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Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXIII–Keep Calm and Carry On…Human Ingenuity and Technology Will Save Us! Part 1

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXIII–Keep Calm and Carry On…Human Ingenuity and Technology Will Save Us! Part 1

Human cognition and the many psychological mechanisms that impact our species’ comprehension, emotions, and beliefs about the world are fascinating subjects, as is epistemology (aka the ‘theory of knowledge’).

Despite being mostly enthralled with biology during my late high school education and physiology during my early university years, I wandered into studying psychology for a couple of years while pursuing my second bachelor’s degree before becoming more interested in human evolution and completing a Master of Arts degree in anthropology/archaeology. 

It was the use of Stephen Jay Gould’s Ever Since Darwin text in an introductory psychology course that sparked my interest in human physical evolution and then a chance meeting with one of the university’s senior archaeologists to help advise on course selection within the anthropology department which steered me into that field and an eventual graduate degree that focussed on North American archaeology (working on a variety of pre/historic sites in Ontario, Canada, and Oaxaca, Mexico). 

I read up on epistemology mostly on my own as a side interest while studying archaeology being exposed to some very interesting aspects in introductory psychology and anthropology courses (particularly philology and hermeneutics), and then also auditing a senior philosophy course on archaeological theory–little of which I understood having none of the fundamental background knowledge; I don’t know what the hell I was thinking by enrolling in it. (See: Decline of ‘Rationality’. Website     Medium     Substack)


A handful of my Contemplations that discuss human psychology:
Despite Warnings We Have Continued Business-As-Usual and Doubled-Down On Our Avoidance Behaviours. Website     Medium     Substack
Avoiding ‘Collapse’ Awareness. Website     Medium     Substack
Reality is an Inconvenience to Beliefs. Website      Medium     Substack
Most People Don’t Want Their Illusions Destroyed. Website     Medium     Substack
Carbon Tunnel Vision And Resource/Energy & Ecological Blindness, Part 1, Website     Medium     Substack Part 2, Website     Medium     Substack Part 3. Website     Medium     Substack
Cognition and Belief Systems in a ‘Collapsing’ World: Part One, Website     Medium     Substack Part Two–Deference to Authority, Website     Medium     Substack Part Three–Groupthink, Website     Medium     Substack Part Four–Cognitive Dissonance, Website     Medium     Substack Part Five–Justification Hypothesis, Website     Medium     Substack Part Six–Sociopolitical ‘Collapse’ and Ecological Overshoot, Website     Medium     Substack


Yes, I spent the entire 1980s in three universities (Western, McMaster, Brock) chasing a number of degrees, settling into a career in education by the end of the decade–it’s where the jobs were at the time  (and this hot girl I had met was interested in that profession). Thankfully my hometown had a university, so I did not have to pay for room and board for most of the first two degrees (I got married during the second one and we moved into the university’s married-students residence that was very reasonably priced, with rent being based upon income. With both of us being students, the rent was relatively low reflecting our income–we celebrate our 40th anniversary next summer). 

I had a relatively good-paying job working part-time in a grocery store so I was able to pay for much of this self-indulgence, working 20-24 hours a week on top of my classes (although I did accumulate some student loans along the way as well that I paid off quickly after graduating–interest rates were about 14% at the time that I had to start repaying them–with the help of working part-time in The Beer Store on top of my working full time as a classroom teacher). Thank the stars for youthful energy, especially those 4 months or so early in my university days that I spent working full-time from 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. stocking shelves before heading home for a quick shower and then off to the university for my physiology classes that began at 8:30 a.m.–typically sleeping from about 2-3 p.m., until 9 p.m..

Anyways, I raise this fascination with psychology because as humanity’s large, complex societies continue their journey along the Seneca Cliff of ‘collapse’, one should expect not only a considerable increase in the symptoms that signal societal decline/simplification, but more importantly from a human psychological perspective a significant and concomitant shift in the beliefs and human responses (emotional and behavioural) that accompany the increased tension that arises from the ecological and societal deterioration that is occurring and becoming more obvious and difficult, if not impossible, to ignore. 

Humans are, if nothing else, a highly ‘intelligent’ species engaged in enormously complex thinking and behaviours to reduce/avoid our anxiety/stress (pain) and increase our optimism/positive ‘vibes’ (pleasure). And, given our story-telling nature, we often do this via the tales we tell ourselves and others, with these stories influencing every aspect of our cognition, beliefs, emotions, and actions–and not always in a positively adaptive manner.

Oftentimes, it would appear, we employ maladaptive strategies but believe they are helpful and create a variety of narratives to support and defend them–even if there is overwhelming evidence that they are ill-informed, quite flawed, and in many cases defy biological processes, geological limitations, and physical laws. And we are, unfortunately, helped along these ‘destructive’ pathways by members of our own species who leverage perceived crises and our fear and anxiety about them to expand their personal wealth and power. [Note: I am using ‘we’, ‘our’, ‘us’ as a generalisation throughout this writing.]


