I thought I would try something a little different in this Contemplation as I work on reading and summarising a chapter from a monograph–Peak Oil, Economic Growth, and Wildlife Conservation. Today’s Contemplation is a Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence-generated summary of three specific questions pertaining to the longevity of ‘empires’, what causes complex societies to ‘collapse’, and what role resource finiteness would play in the longevity of a complex society.
My limited understanding of these computer programmes is that they are exposed to vast datasets of information and then collate this in a summary directed at the query posed. Based upon my personal reading and understanding of the topics I inquired about, the summarised answers below provide a very good synopsis and great starting point for anyone interested in exploring them.
As an aside, I have to wonder how influencing mainstream narratives (something our ruling elite are very good at via numerous avenues) impacts the datasets such programmes depend upon, leading to less-than-accurate summaries/answers to many questions and especially in the sociopolitical and socioeconomic realms–the two areas I would argue that the elite are most interested in ‘managing’ beliefs/perceptions about. But even within areas where the ruling elite may have little skin-in-the-game, and depending upon the prevalent paradigm of the moment, AI-generated responses can simply result in further echoing of the ideas/worldview that are dominant without much critical or outside-the-box thinking involved.
As an example of this is the answer provided to the final question where the impact of finite resources on the longevity of a complex society is proposed to be addressed via increased technological innovation–especially the adoption of ‘renewable’ energy products, given the recognition that our societies are heavily dependent upon hydrocarbons. As I and a few others argue, an increase in mass-produced, complex industrial technologies exacerbates the predicaments we face and are not in any way a ‘solution’. The mainstream zeitgeist, however, is and will probably continue to be that human ingenuity and our technological prowess can address and solve anything that comes our way. There is, after all, a lot of wealth to be made through the pursuit of these technologies and attempting to sustain the unsustainable so it’s important to get that story out and about–repeatedly–and accepted without much in the way of questioning or critical thought.
Our world ‘leaders’ are, if nothing else, fairly consistent in their machinations to ensure they continue to draw revenue streams through whatever means they can control, expand, and/or leverage. And the majority of people outside of the ruling class would prefer to continue and/or improve upon our business-as-usual trajectory rather than think about a less-than-appealing alternative. In fact, my personal experience suggests that the overwhelming majority of people don’t even think about these issues to any degree. But, yeah, let’s put all our eggs in the basket of ecologically-destructive, mass-produced industrial technologies that humanity is so fantastic at spitting out and slap ourselves on the back for our brilliance–Wise Human indeed!
Anyways, without further ado here are the responses I received on my three questions.
How long do empires tend to last?
The lifespan of empires can vary widely depending on numerous factors, including their political structure, economic stability, military power, cultural cohesion, and external pressures. Historically, empires have lasted anywhere from a few decades to several centuries. Here are some examples:
1. Short-lived Empires:
– The Mongol Empire (1206–1368): Lasted about 162 years at its peak, though its fragmentation began earlier.
– The First French Empire (1804–1814/1815): Lasted about 10 years under Napoleon Bonaparte.
2. Medium-lived Empires:
– The Aztec Empire (1428–1521): Lasted about 93 years before falling to Spanish conquistadors.
– The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922): Lasted about 623 years, though its peak power declined significantly after the 17th century.
3. Long-lived Empires:
– The Roman Empire (27 BCE–476 CE in the West, and until 1453 CE in the East): The Western Roman Empire lasted about 500 years, while the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire endured for nearly 1,500 years.
– The Chinese Empires (various dynasties): Some, like the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) or the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), lasted for centuries, with periods of fragmentation in between.
4. Factors Influencing Longevity:
– Strong Institutions: Empires with stable governance, legal systems, and administrative efficiency tend to last longer.
– Economic Prosperity: Wealth and trade networks can sustain an empire through challenges.
– Military Power: The ability to defend against external threats and maintain internal order is crucial.
– Cultural Cohesion: Shared identity, religion, or ideology can help unify diverse populations.
– Adaptability: Empires that adapt to changing circumstances (e.g., technological advancements, shifting trade routes) are more likely to endure.
On average, empires tend to last between 200 and 300 years, though this is a rough estimate. Many decline due to overexpansion, internal strife, economic decline, or external invasions.
What causes complex societies to collapse?
The collapse of complex societies is a multifaceted phenomenon that can result from a combination of internal and external factors. Historians, archaeologists, and sociologists have identified several recurring causes, often interrelated, that contribute to the decline and fall of complex societies. Here are some of the most significant factors:
1. Environmental Degradation and Resource Depletion
– Deforestation, soil erosion, and overfarming: These can lead to agricultural decline, food shortages, and famine.
– Water mismanagement: Overuse or poor management of water resources can cause droughts and desertification.
– Climate change: Natural shifts in climate (e.g., prolonged droughts, cooling periods) can destabilize societies reliant on specific environmental conditions.
– Example: The collapse of the Maya civilization has been linked to prolonged droughts and deforestation.
2. Economic Instability
– Overextension: Empires that expand too quickly may struggle to maintain control over distant territories, leading to economic strain.
– Resource inequality: Extreme wealth disparity can lead to social unrest and weaken the economic foundation of a society.
– Trade disruption: Loss of trade routes or economic partners can cripple a society’s economy.
– Example: The Roman Empire faced economic troubles due to overexpansion, inflation, and reliance on slave labor.
3. Political Instability and Governance Failure
– Corruption and inefficiency: Weak or corrupt leadership can undermine governance and public trust.
– Succession crises: Power struggles or unclear lines of succession can lead to civil wars or fragmentation.
– Overcentralization: Excessive reliance on a central authority can make a society vulnerable if that authority weakens.
– Example: The fall of the Western Roman Empire was exacerbated by political instability and ineffective leadership.
4. Social Unrest and Inequality
– Class conflict: Extreme inequality between elites and commoners can lead to rebellion or civil war.
– Loss of social cohesion: Divisions along ethnic, religious, or cultural lines can weaken societal unity.
– Example: The French Revolution was fueled by widespread inequality and social discontent.
5. External Pressures
– Invasions and warfare: External attacks or prolonged conflicts can overwhelm a society’s defenses.
– Migration pressures: Influxes of migrants or refugees can strain resources and destabilize societies.
– Example: The fall of the Western Roman Empire was hastened by invasions from Germanic tribes and the Huns.
6. Cultural and Ideological Decline
– Loss of shared identity: A decline in cultural or religious unity can erode societal cohesion.
– Resistance to change: Societies that fail to adapt to new ideas or technologies may stagnate and collapse.
– Example: The decline of the Byzantine Empire was partly due to cultural and religious divisions.
7. Epidemics and Disease
– Population decline: Pandemics can devastate populations, leading to labor shortages and economic collapse.
– Example: The Black Death in the 14th century contributed to the decline of feudal systems in Europe.
8. Technological and Military Stagnation
– Failure to innovate: Societies that fall behind in technological or military advancements may be overtaken by rivals.
– Example: The Aztec Empire was outmatched by Spanish conquistadors due to superior European technology.
9. Interconnected Crises (The “Perfect Storm”)
– Often, collapses result from a combination of the above factors rather than a single cause. For example:
– Environmental stress can lead to food shortages, which trigger social unrest and weaken the state, making it vulnerable to external invasions.
– Example: The Bronze Age Collapse (c. 1200 BCE) involved climate change, invasions, economic disruption, and political fragmentation.
Theories on Societal Collapse
– Joseph Tainter’s “Diminishing Returns of Complexity”: As societies grow more complex, the costs of maintaining that complexity (e.g., bureaucracy, infrastructure) eventually outweigh the benefits, leading to collapse.
– Jared Diamond’s “Five-Point Framework”: In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Diamond identifies environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, loss of trading partners, and societal responses to problems as key factors.
Conclusion
The collapse of complex societies is rarely due to a single cause but rather a combination of environmental, economic, political, social, and external factors. Understanding these dynamics can provide insights into the vulnerabilities of modern societies and the importance of resilience and adaptability.
How will the finiteness of resources impact the longevity of complex societies?
The finiteness of resources is a critical factor that can significantly impact the longevity of complex societies. Throughout history, the availability and management of resources—such as food, water, energy, and raw materials—have played a central role in the rise and fall of civilizations. In the modern era, the finite nature of resources poses unique challenges due to global interconnectedness, population growth, and increasing consumption. Here’s how resource limitations could affect the longevity of complex societies:
1. Resource Depletion
– Non-renewable resources: Fossil fuels, minerals, and metals are finite and will eventually run out or become prohibitively expensive to extract. Societies heavily reliant on these resources (e.g., for energy, manufacturing, or technology) may face economic and social instability as supplies dwindle.
– Renewable resources: Even renewable resources like fresh water, fertile soil, and forests can be overexploited, leading to scarcity and environmental degradation.
Impact: Resource depletion can lead to economic collapse, social unrest, and conflict over remaining supplies, undermining the stability of complex societies.
2. Energy Transition Challenges
– Fossil fuel dependence: Many societies rely on fossil fuels for energy, transportation, and industry. Transitioning to renewable energy sources (e.g., solar, wind) is essential but requires significant investment, infrastructure, and time.
– Energy return on investment (EROI): As finite resources become harder to extract, the energy required to obtain them increases, reducing the net energy available to society.
Impact: A poorly managed energy transition could lead to energy shortages, economic decline, and geopolitical tensions, threatening the stability of complex societies.
3. Food and Water Scarcity
– Agricultural limits: Soil degradation, water scarcity, and climate change can reduce agricultural productivity, leading to food shortages.
