To Transform Social Illusions
Can We Hold IT Together?
What happens when an 84-year-old retired academic social scientist examines the ecological and social realities of the 21st century and finds little other than indicators that this world as we know it is, in fact, doomed?
Logically, he would retire to his patio with a generous glass of fine Bordeaux and watch the sunset. Isn’t that what a ‘jubilado’ does?
That is not what I chose. Rather, I put my findings into a logical and convincing book that calls not just for change, but for a new kind of revolution, a New Great Transformation of industrial civilization—that’s all. (Well, that is not to say that I never have a glass of fine wine out on the portal (that’s what we call a patio here in Santa Fe) to watch the endless array of striking sunsets on the high desert horizon at 6700 feet.
“Holding It Together: Social Control in an Age of Great Transformation” is that book.
As part of the process, I began writing a personal blog on a website I call TheHopefulRealist.com, then a bi-weekly Hopeful Realist Newsletter, which is now (slowly) approaching 3000 subscribers. I wanted to write regularly to keep the flow going, even ranging into topics that might seem peripheral to the focus of the book—the role of social illusions in preventing rational, even common sense, responses to the growing catastrophic convergence of global crises of climate, ecosystems, and the international political economy.
Soon it became clear that what is at stake is the stability of the entire Earth System. I had spent nearly two decades after retiring from university teaching, doing the research that commitments to my often ill prepared students had kept me from. I kept finding interesting and important work on the Substack platform, such as Steve Schmidt’s The Warning, Rachel Donald’s Planet Critical, and several other important voices.
I do have a somewhat different perspective, as a ‘recovering academic.’ My career as an academic sociologist had always involved somewhat of an ‘outsider’ point of view. My connection with the world had always been strongly oriented toward how we humans experience of Nature, in relation to one another. Academic social sciences are often insular, which leads to separation of their theories and research from the most important trends in the world outside of academe.
Long story, but the upshot is that from an early age I perceived the world of industrial modernity as somewhat detached from its habitat, the Earth System. I did not fully understand that perception until some time after my graduate studies. After all, along with my childhood immersion in the experience of the mountains, desert, and sea surrounding the Los Angeles metro area, I gradually realized more explicitly that the culture of modernity was somehow disconnected from the reality of living in the ecosystems of the only home we have—the living Earth System, Gaia.
I was fascinated by all the philosophical, sociological, economic, and psychological theorizing and research of academia, but I always returned to my direct experience of the world. I would sometimes go deep into the forest of the Rocky Mountains and stay there until I no longer knew what day it was, by simply concentrating on experiencing the immediate environment.
I took note of the fact that many academic colleagues who were very smart, nevertheless had little concept of the natural world or our place in it, beyond their intellectual models of economy, social or political institutions, or personality. That same detachment occurs in all industries, especially those in which most ‘work’ is conducted on computers. The orientation of most industry toward the planet is almost entirely extractive. It is seen as something separate, ‘out there.’
Even though I was an ‘early adopter’ of personal computers and software, wrote database application programs, and built custom PCs due to my fascination with all technologies, I recognized the tenuous nature of the relations of ‘advanced technology’ to the real world, all the way from the earliest IBM ‘counter-sorter’ to the explosive advent of AI, which borders on a cult-like obsession. I remain fascinated by all new (and old) technologies and especially how they become integrated into systems of social control.
All that experience led me to feel a personal intellectual freedom to explore the world of industrial modernity and its relations with the Earth System that is our home, but which the culture of industrial modernity (whatever the political ideology attached to it here or there) has existentially separated us from, to the initial enrichment of some and the ultimate peril of us all, the only habitat we will ever have—planet Earth. In the latest trend of separation, the rise of authoritarian ethno-nationalism, overt racism, and neo-fascism in so-called ‘advanced’ nations of the Global North, threaten to delay even further the actions necessary to transform our societies into the elements of an ecological civilization.
These are the issues I will explore in my occasional postings to Substack. And, of course, I will appreciate any commentaries readers may with to contribute to the progress of our desperate need for a New Great Transformation of modern societies to bring us all into harmony with the world in which we still need to find a proper place of our own. That will require that we transform our illusions of industrial modernity into fact-based hopeful realism.