Living in perilous times as civil religion unravels

We live in perilous times.

The civil religion of progress is unravelling.

Our careless use of fossil fuels is
changing the world's climate.
 

History is peppered with apocalyptic predictions that amounted to naught and to question someone’s religion is tantamount to foolishness for even disconfirmation of the belief frequently only deepens commitment.

Even though the collapse of progress is irrefutable, its adherents believe with religious-like fervour and to question or doubt it brings scorn and castigation driven by simmering anger, even a sense of insult.

Progress as presently known and understood became possible when we stumbled upon ancient sunlight and in discovering how to release the abundant energy stored in coal and oil, humanity’s trajectory changed, dramatically.

Progress of the past three centuries has been almost wholly dependent upon on the fossil fuels earth has carefully put aside for millions of years and after what is only a geological blink in time, we are scrapping the bottom of the energy barrel.

Many believe contemporary progress, essentially that profit and growth is infinite, but the finitude of our earth contradicts that and rather than maintain our focus on the contemporary idea of progress, we need to abandon the precepts to which we are addicted and re-invent the idea.

Progress should be about the broad betterment of the human project, based on a sweeping and fresh understanding of what leads to human happiness and flourishing; values, that when examined closely, are unrelated to existing beliefs of progress.

Present progress is built on the energy of our rapidly diminishing fossil fuels and because they have been used with such exuberance and foolishness, we are facing unimaginable changes in the human condition, complicated by equally unthinkable changes to the world’s weather system.

The garrulous among us praise the modern market system, but chief economist for the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, has described climate change as the greatest market failure in human history.

Rapid deterioration of our climate is a symbol of the unravelling of the progress myth, but it is not alone for evidence of its collapse can be seen in our refusal to acknowledge that we live in a finite world and that we need a new way.

Our consumer-based lifestyle revolves around and depends upon our continual gouging of finite resources; resources we need to husband rather than wastefully use to pander to a lifestyle that will leave our children, their children and those who follow with a world stripped of its essence.

Many believe technology will resolve emerging difficulties, but nothing exists, is being developed or is even imagined that is able to fill the void left by the seriously depleted fossil fuels.

Our devotion to progress and technology has removed the need for innovation, severely limiting our chances of inventing a fresh and resilient future.

Progress invariably linked to the economy

Progress, a recent meeting in Melbourne seemed to agree, was invariably linked to our economy.

A $14 trillion debt threatens to
 unravel the U.S. economy.

Nothing, not even an idea, could be advanced, it was noddingly agreed, until it could be demonstrated that what was proposed would financially enrich the community, or particularly, some individuals.

Money followed barter and is one of civilization’s earliest inventions and its implications have troubled us ever since as his or her success has long been measured by the financial capital they controlled or could influence.

However, while there is no denying the power of such capital, it is always social capital that is overlooked and rarely valued.

With the world locked onto a trajectory that will see us progress into damnably difficult times in which financial capital will be of little value and social capital will have values never seen before, certainly in modern times, or understood.

In times past, and in some countries, your affluence was measured by the size of your woodpile, but as we venture into circumstances unknown, affluence will be more about your social network than the size of your woodpile, although that would undoubtedly be helpful.

The adage suggesting it is who you know rather than what you know is what matters will become increasingly important, but for reasons different to those that have added meat to the adage.

Finding and securing affluence in society as we know and understand it was linked, sometimes to knowledge in a chosen field, but frequently from links within the same social stratum – nepotism was at play.

Rather than preferential treatment for a few, the community of tomorrow should be interwoven, appreciate and work for equality and accept that real wealth is in social capital and not in accumulated goods or bigger bank balances.

So again it will be about who you know, but in this case it will be your neighbours and your immediate community and, importantly, what they know about living in a low-energy and sustainable way.

It’s not about money rather, it’s about a rich social capital in which the wealth of the community will be measured by the fertility of relationships.

America presently faces a dilemma evolving from a dynamic built around materialism, accumulation, individualism and inequality and, subsequently, is troubled by a US$14 trillion public debt.

America has, along with most of the developed world, enriched itself courtesy of easily accessible, cheap and finite fossil fuels, but now the debt is being called in and the country is unable, it appears, to erode its arrears.

Most other countries are in a similar position, having used nature’s bounty for frivolities, rather than building tight-knit, resourceful, self-reliant communities that put social capital ahead of the rude, and often violent, scramble for economic riches.