– Water stress: Overuse and pollution of freshwater resources can exacerbate water scarcity, particularly in arid regions.
Impact: Food and water shortages can trigger mass migration, social unrest, and conflict, destabilizing societies and straining global systems.
4. Economic Instability
– Resource-driven economies: Societies dependent on finite resources (e.g., oil-exporting nations) may face economic collapse as resources are depleted or demand shifts.
– Inflation and inequality: Scarcity of essential resources can drive up prices, exacerbating economic inequality and social tensions.
Impact: Economic instability can weaken governance, increase poverty, and lead to societal breakdown.
5. Technological and Innovation Limits
– Substitution challenges: While technology can mitigate some resource limitations (e.g., renewable energy, recycling), it may not fully replace finite resources or address all environmental impacts.
– Innovation bottlenecks: Developing and scaling new technologies requires time, investment, and resources, which may be constrained in a resource-scarce world.
Impact: Failure to innovate or adapt to resource constraints could lead to stagnation or decline in complex societies.
6. Environmental Degradation
– Pollution and waste: Overexploitation of resources often leads to environmental damage, such as pollution, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity.
– Climate change: Resource extraction and consumption contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, driving climate change and its associated risks (e.g., extreme weather, sea-level rise).
Impact: Environmental degradation can reduce the carrying capacity of ecosystems, making it harder for societies to sustain themselves.
7. Geopolitical Tensions and Conflict
– Resource competition: Scarcity of critical resources (e.g., water, oil, rare earth metals) can lead to geopolitical tensions and conflict between nations.
– Inequitable distribution: Resource-rich regions may face exploitation or intervention by external powers, while resource-poor regions may struggle to meet basic needs.
Impact: Resource-driven conflicts can destabilize regions, disrupt global trade, and threaten the longevity of complex societies.
8. Social and Cultural Responses
– Adaptation and resilience: Societies that prioritize sustainability, resource efficiency, and equitable distribution may be better equipped to handle resource limitations.
– Resistance to change: Cultural or political resistance to reducing consumption or adopting new technologies can hinder efforts to address resource scarcity.
Impact: Societal responses to resource constraints will play a key role in determining whether complex societies can adapt and endure.
Historical Precedents
– Collapse of the Roman Empire: Overexpansion, resource depletion (e.g., soil degradation), and economic instability contributed to its decline.
– Easter Island: Deforestation and overexploitation of resources led to societal collapse.
– Modern parallels: Current trends in resource depletion, climate change, and environmental degradation raise concerns about the sustainability of modern societies.
Strategies for Longevity
To mitigate the impact of finite resources and enhance the longevity of complex societies, the following strategies are essential:
1. Sustainable Resource Management: Prioritize conservation, recycling, and efficient use of resources.
2. Transition to Renewable Energy: Invest in renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
3. Technological Innovation: Develop technologies for resource efficiency, alternative materials, and environmental restoration.
4. Economic Diversification: Reduce reliance on resource-driven economies and promote sustainable industries.
5. Global Cooperation: Address resource scarcity and environmental challenges through international collaboration and equitable resource distribution.
6. Social Adaptation: Foster cultural and behavioral changes that prioritize sustainability and resilience.
Conclusion
The finiteness of resources poses a significant challenge to the longevity of complex societies. While resource limitations can lead to economic instability, environmental degradation, and conflict, proactive measures—such as sustainable resource management, technological innovation, and global cooperation—can help societies adapt and thrive. The ability to balance resource use with environmental and social needs will be critical in ensuring the long-term survival of complex societies in a resource-constrained world.
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…
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.
AND
Released September 30, 2024
It Bears Repeating: Best Of…Volume 2
A compilation of writers focused on the nexus of limits to growth, energy, and ecological overshoot.
With a Foreword by Erik Michaels and Afterword by Dr. Guy McPherson, authors include: Dr. Peter A Victor, George Tsakraklides, Charles Hugh Smith, Dr. Tony Povilitis, Jordan Perry, Matt Orsagh, Justin McAffee, Jack Lowe, The Honest Sorcerer, Fast Eddy, Will Falk, Dr. Ugo Bardi, and Steve Bull.
The document is not a guided narrative towards a singular or overarching message; except, perhaps, that we are in a predicament of our own making with a far more chaotic future ahead of us than most imagine–and most certainly than what mainstream media/politics would have us believe.
Click here to access the document as a PDF file, free to download.
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXLVIII–What Do Previous Experiments in Societal Complexity Suggest About ‘Managing’ Our Future
September 1, 2023 (original posting date)
Mexico (1988). Photo by author.
What Do Previous Experiments in Societal Complexity Suggest About ‘Managing’ Our Future
Viewing ‘degrowth’ through my archaeology/anthropology lens (and primarily via archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s thesis laid out in The Collapse of Complex Societies[1]) there are a number of societal factors that stymie, if not make impossible, the idealised ‘managed contraction’ advocates tend to market it as. Purposeful ‘simplification/decline’ has never been wantonly experienced for a complex society outside of short-term, imposed ‘austerity’ (e.g. wartime, when the chairs are rearranged to ‘support’ the military[2]). All ‘contractions/collapses’ appear to have been ‘imposed’ by systemic ‘forces’ beyond the scope and control of the people experiencing it.
First, there is the ruling caste of a large, complex society that is HIGHLY motivated to maintain its power/control, especially over the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide its revenue streams. The notion that any of this class of society would willingly give their privileges up for the benefit of society-at-large is naïve at best[3]. In cases of ‘collapse’, society’s power-brokers place the burden of ‘contraction’ upon the masses via currency devaluation, increased taxes, forever wars, increased totalitarianism, narrative management, etc.. They continue to ensure their slice of the pie by taking from the disadvantaged/non-influential masses. While I guess one could call this ‘managed’, it is ‘managed’ in a way that protects the elite and their privileged positions but continually leads to a degradation of the living standards for most[4]. Of course, since ‘collapse’ is invariably unstoppable, the ‘rulers’ are simply amongst the last to experience societal decline, and usually because the support systems that sustain society’s complexities (and, thus, their positions atop the power/wealth structures) have been weakened beyond repair as more and more citizens ‘opt out’ due to the costs to remain outweighing the perceived benefits. And once a tipping point of withdrawn citizen support is reached, collapse of complexity ensues.
Second, there is Tainter’s contention that it is primarily diminishing returns on investments in complexity (i.e., problem solving via increased sociopolitical complexity) that invariably leads to ‘collapse’ [5]. This occurs because humans tend to employ the easiest and cheapest ‘solutions’ when first addressing ‘problems’. Our ‘solutions’ not only intensify complexity (i.e., result in more ‘problems’ that require attention) but grow our material/resource requirements (especially energy) thus increasing the ‘cost’ of our problem-solving behaviours. As costs increase and more issues arise that require attention, we experience diminishing returns on our investments and are forced to direct increasing amounts of material resources towards our problem solving, eating into surpluses. Once surpluses are exhausted, everyday operating ‘costs’ begin to suffer and living standards for the majority begin to wane. A gradual decline in complexity ensues. Any unexpected stress surge can push society off the cliff towards a complete breakdown of societal complexity. Alternatively, it is simply the passage of time before things have broken down to a point when one could label the situation an example of ‘collapse’.
Third, Tainter’s thesis is basically economic in nature. As societal investments encounter the Law of Marginal Utility due to ever-increasing costs of problem solving and its associated complexity, society experiences declining living standards. Eventually, participants opt out of the arrangement (i.e., social ‘contract’) — usually by migrating — resulting in a withdrawal of the support/labour necessary to maintain the various complex systems. ‘Opting out’ in today’s world is more difficult as there are no more ‘New Worlds’ to exploit for their resources, nor seemingly endless reserves of fossil fuels to support humans living beyond the natural environmental carrying capacity — to say little about the loss of skills/knowledge to survive without the complex systems in place (particularly procurement of potable water and food) and the overloading of sinks and biodiversity loss that reduces the carrying capacity of an area. Leaving the workforce or ‘downsizing’ significantly seems to be how some are ’opting out’ given modern constraints.
Fourth, to offset our increasing experience with diminishing returns, especially as it pertains to energy, we have employed significant debt-/credit-based fiat currency expansion to increase our drawdown of important resources among other perceived ‘needs’ — just as past societies have accomplished via geopolitical expansion and/or currency debasement. In the modern iteration, this has resulted in our globalised and financialised, highly-complex economic system increasingly taking on a Ponzi-like nature. Such schemes require perpetual growth to prevent them from imploding, not only to deal with the increased debt of ‘borrowing/creating’ currency, but to expand the resource/energy base. Maintaining this approach, however, will and is bumping up against limits to what is possible. Infinite growth is not possible (except via magical thinking) on a finite planet.
Fifth, to sustain a society’s complexity as it bumps up against limits to expanding its problem-solving ability (particularly its finite resource requirements), surpluses are drawn upon as mentioned above in the second point. The drawdown of these surpluses puts society at greater risk of being incapable of reacting to a sudden stress surge that may expedite the ‘collapse’ of complexity. A true Seneca Cliff-type decline/simplification/unravelling/collapse that cannot be ‘managed’, regardless of wishes.
