Blurts & Spasms

First, what are some of the chief symptoms and causes of our totally fucked future…?  Let’s begin with the U.S. specifically:

1. According to the most recent Presidential approval polls, some 40% of the U.S. voting population appears to be hopelessly stupefied by either blind loyalty or willfully ignorant and delusional thinking – as evidenced by an unshakeable devotion to bloviating con-artists in government and media, and to policies that directly amplify their own suffering, destroy democracy by promoting an increasingly totalitarian flavor of fascism, and endanger the human species and indeed most life on Earth.
   
    
2. A majority of Americans also seem deeply committed – if not behaviorally addicted – to a form of commercialistic crony capitalism that concentrates wealth and power in the upper 1-10%, and impoverishes, oppresses, and even threatens the lives of everyone else. In support of this addiction, a particularly pathological, toxic, and cruel style of business leadership has continued to dominate several American industries, leaders who harmonize overwhelming largesse for shareholders with callous disregard for workers and customers. Just take a look at corporate profits vs. nominal wages in the adjacent chart as proof (from Trickle Down Economics).
    
3. As a consequence of these first two conditions, the most ruthless forms of profit-seeking have created a runaway train of economic exploitation, instability, and risk in the U.S. The results are unsustainable, caustic, often inflationary balloons across multiple sectors, including:
   1. Soaring healthcare costs with poor patient outcomes relative to other peer economies;
   2. A social media ecosystem that addicts its users, isolates them from real relationship and community, ideologically radicalizes and polarizes them, and undermines their mental health and self-esteem;
   3. Overinvestments in harmful AI technology that is replacing jobs across many industries, supercharging military conflicts, amplifying the agency and reach of criminals, terrorist groups, and hostile state actors, and undermining human agency, relationships, and well-being;
   4. Energy policies that are amplifying the climate crisis beyond recoverable tipping points through increasing overall demand and reliance on fossil fuels; and
   5. A financialized economy built on leveraged speculation that will, of necessity, crash and burn to the detriment of everyone in society.
4. As everything in our globally interdependent world becomes more and more complex, U.S. citizens, consumers, and political leaders have become less and less informed, less thoughtful in their deliberations, and more and more entitled in their attitudes and expectations at the same time. The consequence of this self-magnifying trend is an overconfident but perpetually angry and dissatisfied idiocracy that executes increasingly reckless, counterfactual, and counterproductive decisions – while ignoring or dismissing negative outcomes. There could be no better examples of this than the woefully incompetent clown car leadership in the second Trump administration on the one hand, and the increasing abandonment of proven science (efficacy of childhood vaccinations and face masks, legitimacy of climate science and evidence-based solutions, rejection of factual current and historical data, skepticism of subject matter experts, etc.) across the political spectrum’s grass roots on the other.
5. Increasingly extreme ideological polarization and motivation have infected modern beliefs, discourse, media, and politics with excessive hate and rage, disallowing meaningful dialogue and solution synthesis, and exacerbating political violence.

Expanding to a global focus, we also have these well-established trends:

1. Increasing risk of nuclear catastrophe. In January, 2025, the atomic scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” was set to 89 seconds to midnight – the highest risk ever estimated. With Iran’s fissile refinement still underway and the government destabilized by internal and external pressures, Russia’s suffering catastrophic casualties and oil revenue losses in its war with Ukraine, and North Korea and China receiving a green light from the Trump administration that invading other countries for natural resources is completely acceptable, I suspect we’re now even closer to midnight.
2. Erosion or elimination of liberal democracy around the world, often by nationalist, xenophobic autocracies, resulting in the destabilization of political economies and impoverishment and oppression of local populations.
3. A feverish, caution-to-the-wind race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), without any substantive safety guardrails, that will not only rapidly replace all human cognitive labor, but presents the real possibility of catastrophic outcomes – including existential threats to humanity itself.
4. A steady march past multiple planetary boundaries into conditions of highest risk (see adjacent 2025 chart), resulting in irreversible ecological damage, public health crises, resource scarcity and conflicts, ballooning socio-economic inequality, and erosion of human welfare on a global scale.

 

An argument can certainly be made that humans have navigated both natural calamities and crises of their own making in the past. So…what’s different now?

