BecomingEarthseedSlowingProgress
Becoming Earthseed: A Survival Guide for the Human Race
Chapter 2: The first step is the hardest
Putting the brakes on progress
- "But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving."
- -Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
We live in a time of rapid and accelerating change, change directed mostly by economic forces rather than by people. These economic forces, as described by Adam Smith, depend only on self-interest and assume that the societal traits of equity and wisdom will arise naturally from the interactions of self-interested actors. In fact, while economic growth can sometimes benefit whole societies, it often enriches only a few at the expense of many others, which can lead to chaotic revolutionary upheavals (though so far, not as commonly as either Marxists or proponents of true global democracy would like). More importantly for the current discussion, growth without limit is an impossibility on a finite planet (see Chapter 3), and the blind pursuit of this goal is leading our civilization toward an ecological crash of massive proportions.
Ironically, many of the specific problems arising from the acceleration of growth and change actually result from the human tendency to ignore these trends and continue doing things as we always have (in other words, to deny the fact that change is eternal). As former Vice President Al Gore has observed, the combination of old habits with new technology produces dramatically unpredictable consequences. Often, the power of the new technology is multiplied by economic and population growth. For example:
- Using traditional methods of irrigation but with vastly more powerful tools, the USSR (which George Orwell decried as the ultimate attempt at creating a changeless order) almost completely drained the Aral Sea.
- Despite the advent of nuclear weapons and the shift toward terrorists rather than nation-states as the major threats to American security (a shift driven by population growth and new technologies such as the Internet, among other factors), Bush Administration strategists apparently believed that a traditional military invasion would work well in Iraq.
- Many decades ago, Americans established a habit of driving cars around the city and across the country, which seemed harmless enough at the time. Nowadays, the vast numbers of cars and car owners contribute hugely to air pollution and global warming, while in some areas the original goal of moving people quickly is no longer met because of frequent traffic jams.
Why do I say that slowing change is the first step, given that it will obviously be so difficult? Perhaps hurrying to establish ourselves on other worlds would be a reasonable precautionary measure, just in case Earth collapses under the weight of so much chaotic change. But consider: if we send off emissaries to other worlds, they will inevitably carry our civilization with them. The idea that teams of colonists can start fresh on Mars, putting old international conflicts behind them and even building new political and economic systems from scratch, is frankly absurd. (Remember, all positive change takes time. Even the American Revolution of 1776 had its roots in historical trends, and universal suffrage for everyone over eighteen didn't come until passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971.)
If Earth is still in the midst of the current era of accelerating change, with the increasing chaos that implies, our colonies will surely also fall victim to that chaos, unless they are merely tiny enclaves of apolitical scientists--and even then, they may not escape being used directly as pawns in Earth-based power struggles. In all likelihood, though, the colonists themselves will re-establish old patterns of conflict or create new ones, probably related to the drastically limited biological and technological resources that will be available at first. And on a fragile, dependent colony in a hostile environment, any conflict that rises beyond the level of heated argument can quickly lead to death.
So we need to learn to slow things down, if we can.