Sixth, Tainter raises the unprecedented aspect of today’s technological innovations, but they too are susceptible to the Law of Marginal Utility (diminishing returns). He stresses that using a new energy source to help fund continuing economic growth can help stave off, but not eliminate, declining marginal productivity. Perhaps more importantly, a new energy source may not help eliminate diminishing returns in other areas (e.g. agricultural production). And once diminishing returns sets in for a society, collapse requires merely the passage of time. New energy sources, however, do little to address the issues that arise from expanded technology use–particularly the finiteness of the materials required and the overloading of planetary sinks that occur from their extraction and processing (see more on this below).
Seventh, pre/historic evidence also demonstrates a peer polity competition trap where competing ‘states’ drive the pursuit of complexity (regardless of environmental and/or human costs) for fear of absorption by a competing state. In such situations, ever-increasing costs create ever-decreasing marginal returns that end in domination by one state, or collapse of all competing polities. Where no or an insufficient energy subsidy exists, collapse of the competing states occurs at about the same time.
Little to none of the above takes into consideration our current overarching predicament: ecological overshoot (and all of its symptom predicaments such as biodiversity loss, resource depletion, sink overloading, etc.).
Having significantly surpassed the natural environmental carrying capacity of our planet, we have strapped booster rockets to the issue of complex society ‘collapse’.
We have chosen to employ a debt-/credit-based economic system to more quickly extricate finite resources from the ground in order to meet current demands rather than significantly reduce stealing them from the future. We have created belief systems that human ingenuity and finite resource-based technologies are god-like in their abilities to alter the Laws of Thermodynamics (especially in regard to entropy) and biological principles such as overshoot.
It is my contention that no amount of purposeful contraction can alter the trajectory we are on. We might, at best, mitigate to some marginal degree the coming storm for small, local regions/communities. But we cannot halt the consequences that accompany overshoot.
There are many (most?) that will remain in denial about all of this. Our propensity to avoid anxiety-provoking thoughts guarantees it. Magical thinking, particularly in regard to human ingenuity and our technological prowess, will continue. We cannot help ourselves. By denying our biological nature and proclivities, we guarantee failure in ‘managing’ a ‘graceful’ fall from our elevated heights.
I would love to see homo sapiens extricate themselves and the planet from the ecological overshoot trap we have set for ourselves through our expansionary ‘successes’. I have next to no faith that we can escape, however, particularly on a global scale. Not only does the ‘average’ individual have little to no agency in any of this but adaptive systems become ever more complex as they grow requiring increasing resource inputs and becoming more fragile as a result.
Add to this growing complexity the fact that large, complex systems with their nonlinear feedback loops and emergent phenomena are, by their very nature, impossible to control. Every attempt to control/manipulate such systems invariably leads to more ‘problems’ and thus more ‘solutions’ leading to more complexity and further finite resource drawdown, sink overloading, biodiversity loss, etc.. And this says little about the sociopathic ruling caste whose primary motivation is to sustain current power/wealth structures regardless of human and environmental costs; or even if it results in thermonuclear war.
Given we cannot control complex systems, we also cannot predict them well (if at all) and thus we cannot forecast the future with any certainty. But there exist physical laws and limits, biological/evolutionary principles, and pre/historical examples/experiments that all point towards a future quite different from the optimistic ones painted by those who believe we have control over such things.
Yes, spread the message about ‘degrowth’. Encourage a managed contraction of the human experiment. But understand, we’re in a predicament without solutions and time is not on our side. Get through the grieving as quickly as you can and move on to some actions that will help to mitigate the inevitable consequences for your family/friends/local community. And, make as certain as you can that the actions do not exacerbate our predicament by feeding the monster that is continued growth.
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got 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…
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 Catton’s Overshoot and Tainter’s Collapse: see here.
It Bears Repeating: Best Of…Volume 1
A compilation of writers focused on the nexus of limits to growth, energy, and ecological overshoot.
With a Foreword and Afterword by Michael Dowd, authors include: Max Wilbert; Tim Watkins; Mike Stasse; Dr. Bill Rees; Dr. Tim Morgan; Rob Mielcarski; Dr. Simon Michaux; Erik Michaels; Just Collapse’s Tristan Sykes & Dr. Kate Booth; Kevin Hester; Alice Friedemann; David Casey; and, Steve Bull.
The document is not a guided narrative towards a singular or overarching message; except, perhaps, that we are in a predicament of our own making with a far more chaotic future ahead of us than most imagine–and most certainly than what mainstream media/politics would have us believe.
Click here to access the document as a PDF file, free to download.
[3] Although they constantly virtue-signal that this is exactly what they are doing with their policies and ‘investments’, such declarations actually serve to help legitimise their power/control.
[4] Remember George Carlin’s warning: “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it!” See:
[5] ‘Collapse’, here, is defined as a loss/decline of sociopolitical complexity that results in other systems failing, such as the rule of law, economic interactions such as energy-averaging systems/trade, art and literature, etc..
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXC–Beyond Collapse: Climate Change and Causality During the Middle Holocene Climatic Transition
Tulum, Mexico. (1986) Photo by author.
This Contemplation comments upon and summarises a paper that considers prehistorical periods of rapid climatic transition and societal-level responses to the resulting environmental changes. I thought it interesting to review this research article given the significant concern many have regarding how humans may respond to current/future climatic shifts and the changes that result from them.
Many variables of significant, possibly existential, importance to human existence will increasingly be impacted by a changing climate, including but not limited to: biodiversity loss, extreme weather events, disease propagation, altered geographies, and resource availability and distribution–especially water and arable land. Whether our species, or any for that matter, will or can adapt to these changes in either the short-term or long-term is unknown–there exist diametrically-opposed views on this, from widespread extinction of all life to a ‘clean’ and ‘sustainable’ techno-utopia in balance with nature.
The research article in question looks at the changes that took place during the Middle Holocene Climatic Transition (MHCT), a glacial-interglacial transition period of rapid climate change, and how human societies of the time responded to the resulting environmental shifts.
As the author makes clear the comparison is not perfect, primarily because of the differences in the nature of the climate shifts and the human population density and distribution dissimilarities. However, he also points out that it is somewhat analogous in that complex societies were in existence during the changes, so we can draw some parallels based upon how past societies responded to unpredictable and chaotic changes in their environment.
What’s interesting to me is that the evidence can be interpreted as hopeful for some form of successful adaptation as our world changes due to a shifting climate. While some groups were forced to disperse and others perished in the face of a rapidly changing climate, the emergence of urbanisation and complex societies as a result of adapting to environmental shifts occurred as well. There are, of course, significant caveats that suggest modern-day complex societies will not be so lucky as to adapt to changes in anything like their present form and/or population densities.
There exist a number of impediments for our present-day societies and their adaptability to environmental shifts in comparison to those of the past. Below are three of these.
First, there is a very large segment of today’s global population that is enormously reliant upon industrial technologies for maintenance of a vast array of complexities, particularly food production and distribution. These technologies, in turn, are dependent upon a finite energy resource (hydrocarbons) up and down their supply chains. Disruptions in the complex array of supports to maintain our energy-intensive technologies put many modern human populations at risk.
Second, there are few resource-rich regions left on the planet for human societies to expand into and exploit relative to the past. The hyper-charged population densities and distribution we currently have (thanks to the significant surplus energy of easy-to-access hydrocarbons) make the successful adaptations that past societies exhibited far less likely–to say little about the increasing loss of fertility of much of our arable land due to excessive use of hydrocarbon-based chemicals upon them. There was much greater capacity for growth during shifts in the past with smaller population densities, more sparsely distributed settlements, minimal complexity, and resource abundance. The latitude available for past societies to adapt to environmental changes is gone for 8+ billion (and growing) of our species. Add to this the reality of having encountered diminishing returns on investments whereby greater and greater resources (especially energy) must be used to meet current needs, let alone growing ones.
Third, there exists for large swaths of our global population a general lack of skills and knowledge to survive without our energy-intensive technologies and various logistical/organisational systems. In the past, the vast majority of people were involved in food production and could support themselves and/or their families without complex societal systems sustaining them. That is certainly not the case today with few within our populations capable of providing anyone with the basic necessities of existence–potable water, food, and/or regional shelter needs.
Overall, things do not bode well for modern-day societies to rely upon the adaptations of the past that proved successful in the face of rapid environmental changes.
I, personally, am as confident as I can be that ‘collapse’ of our global, industrialised complex societies is in our future–many argue that it has already begun. I am unsure, however, of what arises in terms of human existence from this predicament; if anything given the degree to which we appear to be in ecological overshoot.
With our propensity to double down on our pursuit of technological innovation and economic growth in the face of perceived problems (rather than pursuing a simplification and contraction of our lifestyles) we are exacerbating our predicaments and creating a situation whereby the likelihood of adapting to changing conditions is being made significantly more difficult and unlikely by the day.
Only time, of course, will tell what the future holds for humanity…
Below is a summary of the research article. The longer summary notes can be found here.
Beyond Collapse: Climate Change and Causality During the Middle Holocene Climatic Transition, 6400-5000 Years Before Present
Nick Brooks Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 2013 Vol. 112, No. 2, 93-104 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00167223.2012.741881
Our changing climate is expected to mirror the shift witnessed during glacial-interglacial transitions, only more quickly and possibly reach global average temperatures not seen for millions of years. While changes to our oceanic and atmospheric currents are not precisely known, previous transitions do suggest that the availability and distribution of key resources (especially water and arable land) will be altered and likely affect human societies.
Analogues exist from the past 10,000 years, when cyclical climate disruptions have occurred every 1000-2000 years lasting 100-300 years. These are characterised by cooling at high and middle latitudes, and increased aridity at lower ones–especially in the northern hemisphere. These changes have been linked to warfare and population collapse, and the collapse of several complex societies (e.g., Arkkadian, Egyptian Old Kingdom, Neolithic cultures, and others).
