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Is There Any Point in Fighting to Stave off Industrial Apocalypse?
The collapse of civilisation will bring us a saner world, says Paul Kingsnorth. No, counters George Monbiot – we can't let billions perish
On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy's gross domestic product.
What grips me about these graphs (and graphs don't usually grip me) is that though they all show very different things, they have an almost identical shape. A line begins on the left of the page, rising gradually as it moves to the right. Then, in the last inch or so – around 1950 – it veers steeply upwards, like a pilot banking after a cliff has suddenly appeared from what he thought was an empty bank of cloud.
The root cause of all these trends is the same: a rapacious human economy bringing the world swiftly to the brink of chaos. We know this; some of us even attempt to stop it happening. Yet all of these trends continue to get rapidly worse, and there is no sign of that changing soon. What these graphs make clear better than anything else is the cold reality: there is a serious crash on the way.
Yet very few of us are prepared to look honestly at the message this reality is screaming at us: that the civilisation we are a part of is hitting the buffers at full speed, and it is too late to stop it. Instead, most of us – and I include in this generalisation much of the mainstream environmental movement – are still wedded to a vision of the future as an upgraded version of the present. We still believe in "progress", as lazily defined by western liberalism. We still believe that we will be able to continue living more or less the same comfortable lives (albeit with more windfarms and better lightbulbs) if we can only embrace "sustainable development" rapidly enough; and that we can then extend it to the extra 3 billion people who will shortly join us on this already gasping planet.
I think this is simply denial. The writing is on the wall for industrial society, and no amount of ethical shopping or determined protesting is going to change that now. Take a civilisation built on the myth of human exceptionalism and a deeply embedded cultural attitude to "nature"; add a blind belief in technological and material progress; then fuel the whole thing with a power source that is discovered to be disastrously destructive only after we have used it to inflate our numbers and appetites beyond the point of no return. What do you get? We are starting to find out.
We need to get real. Climate change is teetering on the point of no return while our leaders bang the drum for more growth. The economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon that growth to function. And who wants it tamed anyway? Most people in the rich world won't be giving up their cars or holidays without a fight.
Some people – perhaps you – believe that these things should not be said, even if true, because saying them will deprive people of "hope", and without hope there will be no chance of "saving the planet". But false hope is worse than no hope at all. As for saving the planet – what we are really trying to save, as we scrabble around planting turbines on mountains and shouting at ministers, is not the planet but our attachment to the western material culture, which we cannot imagine living without.
The challenge is not how to shore up a crumbling empire with wave machines and global summits, but to start thinking about how we are going to live through its fall, and what we can learn from its collapse.
All the best, Paul
Dear Paul
Like you I have become ever gloomier about our chances of avoiding the crash you predict. For the past few years I have been almost professionally optimistic, exhorting people to keep fighting, knowing that to say there is no hope is to make it so. I still have some faith in our ability to make rational decisions based on evidence. But it is waning.
If it has taken governments this long even to start discussing reform of the common fisheries policy – if they refuse even to make contingency plans for peak oil – what hope is there of working towards a steady-state economy, let alone the voluntary economic contraction ultimately required to avoid either the climate crash or the depletion of crucial resources?
The interesting question, and the one that probably divides us, is this: to what extent should we welcome the likely collapse of industrial civilisation? Or more precisely: to what extent do we believe that some good may come of it?
I detect in your writings, and in the conversations we have had, an attraction towards – almost a yearning for – this apocalypse, a sense that you see it as a cleansing fire that will rid the world of a diseased society. If this is your view, I do not share it. I'm sure we can agree that the immediate consequences of collapse would be hideous: the breakdown of the systems that keep most of us alive; mass starvation; war. These alone surely give us sufficient reason to fight on, however faint our chances appear. But even if we were somehow able to put this out of our minds, I believe that what is likely to come out on the other side will be worse than our current settlement.
Here are three observations: 1 Our species (unlike most of its members) is tough and resilient; 2 When civilisations collapse, psychopaths take over; 3 We seldom learn from others' mistakes.
