Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCLXIX —
A User’s Manual For the End Of the World As We Know It, Part 1
I have finally finished writing a draft of several chapters of the book that I have been working on that brings together my thoughts after years of researching and reflecting on the issue of societal collapse.
For long-time readers, you will recognise many of the ideas and arguments from my Contemplations. Over the next several months I am going to release a chapter every week or so, culminating in a release of the entire text.
Consider that each chapter is in “draft” form in that it is my initial iteration and the final one may experience some slight editing depending upon my own thinking as I see this project through to the end and receive feedback from readers.
For now, the working title is: A User’s Manual For the End Of the World As We Know It. At this time, I have completed Part I: The Rules of the Game (The Unbreakable Laws) that contains five chapters overviewing the biogeophysical constraints and math that most impact our predicament.
The cover, table of contents, and introduction to the work follows…
If you’re new to my writing, check out this overview.
See my free book offer to readers at the end of this Contemplation…
A User’s Manual for the End of the World as We Know It
Credit: Warner Bros.
Steve Bull
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: The Rules of the Game (The Unbreakable Laws)
Chapter 1: The Only Game in Town: Thermodynamics and the Iron Law of Entropy
Chapter 2: The Great Acceleration: A Brief History of Exponential Growth
Chapter 3: The Planetary Chessboard: Biogeophysical Limits and Tipping Points
Chapter 4: The Madness of the Maximum Power Principle
Chapter 4 Addendum: The Arithmetic of Olduvai — When Per-Capita Energy Begins to Fall
Part II: The Human Traps (How We Got Stuck)
Chapter 5: The Progress Trap: Why Every Solution Creates a New Problem
Chapter 6: Wetiko: The Cannibal Spirit at the Heart of Civilisation
Chapter 7: The Growth Imperative: Capitalism, Debt, and the Theology of More
Chapter 8: The Energy Cliff: Peak Oil and the End of the Easy Stuff
Part III: The Consequences (The Collapse Scenario)
Chapter 9: The Tainter Trap: The Diminishing Returns of Complexity
Chapter 9 Addendum: The Seneca Cliff — Why Collapse Won’t Give You Time to Adapt
Chapter 10: The Elite Lifeboat: What the Ruling Class Does When the Music Stops
Chapter 11: The Feedback Loop from Hell: Climate Change, Famine, and War
Conclusion: What Now? (Or, How to Be a Realist Without Losing Your Mind)
Postscript: The Day After
Introduction
Warner Bros.
I’ve been thinking about societal collapse for a long time now–particularly since I viewed the documentary “Collapse” featuring Michael Ruppert in late 2010. I had hints about our predicament back in the 1980s when I studied biology and archaeology at university, but other interests and pursuits kept it in the background; a somewhat gentle hum that was present but not disruptive. That viewing of Ruppert’s concerns brought it back with a roar that I have been unable to quiet, especially as the signals grow increasingly louder.
While I do think about it periodically in academic terms–as a theoretical problem that can perhaps be modelled based upon natural science laws and principles as well as historical precedents–I mostly think about it in a way you might think about a diagnosis regarding a lump you found during a shower. Or perhaps the way you ponder the fact that water is rising quickly and no one seems to be building an ark.
The following “user’s manual” is a result of this thinking. A compilation, if you will, of my years of reading, researching, working with and learning from others, and writing my Contemplations (Website, Medium, Substack).
What the User’s Manual Is
The following text is not a prophetic script for I am not a prophet, particularly one with a date circled on my calendar. Societal simplification or collapse is approaching, or as some argue is in the process of occurring; as are the consequences of ecological overshoot. The process of collapse may take ten years to unfold or fifty or one hundred. I have no idea if it will be sudden as Easter Island’s seems to have been or as long as Rome’s appears to have taken.
What I believe is that the trajectory our global, industrial civilisation is on is fully and completely unsustainable. The math isn’t mathing and our species is trapped in a lifestyle that is consuming its own future with the various systems we’ve created to manage it, and appears completely incapable of changing course.
This user’s manual is going to attempt to explain why this is so. One can think of it as a diagnostic manual, not for a single disease but for a syndrome; one which is a constellation of interlocking pathologies that when they occur together produce a condition from which our large, complex societies are very unlikely to recover.
Some of the pathologies are physical in nature. The laws of thermodynamics. The limits of ecology. The finitude of hydrocarbons and other important resources.
