The great thing about writing a post on LinkedIn is that, even more so than on Twitter and unlike Facebook, you are forced to limit your message to about 500 words (3000 characters). Schrijven is schrappen (‘Writing is scrapping’ – thank you Simon Carmiggelt) is, as it were, enforced here, accurate to the very punctuation mark and that is good, as an author it’s very educational. Because it forces you to shorten the message to a length that should be manageable even for the hurried, overloaded, I’m-busy-busy-busy reader, without losing sight of the core message.
This book is an addendum, a supplement to my sixth book Our Inner Limits. There are a total of eight addenda, four in Dutch and four in English. The English addenda are not direct translations of the Dutch addenda. On LinkedIn I often respond to English posts in English. Sometimes I translate them into Dutch, but they also stand alone. The same applies the other way around: sometimes I translate a Dutch post into English, sometimes not. So if you speak the English language – and who doesn’t in the Netherlands – and if you want to be completely informed, read all eight. (If you don’t master the Dutch language, I’m glad I am able to offer you four English addenda. The gist of my message is just the same).
At an average reading speed of about 250 words per minute, each subchapter in this book will only take you a few minutes. So I would like to say: do you have a little less time now? Then choose a few chapter titles that appeal to you and spend ten or fifteen minutes on them. Each post stands alone and all I did was put them into a book template and made sure that the information I referenced and responded to was not lost. So you can pick up the addenda and put them away whenever you want. In any case, it is best to take in the information in steps. I wouldn’t want you to be overwhelmed.
Because the addenda are published as PDF books, the website links remain active. So you can step out and take a trip to related information elsewhere and look for further depth there. In addition, you can find more links and information that apply generically in the appendices.
Each of the eight addenda is the size of an average management book, between 30,000 and 35,000 words. The layout is like a complete book, so if you prefer to read on paper, you can easily submit the PDF as a print file to a print shop and voilà, you have a physical book in your hands, easy peasy.
The posts were written from October 2022 to October 2023 and are presented in more or less chronological order in the books. Roughly speaking, you could say that the addenda I/V, II/VI, III/VII and IV/VIII were written in quarters I, II, III and IV of 2023. The posts are also presented chronologically for each subchapter. So don’t be surprised by any progressive insights.
Each addendum is a collection of stories, insights and reflections, loosely classified into 11 fixed chapters:
The frontal confrontation- The collapse
- Economy versus ecology
- The Almighty Algorithm
- Distraction, deception, doubt and deceit
- The climate conflict
- About climate stupidity
- Looking down from above
- Pollution, waste and destruction
- Global consultation doesn’t work
- Science, truth and reality
Please note: not all chapters appear equally in all addenda.
If you’ve worked your way through all four (or eight) books, you’ll have taken a journey from ignorance to climate change to overconsumption and collapse. Not all journeys are equally enjoyable to make and this journey is one of the beginning of the end, of frontal confrontation, major existential problems and the very last, ultimate taboo: the collapse of human civilization as we know it today. That, by the way, does not necessarily mean ’the end of the world’: the extinction of the human species. But it has now become a serious option indeed.
Finally: while in my book Our Inner Limits I leave it to the dear reader to draw their own conclusions about where the human species is going, I am much more explicit in these eight addenda , more ‘right in your face’ and perhaps a bit blunt here and there. Because as a self-proclaimed confrontationalist, I firmly believe that only a frontal confrontation with truth and reality can, perhaps, open our eyes to what is coming our way.
Good luck and success!
Bart Flos
Helmond, November 2023.