From the first observation, this follows: even if you are hardened to the fate of humans, you can surely see that our species will not become extinct without causing the extinction of almost all others. However hard we fall, we will recover sufficiently to land another hammer blow on the biosphere. We will continue to do so until there is so little left that even Homo sapiens can no longer survive. This is the ecological destiny of a species possessed of outstanding intelligence, opposable thumbs and an ability to interpret and exploit almost every possible resource – in the absence of political restraint.
From the second and third observations, this follows: instead of gathering as free collectives of happy householders, survivors of this collapse will be subject to the will of people seeking to monopolise remaining resources. This will is likely to be imposed through violence. Political accountability will be a distant memory. The chances of conserving any resource in these circumstances are approximately zero. The human and ecological consequences of the first global collapse are likely to persist for many generations, perhaps for our species' remaining time on earth. To imagine that good could come of the involuntary failure of industrial civilisation is also to succumb to denial. The answer to your question – what will we learn from this collapse? – is nothing.
This is why, despite everything, I fight on. I am not fighting to sustain economic growth. I am fighting to prevent both initial collapse and the repeated catastrophe that follows. However faint the hopes of engineering a soft landing – an ordered and structured downsizing of the global economy – might be, we must keep this possibility alive. Perhaps we are both in denial: I, because I think the fight is still worth having; you, because you think it isn't.
With my best wishes, George
Dear George
You say that you detect in my writing a yearning for apocalypse. I detect in yours a paralysing fear.
You have convinced yourself that there are only two possible futures available to humanity. One we might call Liberal Capitalist Democracy 2.0. Clearly your preferred option, this is much like the world we live in now, only with fossil fuels replaced by solar panels; governments and corporations held to account by active citizens; and growth somehow cast aside in favour of a "steady state economy".
The other we might call McCarthy world, from Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road – which is set in an impossibly hideous post-apocalyptic world, where everything is dead but humans, who are reduced to eating children. Not long ago you suggested in a column that such a future could await us if we didn't continue "the fight".
Your letter continues mining this Hobbesian vein. We have to "fight on" because without modern industrial civilisation the psychopaths will take over, and there will be "mass starvation and war". Leaving aside the fact that psychopaths seem to be running the show already, and millions are suffering today from starvation and war, I think this is a false choice. We both come from a western, Christian culture with a deep apocalyptic tradition. You seem to find it hard to see beyond it. But I am not "yearning" for some archetypal End of Days, because that's not what we face.
We face what John Michael Greer, in his book of the same name, calls a "long descent": a series of ongoing crises brought about by the factors I talked of in my first letter that will bring an end to the all-consuming culture we have imposed upon the Earth. I'm sure "some good will come" from this, for that culture is a weapon of planetary mass destruction.
Our civilisation will not survive in anything like its present form, but we can at least aim for a managed retreat to a saner world. Your alternative – to hold on to nurse for fear of finding something worse – is in any case a century too late. When empires begin to fall, they build their own momentum. But what comes next doesn't have to be McCarthyworld. Fear is a poor guide to the future.
All the best, Paul
Dear Paul
If I have understood you correctly, you are proposing to do nothing to prevent the likely collapse of industrial civilisation. You believe that instead of trying to replace fossil fuels with other energy sources, we should let the system slide. You go on to say that we should not fear this outcome.
How many people do you believe the world could support without either fossil fuels or an equivalent investment in alternative energy? How many would survive without modern industrial civilisation? Two billion? One billion? Under your vision several billion perish. And you tell me we have nothing to fear.
I find it hard to understand how you could be unaffected by this prospect. I accused you of denial before; this looks more like disavowal. I hear a perverse echo in your writing of the philosophies that most offend you: your macho assertion that we have nothing to fear from collapse mirrors the macho assertion that we have nothing to fear from endless growth. Both positions betray a refusal to engage with physical reality.
