rather than share.
Life becomes an exercise in extracting as much as we can. Rather than contributing to the world, we’re too busy squeezing all we can get out of it. And the tragedy is, no matter how much that is, it’s never enough.
The rise of individualism has made us lose sight of our commonality and our shared connection. Society begins to fall apart when all people care about is ‘me’ and ‘mine’ and ‘what I can get out of life’.
With no regard for the whole and little concern for our neighbour, we end up like the cancer cell. Before we know it, we’re building walls and waging wars and soon the survival of everything is at stake.
How Do We Change This?
“We must look at alternatives objectively and not try to fit the future into our current social mould.” Jacque Fresco
When an organism faces a grave threat to its survival, it can do one of two things. It can adapt and evolve or it can die.
The same is true of us.
We’ve created a world beset with challenges, and we now face monumental ecological and societal collapse.
We have to transform the way we’re living both on a large societal scale and in terms of our everyday lifestyles.
Edgar Morin claimed that we radically need to overhaul modern day lifestyles and he is echoed by countless other sociologists, economists, philosophers and visionaries.
It’s a hard sell. People don’t want to change. They’re happier to stick with what they know, regardless of how unwise that might be in the long term.
Most people are quite content to accept the current status quo, as insane as it is, so long as they have their KFC, Netflix and smartphones.
Perhaps there was a time when religion was the opiate of the masses as Karl Marx said. Now the drug of choice is television and technology, fast food and Facebook. Why should people care about the future of the human race when they can binge-watch Game of Thrones or repost funny videos of cats?
We often don’t want to see what’s staring us right in the face. I fear it’ll take a fairly massive wake up call to jolt the majority of people out of their narcotic haze of distraction and inanity.
But we need to wake up to the falseness, insanity and self-destructiveness of the system of which we are a part.
We can’t afford to simply plod on business as usual.
We need to start caring. We need to find out what’s going on and be willing to stand up and make our voices heard. Together we must choose alternative ways of living on this planet.
Fortunately, the knowledge and ideas are already out there.
Economy
For a start, our economy needs to be re-thought at a fundamental level.
Industry needs to be regulated and the psychotic greed that drives corporations must be kept in check. The notion that economies can grow endlessly needs to be seen as the insanity it is.
Growth should be encouraged in renewable, energy-efficient industries. But limits must be placed on polluting, energy-hungry, monopolising industries.
The needs of the whole and the welfare of the planet should always be our prime motivation.
Financial markets must be strictly regulated. The pathological greed and reckless pursuit of short-term profit that caused the 2008 crash should never have been allowed to happen. The speculative ‘futures market’ has been trading up to 12 times the planet’s entire GDP on a daily basis! The system is completely out of control. It demands strict regulation leading to an eventual and complete overhaul.
Politicians and the public need to be open to exploring new ways of running society and economy. As I have already discussed, I believe a viable alternative is a resource based economy in which money is obsolete and all people have equal access to resources at the point of need.
We might be a long way from such a model right now, but it’s time for such ideas to enter public discourse.
As it happens, the rapid growth of artificial intelligence has us on the verge of a revolution that could make the industrial revolution pale in comparison. A recent report claims that by 2030, 800 million jobs will be lost to robot automation.
Initially, it’s estimated that the rich will get even richer. But with enormous unemployment in the working class, it won’t be long before the economy collapses because no one will be able to afford to buy anything. Once again, thirst for short-term profit could lead to long-term catastrophe.
A solution to this may be the introduction of Universal Basic Income, a proposal gaining some leverage now. A universal income would be necessary to keep the economy afloat in the face of automation, and would also hopefully help with the problem of unequal wealth distribution.
Education
The education system is failing us. Originally public education was brought about to make our countries more powerful and competitive in the world market.
But are our kids being taught what they really need to know?
They surely need to know how the world works, how the cogs of society and politics and economy turn and how we must all play a part in contributing to a better world.
There’s often a wide gulf between what education policymakers consider to be important and what is actually important. An education system that fails to educate people in how to deal with their thoughts, emotions and how to relate to others and function in life in a harmonious way is failing us as human beings.
Above all, in the words of Jacque Fresco, we need to teach our children to be thinkers rather than be merely reflectors of culture.
The Food Industry
The way we eat must be revolutionised.
The meat industry is one of the biggest polluters on the planet, contributing massively to greenhouse gas emissions.
The statistics speak for themselves. Per year, the approximate emissions for someone who eats a meat diet is 4750 km. For those who eat a vegetarian diet, that number is reduced by half. Those who eat an organic vegan diet, however, leave a footprint of only 281 km per annum. The average daily water footprint for meat-eaters is a whopping 4,000 gallons. For a vegan, it is only 300 gallons.
Raising animals in large number in order to be slaughtered and eaten is a gross misuse of resources. Animals require huge amounts of food which must first be grown. Each year in the USA alone, 41 million tons of food is fed to 7 billion livestock which yields only 7 million tons of food. 34 million tons of food is, therefore, wasted every year in the US alone. In a world where many are still starving, that is reprehensible.
