Magical Thinking to Help Avoid Anxiety-Provoking Thoughts
Today’s contemplation shares a comment I made to a Facebook Group a number of days ago in response to an article by Dr. Ugo Bardi — whose writing, especially around limits to growth and his proposal about the Seneca cliff decline we are likely to face as we bump into the biophysical limits imposed by a finite planet, I have enjoyed and greatly learned from. While we agree on much, we have a definite disagreement regarding the role and potential of non-renewable, energy-harvesting technologies (what most refer to simply as ‘renewable’ energy — a powerful marketing twist of language given the actual technologies required are in a very limited way ‘renewable’ (i.e., recyclable/rebuildable) and are not energy sources but technologies to harvest ‘renewable’ energy).
Dr. Bardi posted the article I responded to in reaction to another article that was penned by The Honest Sorcerer that I had shared on one of the several Facebook Groups Dr. Bardi hosts. My original comment is in bold below with some links/charts to articles/research that support my perspective and some concluding remarks.
Whether the article is ‘peer-reviewed’ or not (and there are certainly issues with the ‘gold standard’ of peer review), the fact remains that non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies appear to be an extension of our fossil fuel-based energies relying upon them significantly in both the upstream and downstream industrial processes necessary for their production, maintenance, and after-life reclamation and/or disposal.
Ideally, peer review is an objective and forceful gate-keeper that serves to eliminate poor ‘science’ prior to it being widely distributed but the process is certainly less than perfect and has it criticisms, even from within academia (in fact, the mainstay of gate-keeping — that is, repeating the experiment — is rarely, if ever carried out; mostly because there is not one to replicate):
While there exist some small-scale examples of ‘renewables’ producing needed industrial products and ‘fuelling’ heavy equipment (and lots of marketing propaganda by vested interests around these; mostly, I would argue, to attract capital), the scale and cost are prohibitive, especially for a world already drowning in debt — to say little about the finite resources required to ‘convert’ the processes necessary. The bottom line is that in the present, and forgoing some miraculous as-yet-to-be-discovered technology, fossil fuel-based industrial processes are required for energy-harvesting technologies:
These processes also add significant pollutants to a world already experiencing overloading of its various compensatory sinks, to say little of the reality that fossil fuel use has seen little if any contraction in demand despite decades of exponential increase in so-called renewables.
Here are a handful of ‘academic’ articles on how the industrial processes necessary for ‘renewables’ impact negatively the environment. They are neither ‘clean’ nor ‘green’ but are almost always referred to them as such (again, a marketing ploy):
Here are a couple of charts to demonstrate that fossil fuel use has not decreased as ‘renewable energy technologies have increased in use (and significantly increased the past two decades). As this article highlights, the increase in ‘renewables’ has not detracted from our fossil fuel use (our dependence upon fossil fuels has continued to increase), it has simply offset the decline in nuclear-powered energy:
Highlighting the negative aspects of these technologies and the observation that they do not seem to be actually ‘solving’ in any way our fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot, or reducing our dependency upon fossil fuels, or reducing our destruction of the planet, is not ‘a mission received from God’; it is about challenging a narrative that seems quite problematic but is being marketed by many as the ‘solution’ to something that is increasingly looking to be a predicament that cannot be solved — and as William Catton Jr. pointed out in his 1980 text, we seem destined to experience the collapse that always tends to accompany overshoot because: “..habits of thought persist…people continue to advocate further technological breakthroughs as the supposedly sure cure for carrying capacity deficits. The very idea that technology caused overshoot, and that it made us too colossal to endure, remains alien to too many minds for ‘de-collosalization’ to be a really feasible alternative to literal die-off. There is a persistent drive to apply remedies that aggravate the problem.”
*****
My ‘motivation’ for sharing the above is to provide the opportunity for the reader to decide thru their own reading and ‘research’ which story appears more believable. As The Honest Sorcerer recently wrote in this article (and others have similarly argued[1]), it takes some ‘magical thinking’ to believe that non-renewable, energy-harvesting technologies are any type of ‘solution’ for the predicament of ecological overshoot and for attempting to ‘sustain’ our globalised, complex society.
The widespread adoption of magical thinking to avoid anxiety-provoking cognitions is in no way surprising. It is perhaps, as Ajit Varki argues, that “Some aspects of human cognition and behavior appear unusual or exaggerated relative to those of other intelligent, warm-blooded, long-lived social species — including certain mammals (cetaceans, elephants and great apes) and birds (corvids and passerines). One such collection of related features is our facile ability for reality denial in the face of clear facts, a high capacity for self-deception and false beliefs, overarching optimism bias and irrational risk-taking behavior…”[2].
The allure of non-renewable, energy-harvesting technologies is that they can create a story in which a transition to a ‘green/clean/sustainable’ future with most (all?) of our current complexities is not only possible but assured; in fact, for some, it is the only future we should be pursuing if we are to avoid civilizational ‘collapse’.
Such a future may be possible, I suppose, if ALL the right conditions are met — the most significant that I can think of off the top of my head are being far fewer people, far less imperial endeavours by our ruling elite, and the acceptance of far, far lower living standards by those in so-called ‘advanced’ economies.
Revealing the impediments that exist in such a narrative is not a God-inspired mission as Dr. Bardi accuses. But it can create both anxiety and significant uncertainty for those who have hooked their wagon up to the ‘renewable’ horses and are hoping to get to the big sustainable city on the horizon. So it’s not surprising that many (most?) rail against the argument that our current complexities can in no way be sustained via non-renewable, energy-harvesting technologies and our future path is likely going to be far more chaotic and problematic than most imagine — at least for those that ponder such a predicament, since most actually tend not to think about it.
A book I highly recommend to help in one’s understanding of our penchant for clinging to stories that appear ‘certain’ but very often are not is Dan Gardner’s Future Babble (my personal summary notes can be found here).
As he argues:
It is more often than not the confident, self-assured voice providing a simple story (regardless of ‘evidence’ to the contrary) that is the most persuasive and influences beliefs more — one told by the ‘hedgehogs’ as Gardner calls them. Contradictory evidence is rationalised away and certainty assured.
Given our predisposition to avoiding uncertainty and wishing control (to avoid fear and anxiety), we search for certainty, employ magical thinking, and see patterns where none exist; and someone who sounds like they are sure of their story (and especially if they are an ‘authority’ figure or ‘expert’) is preferred to the ‘foxes’ who will acknowledge complexity and uncertainty about their narrative with warnings and unsureness. Research demonstrates, however, that it is the enthusiasm and confidence more than the expert status that persuades people. It instills a sense of trust. Unfortunately, such overconfidence can lead people astray and into accepting false beliefs.
Further, Gardner argues that human cultures have always created stories about themselves and their world. This allows knowledge to be passed from generation to generation, strengthens social bonds, and allows possible outcomes to be practised. These narratives also function to explain and make sense of phenomena but if such stories are left unresolved, we are unsettled and search for resolution. And if the narrative doesn’t fit into our prior beliefs, we tend to ignore it or deny its implications. If we happen upon a ‘trusted’ expert’s story that resonates with our beliefs and values, we cling to it regardless of their prediction record (usually by forgetting failures but celebrating successes).
Misremembering and hindsight bias not only contribute to the illusion that the past was not uncertain but lead us to be less sceptical of prognostications about the future. We don’t recall that we worried about an uncertain future previously and that most predictions never materilaised. We seek certainty about the future and find it in trustful ‘experts’ and their forecasts.
In the end, we all believe what we want to believe; ‘facts’ be damned…
We could ‘debate’ the ‘facts’ forever and in reality be no closer whatsoever to the ‘truth’ as to whether ‘renewables’ could support a complex society, for only the playing out of the timeline can determine which perspective is ‘correct’. From a scientific method standpoint, we would carry out a number of experiments where significant variables would be controlled (hopefully) and eventually reach consensus on an interpretation of evidence.
Obviously, we cannot do such reality-testing for many (most?) of the narratives we create in our attempts to understand the world and sketch a rough picture of the future, so we continue to debate with the psychological mechanisms that impact our perceptions and beliefs influencing us constantly. While it is one thing to recognise that we are affected by these psychological phenomena, it is quite something different to be able to shield ourselves from them no matter how much we try.
In addition, we often have little to no idea about the eventual consequences of a remedy for a perceived problem, especially if it is a relatively newly recognised one — let alone a predicament that has no ‘solutions’. One of the things I have argued about complex systems is that with their non-linear feedback loops and emergent phenomena, they are impossible to predict (let alone control). Even with the most sophisticated models and the most powerful computer systems, the tiniest of errors in baseline assumptions can result in predictive trajectories being completely off-base from what may eventually occur.
I raise the above point because one of the arguments against pursuing non-renewable energy-harvesting technologies is that their production would bolster our overshoot by further withdrawing finite resources and overloading compensatory sinks. It would put us in even worse peril then we already seem to be in. Is this assured? Obviously not since the future is unwritten and unknowable but the danger remains. To argue there is no danger requires some significant denial, bargaining, and magical thinking.
Regardless of the real dangers and the accumulating evidence that our technologies have in fact created our overshoot and pursuing more of them will result in significant ecological damage, I have a feeling that attempting to create more of them is exactly what we will do. For it is the ruling elite who tend to be the ones who steer our economic policies and decisions, and they stand to profit handsomely from the production of such technologies due to their ownership of the industrial processes and financial institutions required for their production and distribution.
The notion of a managed ‘collapse’ which some advocate for is anathema to those that sit atop the power and wealth structures that exist in our globalised complex society. Better to advocate for and cheerlead confidently a path that can be packaged in a shiny techno-box of hope and certainty for the masses while ensuring revenue streams are maintained or even expanded.
The Ruling Class: Chasing Growth Regardless Of the Consequences
Today’s contemplation is in response to an article by the Honest Sorcerer whose writings I discovered not long ago and have enjoyed for their insight and clarity. I recommend reading them[1].
If only the tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine would be a catalyst for our ‘leaders’ to highlight our existential vulnerabilities to the complex systems we have come to expand and depend significantly upon but, alas, I fear this crisis, as always seems to happen, is being leveraged by our ruling class[2] to benefit themselves primarily, not the vast majority of people. A few of the items this latest geopolitical event is being used to rationalise/justify include: the creation of more fiat currency and government spending (most of which will find its way into their investment portfolios); the expansion of the surveillance state (especially focused on those who question or challenge government diktats); as a foil to blame increasing economic and social woes upon (so as to keep their policies and behaviours that have contributed to these problems out of the light of day); as a reason to expand significantly and speed up tremendously our transition to ‘clean’ technologies, or the opposite — the expansion of legacy energy extraction (both of which whose necessary financial and industrial processes are owned/controlled by them); as rationale to expand narrative control/censorship (particularly of viewpoints/perspective that challenge or question the mainstream storyline); etc..[3]
I have zero faith that our governments at any level have solid plans to reduce or even mitigate the chaos of overshoot beyond attempts to keep the various Ponzis they preside over going as long as and in whatever manner they can. More than likely their approach will be to persuade the populace in the name of ‘patriotism’ and other such emotional trigger points to make increasing ‘sacrifices’, mostly in the form of increased taxes[4] but also in terms of weakened or diminished expectations as far as the ‘benefits’ that might accrue from further investments in complexity[5].
I’ve come to believe that the ruling class’s primary motivation is the expansion/control of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems from which they derive their revenue streams, and thus their power and prestige. Everything they do, from policy to legislation to censorship, first and foremost serves to meet this primary catalyst. Everything. It is all marketed differently (in fact, the opposite most of the time) but ultimately it supports or extends upon their primary consideration.
While the future is impossible to predict, the past suggests that as we fall down the Seneca Cliff of resource availability we will witness a continuation (perhaps even speeding up) of the flow of declining resources up the power and wealth structures inherent in our complex societies rather than down them as the ruling class purports to be pursuing. This will, however, be spun (as it has been throughout history), and increasingly so, in true Orwellian fashion as beneficial for the masses and necessary to keep our complex systems functioning. I suppose in a sense it is true that growth must continue to be pursued but this is primarily because of the Ponzi-like structure of our financial and monetary systems[6].
I see this very clearly in my home region north of Toronto where expansive growth is being not only cheered on by our ruling class but increasingly marketed as the only real means of addressing our various predicaments, especially economic expansion. Growth is progress and only beneficial is the common refrain. We need to expand in order to increase revenues and ensure equity. We can grow sustainably[7] without negatively impacting the environment. We have strong and unfaltering supply chains.
There is zero recognition of resource limits or they are waved away as environmental neuroses and/or doomsday conspiracies. Whatever issues might arise can be countered via more growth. The fact that our population of close to 15 million relies upon around 80+% of its food needs via fragile, long-distance supply chains while we continue to pave over our limited arable lands matters not[8]. ‘Sustainable’ growth ensures our prosperity and must be pursued.
As long as we have a ruling class that holds to the historical tendencies to place their interests above that of their constituents, then we have a situation where mitigation/adaptation will only be prevalent in the narratives spun, not the actual actions taken. I see this so clearly in the attempts to sustain the unsustainable via stories about ‘net zero’ growth and a post-carbon transition to ‘clean’ energy. The ruling class profits immensely from these narratives as they own/control the financial institutions and industries needed to fund and produce these technologies. It doesn’t matter that they do not in any way, shape, or form do what they are marketed as being able to accomplish.
Infinite growth (even sustaining our current world complexities) is not possible on a finite planet. Never has been. Never will be. Techno-cornucopian ‘solutions’ only serve to make the rich richer and the coming collapse from ecological overshoot all the more spectacular.
Readers are encouraged to focus on relocalising the basic aspects of living (i.e., potable water procurement, food production, and regional shelter needs) as much as possible and reconnect with community members who will be your primary supports as things go increasingly sideways. Do not put your faith in our so-called political ‘leaders’. Despite their propaganda, they do not have your best interests at the top of their agendas; if such an incentive even makes the agenda except perhaps around election time when the marketing of more, more, more really blossoms. Because, you know, more is in your best interest…only it’s not.
[1] Full disclosure: the articles align very much with my own thinking and so serve to confirm my own interpretive biases.
[2] It’s not just our ruling class that is using the situation to benefit from. There are numerous grifters leveraging it as well.
[3] These are a continuation of trends that have been taking place for decades (centuries), most recently with the coronavirus pandemic.
[4] Especially in terms of that ‘hidden’ tax, price inflation — that will be blamed on everything, particularly the ‘enemy’, but their expansion of debt-/credit-based fiat currency and diminishing returns on our resource-dependent complexities; and I expect intensified manipulation of the reported statistics pertaining to price inflation as part of the narrative control taking place, even more than the current obscene and increasing levels.
[5] I highly recommend reading archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s book The Collapse of Complex Societies to get insight into how diminishing returns on investments in complexity seems to be the underlying cause of a complex society ‘collapsing’. You can access my personal summary notes to this and a handful of other books here.
[6] Very, very few people want to destroy the illusion that our financial/monetary systems are robust and NOT Ponzi-like in nature as we are all embroiled in it. But once confidence in such schemes is lost it is only a matter of moments before the entire edifice collapses. I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue once a tipping point of people come to realise that these systems are held together by duct tape and prayer (and A LOT of lies).
[7] The idea of ‘sustainable’ growth is one of those oxymorons that drive me crazy–’clean’ or ‘green’ energy being another. Such language manipulation is quite purposeful as a narrative control mechanism and needs to be highlighted every time it occurs. It significantly distorts one’s perceptions of what is and what is not possible on a finite planet.
[8] The overwhelming majority of Ontario’s prime agricultural land is dedicated to modern industrial agriculture in order to grow corn and soybean for products that do not, for the most part, feed its population.
Today’s ‘contemplation’ is derived from a conversation on a Facebook Group post I was recently involved with[1]. I’ve been reluctant to write anything regarding the current Russian/Ukraine conflict due to the extreme polemic and emotional aspects such events create, especially in the early moments when people are reacting rather than reflecting[2], and the propaganda on all sides has been ramped up to warp speed. Nonetheless, here it is:
War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!
So the Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong song goes[3], and this is especially true in times of overshoot given the drain on resources (which have for some time been encountering significant diminishing returns) that modern warfare entails. It is self-evident that military adventurism is heavily resource dependent, and a World War or even a significant increase in a ‘Cold War’ between geopolitical rivals will expedite the coming collapse of our global, industrialised societies as assuredly as a gargantuan ramping up of the industrial processes required to try and replace our fossil fuel-intensive energy needs with non-renewable, renewables[4] that many, even well-intentioned ‘environmentalists’, advocate for[5].
But depending upon one’s perspective, war can be quite good. In fact, fantastic. It is one of the longest lasting means throughout pre/history for a complex society’s ruling elite to maintain and expand power, gain access to resources, and with our current debt-/credit-based fiat currency monetary system and concentration of industrial/corporate ownership ensure gargantuan profits for a select few[6].
Many in the West have jumped upon the patriotic bandwagon to vilify Russian/Putin ‘aggression’ (conveniently ignoring/denying the ongoing aggression of their own elite over the years). This is not surprising given the slanted narratives they are provided by our politicians and their media mouthpieces on a regular basis to garner our support[7]. We are fed lies constantly through both omission and commission. Propaganda is everywhere, all the time[8].
There is a very good argument to be made (based upon history and context) that it has been the West’s ever-expanding encroachment towards Russian borders that has precipitated much of this[9]; to say little about the US-orchestrated coup[10] that led to the current West-leaning Ukrainian regime. And, quite naturally, there has been a full court press on to counter these arguments from US/NATO advocates[11]. The idea that it is unpatriotic to criticise or counter war ‘efforts’ is rampant. The ‘you are with us or against us’ mentality is everywhere. Of course it is nothing new to leverage our ‘natural’ tendency (what some refer to as tribal instincts) of patriotic feelings towards our nation state and her allies; it occurs both in and out of war time[12].
Is Russia innocent in any of this? Absolutely not; they are a nation-state based upon a ruling elite whose primary motivation is the control/expansion of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems to maintain their revenue streams and power/prestige like every other. The West’s elite (who are driven by the same motivation) have challenged the East’s elite and many innocents (the vast majority of the rest of us) are caught in the middle of this power play.
These people don’t give a shit about you or me except in terms of extracting labour and wealth to support them. But on some level they also need our consent to participate in such actions given how significantly outnumbered they are. This consent is, for the most part, manufactured by leveraging our fear of the ‘other’ and our sense of ‘patriotism’ — in this vein, we are sold all sorts of emotional narratives about ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘liberty’, ‘duty’, ‘evil’, ‘tyranny’, etc..
It’s all bullshit but because of our tendency to defer to authority[13] and to identify with the elite we imagine it is ‘us’, the ‘average person’, that the ‘other’ hates and wants to fight[14]. We end up standing with our elite ruling class and support/cheerlead their pillaging of the nation’s treasury (both ‘wealth’ and natural resources) to engage in war…while it is them who are profiting given they own the industries and financial institutions that have to provide the ‘loans’ and armaments. It’s all based on lies and manipulation. It is a racket, plain and simple, just as US Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler argued[15].
In the meantime, it pushes us further into overshoot through its significant resource drawdowns and sink overloading — to say little about the environmental impacts should this go nuclear.
The best thing the vast, vast majority of us could do is not choose a ‘side’ but walk away from this insanity by not supporting it at all. Refuse to participate. Refuse to repeat their propaganda. Refuse their lies and manipulation. Don’t be a pawn in their game. Reduce drastically your consumption. Reduce your dependency upon long-distance supply chains. Relocalise as much as possible. Build your community’s self-sufficiency and -resiliency. Grow your own food. Trade with your neighbours. Support each other, not the ruling class whose interests and motivations have nothing to do with you, your family, or your local community (unless of course its sitting on natural resources they want).
Refuse to remain in the Matrix as much as possible.
[2] Not that discussing cornucopian techno-fixes to our dependency upon fossil fuels with some is not — it can be very contentious, especially when one is attacked for being a fossil fuel shill/cheerleader for simply highlighting the problems that arise with alternative energy sources to fossil fuels.
[3] Although originally sung by The Temptations in 1969 and then rerecorded in 1970 featuring Edwin Starr, I personally was introduced to the song during my formative years of the 1980s and know it as a Frankie Goes to Hollywood one.
