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ARTWORK: Yige Xu
sapiens to systems ALEXANDER LANE EDITED BY ELIZABETH WALKER
Evolution occurs when animals adapt to better live in their environment. Climate change and the Anthropocene are changes to our environment. However, because they are happening so fast, we cannot evolve through our usual means of mutation. To survive, and, in many ways, to thrive, in a new era, we will have to evolve deliberately and collectively. Often, when we talk about our Anthropocenic future, we speak with cynicism. We talk about how doomed we are, about how much we and the planet will lose. The signposts of our times seem to point in only two directions: what needs to be done by 2050, and the hellscape that awaits us afterwards. Fundamentally, a good portion of us seem to have lost a lot of hope. This is understandable. In many ways, it is a logical viewpoint. We are one of the most individualistic societies to ever exist, having to confront a problem caused by our collective actions and which can only be solved by our collective actions. If we were not living it, it would be fantastically ironic.
