(2023-12-14) Schroeder A Whole New Way To End Our Civilization

Karl Schroeder: A Whole New Way to End Our Civilization. In The Single Family Space Colony Part I I talked about frame innovation and the idea that seemingly insoluble problems can sometimes be made manageable by finding a new metaphor for them. This shouldn’t be an occasional activity; it can be how we habitually think. For example, take the idea of the end of the world. What happens if we reframe that?

let’s narrow our focus to the end of our civilization. That could come from an AI takeover, the conquest of the planet by a 1984-style dystopian autocracy, economic collapse, etc.

Rather than focusing on the death of this civilization, we could focus on the birth of the one to follow it. To push the metaphor further, we could think of our civilization as the parent of that new one. As parents, what dreams and ambitions might we have for our child?

Birthing a new civilization is a great idea—and we actually do imagine doing this off-world. (space migration)

New civilizations don’t have to be built on other worlds. We can create them here, by following through on our Enlightenment commitments to democracy, decolonialization, reconciliation, plurinationalism, etc. (Network Enlightenment)

The current ecological crisis is pushing us powerfully towards replacing the Westphalian nation-state with overlapping, interpenetrating jurisdictions of shared responsibility.

and towards a circular, zero-growth or ‘donut’ economy, at least at the global level. A zero-growth strategy is not “poverty for all,” quite the opposite. (I'm not in this climate tribe.)

There seems to be another framing hidden in the parenthood metaphor. This is something I haven’t seen discussed anywhere (possibly because at first blush it sounds crazy): the idea of the deliberate retirement of a civilization.

What if we recognized that our extractive, colonialist, capitalist culture has served its purpose by raising billions of people out of poverty, extending lifespans, and giving us access to unprecedented knowledge and personal agency?

Deliberately dismantling our civilization in favour of a better one changes the focus of our ambitions in really interesting ways.