The Middle Holocene Climatic Transition (MHCT, 6500-5000 BP) witnessed a significant environmental reorganisation due to an acceleration of cooling and increasing aridity trends. Some regions experienced sudden arid conditions, others glacial advance. Monsoons weakened with rains moving southward, and El Niño reappeared after a prolonged absence. The global climate system appears to have been impacted by summer solar radiation weakening outside of the tropics due to a rotational axis shift.
The present day is different from the MHCT in several ways: warming vs. cooling, increasing greenhouse gasses vs. a solar insolation shift, and retreat of ice and snow vs. glacial advance. The distribution of changes will be different as well and the present day may experience greater aridity, especially outside of monsoon regions.
The societal contexts are very different (e.g., population densities and distribution) but also similar (e.g., large urban centres and state-level societies with hierarchical structures and political institutions, as well as some small-scale agriculture and pastoralism).
All regions studied exhibited societal shifts that coincided with rapid climate shifts. In Mesopotamia, egalitarian village-level farming communities coalesced into a hierarchical culture and agricultural settlements were abandoned with the rise of urban centres. In Egypt, many migrated to the Nile River Valley, and in some areas cattle herding increased but in a mobile sense with populations seeking appropriate pastures due to an unpredictable environment. In the Indus Valley, pastoral societies arose with cyclical migration.
Migration patterns, livelihoods, and settlement and occupation patterns all changed in light of increased aridity. In particular, increasing aridity led to movement towards reliable water sources and/or arable lands, the rise of nomadic pastoralism in order to follow grazable pastures, and increasing exploitation of riparian environments (ecosystem along the edge of water bodies).
“Worsening environmental conditions may well have altered patterns of productivity, resulting in the abandonment of some areas, the agglomeration of populations in others, increased competition over resources, and widespread social disruption.” (p. 98)
Near the end of the MHCT (5300-5000 BP) some cultures in Mesopotamia (e.g., Uruk) collapsed with nomadic pastoralism arising, while some areas witnessed dispersed populations coming together to form urban centres (e.g., Uruk-Warka). Resource competition between protostates in Egypt resulted in a larger, complex society centred on the Nile River Valley, while some regions experienced settlement abandonment and populations perishing. A shift towards greater transhumance (seasonal pastoralism) in the Indus Valley led to the emergence of urbanisation. Migration towards the Yellow River in China witnessed a shift from early complex societies to larger and more complex ones. The river valleys of coastal Peru also saw the emergence of urbanisation as people gathered in such resource-rich locations.
Aridification appears to have impacted migrations towards reliable water sources, where many gathered and resulted in urbanisation and complexity, including social stratification, class/caste systems, and formal political power.
The archaeological evidence points to some complex societies collapsing as a result of environmental changes due to a changing climate. On the other hand, there is also evidence that some complex societies appear to have emerged as a consequence of climate change. It would appear that different contexts had different, even the opposite, outcome when climate changes occurred in the past.
During the MHCT some regions experienced sudden arid conditions, others glacial advance. Monsoons weakened with rains moving south, El Niño reappeared after a prolonged absence. Summer solar radiation weakening outside the tropics due to a rotational axis shift that impacted the global climate system. The present day is different. Rather than cooling and glacial advances due to a solar insolation shift we are experiencing warming with snow and ice retreat due to greenhouse gasses.
The societal contexts are different in terms of population densities and distribution but similar in terms of large, urban centres and state-level societies with social hierarchies and political institutions along with some small-scale agriculture and pastoralism).
All regions studied exhibit societal shifts that coincide with rapid climate changes. In Mesopotamia, egalitarian village-level farming communities coalesced into a hierarchical culture. Migrations to the Nile River Valley in Egypt occurred alongside a rise in nomadic pastoralism that required movement to follow suitable pastures during a time of unpredictable environments. Meanwhile, in the Indus Valley, pastoral societies emerged defined by seasonal migrations.
Depending where one looks, there is strong evidence to support the interpretation that rapid environmental change led to societal-level changes. Migration patterns, livelihoods, and settlement and occupation patterns all changed in light of increasing aridity. In particular, increasing aridity led to: movement towards reliable water sources and arable lands; increasing nomadic pastoralism to follow suitable pasturelands; increasing exploitation of riparian environments; and the abandonment of settlements.
“The evidence from the Middle Holocene discussed here suggests that rapid climate change played a role in the emergence of complex societies, as well as their collapse, and that similar climatic stresses might result in very different outcomes in different societal contexts.” (p. 100)
In some instances, climate change overwhelmed other drivers of societal change and adaptation was not possible. Depending upon the circumstances, however, other societies adapted.
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got 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…
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 Catton’s Overshoot and Tainter’s Collapse: see here.
Released September 30, 2024
It Bears Repeating: Best Of…Volume 2
A compilation of writers focused on the nexus of limits to growth, energy, and ecological overshoot.
With a Foreword by Erik Michaels and Afterword by Dr. Guy McPherson, authors include: Dr. Peter A Victor, George Tsakraklides, Charles Hugh Smith, Dr. Tony Povilitis, Jordan Perry, Matt Orsagh, Justin McAffee, Jack Lowe, The Honest Sorcerer, Fast Eddy, Will Falk, Dr. Ugo Bardi, and Steve Bull.
The document is not a guided narrative towards a singular or overarching message; except, perhaps, that we are in a predicament of our own making with a far more chaotic future ahead of us than most imagine–and most certainly than what mainstream media/politics would have us believe.
Click here to access the document as a PDF file, free to download.
Grieving: A Natural Response To Recognition Of Growth Limits
Denial, anger, bargaining, and depression in the face of grievous reality is everywhere; and we all do it to some extent. Some move through the stages more quickly while others remain bogged down in one or more. And it’s not uncommon to bounce back and forth between different stages.
We don’t want to accept the unpalatable, particularly our (and society’s) mortality. Grappling with such thoughts can be debilitating, both physically and psychologically. I know my first few years of reflecting upon our various predicaments as I travelled down the rabbit’s hole that is Peak Oil was most difficult. My anxiety was, at times, through the roof; but being who I am much of that was channelled into physical activities, particularly constructing some elaborate food gardens.
Psychologists are fairly certain that moving to the final stage of grieving — acceptance — and engaging with reality in a more forthright manner (even when it is not what we wish or want) allows one to deal with the emotions in a way that helps us to validate them in a healthier way. But this is so difficult to do when we are grieving. Extremely difficult.
Accepting, for example, that our complex society and its relatively high living standards (thanks primarily to our leveraging of a one-time cache of photosynthetic-created energy) have an expiration date is a contemplation the vast, vast majority of us do not want to consider. We desperately fight to keep the negative thoughts out of our minds, thereby impacting the belief systems through which we interpret the world — its past, present, and future.
In a world that has experienced significant problem-solving success due to our tool-making abilities and this finite supply of dense and transportable energy reserves, it’s exceedingly difficult to imagine this trend of ‘progress’ is coming to an end. We subsequently weave a variety of comforting narratives to avoid such a disheartening reality.
“Complex technologies and human ingenuity will save us from any problem we encounter, including (place your favourite one here)” is one common narrative…except inductive reasoning/logic of this nature does not always work. Continual observations by the turkey of the farmer have provided nothing but overwhelming evidence and positive reinforcement that the farmer is a beneficent and thoughtful caregiver; right up until the day before Thanksgiving and the trip behind the barn to the killing cone, knife in hand.
Confronting the blinders imposed upon us by these comforting narratives allows us to view our world and reality differently, and very much more accurately in my opinion. Not perfectly, but more reflective of the limits existence upon a finite world brings to a biological species not very much different from all the others on this planet — except perhaps for its tool-making skills and denial of reality.
Alas very, very few want to do this. We would rather remain comfortable in our beliefs that humanity is not limited by its physical environment and stands outside Nature. To paraphrase Nietzsche: we don’t want exposure to reality because that destroys our illusions.
One such illusion among others that I’ve confronted recently is the belief that growth (be in economic or population) is not only inevitable but purely beneficial. It has been driving a significant construction ‘boom’ in my province and more specifically my town for a number of years. I’ve written about this before but I continue to see some rather misguided but quite common beliefs dominating the discussion among locals.
The following thoughts are what bubbled up in my mind as I reflected upon these conversations and what the significant majority of my fellow Ontarians appear to believe.
We need to reject the mythos that growth (especially economic but also population) is always and forever a good/beneficial policy path. It is not. Not only are the very real negative environmental/ecological consequences ignored or rationalized away in such a story, but the limits of what is possible and social problems that arise from it mostly discounted/minimized.
In addition, the tendency to assume such growth is inevitable completely overlooks the fact that it is a sociopolitical/socioeconomic policy choice, not a predestined path. We can stop or reverse it if we so choose.
Finally, little if any attention is paid to the reason(s) our ruling elite cheerlead growth. It is not for the virtue-signalling reasons they shout and market repeatedly. It is about sustaining a Ponzi-type economic system that supports status quo power and wealth structures. It is profit and prestige motivated. It must always be remembered that the primary motivation of our ruling caste is the control/expansion of the wealth-generating/-extracting systems that provide their revenue streams and thus positions of power and prestige. All other considerations are secondary/tertiary and ultimately are leveraged to meet their primary one.
