Time's Up!: An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis [Paperback]

Some two hundred years ago, the Reverend Malthus wrote the first of these 'harbingers of doom' type books. The 'Malthusian Crisis' is named after him, but although there have indeed been numerous famines between his times and our own, civilization did not collapse as he predicted. In fact the British population has increased massively since that time, our biggest problem today being overeating not starvation! Why? Because in any age, those attempting to predict the future can only base their judgements on the social/industrial realities around them and must obviously be unaware of future technological/scientific developments. As steam engines, railways, petrol engines, electricity, aircraft, organic fertilisers, nuclear power etc... did not exist in the good Reverend's times; he was unable to factor them into his calculations. Hence he saw looming disaster when by the standards of his age, the future was amazingly bright.

Today's prophets of doom make this same mistake. Example:- Pres. Obama may feel America no longer has the industrial strength to lead humanity out into the Cosmos; but China, India and Japan all have plans to establish human colonies on the planet Mars within fifty years, regarding that planet just as Europe's buccaneers once regarded 'The New World'; a vast untapped treasure-house awaiting those with the courage to claim and tame it.

The liberal/socialist 'doctrines' now gripping the Western World may well bankrupt us as their Soviet counterparts bankrupted the USSR, but despite egalitarian/welfare legislation, homosexual liberation, punitive taxation, political corruption, abortion, credit crunches etc..... mankind as a species today is still as resourcefull, intelligent and determined as ever. We also have vastly greater opportunities open to us and I firmly believe that in future centuries our children will exploit power sources that we cannot envision today, terra-form Mars, mine the asteroid belt, genetically increase our lifespan and voyage to distant stars; while looking back with amusement on futile, pessimistic 20'th Century attempts at 'prophecy'.

To conclude; these 'back to the bush' ideas may be popular with armchair anarchists and/or survivalist types but as an ex-soldier, my memories of outdoor survival are a little less romantic; mud, blood, mosquitos, blisters, driving rain and howling blizzards, fun as a young man though; and the book does make interesting reading. Reminded me just how fortunate I am to be enjoying retirement in a civilized manner. That said, I'm going to pour a beer, step out onto the veranda and drink it!

Time's Up is an unusual book. It begins with a series of chapters that zoom out from the microscopic to whole ecosystems - an elaborate way of showing the sheer scope of our meddling in the earth's systems, from viruses to forests, and the extent to which we have left ourselves vulnerable. It could be the little things that get us, the changing disease patterns that climate change and industrial farming are creating, or it could be the big things, like deforestation. Either way, "nothing is so dependent on other forms of life as humans, the ultimate consumers."

So who are we to have put ourselves outside the rest of creation in this way? And does it matter? Having set out the parameters of the problem, Farnish spends the next section of the book examining humanity and our place in the world. Eventually he narrows our dilemma down to cultural factors: "much of humanity has become a commercial entity" he concludes, and "sustainability is not just about the use of natural resources; it is about the use of our lives."

The solution is to reconnect to the earth, and the only way to do that is to unplug from civilisation. Industrial civilization is "fatally flawed and needs to be removed from the face of the earth, before the inevitable ecological collapse brings it down in far more horrible circumstances." It's an extreme and controversial solution, choosing a primitive wilderness rather than trying to fix or change what we have. This all-or-nothing approach is bound to alienate a lot of readers. If you're an environmentalist or campaigner, it basically tells you that you're wasting your time, and you should give up and go and live in the woods. That's a rather hopeless outlook, and in my opinion a needlessly final solution that Farnish hasn't even taken himself, but it will be music to the ears of those with survivalist ambitions.

In summary, a real mix of the insightful and the impractical, but worth a read all the same.

I like books that make me think or at least present a coherent argument. This is not one of them. The thrust behind this work is to provide the reader with capitalised catchphrases such as "The Culture Of Maximum Harm" and to build a wall with them behind which the "anti-science" eco-warriors can hide in self-satisfied, smug, self-righteousness. It reads very much like a Scientology handbook; redefining the rest of "us" as dysfunctional individuals and selling a solution to problems we never knew we had.

If modern culture is a badly leaking boat then the target audience of this book are trying to scuttle it instead of helping to bail it out or to make better boats. They want us to swim with the natural currents of life... and other such meaningless metaphors. The irony here is that I am already very familiar with self-suficiency arguments and ideas such as going "off-grid" and disconnecting yourself from being dependent on any sort of "society" or "civilisation" - I was introduced to them decades ago in the science-fiction novels of Robert A. Heinlein. In those, the libertarian and anarchic ideas of self-reliance and self-sufficiency were presented as the gateway to a technological sci-fi future where "science" was very much king. The complete opposite of Keith Farnish's Shangri-La.

I've also come across this same idea of abandoning the herd-like masses to become self-reliant "producers" and not parasitic "consumers" in Ayn Rand's excellent "Atlas Shrugged" novel. Once again, there, the idea is presented as a way to achieve scientific progress and to advance humanity into a new age - as individuals and not sheep. The ideas in "Time's Up!" would not produce individuals just a new breed of sheep.

I was continually struck by how similar Keith Farnish's proposed paradise would be to the medieval christian mono-culture in Europe - you know, before the renaissance and the rise of rational and scientific thought; where you had to follow the unknowable word of God unflinchingly in case you "upset the balance of nature".

At the very end of the book he lists the "Key Skills For Going Beyond Civilisation" and the most important long term skills that he favours are "Sociology" and "Political Analysis" - Douglas Adams proposed a place for people with just those skills - the 'B' Ark: I have Mr Farnish's ticket right here.