Mainly we’ve exceeded the tipping point in too many areas at once, inviting a cascading polycrisis that amplifies adverse effects. In other words, we’re coming up against the outward-most boundaries that human civilization and Earth’s current ecosystems can survive. And those boundaries are becoming increasingly thin, fragile, and brittle. Allow me to illustrate….

Imagine for a moment if just one or two of the following factors manifest over the course of the next two years. For the purposes of this discussion, the likelihood of each of these events has a widely varying probability, but they are all conceivable, plausible, and increasingly predictable within a near-future timeframe.

1. Stagflation. The U.S. economy enters a full-blown stagflation recession concurrent with a collapsing dollar, resulting in an enduring period of extreme economic uncertainty and hardship in the U.S., and major political and economic realignments around the globe.
2. Slowing AMOC. The Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which has been weakening since at least 2015 as a consequence of human-driven climate change, exhibits accelerating slowing. This disrupts the availability of fish stocks around the globe, and triggers more extreme and destructive weather patterns in the Northern hemisphere.
3. Narrow AI risks. Bad actors successfully utilize narrow AI agents perfected for cyberattacks to take down supply chains, banking systems, energy grids, transportation systems, communication networks, and the Internet itself. Alternatively, bad actors use narrow AI to engineer another pandemic virus, this time much worse than COVID, and release it into the wild. Either of these scenarios results in widespread panic, civil unrest, government destabilization, violent conflicts over remaining resources, and potential collapse of civil societies and economies around the globe.
4. AGI risks. The race to Artificial General Intelligence is won, but only temporarily. Shortly thereafter, AGI proliferates the globe in competing camps, with some projects successfully aligned with human objectives and safety, and others not. The resulting multi-agent failures completely reshape the world economy and centers of power, with devastating short-term consequences for a majority of the world’s population as all fundamental technologies, systems, and structures are reconfigured, replaced, or realigned.
5. Russia. A deranged and desperate Vladimir Putin increasingly finds himself in an economic, military, and political corner. After four years of massive causalities and economic losses due to his war on Ukraine, he is running out of willing soldiers – along with the money to pay them – and his weapons and oil production capacity is likewise crippled. And yet he still tests Ukrainian and European resolve with past antics like incursions into NATO airspace, deployment of more hypersonic Oreshnik missiles in Belarus which are capable of targeting European cities, and nonstop attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian populations. In the face of humiliating losses and ceding more occupied territory in Ukraine, a panicking and delusional Putin then escalates his lust for destruction and power on multiple fronts at home and abroad.
6. Trump. The Trump administration continues to implement disastrously reckless and ill-informed (as well as notably fascist and racist) economic, international, and domestic policies, which in turn lead to economic hardship and civil unrest across the country and instability around the globe, thereby introducing political peril for Republicans at every level of government. Then, in anticipation of losing the U.S. Congress to Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections, Trump invents a reason to implement martial law against “the enemy within” in all democratically run regions, specifically to disrupt elections and prevent yet another impeachment – this time one more likely to result in a Senate conviction. This destabilizes the entire country and its relationships with the rest of the world, amplifying chaos, suffering, and uncertainty at every level of society in the U.S. and abroad.

Okay. So if we’re really and truly fucked, what can we do about it…?

Historically, there have been a few different options that have succeeded for civilian populations in such dire situations. Here’s a quick rundown of some proven choices, together with some more experimental ideas:

1. Nonviolent resistance. This actually works surprisingly well, even when dealing with oppressive, authoritarian regimes. Here is a link to an excellent list of 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action.

