June 2023

  Its become harder to deny that things are getting worse. Progress, technology, consumerism and the general pursuit of more has finally passed its zenith. We live in an age of decline. The masses teeter between the first two stages of grief; denial and anger. Lacking direction, vision, or the will to change, great numbers bury their head in the sand and lash out at reality in increasingly bizarre displays of confusion. Meanwhile, the biome grows sicker, groaning and twisting under the weight of 8 billion humans. The ecology that fueled our ascendence is gone for good. Millions of children will inherit a world unrecognizable to their ancestors, one of scarcity, harsh limits and increasing instability. The mythologies of the 20th century still hold the reigns of power, but they too are slipping. Spread thin with over-complexity, the artificial systems that support civilization are beginning to crack. Denial has no future. There is no transhumanism. There will be no flight to the stars. The GDP won't rise forever. Our way of life is over. Babylon will fall.
  What we need now is a new mythology. One that accepts, learns and grows from the mistakes of the past. Not nostalgia, not an extension of the status quo, but an adaptation to, and evolution with, the principles and restrictions that provide us with life. The radicals of the past have tainted our vision with a cynical nihilism, unable to imagine a different position they sink into doom and defeatism.
  Today, a blithe culture calls us "extremists". But as time passes, increasing numbers become dejected, alienated and hopeless, swelling the ranks of the dispossessed and deflating the thin spectacle that is the "new normal". Tomorrow promises a world of extremity, new conditions that may make extremists out of all of us.