So I was browsing through my RSS reader and stumbled on this video that describes all the challenges that are facing humanity and I thought it was interesting that at the end it said “Because failure is not an option”. Here’s the video. I found it at Cold Antler Farm.
Failure may not a good choice but it may be a logical conclusion if humanity doesn’t act quickly.
I think we’re at a critical juncture in human evolution… and no not because some prophets say it is so. All you have to do is look a the extraordinary growth in technology and population over the past 100 years. We’ve been on a train that’s been exponentially increasing velocity and it will either continue on that acceleration curve or it won’t. My personal opinion is that it can’t continue and we’ve begun to feel the tremors of tracks taking us elsewhere.
I think we have three choices:
- Ignorantly allow collapse: We could continue to ignore the growing costs of exponential growth and continue living like a virus and hope that mother nature doesn’t have the perfect antibody for us.
- Leave it to our benevolent masters: We could continue to let the politicians and billionaires masterfully craft their vision of a civilization.
- Choose to live more self-sufficiently and sustainably: Each of us could choose to live a sustainable lifestyle in balance with our surroundings and learn to truly support ourselves.
The main benefit with #3 is that even if nothing bad happens and our civilization continues to flourish for a millenia you and your descendants will be able to live happy and healthy lives.
In other words choosing to live sustainably is the best hedge against anything the future brings… and best of all you don’t have to be a crazed fringe nut-job to choose it. You don’t even need to buy into any of the paranoia, you simply have to want to be happy and relatively immune to calamity.