To those who doubt that massive global breakdown is coming I say: It has already started. Look around. Everything we’ve considered stable and enduring for centuries is slipping away. Corporations rule by fiat. Big Finance plays countries off against each other. Economists push for more growth while ecosystems crash. Algorithms swing elections. Unanswerable lies proliferate. And lately, brutal crazy stuff: The emergence of evil monsters like Assad, Sisi, MBS and Putin. Rape and torture are now routinely used as weapons of war.

As temperatures rise, natural systems collapse and social structures crumble, there’ll be water shortages and food riots. The number of failed states will jump from the current twenty to thirty, then fifty-plus. Refugees by the millions will first beg and then fight their way into every corner of the rich world.

And then, in a geopolitical moment of reckoning, a conflict will escalate out of control. Rage will ignite even in the most tranquil minds. All hell will break loose. Nobody will be able to control it. Hundreds of millions, maybe billions, will perish in a massive die- off. Those who survive will huddle up and cower through a dark age that could last a thousand years or more.

This is not hyperbole. The fate of this six-million-year experiment of ours on Planet Earth is hanging in the balance, if only we had the clarity of mind to see it.