2453 More on what can happen.

Our current society and its institutions  are continuing to add social complexity on the surface of our planet that is not being well managed, maybe not even managed at all.  Population, institutions, corruption, a struggling musical chairs middle class, militarism This is the core of where we are. But there is more we need to be conscious of. 

As we are learning From anthropology and archaeology, pre-settlement humans were extremely creative in practical and playful aspects of life. we can expect that the raw  conditions that emerge as we go through the climate crisis will lead too lots of creativity, both trying to recall what we knew and new things that we playfully invent,

The future is not mostly a linear extension from where we are. We  are at the point where as things break down everyone is rushing for the exit from the present- looking for an  entrance - but into  what is unclear, even unknowable. 

When many things are coming together,  things connect fairly easily. When the whole situation is falling apart, connecting a few things is much harder because the connections are being torn by the general movement of collapse.

The question has to be, in our time, are  there things worth bringing together? We lost Christianity. We lost Freud and Marx (and Piaget and Cassirer and Erik Erikson and Rudolph Seiner and so many others.) They get mentioned but not read).

Is there a project of pulling together science, arts and an ecology and politics of the “critical zone” (Bruno Latour), an economy with a new appreciation of the commons and appreciation of every human being? Of every living thing? Integrating humans with nature?

Can we free ourselves from the shared unwillingness to talk about what might happen,  enough to follow  up with a  discussion of what  to do? Changes will happen that force rethinking.  Will most of us do it, or just reach for the gun? The circle of co-living will expand with new arrangements. You and I will not be natives in that culture, but younger people will be at home there even if it is uncomfortable.