Bro, Space X is valued at a trillion, we're going to the moon!!!!! Etc, etc, Do you ever get that? You put a well reasoned assesment, people listen politely, then say something like the above? Indicating they haven't listened and/or don't understand or, really care caus stox do up. 🤪🫠
Yeah - it’s a big read though, and is brutal in its narrative. But I think also presents a similar stark reality of what we are actually seeing play out.
For me, I think the call to action isn’t within the book itself, though it shows us what happens when we don’t shift. I think it comes from the posture we each need to carry to identify what the future needs to look like, and how we can bend our talents to creating it. The earlier we start, the less painful the transition, but the transition is inevitable nonetheless.
After a lot of sitting after reading it, I came to the perspective that I can sit here and be angry about how we got to this place, try to externalize the fact that we are here onto various bad guys and villain narratives, or I can simply acknowledge that we are here and move onto bending my own talents and those of my community towards what the future can be. That took several years to truly embody.
But yeah, I think this book is the cold water wake up call we need as a society to spark us into what Ernesto is talking about, which is building the next.
As a final thought - our great grandchildren will look at this time in history as one of the most amazing times to be alive, and will pine for the opportunity to experience it, because it will be such a fundamental change in the trajectory of our world and they will wonder how we did it. I would suggest this is how, step by step, in how we connect with others who have a piece of the solution, and that we start making baby moves forward.
I also find myself thankful for the past 50 years of people building the innovations under the scenes that will help us with this future. If we can change the incentive structure we value right now to help those innovations to flourish, I think we are in for a beautiful future together, after a few decades of very focused work. :)
Kari, One of the things I have come to appreciate is that complex systems rarely respond well to blame. Blame can be emotionally satisfying, but it is not particularly generative. At some point the question stops being "Who got us here?" and becomes "What is being asked of us now?"
That doesn't mean we ignore responsibility or history. It means we recognize that our grandchildren will not inherit our explanations. They will inherit the consequences of our choices.
What gives me hope is that every period of profound transition in human history has also unlocked extraordinary creativity, cooperation, and innovation. We tend to remember the crises. We forget that the crises were also the conditions from which entirely new ways of living emerged.
The reason I wrote this article is not because I believe collapse is inevitable. Quite the opposite. I believe transitions are inevitable. The outcome is not.
What happens next depends on whether enough people begin investing their energy in building what comes after rather than defending what is already breaking.
I often think that future generations may look back at this period with a mixture of disbelief and admiration. Disbelief at how close we came to some very difficult outcomes. Admiration for the people who chose, in the middle of uncertainty, to start building anyway.
Every regenerative farm, every restored watershed, every commons, every bioregional initiative, every institution that learns to serve life rather than extract from it, every entrepreneur, scientist, artist, policymaker, and community organizer working on these questions is, in some small way, helping to write that story.
The future is not something that happens to us. It is something we participate in.
And despite all the challenges ahead, I remain profoundly optimistic about humanity's capacity to learn, adapt, and create possibilities that from today's vantage point are still difficult to imagine.
Winter may be coming.
But so is spring. The question is what seeds we choose to plant before it arrives.
100% - I explored this concept of the rhythm of change in this post before, and I truly think the concept is one of the fundamental pieces that will help us. We tend to think of Winter coming in a 'Game of Thrones' way, where it feels like an unending, well, .. ending.. of sorts. But winter always gives way to spring of some sort and the seeds we sow sprout again.
Thank you Ernesto. I appreciate the distinction between optimism and preparation. Hope is not assuming everything will work out. It is investing in the relationships, practices, and institutions that help us navigate uncertainty with wisdom and care.
Nice summary Ernesto. One quibble: The Japan drawdown is real, but only 15% of the strategic reserve. I think the markets see this too. And hard to imagine the fed shorting huge volumes, but I suppose possible? Had not considered that. Very expensive. And given time, the reserves will be replenished now that Trump has capitulated. Regardless, the potential food crisis coming is most worrisome.
John, I agree, the Japan reserve point needs more precision. A 15% drawdown is real, but it is not the same as exhaustion. And the Fed/oil-futures question should remain in the realm of possibility, not assertion.
For me, the deeper signal is not any one data point, but the thinning of buffers across the system. Stored energy, fertilizer, shipping capacity, soil fertility, trust — all forms of stored time. And yes, I think you are right: the food crisis may be the place where the abstraction finally becomes embodied.
We’re back to the “first principle” of dynamic balance between efficiency and resiliency! But as the context shifts to higher chaos, the balance point moves hard toward resiliency.
Unfortunately, when food scarcity increases even to a catastrophe, the reaction will likely be “famines happen” since they will happen “far away” to “poor people”
My #1 is everyone being informed. Then all hands are on deck. It couldn't get better than this to wise everyone up -- except if it was shorter. Oh, well. I'm going to cross-connect it to my subscribers. The headline, from it, is "Unpreparedness at the level of civilizational design." Omg.
