Excerpts from Introduction to Third Phase Transition: Solving The Anthropocene Crisis
On human nature and human needs
“Today there is an acute shortage in the level,
density, scope and above all quality of purpose in association of our
cooperative species. Its achieved right of association does not at all match
the escalated rate of cooperation already achieved. Cooperation is becoming
global, its means overwhelming, while the right to unite is denied its general
character. The human needs aroused by the abundantly developing means of
cooperation can therefore not be met. The great rift, between the overwhelming
rate of cooperation reached and the insufficient right of association realised,
signifies that the difference between human needs awaken and those
satisfied is now greater than at any other point of time, since
hominins separated as a qualitatively different family of self-progression from
the animal kingdom.
The failure of meeting the primary human need –
uniting in abundant relations – has fuelled futile material overconsumption.
Frustration of this need turns into a barbarically energetic regression,
bursting forth where- and whenever it becomes immediately possible. Human needs
are instant. To the human mind, material overconsumption works just like the
empty calories of junk food to the body. It only triggers further hunger of
frustration, while deteriorating physical and psychosocial health.”
“As private persons, we can neither fully satisfy human relations, nor consume sustainably, since the outlived system offers the exact opposite of these two kinds of needs. Only by equal and energetic engagement, in completing the phase transition to globally advanced circular metabolism, will abundant opportunities for enriching human relations open themselves.
In the absence of social mutiny, nothing else can strike roots than frustration. This present frustration of needs spans human existence from the individual level to that of humanity in its entirety. At the former level, frustrated young people are driven to treat their own bodies as objects of product development, and their own social relations as market relations, with the centrally manipulated devices of social interconnectivity in their hands. At the latter level, this discord is concentrated in the still unattended need to solve the Anthropocene crisis. It is this frustration of needs, at all levels of association, that semi-helplessly boils down to the bodily and spiritually unhealthy habits, contributing to aggravating the planetary crisis.”
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