Is our civilization in free fall?

Richard Hames has a long essay on why our system is not addressing its systemic challenges, given a number of intergrated psycho-cultural causes.

Here’s the intro, but go to the full article for the detailed treatent of the individual causes.

Richard David Hames:

“During the coming decade we are likely to face a cascade of massively disruptive crises that will feed on each other both economically and ecologically. Many of these will disable institutional power players, potentially opening up space for new socioeconomic, governance and technological innovations to embed. As that happens, collaboration on an unprecedented scale will be needed to transition the human community into one that is at once more viable, resilient and benign to life.

In that regard it is useful to distinguish between two scenarios articulated by my friend Michel Bauwens. The first presupposes enlightened leadership from at least a fraction of the political and business elite. This is difficult because it requires a level of consciousness and individual altruism able to rise above perceived self-interests. The second focuses attention on local resilience but accomplished in ways where the resulting innovation flows are accessible universally – for example through open source design and peer-to-peer communities. Elements of both scenarios are critical to success. Both must be framed within different logics of possibility and desirability.

There appear to be five factors currently hampering civilizational renewal. They have nothing to do with technology, infrastructure and investment capital, and very little to do with politics. In fact all five of these factors are relatively intangible. What they do have in common is an affiliation to the cultural or psychological space within which we typically respond to shifting and uncertain conditions.

Very simply stated these factors are (i) the detachment of ideas and social relations; (ii) fears and apprehension, engendered through an apparent lack of control as well as a distrust of others motives; (iii) outdated and invalid mindsets; (iv) competitive conduct; and (v) the fragmentation of endeavours.”

Let us examine each of these in turn.

1 Comment Is our civilization in free fall?

  1. AvatarH Luce

    This is all well and good – and accurate – but to adopt Islamic methods of analysis, for example, would require getting away from a growth economy which is the basis for modern capitalism – and I see no driving force for these ideas to be adopted by the current well-entrenched system. Moreover, there are significant legal obstacles which exist, chiefly the fiduciary duty of a corporation to increase the wealth of its shareholders. To overturn and overcome these obstacles would require a revolution and the wholesale change of the economic systems of the West – and I don’t see that happening.

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