At mid-life I lost my Christian faith and adopted secular humanism as my worldview. My new beliefs and guiding principles were concisely captured by the AFFIRMATIONS OF HUMANISM, A Statement of Principles, Drafted by Paul Kurtz. Politically I leaned to the left and I embraced a progressive agenda. Western democracies faced lots of serious problems but I believed that ongoing incremental progress was possible and the best path forward. Slowly over the past ten years my views changed.

The financial crisis and the Great Recession of 2007, 2008 and 2009 shook my confidence in the established systems. Every major economic forecasting  model failed in 2008. Fear of collapse was in the air and I marvelled at the coordinated governmental efforts to prevent another Great Depression. The crisis exposed a lot of problems that received considerable publicity and were widely discussed. But two or three years later an economic recovery took hold and concerns faded. However, personally I never regained my confidence in the system. Band aids were applied to the exposed wounds and the needed systemic reforms were not achieved. In my opinion, the economic system today is almost as vulnerable as it was in 2007 and rapid collapse remains possible.

After retiring in 2012, I began a wonderfully intense, lengthy email discussion with my Christian conservative friend, My Conversations with Henk Wilms - Part 1 - 2012. He hammered and hammered away at my progressive views, which I stoutly and sincerely defended. But slowly I began to see that much of the conservative criticism of liberalism was reasonable. 

In 2014 the book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris was the spark that started me on a new path of secular spirituality. Like many others, I was no longer satisfied with secular humanism. I did not see it as wrong, just incomplete, very incomplete. Something was missing. I began a search for deeper insights.

Two major developments in 2016, which I did not see coming, further convinced me that there was much I did not understand. In June 2016 in the UK, the Leave side won with 52% of the vote in the Brexit referendum. In November 2016 Donald Trump was elected President of the USA.

2019 was a pivotal year for me and my worldview, my foundational framework, the lens through which I see the world, changed dramatically.

In 2019 I read 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari.

At the close of the twentieth century it appeared that the great ideological battles between fascism, communism, and liberalism had resulted in the overwhelming victory of liberalism. Democratic politics, human rights, and free-market capitalism seemed destined to conquer the entire world. But as usual, history took an unexpected turn, and after fascism and communism collapsed, now liberalism is in trouble… Humankind is losing faith in the liberal story that dominated global politics in recent decades… But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face… perhaps the time has come to make a clean break with the past and craft a completely new story.

In 2019 I climbed to the top of The Dark Mountain and read UNCIVILISATION, the manifesto written in 2009. It remains a largely unknown pronouncement. It exposed great myths driving our current civilization, all which deeply resonated with me, as do the THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF UNCIVILISATION. I realized that the myth of progress has been a guiding narrative in my life.

The myth of progress... each generation will live a better life than the life of those that went before it... Even within the prosperous and liberal societies of the West progress has, in many ways, failed to deliver the goods.

In 2019 I realized that climate change was probably an unsolvable problem. Save the earth, kill the economy. Save the economy, kill the earth. 

In 2019 I read The Digital Identity Problem by Gregg Henriques, who I had been reading for several years, someone I had gained great respect for. I read Can You See the Elephant Sun God? An Open Letter for a Vision of Humanity in the 21st Century. Henriques outlines four broad areas of grave concern.

I would add to this list another economic crisis just waiting to happen. And Henqiques list is far from exhaustive. For example, the global geopolitical situation is dangerous and continues to deteriorate.

As if this were not enough, in early in 2020 the coronavirus crisis hit, the worst health crisis since the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic. 

For the past year I have been following the trails that Gregg Henriques blazed for me.

Many articles, books and videos have been published about this crisis and that crisis. Fortunately there are some very knowledgeable, very intelligent individuals who have put together the big picture, which I will try to summarize. We have built an impressive civilization which is unsustainable. This civilization is an aggregate of many complex systems which are intertwined. Progress within one dimension often causes unintended problems in another area. Taken as a whole, as a system of complex systems, civilization is fragile. A problem in one system could trigger an unstoppable cascade of ever-growing problems. This is the meta-crisis. Civilization could collapse. Incremental progress within a single system is insufficient. Everything needs to change at once. Changing everything at once is not possible. This is the meta-crisis.

How to think about the meta-crisis without getting too excited. by Jonathan Rowson

Two things seem right to me: the idea of meta-crisis is indispensable, but there’s a strong case for holding it lightly as a term, and keeping it in a properly playful perspective. Which means we need to understand it well enough to let it go.

All is not lost. There is a small but growing group of people who have dedicated their lives to solving the meta-crisis. Their thinking is at a level far above what is reported by the mainstream media. Their efforts are inspiring. As one young man said, paraphrasing, we are going to solve the meta-crisis or die trying.