Is this civilization finished?
The next decades our world will be going through an interconnected meta-crisis of climate change, resource depletion, overpopulation, pollution and social crisis of planetary scope and unprecedented magnitude. For those who are watching this world with a wide and deep lens, it becomes painfully clear that this civilization is finished. But it doesn’t mean that civilization itself it it’s ending. We need to save the best parts of our civilization so we can build the next. This is like realizing that we are living in an enormous mansion, a crumbling old one that is falling apart. It needs to go to make place for a home that is a smaller and healthier, a sustainable one in sync with the carrying capacity of the planet.. But it doesn’t mean that we need to set the old one on fire. Or bulldoze it as if it were a useless ruin. There are many parts that can be salvaged. That can be used in the new house structure and foundations. We also need at least have some of the building standing while we are carefully dismantling the rest of it. This old mansion we are living in was designed and built for a very different time. It cannot be transformed. Too big, too many rooms, too complex and difficult to maintain. Too inefficient. When we built it, energy and material was abundant, even inexhaustible or so we thought. We foolishly ignored the consequences of waste and relentless encroaching of the natural world. But then was a very different time, long go now. We are living in the Antropocene now. Welcome to the end of stability and the time of uncertainty.
The old civilization is in a terminal stage, and there are plenty of signs of it, in the news and around us. But we still need a home to inhabit through the coming ecological and social storm we have created. One to shelter as much life as we can, independently of races, status or even species. And we have plenty of materials that can be saved, that need to be saved, if we want to build a good long lasting home. For example, knowledge, the idea of justice, compassion, inclusivity, cooperation and the idea of the commons. Or the seventh generation precautionary principle just to name just a few.
All those are part of our dying industrial civilization that are worth saving. Too much sacrifice, too much blood has been spilled to be wasted now. They were all built by our ancestors through centuries of struggles. We can live without the material comforts that we are enjoying at the present. The fact that our grandparents and parents could live rich, meaningful lives with many happy moments without them proves it. But it would be much harder to live without justice and freedom. Without community.Without knowledge. And if we could, would it be a life worth living?
The first step in this transformation is to accept the truth that this civilization is finished, as hard as it may feel. And say it. Loud and without shame or fear. Only then we can start building the next one. For those who will come after us. For those whom we need to be the good ancestors they will want to be proud of. Even if we never see it fully realized, as many of us will be gone well before, is it worth to stand and show up.
So the truth that needs to be told is for them, for those children, yours and mine, that will inhabit this Earth after the storm has passed We could still live in denial and burn this world to ashes… But is that what we really want to do? Is this what our ancestors would do? I leave you with this reflection.
May you become a good ancestor your children can be proud of.