Your disavowal is informed by a misunderstanding. You maintain that modern industrial civilisation "is a weapon of planetary mass destruction". Anyone apprised of the palaeolithic massacre of the African and Eurasian megafauna, or the extermination of the great beasts of the Americas, or the massive carbon pulse produced by deforestation in the Neolithic must be able to see that the weapon of planetary mass destruction is not the current culture, but humankind.
You would purge the planet of industrial civilisation, at the cost of billions of lives, only to discover that you have not invoked "a saner world" but just another phase of destruction.
Strange as it seems, a de-fanged, steady-state version of the current settlement might offer the best prospect humankind has ever had of avoiding collapse. For the first time in our history we are well-informed about the extent and causes of our ecological crises, know what should be done to avert them, and have the global means – if only the political will were present – of preventing them. Faced with your alternative – sit back and watch billions die – Liberal Democracy 2.0 looks like a pretty good option.
With my best wishes, George
Dear George
Macho, moi? You've been using the word "fight" at a Dick Cheney-like rate. Now my lack of fighting spirit sees me accused of complicity in mass death. This seems a fairly macho accusation.
Perhaps the heart of our disagreement can be found in a single sentence in your last letter: "You are proposing to do nothing to prevent the likely collapse of industrial civilisation." This invites a question: what do you think I could do? What do you think you can do?
You've suggested several times that the hideous death of billions is the only alternative to a retooled status quo. Even if I accepted this loaded claim, which seems designed to make me look like a heartless fascist, it would get us nowhere because a retooled status quo is a fantasy and even you are close to admitting it. Rather than "do nothing" in response, I'd suggest we get some perspective on the root cause of this crisis – not human beings but the cultures within which they operate.
Civilisations live and die by their founding myths. Our myths tell us that humanity is separate from something called "nature", which is a "resource" for our use. They tell us there are no limits to human abilities, and that technology, science and our ineffable wisdom can fix everything. Above all, they tell us that we are in control. This craving for control underpins your approach. If we can just persaude the politicians to do A, B and C swiftly enough, then we will be saved. But what climate change shows us is that we are not in control, either of the biosphere or of the machine which is destroying it. Accepting that fact is our biggest challenge.
I think our task is to negotiate the coming descent as best we can, while creating new myths that put humanity in its proper place. Recently I co-founded a new initiative, the Dark Mountain Project, which aims to help do that. It won't save the world, but it might help us think about how to live through a hard century. You'd be welcome to join us.
Very best, Paul
Dear Paul
Yes, the words I use are fierce, but yours are strangely neutral. I note that you have failed to answer my question about how many people the world could support without modern forms of energy and the systems they sustain, but 2 billion is surely the optimistic extreme. You describe this mass cull as "a long descent" or a "retreat to a saner world". Have you ever considered a job in the Ministry of Defence press office?
I draw the trifling issue of a few billion fatalities to your attention not to make you look like a heartless fascist but because it's a reality with which you refuse to engage. You don't see it because to do so would be to accept the need for action. But of course you aren't doing nothing. You propose to stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, and, er … "get some perspective on the root cause of this crisis". Fine: we could all do with some perspective. But without action – informed, focused and immediate – the crisis will happen. I agree that the chances of success are small. But they are non-existent if we give up before we have started. You mock this impulse as a "craving for control". I see it as an attempt at survival.
What could you do? You know the answer as well as I do. Join up, protest, propose, create. It's messy, endless and uncertain of success. Perhaps you see yourself as above this futility, but it's all we've got and all we've ever had. And sometimes it works.
The curious outcome of this debate is that while I began as the optimist and you the pessimist, our roles have reversed. You appear to believe that though it is impossible to tame the global economy, it is possible to change our founding myths, some of which predate industrial civilisation by several thousand years. You also believe that good can come of a collapse that deprives most of the population of its means of survival. This strikes me as something more than optimism: a millenarian fantasy, perhaps, of Redemption after the Fall. Perhaps it is the perfect foil to my apocalyptic vision.