Ernesto, this is truly essential reading, thank you. We cannot forecast the details of how our future will evolve, what matters is the direction of travel and it is unmistakable. Systems expand, they contract, they adapt and eventually they succumb to complexity and entropy. This can take decades and we are not equipped to understand time. We have been conditioned to expect immediate answers. We are at a crossroads, and the question is not what does this mean for me, now, but rather, what world do we want to leave our children and our grandchildren and every other living organism on this planet, sentient or not? Could AI be used for the benefit of the planet and its inhabitants? Of course it could but it depends on the training and it depends on us demanding that it be used for the benefit of humanity. Will the 'smart cage' be designed to benefit humanity or will it become something similar to the Chinese social credit system? Again it is up to us to steer the conversation and not be passive onlookers. One thing is clear, the powers that be will fight tooth and claw to protect their privileges.
“Inventories are stored time” is the line I’ll carry from this.
It makes the whole essay feel less like a forecast and more like a change in grammar: from price to availability, from screens to soil, from clever systems to living limits.
Also, “the smarter cage” is a phrase with an unpleasant amount of staying power.
Let's get everyone to read this. The most hopeful thing to happen would be for everyone to get what's going on, so it's all hands on deck for what to do. I'll restack it and cross-post it to my subscribers, urging them to pass it on. "Unpreparedness at the level of civilizational design" is my headline. So many quotable lines. Your writing is as good as the world situation is bad.
My advice is to cut from the last part, where it gets repetitive. I don't want to lose people. Would you look at doing some of that in a revised version, before I pass it along?
Did you get my invite for Brian Swimme on Friday? I so hope it works for you. It's also in yesterday's Substack:
Bro, Space X is valued at a trillion, we're going to the moon!!!!! Etc, etc, Do you ever get that? You put a well reasoned assesment, people listen politely, then say something like the above? Indicating they haven't listened and/or don't understand or, really care caus stox do up. 🤪🫠
Great post- reminds me a bit of the book, Ministry of the Future - probably should be required reading for all of us right now..
Ministry For the Future? That's all I could find at the library. I placed a hold on it.
Yeah - it’s a big read though, and is brutal in its narrative. But I think also presents a similar stark reality of what we are actually seeing play out.
For me, I think the call to action isn’t within the book itself, though it shows us what happens when we don’t shift. I think it comes from the posture we each need to carry to identify what the future needs to look like, and how we can bend our talents to creating it. The earlier we start, the less painful the transition, but the transition is inevitable nonetheless.
After a lot of sitting after reading it, I came to the perspective that I can sit here and be angry about how we got to this place, try to externalize the fact that we are here onto various bad guys and villain narratives, or I can simply acknowledge that we are here and move onto bending my own talents and those of my community towards what the future can be. That took several years to truly embody.
But yeah, I think this book is the cold water wake up call we need as a society to spark us into what Ernesto is talking about, which is building the next.
As a final thought - our great grandchildren will look at this time in history as one of the most amazing times to be alive, and will pine for the opportunity to experience it, because it will be such a fundamental change in the trajectory of our world and they will wonder how we did it. I would suggest this is how, step by step, in how we connect with others who have a piece of the solution, and that we start making baby moves forward.
I also find myself thankful for the past 50 years of people building the innovations under the scenes that will help us with this future. If we can change the incentive structure we value right now to help those innovations to flourish, I think we are in for a beautiful future together, after a few decades of very focused work. :)
Kari, One of the things I have come to appreciate is that complex systems rarely respond well to blame. Blame can be emotionally satisfying, but it is not particularly generative. At some point the question stops being "Who got us here?" and becomes "What is being asked of us now?"
That doesn't mean we ignore responsibility or history. It means we recognize that our grandchildren will not inherit our explanations. They will inherit the consequences of our choices.
What gives me hope is that every period of profound transition in human history has also unlocked extraordinary creativity, cooperation, and innovation. We tend to remember the crises. We forget that the crises were also the conditions from which entirely new ways of living emerged.
The reason I wrote this article is not because I believe collapse is inevitable. Quite the opposite. I believe transitions are inevitable. The outcome is not.
What happens next depends on whether enough people begin investing their energy in building what comes after rather than defending what is already breaking.
I often think that future generations may look back at this period with a mixture of disbelief and admiration. Disbelief at how close we came to some very difficult outcomes. Admiration for the people who chose, in the middle of uncertainty, to start building anyway.
Every regenerative farm, every restored watershed, every commons, every bioregional initiative, every institution that learns to serve life rather than extract from it, every entrepreneur, scientist, artist, policymaker, and community organizer working on these questions is, in some small way, helping to write that story.
