In theory it would be quite possible to devise a sustainable culture — once this one is gone for good — lasting many millennia to come. Using permaculture practices, living in earth berm homes made from locally available, truly renewable materials, like wood, stones, clay, hemp etc. we could build a civilization lasting many millennia, albeit a rather primitive one measured with today’s standards. However, all it takes to drive this experiment to the ground is one spoiled generation, or one unsustainable culture, not giving a rat’s hind leg to sustainability — heck, you only live once!

A Sustainable Utopian Society And Why It Will Never Happen

Technology keeps pushing out the boundaries — but only up to a certain point. Population size and consumption are (and always were) oblivious to this trend and kept increasing well beyond the limits set by resources (both natural and mineral) available to them. This is overshoot. Once reached, there is no safe return: civilizations have to keep doing what they are doing to avoid collapse, but by doing so they’re just hastening their demise.

The Paradox Of Technology

An insightful article that calls the challenges we face today as a civilization

Warning! What follows is not easy to digest, let alone to accept. If you think that this is all crap, or the very thought of a potential end to this way of life freaks you out, I recommend not to…

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Personal Development

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Problem Solving

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Society, Arts & Culture

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Science & Nature

Warning! What follows is not easy to digest, let alone to accept. If you think that this is all crap, or the very thought of a potential end to this way of life freaks you out, I recommend not to read any longer and close this post. Forget about this topic and live a happy life!

A fter a longer than usual intro — <a href="https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/how-i-came-to-believe-that-civilization-is-unsustainable-d2aed64eac34">telling the story of my personal journey </a>— let me show you the reasons why I came to believe that our civilization is approaching its final descent. As you will see, it is a familiar pattern, one that has been experienced by many civilizations before, and I’m sure will be experienced by many following this one — for all too common reasons. Although the “end of times” were forecast many times before, remember that the “end” did come eventually for the Romans, Mayans, and all the others before. What is different this time, is that now we have developed a scientific understanding why those previous civilizations collapsed. Unlike vague prophecies in prior times, we now have solid proofs for trends clearly pointing in the wrong direction (if upholding this way of life were the goal). I’ve collected some of these in this article and added my observations linking them into one more-or-less coherent picture.

I will be adding useful links, scientific research, book recommendations etc. to these topics and keep this post on the top of my page, so it can serve you as a useful guide in understanding what is really going on behind the scenes of this great unraveling. In the meantime, while you are waiting for all the links to appear, feel free to research any of these topics. (Just highlight a phrase and hit ‘define’ or ‘search’ depending on the platform you use.)

While doing so, you might be lured into thinking that many of these issues can be ‘tackled’ (oh God, how I hate this word… sorry). Keep in mind however, that a number of these things have ended civilizations almost single-handedly before… and now they’ve got company . Quite a big one, for that matter. If you still think that this civilization can survive the coming storm after reading (and processing) the list below, then I you might want to read the list again…

This time without the pink glasses though.

W hat’s important to note here is that these topics are the net results of many positive and negative trends . None of them are news-bites about single events, which we could dismiss as pessimistic then move on by reading some good news. Biodiversity loss is a good example: I read dire warnings almost every week, and while there were huge steps made in protecting a few fragile habitats or endangered species, the overall picture still remains a strong downward trend, with no signs of turning.

The problem is, that we are not addressing the root cause to these issues. We are just fiddling around the edges, achieving quick wins here and there, while business as usual (aka overshoot ) continues to roar full speed ahead…

Some topics are recurring, affecting most civilizations before, some are unique to ours. Some are overarching our species entire history. So, while you are reading the list, do not miss to observe the interconnection between them, and notice how they will not disappear even after our current civilization stops worsening them.

+1: But it’s different this time!!! No. It’s not. Overshoot is overshoot. Once your civilization starts to consume more than what naturally gets regenerated, in its folly to pursue infinite growth on a finite planet, collapse is only a matter of time. It usually happens shortly after the resource base (fisheries, forests, topsoil, or in our case oil) supporting the said civilization starts its permanent decline due to over-consumption, pollution and a loss of a livable habitat.

K nowing what I know today, I became comfortable with the thought of collapse. I’ve also made peace with the fact, that the main issue of overshoot won’t be addressed — and no one is to blame. Humanity had a long history spanning tens of thousands of years, all leading up this point in an immensely complex web of causes and effects. Thus the rise and fall of this fossil fuel based civilization was and is as inevitable as the rise and fall of many older civilizations.

This is a perfectly normal, natural cycle of boom and bust. No leader, be it a dictator or an elected official can turn this around. This is too much to handle to any person: there are too many things set into motion all at once. I’m sure that there will be fascists and communists rising to power insisting the opposite — but remember what happened, when these two parties got what they wanted the last time…

Knowing how much of Earth we have consumed in the past 150 years, how far we have depleted every resource from forests to fisheries, from coal mines to sand during our rapacious growth mania, it is not hard to imagine what comes next. Not Star Trek, for sure. Not even a return to “normal”.

In theory it would be quite possible to devise a sustainable culture — once this one is gone for good — lasting many millennia to come. Using permaculture practices, living in earth berm homes made from locally available, truly renewable materials, like wood, stones, clay, hemp etc. we could build a civilization lasting many millennia, albeit a rather primitive one measured with today’s standards. However, all it takes to drive this experiment to the ground is one spoiled generation, or one unsustainable culture, not giving a rat’s hind leg to sustainability — heck, you only live once! — and there goes your utopia. It has happened many times in the past, and there is absolutely no guarantee that it won’t happen again.

Such is life. Birth, growth, maturing then death. The same cycle repeats itself at all scales: from bacteria, to human societies, solar systems and galaxies. This is the world we live in. Temporal. Ever changing.

Never the same, yet always the same.

Be grateful. You have seen the peak of human civilization. You have made it! It’s time to make peace with how it ends and start imagining what comes after. A quote from Antonio Gramsci sums this up neatly:

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of monsters are born.”

Book References:

How I Came To Believe That Civilization Is Unsustainable

A Sustainable Utopian Society And Why It Will Never Happen

The Paradox Of Technology

Ajeeth Swaminathan's ideas are part of this journey:

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