The world is a complex nexus of geography, geology, biology, physics, and chemistry. And the stories told by our ‘leaders’ mostly ignore (or rationalize away) the physical realities of these fundamental sciences in favour of sociocultural myths that reinforce the idea that humans stand outside Nature — and their positions in our societies.
Significantly exponential credit-/debt-based fiat currency growth (thanks to the private financial institutions creating it from thin air and charging interest for its use in order to garner obscene profits, and which is what is feeding all this) collides catastrophically with the realities of existence upon a finite planet and its physical limits.
Given interest-bearing fiat is a claim/lien upon future resources — that we have encountered significant diminishing returns upon — and that we are several quadrillion dollars already in hawk, the writing is on the wall that we are totally and completely fubar. What is unsustainable cannot be sustained; no matter how much money we create. All we are succeeding in doing is stealing resources from the future and ensuring our planetary sinks are beyond repair.
The best option left is to prepare locally for the impending breakdown of the various complex systems that we have grown dependent upon, particularly the procurement of potable water, food production, and regional shelter needs. In addition, we should be degrowing our regions/communities, not making the situation even more dire and compounding its effects by continuing to chase growth — no matter what the profiteers from this perpetual-growth strategy are repeatedly telling us.
What I did say on one of the FB posts to try and keep it relatively succinct and simple:
Infinite growth on a planet with finite resources already encountering diminishing returns and using trillions of dollars of debt-/credit-based ‘money’ to pull them from the future. What could possibly go wrong? We are travelling in exactly the opposite direction of where we should be heading.
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got 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 — 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). Encouraging others to read my work is also much appreciated.
In Part 1, I argue that energy underpins everything, including human complex societies. In Part 2, I suggest that the increasing need for diminishing resources, especially finite or limited ‘renewable’ ones, invariably leads to geopolitical tension between competing polities. Part 3 further posits that this geopolitical competition creates internal societal stresses that are met with rising authoritarianism and attempts at sociobehavioural control of domestic populations by the ruling elite.
Economic manipulation — mostly through the financial/monetary systems of a society, that the ruling caste controls — is part and parcel of addressing the societal stresses that arise as things become more complex (as a result of the problem-solving aspects of a society), competition with other polities increases, resources become more dear, and control of the population takes on greater urgency.
All of the activities to sustain a society require resources, primarily energy but also material ones whose retrieval and processing require energy of some nature. Any non-renewable resource, but also limited renewable ones, must be acquired to not only maintain human life (i.e., procurement of potable water, food production, regional shelter needs) but to support any and all activities — be they physical- or service-based.
The various production and resource-allocation/distribution systems are what constitute an economic system[1]. While there are differing opinions about the number and variety of economic systems, the common thread tends to be that it is a means of distributing goods/services to the members of a group/society.
Economic anthropology[2] for the most part is the study of the mechanism of exchange within a human society, be it a more ‘simple’ band or ‘complex’ state.
In less complex societies where little to no division of labour or occupational differentiation exists and production surpluses are minimal to non-existent, economic activities tend to take place within a framework of reciprocal exchange[3]. I will provide you with some of my current surplus knowing that at some point in the future you will reciprocate this behaviour. Relationships in such groups are primarily impacted by kinship ties and a sense of reciprocal obligation, and not economic ones as occurs in larger, more complex societies.
A complex society[4] tends to have a more complicated/multi-layered economic system, the basis of which is a financial/monetary system[5] that likely came into existence as a population exceeded Dunbar’s number[6] and as a means of helping to track the increasing number of reciprocal obligations that arose[7]. The ruling caste of a society tends to control the monetary/financial systems and evidence strongly suggests that they manipulate them, as they tend to with everything they touch, to their advantage in order to meet their primary goal: the control/expansion of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and thus positions of power and prestige.
While there is much written about the shift from a system of reciprocity-based[8] exchange to one of credit-/debt-based fiat currency[9], it is without doubt that the implementation of a fiat money system opened the door to the possibility of significant manipulation by those who control it [10]. I say significant because even with a commodity-based currency (e.g., precious metals), manipulation (i.e., debasement, rehypothecation) has been common[11].
Joseph Tainter’s thesis in The Collapse of Complex Societies[12] is basically based upon economics. He posits that as a problem-solving organisation, a society endeavours to solve the problems that arise in the course of meeting needs. These problems are addressed via organisational adaptations but also very much through material acquisition and redistribution. This is accomplished in the most economically-efficient way by accessing the easiest- and cheapest-to-retrieve resources first and foremost. This provides the highest energy-return-on-energy-invested[13].
Eventually, however, as a society’s demands/requirements increase due to growth and increasing complexity, the harder- and more-expensive-to-retrieve resources must be pursued. This results in diminishing returns[14] on the energy/resource investments made and the surpluses that existed during the early days are whittled away until eventually a society encounters a point where more and more people opt out of supporting the various systems as they are having to invest greater and greater amounts of personal energy/resources but getting back fewer and fewer benefits.
Diminishing returns eat into surpluses in order to maintain/expand complexities. With falling surpluses, there is less room for a government elite to fund their various projects, be they military expansion and/or legitimisation activities to assert domestic control — to say little of the wealth directed towards maintaining the elite’s living standards. One of the approaches by the ruling caste to offset the negative consequences of diminishing returns and deterioration of societal surpluses is through a manipulation of the economic system. Perhaps the primary means of such manipulation is to debase the currency with the intent to make it ‘go further’ and ensure the elite maintain/expand their portion of a shrinking pie. If this is done at a relatively slow pace, very few if any of the populace take note of the impacts — but they are there nonetheless.
One of the best documented and analysed instances of such manipulation has been during the history of the Roman Empire, where debasement of the Roman currency over time has been observed. This manipulation had many negative societal impacts and was one of the many contributing factors leading to the empire’s eventual collapse according to a number of analysts/historians[15].
Of course, such ‘money creation/printing’ invariably results in price inflation — and many times to hyperinflation — as more currency is chasing the same or more slowly expanding amount of goods/services[16]. This price inflation/currency debasement has a more deleterious impact upon the masses than it does those closest to the monetary creation/distribution system. In particular, consider the Cantillon Effect[17] where the ruling caste/insiders who first have access to the ‘newly-minted currency’ can use it prior to inflationary impacts[18]. But is also benefits the state in other ways, particularly the ability to ‘hide’ taxes within it[19] and allowing debtors (government being amongst if not the largest) to pay off debts more easily[20].
There have been a number of examples of more recent currency debasements, some hidden (i.e., coordinated efforts by numerous central banks to debase their currencies in unison[21]) and some quite obvious[22]. For the current world’s primary reserve currency (the U.S. dollar), there has been the gold confiscation during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency[23], President Richard Nixon’s abrogation of the Bretton Woods Agreement[24], and, most recently, the phenomenon referred to as Quantitative Easing[25].
It’s not simply an exponential increase in the physical stock of ‘money’ that contributes to currency debasement and it negative impacts since government-minted currency makes up only a small fraction of the money creation, but it is the ever-expanding supply of credit-/debt-instruments. With the shift to a purely fiat currency free from any limitations to infinite expansion, the degree of manipulation possible is, well, limitless…except for one rather important impediment: physical resource finiteness.
So, as we circle back to the implications for our fundamental resource, energy, one must consider the observation that money/currency is when all is said and done a potential claim upon energy (even other resources require energy to be accessed and distributed). And, as energy analyst Art Berman notes in the tweet below, all the debt that we have created (currently several quadrillion at this juncture in time) is a “lien on future energy”.
And the conundrum we face as resource extraction and processing encounter diminishing returns — and the elite attempt to counter this with ever-increasing credit/debt instruments — is perhaps best captured by the late Michael Ruppert’s simple statement in the documentary Collapse: “Infinite money growth collides with finite energy.”
With an significant exponentially-increasing amount of claims upon finite resources we seem to be left with the options of attempting to pursue perpetual growth to meet these claims, a debt jubilee or reset of the systems, or monetary/financial/economic collapse. Any or all of these choices are likely to be attempted to some degree or another; in fact, some argue this is already and has been happening.
Basically our economic system has become a gargantuan and complex Ponzi scheme[26] established by our ruling elite and upon which are all involved and dependent upon.
As I commented on a Nate Hagens video post: Our economy is for all intents and purposes a gargantuan, complex Ponzi scheme that we are all a part of and dependent upon to a great if not complete extent. We all (for the most part) wish it to continue, including the ruling caste for their power and prestige comes from sitting atop the pyramid. Given our cognitive abilities and biases, we are adept at all sorts of denial and bargaining to see it otherwise, and/or to craft comforting narratives as to how it can be transitioned to something sustainable and equitable. But, as with all such complex systems — especially one dependent upon perpetual growth upon a finite planet — it is fragile and will, given enough time, eventually collapse. There is no other path at this particular point given how far into ecological overshoot we are. When, however, is the unanswerable question. Human complex societies can go on for a long time before it recognises that things have changed significantly enough to be considered ‘collapsed’…
Given gdp’s (a proxy for economic ‘growth’ and thus living standards — not a perfect proxy, of course, given the perpetual changes in calculation and increasing financialization of the economy) almost perfect correlation with energy production[27], and that our future is certainly going to be one of declining energy resources, there should be little doubt that falling living standards is before us — particularly for those in so-called ‘advanced’ economies.
