The essence of the inflection point

* we’re facing a civilizational crisis
* the genesis dates back to a transition of lifeways that occurred during the period 10,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C. (Gary Snyder calls it the transition from the Old Ways to the New Ways)

* the “New Ways” involve:
…. dependence upon self-production of food
…. consequent “totalitarian agriculture” (clearing the land of all flora and fauna except human food)
…. private ownership of the land and the produce
…. private (and skewed) wealth accumulation
…. productivity values
…. loss of appreciation for ecological/social limits and balances
…. unfettered lust for wealth, power, aggrandizement
…. rise of wealth/power elites; class division of society
…. power manifested as statist, clerical, patriarchal authority
…. increasingly complex division of labor
…. compulsion for cheap labor
…. a drive toward technological and institutional development, expansion, growth
…. development of the Technosphere
…. urbanization, alienation from nature
…. withering of communitarian self-reliance

* the crisis has developed over a period of five millennia
* it has resulted in a hypertrophy of all things (industrial technology, population overshoot, urban megalopolis, unsustainable over-exploitation of resources, consumption, pollution, depletion, congestion, social inequality)

* the consequences will play out over the coming millennia
* the long period of crisis will be gradual, incremental, chastening
* it will involve devolution of power, population, technological complexity, scale in general
* what we can hope for is that humanity will learn what the problem was and what the solution is

* the solution is to live lightly on the earth, locally, cyclically … bioregionally, in community … tolerating cultural diversity