Possible Futures

Don’t be afraid to read and think about what follows – the intention of this site is not despair; it is about creating something wonderful!

What will the world look like when today’s babies are 70 or 80 years old?

Of course the future does not exist yet, but we can speculate how events might unfold, given our present situation, our current behaviour, and the laws of Nature.

Let’s fast forward to the year 2100 and explore the alternative scenarios of how things may have played out:

#1. Some vestiges of civilisation and society limp on – a few privileged groups (their relative luxury being but a poor shadow of the lifestyle we take for granted) barricade themselves inside guarded enclaves, fortified against the roving hordes of hungry and desperate vagabonds. They strive to keep alive fragments of the skills, the culture, and the know-how that had been painstakingly acquired over past few millennia.

#2. There’s been a total collapse of civilisation and social structures – the much-diminished remaining human populations live in isolated tribes who eke out a bare living by hunting wild animals and gathering berries and plants.

#3. The human species itself has become extinct – maybe taking many of the more complex plants and animals into oblivion with them. Perhaps there’s nothing more sophisticated than worms and insects that have survived – maybe even no more than bacteria and protozoans.

#4. The era of life itself has come to an end – this once-green earth is now no more than a barren ball of rock, like so many others orbiting the stars of the galaxy.

We are all aware of multiple mechanisms at work now which seem, nearly inevitably to lead to one or other of these gloomy outcomes. But it is not inevitable – there is one more possible scenario:

#5. We have learned to take responsibility for our actions, and to utilise the wisdom and the technology that already exists to building a civilisation worthy of the name:

• a world that works
• a world where we live in harmony with ourselves, with each other, and with nature
• a world filled with abundance, with love, and with creativity
• a global society that is truly sustainable – not just for a few decades or centuries, but for the hundreds of millions of years that this planet remains habitable.

This site is dedicated to the exploration of what that might look like, and to the exploration of what it will take – technologically, socially, economically, philosophically and spiritually, to get from here to there with the minimum of pain.

I welcome your participation.