I’m trying to envision exactly what a post-consumer, post-ego, internal-locus-of-control, adult society would look like. It would mean the end of a focus on things, the beginning of a focus on the immaterial--really the beginnings of moving from an emphasis on matter to spirit.

Community, family, and relationship would be important. Cooperation and selfless service would become the norm. People would let go of their need to live safe lives, and would wholly embrace their radical freedom.

The exploitation of the earth would end, gargantuan houses would go away, megastores would be gone, Hollywood would be a relic. The earth might still be vastly overpopulated--if we managed this shift without all of the pending catastrophes I see looming on the horizon--but eventually population would come down. We would return to organic farming and sustainable gathering of foodstuffs and medicines from the land. Who would be wholly or very largely vegetarian, so the beef industry would go way, and all the land devoted to feeding livestock could be given over to directly feeding the hungry. We would go local as much as possible. I envision localities trying to reach the goal of producing 90 percent of their needs locally, importing the remainder, and exporting their (what should be modest) surpluses.

Imagine if we could only eat bananas once every several years--what a delicacy they would become! Or mangoes! Each import would be special, a cause for celebration.

Now we totally take for granted all the goods that are available from all corners of the globe, and I’m not just talking about the cheap mass-produced crap, but all of the foodstuffs and products that are indigenous and unique to each area. If only a small fraction of what we needed was imported we would learn to appreciate the diversity we have on this planet; each gift from each part of the globe would be a celebration of abundance and diversity. How we would treasury those gifts.