Ecology & the Polycrisis

How Soon Is Now, published by Watkins Press, took ten years to write and carries introductions by Russell Brand and Sting. This 2019 post restates its thesis: initiation serves a neurological function tied to the prefrontal cortex, and its disappearance from modern Europe produced what Pinchbeck calls Kidults. The book addresses infrastructure, social systems, and consciousness.

Pinchbeck announces How Soon Is Now in 2016, framing ecological collapse as an initiation and an opportunity for a self-willed evolutionary leap. He argues that centralized institutions built in the 19th century cannot manage the crisis, and points readers toward a How Soon Is Now group on the HyLo network, a Salon interview with Carrie Sheffield, and his Burning Man writing for Artsy.

A short post releasing the position paper Towards Regenerative Society: A Rapid Transition Plan, dated October 2014, as a downloadable PDF. The quoted opening argues that humanity has reached one of the rare junctures requiring a thorough transformation of society, culture, and consciousness, and that activating the prefrontal cortex allows a new planetary civilization to be envisioned and designed.

The first newsletter of the Center for Planetary Culture, dated July 2014. Pinchbeck, its executive director, distinguishes the think tank he started with Jana Astanov from RAND, Brookings, and the Project for a New American Century, describes research toward a regenerative civilization, and cites Buckminster Fuller on utopia or oblivion and Joseph Beuys on social sculpture.

Announcing the Center for Planetary Culture, this working draft lays out a post-carbon transition plan divided into technical, social, and communication strategy. It covers bioremediation through Paul Stamets and John Todd, ecocities, alternative currencies and blockchain-based organizations, demilitarization, and liquid democracy, citing Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest.