Note to 10 Year Olds

So, before you are 19, could there be any life boats?

I am not a source. I’m not sounding any alarms. For modern humans, an early alarm was sounded in 1798, and alarms have grown ever louder since. “Hear the loud alarm bells — Brazen bells! What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!” E.A. Poe was listening in 1843. Shelley and Smith in 1918, Kipling and Yeats in 1919, H.G. Wells in 1920 and 1933….

Those who would rather know than believe (to paraphrase E.O. Wilson) knew enough in 1972 to sound the alarm bells loudly enough that the UN and the literate of the world heard all the alarms we needed to hear in 85 languages. The world’s response: Yes, but…. [But the Quran says…, but Growth’s mandate says…, but the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says…, but Marx says…, but the Free Market says….]

Scientists c. 1972, who could hear the sound of the waterfall ahead, screamed out their affright with a desperate desire to alert leaders/public, calling for a resolute endeavor to slam on the brakes — not to avoid hitting the wall of biophysical limits (we were already well into overshoot), but to maybe avoid hitting the wall catastrophically. And in 1992 they tried again (and some tried again in 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 — but why do the same thing over and over while expecting different results? A little slow on the uptake are we?).

Since then, we moderns who “would rather believe than know” [to quote E.O. Wilson] have put the pedal to the metal — all 99.99% of modern (monetized) humans including billionaires and bushmeat hunters.

It is today’s 10 year olds who are likely to pay the overshoot debt we Anthropocene enthusiasts are incurring (some with less enthusiasm than others), e.g. academics who go to Degrowth Conferences and those who gather round pink party boats. We modern humans don’t know what Pogo knew in 1970. Why weren’t we told the truth?

2019

If you can read this, you are a modern human.

We don’t have a lack of knowledge problem, but an inability to use what we know (unless it helps to grow the economy) short coming. We have a schooling system, formal and informal, that serves to make most citizens employable so they can serve the monetary culture as wage slaves/consumers, and to identify the smart kids for further training at daycare centers called universities where those who graduate hope to make more money and where postdocs can hope to make less (but be praised more for serving the world socioeconomic-political system).

That would be modern academia — in the 2nd century BCE with Carneades it wasn’t that bad.

Using the ants on 195 sovereign logs metaphor: in 1972, with determined effort, some of the ants could have (if only by not trying to stay in the middle — the fastest flowing money of the river) beached their log and managed to persist by getting off the log. Some heard the roar of the fall before 1950, but by 1972 most of the would-rather-know-than-believe humans knew enough.

There is now no chance that even small countries, soon to be underwater, can steer their logs on a viable pathway. No sovereign logs will persist, nor will 8 billion and counting sovereign individuals (with reproductive and other human rights).

If all logs go over the falls, will any ants on them survive? If any, will any queen ants survive such that a viable long-term outcome is possible? We ants don’t know anything (for sure), but we know enough to consider extinction as a possible (likely) outcome, whether in 50 or 50k years (queen ant = viable K-culture, without which there is no long-term viability).

The set of all 195 sovereign states and 8 billion ants is the condition of being in and serving modern techno-industrial (MTI) society. While the roar of the falls increases, we have not yet gone over — denial is still possible.

The inertia of all logs precludes (too little time now) a change in course. Some make-shift life rafts might make it to shore with some 10 year olds on board, but only if some elders make it so — in the next nine years.

If there were as many as 1,700 ‘adults in the room’ (no evidence yet there are), a warning to posterity (anyone younger than the 1,700) should be thinkable. But all evidence is that even a warning, with detailed information about making life rafts and, far more important/essential, what to do if you make it to terra firma, is of no interest to modern humans — yet. A ‘teachable moment’ is foreseeable, if only for some when belief in modernity collapses.

1. Pathway to Modernity: We are ants on a log
2. Pathway to a Viable Civilization: A Union of Concerned Elders project statement in 600 words
3. ?

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