Living Without a Future
Being positive in a negative reality
Our single-threat minimalism will kill most of us before the end of this century. This is not a new discovery. And this is not just a possibility but our reality. We have already past the point of no return.
How do we live with this? Our population is in planetary overshoot. I am interested in how we manage our societies to limit suffering and create an opportunity for a viable planetary culture after reaching sustainability.
We live with no future; even if you try to ignore reality, this is tremendously stressful and destructive. Much of the social destructiveness we are facing is the result of growing social insanity, which is making our current reality worse.
This is complex. Our evolutionary tendencies to simplify complex issues and focus on single issues hampers us, while the complex matrix of issues is killing us.
For those who need a refresher on our current reality, the following abstract for an interesting paper on overshoot is a good reference:
The human enterprise is in overshoot; we exceed the long-term carrying capacity of Earth and are degrading the biophysical basis of our own existence. Despite decades of cumulative evidence, the world community has failed dismally in efforts to address this problem…