2. Multipronged sociopolitical activism. Here is my favorite accumulation of techniques to achieve political and economic evolution. They range from grass-roots populism to exposing misinformation to promoting legislation to disrupting the status quo…a total of eleven prongs of revolutionary activism. You can read the list at https://level-7.org/Action/.
3. Replacing the Trump administration via joint impeachment prior to 2028. If a sufficient majority of progressive Democrats and Independents are elected to both houses of Congress in the 2026 midterms, and enough sufficiently brave Republicans in Congress fulfill their oath to the U.S. Constitution, we can initiate a trial and convict Donald Trump and J.D. Vance under joint impeachment proceedings. Then a new, more progressive Democratic majority House Speaker can become acting POTUS until the 2028 Presidential election.
4. Republican lobbying of Congress. There is a large constituency of responsible, thoughtful, and patriotic conservatives in the U.S. who could, if they chose to break with their MAGA brothers and sisters, place significant pressure on their representatives in Washington D.C. to change the fascist course of our country and rein in the Trump administration. There is also some percentage of MAGA who, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, are feeling increasingly unconformable with Trump’s policies, and could also contribute to Congress recovering the oversight responsibilities it has advocated. The most recent bipartisan efforts to push back on Trump’s tyranny indicate this trend has begun – but is there courage and determination of more Republicans to follow through?
5. Violent protest and revolution. This is an unfortunate default throughout human history, but it can often result in the installation of just another violent and oppressive government to replace the old one. Also, it’s now pretty clear that the Trump administration routinely invents civilian violence, and would benefit from more of it – likely to justify an expansion of militarized crackdown as we approach the 2026 midterms. Just look at how ICE agents are being deployed if you have any doubts. So violent protest and revolution is not an ideal option in the short or long run. It is better to exemplify the outcome we want to see in the world as an inherent part of our activism (see options #1, #2, #3, and #4).
6. Thoughtful media consumption. To participate effectively in politics and socio-economic activism, we must be well-informed. This can be a challenge in an algorithm-driven world of media that aims to enrage and addict us even as it extracts profit from that compulsive engagement. But it is possible to be more thoughtful. First, it is helpful to cultivate a starting point of credible news and information sources, and to appreciate the agendas and techniques at work in modern disinformation campaigns. I have assembled resources specific to Russian and far-right propaganda – and our means of inoculation against it – in this link:  https://level-7.org/Challenges/Opposition/. And here is another helpful cheat sheet for examining sources of information more critically: https://www.wikihow.life/Consume-Media-Critically. I recently also had a friend advise me on the best way to avoid algorithmic distractions on YouTube. His advice was to actively “subscribe” to credible, vetted sources for podcasts and informational videos beyond the mainstream, and primarily follow and watch those subscriptions, rather than watching what the YouTube algorithm or corporate mainstream media feeds.
7. Prayer and meditation. Personally, I am heartily committed to prayer and meditation, though not as standalone options. As with many spiritual traditions, my belief is that action – or “praxis” – is an inherent component of faith. For me, this means I will employ skillful compassion, or what Christianity calls agape, in all of my choices to promote positive change, which are in turn supported by prayer and meditation. As for some recommendations on specific meditation and prayerful practices, here is a free online book for you to peruse: Essential Mysticism.
8. Promoting an alternative vision. This is big-picture stuff, but it is probably essential to humanity’s thriving, so that we can depart from the status quo on multiple fronts. We need to have a plan. In fact, I think one of the reasons we are increasingly mired in a crony capitalist dystopia is because movements like Occupy Wall Street did not offer any clear alternatives for us to embrace. Here is website I’ve dedicated to an alternative vision, assembled in largest part from real-world successes around the globe: https://level-7.org/. You can also read an introduction of the central ideas of Level 7 in this AI-assisted overview.
9. Other ideas. Although I believe that we must remedy the underlying issue of our commitment to a toxic profit motive in virtually every arena, there are nevertheless some helpful half-measures that may be able to mitigate capitalism’s harshest (but inevitable) consequences – at least for a little while. One set of such thoughtful half-measures for the U.S.A. can be found here: UNFTR’s 5 Non-Negotiables. But again…these efforts will not stave off the worst outcomes of those six disruptive factors we just outlined above. I believe we need to be a lot more radical in both our aspirational vision and our real-world activism.

That’s a start. Whatever we decide to do, let’s not wait too long to begin our critical next steps. Perhaps you can pick just one of the areas above and try it on for size. Commit right now to exploring your chosen role over the next month or two, and see how it feels. If it's not your thing, then try another approach. Personally, I'm in favor of all of these activities except violent revolution, so I put some thought, planning, self-education, promotion, financial support, creativity, political action, or other supportive effort into many of them nearly every week. I mean...what have we got to lose? If we do nothing, then we could lose everything.

