The Civilizational Level
Author: Douglass Carmichael Issue: 2023-11-01
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The Civilizational Level
by Douglass Carmichael
Most climate discussion is either a discussion of why we are in a ditch, plans that have no discussion of implementation. Wikipedia defines a plan as including timing and resources needed at key points in the plan. Three amazing people have laid out the diagnosis of why climate change is going to kill many of us.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
Schmachtenberger has analyzed exponential trends in society: tech, war, debt, computing, genetics, and growth and shows that we must, to survive, undermine these major exponential trends in society.
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Nate Hagens
Hagens has a project, The Great Simplification. He says “Simplify or be simplified”. There is just too much and we need to learn quickly to do with much less.
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Simon Michaux
Michaux has analyzed the prospects of alternatives, primarily wind and solar, replacing fossil fuels with some high technology replacement and shows that the project fails because the minerals necessary don’t exist or have become too expensive.
“I am developing a plan to transform our relationship between energy, minerals, and industrialization, as the existing proposed strategic plans are shown to be logistically impractical. ”
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I find their analyses compelling. But what is left out is the social side of actual climate change. Remember, we are already in it and seeing some hints of how people will respond: hurricanes, Gaza, Ukraine, food shortages from crop failures, and stopping exports and floods (which are underreported after day 1).
Institutions, all of which had staff, will be discussing climate:
What happens? When might each institution break down? Will key employees fail to show up? What will happen at the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal? Will the printing presses run (without electricity)? How much will people reveal their culture by so many “my God, oh Jesus, what the fuck’s”? What happens in the mayor’s office? How will you respond to the vicissitudes of the calamities?
Toynbee makes it clear that the state and the civilization are separate. For example, the states of France and the United States; whereas civilizations, western Christendom, Eastern Orthodox, Islam, and East Asia.
In every case the civilization contains states; states do not contain civilizations. What is the glue in feelings and relationships that hold them together? Are the glues of the state different from the glues of civilization?
I think it is obvious that the glue for a state is different than the valences of its containing civilization. The state is more dependent on law and regulation; civilization on myths of origin and values held sacred.
These differences are important because, I am suggesting, that viable approaches to the course of climate change are more likely, given scale and the ability to mobilize around values, to be at the rarely-discussed civilizational level.
Taking on the civilizational is not going to be easy.
Related:
- Douglass Carmichael (author)
- 2023 (year)
- Topics: Climate and Environment