Unwinding the Human Predicament Not That Complicated

The human predicament has three attributes.
        Too many people for the earth's declining services,
        too big an inequity among individuals to avoid civilization collapsing conflict
        too small a value for the commons to prevent environmental destruction.

There are many computations that show by the end of this century the earth will be able to support between a billion and 10 million people.

The earth's population, driven by nature or planning, will decline 80 to 99 %.

One of these projections, the business as usual path has:
        our numbers expanding to 9-10 billion at mid century before scarcity and conflict
                cause a die off.
        Most of existing technology and civilization will be lost. And
        chances of recovery, given the absence of easy access to minerals and energy,
                are slim to none.

On any path forward, there will be more deaths than births. But humankind gets to decide if these deaths are from old age or from starvation or conflict.

For example, we get to decide if the number of births each year is determined by billions of personal choices (unguided by their collective consequences) or we let our civilization constrain or encourage these birth decisions.

Depending on:
        how the earth's supporting resources are husbanded,
        the advancement or loss of technology.
        the disconnection of behavior from genetic predisposition and cultural fantasy,
        how these disconnections influence the structure and function of civilization
        (i.e. how civilization shapes personal behaviors that contribute to sustainability)
the human community, at the end of the century, will be
        10's of millions of hunter and gatherers,
        100's of millions subsistence farmers, or
        50 million living a utopian extension of life today.

In this light, the predicament is quite clear.
The required behavior that leads to each of the alternative futures is well defined.

To attain the future we want for our kids depends on obtaining different procreative, hierarchical and commons usage behavior.

1/7/2014

Jack Alpert
The front page of www.skil.org contains updated invitations movies, and archived content for Change the Course.