[4] Non-renewable, renewables is a term I have seen increasingly used by people to describe more accurately our energy harnessing technologies of solar photovoltaic, wind, and wave energy. The natural sources we are attempting to harness energy from are, for all intents and purposes, ‘renewable’ but the technologies used to harness and convert this energy to something humanity can use are not given their reliance upon finite resources, particularly the fossil fuel platform but also the many earth-based minerals that go into the components.
[5] From mining to mineral processing to transportation to reclamation and/or waste disposal, these complex energy-harvesting technologies require much in the way of finite resources and energy inputs, and add significantly to the overloading of our planetary sinks.
Energy and Its Interconnections With Our Financialised Economic System
Petroleum geologist Art Berman recently posted an article discussing an issue regarding the mainstream energy transition narrative that I wanted to highlight. This is the connection between our monetary/financial/economic systems and energy, something that as Art argues is apparently not understood by most (all?) of the cheerleaders of this energy transition.
Or, perhaps it’s not that most don’t understand it, but that the complexities and interconnections are (conveniently?) ignored/dismissed/denied/overlooked/simplified as part of the bargaining/magical thinking/avoidance of anxiety-provoking thoughts that takes place in attempts to provide a ‘solution’ for what is for all intents and purposes a ‘predicament’ that at best might be mitigated at the margins — I’m referring to human ecological overshoot here, but also the recurring ‘collapse’ processes that complex human societies have been experiencing since our first experiments with them many millennia ago.
As Art concludes in his article: “Most of the world’s leaders and the public accept that we are in the early stage of an energy transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Few of them understand what that means for our financial system because renewable energy — for all of its progress and benefits — cannot replace our 383 billion fossil energy slaves.
Money creation is nothing but debt. Debt is an IOU on future energy. If future energy can’t provide the same returns as present energy, money supply and credit will radically contract. A future based on renewable energy will collapse the money supply and the financial system.”
The importance of this connection cannot perhaps be overstated given the degree to which our many complexities have grown to be dependent upon our monetary/financial/economic systems. The impending implosion of these systems places the hopes/dreams of a ‘smooth’ energy transition in great peril; in fact, I would argue it’s an impediment that cannot be avoided and may be as or more significant than the hard geophysical limits of Peak Resources. I also believe this aspect helps to connect the dots between a number of themes that I have written about over the past handful of years as I reflect upon and attempt to come to a better understanding of the immense complexities involved in our predicament of human ecological overshoot and the recurring collapse processes that impact our societies.
I’ve written about fiat currency’s role and our economic/financial systems in our predicament and recurring societal collapse a number of times and from a variety of angles[1]. In particular, I’ve highlighted the debt-/credit-based nature of our relatively recent economic growth dynamics and how this is not sustainable since it pulls potential future growth and, more importantly, all the concomitant resources (especially energy) into the present leaving less and less resources to access and use in supporting our complexities down the road — and on a finite planet this self-evidently means the practice is not sustainable, not even close. And, due to the law of diminishing marginal returns, we need to do this resource drawdown more and more quickly just to maintain status quo complexities — to say little about efforts to pursue continuing growth expansion, the biogeophysical limits to this, and the speed at which it adds to already overloaded planetary sinks and degrades our ecological systems.
While many go to great lengths to deny/bargain with/rationalise away this perspective (including the notion of hard biogeophysical limits), it seems these systems have become little more than a Ponzi Scheme as a result of the approach that has been taken — especially their financialisation. We have, for better or worse, been inclined to pursue perpetual, exponential growth to now keep them from collapsing and having to face the consequences of such an implosion. And these consequences will be significant, especially for so-called ‘advanced’ economies who are the main beneficiaries of this arrangement.
Perhaps the most salient and problematic consequence of a monetary/financial/economic systems ‘collapse’ for our complex societies would be a cessation of global energy averaging systems; that is, trade of goods. For families/communities/regions/nations dependent upon import of goods (especially food, potable water, shelter needs, and the energy that underpins virtually everything), this could be disastrous if local circumstances/resources cannot support population needs. And, given the way and amount that humans have expanded across the globe — particularly the last couple of centuries — most localities cannot support their populations with locally-derived resources; again, not even close.
For example, in considering my home province of Ontario, Canada, the 15+ million (and growing) population imports well over 80% of its food needs and a very significant portion of other important goods. Very little of our basic needs are met with local resources indicating our population is well beyond the natural carrying capacity of our immediate environment and almost wholly dependent upon international trade — and the situation is made worse each passing year as more and more of the limited arable lands get ‘paved over’ in the pursuit of human expansion. In no uncertain terms, should trade-based supply chains breakdown for any reason our population will be in a very dire situation. The ‘inconvenience’ of Covid19 lockdown supply chain issues that was recently experienced by many regions was just a drop-in-the-bucket compared to what may arise in the wake of credit-based, supply chain ‘disruptions’ — to say little about geopolitical-based disruptions that are beginning to expand and can be argued to have a base in resource access/control.
I’ve also repeatedly touched upon the ruling class’s abuse/leveraging/manipulation of these systems to meet their primary motivation — the control/expansion of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams[2]. In order to maintain their privileged positions atop the power/wealth structures inherent in complex societies, the ruling class have taken control of virtually all of society’s interconnected systems (e.g., government, media, academia, security, etc.), but especially the monetary/financial/economic ones. This provides this relatively small group of individuals/families with, at least for the time being, perpetual income/wealth to sustain their living standards and privileges — particularly because of the very significant dependencies on the various systems by the masses that have been established, especially over the past century+ (i.e,. a loss of skills/knowledge to be self-sufficient breeds total dependency upon those providing basic goods such as food, potable water, shelter needs, and energy).
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
-Edward Bernays
Given these organisational tendencies in large, complex societies it should be no surprise, that at the behest of those that stand to profit significantly from their pursuit (i.e., accumulation of wealth and the power/influence that flows from this), we have been guided towards maladaptive strategies via legislation but also very much by way of narrative management/control[3]. In order to sustain/expand the various wealth-generation/-extraction rackets, the ruling class has created broad-based narratives/stories to not only legitimise their positions atop our sociopolitical and socioeconomic systems but also to dissuade the masses from questioning the pursuit of perpetual growth on a finite planet.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
-Edward Bernays
The world’s ruling class and profiteers are motivated to pursue the infinite growth chalice at every opportunity (making a bad situation worse) and in order to keep the various rackets going/expanding (that they control and profit from) they spin/market this as both inevitable and necessary despite it being the exact opposite path for ‘sustainability’, long-term survival of our species, and health of our planet and its various ecological systems. They insist that growth is ‘progress’, only beneficial, has no limits, and can be accomplished in an ‘environmentally-friendly’ (aka ‘green/clean’) manner. Anyone who challenges this zeitgeist is a tinfoil hat-wearing, doom-loving conspiracy theorist and must be excised from spreading their mis-/dis-/mal-information.
In particular, it is completely against the interests of the ruling class for the masses to be independent and/or self-sufficient as this challenges their wealth-extraction/-generation systems and thus positions of power and privilege (see the most recent denigration of home food gardening as being bad for the environment[4]). Rather than risk a loss of their revenue streams and the influence it brings, they steer beliefs towards the support of actions/policies that in the end create greater and greater dependency upon the complex systems they own and control.
It is because of these interconnections between our energy/resource needs/wants and the ruling class’s control/influence upon these various systems that I have personally come to the conclusion that probably one of the last places we should look to/depend upon for a ‘rational’ approach to our ecological overshoot predicament and pending societal collapse is our sociopolitical systems — a ‘rational’ approach being to pursue degrowth and self-sufficiency policies[5], not continue chasing the perpetual growth chalice and sociopolitical dependencies.
While our sociopolitical systems are marketed/trumpeted as ‘representative’ and ‘for society/the people’, when one wipes away this surface narrative they are anything but[6]. They have been created by and remain controlled by society’s ‘elite’ in order to benefit a relatively small number of our species at the expense of the rest of us, as well as the entire planet and its other species. This group’s motivations are, despite narratives to the contrary, diametrically opposed to human ecological ‘sustainability’.
Not wishing to believe or acknowledge the predicaments/insoluble problems we are mired within and believe that we have agency in our lives and society, we story-telling apes have crafted a variety of soothing, cognitive dissonance-reducing narratives to help minimise our anxiety and avoid reality[7]. It seems it is in our uniquely human nature to avoid anxiety-provoking thoughts by telling and believing in stories that are disconnected from physical realities and also overlooks our ecological systems dependencies. We have tales that put us above and beyond the vagaries of the natural world and capable of overcoming biogeochemical limits at the wave of a wand called human ingenuity and technology. And, not surprisingly, our ruling class have dominated the storytelling and leveraged them to their advantage, creating a number of rackets from which they benefit significantly[8].
In particular, tales have been weaved about smoothly transitioning away from the fundamental resource that has underpinned our significant exponential growth in technology (i.e., hydrocarbons), allowing us to — for the moment — ignore the hard, physical constraints of living on a finite planet and believe we stand outside/above Nature and, as a result, created ‘solutions’ that are exacerbating our dilemma by leading us further into ecological overshoot[9]. They are exacerbating our predicament through the continuing expansion of our global, industrial societies, our population numbers, and the prolonged avoidance/denial of it.
Rather than face the anxiety-provoking thoughts that arise from the realisation/awareness that our most adaptive ability — tool innovation and use to enhance the extractive exploitation of our environment and leverage it to our needs/wants — is, in actuality, facilitating our demise (and perhaps that of most other life on the planet), we have employed protective psychological mechanisms to convince ourselves that our eyes are lying to us[10]; that our tools and the human ingenuity from which they arise are not only our greatest asset but will, regardless of impediments or even physical laws, ‘solve’ all potential difficulties/problems we encounter.
The leveraging of hydrocarbons through our tool innovation/use (along with some other ‘innovative’ catalysts, such as credit-/debt-based fiat currency) and subsequent exponential expansion has helped to put us in the predicament of ecological overshoot with all the associated symptom predicaments a result (e.g., biodiversity loss, sink overloading, resource depletion, etc.)[11]. But rather than recognise and acknowledge the one-time cache of easy-to-access and easy-to-transport dense energy resource as a main reason for our ‘progress’, we have woven narcissistic narratives that place the reasons upon our unparalleled ingenuity and tool-based innovations.