A handful of my Contemplations that touch on how crises are leveraged against us:
Rackets: Keeping the Curtains on Reality Drawn. Website     Medium     Substack
Energy and Its Interconnections With Our Financialised Economic System. Website     Medium     Substack
Fiat Currency Devaluation: A Ruling Elite ‘Solution’ to Growth Limits. Website     Medium     Substack
Rackets: Keeping the Curtains on Reality Drawn. Website     Medium     Substack
Ruling Elite Rackets Everywhere….. Website     Medium     Substack


Societal Decline and Concomitant Stressors

In his 1988 monograph The Collapse of Complex Societies archaeologist Joseph Tainter argued that human societies at their core are problem-solving organisations and that they increase in  complexity through ever-increasing investments in problem-solving. This approach, however, eventually reaches a point when marginal productivity and effectiveness of the ‘solutions’ being pursued can no longer rise–complexity can still accrue some benefits past this point, but at a declining marginal rate

As the ‘solutions’ pursued begin to lose their efficacy and perceived issues go unresolved, societal stress begins to grow–this is primarily due to our tendency to use the easiest-to-achieve and least-expensive-to-implement ‘solutions’ first, leaving the more difficult and expensive approaches until later in our problem-solving approach–i.e., we pick the lowest hanging fruit to begin then move to the ones that require more ‘investments’, especially in terms of resources (particularly energy).

Add to this growing strain that many, if not all, of the ‘solutions’ we pursue tend to lead to larger and more convoluted ‘problems’ down the road due to expanding complexity, nonlinear feedback, and unforeseen complications/consequences. This increases societal stressors as time goes by and requires more and more problem-solving efforts and investments, sometimes to a point where the ‘costs’ outweigh the ‘benefits’. A positive feedback loop emerges that is difficult if not impossible to escape from (See: Problem Solving: Complexity, History, Sustainability. Website     Medium      Substack). [Note: I put ‘problem’ and ‘solutions’ in quotes as much of what we are dealing with are not ‘problems’ but predicaments that have no solutions, only outcomes—see Erik Michaels’ writing on this important clarification—particularly when we are dealing with the stresses related to ecological overshoot and all of its symptom predicaments.]

Tainter goes on to suggest that today’s rising “concern with collapse and self-sufficiency may itself be a significant social indicator, the expectable scanning behaviour of a social system under stress, in which there is an advantage to seeking lower-cost solutions” (p. 210). 

This scanning behaviour Tainter is speaking of refers to the expansion of general awareness and associated assessments that a social system employs when it senses challenges or stressors. It reflects how a society measures its environment in order to find adaptive strategies (proactive and reactive ‘problem solving’) that support and sometimes enhance survival. The hope is that vulnerabilities can be identified and crises anticipated by monitoring change, gathering relevant information, and adopting strategies that can address the pending or occurring issues. But more often than not, I would argue, we are being reactive in our problem-solving behaviour as opposed to proactive; however, either approach tends to result in greater complexity and additional ‘problems’ to ‘solve’.

To sum up this scanning behaviour and what arises from it: when the social and physical environments that we exist within begin to exhibit significant stress, humans increasingly notice and begin to look for ways in which that stress can be relieved. This stress relief is usually via some form of ‘problem solving’ investment. There is a good argument to be made to suggest that this is a classic ‘fight-or-flight’ response to alleviate anxiety/avoid pain. 

What are some of the more obvious stressors that seem to be rising to the surface of societal awareness? I’ve listed some in the following table and how they seem to manifest themselves.


These stressors seem to be exploding across nations and the globe, an indication of our global, industrial societies experiencing systemic strain and declining resilience. Such change significantly increases the potential for societal ‘collapse’; it doesn’t guarantee it, it simply sets up a society for a stress surge that cannot be addressed and pushes it past a tipping point. (See: Collapse = Prolonged Period of Diminishing Returns + Significant Stress Surge(s) Part 1, Website    Medium    Substack Part 2, Website    Medium    Substack Part 3, Website     Medium     Substack Part 4, Website     Medium     Substack)

Depending upon one’s perspective, the cause of these stressors varies widely. Most tend to be somewhat reductionist in their evaluation leading to the pointing of fingers at individual determinants, especially at the political and/or economic systems. And while these certainly play a not non-significant role, the vast majority of this thinking neglects the complexity of systems and especially the biogeophysical aspects that I would argue underpin the increasing stress our globalised, industrial societies are experiencing; especially biological processes (e.g., ecological overshoot), geological constraints (e.g., finite resource limitations), and physical laws (e.g., thermodynamic, especially entropy). 

