Sadly, collapse is extremely likely, indeed, already underway. Not all is lost, because the work of constructing a future ecological civilisation is also underway. It's going to be a very challenging few decades. Many are already perishing, and many more will die in future. We should save as much life as possible, but also be realistic about what is happening, and act accordingly. As James Lovelock said in The Revenge of Gaia, we should get rid of all that is wrong in the current civilisation and preserve all that is good, to help those humans of the future who will construct the new society.
I remember how things were in a "smaller, slower and less energy intensive economy". Which was how things were for me iin England in the 1940s, 50s and the first half of the 1960s. The difference between then and now can be illustrated by the legal requirement that in those days little boys were not allowed to wear long trousers until we were 13 years old. My first job was in 1953, the year sweet rationing ended. Virtually everything we had was essential. Discretionary (non essential) markets, in today's terms, did not exist. The only difference I remember, between families was whether they had gardens in which to grow their own food, for themselves and for exchanging their surpluses with their neighbours.
Thanks James. Excellent post. Grim, but I have to agree with you. As we used to say in XR, "we're fucked" . Collapse. Yes. The question now is not whether this is happening, but what to do.
Yes, descent is not synonymous with collapse, but how can we avoid collapse when the global system is constructed with so many interconnections that form weak points, areas of fragility? Richard Heinberg argues for re-localization, but is there a strategy for getting their? And what sort of political system will prevent the dominators from reorganizing to their advantage at the expense of the rest of us? Interesting.
The word 'collapse', I'm discovering, has to be defined by those discussing it before even getting started in the discussion -- at least roughly defined, that is. Otherwise, folks will think they know what is being talked about, but may not have a common sense of what the term refers to. It's much like the terms 'civilization' and 'culture' in this respect.
Joseph Tainter's book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, has had quite an influence upon the use of the word 'collapse'. But, honestly, it takes some work to really get at what he meant by the term, along with his deeply associated term "complexity". For Tainter, "collapse" is basically a reduction in social "complexity" -- but by "complexity" he meant something quite different than what is generally meant by that term in ordinary use. And, frankly, I think Tainter's thoughts are a bit muddled and confused--and often a bit overly reductive. Even contradictory!
This is why I'm digging into the discourses of "collapse" now. I want to understand what the hell people even mean by the term. And the only thing quite clear about the term for me at the moment is that we don't have a common sense of the term in ordinary usage -- if any usage at all.
It might not pay to worry too much about a definition of collapse, unless you're writing a scholarly paper, since any predictions we might make are necessarily rather vague and uncertain. Collapse is often spoken of as a process and/or as an end state. I like Meg Wheatley's working definition, which I think is taken from Tainter:
A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity. Collapse is the sudden simplification of complexity, the loss of institutions and ways of life that depend on complex systems to do their work, deliver services, transport goods.
I'm glad you said "it *might* not pay to worry about the definition...."
It's the word "might" that comforts me here. Over recent months I've learned that more often than not people are talking right past one another about lots of things. A great example is the word "civilization." You use the word and you're pretty sure you know that the word means. And Larry over there uses the word and Larry is pretty sure he knows what the word means. And the word sounds -- and is spelled -- the same way for each of you. So you and Larry initially each believe you're on the same page as to what the word means. But as you and Larry talk some more about "civilization", pretty soon you may begin to realize that you are not using the same word to mean the same thing.
It's only when we're getting into the nitty-gritty details of things that we take notice of this.
For some people, "collapse" means simply a catastrophe of losses, of crumbling away of the good life, of horrors and despair and tragedy and suffering. Of chaos and disasters. But if you get really into the nitty gritty of collapse discourse, you see that there are other ways of understanding the term than that. It can mean the end of a mode of economy and culture, but not necessarily the end of goodness, health, well-being.... And then there are myriad kinds, degrees and paces (temporalities) of "collapse". So the word refers to many things, and a diversity of many things. And so the word itself is highly "complex". And so it serves us well to define our terms.
