Time speeds up as one gets older. When I was 10, the next passing year represented 1/10 of my life. Now each year is 1/50-plus... you see what I mean. I am closer than ever to an end-game that comes ever more swiftly. Has the shortening of years skewed my perspective about the seemingly exponential increase in intractable problems facing humanity? Or are things really going from bad to worse, and if so, can the downward spiral be stopped? Reversed?
As I read the non-candidate diaries posted yesterday and overnight, I see stories about the decline of bats and bees, instructions about reducing our carbon footprints to zero in an effort to stave off global warming, assessments of the dire state of the global economy, problems with and in our food supply, and ever more revelations about political obfuscation and corruption, and the sad human cost of the Iraq war (and all wars)....
And I get the sense that things are falling apart more universally, and more quickly, than I have ever before seen in my 50+ years on the planet.
Some of this feeling is certainly the product of the exponential increase in available information: perhaps things were always falling apart quickly, but we didn't have the means to know about it until now. But I genuinely fear that this is something more: we have entered, and indeed have been in a negative feedback-loop for some time now -- a tightening downward spiral. Our species has surpassed the threshold of sustainability long since: we continue to increase in number at the expense of all other forms of life, and I believe we will soon arrive at the point where we humans will be fighting one another to survive. Water wars, food wars... we already have an energy war.
Perhaps my pessimism is being augmented by the fact that not too far from here, the French military is conducting artillery practice as I write this. Each "boom" costs about 35 euros, so I'm told. Each of the several daily flyovers of Mirage fighters and other aircraft costs thousands of euros. There is an impact on the local environment, and clearly on my peace of mind.
The task of preventing our own extinction is enormous: there is so much sheer ignorance that needs to be overcome; so many special interests who care more about immediate profit and gratification, regardless of long-term costs; and just so darned many of us who need to be fed and clothed. We will grow more food at the expense of ecosystems everywhere. We will use up everything the planet has to offer... and then what?
It is a sunny day here in Upper Provence, and for once the sky is blue: no one is burning leaves today (thus far). I am safe and warm. My family is reasonably secure economically. Is it wrong for me to feel apprehensive about humanity's future when I am so relatively comfortable in my immediate situation?
I want to end this on a note of hope, but that's frankly hard to do at this moment, given the enormity of humanity's self-inflicted predicament. Whatever solutions we come up with will be extremely costly. I can say this, however: we humans do not give up easily, even in the face of enormous odds. There have always been pockets of resistance to overwhelming evil. There has always been altruism among us, along with those celebrated "random acts of kindness." Will human tenacity be enough to save us now?
Oh, how I hope so.
UPDATE: I appreciate kid oakland's diary on "tikkun olam," currently on the Rec list. The MLK quote, "the fierce urgency of now," resonates.