Try something else

Human survival means returning to a sacred animist culture.

Market based capitalism is destroying the world. If humanity survives, we will return to an animist existence. Within a century or so industrialised people will either be completely immersed in living in a living world, or dying on a dying one. Possibly the only remaining question is how far we can make that process democratic, egalitarian and non-violent. The answer may be “not very”.

This tumultuous journey will strip away much of what we currently consider freedom, common sense and rationality. Our task is to decide what should and can be saved.

Our main challenge will be to defuse the bomb of our own psyches. Pretty soon we’ll be doing it in the middle of psychic, intellectual and actual war zones. It’s going to be quite something.

Especially as we’ve discarded religious and spiritual belief and a whole load of other stuff central to what human culture actually is. Without them, in all their eccentric and nonsensical glory, we aren’t fully human.

I sometimes wish I didn’t have certain instincts and emotions. But there’s no healthy way for me to eliminate, override or ignore them. That would leave me a hollow shell of a person.