It is heartbreaking for me to encounter responses to this question that sidestep discernment and wisdom around this issue. Sure, obviously history is written by the “winners.” Sure, folks at different ideological extremes have opposing views of what is “right,” while also expressing the same level of confidence in their views. Sure, people’s attitudes about behaviors, events and priorities change over time. All of this is true. But the conclusion that we should, therefore, abandon all hope of perceiving or understanding “who is on the right side of history” seems to me a rather lazy, cynical, and irresponsible excuse for not paying better attention to the human condition and civil society — and becoming more educated about them. In fact, such casual surrender to willful or despairing ignorance seems to reflect the sort of solipsistic nihilism that has routinely gotten folks into trouble…and indeed often places them on the “wrong” side of history.

So how do we discern who is on the right or wrong side of history? Of course we could begin with our own personal values hierarchy, but that wouldn’t be entirely helpful — in isolation, what do our own personal value or morals have to do with the larger arc of human history, after all? What we can do instead is look back over the history of human existence and civilization and track what the core characteristics of “right” and “wrong” have looked like, and observe how those tendencies have played out over time. Through that lens, we can assess who ends up occupying the “right” and “wrong” sides of history itself, and we can then attempt to project those standards and patterns onto current events.

Although initially requiring a lot of careful research, it’s a relatively simple exercise once the data is compiled. This process is in part what my book Political Economy and the Unitive Principle sets out to do, and you can read it for free via the link provided here.

At the risk of oversimplifying, I’ll summarize the main points:

1. Humans are prosocial critters, and thier prosociality has been key to human survival and the evolution of civilization itself — and also relatively uniform in its expression in terms of promoted behaviors and social mores (sure, there is variability, but the broad strokes are the same).

2. There is also a predictable progression of the individual and collective moral maturity process that reflects ever-widening spheres of inclusion for our prosocial impulses (i.e. we include larger and larger spheres of interaction and relationship in our caring as we morally mature).

3. As long as conditions are supportive, that moral progression is a natural, easily observable phenomenon in individuals and across every society we know of…and continues in those around the globe today. However, that progression is not fixed, fast, orderly, or immune to regression…it is instead messy and organic, and often slow (hence we need remember the “long” part of “the arc of the universe is ***long***, but it bends towards justice”.

4. Despite the “messiness” of our moral evolution, it then becomes quite clear who or what is on the “right” or “wrong” side of history — it is simply a matter of mapping those people and events within a progression of prosocial characteristics. To that end, please see this chart: https://www.level-7.org/resources/Developmental_CorrelationsV2.pdf

Lastly, those who have developed even a little bit in terms of their moral maturity will quickly recognize what is or is not prosocial in both modern times and history — that is, what is or is not beneficial to civil society over time. **However, this level of discernment and wisdom may seem mysterious or perplexing to those operating in the lower strata of moral development.** Those who aren’t as advanced shouldn’t be belittled for that (unless, perhaps, their arrogant willfulness demands it…), but instead encouraged to heal, mature, and grow.

For further reading, I would also recommend this essay:

The Goldilocks Zone of Integral Liberty

And for a deeper dive into my own theorizing about the nature of love — which is the basis of prosociality — and the human condition, please check out this book (also free to read):

True Love

My 2 cents.

Here are the top five reasons why there is a wave of right-wing governments across the globe:

1. Global corporate capitalism, as coordinated and directed by the wealthiest owner-shareholders around the world, is creating huge wealth disparities, increasingly destructive negative externalities (climate change, unbreathable air, undrinkable water, rapid species extinction, etc.), and exaggerated economic instability (boom/bust cycles that are increasingly extreme). This trend understandably frightens people, and they want a scapegoat for their fears. The far-right rhetoric blames progressive social policies, recent waves of immigrants, and “government interference in free markets,” in simplistic, polemic rhetoric. None of these are the real causal factors behind what so frightens right-leaning folks…but they sure are easy targets for polarizing propaganda. It’s really easy to get scared people to vote against their own best interests, and ignore the real “man behind the curtain” (i.e. those wealthy owner-shareholders) who doesn’t want to be held accountable.