With my best wishes, George
- Posted in
78 Comments so far
Show AllThat's like asking if there was a point for Colonel Travis and Davy Crocket and all those guys to fight at the Alamo when anyone with any sense could see they were badly outnumbered and would surely lose.
I don't know the answer. I've heard people make the case that industrial civilization "deserves" to self-destruct, and from an abstract detached place I can see their point. But when the destruction starts to actually pile debris on me, then I start hoping that humanity comes together and puts a stop to it before I get badly buried.
Like Revolution: when the trams don't run, bread is running out, and you have to keep your head down when you pass through your living room near an open window.Oh, and winter is coming and there is no fuel.You might find your enthusiasm sinking regardless of your politics.Just a little snippet of a family memory from Petrograd.
this is the greatest "dialogue" i have heard since Plato. these authors state the "end all of end all." no matter whose side you agree with their assumptions and conclusions are incisive to the situation we find ourselves in today.
"The fall of civilization," indeed. what a wonderful "capsule" these two authors have provided us with.
Excellent and stimulating arguments.
I come down on the side of Monbiot, if for no other reason than I believe, as he does, that you won't find a solution if you don't accept that there is one.
Also, I think that the actions Monbiot lists as worthwhile are important, but perhaps even more important are the things we haven't yet come up with. And for those new and successful ideas to be discovered, recognized and implemented, it will require caring, intelligent, creative, and committed people with their minds focused on solving these problems. As many of them/us as possible.
OK. I accept that there is a solution. Help me find it. Point me in a direction.
Make public transit free. Rebuild the town centers. Educate all children. Give the suburbs to the organic farmers.
http://freepublictransit.org
We are in a world war -- a *true* world war, involving the whole world and every living creature above the level of cockroach at most.
And we're losing, because the enemy is us plus physical law.
Unless we get us to surrender damned quick, we're finished as a species, and we're going to take every other high-order species with us when we go.
There's really only one way to get us to surrender: pull the plug on the greedy.
Outlaw Capitalism, outlaw natalist religions, quarantine the pathologically greedy (or shoot them), and impose mandatory sterilisation on every person after they've had 1/2 a live birth (with men who "accidently" impregnate more than one woman losing their dangly bits--a sufficient deterrent even to the most priapic, I'd think).
In return, guarantee everyone who signs up a lifetime pro-rata share of the world's food, water, space, healthcare, and education.
We can maybe get through this without killing anyone innocent, but only if we work together all the world around.
Will we do it?
"men who "accidently" impregnate more than one woman losing their dangly bits--a sufficient deterrent even to the most priapic, I'd think)."
Nothing like a little hate speech to shed light on the problem. How about we mandate hysterectomies for all women who have more than one child? Do you like that one too?
You are on to one thing. Environmental doomsday prophecy is reactionary nonsense unless it is paired with revolutionary redistributive political economics.
I think your visceral reaction kept your brain from working: a male who decides that the half-kid rule doesn't apply to him could impregnate a dozen women before any dna testing could reveal his part in the first pregnancy and trigger sterilisation. But a woman could not give birth more than once before triggering the procedure.
So there's no "hate speech" involved, just a recognition of biological and social realities.
I tend to agree more with Paul Kingsnorth's view, although I sympathize with Monbiot's position. However, I lost a lot of respect for Monbiot when he wrote a piece a couple of years ago downplaying the population issue http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/01/29/population-bombs/
Addressing overpopulation in a humane manner and pushing it to the very top of the environmentalist and humanitarian agenda offers the best hope of minimizing present and future suffering as TSHTF.
