Back in January, I received a message asking something like: "How did the permacomputers predict-?" I forget which self-inflicted calamity it was referring to, but the question has stayed with me. I don't think #permacomputing is about predicting anything, especially not collapse. The idea driving it is based on a simpler observation: our culture will either figure out how to live sustainably, or it won't.
Daniel Quinn put it like this: "If there are still people here in two hundred years, they won't be thinking the way we do, because if people go on thinking the way we do, then they'll go on living the way we do, and so there won't be any people here."
This reads, to me at least, as both a reminder that minds can change and an invitation, that if we're paying attention, we can already catch glimpses of a new holistic thinking emerging, one that positions human culture as a participant in a wider ecosystem. Maybe we're collectively holding our breath, just as people did before each renaissance, tending an ear for the sound of something that'll tear the middle ages wide open.
The Sibylline Books offer a similar wisdom: We can either willingly learn about the world the better to participate in it, or reach that same knowledge from merely getting caught and swept into its tempers. The knowledge is coming either way, but nobody is ever predicting the future.
https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/now
Full text from Quinn: https://www.ishmael.org/daniel-quinn/essays/the-new-renaissance/
Full text from Adams: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/docs/sybilline_books.txt
