We live in increasingly precarious and polarized times. How did we get here? As if COVID were not enough, then the travel bans, mandatory lockdowns, school and daycare closures, businesses folding, pandemic panic, healthcare and infrastructure failure, and the frantic race to discover a cure were just the beginning. Geopolitical tensions started breaking out all over the world, followed by increasingly large segments of societies unable to keep the lights on or put food on the table. Supply chain shortages disrupted every conceivable way of life. The brouhaha over mandatory vaccinations, restrictions on freedom, the explosion in mental health crises, and millions of people dropping like flies pretty much sum up the past few years. Add to this global scenario that the planet started burning, economies tanked, and people had to stay cooped up like chickens if they were lucky enough to retain their jobs or work from home. Then came the immoral invasion of Ukraine, tension over nuclear engagement or a Third World War, East versus West, soaring gas prices, energy and commodity sticker shock, crippling global food markets, including famine in developing countries, followed by inflation, and now recession. With Hamas’s surprise barbaric massacre of Israeli citizens, the looming Taiwan question, and a potential unholy alliance between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, could it get any worse?
In my new book, End of the World, I explore the main key existential risks and global catastrophic threats to human existence that currently command our world's attention. The conclusion is not pretty. We are in dire straits. We are witnessing our planet slowly disintegrate as devastated economies, social implosions, and anarchy during the pandemic have brought us to our knees. Why are we passive global bystanders to our ecological crisis? Why do we allow obscene disparities in wealth and social divisions to proliferate, remain silent about the prevalence of psychopathy in politics and globalized capitalism, and bow to the imbalances of power that could ultimately bring about our own extinction? It is only on the condition that we are under the unconscious spell of a compulsion to destroy ourselves.
The exploitation from unbridled capitalism only benefits the rich while much of the world population suffers. As politicians think about their reelection campaigns, governments are preoccupied with their military optics and gross national products rather than the environment. As we watch the desolation of "being" alongside our geopolitical tensions, the nuclear bombast, terror, racial, gender, education, and healthcare inequity, overpopulation, and infectious diseases of the future will only bring about more economic collapse, mental illness, culture wars, and crippled societies left to scrounge in the dirt. The range of global threats invites calls to action that seem impossible to ignore. But we can and do ignore them, for the world remains unconscious of our global predicament. Inertia and idleness in the service of dissociation and disavowal become an unconscious strategy to protect us from the very thing we are bringing about. Humanity is guilty of such inaction, for turning a blind eye, hence unwilling to see, and for sticking its head in the sand.
We need to awaken a new ethic of responsibility to the planet, where empathy, solidarity, and becoming better global citizens in the service of the common good will lead to better demos and polis. For this reason, the time has come to critically examine those elements of the human psyche that defeat efforts to mitigate our looming catastrophe. While we continue sleepwalking through our anesthetized states of moral torpor, denial and self-delusion impair our capacity to rise to the occasion collectively. The question becomes, will our collective unconscious death wish bring about our demise?
Our Looming Catastrophe
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07.05.2024
We live in increasingly precarious and polarized times. How did we get here? As if COVID were not enough, then the travel bans, mandatory lockdowns, school and daycare closures, businesses folding, pandemic panic, healthcare and infrastructure failure, and the frantic race to discover a cure were just the beginning. Geopolitical tensions started breaking out all over the world, followed by increasingly large segments of societies unable to keep the lights on or put food on the table. Supply chain shortages disrupted every conceivable way of life. The brouhaha over mandatory vaccinations, restrictions on freedom, the explosion in mental health crises, and millions of people dropping like flies pretty much sum up the past few years. Add to this global scenario that the planet started burning, economies tanked, and people had to stay cooped up like chickens if they were lucky enough to retain their jobs or work from home. Then came the immoral invasion of Ukraine, tension over nuclear........
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