Tainter uses "complexity" to mean something unique to his theory of "collapse". That meaning is vastly different from other uses of "complexity". Indeed, in lots of ways, his meaning of 'complexity' has the very opposite meaning in other usage contexts. For example, a dramatic decrease in Tainter-usage "complexity" can, in fact, lead to considerable increase in 'complexity' in other usage contexts.
For example, hardly anything could be more the opposite of "complex" than modern, industrial agriculture, with its monocropping, its ubiquitous stripping of soil and replacement of soil with a mere "substrate" for plant roots -- similar to chemical hydroponics production. So a Tainter-complex society actually reduces complexity everywhere! If you study culture and ecology you'll know what I mean.
I'm going to continue to explore "the luxury economy" in future articles and essays soon. There's crucial facet of this story I've not touched upon here. It has to do with prices of things and labor costs and competitiveness in the market economy ... and how technological "improvements" almost force us to use "labor saving devices" to be competitive in market economy ... and how any kind of "transition" away from fossil fuels must mean, at times, thumbing our nose at this dynamic.
Good point. Competition in capitalism drives toward lowest costs--where labor is a big factor--regardless of "externalities" such as effects on environment, depletion of resources, exploitation of workers, or any aspect of happiness or well-being. This is awfully hard to escape. Maybe after re-localization ...
If you think about it real carefully, you may notice that we cannot wait for "market forces" to drive re-localization. Or, rather, if we do, we're going to find ourselves entirely unprepared for having to do so when it becomes blatantly necessary.
We're going to need to begin relocalization long before survival needs forces it upon us.
I think there is an important element left out of this picture of the past, present and future. You talk about humanity as a whole; but in the past, a small ruling class made most of the decisions and enjoyed the cream of the fruits of others' labor, while contributing little. In the present--same thing only better disguised. But this dynamic will very likely have a huge effect on the transition. The smoothness of the transition depends upon leveling and cooperation--when such a hefty percentage of our surplus is going into luxuries for the rich, and militaries, cops, guards to protect the rich from the poor essentially (the gargantuan US military is for hegemony, but largely that is to ensure the continuation of unequal relations where US corporations can pillage the rest of the world for natural resources and cheap labor.) The difference in the post-peak economy will be that the rich will no longer be able to allow luxuries to trickle down from themselves to the global middle class. They are busy setting up all sorts of surveillance, armed robots and drones, and legal arrangements for a system in which they continue to pillage the third world for resources to maintain a modern lifestyle for themselves, while the middle and lower classes merge into one huge majority class of serfs. I envision prisons used as slave labor camps. THIS dystopian future is what we get if there is no breakdown, no collapse. So a breakdown is what saves us from it--and leads to a world with a zillion local societies of widely varying sorts. To get to the best possible future, in which we downshift smoothly, deliberately, cooperatively and JUSTly, with the richest undergoing the biggest change, and ecosystems protected as much as possible--would require that the masses stop letting the sociopaths dictate to the rest of us, and I just don't see what could enable that.
The article was not very long, but I spent most of the day working on it! These topics are all outrageously complex. And it's not possible to cover all of the crucial components and factors in a fully integrated (holistic) way short of writing a book. So I focused here on highlighting some of what I'm learning about how the mainstream 'transition' narrative just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Only after having written this article did it occur to me that if Simon Michaux is correct in his assessment, the Heinberg Pulse calculation need not even be discerned and explicated, because the Michaux Monkeywrench renders it irrelevant -- because nothing close to continuation of energy and economy B.A.U. is possible. So in a matter of a couple of days I went from being near certain that almost nothing in this world was more important than quantifying the 'magnitude' of the Heinberg Pulse to strongly suspecting that such an exercise would be pointless and unnecessary.
(The likelihood of both Heinberg and Micheaux both being wrong in their assessments is highly unlikely, I'd say. But in either case there will not be a "simple replacement" version of energy transition--, unless we somehow manage to ignore reality altogether and Michaux's Monkeywrench turns out not to gum up the works.)
