- This article was originally published at Deep Transition Network. -
"There's no evidence to suggest that anyone did waste their time in rearranging the Titanic's deckchairs while it was sinking - the expression is purely metaphorical. The ship's band however, who all eventually drowned, did continue to play on in an effort to calm the passengers." - The Phrase Finder
“My boat struck something deep.
Nothing happened.
Sound, silence, waves.
Nothing happened?
Or perhaps, everything happened
And I’m sitting in the middle of my new life.”
– Juan Ramon Jimenez
And here we are in the middle of our new life. A long rip or gash has been torn in the hull of our ship, and yet collectively we pretend this isn't so. And yet a fair number of us are aware that we've struck an iceberg and that our ship is sinking. One would be Rupert Read, who has said, "If people are feeling paralysed right now, I think it is probably because they are stuck between false hopes."
In the same conversation, Rupert goes on to say,
I have come to the conclusion in the last few years that this civilisation is going down. It will not last. It cannot, because it shows almost no sign of taking the extreme climate crisis—let alone the broader ecological crisis—for what it is: a long global emergency, an existential threat. This industrial-growthist civilisation will not achieve the Paris climate accord goals; and that means that we will most likely see 3–4 degrees of global over-heat at a minimum, and that is not compatible with civilisation as we know it.
I think what Rupert is saying here is likely much more nuanced than many or most folks might imagine. As I hear him, he's saying simply that this particular mode or expression of civilization is done for. It's already in early stages of ending. In this nuanced way, I completely agree. This civilization is finished.
Is it possible that something we might call 'civilization' may continue to exist after our present expression of 'civilization' sinks beneath the waves? Perhaps. But we will not recognize it as something like the civilization we have now. Indeed, the very word 'civilization' has itself hit some rocks and it, too, has a massive rip in its hull.
Most people don't know how recent the word 'civilization' is. Nor do most of us know the transformations in meaning the word has gone through in its short historical life. Wikipedia says, "The English word civilization comes from the 16th-century French civilisé ("civilized"), from Latin civilis ("civil"), related to civis ("citizen") and civitas ("city")." The Online Etymological Dictionary says,
civilization (n.) - 1704, in a now-obsolete sense "law which makes a criminal process civil," from civil + -ization. Sense of "civilized condition, state of being reclaimed from the rudeness of savage life" first recorded 1772, probably from French civilisation, serving as an opposite to barbarity and a distinct word from civility. From civilize + -ation. Sense of "a particular human society in a civilized condition, considered as a whole over time," is from 1857. Related: Civilizational.
The word -- civilization -- can aptly be said to be in disarray as it is used across and within sociology and anthropology. But historians tend to be more in agreement. They tend to define civilizations much as Derrick Jensen has, as a way of life centered on the existence and growth of cities. (Personally, I'm not at all a fan of Jensen's social praxis. But I like his definition of civilization very much.)
Originally, civilization simply referred to those who are not 'barbarians' or 'savages'. But the word evolved, as words do. It basically came to mean cultures which crucially feature large-scaled urban centers, which were generally seats of accumulated and concentrated decision-making power (that is, political power and authority). These were typically 'literate' in that they had the written word. And they have always been stratified into hierarchies of economic and decision-making power, which is to say they are far to one side of a spectrum of authoritarianism versus egalitarianism. They have always been on the authoritarian side of that spectrum, always-- and still are. But we have a difficult time acknowledging this fact, because modern global civilization likes to pretend that it is democratic, which would place it on the egalitarian side of the spectrum -- if it were true. This is to say that modern civilization has a myth about itself which turns out to be more of a cover story than a fact-based reality. This is its mythos. It's story of itself. I sometimes like to say that the fundamental authoritarianism of modern civilization is its "shadow" -- in the Jungian sense, more or less. But it is a cultural shadow, not a personal shadow. We take it personally. But it's embeddedness is in culture, primarily, not so much in individuals.
Jem Bendell is one among many voices which warn about the impending ending of civilization as we know it. In a rather vague and ambiguous collection of words, professor Bendell has said, "In my work I have defined [social collapse] as an uneven ending of normal life, meaning the normal modes of sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity and meaning." There is more than ample evidence that in each of these particular ways the now dominant global culture (which we today now tend to call "global civilization") has begun a shift away from the patterns which we once took for granted as "normal". But this "normal" has had a very short life. Most of the patterns which cohere into what we have recently regarded as "normal" are barely a hundred years old. They were patterns formed during the very brief period in which energy and materials were both abundant and cheap--, in proportion to the human population pressures upon them.