Our ‘advanced’ economies have a long way to fall to reach the level of many emerging ones and it is likely that we will continue to see energy/resources ‘stolen’ from the periphery to support the core — perhaps allowing time for the core to mitigate their decline somewhat, or perhaps as a means to sustain the core for a short time more before a sudden, Seneca-style fall appears as a Black Swan event. Only time will tell…
Please note, I have done my best to wrap my head around and understand this topic/issue. This has been one of the more difficult subjects to write about with any sense of confidence (and I am certain I have misunderstood/misinterpreted a number of things). I am neither schooled in nor worked within the economic realm. Despite this paucity of ‘training’, I do believe the warning of Henry Ford when he paraphrased U.S. Congressman Charles Binderup that “It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning”.
Perhaps it has been purposely designed to be excessively complex and incomprehensible, or this labyrinthian structure is simply the epiphenomenon of the ongoing attempts to ‘solve’ societal issues as they arise over time; and then become leveraged by some (many? most? in leadership positions) to take advantage of loopholes that are in turn addressed through changes and legislation, that leads to further complexity and the cycle continues with the original purpose/solution becoming ever more complex and serpentine… Suffice it to say, the system(s) are increasingly becoming more convoluted and fragile as a result with nonlinear feedback loops and emergent phenomena arising leading to increasing risk since these can neither be predicted nor controlled — only reacted to after the fact.
My growing sense is that if some unforeseen Black Swan event or geopolitical ‘accident’ doesn’t bring on a rapid decline in social complexity, then it will likely be a ‘mistake’ in the economic realm as it tends to impact significantly the various subsystems of trade, transportation, communication, etc. that the global, industrialised world depends upon for everything from potable water procurement to regional shelter need construction to food production and distribution, and everything in between.
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got 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 — 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). Encouraging others to read my work is also much appreciated.
[18] Keep in mind that currency/money comes into existence in a number of ways; in our modern economic world it is primarily ‘created’ via the debt-/credit-disbursement activities of various financial institutions, especially the banking and shadow banking industry. It has been estimated that around 95% of our increasing money supply is created from nothing by financial institutions.
The following contemplation shares my thoughts/response to The Honest Sorcerer’s latest article (another very worthwhile read) regarding the diminishing returns being increasingly encountered by non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies (aka ‘renewables’) — and, yes, I am still plugging away at the Energy Series (Part 1; Part 2) I began as I organise a Food Gardening Guild within my local community, the response to which has been great!
The material and environmental ‘blindness’ to the situation you describe so well seems, at least for the masses, mostly due to attempts to reduce the stress of the cognitive dissonance created by the contradictory information we are exposed to — on the one hand we have increasing numbers of ecologists/biologists warning about the perils of our unchecked growth, finite resource use, and the increasingly negative consequences of these practices; while on the other hand, we have our politicians/industrialists/economists weaving stories about salvation and continued prosperity mostly via the shifting of energy sources and associated products (their motivations being self-serving and that I have written about repeatedly).
These denial-/bargaining-based narratives around a ‘green’ energy transition must be overcome to allow us to see/comprehend the fundamental predicament we have on our hands — ecological overshoot — before any ‘progress’ can be made towards mitigating some of the inevitable consequences we will increasingly encounter as various systems break down (both human-contrived and natural). Without seeing and understanding this predicament we will not, except perhaps in some few local and lucky ‘safe havens’, be able to mitigate at least some of the fallout of the coming storm.
The problem with predicaments of course is that they have no solutions, only consequences, and human complex societies tend to be problem-solving organisations (see archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s thesis in The Collapse of Complex Societies[1]). And this problem-solving orientation of large, complex societies has served humanity well during its last 10,000 or so years, so it seems next to impossible to counter this ingrained/enculturated belief that we can ‘solve’ any issue thrown down in front of us — most recently by throwing gargantuan amounts of fiat currency and/or complex technology at it. Toss on top of this long-term belief system the tendency of our ruling caste to leverage crises to their personal advantage and our dilemma becomes increasingly ‘wicked’; in fact, it becomes next to impossible to see clearly for a variety of reasons (mostly psychological in nature; e.g., deference to ‘authority’, groupthink, cognitive dissonance reduction).
Perhaps one aspect of the issue is that we tend to interpret the world partially through our perceived position on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs[2]. Or at least through a lens that impacts our perceived risk of needs. If we believe our more basic needs are at risk, we focus upon the risk factors located there (e.g., predicament of overshoot, resource scarcity, etc.) whereas those who are in denial of/blind to those risks are concentrating on the needs to be met further along the hierarchy (e.g., achievement, prestige, growth, play, etc.) and hold out that since their basic needs are being met satisfactorily (at least for now) they are not at risk and ‘higher’ needs should be one’s focus.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
As well, It seems next to impossible to counter ruling caste propaganda regarding a renewable energy-based transition to ‘sustainability’ in balance with ecological systems (all while pursuing growth), especially if they serve to instill hope (falsely-based in my opinion) and promises of continuing prosperity/security/etc.. And while some accuse ‘doubters’ of this grand narrative of being fossil fuel-industry shills, ‘doomers’, and/or — God forbid — ‘conspiracy theorists’, the truth of the matter appears to be that we are living during the time of a significant ‘phase transition’[3]. Such eras tend to be a time of competing narratives, confusion, grieving, and even despair for some.
Phase transitions are an interesting phenomenon, particularly in societal settings (an area I think I need to explore further for better understanding). There is growing research/academic study upon them, especially in the realm of transitioning to a ‘sustainable’ society[4]. It seems all of what I read in my brief look into the subject was oriented towards understanding how to shift societal ‘thinking’ towards the acceptance of a ‘sustainable’ future. There is even an entire journal dedicated to this[5]. Of course, the mainstream future being propagated by the ruling caste can be seen in much of this work: technological solutions and the concomitant uptake of new industrial products, and governing shifts that centralise power.
Regardless of the orientation of this research, the important thing to understand about phase transitions is how ‘quickly’ they can occur and how unpredictable they are. My introduction to the topic was during my research for my first novel when I came upon the topic of the Abelian sandpile model[6] and self-organised criticality[7]. Basically, the sandpile model shows why complex systems cannot be predicted and their ‘collapse’ can occur quickly, without warning.
Here are two passages from texts I read while researching for my ‘fictional’ writing that brought this to the forefront of my thinking:
First, from David G. Green’s 2014 book Of Ants and Men: The Unexpected Side Effects of Complexity in Society[8]:
The history of human civilization is, in large measure, a story of the human quest for control. After thousands of years of civilization, we think that we control the environment in which we live. We begin to think that we control the natural world. We might even fool ourselves into thinking that we control human nature. Modern society is built on the assumption of control. Yet, as the terror of the New York blackout shows, chaos all too easily bursts forth, reminding us how flimsy the illusion of control really is.
The root cause of much of the chaos that besets us is complexity, sheer complexity. From complex webs of interactions, chaos emerges. It is complexity that leads to unexpected problems, that turns order into chaos. As much as anything, the New York blackout, like most accidents and breakdowns, was a result of complexity. The power system did have backups and safeguards built in. But no one had anticipated that the network could suffer a cascade of failures of the kind that occurred. Nor could anyone anticipate the mayhem that would ensue when power failed on such a large scale for such a long period. This does not mean that the planners were incompetent; there are just so many possible ways that the system could behave, it is not possible to anticipate and plan for all contingencies.
Second, from a 2003 Corey Lofdahl paper, On the Confounding of Overshoot and Collapse Predictions by Economic Dynamics[9]:
The ability to predict when a system will ‘collapse’ is possible if it is understood when the underlying, foundational resources will exhaust themselves…The best that can be said…is that entropy decreases as the system moves towards its natural limit. The system becomes more likely to collapse, but it is impossible to say exactly when…the larger the resource base, the larger the overshoot and the more postponed the collapse…
[G]rowth can continue for far longer than seems possible to somebody who recognizes the systems’ eventual unsustainability and foresees limitation and collapse…The strongest statement that can be made is that as growth continues, the likelihood of system limitation and collapse increases. For the individual, the growth dynamic can prove so overwhelming that the possibility of collapse begins to seem unlikely and remote as naysayers are continually proven wrong…[However,] the actual likelihood of collapse grows ever larger, while for those under its thrall, the possibility of collapse grows ever more distant. When the system eventually collapses, it does so suddenly, dramatically, and unexpectedly.
The evidence is accumulating that a phase transition is fast approaching for the human species. When it occurs and how quickly it completes its shift is completely unpredictable, which is why it will be a Black Swan event[10] for the vast majority of people. The best preparation for this transition that cannot be avoided will not be to put the remainder of our diminishing resources — especially energy — towards more technologies and complexities, but the exact opposite. We need to be pursuing a ‘Great Simplification’[11], decommissioning those complexities that pose great risk for future generations, abandoning our cherished dreams of infinite growth on a finite planet, and accepting that the future is not going to be one as laid out by our ‘leaders’ and such fictional narratives as Star Trek — not even close.
Attempting to relocalise all those truly important resources (potable water procurement, food production, shelter needs for the local climate) as much as is possible is where I will be putting my energy and resources…as well as getting my community to try and do the same.
Energy Future, Part 2: Competing Polities and Geopolitical Stress
Part 2 of my multi-part contemplation on our energy future.
It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. -various attributions (e.g., Niels Bohr, Samuel Goldwyn, Yogi Berra, Mark Twain, Nostradamus)
As I argued in Part 1, energy underpins everything including human societal complexities. And the more energy humans have at their disposal, the greater the complexities and their concomitant ‘quality of life’ (not for all, but for those with greatest access/exposure)[1]. Being a ‘finite’ resource, the difficulty (impossibility?) in sustaining this ‘prosperity’ is self-evident — or at least it should be[2].
