William Irwin Thompson on Sustainability

We need to transform our civilization, not simply extend it. If we extend ourselves as we are now, we will simply be setting up metastases of the carcinoma of industrial civilization. If we are going to move out into space, we will have to learn how to be inhabitants of the universe, and that will require a transformation of consciousness. Such a transformation of consciousness was beautifully expressed by Rusty Schweickart in the piece you published last summer. What I am asking for is an exercise of imagination more profound than the science-fiction fantasies of the comic books of a generation ago. It is not an exercise of imagination to envision solar energy as the means of beaming down intense concentrations of power to drive capital intensive economies of scale. There is abundant solar energy on the earth for a good life. It may not provide enough energy to fly Ritz Crackers in jumbo jets to Venezuela, and if it doesn’t we need to rethink the whole kind of crazy economy we have created. If that economy is now running out of energy, perhaps there is good reason for it to do so.

I don’t see anything wrong with setting up a colony in space but I do see something wrong in thinking that one can create wildness by placing it into a container. At the present time, there is a battle going on in American culture between those who are trying to surround management with Culture, and those who are trying to surround and contain culture with Management. If the space colonies are sold to the American public as a way of escaping the juggernaut of apocalypse, of escaping the internal contradictions of our industrial civilization, and of not having to face those contradictions but simply to extend, extend, extend always to a new American frontier, then I think we will overextend ourselves to a point of a deserved collapse. I think the space colonies excite the Faustian imagination of the managers and the technocrats for it offers them a way of continuing their existence without going through the pain of a transformation of consciousness. Though I see nothing wrong, in and of itself, with the idea of an experimental small colony in L5, I do see a lot of things wrong with the hype that is being generated in order to sell the American public on colonies, so that they will encourage congress to pass the appropriations. You, yourself, are guilty of encouraging some of this hype by captioning an article on the colonies as apocalypt goodbye to the juggernaut of apocalypse. The apocalypse, in the fashion of the Tibetan book of the dead, is but the malevolent aspect of beneficent deities. If we can in the face of famine, pollution, and war, remember our Buddha-nature, then we can go through the terrifying initiation of the race to discover that the apocalypse that we seek to escape is inside us, and until we come to terms with it, it will follow us wherever we go — to L5, to the moon, or to Mars. Since all of us have to make some kind of choice as to what work will receive our limited energies, I prefer to work to create a planetary, decentralized, meta-industrial village on the surface of the face of the earth. Earth may not be the best place for a highly technological civilization, but it is, as Robert Frost said, “The best place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”