Those of us who have become aware of our predicament and have attempted to speak out/raise awareness of it tend to sit on the margins. Given most people wish their beliefs confirmed as opposed to challenged, we have experienced the emotional ‘reactions’ that accompany the speaking of anxiety-provoking thoughts — particularly ad hominem attacks. I, personally, have experienced this most often when I challenge the mainstream narrative around non-renewable, renewable energy-based technologies and the notion that they can smoothly replace hydrocarbon-based energy and products[12]. I would argue, however, that there is overwhelming evidence that this approach is putting us further into overshoot and reducing the natural carrying capacity of our planet especially as a result of the various planetary boundaries we have already or are close to broaching.
On top of this human ecological overshoot predicament are the recurring processes of complex society collapse, a phenomenon that has impacted every human complex society to date and that also appear to have been sped up by our exploding growth. I’ve written extensively about such complex society collapse particularly through the lens of archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s thesis elaborated upon in his monograph The Collapse of Complex Societies[13]. What’s important to focus upon here and gets us back to Art Berman’s point is the economic nature of ‘collapse’ within Tainter’s framework.
Fundamentally, when the ‘benefits’ of participating in and supporting the sociopolitical system one exists within have for some time been far less than the ‘costs’ associated with it (and, yes, it can take a long, long time — decades to centuries), regions/communities/families ‘abandon’ the behaviours necessary to maintain the system. In one form or another, they ‘opt out’. As more and more people make this choice, the various complex systems of society are undermined eventually resulting in societal ‘collapse’. This recurrent ‘collapse’ process appears to be occurring simultaneously with our human ecological overshoot predicament, creating a double whammy of dilemmas for our species.
Given the pre/historical tendency for the masses to abandon support for their sociopolitical system in the face of ‘costs’ exceeding ‘benefits’, it seems logical to deduce that the breakdown of energy-averaging systems due to diminishing returns on resource extraction (especially energy) will result in a similar loss of support. Maintaining support (in order to sustain privileges/revenue/etc.), even if just passive in nature, is an important consideration for the ruling class and it is increasingly likely (and I would argue we are witnessing this currently) that the ruling class will tighten their grip in order to sustain their privileges for as long as they can.
“Controlling the general population has always been a dominant concern of power and privilege…”
-Noam Chomsky
All of the above is interconnected, and these two phenomena of ecological overshoot and complex society collapse are impacting our species and planet at the same time, creating nonlinear feedback loops that appear to be speeding us towards some consequences we are ill-prepared for — to say little about emergent phenomena and Black Swan events. Uncertainty shrouds the timing and manner in which things will play out. Pre/historical precedents and bio-ecological principles, however, are strongly indicative that the future will not be one of a smooth transition to some technocornucopian-based utopia — not even close.
I have little doubt that the coming phase shift for our global, industrialised world will be transformative in nature, but probably not in a way most are hoping/wishing for; particularly for citizens of ‘advanced’ economies who have ‘benefitted’ the most from our extractive and exploitive behaviours and actions.
[1] See [NOTE: the following is a sampling of my posted Contemplations that discuss the topic/issue referenced and not all have been uploaded to my blog or Substack; it is an ongoing project at this time]:
-Feeding the Growth Monster: Fiat Currency and Technology (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Fiat Currency: Debasement and Infinite Growth (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Fiat Currency, Infinite Growth, Finite Resources: A Recipe For Collapse (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Greenwashing, Fiat Currency, Narrative Management: More On Climate Change and Elite Confabs (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Energy Future, Part 1 (Medium)
-Our Banking System: Government vs. Private Control, Part 1 (Medium)
[2] See:
-Finite Energy, ‘Renewables’, and the Ruling Elite (BlogMediumSubstack)
-’Net Zero’ Policies: Propaganda to Support Continued Economic Growth (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Climate Change And Narratives To Support Continued Economic Growth (BlogMediumSubstack)
-More Greenwashing: ‘Sustainable’ Development (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Are We Being Duped Regarding Climate Change? (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Beware the Snake Oil Salesmen: Climate Change and Elite Confabs (BlogMediumSubstack)
[3] See:
-’Renewables’ and the Overton Window That Ignores Biophysical Realities. June 1. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-On Narrative Control and ‘Fact Checking’. December 21. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Decline of ‘Rationality’. January 15. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-The Road Not Taken. Feb 19. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Primary Motivation For Society’s Elite. Mar 6. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Carbon Tunnel Vision, Externalised Pollutants, And Story-Telling Apes, April 19. (Medium)
[5] See:
-Preparing For Collapse. Apr 4. (BlogMedium)
-It’s Too Late For Managed Degrowth. November 15. (Medium)
-Local Community Resiliency And Political Systems, April 9. (Medium)
-Local Self-Reliance Is Imperative To Pursue In Light Of Ecological Overshoot May 8. (Medium)
-Only Local Leadership Can Help Communities Now, May 20. (Medium)
-Collapse Now To Avoid The Rush: Our Long Emergency, June 6. (Medium)
[6] See:
-Who Do Representative Governments Actually Represent? (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Loss in Trust of Government: A Stage of Collapse (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Ecological Overshoot and Political Responses (BlogMedium) Substack)
-Climate Change ‘Solutions’: Follow the Money (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Faith in Government: A Misplaced Belief (BlogMedium)
-Democracy: It’s Not What You Think It Is (Medium)
[7] See:
-Mythical Narratives Everywhere to Avoid Reality (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Finite Energy, Overconsumption, and Magical Thinking Through Denial (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Cognition and Belief Systems in a ‘Collapsing’ World: Part One (BlogMedium)
-Magical Thinking to Help Avoid Anxiety-Provoking Thoughts (Medium)
-Magical Thinking About the Energy Transition (Medium)
-Reality is an Inconvenience to Beliefs (BlogMedium)
-’Renewables’, Electrify Everything and Marketing Propaganda (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Degrowth, Green Growth, And The Ruling Caste of Society. (Medium)
-Leveraging Non-Renewable, Renewable Energy-Harvesting Technologies To Expand Wealth-Extraction/-Generation. (Medium)
-Ruling Caste Responses to Societal Breakdown/Decline. (Medium)
-Ruling Elite Rackets Everywhere… (BlogMedium)
-Rackets: Keeping the Curtains on Reality Drawn (BlogMedium)
[9] See:
-Electrify Everything: The Wrong ‘Solution’ (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Electrify Everything: Neither ‘Green’ Nor ‘Sustainable’ (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Growth Greenwashing: A Comforting Narrative. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Climate Emergency Action Plan: Electrification and Magical Thinking. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-The Growth Ponzi Must Be Kept Alive (Medium)
-We’re In A Predicament But Insist On Making It Worse (Medium)
[10] See:
-Grieving: There Are No ‘Solutions’ to Overshoot. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-’Clean’ Energy and the Stages of Grieving. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Sometimes People Don’t Want to Hear the Truth. (BlogMedium)
-Overshoot, Hydrocarbon Energy, and Denial: Avoiding the Pain. (BlogMedium)
-Growth and Denial: A Bad Combination. (BlogMedium)
-Avoiding ‘Collapse’ Awareness. (BlogMedium)
[11] See:
-Infinite Growth, Finite Planet; What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Fossil Fuels: Contributing to Complexity and Overshoot. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Ecological Overshoot, Hydrocarbon Energy, and Biophysical Reality. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Overlooking Ecological Overshoot. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Exponential Growth, Natural Carrying Capacity, and Ecological Overshoot. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-The ‘Predicament’ of Ecological Overshoot. (BlogMediumSubstack)
[12] See:
-Criticising ‘Renewables’ is Not a Sin. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-’Renewables’ Are The Solution: Just Ignore All That Ecological Systems Destruction Over There. (Medium)
-Enough Already You Malthusian Doomer! (Medium)
-Non-Renewable, Renewable Energy-Harvesting Technologies (NRREHTs): For and Against…Again. (Medium)
-Critiquing Renewables Is Simply A Right-Wing Conspiracy. (Medium)
[13] See:
-Energy-Averaging Systems and Complexity — A Recipe For Collapse. (BlogMediumSubstack)
-Declining Returns, Societal Surpluses, and Collapse. (Medium)
-What Do Previous Experiments In Societal Complexity Suggest About ‘Managing’ Our Future. (Medium)
-Societal ‘Collapse’: Past is Prologue. (BlogMedium)
Our net zero lesson of the day is from the U.K. but it applies universally. It’s increasingly difficult for Biden and the EU to hide the true costs of net zero mandates.
Britain Boiler Tax Scandal
In the latest green fiasco, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak created a quota system that would require manufacturers to sell more heat pumps to households.
Instead of meekly complying with the regulation as happens with Biden administration EPA announcements, manufacturers let consumers know they would have to pay up whether they installed the heat pumps or not.
Manufacturers correctly dubbed the scheme a “boiler tax” and consumer outrage killed the regulation.
Most English households use natural gas to fuel the cabinet-sized boilers that provide central heating and hot water, and forcing them to adopt electric heat pumps (ultimately powered by renewable energy) is part of the government’s net-zero agenda.
An earlier proposal to ban gas-boiler sales after 2035 proved politically toxic as households balked at the cost of replacing their reliable natural-gas boilers with more expensive, untested heat pumps. So politicians resorted to subterfuge, imposing a sales quota on manufacturers. Starting in April, heat pumps would have to replace 4% of annual boiler sales or companies would pay a £3,000 fine for each “excess” natural-gas boiler they sold.
Worcester Bosch, Britain’s leading manufacturer, warned last year that the proposed quota would add up to £300 ($376) to the cost of natural-gas boilers, which retail for £1,000 and up.
For several days, ever since the supposedly amazing GDP report from quarter four 2023, we’ve been blasted by the media about how great the economy is doing.
It’s exasperating because these claims do not fit with human experience. Last we heard from the Census Bureau, real income is down, and no one doubts it. Everyone, or at least most average people, has felt strong downgrades in living standards over these last four years.
And yet, no recession has been declared. This is for technical reasons. A recession is supposed to show up in the technical reading of the GDP plus unemployment.
