Being a unapologetic generalist who is unencumbered by the narrowing limitations imposed by a formation education, I came to understand technology at a young age as an interconnected system of systems that intrinsically and inexorably links human activity with the natural world. The circular and interconnected nature of ecological systems is not only fundamental to understanding how human activity affects the natural world, but vital to understanding very fate of humanity itself.
Gods, but for the wisdom
Our carbon-based technological civilisation has grown and advanced in its capacity to change the world, but matured it has not. Human civilisation has now extended itself beyond the sustainability of life, disrupting natural balances and equilibria established eons before our arrival. We have altered the natural balances that keep us alive beyond our ability to become sustainable through our traditional means of building new technologies. To understand why this is the case, we must understand how the interconnected and circular system of systems we are a part of behaves, and the relationship between human activity, technology and ecology.
Reducing the carbon footprint of an oil based civilisation cannot be achieved by manufacturing new technologies, because all manufacturing technology is interconnected with existing physical and natural systems of systems. The manufacture of new technologies at scale leads to a growth in industrial mining, manufacturing and transportation, all of which are oil-based.
Yes, renewable energy technologies marginally reduce overall consumer CO2 footprint, but this saving is dwarfed by the jump in industrial CO2 output as production of renewable technologies takes place in the exiting oil based world.
How did we arrive at this impasse?
Our civilisation is built on a foundation of ideas and assumptions, fundamental beliefs derived from the psychology of fearful ancestors who shared this world with other hominid species and megafauna. In this highly competitive and dangerous environment, those who yearned to possess resources for themselves had a greater chance of survival than those whom they denied resources to. Over time, evolutionary forces rewarded selfish behaviours found in narcissistic and sociopathic types, dividing humanity into predator and prey, (mis)informing how humans view their role in the world and how we collectively behave.
Civilisation has allowed millennia of greed, totalitarian philosophies and the megalomaniacal ambitions of a few to shape the fate of those kept in blissful ignorance. We have denied our ecological interconnectedness, turning the relationship between human civilisation and the natural world into an Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. Unable to accept or even fully comprehend our own fate, we bite down harder, hoping not to escape our deadly cycle, but merely to resolve what we perceive as an inexplicable inconvenience, an obstacle to more growth and the continuation of our unsustainable behaviour.
The snake eating its own tail does not know it is eating its own tail, and thus bites down harder, inexplicably suffering more pain, but resolved to eat and be on its way. We, the oil-based civilisation, blind to the intrinsically unsustainable and alienated relationship with the natural world and ourselves, venture to resolve the consequences of our alterations to nature by biting down even harder with new technologies, built by our existing unsustainable infrastructure, exacerbating the very problem we are attempt to resolve.
The Ouroboros does not escape its fate by biting down harder. It either lets go, or pays the ultimate price for its own ignorance. We needn’t neglect to assume our responsibility as custodians of this planet and ourselves, squandering life at our own peril. There is hope to be found in enlightenment and wisdom.
Civilisation may be physically, sociologically and psychologically trapped in a vicious cycle of our own making, but liberation from our demise is possible when we truly understand our predicament.
Once we can clearly see the proscenium of civilisation and its history, we can let go of that tail we foolishly desire to consume that vital organ trailing behind us in our history, the natural world.
