Bios are generally provided so that prospective readers can determine whether writers are qualified to address the title’s subject—but what qualifies someone to write a handbook on pursuing global sustainability?

​

From an orthodox perspective, there is little to suggest that I am such a person. I have no formal training in any related fields. However, I have devoted many years to unraveling the complex relationship between human behavior, technology, and sustainability. 

As an adolescent, I was deeply concerned with how our behavior negatively impacted Earth. I became convinced that we would have to regress technologically to survive. Consequently, I began to learn aboriginal life skills.

 

After high school, I spent a winter in the interior of Alaska, developing basic survival skills. The following summer, I canoed down the Yukon River, hoping to meet and learn advanced skills from Native Americans living in remote areas. Unfortunately, I found that they were also hooked on modern technology.

 

Even so, I believed Native Americans once lived in balance and harmony with nature. That belief prompted me to go on several Native American-inspired vision quests. They required going without food and water for four days to receive guidance or a vision. They were excellent tests of self-denial, but I never received a vision.

 

After that, I lived off the land in cabins and tipis in remote areas for years with no electricity or running water. I even lived in a rock shelter using only stone tools. Interestingly, pottery and other items I made and left there were later discovered and became the focus of an archaeological investigation.

 

Eventually, I realized that people would never voluntarily regress technologically, so our only option was to progress socially.

This would require transcending our primitivistic perspectives and behaviors and adopt ones that were civilized or humanistic.

 

Unfortunately, I found that we are so committed to preserving primitivistic traditions and beliefs that we are unwilling to even considering altering them. 

​

In other words, we are unwilling to regress technologically - or to progress socially. This leaves us stuck in an unsustainable position that will inevitably lead to the collapse of civilization. ​

​

There is ample evidence to indicate that civilization is at imminent risk of collapse, but alleviating these risks will require such profound changes to our perspectives and behavior that we choose to deny they are valid - or to defer responsibility for addressing them to future generations.

 

I used to believe that as we became more aware, responsible social leaders would address these issues. No one ever did. The reason for this is probably that even if they recognized the need to objectively address sustainability, doing so could be so unpopular that, they would risk losing public support.

​

In time, I lost all expectations that social leaders would ever seriously address pursuing sustainability. Consequently, I decided to try. There was nothing in my background that prepared me for this other than that I was reasonably perceptive and very persistent. Additionally, I was not dependent on public support, which might be a primary qualification for addressing volatile issues like sustainability.

 

I struggled to write several drafts of book titled Saving Civilization that addressed these issues and sent them to respected individuals for their comments. I received very little feedback, but I did end up corresponding with the renowned Canadian environmentalist, Farley Mowatt. His last response soon before he died was:

​

"I’m more convinced than ever that homo sapiens is a lost cause. And the sooner we become extinct, the better the prospects are for the ongoing survival and evolution of animate creation."

​

It was disturbing to learn that someone who had devoted much of his life to raising public awareness had given up on us. I understood his sentiments, but I thought then as I do now that if we adopt civilized humanist behavior that civilization can be sustainable and has boundless potential.

 

We may never achieve sustainability, but we should never stop trying. Writing A Handbook for Humanity is my contribution to that effort. I do not want people in the future to face the imminent collapse of civilization and have to say, “If only we had known…”