There have been toy sales at various department stores recently. While wandering through them I saw swarms of mothers with grumpy kids in tow, piling boxes of toys into trolleys in a frantic rush to buy them before they sold out. I could only ponder, what a pointless exercise it all is – the toys are mostly overpriced junk made by cheap exploited labour in far-away countries; the children will soon lose interest in their new possessions, and yet more non-biodegradable plastic will eventually be discarded and end up in landfill. The whole cycle is so typical of consumerism; the huge amount of resources required to sustain it is shockingly wasteful and environmentally devastating. The plastics themselves are toxic and their effects on the human body are a long-term uncontrolled experiment.
Via a negative comment in an entry at writer Charlie Stross’s blog (more on that shortly) I came across The Dark Mountain Project, a movement that aims
to question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation, to craft new ones for the age ahead and to reflect clearly and honestly on our place in the world. We call this process Uncivilisation.
They question the idea of progress and technology always creating a better world; much evidence now demonstrates exactly the opposite. Many engineeering projects, for example, are guilty of hubris, believing they can control Nature – as in the case of dams such as the Three Gorges Dam – but Nature will always ultimately triumph, often to the detriment of humanity.
That commenter has the typical view that technology will triumph over everything and those doubting this are just Luddites. I am not anti-technology, but the way it is used now is simply unsustainable. The capitalist consumer society based on endless growth is simply not sustainable long-term and is environmentally destructive. And, no, we’re not likely to start mining asteroids or colonizing other worlds anytime soon. We must learn to live sustainably on this world. A few random ideas:
- Reducing population growth is imperative; by draconian means if necessary.
- Abandon the obsession with growth; move to a steady-state economy.
- Abandon the process of globalization; localize and try to produce as much as possible close to home.
- Ban the use of petroleum-based plastics.
- Destroy the stock market, which is a parasitical entity (almost a cult) and of no use whatsoever.
- Dismantle and reduce cities if possible, and encourage smaller communities to flourish in the countryside. These are psychologically healthier places for people to live in rather than in anonymous concrete towers.
- Encourage the development of sustainable power sources such as solar power.
This is effectively the downsizing of civilization, and it doesn’t necessarily involve abandoning the comforts of civilization such as medicine and heating in winter! The vision I have is of high-tech and simple, environmentally-friendly living combined, such as a house and garden with its own water supply and solar power, part of a small community connected to others physically by rail and virtually by high-speed Internet. If nanotech could be developed, this would be a great asset – nanobots could manufacture virtually all a household’s needs (though specialists would still be needed to do their programming).
This would require a radical social change; too much for governments now to contemplate. I was disappointed at the response to the recent global financial crisis – the so-called “solution” was to merely give billions to those who had created the problem, and get back to business as usual! It could have been a catalyst for change, but no one had the courage to try.
