Embracing Reality ― A Directive for Achieving Sustainability in the Twenty-first Century

Civilization is on the brink of collapse, and humankind’s exploitive behavior brought it here. Embracing Reality is a frank discussion about how this happened, and what we must do in order to reverse this terrifying trend and establish sustainability. In personal correspondence with renowned Canadian environmentalist Farley Mowat regarding the future prospects of humankind, he stated: "Homo sapiens is a lost cause . . . the sooner we become extinct, the better the prospects are for the ongoing survival and evolution of animate creation." Farley devoted much of his life to raising public awareness and encouraging sustainable behavior—so the fact that he gave up on us as a species should be regarded as an alarming indication that we are not only severely deluded and wantonly exploitive, but that we maintain a perverse determination to remain so. Our exploitive behavior is severely diminishing Earth’s biota and resources—to the degree that if we do not raise our awareness and adopt sustainable behavior in the very near future, we will exhaust Earth’s capacity to support us, and civilization will collapse. But collapse does not have to be our destiny—at least not in the foreseeable future—at least not due to overexploitation. We can achieve sustainability if we raise our awareness and learn to rely exclusively on reason to guide our behavior. This sounds pretty straightforward, but raising our awareness will be difficult because religious, political, business, and other ideological special interest groups (SIGs) coerce us—through expansive indoctrination campaigns—to rely on them and their irrational dogmas to guide our behavior. The following discussion is dedicated to establishing global sustainability in the twenty-first century. Sustainability must be global because individual nations are too interdependent to establish sustainability on their own—and it must be established in the twenty-first century because escalating resource depletion will make it impossible to achieve after then. Establishing sustainability can only be accomplished by raising global awareness—which will require the exclusive reliance on reason to guide our behavior—which in turn will require the transcendence of faith in ideological SIGs and their dogmas. Adherents will undoubtedly find this difficult, but transcending faith and embracing reason is incredibly liberating. The universe is a rational place, so when reality is embraced, everything begins to make sense. Besides, because embracing reality is requisite to establishing sustainability—it is the only acceptable option available to us.

Author biographies are generally provided so that prospective readers can assess the qualifications of writers to address specific subjects—but what qualifies someone to address reality and sustainability? From an orthodox perspective, there is little to suggest that Jeb Taylor would be such an individual. But at a very young age Jeb recognized the unsustainable nature of modern technology and began to reject the status quo. This rejection manifested itself in unusual ways, including an attempt to stow away on an ocean liner to Australia when Jeb was 14, a winter alone in the Alaskan wilderness learning aboriginal survival skills when he was 18, and canoeing down the Yukon River to learn additional survival skills from Athabascan Indians when he was 19. Jeb was convinced that the only way to achieve sustainability was to forego modern technology and revert to more primitive survival strategies. Jeb eventually realized that modern technology was not to blame for civilization’s problems—it was the wanton misuse of technology. Once that realization was made, he began to devote much of his time to unraveling the complex relationship between delusion and awareness and how they affect human behavior. Unfortunately, there is tremendous ideological resistance to the raising of awareness. Jeb wrote Embracing Reality - A Directive for Achieving Sustainability in an attempt to counter this resistance. His unorthodox background has enabled him to assess these issues more clearly than others who have been intimately engaged in civil activities throughout their lives—Individuals who cannot see the forest for the trees. He hopes to make it clear that people currently in positions of authority are neither inclined nor qualified to address these issues, and that if we continue to rely on them for guidance, the problems that threaten civilization will inevitably increase until it collapses. In Embracing Reality Jeb reveals objective observations on religion, politics, business, overpopulation, and other issues that many readers will find deeply disturbing. However, he also offers an alternative to the status quo that will enable us to achieve sustainability.