The future is not something that happens to us. It is something we participate in.
And despite all the challenges ahead, I remain profoundly optimistic about humanity's capacity to learn, adapt, and create possibilities that from today's vantage point are still difficult to imagine.
Winter may be coming.
But so is spring. The question is what seeds we choose to plant before it arrives.
100% - I explored this concept of the rhythm of change in this post before, and I truly think the concept is one of the fundamental pieces that will help us. We tend to think of Winter coming in a 'Game of Thrones' way, where it feels like an unending, well, .. ending.. of sorts. But winter always gives way to spring of some sort and the seeds we sow sprout again.
https://notes.theaperturefield.com/p/systems-move-through-rhythms
Looking forward to your next post on the gardener's role in the fallow season of winter! :)
Thank you Ernesto. I appreciate the distinction between optimism and preparation. Hope is not assuming everything will work out. It is investing in the relationships, practices, and institutions that help us navigate uncertainty with wisdom and care.
Nice summary Ernesto. One quibble: The Japan drawdown is real, but only 15% of the strategic reserve. I think the markets see this too. And hard to imagine the fed shorting huge volumes, but I suppose possible? Had not considered that. Very expensive. And given time, the reserves will be replenished now that Trump has capitulated. Regardless, the potential food crisis coming is most worrisome.
John, I agree, the Japan reserve point needs more precision. A 15% drawdown is real, but it is not the same as exhaustion. And the Fed/oil-futures question should remain in the realm of possibility, not assertion.
For me, the deeper signal is not any one data point, but the thinning of buffers across the system. Stored energy, fertilizer, shipping capacity, soil fertility, trust — all forms of stored time. And yes, I think you are right: the food crisis may be the place where the abstraction finally becomes embodied.
We’re back to the “first principle” of dynamic balance between efficiency and resiliency! But as the context shifts to higher chaos, the balance point moves hard toward resiliency.
Unfortunately, when food scarcity increases even to a catastrophe, the reaction will likely be “famines happen” since they will happen “far away” to “poor people”
John -- Did you get my invite to add your luster to a Zoom on Friday? It's also in yesterday's Substack:
A revolution in thinking that dwarfs Copernicus's
An invite for this Friday, June 26
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/a-revolution-in-thinking-that-dwarfs
My #1 is everyone being informed. Then all hands are on deck. It couldn't get better than this to wise everyone up -- except if it was shorter. Oh, well. I'm going to cross-connect it to my subscribers. The headline, from it, is "Unpreparedness at the level of civilizational design." Omg.
hi Sue -
Yes, sent an email. Please confirm time (and time zone). Is there a link? Hope to join. Thanks!
Check your email for the Zoom link!
I'm collecting people now. Will send the link. I missed Ernesto saying yes already. I like having these connections.
Brilliantly written and argued. Moved me to paid!
Ernesto, this is truly essential reading, thank you. We cannot forecast the details of how our future will evolve, what matters is the direction of travel and it is unmistakable. Systems expand, they contract, they adapt and eventually they succumb to complexity and entropy. This can take decades and we are not equipped to understand time. We have been conditioned to expect immediate answers. We are at a crossroads, and the question is not what does this mean for me, now, but rather, what world do we want to leave our children and our grandchildren and every other living organism on this planet, sentient or not? Could AI be used for the benefit of the planet and its inhabitants? Of course it could but it depends on the training and it depends on us demanding that it be used for the benefit of humanity. Will the 'smart cage' be designed to benefit humanity or will it become something similar to the Chinese social credit system? Again it is up to us to steer the conversation and not be passive onlookers. One thing is clear, the powers that be will fight tooth and claw to protect their privileges.
“Inventories are stored time” is the line I’ll carry from this.
It makes the whole essay feel less like a forecast and more like a change in grammar: from price to availability, from screens to soil, from clever systems to living limits.
Also, “the smarter cage” is a phrase with an unpleasant amount of staying power.
Let's get everyone to read this. The most hopeful thing to happen would be for everyone to get what's going on, so it's all hands on deck for what to do. I'll restack it and cross-post it to my subscribers, urging them to pass it on. "Unpreparedness at the level of civilizational design" is my headline. So many quotable lines. Your writing is as good as the world situation is bad.
My advice is to cut from the last part, where it gets repetitive. I don't want to lose people. Would you look at doing some of that in a revised version, before I pass it along?
Did you get my invite for Brian Swimme on Friday? I so hope it works for you. It's also in yesterday's Substack:
A revolution in thinking that dwarfs Copernicus's
An invite for this Friday, June 26
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/a-revolution-in-thinking-that-dwarfs
It's to get tuned into a new creation story, and is open to your smart bunch of subscribers, too.