Civilization, to be honest, is a hack. It’s a rough draft, a crude prototype of the way things should and must be.  We’ve progressed and grown at a fast and exponentially increasing pace, but only by ignoring critical questions of sustainability and scale. 

An old adage about writing software says "Plan to throw one away; you will, anyway."  It’s essential to create prototypes to gain a better understanding of the right requirements and design. It’s just as essential to throw away the prototype and replace it with something more durable, and to plan to do so. Push a prototype too far, and you have a system that collapses catastrophically at scale. The longer you cling to the throwaway code, the harder it becomes to get rid of it.

Our problem today is that we live under the delusion that our system is designed to last. Modern governments and economies haven’t been around for long, and they have no track record of surviving global challenges like resource depletion or climate change.  It’s a matter of blind faith or stubborn hope that we’ll avoid collapse.

Changing course is hard to even imagine, much less do. It’s close to a sacrilege in the modern religion of progress to slow growth or sacrifice consumption on behalf of future generations. Technologically, socially, and economically, there are so many things we don’t know about how to build systems that will last.

Oil and global warming are just particular symptoms of a systemic, hard-wired flaws in the way we think about the world and plan for the future.  At an almost genetic level, we are built to act as if resources are infinite. Perhaps only the trauma of collapse and recovery can reshape people’s core values and assumptions around sustainability. In that event, "planning to throw one away" means works working to minimize suffering and maximize the knowledge retained during any crisis. 

Some might say it’s overly pessimistic to think that collapse is inevitable and even necessary. Can we engineer a smooth transition between the current prototype and the next iteration in civilization’s design? There are certainly things we can do.  We can’t redefine human nature. We can’t do "big design up front". But we can at least redefine our metrics of success and reward based on the strengths and weaknesses we recognize in our current societal prototype.  Our market incentives and metrics are screwed up, for example;  it’s no surprise that short term thinking dominates and that greater depletion is defined as greater success.

I hate to end on a bummer, but If I’m honest with myself, it’s hard to imagine this "soft landing" scenario working out in the medium to long term.  Our leaders are too timid and too corrupt. People are too unwilling to sacrifice or redefine success, and too preoccupied fighting with each other. I’m unfortunately more inclined towards the "plan to throw one away" point of view. I think things will hold up OK for my lifetime, but I worry a lot for my kids based on our current trajectory.