Blog 1: The problem
Humankind is at risk due to its own entrapment in lethal societal structures, historically bad choices, lack of self aware leadership and the criminal hierarchical self interest of powerful individuals and institutions.

The evolution of our species has brought us to an unprecedented point of singularity, especially during the last few centuries. The final outcome of this situation is showing itself with peak impact in just a few decades, our own lifetime. Before listing our chances let’s list our risks and self inflicted vulnerability.

Vulnerability number 1: In the lethal hands of speculants

70% of the human species is now living in cities around the world. Cities are made of cement, glass and tarmac which we cannot eat or drink. For food, drinking water and any other basic needs we depend on production and logistics from outside the city. With a global population growth that multiplied by 7 over just a few centuries the competition for the world’s natural resources has grown to extreme proportions. Our individual dependence in cities to access those resources has been generalized through money. All the products, our protective housing, our care systems and social securities, and our financial means are in the hands of speculants who just serve their own (financial and power of control) self interest: banks, housing corporations, commercial organizations, insurrance companies, health care institutions and power driven politicians. In cities we are at mercy of their hunger of control and greed.

Vulnerability number 2:  Our own mindless consumer lifestyle mentality

When we stopped being directly involved in the productivity of our own basic needs we also stopped thinking about our responsibilities. Our only modern concern is the availability of sufficient means to access the consumables for our needs. These needs are not adjusted anymore to life essentials or empathy with our environment but to lifestyle standards imposed by the perception of abundance in the city, our desire rather than needs, economic drivers, competitive surroundings and commercial interests. Not having access to sufficient luxury and wealth produces anxiety, stress and greed. This has many effects on the human evolution. On the one hand it stimulates our individualism, eliminates the group dynamics while developing social isolation. On the other hand it produces fears,  criminality, a sense of competitive greed and a gradual break down of our sensorial intelligence and naturally automated resilience. In essence we become massively greedy, unaware, lazy and stupid. We become victim and slave of massive manipulation.

Vulnerability number 3: Genetic antropocene

The elimination of nature from our artificial city’s consumption based financial ecosystem, including the effects of the chemical industries on our manipulated perception of hygene and healthcare through fragmented substitutes of nature, also eliminates the natural defense mechanisms while making us increasingly vulnarable to our own pollution and the undesired manipulation of our genetic resilience. The human body is too complex to react as a virus to change. Our lifecycle of renewal is counted in decades and generations while a virus changes in seconds and produces generations in minutes. The only way to stay robust as a complex species is to find symbiotic harmony with our ever changing surroundings by interacting with it, not eliminating it. We have created a genetic antropocene next to the environmental antropocene that is already likely to eliminate us from the eco-system of life on Earth. Our genetic vulnerability will do the rest. Many children are born already with behavioral, emotional and physical disorders due to pollution, human chemical manipulation and stress. Most adults of today develop cancer and other human made health disorders.

Vulnerability number 4: Historic choices

Cities evolved around anything but core human evolutionary values. Who cared about the human individual? We seem to reproduce like rabbits, our population increases and there is always abundance for insensitive preditors like industrial manufacturers, war agents, financial economists, politicians, commercial interests, religious dogmatic fanatics and bankers. Historically choices were made around facilitating industrial development, governmental authority, logistic processes, defense mechanisms and money driven speculation. Never the human being was considered as an evolutionary responsibility, yet was used massively in trade, war, beliefs and political interests of someone else. As a consequence most cities are vulnerably in conflict with their own past:

  • The origin of the city (as a geographically fixed accumulation of human beings) has often not much to do anymore with its current reality. Yet the basic structure, appearance and physical location of the city was determined back than and remains. Adjustments were made in a time of industrial processes, rapid influx of the people, the required housing and infrastructures, etc
  • a consumption driven culture of trade, events and centralised accessibility appeared.
  • The democratic impotence of our political economic context developed over time as a powerful mechanism for modern governance. This only works in situations of stability and growth. When however a severe crisis demands leadership of change the democracy becomes extremely conservative, demanding the return to old glory rather than adjustment into a new reality. Democracy is an instrument for expressions of self interest in a process of outsourcing responsibilities. It is backward protectionism, not forward adaptiveness.
  • Capitalism was introduced in the 70’s as alternative to a link with the gold standard. It placed a debt burden on our future economic development creating a mortgage on labor and our planet. For some governments this was a way to address the increased cost of social security. The biggest mistake made ever was to make money, not social engagement, dominant in our society.
  • Our 300 years of industrial expertise in effective and mechanical production of goods also started to dominate our public services. It produced a cold process of optimization rather than development around love and human empathy. Human beings became numbers, human problems became independent, fragmented issues and services became reactive rather than proactive. These services have developed into semi government institutions that protect their self interest and develop themselves over the back of tax increases, political conservative promises and financial insurrances.
  • Citizen’s get hence forcefully capture in a structue of long term debt in which their lives are controled by banks, insurance companies and tax authorities. As a consequence large amount of citizens get into trouble, poverty rises and so does their sense of survival in a money dependent system. Legal rules are established to protect the money based system not the human integrity. People become desperate and do anything to survive. Chaos develops.

Vulnerability number 5: Destruction of our rural habitat

Money reigns, also in the competitive acquisition of resources from our rural surroundings. The constant hunger of cities and their population for cheap resources is killing our countryside, eliminating our water resources and producing climate change without precedence. Our attempt to control volume food production through single crop horizontal and mechanical production, using pesticided and fertilizers, is polluting our environment and our own selfs with chemicals. Meanwhile our climate has been disturbed up to a point of lethal natural catastrophes that try to re-establish a natural balance. We are confirmed to be the 6th cause of massive destruction of all life on Earth since the start of life 4.5 Billion years ago. Nearly all mayor species have already disappeared. Human beings are next in line of size and dependence of our environment. Only smaller species will have a chance to survive our massive destruction.

Conclusion
Our dependence on money, our blind lives in a speculative city environment and the massive social economic control instruments of multidisciplinary governance have made us come to a point of no return. If we uphold our current systems and lifestyle we will perrish. If we change we need to change everything against a tremendous effort. Can we do this? Yes we can, instantly. We have a choice. That is the content of the next blog.