2203.Navigating toward the future. Broken elites can’t do it.

With multiple crises at the same time, we want to make sure we are seeing the way things fit together. As it is, the problems taken together  are more complicated than the solutions which are still too much one at a time. . We are at that edge where denial turns into giving up without an intermediate stage of trying our best to make sense and to make progress. Social unrest and the collapse of governance worldwide are spreading fast and we need a view of where we could go, a goal that is plausible even in the face of the anarchy of events. Gardenworld is that proposal and is meant to be robust across scenarios , from coping with change to being the change itself. Gardens are also likely to be safe spaces but surrounded by anarchy. One way to understand the present is to be clear that all previous histories have had elites in control but this pattern is breaking down. There have been revolts but usually self destructive and incomplete.  We are living in the broken arc of the French Revolution, which gave us Napoleon and a restoration of the monarchy father than the promised democracy and more equal economy. .  But now elites have been broken apart by the networking of everyone made possible by the Internet.  (fn. See Manuel Castells Aftermath: the Culture of the Economic Crisis).  This impact and responses – democratic and authoritarian  – will take time, time we really do not have. Now, hopefully, we are approaching the down ramp from COVID but certainly we are already on the up ramp for climate turbulence (increased energy in the atmosphere means more  dynamics, wider swings as well as the  upward trend). Leadership is absent. We have no shared comprehensive strategy for COVID and no strategy for climate turbulence. Policy proposals, yes, but not courses of action. Policies aren’t proposing what specific lines of action starting with right now that governments should do.

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