My take may have come across a bit too doomer: I wouldn’t say humanity itself unavoidably fucked, and our current choices do matter for what generations may come after. My working theory is that the gravity of sedentary civilization is unavoidable due to clear benefits but it’s also inevitably self terminating. Our choice is in how we navigate it.
We can’t grow our way out of our universe’s material limits but we also can’t voluntarily exit the Nash equilibrium of our established civilization. At some point the treadmill of progress ends and we can’t avoid that no matter how slowly and carefully we approach it. After the dust settles we return to a primitivist state, except this time it is physically impossible to reach the same destructive heights. Accessible surface metals are expended, radioactive fuel is spent, mineral deposits have been tapped and diffused, etc…
Our main job is to ensure that the earth remains livable when that time comes. There’s nothing inevitable about a global nuclear apocalypse or total climate collapse. If we avoid those we can achieve something like a soft landing, but we have to accept that our global population and quality of life will plummet no matter what because it’s not sustainable in any other system. Notice that this isn’t quite the same as Anarcho-primitivism even if the end goal is similar, we can’t change the broad strokes of history but we can choose how hard we crash the plane.
I know. You’ve made up your mind: a better world isn’t possible, and that’s that.
Maybe you’re right, but if you are none of this matters. We’re just fucked.
My take may have come across a bit too doomer: I wouldn’t say humanity itself unavoidably fucked, and our current choices do matter for what generations may come after. My working theory is that the gravity of sedentary civilization is unavoidable due to clear benefits but it’s also inevitably self terminating. Our choice is in how we navigate it.
We can’t grow our way out of our universe’s material limits but we also can’t voluntarily exit the Nash equilibrium of our established civilization. At some point the treadmill of progress ends and we can’t avoid that no matter how slowly and carefully we approach it. After the dust settles we return to a primitivist state, except this time it is physically impossible to reach the same destructive heights. Accessible surface metals are expended, radioactive fuel is spent, mineral deposits have been tapped and diffused, etc…
Our main job is to ensure that the earth remains livable when that time comes. There’s nothing inevitable about a global nuclear apocalypse or total climate collapse. If we avoid those we can achieve something like a soft landing, but we have to accept that our global population and quality of life will plummet no matter what because it’s not sustainable in any other system. Notice that this isn’t quite the same as Anarcho-primitivism even if the end goal is similar, we can’t change the broad strokes of history but we can choose how hard we crash the plane.