For more than 20 years, I have been writing about civilizational collapse. I’m not an expert in the subject, just someone who’s read a lot about anthropology, the history of civilizations, human nature, and how complex systems work.
My fundamental thesis has remained basically unchanged over this time:
Our now-global industrial civilization culture is utterly unsustainable and has now entered a period of increasing chaos leading inevitably to the complete collapse of all its underlying and interconnected systems — political, economic, social, ecological, financial, technological, educational, transportation, health care etc.
This collapse is proceeding in punctuated stages, and is unevenly distributed geographically, and will continue, like past large civilizational collapses, for centuries if not millennia to come. All large complex systems, by their very nature, eventually collapse, and there is no preventing, escaping, or even significantly mitigating it.
Much has been written about whether this increasingly widely-shared thesis is ‘correct’ or not, and why. In almost all this writing, even that by the dourest climate science realists, the article concludes with assertions about what can or should ‘be done’ about this.
The proposed actions might include local activism (can’t hurt but won’t have any enduring impact), personal life-style changes (won’t help), global-scale coordinated revolutionary projects that “we all have to” do (idealistic pipe dreams), programs of reforms (won’t help), voting differently (are you kidding me), techno-utopian inventions (yeah, right), and ‘thinking differently’ in various ways (such as ’embracing stoicism‘, or escaping into salvationist religions and spiritualities).
Oh, and of course, the idealists further insist that any programs we undertake must be done in a socially and ecologically ‘just’ way. Well, if you’re striving for what is materially, socially, systematically, and scientifically impossible, might as well shoot for the stars.
I don’t believe there is anything that can ‘be done’ about collapse, to prevent or mitigate or escape from it — it’s a predicament, not a ‘problem’ with ‘solutions’. And I also don’t believe that we can, mind over matter, ‘prepare’ ourselves or our world for it (since we have no free will — if we’re going to become stoics, that’s because our past conditioning has already determined that that’s what we’re going to do).
So I content myself with chronicling collapse. And one aspect of it that intrigues me is that almost all the writing about it is about the ‘facts’ of collapse, to the extent we know them, and trying to convince others of the veracity of their ‘facts’, to ‘change minds’ — from denialist or idealist to ‘realist’. Very little has been written about the psychology of our reactions to the dawning realization of inevitable collapse — our emotional responses to it.
Underlying much of the writing about collapse has been ‘facts’ about its inevitability, and about the ‘rational’ folly of denialism. But I think this denial has very little to do with the facts. It’s not about about what we believe. It’s about what we want to believe and what we cannot bring ourselves to believe. This is all about our emotions, not facts.
So what are these emotions that underly so much of what we ‘think’ about collapse?:
- fear, dread and anxiety — for what we and our loved ones will/might face
- anger and rage — for the fact “no one told us” about this until it was too late, and surely someone is to blame
- shame, grief, and guilt — for what we have done, and not done, and how that will affect future generations
- righteous indignation — at having this inconvenient and terrifying truth shoved in our faces
- overwhelm — the ‘freeze’ response of incapacitating disbelief that this could really be happening and is utterly beyond our control
The simplistic thinkers with their ‘five stages’ models will have us believe there is a ‘process’ for dealing with these emotions that can be controlled and ‘rationally’ managed. Work our way through these, they promise us, and we can ‘move past’ denial and dread and ‘arrive’ at a place of calm acceptance.
Of course these simplistic thinkers have to believe we have the free will, choice, control, and agency to do these things. If they acknowledged the evidence that we do not, they’d be propelled (and propel us) back into the ghastly swirl of the emotions bulleted above.
Welcome to predicaments. Not only are they not ‘problems’ with ‘solutions’, they cannot be predicted or prepared for. As their effects become undeniable, we will adapt ourselves, as best we can, to the unpredictable circumstances of each moment, whether they be turbulent and chaotic, or briefly calm and familiar. Just as all non-human animals, un-afflicted with the illusion of control and certainty, have always lived.
Even if you believe, intellectually, that this is our lot and our fate — that we have no free will or choice over what our bodies do or what our brains believe — this understanding provides absolutely no solace. Our conditioning is such that we will continue to act — and think and feel — as if we do have free will.
And similarly, if we come to understand that the simple and inevitable fact of collapse is just what large complex systems always finally do, our awareness of the ‘inappropriateness’ of feeling the terrible emotions about collapse bulleted above does not change the fact that we will feel them. That’s just how our conditioning works.
Of course, if our study and appreciation of collapse has led us sometimes to feel relief that there is nothing we can do or could have done, and no one (us in particular) to ‘blame’, then in subsequent reflections on collapse we might well recall and feel that relief again, easing or negating the negative emotions of dread and shame etc.
Our studies might even lead us to become excited that collapse, at least once it nears its conclusion, will almost certainly mean the end of the horrific amount of pain, suffering, and destruction that our well-meaning, befuddled species currently inflict upon each other and on all the more-than-human life of our fragile little planet. A chance for the survivors, whether or not that includes any humans, to restart the evolutionary clock and roll the evolutionary dice and see what astonishing things evolve next time, after us.
The biological and cultural forces that condition us to act, think, and feel as we do will prompt the corresponding chemical releases in our bodies, and that will determine our emotional reactions to collapse, now and in the future, and the actions we will take. We are all just along for the ride. But for some of us at least, it seems to help to know that that’s what’s happening.
So fare forward, voyagers. See you along the way.
