Joel Caris discusses his new quarterly magazine Into The Ruins, and the doubtful future of industrial society.
(Stream / download audio at bottom of page)
Modern industrial civilization is a mode of existence which most of us take for granted. The abundant food, supercharged sanitation, endless entertainment, and constellation of other seemingly unlimited choices laid before us is rarely questioned, and its complexities are poorly understood. But in our headlong charge to consume more of everything whatever the cost, we have set in motion a chain of events which is currently cascading towards catastrophe.
Within the realms of energy, the economy, the environment, and the dilating danger zone where all three meet, mounting crises are already undermining our ability to keep the wheels of the capitalist road-show turning. The dream of infinite growth on a finite planet is being exposed as the fantasy it always was. And yet still we pursue the impossible as if it were inevitable, billions of conditioned consumers unwilling or unable to imagine life without their technological trinkets and toys, and still billions more impatiently awaiting their share of the techno-industrial spoils.
For most of those aware of our predicament, the future belongs either to a utopian paradise in which technology unfailingly offers solutions to each and every problem, or to a dark dystopian nightmare where the remnants of our race wander the wastelands preying on each other and praying for death. But another world is possible – a world in which we may lose everything, and yet ultimately, once again find ourselves.
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