It is rare indeed that there is any consideration or discussion regarding the notion that many if not all of the predicaments we are facing are the result of humanity having bumped up against and are now experiencing the consequences of ecological overshoot as laid out by Meadows et al in their 1972 text, The Limits to Growth, and William Catton Jr. in his 1980 monograph, Overshoot:The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

For the most part, what one must not do is challenge the ideas of economic growth and its associated ‘progress’ for they are the dominant and preferred mindsets within the modern zeitgeist, and must be maintained regardless of the ‘costs’. 

Human Psychological Responses To Stressors

Regardless of the causes of these stressors, the responses by our species to them vary rather widely with much depending upon sociocultural context, community dynamics, available resources, and personal circumstances. And while some may simply seek more information about what is occurring, others pursue more actionable pathways–such as adapting behavioural changes that can steer individuals and/or communities towards ‘sustainable’ practices and self-sufficiency, relocating/migrating from a ‘failing’ region/nation, or engaging on a sociopolitical level–it is the psychological reactions that I am focussing upon in this Contemplation.

The psychological repercussions of growing societal stressors are exceedingly complex and also quite varied. Some people handle stress much better than others, with much depending upon personal experiences and personality traits, but also sociocultural norms and expectations. 

The tendency of some in the face of growing societal stress is to lay the blame at the feet of others and we see this in the rise of othering alongside both domestic and geopolitical strife. Some actually take a diametrically-opposite path with attempts to form altruistic networks and organisations to support individuals and communities. 

Still others don’t even acknowledge these stressors, wondering what all the fuss is about. James Howard Kunstler has argued that many, perhaps most, are simply too caught up in the ‘thrum of daily life’ and personal/family stress that takes precedence over concerns about societal-level stressors (I often think about the ‘privilege’ I have in being able to contemplate and then pontificate about in my writing these issues and topics in light of some of the tragedies and situations others in this world are experiencing on an almost daily basis–some not small number of people are struggling to avoid sectarian violence, survive the next bombing run, put food on the table, and/or pay for or find shelter). 

Additionally, I wouldn’t be surprised if part of this ‘lack of interest’ is due to the large number of individuals in our ‘modern’ societies being medicated for anxiety/depression–a personal communication from one of our local pharmacists a couple of years ago caused me to pause when he declared that he guessed a good half of our town’s adult residents were on anti-anxiety/-depressant medication; likely exaggerated, but still… 

And then, of course, there are all the distractions that the ruling elite help to maintain–the Roman ‘bread and circuses’; ‘modernity’s’ version being found mostly in the entertainment industry (think musical performances, video games, theme parks, film and television production, sports, etc.). 

While fear and anxiety about external stressors can overwhelm some, perhaps the most common reactions are reflective of the grieving stages (much of the above few paragraphs on responses can be categorised into these). When societies experience stress, it is common to have to confront loss and significant change, and the stages of grieving are a reflexive response to this as they help to alleviate anxiety-provoking thoughts and fear.


The defence mechanism of denial is one of the initial ones employed when confronting stress. It is the refusal to accept the reality that one is experiencing. It is oftentimes a temporary coping strategy to help protect oneself from overwhelming emotions. If the issue doesn’t exist, neither does the emotional torment. Problem solved. 

However, in the context of a failing society, this reaction can lead to more problematic outcomes since it delays actions that might help to reduce the negative consequences that accompany ecological overshoot and societal simplification. Denial often results in the belief that things are not nearly as bad as portrayed by some and that stability will reassert itself soon enough even in the face of evidence to the contrary. 

And then there’s the bargaining stage. 

At this point in our global, industrial society’s ‘collapse’ I am witnessing a significant rise in this particular phase of grieving–it could just be my confirmation bias (I’ve noted it and now I see it everywhere). It would seem that more and more people are moving past the denial stage–more-or-less acknowledging that there are growing signs of societal and ecological stress–and into that of attempting to negotiate themselves and/or society’s way out of the situation to avoid the associated anxiety and loss. 

Oftentimes, the bargaining by way of seeking ‘solutions’ is aimed at sustaining current living arrangements with as little inconvenience as is possible. Many appeal to our politicians and political institutions (naively, in my opinion, believing the decision makers in these systems  actually have the best interests of the masses at the top of their agendas). Others put their faith in the ‘free market’ and corporate ‘leaders’ (believing that ‘rational’ choices by consumers and human innovation will lead us to the promised land). And some turn to society’s ‘experts’ and academics, having placed ‘science’ on a pedestal that is ‘objective’, definitive in its conclusions, and capable of ‘solving’ all ‘problems’ given enough time and resources (not appreciating the impossibility of our species to have complete objectivity, the influence that paradigms and incentives have on steering a lot of research, and the leveraging of this approach by various profiteers–including our political class).