2. The actual solutions to many of these modern challenges are complex, nuanced, contingent, dynamic and abstract. To even fully comprehend some of the problems humanity faces requires an advanced understanding of specialized disciplines that take years to learn (i.e. economics, climate science, biology, medicine, genetics, etc.). Consequently, it’s difficult to explain how to move forward to “the average voter,” and much easier to hoodwink them. And the conservative, right-leaning voters around the world have often had an uneasy relationship with evidence-based, scientific approaches, often mistrusting experts and academia on a fundamental level. And yet, these same conservative “average voters” feel empowered by misinformation they find on social media, in sensationalist journalism, on conspiracy websites, and through other unreliable sources. This creates a false sense of confidence (see Illusory truth effect and Dunning–Kruger effect), which combines with tribalistic “Us vs. Them” emotional reactivism, and in turn leads to mass movements that are highly irrational and easily manipulated. Unfortunately for those who gravitate towards the far-right end of the political spectrum, nearly all of the most strident, deceptive and manipulative propaganda today is housed in their media. So instead of becoming educated with real evidence or persuaded by rational reasoning, the right-leaning person becomes increasingly deceived and deluded.

3. Some rather unsavory folks with self-serving agendas have decided to double down on this ongoing deception. Whether it’s the fake science and science skepticism (such as climate denial) funded by the Koch brothers and neoliberal think tanks; or the “active measures” of Vladimir Putin aimed at dividing, angering and confusing folks all around the globe; or the strategic social media influence campaigns from Cambridge Analytica; or the lies and exaggerations of a mentally unstable President Trump — all of these sources are just engineering and promoting their own accumulation of wealth and power. It’s a pretty simple and transparent strategy…just “follow the money.” And social media platforms have now provided a powerful, dopamine-addiction-driven tool to entrain mindless conformance among targeted groups of users. For more discussion of this pernicious pattern, see The Opposition.

4. Progressives and technocrats are generally TERRIBLE at explaining their positions and the rationale for approaching complex problems a certain way. To them, the situation and its solutions are painfully obvious…but very few have the gift of translating that “obviousness” into clear, easily shared memes on social media, or humorous quips on talk shows, or simplistic black-and-white tropes that uneducated folks can latch onto. This is one reason I have proposed creating a Public Information Clearinghouse to help the “average voter” understand complex issues and appreciate evidence-based solutions.

5. I think…and this is perhaps the hardest thing to accept, let alone articulate…that humanity is getting dumber. Perhaps as a consequence of a combination of things — stress, pollutants, reliance on technology, poor diets, fast-paced lifestyles, etc. — or epigenetic changes that have been amplified by this same combination of factors, human beings aren’t thinking very clearly or cleverly. And there is also an increase — especially among conservatives and the far-right — to actively suppress their own intelligence. It’s quite disturbing to witness the extraordinary levels of cognitive dissonance conservatives must sustain to hold onto their most cherished but misguided beliefs. And this “cultivated stupidity” has a collective snowball effect, which again is just amplified into lockstep in-group conformance by the mass media that crafts these deceptive narratives and perpetuates them.

So don’t allow yourself to be hoodwinked by the right-wing propaganda about why there is a wave of right-wing movements. Over many decades, socially conservative, market fundamentalist, greed-centric crony capitalists have created the conditions that now make them so fearful and unhappy. But they are not willing to take responsibility for what they have done, and instead seek to blame others. It's a very human failing, but promises to be particularly disastrous in this situation — because it avoids engaging the actual causes for impending calamity.

My 2 cents.

A Critical Shift Away from an Extractive Downward Spiral

We can no longer maintain an opportunistic, ever-expanding extractive mindset toward planet Earth’s ecosystems and resources, toward human labor and creativity, toward the cooperative infrastructure of civil society, or in the “taking for granted” of life itself. Our extractive habits are unsustainable in economic terms, but more critically they are destroying everything around us at an accelerating pace. To fully appreciate both our extractivist habits and their consequences, please consult the following resources:

“Deep Adaptation: A Map for Avoiding Climate Tragedy” by Professor Jem Bendell (full paper available here; editorial article available here)

UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ (Detailed report overview with many key statistics here; full “advanced unedited” IPBES report here)

“Capitalism is destroying the Earth. We need a new human right for future generations” — Guardian article by George Monbiot here.

