What to Do?
(This is part 8 in the No Time for Utopia series.) I never liked Tolkienβs books β I always found them badly written, reactionary garbage β but when I was trying to write this final chapter in the No Time for Utopia series I kept returning to this quote from The Lord of the Rings: βI wish it need not have happened in my time,β said Frodo. βSo do I,β said Gandalf, βand so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with...
Enemies of Our Children
(This is part 4 in the No Time for Utopia series.) In the previous two episodes in this series I argued that there are two possible futures for mankind and our planet. One is global societal collapse, which may take place within a matter of decades. The other is the βLesser Dystopiaβ, a set of policies and adaptations intended to avoid societal collapse and the massive suffering it would cause. The Lesser-Dystopian path is a rather narrow path, however, and significant deviation will inevitably result into a slide towards the Greater Dystopia of global societal collapse. To some extent, both...
Crisis and Inertia (4) β Economic, Political, and Cultural Crises
(This is part 4 in the βCrisis and Inertiaβ series.) While climate change constitutes a major if not terminal crisis for civilization (and possibly even for mankind) and certain technologies may also become existential threats in the wrong hands, there are many other crises and threats that seem to be less severe. All economic, political, and cultural crises appear to fall in this βless severeβ category, for example β at least, it doesnβt seem likely that another economic crisis or the gradual collapse of democracy will lead to the end of civilization. Nevertheless, they are crises in the sense adopted...