Waiting Is Not An Option: The Transition from Unlimited Growth to Long-Term Survival (eBook)

Resilience Requires Preparation Before The Crisis

Dick Rauscher (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
452 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-5134-2 (ISBN)

Infos

'Waiting Is Not An Option: The Transition from Unlimited Growth to Long Term Survival' illustrates clearly the dangerous threats to social, economic, and civil collapse that humanity's immature consciousness has created, and the urgent need to begin 'now' creating self-reliant local communities and economies for long-term survival.

---

The Golden Arch, or the reason the author wrote this book, reflects the wisdom of Mark Twain, who wrote, "e;It's not what you know for certain that will harm you, it's what you know for certain that just ain't so."e; The book is based on the premise that humanity's collective consciousness has used primitive, immature, unevolved early childhood conditioning to create the fragile social and economic structures that now have human civilization poised on the brink of social, civil, and economic collapse. In part one, the author illustrates how humanity urgently needs to tame its primitive early childhood ego thinking and intentionally embrace more mature, self-aware, and evolved collective consciousness. In part two, the author describes in detail what he refers to as the existential force multiplier threats that have human civilization poised on the edge of collapse and the possible extinction of our species on this planet. In part three, the author describes the urgent need to prepare for the changes that the force multipliers in part two will create in the near future. The future is not what it used to be, and much of what we know for certain "e;just ain't so."e; His message of hope for resilience and long-term survival will require the urgent need to begin "e;now"e; creating self-reliant local communities and local economies. Resilience requires preparation before the crises that the massive changes that are coming are going to create.

Textauszug

INTRODUCTION

The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be

Like so many today, I have been feeling a sense of despair and a lack of hope as I’ve watched the climate crisis grow in severity. Storms are intensifying. Forests are burning. Droughts are increasing. Atmospheric rivers are increasing their water content. Rain-bomb flooding grows in severity. Despite the growing severity of these events, I found it difficult to understand why “somebody” wasn’t doing “something” to address the growing crisis.

About two years ago, I accepted the sobering reality that somebody or something simply wasn’t going to happen.

I don’t like feeling hopeless, frustrated, or powerless. As a mental health therapist, those are not feelings I tolerate for long. So I decided to learn more and get more insight into why no one seemed overly concerned about the growing climate crisis. It felt insane to me that climate scientists were describing global warming as an existential crisis, and the rest of the world was essentially ignoring the problem. It reminded me of frogs sitting in a pot of water, ignoring the reality that the water in the pot was slowly warming. And we all know how that story ended!

Two years of research has convinced me that the “future” is not what it used to be, and that future will be far more dire than most people believe—even more alarming than the environmental scientists have been warning. I also learned that global warming is only one of the existential force-multiplier threats that will threaten our future. There are more, a lot more. And I realized that I could not remain silent. I had to share what I’ve learned.

This book is my warning to those who will struggle with the challenge of surviving the future that’s coming. And that future is not the future that it used to be. Not even close.

But this book also offers a path to what I believe is a realistic hope for those who begin to prepare now for that future.

Change: The Reality That Everything Changes

The more I learned, the more it felt as if the whole world was ignoring the reality that everything in creation experiences never-ending change. My classes in physics while working for a degree in electrical engineering taught me that everything in the universe is continually changing, evolving, and becoming something new. And because some changes can be dangerous when they are ignored, we were also taught the simple logic that we need to pay careful attention to the reality of change.

One of my favorite reminders on the reality of change came from the book Who Moved My Cheese, by Spencer Johnson in 1998. This quote from his book has hung on the wall of my writing studio since 1998. It’s titled “Change Happens.”

Change Happens
They Keep Moving the Cheese
Anticipate Change
Get Ready for the Cheese to Move
Monitor Change
The Cheese Is Getting Old
Adapt to Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go of Old Cheese,
The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese.
Change
Move with the Cheese
Enjoy Change!
Savor the Adventure and
Enjoy the Taste of New Cheese!
Be Ready to Quickly
Change and Enjoy It, Again
Because They Keep Moving the Cheese.

Anyone who is paying attention knows massive change is happening in our world. The cheese is being moved. The future isn’t what it used to be. And it is time for us to pay attention and begin preparing for the future that’s coming, including the existential life-threatening changes and threats that the future is going to bring us. Most of humanity is not paying attention to the reality of change, the life-threatening changes that are coming, or the fact those changes will arrive far sooner than most of humanity believes possible.

Two Simple Questions

As I researched the massive challenges and crises that are coming, I asked myself two simple questions.

What should we do? And what can we do that’s even remotely realistic given the collective intentional denial embraced by most of humanity?

After eighteen months of research, the conclusions I’ve come to are undeniably sobering, but they are also simple and straightforward.

First, the facts are obvious and undisputable. Humanity is headed toward disaster; the social and civil collapse in the near future is all but certain, and the extinction of our species is highly likely. The path humanity has chosen to create has life on our planet headed toward disaster. Social and civil collapse are all but certain, and the extinction of our species is growing more likely every year. The life-threatening challenges and existential changes that are coming are not problems; they are symptoms of the human civilization that we have created. We are the problem. We are the root cause of the existential force-multiplier threats or symptoms discussed in Part 2 of this book that will threaten the survival of human civilization and the survival of our species on this planet.

Second, we have run out of time to mitigate or reverse the threats already created by global warming and the other existential force-multiplier threats to human civilization that we will explore in Part 2. We need to ignore much of what the media is telling us. The changes and existential threats are not coming; they are already baked into our future. Three of the more important questions we need to be asking ourselves now are

• How soon will we acknowledge the need to intentionally and aggressively begin eliminating carbon emissions and stop the climate crisis from growing toward the extinction of our species?
• How soon will we acknowledge that the fossil fuel energy that drives our entire global economy is a non-renewable resource that is in rapid decline?
• How soon will the force-multiplier threats and economic triggers described in the chapters of Part 2 create the collapse of human culture and human civilization as we know it?

So far, we are not even acknowledging the severity that these existential impacts will have on human culture and human civilization, much less preparing for their arrival.

A Golden Arch of this Book: Why I Wrote This Book

Every book contains a golden arch. If the book is well written, everything in the book will support the golden arch or reason I wrote this book. Everything in the book will illustrate for the reader a concept or reality that the author believes is important enough to spend months or years of his or her life researching and writing about in their book.

The golden arch of this book, the purpose I wrote it, was (1) to expand the reader’s knowledge and awareness of the massive changes, concepts, and existential threats that are coming; and (2) to support the deep sense of urgency our younger generations will need to embrace, and act on now, to successfully create the resilience they will need to survive those changes and threats when they arrive and threaten the foundations of human culture.

I am under no illusion that the concepts and ideas in this book will save my life. But I am hopeful that they could help people in the younger generations survive the future challenges and massive existential changes that they are inheriting. For them, the future isn’t going to be what it used to be, and their future survival will require intentional preparation to begin now for the life-altering changes that are coming. Only intentional preparation will create the resilience they will need to survive the future they are inheriting. And that future is coming far sooner than most people in the world are prepared to survive.

A Dark Future and Two Hopeful Paths

As my research continued, I realized that global warming and climate change was only one of the existential threats facing us as a species. In fact, it wasn’t even the most urgent critical threat. As I dug in a bit deeper, I realized that the nine force-multiplier threats and economic triggers described in Part 2 chapters of this book each have the potential, in the near future, to create the social and civil collapse of human culture and human civilization as we know it. I also realized that waiting to begin preparing for the massive changes and existential threats that are coming was...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 28.1.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-5134-7 / 1098351347
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-5134-2 / 9781098351342