“Extractivism and neoextractivism: two sides of the same curse” by Alberto Acosta (full essay available here)

The only solution is to shift as rapidly and all-inclusively as possible to regenerative solutions — and a regenerative state of mind. Collectively and individually, there is really no other choice. Why? Because hopes that global capitalism can be reigned in or civilized are naive and Pollyannish — as all such efforts are routinely undermined by enormously well-funded and fanatical neoliberal investment in the extractive status quo. Because trust that human innovation will address the most serious consequences of extractivism with new technologies is contradicted by the enormous complexities of natural ecosystems, the stunning scale and current momentum of the problems we must address, and the dismal track record of a majority previous technologies that created unanticipated negative externalities. Our only reasonable option is to implement regenerative systems and vigorously restrain and extinguish extractive systems.

And again, these changes are not restricted to how humanity views and utilizes natural resources — that is really just the tip of the iceberg. Equally important are how we view people — human creativity, labor, economic behavior, social behavior, spirituality, etc. — as well as how we view the institutions of civil society, and how we view both the wonder of Nature and the miracle of life itself. Does everything exist merely to be used up and exploited? Or does everything in this amazing reality have intrinsic value apart from any utilization by humanity? This is the fundamental question we must answer in order to guide effective transformations of our old, self-destructive habits into new, sustainable and thriving ones.


If These Concerns Are the Primary Drivers of Reform, How Can We Change?

What do “regenerative solutions” look like, then? Certainly there are many proposed frameworks for sustainability that have already proven themselves on various scales — many of which are described in proposals on my Level 7 website, or would easily dovetail with those proposals. Successful recycling programs and materials sourcing, renewable energy, and sustainable agriculture have demonstrated genuine promise in their workability and scalability — even using capitalist metrics, they have increasingly been able to compete with traditional extractive models in terms of productivity and efficiency. As for human exploitation, worker-owned and managed cooperatives, Open Source production, P2P models, and commons-centric governance likewise have an established a meaningful track record of self-sustaining success — again even when using capitalist metrics to evaluate them, they often exceed the productivity and efficiency of traditional exploitative models.

Apart from the understandable resistance of established power and wealth to what will inevitably be a self-sacrificial change, what is the barrier, then, to transitioning away from extraction and exploitation? What is stopping us, and how can we overcome that barrier? Is there something more deeply rooted in our psyche that prevents us from moving forward. . .?

This is my intuition: that we need to fall in love again — with everything that our hectic, worried, materialistic, technological lifestyle has distanced us from. We need to re-invoke some of the mystery and wonder that once existed for us as we beheld the magnificence of Nature on a daily basis. We need to reconnect with each other in more personal ways — as neighbors, as community members, as citizens and fellow travelers of a rich cultural heritage. We need to cultivate more gratitude regarding the stunning gift our very existence. We must abandon a mechanistic, individualistic, reductionist and profit-centric view of ourselves and the world around us, and reacquaint ourselves with the felt experience of community and mystery. And we must not only grudgingly allow the possibility that life on Earth has intrinsic value, but actually celebrate it as we honor all species, all ecosystems, all habitats, all beings — including each other. In other words: we must return to more authentic, intimate and wonder-filled relationship with All That Is.

This is not a new concern, or a new remedy. Writers, activists, leaders, organizations and movements since capitalism first clawed its way to prominence have warned us of its dangers. However, this re-invocation of mystery has often been framed as an individual journey or choice — sometimes mystical, sometimes psychological, sometimes inviting methodological holism or integralism — but I would contend that this individualistic framing is itself destined to fail. A disproportionate emphasis on individual transformation and development is, in fact, just a new manifestation of the underlying error, confining the solution to the same atomistic, alienated, disconnected separateness that is causing the problem. The re-invocation of mystery must therefore be deeper, more encompassing, and more pervasive and participatory for any enduring, systemic transformation to take effect. It cannot be restricted to “me,” or “my tribe,” or “our community,” or even “our species” or “our planet,” for the egotism of individualism is too easily converted into the arrogance of anthropocentrism.

