While #Capitalism is the main root of the #Polycrisis since the culprit behind it all is the simple fact that we have exceeded the sustainable planetary growth limits of Earth, as already outlined in the 1972 MIT computer model simulation study Limits of Growth, Capitalism is not the whole problem, and 19th century ideas of proletarian revolutions won't solve it. There are other roots that need to get ripped out along with the capitalist world economy. The 20th century showed us that a Soviet style socialist regime is even worse in terms of sustainability, and that our entire Industrial Age is basically unsustainable, which means it _will_ end no matter what we do. No reform or revolution can stop the already ongoing collapse because we're deep in overshoot, the global economy _will_ shrink, many systems are already beginning to unravel, our civilisation won't last for very much longer.
A #SocialistWorldRevolution would help a lot, but it wouldn't be enough. A #GreenWorldRevolution would help a lot, but it wouldn't be enough. A #GreenSocialistWorldRevolution would get us on the best of all possible trajectories, but it would still lead into a slow #decline and eventual #collapse at some point in the next few centuries. A shrinking economy is no fun at all, therefore it is wrong to think of #degrowth as something we can decide to do or not; the economy will shrink no matter what we do, and degrowth is an attempt at achieving a controlled economic contraction instead of an uncontrollable chaotic breakdown.
The real problem us that all of our modern industrial cultures, no matter whether Western or Eastern, rooted in European or Asian thinking, are about to end. Our ways of thinking about the world, about the role and place of humanity within that world, about the might and importance of the human race, are completely out of touch with the real, living planet. We live in landscapes that have been raped and dismembered by our machines since before we were born, we live in a dead world where most of the few remaining living things are humans, and we don't even remember what it feels like to participate in a living ecosystem as an animal among others.
We are part of the ecosystems in which we live, whether we like it or not. And there is no way to keep producing and using our modern technology. I don't say we should just stop using our technology, I say we should steel ourselves and enjoy our time as long as it lasts, because 60 years from now, computers will be something rare and expensive very people ever get to touch, just like they were 60 years ago. The Industrial Age is close to its peak, it's probably already behind us. We're in the plateau phase of our growth now, and we don't know how soon we will drop over the edge, and how steep it will be. We need to be ready.
The Polycrisis is not just a series of crises and catastrophes, that's just how it is presented to us in the media, usually paired with suggestions for technical solutions to each particular problem, but that's not how it works. #ClimateChange escalating into #ClimateChaos , #BiodiversityCollapse aka the #SixthExtinction , #war and #hunger and #Fascism and all those things, #inflation and #recession etc., they are all just symptoms, and the disease is our industrial civilisation itself. We think we can solve everything with machines, but the machines are eating the world, and we are part of the world they're eating. It just doesn't work. The future will have much fewer humans and not very much technological complexity, there's no way to avoid that. There won't be any people building cities on Mars, there will be people moving across the planet on foot and in carts drawn by horses and donkeys, nomadic post-collapse tribes on a broken planet that probably won't support more than a few hundred million humans anymore. If there is any kind of Mad Max warriors riding motorbikes and driving cars and tanks, it won't last for very long, that period will peter out as it runs out of fuel, and the fewer survivors remain, the more likely they are to cooperate instead of killing one another. When there aren't many humans left, you cannot afford to kill anybody who might otherwise help everyone survive a little longer. Even if they can't work very much, they can still think about things and perhaps come up with important ideas.
Today we need to resist the Fascists and oligarchs that are trying to use the chaos for their power grabs, and a who are accelerating the breakdown of the #biosphere as if they weren't part of it. (They're rich and stupid but consider themselves smart, and because they're too important to die, they think their plans will work). Tomorrow we need to cooperate in our struggle to survive the escalating chaos. The future will be ugly, but we can still survive. We might have to #EatTheRich and #BashTheFash though.
