Primitivist philosophers like
Derrick Jensen and
John Zerzan present a critique of the origins of "The Problem of Civilization" along with proposals for what a sustainable end-state for our civilization might look like (low human population, low technology, no industrial agriculture, no fossil fuel use etc.), without worrying overmuch about how we get from here to there.
I largely accept their critique about the origins of our predicament, and like them I think we're going to be heading back in that direction once we get past the inflection point we are now entering. The inflection will be marked by a shift from expansion to contraction in most of the markers we use now to define "progress": industrial production, GDP and personal incomes, social complexity and the rule of law, energy consumption, the global food supply, and ultimately global population levels.
From what I can tell, we seem to be nearing a point where the course of human progress appears to hang still in the air, like an arrow shot straight up, before it reverses course and begins the inevitable gravity-driven return to the Earth. Like that arrow in flight, our civilization's trajectory is governed largely by forces beyond our control. We have aimed the arrow and loosed the bow. Now the less personal forces of wind and gravity - in the case of civilization those forces include limited energy supplies, soil and water depeletion, climate change and socioeconomic dynamics - are shaping our course.
Of course we are human, so we tend to reject the idea that our fate is completely beyond our control. Most of us cling to the faith that far-sighted national policies will be able to alter the course we have been on for the last 10,000 years.
Unfortunately, it's likely that the coming change in the curve of social progress from a positive slope to a negative slope isn't going to be managed by top-down policy changes. Rather than driving change, policy shifts are generally undertaken in response to changes that have already occurred. Counter-examples, like JFK's drive towards global peace in 1963 are rare.
Local policies will be more proactive in some places, and may help to ease the transition, but I expect that most attempts to institute effective proactive policies - especially at national levels - will be strongly resisted by both the power elite and the grass roots because they will be seen as defeatist. Returning to Kennedy's desires for world peace, the institutional resistance to that policy change was made abundantly clear to the world that November in Dallas.
Ultimately I think that the world population has to settle at a level below (possible much below) one billion for it to be sustainable over the long term. How long it will take to get there depends on how much we have already damaged the planet, and how much we are prepared to continue damaging it in our forlorn oursuit of the status quo. That tally of destruction is by no means complete yet, so we really don't know how bad the damage is, but the current signals are deeply discouraging. The more damage we have inflicted, the steeper the post-inflection decline will be and the lower our final population level. This is standard for species that are correcting from an overshoot condition.
In the end, the only arrow whose trajectory we can control is our own.
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for your leader.
Best wishes for world and personal peace.