Rated
May 01 2008
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2 reviews
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evolution, society, change, worldviews
• blogspot.com
Not The End Of The World
in The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
It's not the end of the world, or even the end of industrial civilization, but if history is anything to go by, we could be in for a couple of very rough decades. A crisis phase in the downward arc of catabolic collapse is not a pleasant thing to live through, and we can expect it to have social, economic, political, and (unless we're extraordinarily lucky) military dimensions that will transform most people\u2019s lives for the worse, temporarily or forever. That need not stop us from facing the emerging crisis with as much grace and humanity as we can muster, while doing our part to lay the foundations for the ecotechnic societies of the future - unless, that is, we allow premature proclamations of triumph or catastrophe to distract us from the work that must be done.
Not The End Of The World.
A most enlightened vision of societal change. This post is perhaps John Michael Greer's most influential one.
He is undoubtedly right that "Human societies are complex homeostatic systems that respond to changes in their environments by trying to maintain their equilibrium." Failing to understand this organic way of societies leads to simplistic interpretations of present events that contracts reality into its dualistic visions of doom and gloom versus technophilia. Those are unhelpful perception crutches at best and devastating at worst.
We are not close to the end of the world as the title of Greer's post states but we are at a societal stage of evolution that is going to displace modernity for something new often referred to as postmodernity. But the word has been twisted to say so many things that its meaning has often been lost on its users. Postmodernity is the stage of societal evolution that follows modernity and the transition is, for sure, going to be traumatic for most. Each stage of societal evolution has its own economic, social, cultural and other characteristics but what differentiates each of them is the worldview (understanding of reality) that is shared by the citizens within their societies. We observe 4 stages of evolution:
- animism: citizens of tribes share an animistic worldview.
- religion: citizens of kingdoms and empires share one or another form of religious belief and or one or another philosophic derivation of animism.
- modernity: citizens of nation-states share a common vision of rationality (derived from the logic of capital) and believe that science has technological answers to everything.
- postmodernity: citizens of the world will share a common vision of reality wherein humans are seen as interconnected minuscule particles of a whole that is unattainable.
The transition between modernity and postmodernity is a process of change that will take many decades to stabilize and, for sure, there will be ups and downs along the road. Before to tackle the causes of climate change we'll suffer its consequences. Before to tackle peak oil and other resources we'll be confronted with shortages in energy and materials that will oblige us to revise our ways of living. Before to tackle poverty we'll be confronted with individual and societal violence that will oblige us to care for the weakest ones among us. Our future is in ecotechnic societies interconnected through solidarity.
in The NYT by Natalie Angier
in The National Geographic by Scott Norris 
