Thom Hartman has connected the dots. In his words:
“A radical ideology known as the Dark Enlightenment is fueling a billionaire-led movement to gut our government, erase democratic norms, and install a technocratic elite in their place.”
I think that we are already in the midst of several catastrophes: climate change and increasing social disorder. These are the additional fuels that will combine with the radical ideology to bring the dark enlightenment to reality.
In one likely scenario, temperatures will increase and the sea level will rise 6 feet by 2100 - with all the attendant consequences including extreme weather, drought, and famine. Worse is possible. For point of reference, our grandchildren will be about our age in 2100.
What we can’t do is to keep thinking as if the future will be like it is now, only maybe just a little bit worse. The future will likely be unrecognizable to what we know now.
At any time along the way, various tipping points will occur related to our changing climate: economic failures and breakdowns in social order of various kinds will occur. It is in this environment that a great many people will be prepared to follow a leader who will rise up and promise prosperity, or at least stability, in exchange for various freedoms. The dark enlightenment will arrive.
Just imagine a Trump, or someone more competent, using AI to control people and run the government. A strong AI is almost there and it will become the perfect tool for surveillance and management with only an elite in charge. Only the promised reality won't turn out to be prosperity for all. Many will die or end up living in grinding poverty. The rest of us, of course, will do the work that machines can't do while the elite will live comfortably in their enclaves.
The specific details of the future, of course, are unknowable, but almost every path to the future looks like one we would not hope for our children or grandchildren. Climate change is already destabilizing human society. Already it is a significant part of the forces that are driving migrants from failing societies to wealthier ones And if a wall won't hold them out, then military forces will be deployed. And if we ourselves don’t comply, they might be turned on us, although with AI and social media, the populace will be malleable enough. Social coercion will be sufficient. But inequality will surely increase. Economic and social systems will be strained. The already fragile social cohesiveness of today will dissolve and tomorrow the forces of the dark enlightenment will be ready to step in.
I would like to hope that we could build a strong countervailing force to the dark enlightenment. Perhaps we might just get lucky and retake Congress in the midterms and the Presidency in four years. But then, with all of the seeds of chaos that have been already planted in society, the Democrats in power would get blamed for the high prices of eggs and gasoline - and everything else - and then a leader will rise up and, then, let’s say in 2032, the United States will will indeed finally enter the Dark Enlightenment. We’re seeing the prequel.
Too dark?
But let’s be honest. Can we stem this tide? I think climate change and social disruption are tidal forces, not merely changes in the currents. And if my imagined apocalypses only partially come to pass, I think we will need some kind of an answer that gives us and our decedents the best chance for a good and hopeful future - whatever comes.
I simply don’t think we're going to just be able ride out next four years and then we’ll (somehow) turn things around. I would very much like to believe that solar energy, EVs and perennial agriculture - or whatever - will save us. Maybe, just maybe, if we could just get to sustainable, we'd be okay? Racism and greed will – subside? At least half the country is ready to buy into a dark enlightenment vision already.
It's going to be like trying to out run a wild fire. How can the coming ecological realities not bring about the social unrest that will makes the rise of a dark enlightenment almost inevitable?
It seems likely that some version of a dark enlightenment will become the answer to control the social chaos. It will be called the Peace and Prosperity Party, or maybe just keep its old name, MAGA. People will exchange freedom for stability – and then worse. No more voting will be necessary.
If I'm wrong, moving towards closer communities will still be a good idea, but if things become more dire, our more individualistic ways of living won’t work. Our children will have to pull more tightly together, perhaps living together in intentional communities, networking with like-minded communities, to hold onto our humanity.
So if the dark enlightenment is indeed on our doorstep, this is the question: how will we prepare our children and grandchildren to face it? Our thinking and our actions need to be go beyond the next election.
I don’t have much hope to offer, but I do think that at the very least we must be clear-eyed and to learn to live as well as we can with whatever comes - within communities.