My point is that finding one's bearings in such a turbulent space is ... very tricky! So sometimes we need to focus on one piece at a time. And the piece I was focusing upon here was whether the standard energy transition narrative was even possible.
"To get to the best possible future, in which we downshift smoothly, deliberately, cooperatively and JUSTly, with the richest undergoing the biggest change, and ecosystems protected as much as possible--would require that the masses stop letting the sociopaths dictate to the rest of us, and I just don't see what could enable that."
The whole point of the R-Word, at the largest scale of its inquiry, is that only revolution (non-violent and non-insurrectionary) could enable that. The Opening article (essay?), Revolution 2.0. -https://rword.substack.com/p/revolution-20 begins a process of exploring what sort of revolution it would have to be, and it concludes that it would be a revolution centered on mutual empowerment of everyone, the replacement of hierarchical political and economic relationships with sharing, cooperating and collaborating ones..., a shift from 'centripetal' to 'centrifugal' power distribution. A foregoing of hegemony in favor of ..., well, its opposite.
The only way to enact such a revolution is to adopt, express and enact its ethos in our local and regional communities, where the rubber meets the road. (bicycle or shoe rubber, ideally) It's only big and dramatic when it catches on and becomes powerful by being widespread. Let's do it!
The problem I see here is that, as always, changing the narrative is key. And a key part of "doing it" is living on the land and growing at least some of your own food, setting up your own off-grid energy system--arranging to depend on, and support, the Machine as little as possible. Until things fall apart, that usually means buying land, which isn't easy for today's debt-encumbered young people, especially, to do. And then, when you're in the country living off-grid on low income and growing much of your food, in theory you make a fine role model but now there are two more problems--what you're doing is visible to far fewer people than if you lived in a city (unless you're doing a retro-suburbia thing, like David Holmgren, but who can afford suburban land?) The other problem is that rural places are very conservative, likely the worst social landscapes in which to bring people into revolutionary ideas. Perhaps once breakdown picks up steam, this will no longer be true, and city people will be the ones clinging to the twentieth-century model while rural, unemployed people will be ready to talk about alternatives. And once breakdown advances, land owned by wealthy absentee owners will become available to squatters
More good points. All major hurdles, for sure. It's very, very difficult to create the economic and social conditions which enable what I call "Departure" (leaving the dominator culture behind).
And yet--and yet, I think most people are NOT happy with the present matrix, not happy with the divisiveness (even though they do get addictively into participating in sniping across the divide of the culture war), not happy with the ratrace, not happy with the evidence they do see of the environmental crises...surely young parents are horrified at the soulless, commercial substitute for kid culture their children are marinating in--although I think that's a case of shifting baselines, as most didn't have the kind of childhood I did ("free range" childhood)...
Your mention of "free range" childhood feels important. I was a free range child, too, and spent much of my childhood--outside of school--as a wild wanderer. My buddies and I would wander for miles, seeking out the patches of wild places where we could play and explore where there were lizards, frogs, cray fish, open spaces and thickets through which we could manchette trails. We'd walk the tops of fences -- literally -- in our neighborhood. All without adult supervision.
This morning I'm exploring the idea of "narrative" and how it shapes culture and politics... and how it relates to imagination, along with our ideas about what freedom is. Seems I'm still a wild thing. I have a wild and free-ranging imagination. That is, relative to the average.
And that then leads me to wonder about what I want now to call "the relational imagination" -- or imagination within sociality, rather than crammed into an isolated individual. Wow! Now I am walking on fence tops again! Thanks!
"Not everyone is coming to the future
Not everyone is coming from the past
Not everyone can come into the future
Not everyone that's here is gonna last"
Madonna
Sadly, collapse is extremely likely, indeed, already underway. Not all is lost, because the work of constructing a future ecological civilisation is also underway. It's going to be a very challenging few decades. Many are already perishing, and many more will die in future. We should save as much life as possible, but also be realistic about what is happening, and act accordingly. As James Lovelock said in The Revenge of Gaia, we should get rid of all that is wrong in the current civilisation and preserve all that is good, to help those humans of the future who will construct the new society.