It’s no surprise that scientists warn we must eat far less meat in order to avoid environmental collapse. Adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet would cut global food-related emissions by up to 70% by 2050. Further studies show that giving up on beef alone would reduce our carbon footprint more than giving up cars.
Most people don’t want to hear that, but there’s little room for negotiation. The fact is the western diet is killing us; obesity, diabetes and all number of related diseases are rampant. We adapt, change our lifestyles or we go the way of the dodo.
A recent development is the creation of ‘clean meat’, which is to say, lab-grown meat. This has the potential to usher in a new food revolution. Removing the animal from meat production will not only spare us the enormous environmental cost incurred by the meat industry but also the terror and suffering inflicted on billions of animals.
In a perfect demonstration that corporations are sociopathic, the beef industry is already suing clean meat startups.
The problem with making any kind of positive change in the world is always the same. There will be those who fight tooth and nail to maintain the old status quo in order to keep lining their own pockets.
Media
The media leads us by the nose.
It’s alarming that every single major media outlet on the planet is owned by a mere handful of powerful individuals — individuals with immense political power.
Whoever controls the media has the power to mould and shape the belief systems and views of the population.
Societal norms are constructed. Worldviews are formed and imposed on malleable minds. Noam Chomsky has written extensively on this. His work is worthy of close examination.
The extreme negativity of the media is plain to see. There’s a reason the news is filled with disaster, distress and dread while positive news is rarely reported. Negativity sells newspapers and gets ratings. Psychologists have discovered we have a ‘negativity bias’ whereby we’re far more likely to respond to negative things than positive things.
Perhaps this explains why film and television entertainment now has such great emphasis on darkness, ‘edginess’, sensationalistic violence and psychological dysfunction, which is promoted as more or less the norm. Our brains are being manipulated and our outlook on life distorted to hook our attention and get sales and viewers.
I’m not sure how this can be addressed. As long as negative media is hungrily consumed by the masses it will continue to be available and censorship is not an option.
On an individual level we must take responsibility for all our choices, including on the level of lifestyle and media, and be sure that what we are doing has a positive and not a negative impact on our state of mind and well-being (check out this article on managing our gunas, or qualities of mind).
Another problem coming to light is the enormous problem of ‘fake news’. The internet is flooded with manufactured narratives catering to all kinds of different prejudices.
One of human beings’ greatest Achilles heels is confirmation bias.
We tend to seek only information that confirms our preexisting opinions, beliefs and biases. The internet makes this ridiculously easy to do. In fact, search engines function with algorithms designed to present us with the information it thinks we’re most likely to want.
The results can be dangerous. When the public is misinformed, fake news can sway elections and referendums. As we indeed may have seen in the recent cases of Trump and Brexit.
It’s true that even the mainstream media has been guilty of deceiving us since time immemorial. When media outlets are slanted to favour a particular ideology or party, the way news is reported and presented can be a weapon to make people think and vote a certain way.
Perhaps the good thing in all this is that we are finally waking up to the crucial need for discernment in all the media we are exposed to. Indeed, discernment is a vital skill for navigating life in general.
Conservation and Ecology
Politicians seem to believe the most important thing in the world is a country’s economy. Economic factors immediately outweigh environmental considerations as well as the general well-being of the population.
This is totally backward. The current state of the environment is of prime concern.
Terrifyingly, scientists have warned that a mass extinction event is now underway. This is serious shit. The scientists responsible for the report concluded that “The resulting biological annihilation obviously will have serious ecological, economic and social consequences. Humanity will eventually pay a very high price for the decimation of the only assemblage of life that we know of in the universe.”
We have to do whatever we can to change our current trajectory.
Countries simply have to adopt cleaner, more energy-efficient measures. Conservation is vital and science and technology must now be focused on finding solutions to our immediate problems, such as finding clean, renewable energy sources.
Fortunately, in spite of serious setbacks (thanks, Donald), there is progress being made. Recent data now shows that the number of cities predominantly powered by renewable energy has more than doubled since 2015.
Distraction is a Luxury We Can No Longer Afford
At the moment, everything is driven by profit, by making as much money as possible by cutting as many corners as necessary. Moving forward, our main concern in every government, institution and industry must be in building for the future, thinking long-term rather than short-term and in terms of contribution to the whole rather than immediate profit.
These changes can only happen, of course, when a critical mass of people recognise the necessary and accordingly do everything in their power to demand these changes. That’s why awareness is half the battle. You have to be aware of a problem before you can begin to do anything about it.
Currently, too many people are numbing themselves out with ‘weapons of mass distraction’. This includes excessive television, social networks and internet trawling, alcohol, porn, drugs and misdirected obsessions with all manners of irrelevant trivia.
Our psychological blinders limit and distort our perception of what’s actually happening. They distract us from the problems we all face.
But distraction only works for so long.
Eventually, life will wallop us across the face with such force that we’ll be snapped out of our waking dream once and for all. The question is, will it be too late by that point?
It All Begins With Us
When we’re growing up, people often ask us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “What do you want to do?” “What kind of job/house/car/salary do you want?”