Some are systemic. Capitalism’s growth imperative. Bureaucracy’s complexity trap. Money’s debt-based architecture. The periphery-to-core extraction mechanism of empire.
Some are psychological. The collective psychosis that some Indigenous peoples term Wetiko. A death drive that celebrates our undoing. The promise of rescue without repentance through salvation narratives. The manner in which we grieve and respond to loss.
This user’s manual is an attempt to bring all of the above together into a single framework. I do this not because I think I have the answer but because I think it may prove useful to demonstrate that there is a means of seeing our situation in a manner that refuses to separate the physical from the psychological, the structural from the spiritual. Because the crisis appears to be not just outside of us–in the physical world or the economy or our sociopolitical systems–but inside us; in our minds, desires, and the way in which we interpret the world, our species, and our individual selves.
What This Book Is Not
You will not discover “solutions” in this text. If you are searching for policy proposals, a revolutionary technology, a political movement, or salvation, you will be disappointed because it will not follow. I have stopped believing in solutions in the traditional sense because I don’t believe they are out there. While some would suggest that makes me a pessimist, I would argue that the very idea of “solutions” is a big part of our dilemma.
Solutions imply a fix. That reparation of the machine is entirely possible. That the lifestyle of our species with its growth and consumption can continue unimpeded and without having to suffer the consequences of it because we can discover the right lever to pull. Unfortunately, growth is the fundamental problem. Our way of living, especially with its technologies, is the problem.
I would argue that the very nature of this reality is what makes our predicament so difficult to see, let alone address. We cannot simply pull the emergency brake on the runaway train we are passengers on for we are the train. Its engine, fuel, tracks, and destination. We are hurtling towards a cliff ahead and refuse to see it, cannot believe it is there, and don’t even want to imagine it exists.
Most would despair in the face of what I am going to write about, but I would suggest that such a feeling is unwarranted. Understandable, but unwarranted. I do not believe that in the face of inevitable collapse nothing matters, or that nothing can be done because the future is written. I don’t believe we can prevent collapse but we can choose how it is met. We can try to meet it together or alone. We can try to build community or hoard and fortify. We can attempt to starve the wetiko or feed it. There is some limited agency in how we meet the uncertainty of the future.
And while some would argue otherwise, I believe that the end of our global, industrial civilisation and its myriad of complex societies is not the end of the world. It will be the end of the world that has been constructed with cheap hydrocarbons, pursuit of infinite growth, and the idea of a separate self. But what comes next is not written in stone. It is not predetermined but will be shaped by what we do with the time we have. Do we build communities and cultivate relationships? Do we learn the skills necessary to live without modern conveniences? Do we give new meaning to our lives in a world that will be significantly different than it is currently?
These are not solutions to our predicament but ways of living in a new world. Of being human during collapse and afterwards.
The Three Lenses
I will be viewing our predicament through three primary lenses.
The first will be that of the outer mechanics; the physical and biological laws and principles that govern complex systems. Thermodynamics. Ecological overshoot. Complexity theory. These are the rules of the game that are unbreakable and don’t care about human politics, economics, hopes, or fears. They just are, and they are informing us with increasing clarity that our game is almost finished; in fact, they’re in the process of clearing the gameboard, most just haven’t noticed yet.
I will begin with the science of physics and its laws of thermodynamics. The law of entropy. The one-time cache of easy-to-retrieve hydrocarbons. The declining energy return on investments. I will examine why our species is in overshoot, consuming more of its resources than our finite planet can provide, and why such a situation cannot continue much longer. I will explore the various biogeophysical limits (planetary boundaries) that lay out the safe operating space for our species and how many of them we’ve already broached.
I am also going to discuss the arithmetic of the Olduvai theory, which at its core is about the ratio of energy to population, the peak of this around 1979, and asks questions about what occurs once this ratio begins its irreversible decline. This is a diagnostic tool as opposed to a prophecy and attempts to see our civilisational trajectory in a manner quite different from our sociopolitical and economic models which are designed to ignore most alternate worldviews.
Our inner drivers follow. I will examine the psychological and sociocultural forces that seem to keep us running towards the cliff edge ahead.
