Collapse Dialogue Derailments
#1: Comparisons to “Previous Apocalypses”
It has become popular to point out that “humans have survived apocalypses and ends-of-civilizations before”. They are often referring to indigenous communities and implying that if we learn from their examples, we’ll be okay.
There are several differences between our current predicament and previous ends-of-worlds:
In the case of indigenous communities, the threat was coming from outside (with the exception of times when, for example, they drove megafauna to extinction). In our case, we (i.e. the machines and the extractive calorie acquisition on which we’re reliant for survival) are our own problem.
Although some members of persecuted societies and collapsed civilizations survived, a narrative focus on those who live to tell the tale misses the other side of the story: Plenty of others perished during those periods. Many individuals this time (possibly including you and I) will be the “dispensable extras in this movie”.
In previous instances, our extremely advanced technosphere (which Andrew Nikiforuk describes here) didn’t exist. Therefore, most humans knew how to survive through direct reliance on their environments. Today, many humans lack the skills to survive without the technosphere.
Past ecological damage was regional. This time, we’ve decimated the entire planet. In some cases, it’ll be the extreme weather plus technosphere demise that reveals places as deadly. In other cases, it’ll mainly be a matter of how “development” dramatically reduced locally accessible calories. Compared to the past, there are fewer places that are hospitable to “unassisted” human life.
#2: Confusing various meanings of “the world”
Civili-zealots fail to understand the distinction between the technosphere and the planet, and therefore wrongly interpret my stance as a dismissal of everything’s prospects.
Whenever I’ve thought “we’re f&$#%d”, I’ve never meant that the planet and all lifeforms on it are doomed. In the year 2200, Earth will definitely still exist and I believe that living organisms will very likely still exist, too. The story of this planet will continue to play out until the Sun consumes it.
Nevertheless, certain phenomena on this planet do have very little time left until they expire. Our machinery and infrastructure started out as a fun perk for early civilizations. But now most humans have now become utterly dependent on them for survival. As those material systems run low on fuel and fall into disrepair, this (along with climate extremes and other ecological and social factors) will bring an end to our intangible systems and to the coordination-of-activities-according-to-the-civilization-framework. This will leave civilization-reliant humans quite f&$#%d.
The “world” that Hannah Ritchie defends in “Not the End of the World” isn’t the natural one; it’s the technosphere, which has consistently across civilizations served to suck up resources and lay waste to its surroundings. Hers isn’t true concern for nature, the environment, Earth, Life. It’s an insistence that the technosphere can somehow be compatible with a finite planet (It can’t.) yet Ritchie gets crowned eco-savior.
Our confusion of the technosphere (“the world”) with Earth (“the world”) is so profound that when you oppose industrialism run on “clean” energy, people assume that you are in favor industrialism run on fossil fuels. They cannot even imagine the possibility of NEITHER. We're terrified of climate change killing us but we're equally terrified of having to live like the animals that we are, which (as things currently stand) would be a death sentence for most of us.
#3: Reduction to Self-Help
I strongly believe that there is inner work to be done as relates to collapse. It’s important to reflect on how we want to show up during these times and behave in ways that are consistent with our values. Moreover, I believe that we have an obligation to acknowledge the positives that are still present and to express gratitude for how relatively good we still have it. But it feels disrespectful to not acknowledge that much suffering and death has already occurred at the hands of civilization, and that this will worsen.
However, it bothers me that some voices, when they put a transcendental twist on the collapse concept, are downplaying all of the endings and suffering that are on the horizon. It’s for this reason that I’m suspicious of New-Age-sounding messages that present this moment purely as an opportunity for reinvention. If folks are concerned about what lies ahead (and I think they are), it’s misleading to refer to it merely a spiritual transformation.