James, you are garnering plenty of comments not only here but also at resilience.org. Congratulations! It's great to see thoughtful discussions.
Very good James. It should be posted in Radix.
I remember how things were in a "smaller, slower and less energy intensive economy". Which was how things were for me iin England in the 1940s, 50s and the first half of the 1960s. The difference between then and now can be illustrated by the legal requirement that in those days little boys were not allowed to wear long trousers until we were 13 years old. My first job was in 1953, the year sweet rationing ended. Virtually everything we had was essential. Discretionary (non essential) markets, in today's terms, did not exist. The only difference I remember, between families was whether they had gardens in which to grow their own food, for themselves and for exchanging their surpluses with their neighbours.
Thanks James. Excellent post. Grim, but I have to agree with you. As we used to say in XR, "we're fucked" . Collapse. Yes. The question now is not whether this is happening, but what to do.
Thanks Andy! Remind me to write an essay or article on why energy / GDP / industrial "descent" is not synonymous with "collapse". I may forget!
Hugs, brother!
Yes, descent is not synonymous with collapse, but how can we avoid collapse when the global system is constructed with so many interconnections that form weak points, areas of fragility? Richard Heinberg argues for re-localization, but is there a strategy for getting their? And what sort of political system will prevent the dominators from reorganizing to their advantage at the expense of the rest of us? Interesting.
Paul -
The word 'collapse', I'm discovering, has to be defined by those discussing it before even getting started in the discussion -- at least roughly defined, that is. Otherwise, folks will think they know what is being talked about, but may not have a common sense of what the term refers to. It's much like the terms 'civilization' and 'culture' in this respect.
Joseph Tainter's book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, has had quite an influence upon the use of the word 'collapse'. But, honestly, it takes some work to really get at what he meant by the term, along with his deeply associated term "complexity". For Tainter, "collapse" is basically a reduction in social "complexity" -- but by "complexity" he meant something quite different than what is generally meant by that term in ordinary use. And, frankly, I think Tainter's thoughts are a bit muddled and confused--and often a bit overly reductive. Even contradictory!
See: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-07-07/resilience-through-simplification-revisiting-tainters-theory-collapse-part-1/
This is why I'm digging into the discourses of "collapse" now. I want to understand what the hell people even mean by the term. And the only thing quite clear about the term for me at the moment is that we don't have a common sense of the term in ordinary usage -- if any usage at all.
It might not pay to worry too much about a definition of collapse, unless you're writing a scholarly paper, since any predictions we might make are necessarily rather vague and uncertain. Collapse is often spoken of as a process and/or as an end state. I like Meg Wheatley's working definition, which I think is taken from Tainter:
A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity. Collapse is the sudden simplification of complexity, the loss of institutions and ways of life that depend on complex systems to do their work, deliver services, transport goods.
Wheatley: Who Do We Choose To Be, p. 250.
I'm glad you said "it *might* not pay to worry about the definition...."
It's the word "might" that comforts me here. Over recent months I've learned that more often than not people are talking right past one another about lots of things. A great example is the word "civilization." You use the word and you're pretty sure you know that the word means. And Larry over there uses the word and Larry is pretty sure he knows what the word means. And the word sounds -- and is spelled -- the same way for each of you. So you and Larry initially each believe you're on the same page as to what the word means. But as you and Larry talk some more about "civilization", pretty soon you may begin to realize that you are not using the same word to mean the same thing.
It's only when we're getting into the nitty-gritty details of things that we take notice of this.
For some people, "collapse" means simply a catastrophe of losses, of crumbling away of the good life, of horrors and despair and tragedy and suffering. Of chaos and disasters. But if you get really into the nitty gritty of collapse discourse, you see that there are other ways of understanding the term than that. It can mean the end of a mode of economy and culture, but not necessarily the end of goodness, health, well-being.... And then there are myriad kinds, degrees and paces (temporalities) of "collapse". So the word refers to many things, and a diversity of many things. And so the word itself is highly "complex". And so it serves us well to define our terms.