During this period, in the "most developed" nations, average per capita house sizes have more than doubled, urbanization expanded dramatically, farmers shrunk from a majority occupation to less than 2% of the working population, a global tourism industry dramatically exploded and a luxury-based and luxury dependent mode of economy was adopted. And nearly everyone had a car, and increasingly depended on this car for increasingly longer daily commutes. Indeed, our material culture and means of livelihood ("economy") was utterly and dramatically transformed to use and depend on ever greater volumes of technologically structured energy use, especially fossil fuels. Old growth forests were nearly entirely eliminated in many locations. Large fish in the oceans nearly disappeared, at a degree and rate of overfishing which can only be called a "collapse". Insect populations plummeted. Species extinctions skyrocketed. And sixty percent of the "biomass" of wild animals simply disappeared.
Now scientists are essentially telling us that if we wish to "preserve civilization" we in the "developed nations" will have to dramatically reduce our "throughput" of energy and materials consumption. But year after year, even after hearing this a thousand times from scientists, those who we call "our leaders" (government bodies) are doing essentially nothing to reduce energy and materials throughputs. Instead, they are demanding yet more economic growth, as measured in GDP and GWP -- which is to say in dollars, yen, rubles, or whatever currency we may be using. This is far, far worse a situation than merely rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship. It's doubling down on the already existing hole in the hull of that ship. It's drilling holes in the hull and blasting yet more holes in the steel.
Meanwhile, despite more than half a century of trying to get governments to change their spots, almost everyone who calls themselves an "activist" has most or all of their eggs in the spot-changing basket, which is to say that they are attempting to "pressure government" to change their spots. But the evidence is in. Governments do not change their spots. And there is a good reason for this. Modern governments are the product of a co-evolution process in which governments as we know them co-emerged with corporate capitalism, which also cannot and will not change its spots. And governments are fused with Big Business and Big Money. They are like Siamese twins. Only there is really only one head, and that is economic growth ideology.
There is, however, an alternative basket, an alternative ethos, an alternative to growth ideology, an alternative potential culture (though we may not wish to call that alternative culture a 'civilization', per se. The only viable alternative which I can imagine is one in which we simply stop trying to "pressure" government to change its spots, and we go about using the methods (praxis) of prefigurative politics and direct action, instead. If you will read the article on direct action, just linked to here, you will note that two of the four kinds of direct action go by the names "constructive" and "instructive". These two modes of direct action, if they are to be effective, are fundamentally intertwined, linked by mutual necessity. They require one another to be effective. And in both domains we're doing less than 10% of what we must be doing -- mainly, I think, because we have our collective eggs in the wrong basket.
To be doing 100% of what is necessary to avert worst case avoidable future scenarios, there is -- in my opinion -- no option other than to adopt an essentially revolutionary approach. But it must be a non-violent revolution. A violent revolution would be put down in an instant with violence, after all. And besides, the 'enemy' is not 'out there'. We are the ones who are demanding the sort of culture / civilization we're getting, by participating in it, fueling it (literally and figuratively). An insurrection is both impossible and absurd in this case. So we have to re-imagine and re-define "revolution" for our times. There is no other way!
Let's get started.
Or, if you like, go ahead and bang your head against the wall of attempting to get government to change its spots. I'll not join you in that effort. It just ain't gonna happen.
Everything I said above rests on one insight, which insight has the technical name of synergy. Synergy is where wholes are greater than the sum of their parts, where a lot of small actions and engagements cohere and align to amount to something much, much bigger than they would be in isolation. If you do not understand synergy you'll not really understand anything I'm saying about revolution. Only if you understand the principles of synergy can you understand that if 5-10% of us cohere around non-violent revolution as an enhanced form of prefigurative politics ... as direct action ... then you will know what we must do. Then you will join with others in such a way that none of us are any longer alone and powerless.
This civilization is finished. We're done with it. It was never meant to last, anyway.
I'm just beginning to watch and listen to this. It was recommended to me over at Deep Transition Network. But Its clear already that this fellow knows a thing or two about our situation, so I'm sharing the link here.
https://canadiancor.com/ruben-nelson-transcending-our-mti-form-of-civilization-exploring-the-new-core-work-of-the-21st-century-cacor-2022-06-2/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMG1Wjk4LjY&t=441s