my biggest fear for a while now
My biggest fear for a while now has been that the "billionaire club" becomes a coordinated effort to take over the world. It seems like the club is getting smaller as the wealth of the world concentrates in these few moneyed hands. If they can put aside their differences and petty squabbles they can pretty much consolidate power for themselves, like a global royalty. Their mindset of extraction is hastening climate change, societal collapse, and dominance of a few over the many. I hate to say it, but I was right.
I think what scares me most is I don't have any idea how this movie will end. Will it be millennia in some sort of new dark ages? Or an uprising that takes back this power and begins to rebuild a new, more just society? I'll tell you a couple of things: no matter what, it won't be easy, and even if we do win, we're going to be left doing our best to minimize harm for a very long time because this environmental spiral is not going be easily or quickly reversible.
Jim used to tell me that when you're scenario planning, there have to be more than three scenarios because if you only have three possible scenarios, humans will choose the one that most approximates the status quo and therefore also choose to do as little as possible to change the contours of the scenarios. But no one scenario is ever fully up to the task. Trying to determine almost any outcome defies our intellectual ability to identify all the possible factors and their interplay to bring about an event.
And like everyone else, I like to think I'll be more resourceful when my back is at the wall, but based on my experience in self defense training, I'm not sure I want to count on that. I remember being taught something along the lines of "under real stress, we tend to perform at 50% of our ability." Intuitively, this makes sense and even if it's also an apocryphal or imperfect rule, I tend to wonder how smart humans will step up under future conditions of deprivation, anxiety, and uncertainty when we all really need to perform. Similarly, we have to wonder if new generations will have the grit, determination, and education they will need in a world that is currently built to sap energy, optimism, and enthusiasm in its population, especially its youngest. So the question is what do we do?
I am becoming more convinced that we have to build resilience at our most local levels, solving problems side by side with our neighbors. Someone said there is no social media posting that gets you out of fascism, and I strongly agree. So, I'm committing to more work, closer to home.
I commit to:
- Start a food garden, so I appreciate where food comes from, and have an idea how to be more self reliant when supply chains fail
- Join my neighbors as they meet this moment in political action, mutual aid, and localism and;
- Create, support, and join communities with those around me in the city to find joy and fellowship
There's no one who can save us except us. It's certainly not the democrats, or anyone who thinks they're going to use this moment as a way to make money.