We’ve known for years that the unemployment data is broken. It does not account for labor dropouts or adjust for multiple job holders or otherwise reveal anything about labor participation or remuneration.
Unemployment is technically low, but so what?
As for GDP, it is not a measure of the standard of living or even economic growth. It is a measure of output — stuff going on as measured in dollar terms, whether necessary, productive, society serving, efficient or not at all.
The aggregate was concocted at a time when economists believed that spending was itself productive, whether it flowed from a sustainable capital base or government itself. Anything moving and churning was regarded as good.
We Don’t Need More GDP Reports Like These
When the latest report came out and everyone cheered, I dug around the data a bit but figured I would wait for my favorite analysts to weigh in. Sure enough, Peter St Onge writes it up and it is a doozy:
Fresh GDP numbers came in and it was a blowout. The kind of blowout that only a $2.7 trillion government deficit can buy while the private economy crumbles around it. Another couple blowout GDP reports like this and Americans will be living under an overpass.
Almost everywhere the pursuit of the infinite growth chalice (primarily by the ruling elite) and/or population growth along with a disregard for/ignorance of biophysical limits has put a community/region/nation into ecological overshoot. As a result, the people have become dependent upon fragile and complex long-distance supply chains — to say little about the creation of communities in areas that never should have been occupied by humans as they were never sustainable without such supplied resources.
There’s no ‘transitioning’ to something ‘sustainable’ in such a scenario — at least not for the significant majority of those caught up in it.
Many who are aware of the pending consequences (especially shortages of basic resources) are desperately clinging to the (false) hope that ‘clean/green/sustainable’ energy (non-renewable energy-harvesting technologies) will somehow stave off the inevitable die-off that seems to be charging our way. Although, there also seems to be a growing chorus of others who argue that all we need to do to avoid our situation is allow the expansion of fossil fuel extraction.
Denial, however, is not just a river in Egypt; it is a powerful psychological mechanism to avoid anxiety-provoking cognitions such as the predicament we’ve created for ourselves. And in our mass psychosis it seems we are championing strategies that evidence suggests will serve to exacerbate our plight (and it doesn’t help — in fact, it encourages the false beliefs — that our ruling elite are pushing specific ‘solutions’ for mostly monetary gain; a gain that serves to aid them in maintaining their privileged positions atop the power/wealth structures of our complex societies).
The longer we fail to accept and face our predicament (and abandon the false ‘solutions’), the worse we make the consequences charging our way.
I am increasingly reaching the conclusion, unfortunately, that the path we are on and will take is not towards some utopian nirvana of existence supported by ‘clean’ energy and ‘sustainable’ lifestyles as many believe. We are more likely to waste the last of our one-time cache of ancient energy stores on misguided technologies and resource wars.
This is perhaps not because we humans don’t want to attempt to address our issues but because we, in our uniquely human way, are lying to ourselves about the impediments of a finite world and its biophysical limits and thus are looking in the completely wrong direction for answers. It also doesn’t help that we have lost our realisation that we are not a unique species when it comes to ecological principles and thus can’t have our cake and eat it too.
There are some tremendously difficult decisions to make and the vast, vast majority of us don’t wish to even consider them; better to remain in ignorance or distraction.
As I have written previously:
Personally, I’d like to see our dwindling fossil fuels dedicated to decommissioning safely those significantly dangerous complexities we’ve created (e.g., nuclear power plants, biosafety labs, chemical storage, etc.) and relocalising as much potable water procurement, food production, and regional shelter needs as possible rather than attempting to sustain what is ultimately unsustainable given the fossil fuel inputs necessary. Perhaps, just perhaps. by doing these things a few pockets of humanity (and many other species) can come out the other side of the bottleneck we’ve created for ourselves.
As this is unlikely to be done for a variety of reasons, perhaps the best thing for those who have accepted our predicament to do is search for like-minded family/friends/community members and pursue relocalising strategies that might be ‘resilient’ in the face of disrupted supply chains and sociopolitical and/or socioeconomic upheaval.
It is increasingly likely that the unwritten and unknowable future is going to be messy…
Cognition and Belief Systems: Part Six — Sociopolitical ‘Collapse’ and Ecological Overshoot
This contemplation is my concluding post regarding several psychological mechanisms at play in our thinking about ecological overshoot and the accompanying societal ‘collapse’ that will eventually result.
In the initial post, I briefly summarised four psychological mechanisms I’ve been reflecting upon in the context of ecological overshoot and in particular the collapse of our global, industrialised complex societies that will (or, as some argue, has already begun to) accompany this overshoot; you can read it here. In Part Two, I began elaborating my thoughts on the first mechanism in my list: Obedience/Deference to Authority; you can find it here. Part three comprises some thoughts about the phenomenon of Groupthink and can be found here. The fourth contemplation in this series looks at the role of Cognitive Dissonance in our cognition and can be read here. In the fifth contemplation, I round out the phenomena I review with a view on The Justification Hypothesis; read it here.
One of the primary considerations in understanding how our cognitions and thus our beliefs and behaviours are going to be affected by the unfolding of the consequences of ecological overshoot and the concomitant ‘collapse’ of our societies is the anxiety/stress that such a future (and present) is going to have (is having) upon us; personally, on a familial level, and on the broader societal scale. Contemplating an unknowable future that is unlikely to provide many of the energetic conveniences most currently depend upon and/or that will challenge our complex systems to the breaking point because of extreme weather events, or supply chain disruptions/breakdowns (especially food, water, energy), etc. can be exceedingly anxiety-provoking.
Mix these (and many other) psychological mechanisms in with Edward Thorndike’s Law of Effect — that postulates all animals have an innate motivation to avoid pain/seek pleasure[1] — and you have an animal whose sense-making abilities are leveraged by its mind to deny/ignore away evidence that challenges them and can cause painful, anxiety-provoking emotions (in fact, there appears to be neuroscientific support for this[2]). In response, we appear to employ all sorts of biases/rationalisations to support our belief systems (a ‘pleasurable’ sensation) regardless of disconfirming evidence (that can lead to painful/stressful emotions).
I must begin by going back to a passage from an article I cited in the introductory ‘essay’ by Megan Siebert and William Rees: “We begin with a reminder that humans are storytellers by nature. We socially construct complex sets of facts, beliefs, and values that guide how we operate in the world. Indeed, humans act out of their socially constructed narratives as if they were real. All political ideologies, religious doctrines, economic paradigms, cultural narratives — even scientific theories — are socially constructed “stories” that may or may not accurately reflect any aspect of reality they purport to represent. Once a particular construct has taken hold, its adherents are likely to treat it more seriously than opposing evidence from an alternate conceptual framework.”[3]
The following is my story that I’ve developed over the past 10+ years in reading relatively extensively and reflecting upon a variety of other stories about our past, present, and future. I am not SO confident in it that I would wager heavily in favour of it being the ‘truth’ — I think it’s close but I also believe that the complexities involved in attempting to understand exactly what is happening is far beyond human comprehension (and certainly mine). Plus my view changes periodically with new information/interpretations. The generality of it tends to remain but the specifics alter; and the more I learn, the more assured I am that my understanding is still quite rudimentary[4]. And then there’s the impossibility of making accurate predictions about how the future will unfold. I am relatively confident that such prognostications are completely beyond the scope of human cognition (even with the aid of computers) given the incalculable non-linear feedback loops and emergent phenomena that exist in complex systems — a single, minuscule faulty base assumption can send the trajectory of any calculation sideways in totally unexpected ways.
Anyways, here is my story beginning with a brief review of ‘collapse’ and overshoot:
Humans are susceptible not only to sociopolitical collapse[5] but collapse of its population via a massive die-off due to ecological overshoot[6]. Both seem inevitable at this point in our evolution[7]. And both are extremely anxiety-provoking regardless of whether one has moved through Kubler-Ross’s Stages of Grief[8] and reached the final stage of acceptance or not.
Let’s begin by looking at what ‘collapse’ means from the perspective of archaeologist Joseph Tainter, who summarises his perspective near the beginning of his text, The Collapse of Complex Societies, on the subject.
“Collapse…is a political process. It may, and often does, have consequences in such areas as economics, art, and literature, but it is fundamentally a matter of the sociopolitical sphere. A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity…[It manifests itself] as:
· a lower degree of stratification and social differentiation;
· less economic and occupational specialization, of individuals, groups, and territories;
· less centralized control; that is, less regulation and integration of diverse economic and political groups by elites;
· less behavioural control and regimentation; less investment in the epiphenomena of complexity, those elements that define the concept of ‘civilization’: monumental architecture, artistic and literary achievements, and the like;
· less flow of information between individuals, between political and economic groups, and between a center and its periphery;
· less sharing, trading, and redistribution of resources;
· less overall coordination and organization of individuals and groups;
· a smaller territory within a single political unit.”[9]
While Tainter’s analysis of sociopolitical collapse is startling, given that virtually every experiment we have attempted with complex societies over our pre/history have failed and thus our hyper-complex one is likely even more susceptible to the primary factor that leads to its eventual demise (i.e., diminishing returns on investments in complexity), the work of William Catton Jr. on the ecological overshoot of the human species is even more anxiety-provoking[10].
Catton argues that our leveraging of fossil fuels has allowed humanity to expand well beyond the natural carrying capacity of the planet and mirrors quite clearly the type of exploitation that is observed in species that invariably ‘bloom and crash’.
And while in our denial of this inevitability we have created stories that we can avert such a future, Catton asserts that “habits of thought persist…people continue to advocate further technological breakthroughs as the supposedly sure cure for carrying capacity deficits. The very idea that technology caused overshoot, and that it made us too colossal to endure, remains alien to too many minds for ‘de-collosalization’ to be a really feasible alternative to literal die-off. There is a persistent drive to apply remedies that aggravate the problem.”[11]
In fact, he recognises that “…believing crash can’t happen to us is one reason it will. The principles of ecology apply to all living things. By supposing that our humanity exempts us, we delude ourselves…whatever the species, irruptions that overshoot carrying capacity lead inexorably to die-offs. Irruptions can happen to any species that gains access to a previously inaccessible but highly suitable habitat. All it takes is for the habitat to contain an abundance of whatever resources are needed by the invading species, and for there to be little population-checking pressure from predators and little or no competition from other species having similar niche requirements and living in the same area.”[12]
As Catton concludes, when overshoot has occurred there is no avoiding the crash.