As walking, talking apes that communicate via stories we have weaved many tales of how we will sustain our complex living arrangements and the energy ‘slaves’ that make this possible[3]. In our quest to reduce anxiety-provoking thoughts we have, for the most part, ignored/denied the implications of dwindling resources — especially energy — and the implications of this for our future[4].
The more dominant and mainstream narratives argue we can or will transition to low-/zero-carbon technologies with nary a hiccup[5]. Our ingenuity guarantees this — or at least the snake oil salesmen marketing their wares and standing to profit handsomely from these tales do[6].
While I believe we will indeed attempt this (primarily because the ruling caste that guides/influences the narratives that we tend to believe in and allocates our society’s resources towards actions/efforts that helps to meet their overarching goal — the control/expansion of the wealth-/extraction-generating systems that provide their revenue streams and thus positions of power/prestige — will make it so), all it will likely accomplish (besides creating some comforting stories to share and huge profits for our already insanely wealthy few) will be the exacerbation of our fundamental predicament: ecological overshoot[7].
This means the speeding up of the drawdown of our resources (both ‘non-renewable’ and ‘renewable’) and the magnification of the concomitant ecological systems destruction[8] — more on this in a future post.
Speeding up the drawdown of resources (especially some that are only or primarily found in far-off locations from the sociopolitical centres that ‘require’ them to support their complexities, and ‘controlled’ by others) feeds into another unfortunate propensity of human complex societies: competition between polities.
In their detailed computer analyses of how a species that pursues growth on a finite planet might fair in a future of biogeochemical limitations, Meadows et al. highlight that two of the symptoms of overshooting the natural environmental carrying capacity are increasing conflicts over resources/sinks and declining respect for government as it uses its ‘power’ to maintain/increase the share of declining ‘wealth’ for the ruling elite — primarily by disproportionately allocating resources towards its military and industry, and away from the majority of its citizens[9].
And while his focus is upon pre/historical sociopolitical collapse, as opposed to ecological systems collapse (although ecological breakdown certainly has contributed to past societal collapses), archaeologist Joseph Tainter argues in his text The Collapse of Complex Societies that past collapses have occurred in two different political situations: a dominant state in isolation or as part of a cluster of peer polities[10]. With global travel and communication, the isolated dominant state has disappeared and only competitive peer polities now exist.
Such polities tend to get caught up in spiralling competitive investments as they seek to outmaneuver each other in their quest for control/influence and evolve greater complexity together. The polities caught up in this competition increasingly experience declining marginal returns on their investments in this strategy and must divert ever-increasing amounts of energy/resources leading to increasing economic weakness — especially for those outside of the ruling caste.
Withdrawing from this spiral or collapsing is not an option without risking being subsumed by a competitor. It is this trap of competition that will continue to drive the pursuit of complexity regardless of human/environmental costs and the impact upon dwindling resources. Incentives and economic reserves can support this situation for a lengthy period, as witnessed by the Roman and Mayan experiences where centuries of diminishing returns were endured, but not forever.
Ever-increasing costs and ever-decreasing marginal returns typify peer polities in competition. This ends in either domination by one state and a new energy subsidy, or collapse of all. As Tainter concludes:
“Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.” (p. 214)
It would seem one of the consequences of our diminished energy future will be increased tension between competing polities. And this competition will be primarily about energy/resource reserves. In fact, a number of analysts have predicted that the globe is heading for (or is already engaged in) significant geopolitical stressors, if not resource wars[11].
William Catton Jr. also discusses this trajectory towards increasing geopolitical tension in Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change[12]. He argues that we are fated to continue our self-destructive proclivities as long as we fail to understand them. While we have learned to be civil over the centuries, particularly since the leveraging of fossil fuels began and net surplus energy has led to an explosion of growth and ‘wealth’, the concomitant population irruption and the pressure compounded by technology have led to a degradation of these relationships and have become increasingly competitive.
Humans have reacted in pressure-increasing ways that has created a further diminishing of carrying capacity making our overshoot situation even worse. War-like rhetoric has increased as population pressures have. Wars are a useful leverage point for the ruling caste to target the ‘other’ as redundant, as opposed to ourselves who ‘deserve’ our energy-intensive way of life and the resources required to maintain it.
“In a habitat that was not growing any larger, the continuing increase in either our numbers, our activities, or our equipment would ultimately induce more and more antagonism. Our routine pursuit of legitimate aspirations as individual human beings, as breathing, eating, drinking, traveling, working, playing and reproducing organisms, would increasingly entail mutual interference.” (p. 224)
Here we have competition over finite resources that is leading to a quickening of the drawdown of these resources. These diminishing resources are being allocated to this spiralling pursuit of competition while the consequences — both economic deterioration for the majority of humans and ecological destruction of the planet — are ignored/denied and/or rationalised away by way of narratives that argue the very instruments of our demise (increasingly complex and resource-dependent technologies) must be pursued with all the expediency we can muster.
Our conundrum is becoming ever-more wicked in its complexity.
In Part 3 I will explore some of the issues for human societies of this increasing geopolitical competition.
[2] Fossil fuels are finite in the sense that the flow from the existing stocks in the form of extraction far, far exceeds their replenishment rate which is estimated at millions of years. See this.
The other day, as I was doing my daily reading, I came across climate scientists, debating whether or not we faced civilizational collapse. It was interesting, and I want to take a sec to give you my perspective, which is that of an economist slash top 50 thinkers guy, guru, whatever you want to call it etcetera.
Collapse. Think of a top spinning. How does it stop? It destabilizes. That’s the same model we should apply to us. So what destabilizes our human organizations, the largest of which is a civilization—leading to the loss of momentum, the breakdown, that ends in collapse?
And here, collapse isn’t a sci-fi film. Tomorrow, it’s the End of the World. The Roman Empire took centuries to fully collapse. The Soviet Union took decades to become what Russia is today. And so on. We’re talking about a process, that takes from decades to centuries, then, not a sudden sort of blockbuster film overnight melodrama. The tragedy of collapse is written across generations.
So. Destabilization. Long-term. What causes it?
The Future of the Economy
The economy. It’s the very first thing we should look at to think about this question.
And the economic picture before us is as clear as it is dire. What were we just discussing yesterday? How inflation is the primary destabilizer of modern polities. So what’s the future of the economy?
We’re in for a lost decade, plus. The global economy’s projected to stagnate for the next decade, but even beyond that, there are no real sources of easy growth left. We’ve made war on each other, pillaged the world, and destroyed the planet…
Well, everyone wanted to do what they wanted to do instead of what they needed to do, and this is the end result. It was inevitable. Neglecting our responsibilities on this earth only had one outcome, and it’s a living nightmare. I think it’s time we talked about the time we all F-’d around, and ended up in Find Out-ville.
MOTHER NATURE IS PISSED
Look, we are definitely not on a winning streak right now. Mother Nature is pissed off, the weather and climate is all over the place, our food supplies are being disrupted in every way imaginable, and natural disasters are occurring left and right with no end in sight. And to top it off, people are struggling economically, emotionally, and psychologically. Don’t get me started on politicians, business leaders, and the 1%. Oh did I mention that everyone I know is in debt? But the reality is, I think we only have one to blame for our situation, ourselves. After all, we allowed it to happen, stood by and watched and went right along with it.
WE WERE WRONG
Personally, I think it all started with money and the inevitable greed that it brings to literally every society that has ever used it, but that’s another story. If you’re in the Daniel Quinn camp, it all started with the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago when we transitioned from nomadic to sedentary and started taking more than we need (Ishmael had some good points on this). What ever the start, we are most definitely racing towards the finish like a fireball on cocaine. How the hell did we end up here? Well that is simple.
Today’s Contemplation has been once again prompted by the latest musings of The Honest Sorcerer. I believe their posts motivate me more than most others I read because we very often focus upon the same subject matter and appear, for the most part, to come at the issue(s) from a similar standpoint. In fact, I have had more than one person accuse me of being The Honest Sorcerer and simply using a different name/platform — which I will take as a compliment given how much I enjoy their articles.
Here is my posted comment on their Substack publication:
I’ve found it most enlightening (and I’m sure it’s my personal bias in having some background in the subject) to consider past experiments in complex societies and the societal responses/reactions to the cyclical phenomenon of ‘collapse/simplification’ to guide our discussion on how things may unfold. Archaeology demonstrates that despite human ingenuity and having the best ‘technology’ of the time, similar patterns emerge across both time and space as a complex society ‘dissolves’.
As the saying goes, ‘It’s difficult to make predictions, especially if they’re about the future’; however, there’s also the Shakespearean phrase ‘What’s past is prologue’ suggesting that we can learn from pre/history and its apparent oft-repeated processes as we have hints as to what may befall us as our societal ‘decline’ proceeds providing an educated guess on the future (the best we might hope for in an uncertain and complex world full of nonlinear feedback loops and emergent phenomena, to say little about Black Swan events).
In this piece of writing I focused on the aims of the ‘degrowth’ movement and why our ‘collapse’ will not likely be ‘managed’ in the way many degrowthers hope. I make the argument, based upon my understanding of archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s thesis in The Collapse of Complex Societies, that:
1) “…society’s power-brokers place the burden of ‘contraction’ upon the masses via currency devaluation, increased taxes, forever wars, increased totalitarianism, narrative management, etc..”