This is where the concept of wetiko enters my story. Some Indigenous peoples refer to wetiko as the cannibal spirit that consumes life to feed itself but is never satisfied. Greed. Domination. Endless consumption. These come together in the form of a collective psychosis that cannibalises civilisation. It is a mind-virus that refuses to allow us to stop, even when we realise we should. I have found the concept useful as it names something that materialist frameworks have found difficult to capture; that is, the manner in which humanity’s seemingly collective appetite for more operates as a kind of possession or compulsion that works below the level of rational choice. It seems to describe our behaviour relatively accurately, whether it is taken as a literal concept or a metaphor.
Wetiko does not sit alone as an inner driver, however. The Kubler-Ross stages that humans tend to go through in their grieving is another. From denial and anger through bargaining and depression to acceptance, we ride a roller coaster of emotions as we come to grips with being aware of the impending collapse of our complex societies and the lifestyles they have provided. The salvation narratives I’ve documented and critiqued are a textbook example of our bargaining. A somewhat twisted form of acceptance is our celebration of our impending doom, a form of surrender that avoids actual grieving. Many readers may recognise themselves or others in one of these stages and understanding where one gets stuck may help to explain why the same facts can produce very different interpretive responses in different people. Many never leave the first stage, denial, and a lot also get caught up in the bargaining stage. Regardless of the stage one exists within at any moment, the impact our emotions and thinking have on our continuing difficulty in seeing biophysical reality’s effect on our existence and future is monumental yet also remains unseen with both the cliff ahead and our pathway towards it invisible to us.
We are trapped by other mechanisms as well. There’s the progress trap described by Ronald Wright where every solution we implement in the face of a problem leads to additional problems, compounding our complexity and resource drawdown until society is forced to simplify. Then there’s our theology of growth that convinces us growth is only beneficial, more is better than less, and that limits are a heresy uttered by zealots. Our salvation mythologies mentioned above are another such mechanism, where we believe our ingenuity and technological prowess will save us. And, of course, there’s our denial tendencies that help us manage our terror and reduce our cognitive dissonance.
These inner aspects of the human condition contribute to our inability to stop what is for all intents and purposes a suicidal drive.
My third lens will address the question of how societal collapse unfolds. The possibilities here exist along a continuum. Will it be sudden, like over a cliff ledge as the Seneca Effect suggests, or gradual in a slowly unfurling and gentle descent? Will a single event mark the simplification, like a total power grid failure, or will it be a staircase-like longer unravelling marked by periodic chaos and loss of complexity. The answers to these don’t change the outcome; however, they may alter our preparations for what lies ahead–especially how we live during the changes to come.
Here I will explore Joseph Tainter’s thesis on diminishing returns on complexity and his argument that complex societies tend to collapse when they are at their most complex and demonstrate an intensification of this complexity just prior to their collapse. I will also look at the Seneca Cliff thinking that Ugo Bardi has popularised; that sudden fall that takes place when a complex system reaches a tipping point. The responses by the elite to all of this will also be examined for they, in their dominant decision-making roles, contribute significantly to the final blow-off top seen in the intensification of societal complexity just prior to its fall. And, finally, I will analyse the feedback loop that will define the coming decades: the cascading and colliding crises of famine, war, resource depletion, and planetary boundary broaching.
A Note on Controversy and Tone
Depending on one’s beliefs, some of what follows will be controversial. It may challenge your thinking and cause some cognitive dissonance.
For example, if you believe in “green” growth, you may find my claim that capitalism is structurally incapable of reform problematic. If you prefer material explanations to spiritual ones, you may find my use of wetiko as an explanatory mechanism overly mystical. If you hold that hope is a necessary feeling to underpin action, you may not agree with my argument that certain forms of hope function as denial and bargaining. My claim that collapse is inevitable may be dismissed by you if you believe human ingenuity and innovativeness always wins out in the end. Finally, for those that agree with the narratives surrounding the ability of renewable energy-harvesting technologies to free us from hydrocarbons and power our tools and conveniences forever and always, you may feel my argument that they are no solution but helping to exacerbate our predicament is problematic.
I don’t expect anyone who disagrees with my claims to accept them at face value but I do ask that you consider the evidence I will present, weigh it, and then see if it helps you understand the arguments I am making regarding what is happening to our species and planet. Our predicament and its significant complexity cannot be captured in a single framework. It’s not just a super-wicked problem we are confronted with, it is–as Erik Michaels reminds us–a predicament without solutions.
