Our collectives aren’t merely broken or bad; they’re actively omnicidal. The reason we have survived this so far, is that the damage is hidden in the environment (our origin and survival, moment to moment), the poor, and those who have neither a voice in the modern context… nor power. For the past few thousand years, the environment could (mostly) survive absorbing that damage. No longer.

Left unattended, this will definitely result in cascades of catastrophes of ever-increasing magnitude and scope.

Strangely, however, these same collectives are profoundly invested in continuing to develop in this direction. The priorities are technological ‘development’ (actually suicide in this situation), war (the same), and the caching of commodities and power.

I suspect that if collectives formed whose priorities were intelligent and developmentally sound, we could solve the majority of truly deadly problems with around 5% of the energy and resources the institutions we are subject to invest in technological development. Or, perhaps, 3% of what of what is wasted in unnecessary war and conflict.

Unfortunately, at this phase in the development of our societies, that isn’t merely unlikely. It borders on the impossible. Eventually, however, the phase will shift… and the luxury of choice will disappear because the beings and living places that have been buffering the damage will no longer be capable of doing so.

Somehow, we must find new ways together to become human at the scale of the collective, and ways to ensure that this potential of our species… becomes available to transformation… and something resembling survivable intelligence.