It Feels Like the End of an Era Because the Age of Extinction Is Beginning:

stevemaclellan:

I recently read an article by Douglas Rushkoff, one of the age’s great thinkers. He
was invited to speak to an “ultra wealthy” group in the American West,
so he did what us nerds do, prepared a little talk. And when he got
there, he realized — LOL — it was five billionaires who wanted to pick
his brain about whether their Luxury Doomsday Bunkers were going to make it.

You
see, these idiots thought — think — that there’s going to some kind
of…event. A sudden cataclysm, during which they’ll be able to rush to
their luxury bunkers, and eat hydroponic food and be protected by their
Imperial Guard of Navy Seal mercenaries for…what…the rest of their
lives? While the rest of us out here are taken up to heaven in some
version of the Rapture.

They don’t get it. There’s not going to be an event. Because we’re already living inside The Event. See the planet dying? That’s The Event.
It’s not going to happen overnight — at least in the mayfly timescale
of a human life. And yet it’s happening, increasingly horrifically,
every single season.

We’re living inside The Event. This age is so difficult to explain and comprehend because that’s really different.
This age is itself The Event — yet an “event” is something we humans
think of as happening in the blink of an eye. This is, in geological
time — but not in human time. To reconcile these two perspectives is
very, very difficult for the human mind. It’s like seeing with two
different sets of eyes at once.

Let me try to distill that, so you understand how different this age really is going to be.

Just apply the formula at the End of History — and don’t worry about it. We weren’t going to run out of planet. Because in all this, nature’s job was just to keep on giving us stuff for free. The trees breathed out air for free, the rain poured, the ocean currents surged — and to the way of thinking of the neoliberal mind, left over from Ages of Empire and Industry, that free stuff was an afterthought. It’d just be there forever.

And yet here we are. A civilization, running out of clean air, water, food, energy. Prices skyrocketing. Economies in turmoil. Fascisms erupting. Pandemics igniting.

It Feels Like the End of an Era Because the Age of Extinction Is Beginning: stevemaclellan:

I recently read an article by Douglas Rushkoff, one of the age’s great thinkers. He
was invited to speak to an “ultra wealthy” group in the American West,
so he did what us nerds do, prepared a little talk. And when he got
there, he realized — LOL — it was five billionaires who wanted to pick
his brain about whether their Luxury Doomsday Bunkers were going to make it.You
see, these idiots thought — think — that there’s going to some kind
of…event. A sudden cataclysm, during which they’ll be able to rush to
their luxury bunkers, and eat hydroponic food and be protected by their
Imperial Guard of Navy Seal mercenaries for…what…the rest of their
lives? While the rest of us out here are taken up to heaven in some
version of the Rapture.They don’t get it. There’s not going to be an event. Because we’re already living inside The Event. See the planet dying? That’s The Event.
It’s not going to happen overnight — at least in the mayfly timescale
of a human life. And yet it’s happening, increasingly horrifically,
every single season.We’re living inside The Event. This age is so difficult to explain and comprehend because that’s really different.
This age is itself The Event — yet an “event” is something we humans
think of as happening in the blink of an eye. This is, in geological
time — but not in human time. To reconcile these two perspectives is
very, very difficult for the human mind. It’s like seeing with two
different sets of eyes at once.Let me try to distill that, so you understand how different this age really is going to be.

Just apply the formula at the End of History — and don’t worry about it. We weren’t going to run out of planet. Because in all this, nature’s job was just to keep on giving us stuff for free. The trees breathed out air for free, the rain poured, the ocean currents surged — and to the way of thinking of the neoliberal mind, left over from Ages of Empire and Industry, that free stuff was an afterthought. It’d just be there forever.And yet here we are. A civilization, running out of clean air, water, food, energy. Prices skyrocketing. Economies in turmoil. Fascisms erupting. Pandemics igniting.Read More