Time’s Up!

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Let’s start at the end.

The first ending has happened before. Vast groups of humans, all taking part in a single, complex system, thrive for a short while; they take what they want until there is nothing left to take, and the system collapses. This has happened time and time again in the fruitless rise and fall of human ambition. The greatest of these civilizations is the one we are living in now. The end is when it falls, and the fall is coming soon. With this ending, we stand little chance of survival.

The second ending is something we’re becoming sadly familiar with: the one in which the ice caps melt, the forests disappear, the oceans rise and countless species wake for the last time before leaving the Earth forever. This is an environmental catastrophe. We can bat it away, think it has little to do with us and carry on as before. But the environment is not another place: it is what we depend on for our survival, and we are part of it, whatever anyone might say. An ‘environmental’ catastrophe is a human catastrophe. With this ending, we also stand little chance of survival.

The third ending is one you get to choose. There is a chance that we might survive.

I think we are beginning to see mounting awareness of the gravity and scope of the crisis afflicting life on earth. Keith’s “Time’s Up” is a huge contribution to understanding the extremity of our situation and providing ideas for facing up to ending a fundamentally false and devouring technoculture.

John Zerzan

Time’s Up! is the published version of A Matter of Scale, and is available across the world from major retailers, online stores and all independent bookshops. Just search for “Keith Farnish”.

If you want to preview Time’s Up! you can read every page on Google Books

Click here for A Matter Of Scale, the free online version.

Praise for Time’s Up!

“Keith Farnish has it right: time has practically run out, and the ‘system’ is the problem”
Professor James Hansen, Columbia University

“An amazing book.”
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power

“I have read no clearer exposition of the interconnectivity of life. Nor have I come across a more reasoned explanation for our selfishness. If you read it, and I exhort you to read it, you will see that there is no other solution but the wholesale deconstruction of industrial society.”
Jon Hughes, Fourth World Review

“Farnish gives us the knowledge, the inspiration and the empowerment to pull together and start this fight, even if we can’t all be like him – we can and we have to do something.”
Polly Cook, The Ecologist

Read “In My Own Words: A Terminal Lack Of Connection” (PDF download)

Interview on The John Batchelor Show: listen or download via this link (via archive.org)

Interview on Radio Ecoshock: listen or download via this link (via archive.org)

Interview on BBC Radio Essex: listen or download via this link (via archive.org)

A Note For Concerned Readers

After reading Time’s Up! (and A Matter Of Scale) a number of people have contacted me asking for more information about what they should do next. Recently a correspondent wrote:

“So even though I have been reading Dmitry Orlov, John Michael Greer, Sharon Astyk, Ran Prieur, and others for some time, your book really freaked me out. Aside from the convincing finality of your arguments (and your book seems extremely well-researched and well-annotated), I feel kind of paralyzed into inaction (think deer in headlights).”

It was a really thoughtful note, and I really sympathise, but while I can help talk people through problems, I cannot tell anyone exactly what to do next, given how important it is to move away from the “one size fits all” approach. However, I have written a number of articles related to some of the more difficult subjects contained in the book, with some of the more recent ones consciously being “appendices” to Time’s Up!

For a list of these articles, follow the link to the A Matter Of Scale : Appendices page. I will keep this updated as more articles are written.

The essential follow-up to Time’s Up! which was written in response to this and my own concern over a lack of an adequate reference guide is UNDERMINERS, which forms the main part of this website.