Humanity's Final Exam -- Understanding

“The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.”
-- Erwin Schrödinger

“An educated mind is useless without a focused will and dangerous without a loving heart.”
-- Winfried Deijmann

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
-- H. L. Mencken

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
-- Albert Einstein

The primary motivation for the work underlying this site is to provide resources for effective action to meet the crises, to serve as a journal of actions underway or completed, and as a guide to actions that need to be taken. My way of working is to ground action in a thorough understanding of the crises, and the various problems that they present, as well as the resources available to solve the problems, and the possible courses for action.

To avoid the well-known “paralysis by analysis”, Understanding and Action should proceed roughly in parallel, each informing the other. Emerging understanding will suggest lines of action; actions will encounter obstacles and raise issues that need deeper understanding to resolve. In a sense, then, Understanding and Action here are related in a way similar to science and engineering.

This page, as it now stands, is an outline and placeholder for an entire section of the site. As a heading begins to be fleshed out, it’ll be extracted into more detailed subsections, with a summary and links left here.

Who’s “We”?

On the Home page, I identified the people affected by the coming crises as “all humanity”. In various places, I may use the word to identify more specific groups of people. I believe it’s important in endeavors such as this to be careful about the use of the pronoun. We may want to assume, in a particular utterance, that we’re speaking to all of humanity, but we’d be better served by being aware of who the likely audience is, and framing what we say in a way appropriate to that audience. This is particularly crucial when we’re urging the audience to action; is it reasonable to expect that the intended audience is capable of this action, and can be expected to be willing to undertake it?

Understanding the Crises

This section is intended to provide a richer picture of the crises that are briefly described in Context.

Global climate change

Peaking fossil fuels production

Potable water

Global social-political instability

Population growth

Dark Horses: Other Potential Crises

Distribution of trace elements; food production on lands degraded by industrial agriculture; ...

Interactions

The above sections focus on the various crises independently; this section investigates how they interact and affect each other, either by exacerbating each other’s effects, or by damping them. (For example, one result of the decline of fossil fuel use will be to gradually reduce the impact of greenhouse gases on climate change.)

Effects of the Crises

The magnitude of these crises, and the time scales over which they’ll operate, leads me to believe that there must be a decline in various aspects of human societies today, particularly those societies most dependent on industrial technology and the associated ways of acting and understanding the world.

The decline will likely occur in phases. I believe these phases will occur in all possible futures, even the most benign. This is a consequence of the fact that our use of fossil fuels has led us to overshoot the limits of sustainability. Ideally, the decline will only be in the average per-capita standard of consumption

{** Note here: this isn't a good way to characterize it -- am I talking about the worldwide average? That's already pretty low. Hmmm, what would a "mild" decline look like?}

, and the phases will be minor periods of adjustment; in the worst case, the decline will be in all important aspects of human life, and will be too severe and too fast for our individual, technological, and cultural faculties to adapt to. In the former case, the different phases may not be clearly discernable as such; the description below is phrased in terms of a more severe decline to make the distinctions clearer.

Pre-Decline

This goes from the present up to the point that one or another crisis begins to seriously affect large economies and societies. Ideally, it will be a period of evaluation and planning, providing a foundation for meeting the crises effectively.

Initial Decline

During this phase, the decline will be evident to all. It will also be a time of increasing difficulties and challenges.

Full Descent

By the beginning of this phase, the peak of fossil fuel production will have passed years ago; any use of fossil fuel energy will be at most in a transitional role. People, organizations, and governments will be facing the problems of trying to build the foundations for post-fossil fuels in the face of declining available resources and increasing challenges to social stability. The problems here may well be exacerbated by the need to address one or more of the other crises at the same time.

Stabilization

In one way or another, a more or less stable situation will emerge, in which sustainable forms of energy will be used to support whatever social structures have survived or evolved.

Possible 2^nd-Wave Decline

It’s possible, however, that delayed effects from previous environmental insults will result in new environmental crises, which will strain the fragile structures and possibly cause a further decline in population and/or standard of living. Also, the new social structures, having been created and evolved under considerable stress, may suffer from internal contradictions that will cause them to collapse.

Subsequent waves are also possible, of course.

New Equilibrium

Finally, a “low point” will be reached, from which survivors can begin to rebuild to the extent permitted by the energy and environmental resources available.

Understanding Systems

Nature of complex dynamic systems

Resources having a whole system focus on problem and/or solution

Resources for Meeting the Crises

Personal

Group

Cultural

Appropriate Technology

Personal Understanding

Following are some personal observations on the possibilities and places of greatest leverage for action. The main point is that it’s important to understand both what your end goal is, and what immediate actions make the most sense in the immediate context to make progress toward that goal.

A natural impulse is to look to political action to accomplish a goal. If one could only leverage the resources of a nation, especially the U.S., one could accomplish a large amount in a relatively short time. The problem with this is the difficulty of acquiring enough policital clout to access the levers of power. This is especially problematic when one’s goal is to achieve a significant change in popular perception, particularly if it affects the balance of power in the nation (e.g., changing the dominant economic model).
On the other hand, political action can be effective. The environmental movement in the industrial nations has been able to change both general perceptions and created effective political action (although it’s constantly subject to counterforces).
Another approach to action is implied by the slogan “think globally, act locally”. Often the best way to effect national and global change is to create a groundswell of support for it by working in communities over a large area. Needless to say, this requires time and many committed people.

Site authored and maintained by Don Dwiggins.
(Note: email address subject to change. Check back here if you get a bounceback.)

Humanity’s Final Exam