## Metadata - Author: [[William Ophuls]] - Full Title: Apologies to the Grandchldren - Category: #books ## Highlights - although human beings enjoy novelty, they deeply fear change. ([Location 420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=420)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Economic development as we know it started with Europe’s conquest of the New World, a bonanza of found wealth.43 Before the conquest, European societies were politically, economically, and socially closed. But once flooded by a surge of new energy from the Americas, they began to open and develop. All the philosophies, institutions, and values characteristic of modern life, above all liberal democracy, slowly emerged.44 Over time, as the New World bonanza was supplemented and then supplanted by fossil fuels, economic and political development proceeded in tandem to transform the world and to create the luxuries and freedoms we enjoy today. With a return of ecological scarcity, however, what abundance has given will be taken away—to what extent and how rapidly remains to be seen, but we can hardly expect liberal democratic institutions fostered by abundance and predicated on abundance to survive in their current form. ([Location 655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=655)) - Second, contemporary civilization has attained a daunting and costly degree of complexity that has outrun by far the intellectual capacity of a democratic electorate. (We tend to emphasize the monetary and energetic costs of complexity, but its cognitive challenges may weigh more heavily in the long run.) ([Location 664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=664)) - If those who govern us were saints advised by geniuses, and if the populace were eager to embrace change, there might be some possibility of turning this epochal crisis into a grand opportunity to reframe civilization to be both humane and ecological. ([Location 692](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=692)) - The worst-case scenario is that deep collapse will cause us to fall into a dark age in which the arts and adornments of civilization are partially or totally lost. We therefore need to establish arks, storehouses, and banks to preserve the knowledge, skills, and materials with which to reconstitute a complex civilization. To be clear, this does not mean providing protected enclaves for a favored few—that would be an exercise in futility, like fortifying the fo’c’s’le of a sinking ship. Nor does it mean lessening efforts to forestall or mitigate collapse. To persevere as long as any hope remains is a moral imperative. But we must at the same time acknowledge the extremity of the situation and the limits of our powers. No ship is unsinkable, and long experience has taught prudent mariners to provision lifeboats and practice abandoning ship against the eventuality of shipwreck. We should do no less by bequeathing posterity the tools it will need to erect a new civilization from the ruins of the old.56 ([Location 728](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=728)) - Whatever their proximate causes, the grave problems afflicting humanity in the 21st century are ultimately the result of a lack of governance. Ergo, the solution to those problems is to be found in appropriate governance, not in mere treaties between sovereign nations or in social or technological fixes. ([Location 741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=741)) - It is up to us whether peace remains a mere armistice between inevitable wars, whether we tolerate the enormous inequities that guarantee future turmoil, or whether we cling to our energy slaves rather than make a timely transition to a sophisticated solar economy. ([Location 902](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=902)) - Unchecked by moral imperatives derived from a relation to the infinite, the wolf of appetite runs free, with consequences that are more and more devastating to ourselves and the earth. For, said Shakespeare, Then every thing includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. ([Location 923](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=923)) - the gap between infinite human desires and finite biological resources is at root a moral problem—How and where shall we place a controlling power on human will and appetite?—not something that can be bridged by merely technical or material measures. Hence the solution must be spiritual or religious lest it be nakedly political. ([Location 979](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=979)) - Yes, “elite” gatekeepers have biases, blindspots, and axes to grind, but these can usually be kept in check by competing gatekeepers. To expect a good result from throwing the crooked timber of humanity together into one giant arena, instead of allowing the truest timbers to set standards and make rules, is a kind of madness. ([Location 1088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=1088)) - Note: I have to disagree with him here. What an elitist thing to say. - Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; ([Location 1098](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=1098)) - Note: Apparently Goethe - There are two problems with Keynes’s vision. First, we have attained a level of material abundance approximately double the eight-fold increase posited by him as more than sufficient for economic nirvana. Yet we have by no means exited the tunnel of necessity, because economic growth seems inevitably to produce more mouths, more wants, and, above all, more complexity. So the tunnel continuously extends itself before us. ([Location 1130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=1130)) - The solution to the “economic problem” is not economic, it is social and political. Simply continuing to stoke the furnace of human greed is a dead end. We need a radically different, post-Hobbesian conception of the good life, one in which politics is grounded on some higher value, some standard of virtue more elevated than the satisfaction of desire. As noted in “Requiem for Democracy,” Thomas Hobbes became the author of modern political economy by abandoning virtue as the purpose of politics and making economic development into the end of government. What is now required is a more spiritual end. ([Location 1156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=1156)) - Note: Can't help thinking of metamodernism, or Gaia - our Stone-Age ancestors enjoyed a profound empathy with creation, a deep connection with the land they inhabited and with the other beings peopling it. And they used various rituals and techniques to maintain and deepen that connection, which facilitated their success, fostered their contentment, and nourished their souls. ([Location 1185](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=1185)) - a frugal but decent solar-agrarian economy that has a limited, semi-artisanal industrial sector dedicated to providing certain modern conveniences in a sustainable fashion. Such a society would have the shape of pre-industrial societies and be organized and governed accordingly. That is, it would be hierarchical and conventional, so individuals would have to find their freedom within the bounds set by society, not by standing apart from it.127 This would be no utopia. Far from it. We would suffer all the joys and sorrows that humanity has experienced since the beginning of time. But we would still be recognizably human, and we would retain the capacity for a deep connection with creation, a connection that constitutes the true source of lasting satisfaction. For although we now live in cities, our hearts remain primal and will wither without a relation to the infinite.128 To put it in the terms that Max Weber made famous, the only real hope of escaping the “iron cage” of a civilization grown too great, too complex, and too avaricious is the reenchantment of the world. ([Location 1189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=1189)) - Post-industrial societies will be decidedly agrarian, albeit with many technological appurtenances and modern conveniences, because the essential nature of solar energy is that it is dispersed. Hence it will generally be more practical and economical to decentralize production—especially agricultural production—rather than try to mimic the centralized industrial mode of production with more limited post-industrial means. ([Location 1274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07L3GQTN7&location=1274))