The Regime Change thesis
There’s no shortage of myths of a harmonious past when all beings lived in peace. But the goods times never last do they? That glorious symmetry was fated to fall; greed and delusion take over and we live in a state of permanent strife.
Until…..?
Until the end of days, I suppose. Except that you and I may disagree on how that end plays out. Is it:
Jesus will reappear and lead the faithful to heaven? And consign the rest to eternal damnation.
Humans will burn themselves to death and the planet will slowly restore itself after a few thousand years?
Some of us will fly off to Mars and establish Anthropocene 2.0?
We come to our senses and reestablish that original state of harmony?
Which one is it going to be?
It’s very hard to predict, especially the future, but I am guessing none of the above. Edenic and apocalyptic scenarios are ahistorical - nothing happens when you’re living in harmony or when everyone’s dead.
Regime change is a bit different - it marks a transition from one historical condition to the another1. What interests me is the regime change from the globe to the earth, where
globe = society + (nature as represented in society), while
the earth is life on the planet qua planet.
The future being hard to predict, I can only paint a plausible picture of what’s happening but what’s clear is that the shift from the globe to the earth is both the next phase of globalized society and the greatest change ever. It’s the next step because the globe isn’t insulated from the earth; in fact, it’s embedded in it and we are awakening to that embedding. But
with the usual caveats that this change is rarely instantaneous or uniform or irreversible