A handful of my Contemplations that discusses these appeals to authority:
The Politics of Dancing: The politicians are now dj’s…. Website     Medium     Substack
She Blinded Me With Science, and More On The ‘Clean’ Energy Debate…. Website     Medium     Substack
Solace Will Not Be Found Within Our Sociopolitical Systems—Biogeophysical Limitations Cannot Be Overcome By Way Of Policy. Website     Medium     Substack
Our Political Systems Are Not Going To Help Our Predicament As They Want/Need Growth. Medium     Substack
Sociopolitical Agency, Narrative Control, and Collapse. Medium     Substack


Being who we are–a story-telling ape with the ability to devise and construct various complex tools–we are tending to gravitate towards utopian tales of unending progress and ‘relevant’ technologies in our attempts to ‘solve’ and/or mitigate the array of societal and ecological stressors. Most of the technologies we are employing tend to be ‘quick fixes’, the lower-hanging fruit of ‘solutions’. On top of this many are spreading fantastical tales through their support of prototypes or conceptual/as-yet-to-be-hatched technologies that will ‘save’ humanity and the planet–all of them quite magical in their ability to be ‘clean and sustainable’.


Unfortunately, this problem-solving approach that humanity tends to use ignores both the complexity and deeper structural aspects of the issues we are facing. And more often than not, we have been drawn towards the idea that technological fixes in particular are sufficient to prevent, address, or reverse precarious situations. Because, after all, technology is always ‘progressing’ as it’s always getting better (‘new and improved’), and human ingenuity guarantees this forever and ever. Amen!

This stage of grieving that strives to confront loss and change also aims to maintain/regain a sense of agency in our lives and societies. In trying to retain a sense of power over our lives, quick-fix solutions are quite appealing. We often don’t care if they are getting to the root of the issue or not. Does it provide, even temporarily, immediate relief from the stress/anxiety being experienced? Yes? Then let’s do it and to hell with the fallout or we will deal with it, if any, down the road. And since we’re such an intelligent species, we will ‘solve’ such repercussions…eventually. 

This is guaranteed because it’s always worked in the past–only it hasn’t. 

In Part 2, I will explore this human ingenuity and technological prowess aspect further and its use to bargain our way out of societal and ecological collapse. And what prompted me to write this Contemplation.


What is going to be my standard WARNING/ADVICE going forward and that I have reiterated in various ways before this:

“Only time will tell how this all unfolds but there’s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst by ‘collapsing now to avoid the rush’ and pursuing self-sufficiency. By this I mean removing as many dependencies on the Matrix as is possible and making do, locally. And if one can do this without negative impacts upon our fragile ecosystems or do so while creating more resilient ecosystems, all the better. 

Building community (maybe even just household) resilience to as high a level as possible seems prudent given the uncertainties of an unpredictable future. There’s no guarantee it will ensure ‘recovery’ after a significant societal stressor/shock but it should increase the probability of it and that, perhaps, is all we can ‘hope’ for from its pursuit.”If you have arrived here and get something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website or the link below — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).


Attempting a new payment system as I am contemplating shutting down my site in the future (given the ever-increasing costs to keep it running). 

If you are interested in purchasing any of the 3 books individually or the trilogy, please try the link below indicating which book(s) you are purchasing. 

Costs (Canadian dollars):
Book 1: $2.99
Book 2: $3.89
Book 3: $3.89
Trilogy: $9.99

Feel free to throw in a ‘tip’ on top of the base cost if you wish; perhaps by paying in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian. Every few cents/dollars helps… 

https://paypal.me/olduvaitrilogy?country.x=CA&locale.x=en_US 

If you do not hear from me within 48 hours or you are having trouble with the system, please email me: olduvaitrilogy@gmail.com.

You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially William Catton’s Overshoot and Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies: see here.

 

The Bulletin: September 6-12

The Bulletin: September 6-12

We really need a plan

Signs of Collapse: Broken Things | how to save the world

Lockheed Martin Develops System to Identify and Counter Online “Disinformation,” Prototyped by DARPA

The Seneca Cliff of Petroleum Production – by Ugo Bardi

Is the World Walking Blindfolded Toward a Nuclear War? – Global Research

Was 911 a False Flag?

