Pathway to a Viable Civilization

A Union of Concerned Elders project statement in 600 words

“For the first time in history a conviction has developed among those who can actually think more than a decade ahead that we are playing a global endgame. Humanity’s grasp on the planet is not strong. It is growing weaker. Our population is too large…” — Edward O. Wilson, Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life 2016

Abstract: A viable form of civilization implies a viable form of education system (formal and informal). Implementing one would be alternative to convincing a majority of expansionist adult humans on the planet (1+ billion heads of household plus dependents?) to agree to a policy of rapid population reduction and economic contraction to avoid a die-off event secondary to ecological, complexity, density, financial, cognitive and civilizational overshoot (and force the minority to comply with rapid degrowth policies needed to avoid a die off by premature death instead of old-age death). The precondition for forming a viable civilization would be the formation of a Union of Concerned Elders (UoCE) consisting of a minimum initial number of 1,742 ‘ecolate’ elders. Unfortunately for 10 year olds (aka posterity), there is no evidence that there are enough ecolate elders on the planet who could self-identify as ecolate and write a warning to posterity that existing ecolate elders would view as insightful, and of potential value to posterity should posterity consider the warnings offered. An alternative pathway is to convince over 4 billion people (including dependents) to vote for a viable form of civilization based on a social contract that selects for persistence.

Seven-step Endgame

1. Members of the Union of Concerned Elders (1,742+ world ecolate elders, 57+ per design team average of 5+ subgroups) envision/design 30 potentially viable civilizations (i.e. complex societies/subsocieties, facets of an interconnected system of global systemic Gaia governance as a viable form of civilization) by best-guess-then-test methods (of systems science and systemic management dependent on all silo sciences, e.g. physics, chemistry, biology, systems ecology).
2. Implement (i.e. test) each design, one within each of the 30 sub-regional management divisions (non-political) of Earth’s 7 continental regions (one currently not habitable by biome dependent humans).
3. Each implementation is centered on an Academy Watershed Management Unit (AWMU), a core Watershed Management Unit (WMU) to which additional adjoining WMUs would be added with assistance of the AWMU.
4. The initial AWMU would be a learning community of 20 to 50 subcommunities of 20 to 50 scholars and dependents in which the developmentally less advanced in a subject learn from those who are developmentally more advanced (elder to) regardless of chronological age.
5. The most senior of elders would know that the most recent junior member could have something to teach them about something, hence all are both learners and teachers, and no one ever ‘graduates’ except by death or disability (per tradition, each new arrival will meet with a senior elder and the meeting will not end until the new arrival teaches them something of value/interest they did not know).
6. Following the founding of the 30 sublate AWMUs, other AWMUs would be founded within each bioregion, and junior academies would be founded within ecoregions within the bioregions. Each WMU would provide learning opportunities to residents whose more motivated learners could go to an ecoregion collage from which some could go to the bioregion university, from which some could become members of one of the 30 sublate academies or 6 ecolate academies. Some would be invited to go to the global academy (possibly located in Greece for sentimental reasons) for cutting-edge advanced studies among peers.
7. Collectively the academies would provide the understanding needed to manage human demands on nature’s resources (to form a naturocracy, i.e. rule by Nature’s laws whose apprentices endeavor to listen to Nature, Gaia, Aluna, Mother who has all the answers as to what works, who determines what subsystems persist long term on Earth as the millennia pass).

7 ecolates and 30 apolitical sublate management boundaries named

To achieve the goal of renormalizing humans to again live as adaptive, evolvable K-strategists within the environmental carrying capacity of all biomes (to maximize empower, MPP), the Union of Concerned Elders (UoCE) will issue a warning to posterity (as 13–19 year olds) in such a way that all 13 to 19 year olds on the planet hear the warning.

The warning calls upon posterity to question and rethink the assumptions of Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) society’s narratives and consider not seeking to be schooled by MTI colleges and universities. None are to serve a society that is not remotely viable long term. Posterity is to be called upon to apply for admission to the first AWMU as autodidacts in a lifelong learner-teacher community based on a self-sufficient agrarian biophysical economy of enough that seeks out the condition now that will come anyway.