Welcome to the Era of Mega- Disruption and Mounting Chaos

Change. Change.

“We want change,” American voters insisted — and then demanded. Accordingly, they went ahead and (foolishly, crazily, dangerously) re-elected Donald Trump, who is a convicted criminal, known disruptor, and supposed ‘change agent.’

But the thing about change — the deeply disturbing thing — is that change can go either way and can be intensely negative as well as positive. Calling for wholesale, indiscriminate ‘change’ is a crapshoot, a total wild card, since we never know what we’ll get or experience.

Change can be wonderful, disastrous… and everything in between. But given Trump’s tyrant-wannabe attitudes and actions — amid our current bizarre national and global circumstances — it seems like most of the big changes coming our way over the next few years will lean heavily toward the ‘disastrous’ end of the spectrum.

We’ll see plenty of ‘change,’ all right — most of it painful, threatening, and/or frightening. Welcome to the era of endless disruption and chaos.

Many long-term disruptive/destructive trends are converging

Human societies are intended to provide a stable social framework for humans to live, grow, work, love, and play within. Our economies and most of our day-to-day activities depend on a stable, secure ‘base of operations’ — and both our economies and our daily lives react very poorly to sudden shocks, disruptions, or mounting chaos.

Yet the era we’re entering will be largely defined by sudden shocks, disruptions, and mounting chaos — and our societies are not designed to handle this and will not adapt well. This is no exaggeration, as I will show; too many changes are happening, too rapidly.

Quite a few major, long-term disruptive trends are now intensifying and converging — all of which amplify and spread each other’s effects.

These disruptive, chaos-inducing trends include:

1. Mounting climate disruptions and disasters due to excess CO2 and global warming.

2. A growing cadre of autocratic political disruptors, all around the planet.

3. The fast-accelerating gap between the ultra-wealthy and the other 99.9% of humanity.

4. The re-election of a major sociopolitical disruptor and ‘agent of chaos’, Donald Trump, to lead the world’s most powerful and influential nation.

5. The spreading negative effects of overpopulation combined with heavy consumerism.

6. The utter failure of large nations to achieve even minimal emissions goals.

7. The spreading negative effects of social media and their massive deluge of hate and disinformation.

8. Intensifying crackdowns on immigrants, transgender and gay folks, and women seeking abortions.

9. Widespread and accelerating adoption of AI, leading to the exponential growth of ‘fake world.’

This list is likely incomplete; it includes the issues and trends that were topmost in my mind as I was writing. There are undoubtedly other vital and worrisome issues, as well; my list is just a helpful starting point.

What holistic awareness of our situation tells us

To fully grasp our current situation, it’s crucial to see it through the lens of holistic awareness. Most of us understand ‘holistic’ in terms of ‘holistic medicine’ or a ‘holistic’ approach to this or that — and see it as quite a positive thing.

But ‘holistic’ does NOT imply ‘positive.’ It only describes an encompassing, inclusive way of looking at interconnected things or processes.

‘Holistic’ merely describes a broad-based approach that tries to include all variables and account for the many interactions and patterns that emerge from all the variables impacting each other and often intensifying each other.

In terms of politics and societies, ‘holistic’ analysis can reveal just as much downward or negative momentum as positive, depending on the situation.

In our current situation, ‘holistic’ analysis reveals an accelerating downward spiral of denial, degradation, and destruction. In the U.S. in particular, our society-wide downward spiral has greatly intensified and sped up over the past decade — especially over the past nine years of ‘Trumpism.’ I’ve written about this numerous times, to the point that I’m totally sick of it (and him!) — so I won’t focus much on him or his malign influence today.

I’m only mentioning it because his ‘reign’ is one major strand in the dire holistic picture of what’s happening (rapid, intensifying decline) in the U.S. and around the world.

Holistically speaking, the picture is: we and our planet are totally screwed.

A vast, intensifying downward spiral

The reason we are so screwed is that the nine trends I enumerated above are just different aspects of a worldwide holistic pattern of degradation and collapse.

