Welcome to the chaoscene

In the future, real communities – people near you who can actually help you reliably access food, water, warmth, electricity, repairs, early warnings against disasters, etc – will again become increasingly important. Our future will be in part ever newer, as we enter deep into a terrifying unknown, and in part ever more ancient, drawing on needs and capacities that we fantasised had been left behind. Our society became individualistic to some extent simply because it was able to, because of a fossil-fuel pulse in the stable conditions of the Holocene. In the rough times that are coming, the fate I term the Chaoscene, that atomisation will be seen clearly as an increasingly unaffordable luxury. Strong ties within community will often make the difference, henceforth, between flourishing and failing and even, gradually but increasingly, between living and dying. As stretched states creak, as commercial insurance withdraws, we will need each other again – not least as first responders, as a safety net, and as mutual meaning-makers.

Rupert Read

Read full article by Rupert Read in aeon.com