We are tumbling into a new and bright future. However the process promises to be difficult for most of us and we will hardly recognize the outcome. Looking around, it appears to a casual glance, that the structures that have supported our way of life are bending if not crumbling. A great change has begun.
The daily news reports that the pillars of our stable climate are at least shifting if not disappearing. The vast amount of ice which is a basis for the current world climate is melting. This is the climate we have evolved to prosper in, and we too will need to change as our climate changes.
The forces of nature, in their own time, have been adjusting, making corrections in response to this new-comer on the planet we call homo sapiens. It has only been about 20,000 years since humankind began showing a new level of intelligence and influence on the earth. We humans set in motion forces we barely understood then or now. When we made changes to our environment , the forces of nature adjusted, in their own time. Nothing personal mind you, just the basic laws of physics.
Something about action and reaction. Because of our new intelligence, we humans have been empowered to make changes and have impacts that are huge. You might even say earth-moving. The mechanics of the earth are gigantic in size. It is a testament to our intelligence that we have been able to leverage aspects of the earth causing them to shift, to move, to adjust. All this has happened in only 20,000 years.
Until now, those changes have been minor, even masterful. Early on, we brought about changes such as getting rid of competing species of humans. Replacing mega fauna like bison, mammoths and great cats with domesticated animals were also some of our early accomplishments. So was changing vast prairies and woodlands into farm country. The earth adjusted, but in small ways.
At some point we began to get out of hand, and humans began releasing carbon giants from under the ground. Then we lost control of the direction of human development and the laws of nature began to respond. The forces of human intelligence began thrashing out of control and required a serious response from nature. What seems like nature running out of control is simply a natural reaction, a counter balance to the lack of control by human intelligence. Mother nature has to grab the wheel, take control because humans have lost control.
If we’re lucky, that won’t mean that we have to be eliminated to make the necessary adjustments. That is uncertain. What is certain is that the laws of physics, the natural laws will win out and prevail. In the end, there remains physics.
Unfortunately, the human forces of greed and consumption have become so strong that the corrective response by nature will likely be equally strong. The adjustment will be great. Many will suffer and die. That includes humans and other forms of evolved life. All will have to adjust. It is the same scenario that has played out for over 3 billion years.
The future will belong to those who have learned to live in balance with the forces of nature. That includes plants, animals, and humans. We have evolved a great intellect and powers no one could have imagined even a hundred years ago. Our Prometheus Fire has served us well and has given direction to our own evolution. Now it is forcing great changes in nature and in us. We unwittingly, perhaps blindly, are forcing our own evolution.
We seem incapable to accurately predict the adjustments nature is making. There is little history to base accurate predictions on. We can make some general predictions about our environment, changes such as shifting weather, sea levels, melting ice. We can also make some broad predictions of the adjustments that must be made by surviving humans.
As we look around, some of the seeds of those adjustments are already being sown by mindful humans. We can predict that it will be a future much less dominated by consumption. Humans will follow a common, simpler lifestyle that no longer feeds the personal furnaces of the greedy few.
Our mega houses of cards will crumble, and we will build on a smaller scale. We will live in smaller communities, closer to our sources of sustenance. Growth in technology will be governed by conscious needs and not by consumer fascination with new things.
Large government is already showing its inability to promote the welfare of its citizens or the earth. Large government worked when there was cooperation among the leaders, when there was common purpose in support of the many. In so many places, the personal interests of the leaders, including their clinging on to power, have eclipsed the welfare of the human race, and we are seeing and feeling the crumbling effects. We know in our hearts this is not working, and the time of the large dinosaurs has once again passed. Big is no longer better.
We are entering a new time when smaller communities will better serve the survival and sustenance of the many. It is a future of smaller communities, local rule, formation of loose confederations of cooperation rather than rule and competition. We will recognize we are joined together in the interest of survival and create social structures that make that happen.
We have already seen and felt the effects of the inability of humans to agree, cooperate and compromise. The process of governing must be put back into the hands of humans who have a vision of cooperation and survival.
The strident and bull-headed humans are not the best of our species, and they are destined eventually for extinction because their way is not the way of survival for this species. This is nothing but the forces of evolution at work. If we don’t cooperatively adjust to the changing world, we won’t survive.
We don’t succeed when we try to force biology, when we work against the inherent intelligence and compassion of our species. These are traits that have served us well so far. We succeed most profoundly when we stir and enhance the forces of our humanity, when we support the unique powers we have.
This is nothing new. It has happened many times before when a subset of a population, capable of adjusting, survives and becomes the dominant species in the next era. It is the law of nature, as best we understand it. That is hopefully our future.