My Background + Goal

"Start Getting Comfortable, Being Uncomfortable" - one of my theater professors

My background is in the humanities and the social sciences but for the past year and a half I've been focusing on the nature sciences - particularly the concepts of 'Sustainability' and 'Resilience Thinking'. However, when I recently read an article by Alf Hornborg, it was like having a wicked spell removed from how I felt I was being conditioned to think.

Hornborg brought me back to Giddens and Marx (not to socialism but his critique of Capitalism), who brought me back to Lewis Mumford which connected me back to a lot of ancient Greek plays as well as Moreno which, all contrasted to the lens of the natural sciences, would explain why I've been so damn depressed!

As a research/scientist, what am I actually trying to do here? Save the world, bull! I would like to see the human race survive but after spending all this time in the natural sciences, I'm worried that the natural boundaries that supply us with the ability to 'live,' may be in threat. To what extent? Probably a lot more than most of us think.

However, when I say 'boundaries' I question myself --> what do you mean by 'boundaries?' the very THING that humanity has chosen to define and continues to redefine whenever he or she sees fit!

My point is, I've spent the past year and a half looking at how humans have, and are continuing to consume beyond our means. And during this past 1 and 1/2 years, I've felt as though I've been conditioned to see humans as the problem. At this very moment, I find this lens of perception the biggest problem. I don't think it's very productive to continue to look at human beings as the poison, rather than the cure to our own cocktail of complexity. I find it ridiculous to say, "let's save the world," we have the option to save humanity. The world will live on for an estimated few more hundred million years, humans may or may not. I would prefer to stay positive, in fact, my goal is to stay positive, yet reasonable regarding humanity's fate.

humbug