Thread by @EthicalRenewal

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be immersed in a perfect storm?
Nothing would be predictable from one moment to the next.
Chaos all around you… Noise and confusion buffeting you from every side.
Solid ground?
Even its memory would begin to recede.

1/20
#storm

As a species, that’s where we are now. Our beautiful planet is under attack from weapons of mass destruction. Chemical weapons are being deployed against our people. The foundations are being laid for ecological and civilizational collapse.

2/20
#Storm
#WMDs
#ChemicalWeapons

“Weapons of mass destruction?” you ask. “They didn’t exist the last time someone claimed they did. Are you sure they exist now?”

The evidence is pretty overwhelming:
- Burnt hydrocarbons flooding our atmosphere with CO2
- Intensive agriculture stripping away our soil

3/20
#WMDs

Weapons of Mass Destruction:
- Intensive tree-felling stripping away our forests
- Mono-culture farming decimating habitats
- Mining; concrete production; nuclear spills
- Factories creating more waste and packaging than product

4/20
#APerfectStorm
#WMDs

These are the WMDs we’re using to attack our world.
And their most destructive impact?
Climate change.
Exacerbated by the feedback of icecap loss, tundra melt, forest fires and increased water vapour in an already warming atmosphere.

5/20
#APerfectStorm
#WMDs
#ClimateChange

The air above our heads is turning into a lens.
Unabated, our world will soon begin to cook.

6/20
#PerfectStorm
#ClimateChange
#ClimateEmergency

There’s other bad stuff happening too:
-Desertification
-Water exhaustion
-Sea levels rising
-Ocean acidification
-Storms, droughts, wildfires and floods
-Species extinctions
It would be easy to go on.

The stuff of nightmares?
I feel my jaws clench as I sleep.

7/20
#WMDs

So these are the WMDs we’re using to attack the environment.
What of the chemical weapons we’re using against our own people?

Well, you can hardly avoid them:
-Plastics, accumulating even within our own bodies
-Pesticides, decimating the pollinators we so desperately need

8/20

-Herbicides destroying plant diversity
-Phosphates bleeding into water supplies
-Mercury, lead, chromium and arsenic…

Our media trumpets the crimes of dictators using chemical weapons against their own people… and yet here we are, chemically poisoning our entire world.

9/20

And there are other ways we’re attacking human viability, ways which are neither so obvious nor direct:

- Intensive meat farming creates an ever-increasing likelihood of pandemics

- Uncontrolled genetic engineering creates the risk of entirely new viruses and pathogens

10/20

A society on self-destruct:

- Antibiotic failure looms

- Environmental degradation and resource depletion has already begun to cause mass migration and war

- Nation states continue their uncontrolled development of armaments, including AI- or semi-autonomous weapons

11/20

A society on self-destruct:

- Undisciplined AI research offers a brand new risk: the introduction of a sentient power with no commitment to organic life

A pretty picture?
Do you enjoy the darker paintings of Hieronymus Bosch?

12/20
#SelfDestruct
#PerfectStorm

The winds from our perfect storm are howling – and our walls are beginning to shake.
But there’s more.
The storm that engulfs us is cognitive, too. It’s a storm of lies; of viral opinions & beliefs; of destructive societal constructs… And a catastrophic failure of ethics.

13/20

In the very eye of the storm we find:
-The idolatry of wealth
-The celebration of greed
-The escalation of inequality
-The prioritisation of race, gender, origin over fairness
-The objectification of humans as punters, targets, markets: our individuality & humanity ignored.
14/20

At the very heart of the storm:
- The funnelling of wealth to a tiny elite
- The worship of possessions
- The worship of artefacts
- The idolatry of things

15/20
#Idols
#Worship
#Idolatry

At the heart of our society we find:
-The idolatry of leaders
-A religion of consumerism and growth
-The industrial-scale harming of animals
-People peripheralised by robotics, apps and AI
-The commercialisation of war
-The ongoing centralisation of power and wealth

16/20

At the storm's heart:
-The technological enhancement of propaganda and persuasion
-Our media taken captive by oligarchs and the establishment
-The commercialisation of sexuality
-The dissolution of communities
-The atomisation of individuals
-The normalisation of lying

17/20

We see:
- The idolatry of ‘success’
- Legal systems which favour the rich
- Democracy hijacked by wealth
- Psychology hijacked by commerce
- Identity hijacked by politics

A perfect storm rages around us… and another howls inside our heads.

18/20
#APerfectStorm
#Storm

These civilisational threats are so embedded in our culture they seem unavoidable.
But, make no mistake, they’re not.

We have the genius required to address them. More than that, we have the energy and the technical capability needed to create a new and better world.

19/20

We are perfectly positioned–through our science, our technology, our energy and our numbers–to realise the incredible potential of our species. But first we must change the way we think

We’re in a perfect storm.
It’s essential for our survival that we discover a way out.

20/20