“Climate change is the gym in which we as human beings are strengthening our muscle to be able to evolve to a much higher sense of awareness than before … measured in the way that we understand our relationship with nature”
-Christiana Figueres, “clean” energy advocate, on an episode of On Being
This language can imply that an “Ecological Civilization” will eventually emerge - whereas there is no such thing. It can imply that we need only to do the inner work to secure our wellbeing for the years ahead. Au contraire. Meanwhile, “clean” energy marketing encourages us to believe that there’s nothing particularly damning about reliance on machines; that the suppression of “primitive” existence was merely unethical; that “civilized” existence has reduced the spiritual richness of our lives but won’t have any serious material consequences for us.
Have these folks who expect a *cultural transformation* already contemplated and moved past the idea that, in the coming decades, human deaths will so exceed births that the population will drop by billions? Have they sat with the thoughts of a more gruesome death than many of us in the Global North expected to face? Have they reflected on how traumatic it will be to witness others suffer, the survivor guilt? I could be wrong, but I suspect that they haven’t given it much thought at all. Their framing may have emerged from the imperative to acknowledge that things are bad, without the awareness that certain crucial things are also bound to end. It feels like cheating, like a way to bypass the step of acknowledging that we are still very much engaged in a settler culture and that, in our state of domestication, we are terribly maladapted for the conditions that are coming our way.
One might suggest that I’m being too tough on people, that this is all very scary to grapple with. But I’m leaning toward the verdict that we members of “civilized” society need to grow up and face reality, after all the brutality that our culture has inflicted for millennia on more-than-human beings and on humans who were wise enough to live harmoniously with the rest of Life.
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#4: Having It Our Way
Alternatively, folks are willing to use the term “collapse” but insist on dictating the exact terms and conditions of the apocalypse.
Sometimes, they eagerly embrace the idea of its imminence. They might wish to declare a premature victory, skipping ahead to the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, the collapse of our technosphere and of civilization-type behavior will not be “over” until much later this century. Our impatience with it is like in April 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown, when everyone was already so eager to go “back to normal”. James Howard Kunstler aptly titled his book about collapse “The Long Emergency”.
Just as often, folks embrace a specific idea of collapse. They long for a convenient cleansing - like a Biblical flood, and of course there’s a spot for them on Noah’s Ark. Folks want to be rid of fossil fuels, of capitalism/growthism, of consumerism and speculation, of Republicanism, of excessive meat consumption, of cars and planes (but not trains and buses), of brain-rotting entertainment, of crowdedness.
We’re at a strange moment when people are admitting that "it's impossible for us to keep doing what we've been doing" without really understanding what that means. When they imagine how we might nourish, teach and heal each other in the future, they have difficulty to imagine these occurring beyond the settings of restaurants, hospitals and classrooms, and without the supplies afforded to use by imperialism’s extensive supply chains. “Third World Problems” are seen as adversity that affects other people in other places.
What we’re ultimately headed toward is the absence of industrialism, economy and government entirely. Along the way from civilization’s current state to its obsolescence, what we experience is unlikely to be a socialist, progressive, plant-based utopia powered by “clean” energy where women’s empowerment has lowered the birth rate. What if what comes next is work camps and famine? After all, tech billionaires are conspiring to accelerate the USA’s collapse and establish their own feudal states. It’s already legal to imprison people for being unhoused and to use imprisoned people for labor, so the only step missing is to trigger high unemployment, combined with unaffordable rent/mortgages.
You always make me want to add loads of comments, inspiring thoughts I guess, which is proof of a good writer :). But I want to ask first Andrea, have you read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer?
Temporary. - like, how temporary? There’s some mighty inertia built up in this errant supersystem, entropy and all, so it might be longer than an older folk’s lifetime, might not, let’s ask all the Nostradamuses…
Tough topic, but your writings are so much more grounded than Ms. Donald efforts, though she puts on quite a show. She should have you on - Eliot Jacobson fumbled his CNN International chance to do a Newsroom-style truth bomb for all us doomer bastards, but you wouldn’t let us down.