If you disagree with where I believe the arguments are stronger, positions better supported, and the evidence more compelling, so be it. I’ve tried to follow where the evidence leads, even when the conclusions it leads to are uncomfortable. Just please don’t dismiss the argument, engage with it.
As for tone, I’ve tried to be clear and honest with my analysis. There may even be a touch of humour in its presentation; a survival strategy that considers the absurdity of the situation as somewhat apropos for a species of clever apes burning its home for some short-sighted convenience in full awareness of its own stupidity. Laughing at ourselves is likely better than the alternative of drowning in despair because that can lead to paralysis, and that’s not what I want for any of us. So the tone, I hope, will be sober, urgent, and clear-eyed rather than solemn, hysterical, and cold. I don’t want to be condescending or provide false hope, especially for those just waking up to our biophysical realities. I want to be honest, forthright, and stress that we’re all in this together whether we want to be or not.
A Note on What Comes Next
I’m going to take us on a three-part journey through the traps we’ve built for ourselves.
The first will establish the Rules of the Game, the biophysical constraints that exist and are non-negotiable. This is our reality regardless of our politics or preferences. They simply are.
Next, I will explore the Human Traps. This will consist of an exploration of the structural, psychological, and sociocultural systems that help to explain why we can’t stop ourselves and our journey to collapse.
Third, I will discuss The Consequences and suggest where our journey will take us and the shape of it. It will argue that our future is not going to be the expected continuation of our growth trajectory that so many believe in.
I will offer a way of confronting this inevitability in my Conclusion: What Now? closing. It will not be a solution or policy proposal; it will suggest a way of remaining human in the face of our unravelling.
A Final Word Before We Begin
Pre/history shows overwhelmingly that our species is remarkably adaptive, and that societies and communities have demonstrated resilience in the face of chaos and decline, with some hanging on for centuries before their final simplification. During any such fall, meaning can be found and the end of one world is not the end of all worlds.
This user’s manual, as it were, is my personal attempt to make some sense out of what is happening. I write and share it as a form of catharsis and to help me (and hopefully others) understand better our predicament. It’s an attempt to face the predator that is wetiko and no longer feed it. I offer it to you, the reader, in a similar spirit. Not as a solution, prophecy, or comforting tale, but as a guide for the path we are all walking upon. Perhaps we can find some comfort during the trek through the presence of others who can see the leaf-covered roots and holes on the trail as some of us can.
So, let’s begin our look at the cliff directly ahead…
Special Offer
If you have made it to the end of this Contemplation, I have an offer for you. Send me an email at olduvaitrilogy@gmail.com requesting a copy of Part 1 of my trilogy and I’ll fire off a PDF of it to you for your “fictional” reading pleasure. If you like the beginning of the tale, please consider ordering the trilogy here: Purchase Book(s) — Olduvai.ca.
What is going to be my standard WARNING/ADVICE going forward and that I have reiterated in various ways before this:
Only time will tell how this all unfolds but there’s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst by ‘collapsing now to avoid the rush’ and pursuing self-sufficiency. By this I mean removing as many dependencies on the Matrix as is possible and making do, locally. And if one can do this without negative impacts upon our fragile ecosystems or do so while creating more resilient ecosystems, all the better.
Building community (maybe even just household) resilience to as high a level as possible seems prudent given the uncertainties of an unpredictable future. There’s no guarantee it will ensure ‘recovery’ after a significant societal stressor/shock but it should increase the probability of it and that, perhaps, is all we can ‘hope’ for from its pursuit.
If you have arrived here and get something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my “fictional” novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website or the link below — the “profits” of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).
Attempting a new payment system as I am contemplating shutting down my site in the future (given the ever-increasing costs to keep it running).
If you are interested in purchasing any of the 3 books individually or the trilogy, please try the link below indicating which book(s) you are purchasing.
Costs (Canadian dollars):
Book 1: $2.99
Book 2: $3.89
Book 3: $3.89
Trilogy: $9.99
Feel free to throw in a “tip” on top of the base cost if you wish; perhaps by paying in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian. Every few cents/dollars helps…
https://paypal.me/olduvaitrilogy?country.x=CA&locale.x=en_US
If you do not hear from me within 48 hours or you are having trouble with the system, please email me: olduvaitrilogy@gmail.com.
You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially William Catton’s Overshoot and Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies: see here.