No, the smallest scope of this shift in relationship must, of necessity, be “All Life,” and then cascade through all other strata of being from there. To love all of life itself, to cherish it and commit ourselves to its thriving a a whole, is the beginning of cultivating kind, compassionate, caring relationships with everything else. And humanity must, as a whole, participate in this renewed relationship. We must all collectively revive a worshipful passion for the sacredness of life — certainly here on Earth, but really all of its forms wherever they may be found. And we must operationalize that passion within every system, every institution, every mutual agreement, every law, every collaboration and competition, every collective act. We must all live this truth together as if our lives depend on it — because, in light of the cataclysm we have created, our lives do in fact depend on it.

Yes, there will always be outliers, rebels, egoists and psychopaths, some of whom will continue to attain positions of power and influence. And there will be plutocratic pushback against all reforms challenge the supremacy of greed. But despite corporate capitalism’s endless efforts to reenforce, elevate and amplify such antisocial aberrations — through its heartless obsession with transactional relationships, commodification, externalized dependencies, self-indulgent hedonism, and the almighty dollar — that is not who we human beings are in our heart-of-hearts. Instead, we want to belong, we want to contribute, we want to care and be cared for, we want to love and be loved, and we long to have our intrinsic value and worth acknowledged. That is the basis of society itself — and family, friendship, and lasting romance — rather than the will-to-profit. So it follows that if we can, altogether, remember who we really are, then all the wonder and mystery of our relationship with life itself can be restored.

First Steps

In many ways what we are aiming for here is recovering a long-abandoned faith. Not faith in the sense of a blindly adherent belief system — and not the faith of any particular religious tradition — but faith as an intentional quality of character that trusts in certain fundamental realities: realities like the interdependence of all living things; the true miracle of existence; the joy of connectedness and belonging available to all; the power of lovingkindness; and the awe that we can be conscious of any of this. A faith that leads us to conclude with gratitude that, because the Universe has conspired in favor of our consciousness, our consciousness can now conspire in favor of the Universe. A faith that inspires us to celebrate rather than exploit, to regenerate rather than extract, to create rather than destroy. A felt experience of trust in the triumph of love over fear. A faith in life itself.

If such an intuition is correct, it demands that any reformation or revolution begin with this shift in focus, however that can be accomplished. As a small first step in this direction, consider the following short exercise with one or more friends and loved ones, and — if it feels helpful and right to you — practice and share it with others. And if it doesn’t work for you, perhaps you can come up with your own participatory practice that inspires a similar result.

In a quiet space, free of technological interruptions, have everyone join hands, and describe the following steps:

1) With heads bowed and eyes closed, take three deep, slow and even breaths to calm and center the body and mind.

2) Then, take three more slow and even breaths, and silently say to yourselves “May our faith reawaken” as you exhale each time. Focus on the meaning of those words.

3) After three repetitions, open your eyes and look at each other.

4) Breathe in slowly together, and then, as you all exhale, speak aloud in unison: “May our faith reawaken.”

5) Listen to each other, see each other, and again feel the meaning of those words in that moment.

6) Repeat the slow intake of breath and speaking the phrase aloud together two more times ― as an affirmation and encouragement.

7) Afterwards, pause for a few moments to allow this experience to settle and sink in.

We can of course make this exercise more specific by adding to the phrase: “May our faith in each other reawaken,” or in humanity, or in the power of compassion, or in life itself, and so on. But if we were all to consecrate our day, our actions, our relationships, our intentions, and our purpose with this kind of mutual affirmation and opening up — with a clear understanding of what it invokes regarding a sacred relationship with all of life — could such a small spark make a difference? Could it ignite a unity of compassionate restoration, and energize a critical transformation? Could it reawaken a quality of relationship with ourselves and everything around us that will restore balance and harmony?

In my teaching and coaching, I am always amazed at the power that connectedness and shared intention can create in small groups. That observation is what inspires this exercise, and the entire framework of Community Coregroups that I discuss in much of my writing.