From the Archives: Martin Armstrong (Correctly) Predicts Chaos

The Blair Witch Project: Former Prime Minister Calls for Global Censorship – JONATHAN TURLEY

The Looming Shift: Oil Markets Signal a Structural Phase-Change | Art Berman

A Short History of Progress | how to save the world

Matt Taibbi: Why Censorship Is Suddenly Fashionable

The Continuing Lies and Crimes. 9.11 X Twenty-Three = Speechlessness – Global Research

17 Signs of Collapse

Crude oil extraction may be well past peak

The Sun Is Doing Something That It Is Not Supposed To Do, And That Could Mean Big Trouble In The Months Ahead

A Concise History of the Global Empire

A Concise History of the Global Empire

Like all past empires, the Global Empire has gone through its parable of growth and glory and is now starting to decline. There is not much we can do about it; we must accept that this is how the universe works.

For everything that exists, there is a reason, and that’s true also for that gigantic thing that we sometimes call “The West” or perhaps “The Global Empire.” To find that reason, we may examine its origins in an older but similar empire: the Roman one.

As someone might have said (and maybe someone did), “Geography is the mother of Empires.” So, the Romans exploited the geography of the Mediterranean basin to build an empire based on maritime transportation. Rome was the center of a hub of commerce that outcompeted every other state in the Western region of Eurasia and North Africa. It was kept together by a “Lingua Franca,” Latin, and by a financial system based on coinage, in turn based on the availability of gold and silver mined from the Empire’s mines in Spain. More than all, it was based on a powerful military system created by the Roman wealth.

Like all empires, the Roman one carried inside the seeds of its own destruction: the limited amount of its mineral resources. Roman gold and silver were used to pay not just for the legions but also for expensive commodities coming from China that the Empire couldn’t produce in its territory. As long as the Romans could keep producing precious metals, the amounts lost to China to pay for silk and spices didn’t matter so much…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ignorance, Hubris, and Stupidity

Ignorance, Hubris, and Stupidity

Artwork from Ken Avidor

As I frequently point out, we face a series of predicaments all brought to us as a result of our own behavior of using technology, which has produced the predicament of ecological overshoot. When a species goes into overshoot, it always faces the same outcome: collapse. There is quite literally no way to avoid this; it is baked into cake, so to speak. I frequently hear people talk about avoiding collapse to which I can only chuckle and explain that attempting to avoid collapse and extend civilization is a fool’s errand because all this does is steepen the Seneca Cliff once the ability to extend civilization dries up. Civilization exists upon the surplus energy provided by technology use such as that furnished through agriculture; this then provides the ability of humans to develop permanent settlements which is the beginning of a civilization. Sadly, civilizations are unsustainable and each one that has ever come into being has also collapsed. Today’s civilization is no different and there will never be a sustainable civilization. Talk of such ideas is no different than “sustainable” development or “green” growth (see greenwashing).

I genuinely want people to understand the truth about where we are within these systems and predicaments and what can and cannot be done about them. Most people’s responses are fueled by a desire to “fight” one of the symptom predicaments such as climate change or energy and resource decline. Sadly, a considerable number of those folks read or hear something about stopping or reversing climate change or emissions or any other symptom predicament and get the incorrect idea that this is actually possible…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Collapsing by Doubling Down: How Leaders Create Their Own Ruin

Collapsing by Doubling Down: How Leaders Create Their Own Ruin

Napoleon won all the battles he engaged in, up to Borodino (1812), which was a non-victory, equivalent to a loss. From then, on it was all downhill from him. Napoleon had engaged in a task too big even for him: invading Russia. It is typical of successful leaders to use the doubling down strategy that leads them to a rapid collapse in their career — another manifestation of the Seneca Cliff. 

Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey) was a very successful leader during the final years of the ancient Roman republic. Isaac Asimov told his story in 1971, noting a curious detail. Pompey was successful in everything he did up to a fateful day, in 61 BCE. From then on, everything he did was a failure until he was assassinated in Egypt, in 48 B.C. Half-jokingly, Asimov suggested that Pompey’s reversal of fortunes coincided with having desecrated the temple of Jerusalem, that he had just conquered.

Even without desecrating anything, it is a constant of history that “invincible” leaders tend to end their days in the dust after a stellar career. Another case, centuries after Pompey, is that of Napoleon Bonaparte. He won every battle he was involved in until, in 1812, his army faced the Russians at Borodino. Maybe it was a victory, but it weakened Napoleon so much that he didn’t win any more battles again.

There are many more examples. Think of Adolf Hitler: successful in everything he did, until his ill-fated decision of attacking the Soviet Union in 1941 (same mistake as Napoleon). Or of Benito Mussolini. Everything he did was a success up to when he engaged Italy in WWII as an ally of Germany….

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Phrasing the Question Right is the First Step to Find an Answer. How to Prevent Nuclear War

Phrasing the Question Right is the First Step to Find an Answer. How to Prevent Nuclear War

Professor Bernard Lown died this February at 99. A great man by all means: Physician, cardiologist, professor at Harvard University, and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He was the inventor of the defribrillator, the proposer of many successful ways to help people suffering from heart failure. He was also the recipient of the Nobel prize for peace for his activity against nuclear war.

