Humanity is on trial. Humans are a smart but flawed species that has always struggled with a range of challenges that have tested their societies. Over time, groups and societies have coped with these challenges in different ways, with variable outcomes. They have experienced both good and bad times, but when the combined challenges proved overwhelming, societies collapsed. Increasingly, humanity faces these challenges globally as well as locally and regionally. How people collectively address these issues will affect the future humanity faces and may even determine its survival as a species.
Arguably, the most pressing is the environmental challenge. Rapid environmental degradation poses a growing threat to human societies and, perhaps, to the survival of the human species. The large-scale unravelling of ecosystems, from the local to the global level, not only spells the demise of numerous species but also severely erodes the biophysical conditions on which human life and well-being depend. The world is transitioning from the Holocene, a geological era that began approximately 11,700 years ago and created conditions conducive to human flourishing, to an epoch now commonly labelled the Anthropocene. This marks a stage at which the impact of human activities is altering Earth’s biophysical systems and processes to the extent that these relatively stable conditions are coming to an end, and great uncertainty arises about where and what this is leading. This does not necessarily imply that human extinction is imminent, as some people argue. However, it seems highly likely that if humankind does not end its environmentally damaging practices soon, it will face a bleak future.
Yet, ongoing environmental degradation over the past 50 years indicates that this is a significant challenge. Although environmental concerns began to appear on the public and political agendas in many countries, and globally, from around 1970, the efforts of almost all countries and governments have fallen short, failing to stem the ongoing and even growing flow of environmental pressures and problems. It may be overstating to say that doing so is impossible, but even a cursory survey of efforts in this area suggests formidable political, economic, social, technological, and practical obstacles to addressing the sources or causes of environmental problems. Predominantly, environmental problems are still (if at all) addressed reactively (after they have become blatantly evident and severe), on a one-by-one (fragmented) basis, and by technological or managerial means that enable societies to carry on “business-as-usual”. For some reason(s), despite growing environmental concerns, governments and societies seem unable and perhaps unwilling to address this challenge collectively and effectively.
This failure does not stand alone. From its inception, the human species has been confronted with a range of intractable issues that have profoundly impacted the functioning or non-functioning of societies and the well-being or ill-being of their members. Humanity’s failure to address the environmental challenge more effectively is not an isolated case but is linked to several other conundrums confronting human societies. Yet societies have addressed these ongoing issues in various ways, with varying degrees of success over time. In this context, “more or less satisfactorily” can mean a lot, making the difference between large-scale suffering and a relatively satisfying way of life for many people. However, these enduring challenges place an ongoing strain on societies and, at times, in combination, can become overwhelming, leading to collapse.
Identifying these deeper issues is, of course, no straightforward matter. Potentially, as everything is connected to everything else, singling out a few things as more fundamental than others can be regarded as arbitrary. The claim that some problems have always been inherent to humanity cannot be backed up by scientific evidence. Moreover, identifying a few issues as inherent to the human condition could be interpreted as a form of reductionist determinism, an attempt to attribute everything that happens (and has happened and will happen) to a handful of causes beyond human control.
Nonetheless, it is important not to be deterred by these potential pitfalls if we want to believe that, through collective agency, human societies can, at least to some extent, influence their state of affairs, avoid or mitigate widespread suffering, and prevent collapse. Therefore, I proceed by identifying six themes that repeatedly emerge, posing intractable and enduring challenges to societies. These have been selected by taking a wide-angle (transdisciplinary) lens to the course of human history.
The ongoing issues or themes that I have identified and will discuss on these pages are:
1. What does it mean to be human?
2. Social integration and fragmentation
4. Different ways of seeing the world
5. The environmental challenge
6. Bully states and global anarchy
Six Enduring Themes of Human Existence offers a synopsis of these themes.
It is evident that these six themes are interrelated and that, by necessity, there will be overlap in their discussion. Only by examining the interactions can we gain a deeper understanding of what is happening in the world and construct a more comprehensive picture of the situation. But I do not claim that the picture I paint in these pages explains the state of the world, or any particular society, at any time. The dynamics created by human agency and the interactions between people, systems, and environments imply that how these themes play out and what approach a society takes to these ongoing challenges cannot be explained by the themes themselves. At most, they provide a framework that can help us understand what is happening in the world.
As these challenges cannot be resolved once and for all and are intrinsic to the human condition, there has never been, and will never be, a perfect society and a perfect world. There have been relatively good times and bad in the history of societies and the world. However, the rapidly worsening environmental conditions worldwide suggest that addressing these deep, interconnected issues more effectively is becoming imperative for humanity’s future. Environmental degradation, let alone collapse, creates additional pressure on the social integration challenge, and is linked with power and inequality, political and economic systems, and people’s thinking and worldviews, while global anarchy and the rivalry between bully states prevent effective addressing environmental, social, political and economic issues at the global level. More than ever, societies and humanity as a whole are on trial. They either find a way to deal with these intractable and interrelated issues much better than they have done thus far, or they will be condemned by nature.
Each of the six themes is elaborated upon in a separate essay. These essays are personal reflections rather than scholarly articles. This does not mean that facts and information are unimportant in my accounts; on the topic pages, I cite sources and provide links to relevant information and literature. For those interested, I also provide a list of my papers and publications, most of which are available for download.
The Snippets are brief commentaries on events that are linked to and illustrate a theme or topic. As such, they do not aim to offer extensive discussions but to provide further support for the arguments put forward on other pages or to draw attention to developments that do not (seem to) fit in. In the case of the latter, this may lead me to review my arguments.
Reflections (in the top menu) are essay-type think pieces on developments or ideas related to one or more themes that may have implications for the arguments put forward on the main pages. They address issues or topics that have not been dealt with (adequately) under the Themes and Topics heading and will eventually be included under that heading.
Finally, to demonstrate that, despite all the doom and gloom, I have not abandoned the idea that it is possible to create better societies and a better world, I will explore and advocate ideas about what “we” can and/or should do to make that happen. I begin this exploration on the page titled “What is to be done?”