Cutting to the chase, we have a globalised world that can be expected to experience sociopolitical collapse (or is already experiencing) and/or a massive overshoot die-off that puts everything at risk, for everyone; but especially for those who live within so-called ‘advanced economies’ that have come to depend fully and completely upon the energy-averaging systems of global trade and its complex and fragile supply chains[13].
Talk about anxiety-provoking!
I have been ‘searching’ for a few poignant thoughts on how to conclude these handful of contemplations on the psychological mechanisms I’ve outlined and how this may impact our thinking (or, at least, mine) about an unwritten and unknowable future. And I think, perhaps, the comment I left at Tom Murphy’s Do the Math site in response to an article he posted recently kind of hits the nail on the head of where my thoughts have led me (at this point in my journey). The comment is in bold with some further connective ideas added:
I’m coming to three (of many) rather ‘anxiety-provoking’ conclusions given everything. First, that our leveraging of that one-time cache of fossil energy has expedited our journey into ecological overshoot — this being our fundamental predicament that is signalling its presence in all the ‘problematic’ symptoms we are experiencing.
Our primary predicament, then, seems to be ecological overshoot. The sociopolitical collapse that Tainter attributes to diminishing returns on investments in complexity appears to resonate with a society’s tendency to overshoot its carrying capacity, be it local, regional, or global. When biophysical limits of the supportive and accessible resources (given the technology of the time) are breached, diminishing returns on investments in complexity begin to arise. Eventually, such diminishing returns hits a point where participants in the society begin to make the economic choice to abandon support for it as the previous benefits gained from living with such complexities falter and no longer make the investments worthwhile. The sociopolitical system cannot function for long without support from the masses — it eventually ‘collapses’.
The unavoidable consequence of such overshoot in our current hypercomplex, globalised society is likely a massive die-off of our species as Catton warns given the fact that the vast majority of humans no longer possess the skills and/or knowledge of basic survival skills such as the procurement of potable water, local food production, and maintenance of regional shelter needs. In fact, many of today’s communities exist in regions where such resources cannot be acquired and they depend entirely upon fragile and complex long-distance supply chains. In the past, most disenchanted people simply migrated and took up existence outside of the sociopolitical realm that was disintegrating. Such an option for the vast majority, if not all, is perhaps completely out of the question nowadays.
Second, our penchant for denial of anxiety-provoking situations is leading us to ignore our predicament and cling to optimistic narratives — even if completely false (or misleading) in nature.
Add to the significant anxiety created by our predicament the profound sense of loss involved when one’s world suddenly moves sideways, particularly in unsuspecting ways, or when a loss is ‘expected’, and we experience the grieving stages Kubler-Ross identified and described — particularly denial, anger, and bargaining.
Moreover, the research around anticipatory loss suggests that the stages of grief that one experiences can actually be much more intense when one is expecting such loss than after the actual loss. There can be greater anger, more significant loss of emotional control, and atypical grief responses[14].
Most importantly it seems that the initial stage of grief, denial (especially of death and anything unpleasant) has been argued to be the defining evolutionary trait that makes us human[15], so it tends to be the most common response by people.
Wanting to avoid/reduce the pain that accompanies the resulting anxiety we search for evidence to confirm any ‘positive/pleasurable’ beliefs we tend to hold as ‘correct’ and deny and/or rationalise away the information that is challenging our ‘faith’. And what could be more anxiety-provoking than the impending collapse of one’s complex society or a massive die-off? As crises erupt and challenges our belief systems, we will search for evidence that any decline/fall is either far off in the distant future, nonsensical, can be ‘solved’ (especially via our ingenuity and technological prowess), the fault of some ‘enemy’ or opposition group within our domestic ranks (or supernatural entity), etc..[16]. This is typical ‘bargaining’ behaviour.
Third, our ruling elite are themselves leveraging our ‘fears’ to do what they do best: seeking to maintain/expand the power/wealth structures that exist in complex societies and provide them their privileged positions; and our tendency to defer to ‘authority’ and desire to alleviate anxiety make us susceptible to the narratives they create, such as human ingenuity and technology will allow us to continue to chase the perpetual growth chalice to infinity and beyond.
It seems clear to me that ‘collapse’ puts directly in its crosshairs the power/wealth structures that support the ruling class. I’ve said a lot about this in previous articles but feel compelled to share a bit more.
I have little doubt that the ruling class will take advantage of all of these well-known psychological mechanisms in their ongoing and ever-present quest to maintain/control the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and privileged status. Narrative control, perhaps one of if not the most important mechanism for sustaining the status quo societal structures, will be ramped up continuously. ‘Threats’ will be vilified. Myths will be created and/or amplified. Means of extending and pretending will likely dominate as the elite kick-the-can-down-the-road as long as they can.
We need to not only be aware and conscious of these psychological mechanisms that influence our beliefs and thus actions, but actively engaging ‘countermeasures’ by resisting our automatic responses (e.g., ‘leaders’ and their courtiers/sycophants/bureaucrats are always correct and/or have the best interest of the people/society at the top of their motivations) and reflecting upon/challenging our beliefs/thought processes periodically. We also need to admit that much of what we believe to be true/factual may, in fact, be conditioned responses and/or ‘programmed’ ideas established by the ruling elite[17].
Cognitive framing in which the way we perceive/interpret events is established for us, perhaps through propaganda or the creation of an Overton Window. We are kept from thinking about alternatives to the established options and made to believe the offered ‘solutions’ are the only ones to consider…thinking outside the box is not allowed, especially if it challenges the status quo power/wealth structures. I expect the totalitarianism that is increasingly defining our sociopolitical systems worldwide[18] to expand significantly as we slide down the Seneca Cliff of resource contraction (especially energy).
The collapse that always accompanies overshoot seems baked in at this point with little if anything we can do about it.
Personally, I’d like to see our dwindling fossil fuels dedicated to decommissioning safely those significantly dangerous complexities we’ve created (e.g., nuclear power plants, biosafety labs, chemical storage, etc.) and relocalising as much potable water procurement, food production, and regional shelter needs as possible rather than attempting to sustain what is ultimately unsustainable given the fossil fuel inputs necessary. Perhaps, just perhaps. by doing these things a few pockets of humanity (and many other species) can come out the other side of the bottleneck we’ve created for ourselves.
In my skimming of the topic of denial I happened upon Nate Hagens’ work on this in Reality Blind. I’ll add this to my ever-expanding list of readings…
In addition, here are some useful sites/links for exploring further some of the above concepts:
[4] In my writing and reflecting upon issues/topics in this set of posts I have explored new topics that I had not previously encountered or thought extensively about.
[5] Tainter, J.. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press, 1988. (ISBN 978–0–521–38673–9).
[6] Catton, Jr., William R.. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. University of Illinois Press, 1980. (ISBN 0–252–00818–9).
[7] Although I am fairly confident that this is the case, I say ‘seem’ because the future is both unwritten and unknowable. And keep in mind that recognising this does not necessitate that one has ‘given up’, an accusation common amongst those who disagree with the belief.
[9] Tainter, J. The Collapse of Complex Societies. P. 4.
[10] Although, “less sharing, trading, and redistribution of resources” has enormous implications for the masses of humanity that depend on such energy-averaging systems given their knowledge/skill loss in providing the necessities of life — i.e., potable water procurement, food production, regional shelter needs.
[11] [11] Catton, Jr., William R.. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. P. 174.
[13] I can’t help but ponder the chaos of my Canadian home province of Ontario with its 15 million inhabitants that imports 80+% of its food needs along complex and fragile supply chains and has pursued the ‘paving over’ of its limited arable lands to expand suburban neighbourhoods and dedicated most of its remaining ‘farming’ to industrial agriculture that produces primarily corn/soybean to feed ethanol production and livestock. We grow a very limited amount of our local food needs.
[16] Most are unlikely/unwilling to look in the mirror and see we have contributed to the situation.
[17] See Bernays, E.. Propaganda. iG Publishing, 1928. (ISBN 0–9703125–9–8).
[18] Do not be fooled by the narratives surrounding representative democracies. The notion that we have agency via the ballot box is perhaps one of the most successful scams ever perpetrated on the masses by the ruling elite — along with the control/distribution of fiat currency being done in an equitable and thoughtful manner that serves everyone.
Washington has exercised strict control over Iraqi oil revenues for the past two decades
(Photo credit: INA)
The Finance Committee in the Iraqi parliament made a statement on 31 January calling for the sale of oil in currencies other than the US dollar, aiming to counter US sanctions on the Iraqi banking system.
“The US Treasury still uses the pretext of money laundering to impose sanctions on Iraqi banks. This requires a national stance to put an end to these arbitrary decisions,” the statement said.
“Imposing sanctions on Iraqi banks undermines and obstructs Central Bank efforts to stabilize the dollar exchange rate and reduce the selling gap between official and parallel rates,” it added.
The Finance Committee affirmed its“rejection of these practices, due to their repercussions on the livelihoods of citizens,” and reiterated its “call on the government and the Central Bank of Iraq to take quick measures against the dominance of the dollar, by diversifying cash reserves from foreign currencies.”
Washington imposed sanctions on Iraqi Al-Huda Bank this week, under claims of laundering money for Iran. Several other banks have been hit with similar sanctions over the past year.
The statement came the same day a senior US Treasury official said Washington expects Baghdad to help identify and disrupt the funds of Iran-backed resistance factions in Iraq.
“These are, as a whole, groups that are actively using and abusing Iraq and its financial systems and structure in order to perpetuate these acts and we have to address that directly. Frankly, I think it is clearly our expectation from Treasury perspective that there is more we can do together to share information and identify exactly how these militias groups are operating here in Iraq,” the official stated.
Expediting ‘Collapse’: Financialisation of Our Economic System
A very short contemplation that deviates from the ‘series’ I’ve been writing on several psychological mechanisms that impact our cognitions regarding overshoot and collapse. This is a brief comment (with a slight edit) on an article by The Honest Sorcerer whose writing I discovered a few months ago and have found to be quite excellent (probably because I get positive, confirmatory ‘feedback’ in the sense that their philosophy/analysis aligns with a lot of my own thinking; in fact, some commenter has actually accused me of being The Honest Sorcerer) — I highly recommend reading their work.