 
It was in the 1980s when I attended a seminar in Berkeley given by a member of the group called “International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.” Some decades later, I am not sure the talk was given by the founder of the group, Dr. Bernard Lown, but it may have been him. In any case, I was impressed by the clarity of the talk. The speaker said it very simply: “it is not a question of being left or right: nuclear war is the greatest medical emergency I can imagine.” 
 
It is the way you frame a problem that gives you the tools to solve it! Just like “The Seneca Effect” gives a name to a typical behavior of complex systems, that of collapsing, framing the nuclear confrontation as a medical emergency and not as a political struggle brought it to the realm of concrete problems that people could understand. We might also frame nuclear war as an especially nasty kind of Seneca Cliff affecting humankind and the whole planet.
 
Probably because the problem was framed right, the Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War had a remarkable success…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Taboos and illusions in the environmental question: The viewpoint of a physician

Taboos and illusions in the environmental question: The viewpoint of a physician

Physicians have a view of the world that makes them especially able to understand the concept I called the “Seneca Cliff.” Here, Lukas Fierz, Swiss physician, provides some basic principles that apply to collapses of complex systems, it doesn’t matter if we deal with human bodies or entire civilizations. The basic behavior is the same: collapses start slow and often unnoticed, and then strike hard by a combination of mutually reinforcing factors. The final result may be that someone dies, or that an entire civilization goes down to the dustbin of history, or even that an entire ecosystem is destroyed. It happened, and it will happen again.

*****

I am not a climatologist, but as a physician, you only master certain areas and otherwise you listen to various other specialists. We are also used to deal with uncertainties: e.g. If you are considering an operation, you estimate the chance of success based on the patient’s age, nutritional and physical condition, morale, heart health and previous illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes etc. Every risk factor reduces the chances of success. Inability to calculate anything precisely does not release you from making an estimate.

Similarly, the uncertainties in the climate discussion do not release one from making an assessment. There we are unfortunately hindered by some taboos and illusions, but let’s try:

I grew up in Basel where in the museum hangs a picture of the dead Christ, painted by Holbein 500 years ago.

This made a deep impression on me and I had it above my desk for years: A mercilessly realistic view of our God, his passion and the end of us all. We have to measure our actions against this end.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Collapse: the way we imagined it, and the way it was.

Collapse: the way we imagined it, and the way it was.

Even those of us who could see some kind of collapse coming (the “collapsniks”) were taken by surprise by the form it took. But, as always, for everything that happens there has to be a reason for it to happen. Above: the Seneca Curve.

Collapses happen, it is a rule of life, as the ancient Roman philosopher Lucius Seneca had noted long ago when he said that “ruin is rapid” (festinantur in damnum). Yet, another rule of collapses is that they always take you by surprise. I think even Seneca himself was surprised when he received a message from his former pupil, Emperor Nero, ordering him to commit suicide.

So, even the most hardened collapsniks were surprised by the onrush of the coronavirus epidemic. I had been thinking about the collapse that the models predicted but, honestly, I hadn’t imagined it would take this form. Surely, I had in mind that some unexpected shock would have unbalanced society enough to cause it to take the fast way down, but I imagined it mostly in the form of a war. When the Iranian general Soleimani was assassinated by US drones in January, I thought “This is it.” It wasn’t. Nobody could have imagined what would have happened just a couple of months afterward.

Yet, for everything that happens, there is a reason for it to happen. And there is a reason also for the coronavirus. I noted in my book (Before Collapse) that epidemics hit stressed societies after that they have reached their physical limits. The main example I discuss is that of the “Black Death” that struck Europe in the mid-14th century.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Seneca Cliff According to H.P. Lovecraft

The Seneca Cliff According to H.P. Lovecraft

It is strange how sometimes fiction manages to catch human feelings and ideas in ways that are not easy to articulate in terms of facts and models. H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) has been one of the world masters of the horror genre, managing to flesh out some of our deep fears.

We can read Lovecraft’s story “The Doom that Came to Sarnath” as an allegory of our times. The prosperous and shiny city of Sarnath had a dark origin, the violence against the previous inhabitants of the region. And the whole drama unfolds with all the characters mentioned in the story aware that they’ll have to face some kind of retribution for what they did and, yet, refusing to admit it. And the retribution came to Sarnath in a form not unlike what the Roman philosopher Lucius Seneca had noted when he said that “growth is sluggish, but the way to ruin is rapid,” the Seneca Cliff.