PS -
Tainter uses "complexity" to mean something unique to his theory of "collapse". That meaning is vastly different from other uses of "complexity". Indeed, in lots of ways, his meaning of 'complexity' has the very opposite meaning in other usage contexts. For example, a dramatic decrease in Tainter-usage "complexity" can, in fact, lead to considerable increase in 'complexity' in other usage contexts.
For example, hardly anything could be more the opposite of "complex" than modern, industrial agriculture, with its monocropping, its ubiquitous stripping of soil and replacement of soil with a mere "substrate" for plant roots -- similar to chemical hydroponics production. So a Tainter-complex society actually reduces complexity everywhere! If you study culture and ecology you'll know what I mean.
Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil?
BY ROBERT HUNZIKER
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/23/is-there-enough-metal-to-replace
I'm going to continue to explore "the luxury economy" in future articles and essays soon. There's crucial facet of this story I've not touched upon here. It has to do with prices of things and labor costs and competitiveness in the market economy ... and how technological "improvements" almost force us to use "labor saving devices" to be competitive in market economy ... and how any kind of "transition" away from fossil fuels must mean, at times, thumbing our nose at this dynamic.
Good point. Competition in capitalism drives toward lowest costs--where labor is a big factor--regardless of "externalities" such as effects on environment, depletion of resources, exploitation of workers, or any aspect of happiness or well-being. This is awfully hard to escape. Maybe after re-localization ...
Hey, Paul.
If you think about it real carefully, you may notice that we cannot wait for "market forces" to drive re-localization. Or, rather, if we do, we're going to find ourselves entirely unprepared for having to do so when it becomes blatantly necessary.
We're going to need to begin relocalization long before survival needs forces it upon us.
Definitely!
I think there is an important element left out of this picture of the past, present and future. You talk about humanity as a whole; but in the past, a small ruling class made most of the decisions and enjoyed the cream of the fruits of others' labor, while contributing little. In the present--same thing only better disguised. But this dynamic will very likely have a huge effect on the transition. The smoothness of the transition depends upon leveling and cooperation--when such a hefty percentage of our surplus is going into luxuries for the rich, and militaries, cops, guards to protect the rich from the poor essentially (the gargantuan US military is for hegemony, but largely that is to ensure the continuation of unequal relations where US corporations can pillage the rest of the world for natural resources and cheap labor.) The difference in the post-peak economy will be that the rich will no longer be able to allow luxuries to trickle down from themselves to the global middle class. They are busy setting up all sorts of surveillance, armed robots and drones, and legal arrangements for a system in which they continue to pillage the third world for resources to maintain a modern lifestyle for themselves, while the middle and lower classes merge into one huge majority class of serfs. I envision prisons used as slave labor camps. THIS dystopian future is what we get if there is no breakdown, no collapse. So a breakdown is what saves us from it--and leads to a world with a zillion local societies of widely varying sorts. To get to the best possible future, in which we downshift smoothly, deliberately, cooperatively and JUSTly, with the richest undergoing the biggest change, and ecosystems protected as much as possible--would require that the masses stop letting the sociopaths dictate to the rest of us, and I just don't see what could enable that.
Excellent points, Mary.
The article was not very long, but I spent most of the day working on it! These topics are all outrageously complex. And it's not possible to cover all of the crucial components and factors in a fully integrated (holistic) way short of writing a book. So I focused here on highlighting some of what I'm learning about how the mainstream 'transition' narrative just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Only after having written this article did it occur to me that if Simon Michaux is correct in his assessment, the Heinberg Pulse calculation need not even be discerned and explicated, because the Michaux Monkeywrench renders it irrelevant -- because nothing close to continuation of energy and economy B.A.U. is possible. So in a matter of a couple of days I went from being near certain that almost nothing in this world was more important than quantifying the 'magnitude' of the Heinberg Pulse to strongly suspecting that such an exercise would be pointless and unnecessary.
