We stand at the terminal edge of the Holocene. By now, those of us paying attention to the data know that the era of “green growth” and technological salvation is a delusion. We are beginning to understand what systems theorist Nate Hagens calls “The Great Simplification”—the inevitable thermodynamic correction that occurs as our civilization’s energy subsidy, the “Carbon Pulse,” begins to fade.

Hagens has done the essential work of diagnosing the physics of our predicament. He has shown us the economic machinery of the descent. But as I walked the transects of the Sonoran Desert, watching the Saguaro forests vanish not into “nothing,” but into “weeds,” I realized that physics is only half the story.

The Great Simplification explains what is happening to us. It does not explain who we must become to survive it.

From Mechanics to Maturity

I have released a new document, “The Manifesto of the Initiation,” to bridge this gap. If Hagens provides the anatomy of the collapse, this Manifesto provides the soul of the descent.

The central premise is that the collapse of industrial civilization is not merely a failure to be avoided; it is a necessary evolutionary bottleneck—an Initiation.

Drawing on fifty years of ecological field data from the Arizona desert, the Manifesto argues that humanity is currently trapped in a state of “Industrial Adolescence.” We have exhibited all the classic pathologies of youth: omnipotence fantasies, immediate gratification, and a rebellion against limits. We believed we could bargain with biology.

The ecological data I present in the Manifesto—the “Sonoran Fractal”—proves that nature does not bargain. Just as the complex Saguaro ecosystem is being replaced by hardy, generalist weeds to survive the new climate, our civilization is being forced to shed its “Cathedrals” of complexity.

Why You Should Read It

While “The Great Simplification” asks how we might bend rather than break, “The Manifesto of the Initiation” asks a different question: How do we die well as a civilization so that we may be reborn as a mature species?

It is a guide for moving from:

• Despair to Resoluteness.
• Planetary Disruptor to Earth System Steward.
• Sentience (feeling) to Sapience (wisdom).

We cannot save the world we knew. That world was built on a debt to nature that is now being called in. But we can curate the seeds for the world that is coming. We can stop being the “Black Knight” of the galaxy, denying our wounds, and finally grow up.

I invite you to read the full text. It is not a comforting document, but I believe it is an honest one.

[Link: “The Manifesto of the Initiation”]