Visions of the Future

Some time ago, my friend J send an email to handful of kids he knew asking what out visions for the future are, as it concerns the environment. He was working on a semester-long project trying to determine our school's ecological impact. Here was my response:

Hey J,

I appreciate your emailing this to me. This is something that I find very compelling about primitivist ideas: it seems to offer an actual alternative vision. I'm reminded of Fight Club, when Tyler says, "In my world, I see people climbing wrist-thick kudzu vines up the side of what used to be the Sears Tower. I see people laying strips of venison on abandoned six-lane superhighways." I was inspired by that, and thought about how this is excellent precisely because it offers a vision, something more than just a negation of present-day bad things.

In any event, this is what I envision, maybe ten, maybe a hundred pr more years down the line: people once again living off their landbases, primarily nomadic foargers, but some horticulturalist probably as populations diminish and people learn again what works and what doesn't in their regions. The mass slaiughter and extinction of species is halted. Some species begin to recover- salmon, black bears, innumerable insects, etc. The skies are clearer, the trees have begun to re-emerge. Forests are coming back. Cities are mostly abandoned curiosities, though wilderness hasn't kept them at arm's length. It seems that much of our civilization's work is maintenance (mowing the lawn, cleaning, waste management, re-building, etc. etc.)- it takes a lot to keep fighting the earth and subduing it. As a result, I envision wilderness sprouting again over former urban enclaves, and within a generation. I see men and women able again to interact with each other in non-dominating ways- rape is a concept so foreign as to be incomprehensible. I see sharing valued a priori. I am inspired by what one author of hunter-gatherers has described as a 'cosmic economy of sharing,' in which the earth is seen as bountiful and giving, and everyone upon the earth is expected to reciprocate that- no hoarding permitted. I see people laughing, playing, sharing stories, making love, arguing and fighting sometimes, but above all being human. I don't think we're perfect- there must be some nascent elements of us which collectivelly brought us to our present crises. But neither are we depraved and blood-lusting. Embedded within us, I think is the capacity to live harmoniously with each other and with the non-human animate and inanimate beings that we share the world with. We did it for so very long, and I think that one day, if we emerge out of this big mess and become healed, we may look at those of us living today as so wounded, and so misguided that we by and large missed the fact that everything we need was right there for us, where it had always been. I hope that one day, we can engage the world around us, the people, the plants, the animals, the rocks, the winds, the soils, everything around us without an eye toward control and manipulation. I think about the myriad problems we face- ecological ones, interpersonal ones, psychological ones, and I hope that one day, we're able to see these as signs on every level that we weren't doing the right thing, and that our problems began to ameliorate once we returned to our roots.

It's hard, the transition- I may never see such a day, but I hope that we will come out on the other side, with the madness behind us, happy, whole again.
______

Still makes me smile. We'll see yet what comes t opass.