In case anyone didn’t get the memo, I recently started a Substack called The Epimethean. In one of my recent offerings, “When the Machine Stops, We Still Have Each Other,” I explored how self-sufficiency is not simply a myth, but a damaging trope of our lonely individualistic world. I go on to predict the collapse of the internet from a geomagnetic storm known as a Carrington Event, while suggesting eight things we can do to get ready. But it really all comes down to one thing: love each other! From my article:
Our world has seen enormous changes over the last hundred years. But the glue that holds us together is the same as it has been for centuries: local community. Jesus addressed the importance of community when he placed the injunction to love our neighbors right next to loving God (Matthew 22:36-38).
This is not a popular truth in the modern world, which fosters the illusion of self-sufficiency and individual autonomy. As we increasingly look to experts, technology, and government to make problems go away, it is easy to forget our need for local community. Sometimes it takes a tragic event to remind us that we still need one another and always will….
As our society follows the Promethean urge to achieve wealth and comfort at all costs, are we chaining ourselves to systems and ways of life that are ultimately brittle and easily broken?
Someday our Machine will stop, and when it does, our flourishing—perhaps even survival—will depend on our relationships with one another. It will depend on the traits, practices, and virtues that enable us to flourish in distinctively human ways, and not as mere cogs of the Machine. And that means “love your neighbor.”
You can read the entire article by clicking on the image below.
