That's a nice summary of what life in the early 21st century feels like. And now, Alexander provides the obligatory hope (emphasis added).

I am referring here to the emotional or what one might even call the spiritual challenge of living in an age of crisis; of living in an age when the myths and stories that have shaped and grounded our cultures and even our identities have begun to breakdown, unsettling our sense of purpose and place in a fast-changing world.

The words left an impression on me I think because they describe that strange, existential ache that we probably have all felt at some time or another, when contemplating how we should live our lives in a world that seems so tragically off track.

The writer went on to explain that it hurts because we are inside this dying system, we are inside this unsustainable form of civilization while it is undermining the life support system we call Earth, and what is perhaps most unsettling about this is that it’s not yet clear what comes next; nor is it obvious that the global problems we face even have smooth, painless solutions. The hour is dark and a bright new dawn is not guaranteed.

Alexander is quoting this analysis , which appeared on medium.com earlier this year.

I was drifting through cyberspace recently, not really absorbing the words in front of me, when I came across a sentence that tripped me up, so to speak, and forced me to pay attention.

Writing in Adbusters, Sam Alexander wrote a piece called The pain you feel on September 6, 2016. Morris Berman quoted Alexander's post approvingly on his blog Dark Ages America, which led me to the original. Alexander's post reflects in part Berman's " dual process " theory of the future (and read here .)

But this crisis of meaning in our culture, if I can put it that way, presents itself to us, I think, as a heavily disguised but tantalizing opportunity.

That "tantalizing opportunity" is so heavily disguised that it is utterly unrecognizable.

One of the most promising aspects of the biological world we live in is that the cycles of nature embrace death and decay as a necessary part of rebirth – as anyone who composts knows very well – and if we understand this, then we can see that as the existing form of life deteriorates in the face of environmental limits, new ways to live will inevitably evolve, and are evolving, like green shoots peeking out of the widening concrete cracks in capitalism. Our challenge is to face this inevitable breakdown with defiant positivity and set about turning today’s crises into opportunities to reinvent ourselves, our cultures, and our economies in more localized, more resilient, more humane ways. We are, it seems, like tiny microbes inside this massive, decomposing system, being challenged to work creatively in our own small ways, building the soil from which a diversity of new worlds can emerge. In short, I would say that we are being challenged at this moment in history to compost capitalism, and in the rich soil of resistance bring renewal to our task, our collective task, to seed a new Earth story.

That one phrase stuck with me — defiant positivity.

Is this really the best hope Sam Alexander (and by extension Morris Berman) can come up with?

That we can soften our "existential ache" in a world "so tragically off track" by seeding a new Earth story out of the "compost" of dead capitalism?

And why would anybody think capitalism is dying? Isn't that just wishful thinking? Of course it is.

Capitalism in failing lots and lots of people in the usual way — in the Age of Globalization, a relative few are getting very rich, living standards for many people outside the West are improving, and everybody else is getting screwed. That doesn't mean capitalism is dying. In fact, the reach of capitalism is expanding.

For humans "defiant positivity" is an oxymoron. Delusional optimism is a hallmark of the human animal. Positivity can never be defiant.

I'm sticking with defiant realism. What's dying is the biosphere, not the means humans are using to destroy it. For example, all those newly wealthy Asians are endangering lots of other species.

Just recently, I read text this in a National Geographic story about the oceans.

“We all know the oceans sustain this planet,” says Inger Andersen, IUCN’s director general, “yet we are making the oceans sick.”

And this—

So “how are we going to stop going to hell in a handbasket?” asks Greg Stone, executive vice president at the nonprofit organization Conservation International and a marine expert.

He suggests treating the ocean like a sick patient that has a temperature. To lower the temperature, that requires stopping polluting the atmosphere with carbon—of course, no easy task.

And even as we're talking about going to hell in a handbasket, we get desperate positivity.

Another solution, however, is creating marine protected areas—in essence, “telling the patient to rest. Then the immune system has a chance of fighting,” says Stone, who was not directly involved with the new report.