2) “Once surpluses are exhausted, everyday operating ‘costs’ begin to suffer and living standards for the majority begin to wane. A gradual decline in complexity ensues.”
3) “As societal investments encounter the Law of Marginal Utility due to ever-increasing costs of problem solving and its associated complexity, society experiences declining living standards. Eventually, participants opt out of the arrangement (i.e., social ‘contract’) — usually by migrating — resulting in a withdrawal of the support/labour necessary to maintain the various complex systems.”
4) “…to offset our increasing experience with diminishing returns, especially as it pertains to energy, we have employed significant debt-/credit-based fiat currency expansion to increase our drawdown of important resources among other perceived ‘needs’…”
5) “…to sustain a society’s complexity as it bumps up against limits to expanding its problem-solving ability (particularly its finite resource requirements), surpluses are drawn upon…The drawdown of these surpluses puts society at greater risk of being incapable of reacting to a sudden stress surge that may expedite the ‘collapse’ of complexity.”
6) “…once diminishing returns sets in for a society, collapse requires merely the passage of time. New energy sources, however, do little to address the issues that arise from expanded technology use–particularly the finiteness of the materials required and the overloading of planetary sinks that occur from their extraction and processing…”
7) “…pre/historic evidence also demonstrates a peer polity competition trap where competing ‘states’ drive the pursuit of complexity (regardless of environmental and/or human costs) for fear of absorption by a competing state. In such situations, ever-increasing costs create ever-decreasing marginal returns that end in domination by one state, or collapse of all competing polities. Where no or an insufficient energy subsidy exists, collapse of the competing states occurs at about the same time.”
We should be able to learn from these past trials in large, complex societies. And I recall putting this prospect to Jared Diamond about a decade ago when I heard him speak at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. His response (and I’m paraphrasing) was that just because we have this capability does not in any way mean we will use it.
Do I believe humanity will heed the lessons of the past?
In those early days of my journey down the rabbit hole of societal ‘collapse’ that began with my exploration of the concept of Peak Oil and its implications for our world (I thank the rental from our local Blockbuster in late 2010 of the documentary Collapse with the late Michael Ruppert for this), I thought we could avoid the pending decline of society. I thought that human ingenuity and intelligence could and would come to understand our plight and take remedial steps to set things right.
I no longer believe this; in fact, I chuckle somewhat at my naivete in those early days as I struggled to move through Kubler-Ross’s stages of grieving. I experienced an awful lot of denial and bargaining.
Pre/history appears to show that every complex society has reacted to their decline in somewhat parallel ways. Not exactly the same, but pretty damn similar despite the vast differences between them in terms of time, geographic location, and sociocultural practices.
Despite all of this evidence, most of us involved in the current iteration (at least those that have the ‘privilege’ to contemplate such things; many in our world of course don’t) have a tendency to believe that this time is different — especially because of our ingenuity and technology leading to our perpetual ability to ‘solve’ any issue that arises — and the narratives we craft in light of this belief system. But our responses appear to be unfolding in ways not unlike those that previous societies have experienced.
In fact, there’s a good argument to be made that our ‘modern’ responses are even more broadly and significantly detrimental to our future prospects because of the ever-present and widely disseminated propaganda that aims to keep the masses ignorant of the various revenue-generation/-extraction rackets siphoning resources towards the top of our power/wealth structures, and that appear to be expanding and speeding up as the surplus energy that has sustained our growth moves towards zero and then goes negative.
And as I conclude in the piece referenced above,
Little to none of the above takes into consideration our current overarching predicament: ecological overshoot (and all of its symptom predicaments such as biodiversity loss, resource depletion, sink overloading, etc.).
Having significantly surpassed the natural environmental carrying capacity of our planet, we have strapped booster rockets to the issue of complex society ‘collapse’.
We have chosen to employ a debt-/credit-based economic system to more quickly extricate finite resources from the ground in order to meet current demands rather than significantly reduce stealing them from the future. We have created belief systems that human ingenuity and finite resource-based technologies are god-like in their abilities to alter the Laws of Thermodynamics (especially in regard to entropy) and biological principles such as overshoot…
Given we cannot control complex systems, we also cannot predict them well (if at all) and thus we cannot forecast the future with any certainty. But there exist physical laws and limits, biological/evolutionary principles, and pre/historical examples/experiments that all point towards a future quite different from the optimistic ones painted by those who believe we have control over such things.
I expect one last ginormous pulse of energetic ‘consumption’ in a most wasteful binge (and likely mostly towards geopolitical strife over the table scraps of finite resources) and a significant amount of narrative management by society’s wealth-extracting forces before ‘the great simplification’ and Nature’s corrective responses to our overshoot take hold — showing Homo sapiens who is really in charge…and it’s not us.
There is a rule in ecology called the maximum power principle formulated by Lokta in 1925. It can be summarized as follows: “The systems that survive in competition are those that develop more power inflow and use it best to meet the needs of survival.” If one wanted to describe the animating force behind the rise and fall of civilizations, they would be hard pressed to come up with a better one. Complex systems — such as our modern industrial world economy — appear to be ruled by the same ecological principles to which all other complex organisms obey. These rules are so universal, independent from size and scale from microbes to galaxies, that one would do better to call them natural laws. Join me on a wild ride from bacteria to petroleum extraction to see how these rules govern our daily life and how they could eventually lead to the decline of what we call modernity.
Imagine a clean Petri-dish chuck full of yummy Agar Agar, a medium utilized to grow fungi and bacteria on. Now place a range of microorganisms on it and see what happens: those bacteria which use up the most food energy to multiply will simply outcompete almost any other life form in the dish. Those who use energy sparingly, and live a slow but long life with relatively few offspring, will be simply outcrowded and completely overwhelmed. Now, let’s take our thought experiment to the next level: take a clean Petri-dish, but this time fill half of it with tasty bacteria food and the another half with a not-so-yummy medium with a much lower energy content. Next, add some bacteria which double their numbers every hour. What you can expect to see here is exponential growth at its best — and something unexpected.
Overreach And Diminishing Returns: Contributing To Complex Society Collapse For 10,000 Years
Today’s very brief Contemplation is my comment on The Honest Sorcerer’s latest piece.
U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler stated it so clearly in his treatise on war some 100 years ago. War is never about the narratives weaved by our ruling caste.
As he argued: “War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses…
I served in all commissioned ranks from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”
We learn almost nothing from history; are caught up in collective narcissism and hubris; and, are led by a socio-/psycho-pathic ruling elite that are only too willing and able to sacrifice as many pawns as possible to maintain their control of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and thus power and prestige.
And given our species’ proclivity to defer to ‘authority’ figures and adhere to their self-serving stories (as well as their influence over the media and the political, judicial, and financial systems), the significant majority are blind to it all and cheer the insanity on — the elite leveraging our tribal sense of ‘patriotism’.
Then there’s the whole surplus energy decline predicament that has been kept almost completely behind the curtains as the snake oil salesmen weave a tale about a ‘renewable’ energy transition…is it really any wonder that the entire Middle East is a geopolitical hot spot?
As I stated on another’s Facebook Post about this entire geopolitical morass: Overreach and diminishing returns…contributing to complex society collapse for 10,000 years.
Intelligent species, just not very wise despite its self-imposed moniker.
In the title of this piece, I use the term, “high tech” however this is about the vulnerabilities of any advanced civilization. Such societies tend to be specialized with their members dependent on services and jobs being carried out by others in the community to provide the basic necessities they need. If people were suddenly faced with losing the things they need to survive it is easy to envision a situation where survival of the fittest became the mantra of the day and things would rapidly become quite dicey.High-tech societies are particularly vulnerable to collapse due to their population being dependent on both the system and others to provide the basic items they need to survive in everyday life. Electricity, food, water, sewer systems, phone and computer connections, transportation, and healthcare fall into this category. Just about everything else we have come to expect and experience as we go through our day depends on technology.
Life has become more complex as we transferred the task we did in the past to machines, and this could come back to haunt us. Our growing dependence on computers and devices such as smartphones and computers has dumbed down society. This has compromised the skills we need to endure and survive. We have reached the point where many people can not do simple math or read a map.
A video by City Prepping reveals just how difficult it would be to survive following a massive disaster where no help or aid comes forth. Imagine being forced to exist for months on your own. The video points out many people will die if such a situation would arise. Would you know what to do? Even if you do, many of the things that would help you and your family survive are easier said and done.
Ha! It’s poetry in motion
Now she’s making love to me
The spheres are in commotion
The elements in harmony
She blinded me with science
(She blinded me with science!)
And hit me with technology
-Thomas Dolby, 1982 (She Blinded Me With Science)
***
Science, it turns outs, is a process not an answer. And, it usually has many answers from various sciences, each having their own methods and standards. When someone tells you, “the science says,” be skeptical. They are usually being paid to say what they are about to say or at least have been thoroughly indoctrinated by others who are paid. There is never just one answer to any supposedly scientific question.
-Kurt Cobb (Why am I feeling so anxious? The end of modernism arrives)
***
Unfortunately, there are many other misconceptions about science. One of the most common misconceptions concerns the so-called “scientific proofs.” Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a scientific proof…all scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final. There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science. The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all available alternatives. Its status as the accepted theory is contingent on what other theories are available and might suddenly change tomorrow if there appears a better theory or new evidence that might challenge the accepted theory. No knowledge or theory (which embodies scientific knowledge) is final.
-Satoshi Kanazawa (Common Misconceptions About Science I: “Scientific Proof”)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