We’re brought up to view life as something we need to conquer, and that in order to be happy, we need to be, have, do or acquire certain things. We believe life is something we need to extract from; that we have to squeeze all the goodness out of it before anyone else can. Another, more telling variant on the above questions is: “What do you want out of life?”
We’re at a point where we can no longer operate on that premise.
We can no longer seek to get all we can out of the world. This mindset is responsible for the terrible predicament we’re in as a species, and also the widespread misery of human beings as evidenced by our pandemic of depression, anxiety and psychological problems.
We need to reverse our approach and ask ourselves:
“What can I give to life?”
“How can I contribute to making this world a better, saner, happier place?”
“How can I serve?”
For a start, we need to stop seeing life as some kind of big vending machine.
We need to question our conditioning and stop being such voracious consumers.
Obviously, we all have basic needs that must be met. But part of the problem in the ‘developed world’ is that we mistake our luxuries for necessities. As resources continue to dwindle while the ‘elite’ grow richer to the detriment of everyone else, this will no doubt change by necessity.
Instead of being consumers, we need to start being people again.
We’re not separate from the world. We are the world and it’s our duty to cherish and protect it accordingly.
Saving Ourselves
Einstein once remarked that you can’t solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it. You have to first change, or you’ll simply create the same kind of problems over and over again. That accounts for a lot of human history.
As the great sage Nisargadatta Maharaj noted:
“The world doesn’t need saving by you. It needs saving from you.”
In other words, we have to sort ourselves before we’re going to be of much use to anyone or anything else.
To the uninitiated, it might seem a selfish endeavour, but those committed to personal and spiritual development are helping pave the way for a better future.
The core problem, the very root of all our troubles, is the human ego.
It’s the ego, this sense of being a separate, fundamentally dissatisfied, lacking and insecure little person which drives us to commit all kinds of self-effacing and ultimately self-harming actions.
It’s the source of our insatiable greed, our inability to reconcile differences or to cooperate and build rather than compete and destroy. It’s the ego that puts what it perceives as its own interests — all its seeking and desires — above all other concerns, including the well-being of others and the planet.
The Toltecs called this malignant part of the human mind the ‘parasite’ and the Cree Native Americans called it the ‘Wetiko virus’, a psychosis at the very root of mankind’s self-destructiveness.
Whatever it’s called, it all stems from ignorance of our wholeness and the deeper spiritual aspect of our nature. That’s why I believe spirituality is essential to our survival as a species.
As Sam Harris correctly points out, the word ‘spiritual’ now has bad connotations to many in much the same way as the word ‘God’ does. It’s been misused and associated with all kinds of erroneous notions from the spooky to the kooky and downright wacky.
But the word has to be reclaimed. ‘Spirituality’ doesn’t denote something outside of ourselves. It refers to our own essential nature; the part of us that’s always present yet hidden from our ordinarily extroverted perception. Until we reconnect with this estranged part of our own being, we remain lost in the illusion that we are nothing more than the limited, lacking little person we assume ourselves to be.
When we are ignorant of our spiritual nature, we seek wholeness and happiness outside of ourselves in ‘things’, in relationships, in money, fast cars, status, or whatever else fits the bill.
We become locked in what the Eastern traditions call samsara; a state characterised by perpetual dissatisfaction and suffering, by an endless craving for wholeness that is never, ever satisfied no matter where we seek satisfaction.
The only solution to samsara is to inquire within and come to know the truth of our own nature.
What if there’s more to us than the limited, grasping little wretches we appear to be?
Traditions such as Vedanta, the philosophical basis of Hinduism and even to an extent Buddhism, lead us to see that there’s a whole lot more to us than the content of our minds, thoughts and habitual tendencies.
We also learn to see the interconnectedness of all life. We realise that life isn’t an assemblage of constituent parts, each existing in isolation. It’s a whole, and we’re all part of that whole. With this knowledge comes a flowering of compassion, respect and kindness.
I believe that is what human beings need more than anything else.
If we all lived with compassion and kindness, the world would not be in the state it’s in.
A Vision of Hope
There are a number of ideas and recommendations presented here and a lot of them are pretty much common sense.
No one person can wave a magic wand and change the world overnight.
But by raising awareness of the problems we face and exploring viable options of what can be done about them, we help create a global tide of change that is necessary for our survival.
If you can wade through the mass of unprovable conspiracy theories and distorted ‘alternative facts’ that proliferate the web, there’s a wealth of information out there, and so many great minds coming up with exciting innovations and solutions to our problems.
The ingenuity of the human mind has saved us from the brink of disaster many times in the past.
I’m generally an optimist; a glass-is-half-full kind of guy.
I believe in the beauty, kindness, power and creativity people are capable of. I believe in the spark of divinity within all beings.
I’d like to think that if enough people wake up and start to care about our predicament, we can rise above the challenges we face and evolve into something far greater than the half-asleep mob of self-fixated consumers we currently are.
There’s a revolution coming — and it may well be the human race’s defining moment.
