Imagine regaining consciousness after some no-holds-barred, drink-yourself-into-a-coma, fall-asleep-in-your-own-fluids kind of party. It was fun while it lasted, but now your head aches as you surveil the dilapidated remains of last night’s hoopla. Sunday-afternoon doldrums dissolve any remembrance of dopamine-driven delight.

Picture that hollow, morning-after aftertaste. The realization that maybe, just maybe, you took things too far.

If you’ve ever seen what Traverse City looks like after the Cherry Festival – rancorous remnants of delight clinging to the edges of beaches and the shores of rivers – then you know the feeling I’m talking about.

Now extrapolate with me. Multiply that nagging feeling of foreboding in your gut by six billion. Imagine that the staging ground for this excessive indulgence was the entire planet. The party-goers: crowds of consumers consummating their every desire via shopping satisfaction. Each and every one so secure in the surety of entitlement. But now, picture the participants in this monstrous masturbatory orgy finally waking up.

Facing the fact that the party is officially over.

In the not-so-distant future, this collective double-take may be the only thing capable of preventing a global O.D. Freed from the fog of religion and commercialized modern-living, our species will gaze with a newfound clarity on the havoc wreaked by our celebratory destruction.

After sending thousands of young people to their deaths to secure access to resources in the Middle East, will we finally have had our fill?

What will be the catalyst for this planetary intervention? Will it be the recent U.N. report concluding, with over ninety-percent certainty, that human-activity is the main cause of global warming? Perhaps it’ll be the prediction by the journal Science that Earth’s seafood stocks will collapse by 2048 if current overfishing and pollution trends continue. Or how about the discovery that a “Trash Vortex” the size of Texas – mainly composed of small, indestructible particles of plastic – is slowly rotating in the Pacific, nestled between Hawaii and the West Coast? If we learned that one half of all species on Earth will be extinct in less than 100 years as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and climate change, would that do the trick?

After sending thousands of young people to their deaths to secure access to resources in the Middle East, will we finally have had our fill?

It is my sincere hope that after being startled awake from this long night of decadence, we won’t merely shrug our shoulders at the filth we find ourselves wallowing in, squeeze shut our eyes against the harsh light of an unwelcome sun, and snuggle back to sleep in the crooks of our couches. Only to be found years later, dead and decomposing, wrapped in crusted-vomit shrouds and clutching remote controls in rigor mortis claws like teddy bears.