Stewart Brand in 2020

It’s fitting that Stewart Brand authored the first article in the inaugural issue of Pace Layers. True to his trademark big-picture perspective, Brand observes that our news cycle fixation on existential threats to civilization often detracts from the essential work of managing civilization’s continuity and enhancement. Instead of focusing on potential endings, he highlights the critical task of ensuring and improving the long-term trajectory of human progress.

Brand’s perspective brings to mind a lesson I learned while mountain biking: the bump you’re on is already behind you. Rather than worrying about it, lift your eyes, look down the trail, and choose the line that leads to where you want to go.

""...This is the reason to not be constantly obsessed with how civilization might end. It takes our eye off the main event, which is how we manage civilization’s continuity. Continuity is made partly of exploration, but most of the work is maintenance. That’s the strongest argument for protecting Nature, because Nature is the most enormous and consequential self-maintaining thing we know. 

""We are learning to maintain the wild so that it can keep main­taining us.” - Stewart Brand

Article: Elements of a Durable Civilization