Apart from the inevitability of diminishing returns on investments in resource extraction (particularly energy-related ones) that you highlight brilliantly, I have to wonder about the role of some other phenomena in our complex global industrial civilisation that are leading us quickly towards ‘collapse’ (to say nothing really about our fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot).
In particular, I look at the extreme financialisation of our economies — especially via interest-bearing credit/debt expansion — that has led to pulling resources from the future that necessitates the pursuit of the perpetual growth chalice (and, as you point out, this is a pointless endeavour given the harsh reality of physical limits on a finite planet).
The financial industry (central, private, and shadow banks particularly), along with the complicity of our political class, has allowed/cheerlead the explosion of debt instruments that I would contend does not only allow us to avoid reality for some time but also contributes to price inflation as we have gargantuan amounts of ‘wealth’ chasing decreasing resources.
The real kicker I agree is our bumping into physical limits that not just dampen our pursuit of growth — that is required to keep the gargantuan Ponzi scheme that is our economy from expanding — but very likely is the pin that has burst the biggest economic bubble in our relatively short history on this planet. Ponzi schemes have a tendency to collapse when they can no longer expand and physical limits on a finite planet ensure the one we’ve created to ‘sustain’ our global economy is on its way to implosion.
Of course, overshooting limits (be they biological in nature or economic) can carry on for some time before the actual ‘pain’ is felt — the human penchant to deny reality helps here in the extreme. This is perhaps why Black Swan events are the ones that create the greatest impact on us; in our denial (and our inability to assess risk very well), we fail to prepare for possibilities that increase our anxiety — like collapse. Better to live in a fantasy world of human ingenuity and technology always being there to rescue us than accept that we are simply walking, talking apes that don’t understand complex systems and how our tinkering with them always, eventually backfires.
Cognition and Belief Systems: Part Five — Justification Hypothesis
This contemplation is the fifth part of a look at several psychological mechanisms at play in our thinking about ecological overshoot and the accompanying societal ‘collapse’ that will eventually result.
In Part One, I briefly summarised four psychological mechanisms I’ve been reflecting upon in the context of ecological overshoot and in particular the collapse of our global, industrialised complex societies that will (or, as some argue, has already begun to) accompany this overshoot; you can read it here. In Part Two, I began elaborating my thoughts on the first mechanism in my list: Obedience/Deference to Authority; you can find it here. Part three comprises some thoughts about the phenomenon of Groupthink and can be found here. The fourth in this series looks at the role of Cognitive Dissonance in our cognition and can be read here.
One of the primary considerations in understanding how our cognitions and thus our beliefs and behaviours are going to be affected by the unfolding of the consequences of ecological overshoot and the concomitant ‘collapse’ of our societies is the anxiety/stress that such a future (and present) is going to have (is having) upon us; personally, on a familial level, and on the broader societal scale. Contemplating an unknowable future that is unlikely to provide many of the energetic conveniences most currently depend upon and/or that will challenge our complex systems to the breaking point because of extreme weather events, or supply chain disruptions/breakdowns (especially food, water, energy), etc. can be exceedingly anxiety-provoking.
Mix these (and many other) psychological mechanisms in with Edward Thorndike’s Law of Effect — that postulates all animals have an innate motivation to avoid pain/seek pleasure[1] — and you have an animal whose sense-making abilities are leveraged by its mind to deny/ignore away evidence that challenges them and can cause painful, anxiety-provoking emotions (in fact, there appears to be neuroscientific support for this[2]). In response, we appear to employ all sorts of biases/rationalisations to support our belief systems (a ‘pleasurable’ sensation) regardless of disconfirming evidence (that can lead to painful/stressful emotions).
The uniquely human phenomenon theorised via the term Justification Hypothesis can be summed up in a quote attributed to author Robert Heinlein in the previous article: “Humans are a rationalising animal, not a rational one”.
It is argued that we seek to rationalise/justify our behaviours and cognitions in order to align them, sometimes to justify our efforts/actions, and perhaps at the same time to present a positive image to others and ourselves. A form of positive feedback tends to then arise where we experience increasing ‘pleasure’ through the confirmation of our beliefs, putting more ‘effort’ into attempts to confirm them (i.e., seeking like-minded individuals/groups or examples/data in support of), and becoming more ‘convinced’ we are correct in our belief system.
Effort justification, for example, may be as simple as rationalising the physical or mental energy we put into an activity. Research indicates that the more effort or sacrifice we put towards an activity or idea/belief, the more we come to view it as positive. It is important to note that studies suggest that this attractiveness is stronger and more prone to occur if the activity/belief is perceived as being freely chosen and the expected ‘cost’ is known prior to any effort[3].
“At least two important implications seem to follow from effort justification. First, it is likely to have functional benefits for groups. By increasing attraction and commitment to the group, group cohesion and stability are enhanced. Second, effort justification is likely to increase persistence at tasks that are not altogether pleasant, especially when such tasks are seen as chosen. Many worthwhile outcomes in life require short-term sacrifice to achieve longer-term gain. By encouraging such sacrifice, effort justification is functional to the individual and the group.
Of course, what is functional is not always good. Attractive, cohesive groups may be more prone to group-think, and persistence at lost causes can be destructive.”[4]
While the justification by individuals is the basis of this theory, research has expanded to look at the use of it by systems in a broader sense. Systems justification theory looks at how groups justify/rationalise the status quo systems they exist within[5].
“System justification can lead us to deny and excuse aspects of our society — such as the ever-widening gap between rich and poor and the damage we are doing to the natural environment, to take just two very salient and worrisome examples — that we ought to confront sooner rather than later.”[6]
Think about this hypothesis in terms of the leveraging that can be accomplished by a ruling elite with specific motivations in mind, especially as the complexities that ‘sustain’ our industrial civilisation increasingly falter[7].
First, we tend to defer to ‘authority’ so establishing and maintaining this authority will help to ensure the majority of individuals comply with the status quo directives that may be increasingly difficult as numerous crises erupt. While ‘force’ can help to ensure such compliance, having people ‘believe’ in the narratives we are ‘herded’ towards is far more efficient (i.e., less costly) and more effective (i.e., think of Johann von Goethe quote here: “The best slave is the one who thinks he’s free.”).
Second, our motivation to belong to a social group along with our tendencies to conform to the beliefs/ideas/opinions of the majority and to view events/evidence through the context we are provided, makes establishing the narrative by which the group tends to interpret exceedingly important. By setting the context (cognitive framing as some call it[8]) through which people view the world, the stories that percolate through society can more or less be controlled, especially those that legitimise the power/control of individuals/groups that sit atop the power/wealth structures of our world. This not only maintains the flow of ‘wealth/goods’ up to the elite but minimises the discontent that can result in sociopolitical upheavals.
Third, because there can be competing narratives in large, complex social groups and people will feel dissonance when conflicting cognitions exist, it is vital that the messaging of the elite is ‘proactive’ (i.e., their story is put out very quickly in order to set the context thru which people interpret events), relatively similar/consistent (i.e., remain on message), and repeated often. This is where their control of most media institutions comes into play[9]. They not only have the means to spread their message relatively quickly and consistently, they can do it in a way that appears ‘objective’. The power structures, for example, can be reinforced through narratives regarding ‘representative democracy’ and agency via the ballot box. Not only can the context through which people interpret events be established but confirmation biases can be supported.
Once we latch on to a narrative we strive to justify it and rationalise events/evidence in light of it to reduce any anxiety that might arise from the conflicting messages our minds receive. This phenomenon is perhaps one of the strongest mechanisms that contribute to the denial of ‘facts’ that challenge one’s interpretive narrative.
This ends my thoughts on the four aspects of psychology I set out to discuss. In the next and last instalment of this mini-series of articles I shall attempt to tie them together with respect to what is increasingly seeming to me to be a self-created bottleneck that threatens our complex societies and perhaps even, as some argue, our and many other species extinction.
[7] Note that I am aware that I am as prone to these psychological mechanisms as everyone else and this long series of articles could be perceived as my attempt to rationalise/justify/reinforce/confirm my own biased beliefs; especially as they pertain to ruling elite behaviours in the face of societal collapse.
[9] It is not surprising that the rise of technologies that allow for competing narratives that challenge the status quo is creating increasing calls for censorship — currently in the guise of countering ‘fake news/misinformation’.
By now the impacts of supply chain disruption are becoming all too familiar: shortages, inflation, factory closures, goods waiting at ports to be unloaded. All these impacts are serious enough, but another more-hidden concern lurks just beneath the surface: the impact of supply chain failure on national security, broadly defined as a nation’s ability to protect and ensure the well-being of its population.
This definition of “national security” is broader than just the defense industry or military-related efforts; it also could encompass the very ability of a nation to ensure economic well-being, public health, and protection of a nation’s key infrastructure. Supply chain disruptions cause general economic disruption and key commodity shortages, which then in turn can, in fact, drive aggressive national behavior and international instability. And ironically, this reactive aggressive national behavior can happen even if the health of a national economy itself depends upon continued international economic interdependence. Indeed, this very interdependence can create vulnerabilities. So a systematic effort, cutting across agencies and public and private sectors, could be one way to ensure these vulnerabilities are understood and mitigated.
Supply Chain Disruption and Conflict
Dispersed supply chains develop because actors find it’s economically advantageous to seek the least-expensive and most-productive sources of supply. These dispersed chains develop for good reasons, but they create complicated interdependencies whose risks and vulnerabilities are sometimes not even understood, let alone mitigated.
While the reasons for creating these chains lie largely with private interest, the effects of disruption—which can come from sources ranging from malign human action to natural disaster—are rarely localized. When shortages occur in one industry, the disruptions in one area nearly always spill into adjacent companies and sectors. Whole economies feel the impact, not isolated actors.
The rot caused by easy money will only become fully visible when the hollowed out institutions start collapsing under the weight of incompetence, debt and hubris.