In a sense, just one process is happening, and that’s collapse in all its forms. But it’s hard for our limited human minds to grasp such a vast and frightening picture, so we need to break it down into various smaller ‘parts.’

But remember: these different ‘parts’ are all ongoing, intensifying aspects of one huge global process, and need to be seen in that light. Using that framework, it’s easy to see how each ‘part’ influences and intensifies other ‘parts,’ and how the whole process keeps feeding on itself and accelerating.

That’s exactly why destructive downward spirals are so hard to stop or turn around; they develop intense momentum, and the momentum keeps increasing… until the entire system collapses.

In our case, the systems that are collapsing include our climate system, ecological systems, social systems, governmental systems, and soon our economic systems. All these systems are hanging by a thread now, and all or most are on the verge of utter decay and collapse.

That’s just the way holistic downward spirals always and necessarily play out. It’s just ‘the nature of the beast,’ so to speak — unfortunately for us.

Examining the effects of overpopulation and over-consumption

Rather than expand on that entire list of nine destructive trends — which are fairly obvious to even a casual observer — I’ll focus on just one, #5, as an example of the ways all these trends interact and reinforce each other.

Trend #5 is: The spreading negative effects of overpopulation combined with heavy-duty consumerism. This trend is a ‘biggie,’ because its effects are so dire and widespread.

Lately, it’s become fashionable to lament the global decline in birth rates and whine about human population growth declining — as if that’s a bad thing. But nothing could be further from the truth. The growth rate may be declining, but our human population keeps expanding.

The truth is, human population growth is still out of control despite declining birth rates. Over the past 50 years, the human population has more than doubled — from 4.069 billion to 8.192 billion — and simultaneously, consumerism and ‘mass consumption’ have risen in tandem and are still accelerating fast, all over the world.

This combination is nothing short of disastrous.

It means that more and more people are seeking our ‘modern’ consumer lifestyle, all around the globe… which intensifies worldwide demand for more and more ‘consumer goods’… which intensifies our dependence on fossil fuels and oil derivatives like plastics… which intensifies our rush to ‘conquer’ nature and wrest every bit of her ‘resources’ away for our own use… which keeps accelerating the collapse of ecosystems and animal species around the world.

Meanwhile — as all of these destructive trends accelerate and amplify each other — our planet’s former self-regulating climate systems are going haywire, and disruptive, chaotic ‘climate change’ is also accelerating.

The increasing frequency and severity of storms, floods, fires, and droughts are starting to play havoc with our crops and supply chains… which will soon have huge negative effects on our economies… which will further destabilize our societies and open the door for Trump and other ‘strong men’ to leap into the breach with their empty promises to ‘save’ their nations… which will further erode human rights, freedom, peace, and happiness… which leads inevitably to even more discontent and desire for ‘security’ and a ‘strong man’ savior… which leads to even less emphasis on changing our greedy ways and trying to ‘save the planet’… etc.

. . .

You can apply this sort of holistic thinking and analysis to all the other trends I described. The results are eerily and frighteningly similar, in each case — which again ‘proves’ my point about the holistic, interconnected nature of the threats we face.

People get ready — destructive ‘change’ and collapse are imminent

My main point is simple: major disruptions and chaos are coming our way soon — and faster than we can probably imagine. Under these circumstances, the wise thing to do is to get ready psychologically and also get prepared on every level, as much as possible: food, shelter, water, cash on hand, community, etc. (Of course, in the case of rapid social collapse and mounting chaos and violence, no amount of preparation will ‘save us.’ My suggestions will be useful during less dire or more gradual collapse scenarios, though.)

Folks, our current ‘stability’ and ‘prosperity’ are largely illusory — and we’re about to find out just how illusory and undependable they are. ALL the factors I mentioned above are now combining and intensifying each other, and the disastrous results of this global ‘holistic’ process are heading our way fast.

As I’ve written before, the time for hope is now over — but so is the time for despair. Now it’s time to steel ourselves, process our grief, fear, and anger, and get to work — alone and with others — to prepare for the fast-approaching storms of accelerating collapse.

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This post was previously published on Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs.

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