In our case, we know what we did to the Earth’s ecosystem. We know about the greenhouse gases, we know about the slaughter of other species, we know about the pillaging of the Earth’s resources. We know all that but, like the inhabitants of Sarnath, we refuse to admit it. What kind of retribution can we expect in the future?

It is curious how the knowledge of the horror we did to our planet takes the shape of the tales of the horror genre. It is something modern, the ancient just didn’t have it. Think of Dante Alighieri: his Comedy is all about ghosts, but there is no horror anywhere in modern terms. Think of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there is a ghost, a skeleton, a dark castle, but no horror elements. Why?

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How do you Stop the Arms Race? By Starting a New War, for Instance

How do you Stop the Arms Race? By Starting a New War, for Instance

Do you see a ghostly Seneca Cliff in this graph? (source)

There is a good rule that you should always be careful when extrapolating your data, especially over the long term. And there is an even better rule saying that you should never, never extrapolate an exponential growth. The uncertainty in the data of an exponentially growing curve increases exponentially, too, and that makes your extrapolation meaningless very soon.

But, in the figure above, they extrapolated an exponentially growing curve for the military expenses of the US and China over more than 30 years!  The origin of that curve above seems to be the RAND Corporation. I couldn’t find the original source, but it has been reproduced in the blog of the Wall Street Journal and on Zero Hedge

It looks like someone seriously proposed this extrapolation. But consider a few numbers: according to the chart, by 2050 the US would spend more than 20% of its present GdP for the military! (it is now about 3%). It might be possible if the US GdP were to increase in proportion. But, from the graph, they assume a growth of nearly a factor of 5 (from ca. 600 billion dollars, today, to 2.9 trillion in little more than 30 years. It means that the GdP should double at least twice in 30 years, that is, the US economy should grow at the rate of 6% (twice the current rate!) every year for the next 30 years. Otherwise, the US government would bankrupt itself even faster than it is doing now.

Now, you might want to dismiss this graph as one of the many silly forecasts that are part of the everyday chat on how this or that sector of the economy is going to grow — and therefore everyone should invest on it.
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The Seneca Rebound: why Growth is Faster after Collapse. Explaining the European World Dominance

The Seneca Rebound: why Growth is Faster after Collapse. Explaining the European World Dominance

Lisbon: the monument to the European sailors of the age of explorations, starting with the 15th century. What made Europeans so successful in this in this task? My interpretation is that it was the result of periodic “Seneca Collapses” of the European population which made it possible to accumulate resources that would then be available to propel the European expansion. It is an effect that can be called the “Seneca Rebound” that makes growth faster after a collapse.

The Middle Ages are sometimes referred to as the “Dark Ages” — this is mostly untrue, but it is not wrong to apply this term to the early Middle Ages. According to some estimates, in 650 AD the European population had shrunk to a historical minimum of some 18 million people, about half of what it had been during the high times of the Roman Empire. If you think that today the European population is estimated to be as more than 700 million people, it is almost impossible for us to imagine the Europe of the early Middle Ages: it was a minor appendage of the Eurasian continent, a poverty-stricken place, nearly empty of people, where nothing happened except for the squabbles of local warlords fighting each other.

Yet, a few centuries later, the descendants of the inhabitants of this backward peninsula of Eurasia embarked in the attempt of conquering the world and were successful at that. By the 19th century, practically all the world was under the direct or indirect control of European countries or of their American offspring, the United States. How could it happen?

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Dealing With Collapse: The Seneca Strategy

Dealing With Collapse: The Seneca Strategy


The ruins of the Egyptian Pyramid of Meidum, perhaps the first large building to collapse in history (*). The collapse of large structures is part of a fascinating field of study that we may call “Collapsology.” I already wrote a book on this subject, titled “The Seneca Effect” (Springer and Oekom 1917), available in English and in German. Now, I am writing a second book with Springer which expands and goes more in depth into the matter with the idea of being a “collapse manual” dedicated to how to understand, manage, and even profit from collapses. It should be titled “The Seneca Strategy” and it will be available in 2019. 

About 2,000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote to his friend Licilius noting that “growth is slow, but ruin is rapid“. It looks obvious, but it was one of those observations that turn out to be not obvious at all if you go in some depth into their meaning. Do you remember the story of Newton’s apple? Everyone knows that apples fall from trees, isn’t it obvious? Yes, but it was the start of a chain of thoughts that led Isaac Newton to devise something that was not at all obvious: the law of universal gravitation. It is the same thing for Seneca’s observation that “ruin is rapid.” Everyone knows that it is true, think of a house of cards. But why is it like this?

Seneca’s observation – which I dubbed “The Seneca Effect” (or the “Seneca Cliff” or the “Seneca Collapse”) is one of the key elements we need to understanding the developments of what we now call the “science of complexity.” In the space of a few decades, starting since the 1960s, the development of digital computing has allowed us to tackle problems that, at the time of Newton (not to mention those of Seneca), could not be studied except in a very approximate way.
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The Coming Population Crash: A Seneca Cliff Ahead for Humankind?

