Hang on for the ride .. it may be a long one

AP Photo/Kyodo News

Back in February I wrote about pretty much what's happened (happening) this week. Markets collapsing and staying collapsed (may be too soon to tell) and rioting in the UK are symptoms of the problem - but not the problem itself.

The problem as I see it is the unsustainability of the "Western World" life we've created. You cannot build a society that depends on growth for it's survival. Growth has to stop somewhere, and the magnificent thing about our natural laws are that, whether we do something about it or not, the growth will stop. Just like gravity, we can defy it as long as we want, but in the end, gravity wins. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about capitalism, debt, resources, people, food, whatever. If our current system relies on everything increasing infinitely, it will fail.

Our planet could care less whether we're here or not ... and perhaps everything would be much better off if we weren't. Until we learn to accept that growth is not all good, and we become OK with the idea of "enough", we're doomed as a species.

That's quite the extrapolation from recent events, huh? I think this is only the tip of the iceberg, and we're in for a long, rough ride. A ride that doesn't really care how we feel about it - we're on it anyways. We've had plenty of opportunity to change our course, but we've refused. Now it's out of our hands.