I came across an interesting quote that expresses my idea that making dramatic changes to the way that society operates doesn’t necessarily take a lot of energy or work. Unfortunately, I failed to note the attribution for the quote – so it is I have to apologize to the author (whoever they were). The quote had to do with the difficult task of projecting the future of mankind and society.
“Any prognosis much consider that men can change their angle of vision and therefore change the future.” – unknown
It appears that mankind may have entered up a period that we are creating an existential (in the sense of “existing”) threat to itself because of the high potential of the outcomes of having exceeded the carrying capacity* of the physical world. We have exceeded the carrying capacity of earth in a number of related and interdependent ways. Perhaps the biggest problem is that our population has grown so much that there may be no means of sustaining it into the future. However, it isn’t as simple as just increasing the number of people, the increased number of people is related to our cleverness in finding ways to expand the available resources in order to support the population explosion. However, in order to accomplish this we have had to increase our use of natural resources even more. It is an escalating spiral where growing more food, having more energy, making more goods, providing better heath care, and others results in the ability to have more surviving children, increasing the population. Providing the increased population even more of these benefits feeds back to create an acceleration of the population, and an exponentially accelerating increase of the use of natural resources.
It appears that we might be reaching a limit where pollution in many forms will have the cumulative effect of causing a collapse of the bounty of the earth. Some well known examples are: poisonous chemicals in the air and water, global warming due to green house gases, collapse of fisheries due to ocean acidification, sea level rises due to melting glaciers and the expansion of water as it warms.
The point is that humanity seems to have painted itself into a corner with no obvious ways out. The earth will be fine, after all it is just a big ball of rock and dirt – it doesn’t care about what sort of life exists on it. In fact, it is just rock and dirt and doesn’t “care” about anything. Life will undoubtedly continue, it has demonstrated an amazing resilience in the face of many disastrous events in the past. The life forms will likely change, but that will eventually happen no matter what – that is what evolution does. However, in the short term it might get a bit uncomfortable for people. Humanity will probably survive whatever the future will bring, but it is almost certainly undergo great disruptions and pain in the process. This doesn’t matter in the grand, celestial point of view – does matter to those of us who will experience it.
Assuming we haven’t already gone past “the tipping point” where there is no possibility of avoiding a catastrophe, what is it that keeps us from changing in ways that could avoid that outcome? It seems to be related to a point of view, or as mentioned in quote, the “angle of vision.” We continue to act as if short term gain is worth more than existence of the species. We continue to act as if “our” children will do fine in the future, even though it is obvious that “their” children will likely die horrible deaths because of malnutrition and disease. We seem to think that we can close our boarders in the face of billions of people worldwide being forced from their homes because of climate changes and rising sea levels. Our view is that growth and increasing is an inherent desirable and good thing; that increased usage of energy translates to prosperity; that it is appropriate and expected to take as much as possible from the environment and available resources if this results in increased short term profits to a few without taking into account the cost to others that don’t share in those profits.
What if all of those assumptions about what it means to be “successful” are recognized as merely being our current angle of vision? What if we could change that a little bit so that “success” translates to making a better long term future for all, rather than a better short term presence for ourselves? What if family size and reproduction rates were judged by how help future generations rather than being a sign of ??? (Actually I can’t imagine what good thing a large family is a size of, so I can’t finish that sentence.)
What if all that is required is a change in humanity’s “angle of vision”? What might the new angle look like? Is there a different way to look at the world that results in our staying within the carrying capacity of our earth while enjoying the good things that we have come to expect? Maybe that includes a new definition of “good things” – perhaps changing ideas from “having a big enough heater to keep us warm” to “being warm enough.” The first vision is that one solution works, the second vision doesn’t constrain the approach.
While this seems trivial and obvious, it doesn’t appear to be so. I am currently reading a book by Bill Gates called, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”. It is all about the need to produce more power, using more efficient (and more profitable) means so that more giant corporations will be interested in investing. The book assumes we need more power, owned by fewer people, generating more profits. Always looked to growth as the solution. It doesn’t spend much time talking about achieving the goals (warmth, coolth, food, transportation, etc) using fewer resources and less energy. It is focused on the benefits of “more” instead of “enough”.
What is the new point of view where we can all realize that we are wealthy once we need no more?
*Carrying capacity: noun: the maximum population (as of deer) that an area will support without undergoing deterioration. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/carrying%20capacity. Accessed 23 Jan. 2023.