Get our collective act together. This would include:

1. Ending militarism and WMD.

2. Moving away from highly toxic and destructive crony capitalism to a more egalitarian political economy.

3. Thinking more collectively about solving problems that affect all of us — rather than individualistically about what “works best for ME.”

4. Being more understanding and inclusive about “difference” (If our societies are intolerant of LGBTQ, women, or people with different skin tones, how could we ever learn to get along with aliens?).

5. Exercising the “precautionary principle” regarding new technologies and innovations, instead of rushing to adopt them.

6. Getting more of a handle on our own well-being, in a truly holistic and harmonious sense. If we aren’t truly “well” — mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually — then we shouldn’t be spreading our illnesses around the galaxy (remember Smallpox and Native Americans…?).

7. And, as a general principle that influences all of the above, becoming much better at understanding and addressing our own limitations and shortcomings — individually and collectively.

In other words, we need to grow up a bit as a species. For some time I have theorized that other spacefaring intelligences are likely patiently waiting for us to mature enough to meet them. I would speculate that, right now, they are very disappointed in human beings, who seem to be moving backwards rather than forwards in terms of societal stability and individual development.

My 2 cents.

Thanks for the A2A Jeff. To my mind there are three options, all of which are all probable to varying degrees at this point:

Catastrophic failure of capitalism. Mass disruption of human civilization as a result of expanding disease vectors (climate change), environmental destruction, social unrest, degradation and homogenization of food supply, toxic pollution, human health decline (poor diet, stress, toxins, disease), exponential extinction of species, genetic manipulation, etc. All precipitated by industrialization, income inequality, exploitation of resources and labor, bleeding edge research, overpopulation, and homogenization of both culture and biodiversity - all of which would be consequences of elevating the profit motive above all other concerns. The result will be chaos - an apocalypse of our own making. It is possible that we could resurrect ourselves hundreds of years afterwards, but not likely in a form of civilization we would recognize.

Enslavement to ASI. Capitulation of management of all complex systems to self-replicating Artificial Superintelligence that postpones the catastrophic failure of capitalism at the expense of human freedoms, managing the problems created by previous eras of resource exploitation, industrialization and profit motivation in a top-down fashion, with ASI at the top of the hierarchy, and humanity at the bottom. At first this will seem to be a “necessary sacrifice” because humans could not manage the problems they created; eventually, however, it will become evident that the sacrifice was too great.

Rejection of capitalism and blossoming of diffused, rhizomatic political economies. Several populist movement have hinted at this grass roots revolution/evolution, but have all fallen short in the face of almost universal de facto dependence on status quo power relationships and commercialistic programming. In other words, the masses return to a medicated state and the plutocrats remain in control simply because most folks are afraid to break free of their commercialistic dependence. However, it is possible that disruptive events short of a complete, catastrophic failure could trigger a resurgence of these populist sentiments, which - if they coincide with cogent and fluidly transmittable alternative memes - could generate the necessary focus and change agency for moving beyond the status quo and dismantling monopolies of power, production, administration and wealth.

Inherent to all of these options is a new relationship with complexity: either complexity will be exploded back into simpler relationships; complexity will be managed by superintelligent agents; or we will begin managing complexity in a more distributed, interdependent fashion. In addition, the defining characteristics of “the next era” will also include a new moral orientation: either regression to primitive tribalism; hyperindividualism and dependence to an extreme of debilitating infantilization; or a more unitive, compassion-centric view of human relations that engages civil society with conscience and conviction.

My 2 cents.

Comment from Brian Johnson: "And I take it these are all possibilities and not probabilities like you suggest? They are just maybe’s and speculation."

Nope. They are all probable - just to varying degrees. A “possibility” would be that we will send a manned mission to Alpha Centauri and start a settlement there. That is “possible” but far less “probable.” In contrast, the collapse of capitalism is impending, not just possible, unless something like ASI intervenes (ASI is also an impending technology, not just a possible one). Alternatively, we could sidestep the collapse with a new form of political economy…now THIS is more of a possibility than a probability, but my own optimism regarding the resilience and creativity of the human species prompts me to place it in the “probable” column.

(From Quora question: https://www.quora.com/What-will-come-after-the-modern-era-Assuming-modern-includes-modernism-and-postmodernism-And-what-will-define-it)