(The likelihood of both Heinberg and Micheaux both being wrong in their assessments is highly unlikely, I'd say. But in either case there will not be a "simple replacement" version of energy transition--, unless we somehow manage to ignore reality altogether and Michaux's Monkeywrench turns out not to gum up the works.)
My point is that finding one's bearings in such a turbulent space is ... very tricky! So sometimes we need to focus on one piece at a time. And the piece I was focusing upon here was whether the standard energy transition narrative was even possible.
"To get to the best possible future, in which we downshift smoothly, deliberately, cooperatively and JUSTly, with the richest undergoing the biggest change, and ecosystems protected as much as possible--would require that the masses stop letting the sociopaths dictate to the rest of us, and I just don't see what could enable that."
The whole point of the R-Word, at the largest scale of its inquiry, is that only revolution (non-violent and non-insurrectionary) could enable that. The Opening article (essay?), Revolution 2.0. -https://rword.substack.com/p/revolution-20 begins a process of exploring what sort of revolution it would have to be, and it concludes that it would be a revolution centered on mutual empowerment of everyone, the replacement of hierarchical political and economic relationships with sharing, cooperating and collaborating ones..., a shift from 'centripetal' to 'centrifugal' power distribution. A foregoing of hegemony in favor of ..., well, its opposite.
The only way to enact such a revolution is to adopt, express and enact its ethos in our local and regional communities, where the rubber meets the road. (bicycle or shoe rubber, ideally) It's only big and dramatic when it catches on and becomes powerful by being widespread. Let's do it!
The problem I see here is that, as always, changing the narrative is key. And a key part of "doing it" is living on the land and growing at least some of your own food, setting up your own off-grid energy system--arranging to depend on, and support, the Machine as little as possible. Until things fall apart, that usually means buying land, which isn't easy for today's debt-encumbered young people, especially, to do. And then, when you're in the country living off-grid on low income and growing much of your food, in theory you make a fine role model but now there are two more problems--what you're doing is visible to far fewer people than if you lived in a city (unless you're doing a retro-suburbia thing, like David Holmgren, but who can afford suburban land?) The other problem is that rural places are very conservative, likely the worst social landscapes in which to bring people into revolutionary ideas. Perhaps once breakdown picks up steam, this will no longer be true, and city people will be the ones clinging to the twentieth-century model while rural, unemployed people will be ready to talk about alternatives. And once breakdown advances, land owned by wealthy absentee owners will become available to squatters
More good points. All major hurdles, for sure. It's very, very difficult to create the economic and social conditions which enable what I call "Departure" (leaving the dominator culture behind).
And yet--and yet, I think most people are NOT happy with the present matrix, not happy with the divisiveness (even though they do get addictively into participating in sniping across the divide of the culture war), not happy with the ratrace, not happy with the evidence they do see of the environmental crises...surely young parents are horrified at the soulless, commercial substitute for kid culture their children are marinating in--although I think that's a case of shifting baselines, as most didn't have the kind of childhood I did ("free range" childhood)...
More salient thoughts from you, Mary.
Your mention of "free range" childhood feels important. I was a free range child, too, and spent much of my childhood--outside of school--as a wild wanderer. My buddies and I would wander for miles, seeking out the patches of wild places where we could play and explore where there were lizards, frogs, cray fish, open spaces and thickets through which we could manchette trails. We'd walk the tops of fences -- literally -- in our neighborhood. All without adult supervision.
This morning I'm exploring the idea of "narrative" and how it shapes culture and politics... and how it relates to imagination, along with our ideas about what freedom is. Seems I'm still a wild thing. I have a wild and free-ranging imagination. That is, relative to the average.
And that then leads me to wonder about what I want now to call "the relational imagination" -- or imagination within sociality, rather than crammed into an isolated individual. Wow! Now I am walking on fence tops again! Thanks!