We all know that the current paradigm is unsustainable over longer time frames. Here are a few of the ways in which we can express that concept more specifically:
- It's not possible for human population to continue to expand forever. The expansionary phase of our specie's history is drawing to a close. This alone is an enormous shift, and it is already becoming evident in the slowing rate of global population growth. For everyone born after the new millennium, population growth will be in the rear view mirror by the time they hit what we now call retirement age.
- Oil is becoming increasingly expensive to find and extract. It's no longer possible to count on steadily increasing amounts of oil in general, and net energy from oil specifically. Growth in net energy per capita from oil is already in the rear-view mirror. Every edifice and artifice supported by cheap oil is going to be refashioned, like it or not.
- Steadily borrowing more and more in a world of increasingly less and less is a sure-fire recipe for an economic and/or financial accident. The current practices of borrowing are unsustainable and they will most certainly change. Based on actions and reactions on the part of our ‘leaders’ observed since 2008, these changes will probably not arise by conscious insight but as a consequence of pain.
- Various ecosystems and other natural support systems are being depleted at rates far faster than they can regenerate. Aquifers are disappearing, fisheries collapsing, and pollinators disappearing all because of our current behavior. It's grade-school simple to conclude that how we operate is unsustainable and will have to change. Again, we might suspect that the change will happen after some painful event, like a sudden collapse in house prices in Las Vegas the very minute water no longer flows from its taps, and likely not a minute sooner (except among those few who possess the proper context).
There are many other examples I could cite, and virtually any one of them could and should suffice to cause some sort of prudent reaction within a thinking, conscious individual.
The problem is that most of what we refer to as our ‘society’ or ‘culture’ operates on an unconscious level. By that, I don’t mean unconscious like a drunk passed out in the gutter, but in the sense of operating from a very shallow level of awareness where one’s unexamined beliefs and the ego team up to cause one to react without thinking and cling to comforting, but inevitably false, narratives.
by lesphelps 
