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writing for godot

THE FUTURE OF DEVELOPMENT

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Thursday, 23 May 2013 14:57
The Eight Millennium Development Goals to Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger, Achieve Universal Primary Education, Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women, Reduce Child Mortality, Improve Maternal Health, Combat Diseases, Ensure Environmental Sustainability and build Global Partnership for Development are the face of ‘Development’ and the dream that drives the ‘Dominant Developmental Paradigm’ that promises a life on two or three dollars a day to the major part of the human species along with the dream that they may if lucky make it someday to the world of Employment, Housing, Electricity, Computers, Televisions, Refrigerators, Air Conditioners, Household appliances, Swimming Pools, Healthcare, Effective and Relevant Education, and Retirement Benefits. A cruel dream and the carrot that is preferred to the deadly stick that follows resistance.

But more and more humans are being shaken awake by the rumbling storm clouds gathering on the horizon and the terrible storms that have seized them and thrown them out of bed. It seemed that the year 2012 would be remembered, by all those involved in attempting to awaken the human species to its dire predicament, as a significant one. It was thought that it would be remembered as the year in which the critical situation into which the human species has brought itself, and all Earthlife as we know it, was officially acknowledged at global level through the World Bank report titled “Turn Down the Heat” that was issued in November of that year. It was expected to be the year in which the repression was finally lifted.

The report acknowledged that scientists expect a rise in global temperature, due primarily to anthropogenic forcings, of four degrees Celsius by the end of the century along with all its many consequences as well as the unpredictable outcomes of positive feedback loops that are likely to be generated. A space was finally opened officially for discussion on the critical situation brought about by the human species and possible responses thereto and this discourse carried out on the World Banks community of Disaster Risk Management Practitioners within a few months rapidly reached forward to ‘thinking the unthinkable’ aimed at examining low probability high impact developments and possible responses thereto.

It seemed that those who had been rejected as ‘prophets of doom’ were finally reluctantly, fearfully, being invited to take their seats at the ‘developmental discourse’.

2012 it was thought would be remembered as the year in which it was recognized that the time had come for the human species to change the way it had come to view the world, to abandon the perceptual paradigm it had assumed to be the only one possible and to move into another one that has been present from the beginning of time but has so far been rejected and ignored.

On the contrary the World Banks report “Turn Down The Heat” has been buried, and we are back to business with Version Two of the Millennium Goals that will last it seems from 2015 to 2030. Any hopes that the United Nations, which sponsors the Millennium Goals, would accept that the ‘age of development’ has passed and that the ‘age of survival’ has come upon us have been dashed by the hybrid ‘Sustainable Development’ whose mysterious meaning eludes even the commonest of common sense. What we are going to see is not a commitment to undo the damage that has been done but an orgiastic and semi conscious speeding ahead to disaster.

There will be no clear and unambiguous warning of the Temperature Rises, Storms, Floods, Droughts, Rises in the prices of Food, Energy, Fuel and Medicines with increasing shortages and rationing or of the impending drop in demand as shortages drive up cost, no warning of the increasing movement of Tectonic Plates generating Earthquakes and Volcanic Activity and likely to generate more, no warning of how Deep Drilling Techniques used to access dwindling resources are increasing Tectonic Plate Failures, or of the likelihood of Pandemics and Pathogens sweeping through the Human Species and how rising anxiety and fear are leading to social paralysis and confusion.

There will be no attempt to understand the nature of growth and use it sparingly towards the achievement of objectives worthy of the human species. There will be no replacement of the objective of Development by that of Survival, no plans for the Conservation and Rationing of scarce Resources, no plans for the systematic reduction of the human population, no De-Linking of access to resources from access to wages, no rapid Bio-Sequestering of carbon, no Bio-Containment of Vectors and Pathogens and definitely not the slightest indication of the construction of a civilizational commitment to the conservation of resources and their dedication to the facilitation of life’s conscious evolution through and beyond human being and to its universal spread.

There will be no conscious move towards a new economy that generates new products through new production processes, no move to construct the extensive Global Support Systems to replace crumbling states and governments that can no longer govern, no systematic movement of populations to resilient cities linked to robust supply chains and Guided by Virtual and Geographical Survival Platforms (VSPs & GSPs) that generate data and engage in research and Guide the Repair and Regeneration of the Planetary Environment and Formulate, Initiate, Support and Sustain Processes of Mass Perceptual Modification aimed at the transformation of the Global Civilization of the Human Species from one based on consumption for its own sake to one based on the careful Conservation of all available Resources and their dedication to Life’s Evolution and Universal Spread.

What we are assured of is that there will be is an increasing attempt at more ‘development’ and a desperate clamor for more ‘growth’ that hasten our slide down the slope towards civilizational collapse.






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