Yes, indeed, the machine (ie: oil-driven economies/cultures/dreams of accelerating over-consumption) IS stopping. It/we have hit and exceeded the very narrow, "goldilocks" sweet spots--the material limits--of "life on earth." Many current species on our planet are able to live within quite narrow parameters of climate, population size, r…
Yes, indeed, the machine (ie: oil-driven economies/cultures/dreams of accelerating over-consumption) IS stopping. It/we have hit and exceeded the very narrow, "goldilocks" sweet spots--the material limits--of "life on earth." Many current species on our planet are able to live within quite narrow parameters of climate, population size, resource consumption rates, CO2 in the air, etc. Including our own species, of course. Evolution simply doesn't move fast enough for many current life forms to adapt to or re-configure themselves in response to our man-altered global environment. And so, in fact, the hills of Wessex have not escaped, and cannot escape, the Machine at all. Only the future will tell whether the turf that covers the Wessex hills will cover it still in the Anthropocene ... whether the Wessex hills' "muscles" will be capable of "rippling" with biological life in the Anthropocene's futures ... whether the biodiversity of those hills is asleep/gone "forever" or might be "reawakened" by "happy men and women". In other words, there is no such thing as escaping the material, planet-scale realities of the Anthropocene. But, there IS, if we are fortunate enough to learn it, such a thing as living within the material limits of our embodiment on this small blue planet. The dream of transcending life's limits (by technological or theological means) was a bad dream, and it's over. There is no way "out" of life's (generative, fecund) limits. But, there are ways right now, to go deeper within--to live more deeply attuned to and in-formed by--the mesh-net of things and beings that we are, and that we are of. Living with and in limits might not constitute "freedom" or "escape" (as defined—dangerously—by dualistic thought systems). But living with and in the very real material limits of our habitat on planet earth (including the very real limits of our human bodies/minds/brains)--can be endlessly creative, engaging, meaningful, and worth the doing.
Yes, indeed, the machine (ie: oil-driven economies/cultures/dreams of accelerating over-consumption) IS stopping. It/we have hit and exceeded the very narrow, "goldilocks" sweet spots--the material limits--of "life on earth." Many current species on our planet are able to live within quite narrow parameters of climate, population size, resource consumption rates, CO2 in the air, etc. Including our own species, of course. Evolution simply doesn't move fast enough for many current life forms to adapt to or re-configure themselves in response to our man-altered global environment. And so, in fact, the hills of Wessex have not escaped, and cannot escape, the Machine at all. Only the future will tell whether the turf that covers the Wessex hills will cover it still in the Anthropocene ... whether the Wessex hills' "muscles" will be capable of "rippling" with biological life in the Anthropocene's futures ... whether the biodiversity of those hills is asleep/gone "forever" or might be "reawakened" by "happy men and women". In other words, there is no such thing as escaping the material, planet-scale realities of the Anthropocene. But, there IS, if we are fortunate enough to learn it, such a thing as living within the material limits of our embodiment on this small blue planet. The dream of transcending life's limits (by technological or theological means) was a bad dream, and it's over. There is no way "out" of life's (generative, fecund) limits. But, there are ways right now, to go deeper within--to live more deeply attuned to and in-formed by--the mesh-net of things and beings that we are, and that we are of. Living with and in limits might not constitute "freedom" or "escape" (as defined—dangerously—by dualistic thought systems). But living with and in the very real material limits of our habitat on planet earth (including the very real limits of our human bodies/minds/brains)--can be endlessly creative, engaging, meaningful, and worth the doing.