“We are racing in complete darkness into a concrete wall”                                       

“Only stupid people are optimistic”                                                                                      

“The combination of climate change, digitalisation and uncontrolled capitalism are disrupting our society”                                                                                                                 

“It will cause anxiety and could lead to the final end”                                                   

“Still we take no action”

These are findings of historian Philipp Blom which confirmed to me that society is on a point of no return. Blom, born in Hamburg, my hometown between 1970 and 1993, explains that a society that is blind for its faults, has no chance of survival

For a while I had been wrecking my overcooked brains about where society ran off the rails:                                                                                                                                      

  • Overpopulation (read the drastic solution in Dan Brown’s INFERNO)
  • Extreme consumption, look at content of peoples trolleys in supermarkets
  • Wholesale banking, selling debts
  • Unhealthy diets, fast food, readymade meals, sugary drinks
  • Unsustainable air travel, instead of reducing flights, build more runways and airports
  • Climate change
  • Incompetent politicians ……..

Here a bite of Blom’s vision: We are making mistakes a society can make only once. (we are worse than donkeys)   

Key missteps:                                                                                                       

  • Our inability to deal with Migration. Warming up the climate has an effect on migration; when climate change moves productions and harvests up North, millions of people won’t be able to follow and will no longer have an income. Metropoles will become unmanageable. It makes no difference if climate change is manmade, it will happen by natural causes anyway
  • Jobs loss through digitalisation will be the biggest threat. Digitalisation will make jobs obsolete which will change society dramatically. And not in 50 but in 10-20 years, we are running out of time

Philipp says that the planet does not need us and it is an enormous mistake to think that we can run mother earth. When the temperatures rise 5%, ocean streams will make a U-turn; if we go on like we do now, we could become the 1st society that shapes a brilliant planet by removing ourselves.

If by a miracle we would survive the climate change, there is still the challenge of digitalisation. More people will have no jobs; the manufacturers buy robots that control production and that write their own Algorithms. Lots of people will be obsolete for the economy and will just become consumers. Robots don’t strike so nobody will take influence on ignorant politicians and managers; the jobless will become useless for society.  Ironically this could be a positive development, us being the 1st society to get on without the need to work. Prosperity created by computers, robots and algorithms.

Digital Communism controlled by robots that allow us to remain a society of consumers. No longer civilians, just consumers. This computerized wealth will have to be divided equally as a minimum income for everybody. There will be no alternative.

Capitalism and open markets could be sustainable, but not when it is forced to grow continuously. Citizens understand instinctively that we can’t go on like this.

Our system is shaken by an enormous continuous earthquake without us noticing; don’t promise your grandchildren that they will have a better life than us. It won’t happen!

However I am one of the stupid optimists. There would be a minimal chance to survive, at least for a while. It is our generation that has messed up big time so we should hand over power to the 20-30 year olds. They could build new societies, no longer focused on consumerism; where products would be priced at what they really cost, raw materials are not harvested by slavery and recycling costs are included.

Thanks Philipp for the warning, the need to take action is gigantic.

PS: I was going to write about overpopulation and how secret organisations want to reduce that drastically. But that is a column by itself; maybe it will follow soon, so look out for it