We need the ecological crisis to push us out
of our comfort zones. And if we look back
we know we have been heading in this direction
like a half century really.
Probably we're undergoing kind of an evolutionary
process as a species like we've developed
a kind of perception that we're separate from nature
and cosmos, and we're just, you know, independent.
But actually what we're experiencing
at this rapid evolution of technologies and
the matching together of humanity into a global
brain has similarities to what we often see
in nature in the evolution of species and
the birth of individuals. The way the brain
of a fetus is formed, as all these neuropathways
connect, so now it seems like a birth also
involves a lot of trauma and, you know, blood
and suffering and so on. So it feels to me
quite likely that we're in a kind of evolutionary
birthing process. And a lot of things that
are hard for us to understand from our present
perspective could make sense from a different
advantage point. I think that's a very hopeful
way of understanding because nature is usually
intelligent and usually has a way of orchestrating things
towards, you know, new and more imaginative ends
in a way. So we might be for instance
on the birth of a true planetary civilisation.
We might be on the birth of exploring other
worlds or acquainting a financial system that
provides everybody with a basic income. It's
much easier to see the negative and the shadow
of what's possible than it is to see the positive
and the light in what's happening.
These three areas of technical, technological,
infrastructure, social system and then also
kind of consciousness which is shaped by culture
and media and education, these are the three
sort of big areas I think we need to look at.
Technically, we know what we need to do
in terms of energy, we need to shift to renewable
energies very quickly, and we're seeing more
and more capacity that makes that possible
whether it's the evolution of solar which
has now reached kind of grid parity or the evolution of
storage systems, the internet of energy,
the internet of things which will
allow energy to be shared efficiently,
so that actually people could become ... individuals
or communities could become net producers
of energy and feed it back to the grid. In terms of
industry the whole idea of a cradle-to-cradle
manufacturing, you could have like things
that are packaging, being compostable,
having seeds in it so that you can create new gardens
or something. In terms of agriculture we shift
to renewable, regenerative farming practices,
no chill farming, permaculture. At the moment
we know that the industrial farming system
according to the UN there are about 60 years
left we can farm in this way before we can't
produce anymore food.
But luckily we know there are these other ways
of farming. Some are not new innovations,
they are ancient innovations, we can theoretically
learn from the past and scale up these types
of models and shift our direction. Other technological
areas are very intrigued by the social networks,
social media, media in general, and the fact that
15 years ago something like Facebook that
now reaches 2 billion people on the planet
every day was basically unimaginable.
More than one quarter of the planet, various populations
matched together in a gobal communications
infrastructure that could allow for rapid evolution,
new ideas, social innovations
I'm extremely interested in. Basically, the thesis of the
book is not that we, you know, destroy capitalism
but that we recognize the limits in capitalism,
that it's a very unsubstainable system
and we evolve ways to work past those limits.
So for instance we could use mass manufacturing
to create housing units that
are totally self-sufficient so that people
can grow their own food, hydroponics, create their
own energy from solar, compost their own waste.
There is a Stanford group that
is pioneering what they are calling vegan villages
as a model for that. Then you think
about how there is a refugee problem,
and all these refugees are being settled in one
of these tent complexes where they are totally
dependent from the outside. What if that's
turned around and we're able to create, you know,
kind of mass manufacturable housing units
where people can support themselves
in a zillion ways. So I think if we're going
to deal with the ecological crisis that we
created which really is very dire in many
respects, it's going to require innovation
that's exponentially scalable quite rapidly,
and it seems like we've created the technical means
for those innovations to scale, with the
communication systems that allow everybody
to communicate and the distribution of manufacturing
systems. That capitalism will probably need
big fundamental shifts in our financial system
and our decision-making structures to bring
about that types of rapid innovations that
are necessary.
We would need to rethink the gaín system so that
it's not just about financial capital, financial profit.
It's also about corporations becoming more
a cooperative of infrastructure with supporting
health and biodiversity of ecosystems, you know,
health and biodiversity of local communities,
and then in terms of the tool that we use to
exchange value, you know, that's also something
that just had a kind of certain kind of evolution.
You know, the idea that money is a fiat currency
that is issued by a central bank that's based on
bank debt, you know, it's a form of currency
that forces competitive and aggressive behaviour
across the society because when you go to
a bank to get a loan they value your credit score
which means they are valuating your capacity to
bring back the interest in that loan, you know,
against anybody else in society.
And if they think that you're a good risk, that you're competitive enough, that you'll be able to
make more money that they are giving you then
they'll give you the loan, right? So the financial system
that we have now is built on artificial
scarcity, it automatically creates debt and
bankrupcy and anxiety and discomfort, and it does that
systemically. So then we can ask yourself:
OK, how can we do better than that?
If there's enough food and resources
for people, could it be a universal basic income,
could it be, I'm really interested in etats,
working on a book called "The Future of Money",
it analyses the history of money systems.
It argues that there is kind of ying and yang
currencies. There are currencies that actually
are more ying that support cooperation and
community and so on. People propose they have
a negative interest currency called the terra and the
global scale. The idea is that people have no,
like you would get it, it has like
a time stamp on it, so it loses value
the longer you hold on to it. So instead of holding
it you want to share it back because there's
no value in holding it. And what's interesting
about the blockchain is that it allows people
to create kind of tokens, cryptocurrencies
that are based uopn, agreed on rules by whoever
wants to get involved by supporting it.
So if these ideas gain a currency in a sense
you could create tokens or cryptocurrencies
or distributing autonomous organisations that
had more of this ecological and social benefit
built into them.
I like this model of thinking about it as
an initiation which is something we see over
and over again in films, whether it's Avatar or
Star Wars or Matrix or whatever, that this
is like a crossing over a point and instead of resisting
change and the dangers of what's happening
people could say: OK, this is the
existential situation that we're in and
I'm going to step into. This is my hero's journey,
this is my mission, my initiation, and how can I be
the best contributor to a positive outcome for my family,
for humanity, for the planet as a whole?
And then it becomes very exciting, almost like
a game or something, to see how much
can you give, how much can you contribute?
But yes I understand that, you know,
many people are in established structures and they
fear for the future, they have a lot of equity
in the systems as it exists. And, you know,
that's legitimate also. But, you know,
it is a time of profound change, and people are
feeling that shaking, as you said, in their
value structures ... the stuff that they thought
that they want isn't even really that satisfying,
and that actually maybe, for instance, you know, in
New York there is a lot of people and their culture,
young people in their 20s and 30s,
but there isn't like communities that are
multigenerational, people really care for
each other, and it gets tiring as you get
older that actually these models of the things
that would make the planet more livable and
thrivable would also mentally be much more
satisfying for the indivdual after a change
that admitedly is uncomfortable and weird and difficult
and turbulent, and we don't even know quite
how to make totally right now. So it is an
experimental time, I understand many people would
feel threatened, but there's in a sense the
die is cast in certain respects like whether
it's technology and automation or what's happening
environmentally, we're rapidly moving into
a different circumstance, and we have to adapt to that
kind of mindset of flexibility and fludity and change.
