Food for thought...

Tonight as I was going through my blogroll I found two thought- and feeling- provoking essays that I recommend. The first is at deconsumption synthesizing his thought processes about our culture and our future:

The time for a self-imposed education and socio-personal growth has passed: we did not learn to delay our gratification, we did not learn to rise above our individual differences, and we did not invest the precious wealth of fossil-fuel resources that were available to us. Thus, although many people do not know it yet and won't until it is even more clearly in front of our faces, the window of opportunity for our "Star Trek" future is closed to us. We won't be living in eco-cities any more that we'll be journeying to the stars; we didn't invest for these possibilities while we had the wealth, and now we are broke. But at the same time we probably shouldn't lose too much sleep over it because realistically we were never going to do any of those things anyway. Certainly we could have paced ourselves, trod the road of human progress in careful, well-studied steps and directed our course with more than just lip-service to the benefit of future generations. But our leaders didn't do that, either in the past or today. And we didn't ask them to, either in the past or today. This was the path by which our culture of Empire redeems itself, and whereby both our society and our leaders grow-up, embrace gratitude, and accept responsibility for the gifts we were given. This was an option open to us, make no mistake. But it didn't happen, at least not in time--and now that path can no longer develop because WE never developed.

Deconsumption provided a link to one of Ran Prieur's recent pieces that chronicles the Worst Case Scenario, the Ridiculous Best Case scenario, Naive Sci-fi Utopia, his Sci-fi Utopia, Playing the Odds and finally just You. He has a way of bringing it all home. Check it out.