Surviving the Anthropocene: A Darwinian Guide

Abstract

The fundamental theory of the survival of life on this planet is Darwinism. Darwinian evolution is about coping with change by changing, using what you have on hand to survive. The fuel for this process is evolutionary potential, which resides in preexisting variation. This preexisting variation allows living systems to move forward into an uncertain future. The biosphere is a complex evolutionary system that generates, stores, and uses its own potential to survive. This makes ecosystems robust, not fragile. That suggests we can use the biosphere without destroying it, but we need some guidelines. Those guidelines are embodied in the Four Laws of Biotics, which tell us how we can interact with the biosphere without endangering ourselves further. We can further improve humanity’s chances of survival as a technological species by (1) implementing the economics of well-being, (2) reducing population density by finding space in rural areas and revitalizing them into circularized economies, (3) regrowing sustainably by creating networks of cooperating circular economies, adding new modules when growth occurs, not consolidating into new densely populated and vulnerable urban centers, and (4) modifying social institutions to be responsive to the desires of the grassroots, even when those desires do not produce the expected outcomes. Darwinian principles provide humanity with a middle ground, a third way, between unattainable utopia and unacceptable apocalypse. We can alter our behavior now according to Darwinian principles, at great expense and difficulty, and extend or even improve upon the current state of the Anthropocene, or we can fail to act on our own behalf, experience a general collapse of technological society, and rebuild using those Darwinian principles to provide a more survivable future.