We have yet to reach a full reckoning of the consequences of the era of easy money, but it’s abundantly clear that it ruined us. The damage was incremental at first, but the perverse incentives and distortions of easy money–zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP), credit available without limits to those who are more equal than others–accelerated the institutionalization of these toxic dynamics throughout the economy and society.
Fifteen long years later, the damage cannot be undone because the entire status quo is now dependent on the easy-money bubble for its survival. Should the bubbles inflated by easy money pop, the financial system and the economy will collapse into a putrid heap, undone by the perversions and distortions of endless easy money.
Easy money created destructive, mutually reinforcing distortions on multiple fronts. Let’s examine the primary ways easy money led to ruin.
1. The near-zero rate credit was distributed asymmetrically; only the wealthiest few had access to the open spigot of “free money.” The rest of us saw mortgage rates decline, but we were still paying much higher rates of interest than corporations, banks and financiers.
If we’d all been given the opportunity to borrow a couple million dollars at 1% and put the easy money into bonds yielding 2.5%, skimming a low-risk 1.5% for producing nothing, we’d have jumped on it. But that opportunity was only available to banks, the super-wealthy, corporations and financiers.
The charts below show the perverse consequences of offering the wealthiest few limitless money at near-zero rates while the rest of us paid much higher interest. The wealthiest few could buy income-producing assets on the cheap at carrying costs no ordinary investor could match…
In a previous post I referred to two “highly seductive and misunderstood words.” I dealt with one of these several years ago when considering the growing number of things that humans can do in theory but can no longer do in practice. This applied to highly expensive projects like sending humans to the moon or operating commercial supersonic air travel. But it also applies to more mundane activities like the once ubiquitous automated car washes. The point being that whenever an activist, politician or journalist uses words like “ought,” “could,” “should,” and “can,” what they most often mean is “can’t.”
This, in turn, implies an unacknowledged powerlessness. Because these antonyms are almost always preceded by another deceptive word… “we.” People on what is broadly considered the political right, for example, will explain that “we ought/could/should…” start fracking the Bowland shale deposits in northern England and/or start drilling the oil deposits west of Shetland and/or hurry the development of new nuclear power stations. Against this, those who identify as being on the left will claim that this is unnecessary because “we can/ought/should…” accelerate the deployment of wind turbines and solar panels, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. I have covered the impossibility of both proposals – broadly, that they are too energy and resource expensive compared to the energy they return to be viable in the real economy – in several previous posts. But what I want to explore here is just how deceptive the word “we” is, since it should be patently obvious that used in these kinds of context, the word “we” actually means “they” – or more correctly, since nobody knows who “they” are – “someone else.”
Cognition and Belief Systems: Part Four — Cognitive Dissonance
This contemplation is the fourth part of a look at several psychological mechanisms at play in our thinking about ecological overshoot and the accompanying societal ‘collapse’ that will eventually result.
In Part One, I briefly summarised four psychological mechanisms I’ve been reflecting upon in the context of ecological overshoot and in particular the collapse of our global, industrialised complex societies that will (or, as some argue, has already begun to) accompany this overshoot; you can read it here. In Part Two, I began elaborating my thoughts on the first mechanism in my list: Obedience/Deference to Authority; you can find it here. Part three comprises some thoughts about the phenomenon of Groupthink and can be found here.
One of the primary considerations in understanding how our cognitions and thus our beliefs and behaviours are going to be affected by the unfolding of the consequences of ecological overshoot and the concomitant ‘collapse’ of our societies is the anxiety/stress that such a future (and present) is going to have (is having) upon us; personally, on a familial level, and on the broader societal scale. Contemplating an unknowable future that is unlikely to provide many of the energetic conveniences most currently depend upon and/or that will challenge our complex systems to the breaking point because of extreme weather events, or supply chain disruptions/breakdowns (especially food, water, energy), etc. can be exceedingly anxiety-provoking.
Mix these (and many other) psychological mechanisms in with Edward Thorndike’s Law of Effect — that postulates all animals have an innate motivation to avoid pain/seek pleasure[1] — and you have an animal whose sense-making abilities are leveraged by its mind to deny/ignore away evidence that challenges them and can cause painful, anxiety-provoking emotions (in fact, there appears to be neuroscientific support for this[2]). In response, we appear to employ all sorts of biases/rationalisations to support our belief systems (a ‘pleasurable’ sensation) regardless of disconfirming evidence (that can lead to painful/stressful emotions).
Hastening back to the summary I wrote on cognitive dissonance in the first part of this series, recall that it is fundamentally “…the idea that humans experience negative emotions when they hold conflicting or inconsistent cognitions[3]. The resulting state of discomfort leads us to become motivated to align our cognitive knowledge, and the more discomfort or anxiety we feel from such conflicting cognition the more we struggle to reduce the resulting tension. It is during such efforts to reduce the dissonance we are feeling that we engage in significant rationalisation that can convince us to accept knowledge that we might otherwise not agree with.”
The anxiety one may experience in holding conflicting beliefs varies since some people are not as impacted by such internal conflict as they have a higher tolerance for it. In fact, there are some who are quite comfortable with holding beliefs that conflict with each other so their dissonance-reducing efforts are not as impactful as for those who do encounter such internal stress.
For those who do suffer from anxiety-provoking emotions caused by conflicting beliefs, if the beliefs one holds are more personal or valued in nature (or the disparity between them is great), even more dissonance may be experienced than may be typical if the beliefs are not personally valued. This can bring about heightened efforts to reduce the dissonance. These efforts may also be increased if beliefs are challenged by others, leading to even further entrenchment/defense of one’s beliefs and concomitant dissonance-reducing attempts.
Further, if our behaviours do not align with our beliefs we may find that we actually alter our beliefs to become consistent with our behaviours[4]. There appears to exist a feedback loop between our beliefs and actions, with each affecting the other in ongoing attempts to minimise personal anxiety (i.e., psychological ‘pain’).
Another complexity in this entire process is that a person’s comfort with uncertainty may also critical to how much dissonance may be experienced[5].
Research on human reactions to uncertainty is, of course, important to the issue of overshoot and collapse given the nature of the predicament and what we do in attempting to understand how it will impact us and the planet. We are, for all intents and purposes, making ‘guesses’ about our future and as physicist Niels Bohr has been credited with stating (and several others): “Predictions are difficult, especially if they’re about the future”.
We can’t help but be anything but uncertain about our future and this feeling of uncertainty intensifies emotional reactions; sometimes positively but most of the time negatively because humans desire certainty (which is why we sometimes are prone to misleading narratives, especially if communicated in a convincing manner that offers assurances). And the greater the uncertainty, the stronger the affective reaction. Most people experience anxiety with uncertainty[6] and seek ways to reduce this.[7]
One of the ways our brains reduce uncertainty is to simplify our understanding of the world. We engage biases and heuristics to do this[8], and in the process we tend to see patterns that don‘t exist and treat random events as meaningful[9]. By simplifying an exceedingly complex reality we can reduce our uncertainty and thus our anxiety about the future.
So, here we are, an animal existing in an exceedingly complex world with relatively remarkable cognitive abilities attempting to understand the flood of information our senses are experiencing. We also find ourselves within a hierarchical social environment where our tendency is to defer to those ‘above’ us in social status. If they can influence or create the worldview through which we interpret the world, we tend to do this.
Then comes along some disruptive technologies such as the printing press and, more recently, the internet to allow for the dissemination of competing narratives for how we view the world. The variety of interpretive lenses that are created by this can lead to ever-growing dissonance[10]. We are exposed repeatedly to the stories that our elite are pushing[11], but we are also aware of competing ones. We tend to defer to those communicated by our authority figures (be it politicians, the media, academics, etc.), but not always. We do occasionally get exposed to conflicting messages and evidence.
How do we alleviate the resulting anxiety? We employ our mind to filter out the incoming information in a way that reduces the stress we are experiencing. It matters little what we experience with our own senses or the data we are exposed to. We simplify, alter our perspective/interpretation, and create a narrative that we can filter evidence through. We also seek out self-reinforcing echo chambers of like-minded individuals/groups. Confirming information is amplified and reinforces our story while disconfirming information is ignored, denied, or rationalised away. In essence, we believe what our minds want us to believe; ‘facts’ be damned. And if we are challenged and begin to experience dissonance, we grab a hold of our fundamental beliefs even harder.
Obviously, it’s not quite as simple as this and some are more prone to the anxiety-reducing mechanisms than others, but for the most part we are ‘guided’ to beliefs that may not align with ‘reality’ but that reduce our ‘pain’ (i.e., anxiety) while increasing our ‘pleasure’ (e.g., dopamine surges appear to be one result when we encounter the pleasurable sensation of ‘confirmation’ of our beliefs[12]). We take increasing comfort in narratives that can reduce our anxiety, often regardless of any evidence that challenges them.
Depend significantly on industrial civilisation and all the conveniences it offers? Then you can be sure to either ignore/deny the narratives and accompanying evidence that point to its probable demise[13], and/or take increasing comfort in the stories that human ingenuity and our technological prowess will ‘solve’ our predicament[14] of ecological overshoot and its accompanying collapse. It seems we create our own ‘reality’.
Finally, keep in mind the statement attributed to author Robert Heinlein: “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal”. We ‘rationalise/justify’ what we believe and do so constantly, which will be looked at in the next piece that reviews The Justification Hypothesis.
[6] This feeling appears to be context dependent as some activities with uncertainty may actually produce positive emotions, such as watching sports or a mystery movie, or gambling.
[11] As I have argued previously, we have a ruling elite who sit at the top of our power/wealth social structures and are motivated by a drive to sustain their privilege. Part of what they do to meet this imperative is that they create narratives that help to legitimise their positions — from being directly descended from God/the gods to chosen ‘freely’ by the masses as their representatives (or worked exceptionally ‘hard’ to deserve their privilege). This class of people also tend to be susceptible to the vagaries of groupthink due to their increasing isolation from the hoi polloi.
[13] I say ‘probable’ given the self-evident fact (at least, to me) that not one of us can predict the future with much accuracy. Evidence appears to be accumulating that the endgame of ‘collapse’ is unavoidable but in truth only time will tell if and how this all plays out.
[14] I am of the opinion that this is a predicament without solution; it can possibly, at best, be mitigated somewhat and in some places better than others.
(Photo credit: INA)