The Coming Population Crash: A Seneca Cliff Ahead for Humankind?

This is a condensed and modified version of a paper of mine that appeared on “The Journal of Population and Sustainability” this year. The image above is the well known “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” by Albrecht Durer – 1498. Yes, I know it is catastrophistic, but it is not my fault if biological populations do tend to collapse! (see also my previous post: “Overpopulation Problem? What Overpopulation Problem?A Seneca Collapse for the World’s Human Population?

By Ugo Bardi (a similar version has appeared in 2017 on “The Journal of Population and Sustainability“)

1. Introduction

“The world has enough for every man’s need, but not enough for every man’s greed.” Gandhi [1]

While Gandhi’s observation about greed remains true even today, it may not be so for the ability of the world to meet every man’s need. Gandhi is reported to have said that in 1947 when the world population was under 2.5 billion, about one-third of the current figure of 7.5 billion. And it keeps growing. Does the world still have enough for every man’s need?

It is a tautology that if there are 7.5 billion people alive on planet earth today there must exist sufficient resources to keep them alive. The problem is for how long: a question rarely taken into account in estimates purportedly aimed at determining the maximum human population that the Earth can support.

The problem of long-term support of a population can be expressed in terms of the concept of “overshoot,” applied first by Jay Forrester in 1972 [2] to social systems. The innovative aspect of Forrester’s idea is that it takes the future into consideration: if there is enough food for 7.5 billion people today, that doesn’t mean that the situation will remain the same in the future.

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The road to the Seneca Cliff is paved with evil intentions. How to destroy the world’s forests

The road to the Seneca Cliff is paved with evil intentions. How to destroy the world’s forests

The oldest stories of human lore have to do with cutting trees and with the disasters that followed as a consequence. Above, Legendary Sumerian heroes Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the guardian of the trees, Huwawa (image source). Several thousand years afterward, we don’t seem to have learned much about how to manage our natural resources.

I expected this to happen, perhaps not so soon and not in this form, but it had to come. With the era of cheap fossil fuels coming to a close, what’s left as low-cost fuel is wood and that had to be the target of the next wave of exploitation. Naively, I was thinking that the rush to wood would have taken the form of desperate people moving to the woods with hand-held axes, but no, in Italy it is coming in a much more destructive way. It is a government decree approved on Dec 1st, 2017 which allows local administrations to cut woods, even against the will of the owners of the land. It is the start of a new wave of deforestation in Italy, probably an example that the rest of the world may follow in the near future.

It is a long story that goes back to the roots of Italian history. Already in Roman times, deforestation was a major problem, believed to have generated the marshes still present in Italy in modern times. During the Middle Ages, woods returned and were cut again in several cycles, the last one coming with the political unification of Italy, in 1861. At that time, the Piedmontese government treated the newly acquired lands as spoils of war, razing down ancient forests without any regrets. The story is reported in a novelized form by the British writer Ouida, in “A village commune.” (1881).
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Trump and Berlusconi: harbinger of the coming Seneca Cliff

Trump and Berlusconi: harbinger of the coming Seneca Cliff

Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi have many similarities as country leaders. I argue here that they are the symptom of a giant political transition which is reversing the trends that started more than two centuries ago with the French revolution.  Human rights have a cost and this cost has been paid, so far, by fossil fuels (our “energy slaves“). Now that our dark slaves are leaving us, who will pay? Not a small problem and the result seems to be an ongoing “Seneca Transition” catapulting us to a new and different world. 

After one year of Trump presidency, America looks more and more the same as Italy was when Berlusconi ruled it. I am not going to list the similarities between Berlusconi and Trump: it has already been done and everyone knows about the sex scandals, the outrageous behavior, the offensive way of speaking, all that.

For Silvio Berlusconi, this kind of behavior led him to be prime minister for a total of 9 years, over more than 20 years in which he strongly influenced Italian politics. Today, it looks perfectly possible that, at 81, he may become prime minister again with the coming national elections, in March, replacing the fading star of his heir, Matteo Renzi (aka “Berlusconi 2.0”).

Donald Trump uses the same methods developed by Berlusconi and he seems to be attaining a remarkable political staying power. Fighting him, the American Left is making the same mistakes that the Italian left made with Berlusconi: demonizing him while aping his political choices. Actually, the American Left is doing even worse: at least the Italian Left never accused voters to be so dumb that they could be easily swayed by the propaganda tricks of a foreign power. A surefire way to win the next elections: first you tell them they are idiots, nay, traitors, then you ask for their vote.
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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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