Excellent conversation. But it's clear that Paul is correct - at least in the sense that there is now zero chance of avoiding the collapse under discussion. What the outcome will be following that is an open question but at 61 years old I don't think I'll be around to find out. George suggests that we "join up, protest", etc. in an attempt to avoid the inevitable. I will applaud any engaged in such noble efforts but they are doomed to failure IMHO. The level of global organization and cooperation required are simply beyond our current capacity. And when the situation becomes sufficiently dire to compell them - as it should already be - it will be too late. And, since we've already exceeded the planetary carrying capacity for George's "steady state" world economy by several billion IMHO, I'm not sure how he envisions reducing the numbers short of the apocalypse he thinks we can avoid. China, despite some draconian measures, was unable to do more than slow their population growth. In fact, if not for their cultural preference for boys over girls limiting the population of fertile females, they might not have even achieved that. I'd like to believe - as George apparently does - that as a species we're smart enough to act but a lifetime of observation - and a knowledge of history - indicates otherwise.
drb48, I don't think that being 61 years old means that you "won't be around to find out." Many of my friends are living well into their nineties, and in any event, we are "finding out" already. The worldwide economic collapse is affecting everyone that I know. And of course, we will never return to the old economy because it (the bubble) never really existed in the first place. It was a mirage.
Regarding the debate in the article, my response is very straightforward. It doesn't matter what the outcome will be. We know what we must do. And that is to take every possible step to preserve what remains of the environment, and to ease the suffering of our fellow human beings and other living creatures. That is the only moral response to the enormous challenges and dangers we face.
nosurrender -
Of course you're right about the moral imperative. Just don't think there's enough of "we" - nor has there ever been - to make a difference. I'll be happy to be proven wrong. And I agree that the old economy was a mirage, although that doesn't necessarily mean that we won't stagger from bubble to bubble trying to re-create it for the forseeable future. In fact that effort is obviously underway. As for the possibility of surviving long enough to find myself in the "Soylent Green" aftermath - even if I'm fortunate enough to become a nonagenarian - that would require a faster collapse than I currently think likely. At least in the developed world, as the powers that be will defend their privilege with all their not inconsiderable means. I think that the reality of what has happened with the Obama administration - as opposed to what was promised, much less hoped for - shows the limitations of what "we" can do in opposition to the entrenched corporatist elites. On this site we're all "preaching to the choir", but "we" are a tiny sliver with a very small mike compared to the 24/7 megaphone of bullshit flooding the MSM and the death-lock that K Street has on the US political system. It may be a little better in the EU but I don't see China and India signing up to back off development to save the planet. I think we're just hosed. And, BTW the above doesn't even factor in a nuclear holocaust - which seems to be more possible now than ever.
My Chinese friends tell me that it is not the cultural preference for boys over "fertile girls" that slowed population growth there. It is the one-child policy, which has been adhered to pretty well (and sometimes forcibly so) that has caused that slowing.
You seem to have missed the point. With a "one-child" policy and a cultural preference for boys over girls, abortion and even infantacide - anectdotally at least - have created a situation in China where there is now a shortage of females. Which is a limiting factor on population growth. Or so it has been reported. Trying Googling "shortage of girls in China".
These arguments have been playing in my head for years now. I think this is true for many people. Also, I don't think we have to take one side or the other of the argument. Both sides have great value. There are things we can control, and there are things we cannot control. There are those who are fighting hard to change things now, and there are those who are doing what they can to lessen the impact of our future "descent". What we choose depends on our individual psychological makeup. Both camps have something to offer. Such dialogue is the juice of creative spirit. Thank you George and Paul for sharing your letters.
The true indication that the end is nigh and that there will never be a technotopian fix is the human tendency to bilaterlize any situation. It is either this or that. Or, it is a particular stem from the tree of disaster: peak oil, overpopulation, climate change, fresh water, war, soil loss, ongoing holocene extinction event, etc. Then you pick a side. All of these have one side--your side.
Everyone is busy pounding their podium in a vast amphitheater of podiums built on the Titanic, on top of Rome, balanced on the production floor of Chernobyl. Not one of these podiums or the people behind these podiums believes for an instant that they are the problem. Not one. Well, maybe a few in a hazy non-committal way, but by and large they all feel that all we have to do is listen to them and the problem is solved.
Then you have the people who say things like--death is bad!!! Are you going to be a fascist and let a bunch of precious, exceptionalist people die? I mean each and everyone of those people are so special. And god knows we can't let them die in the huge spiraling death throes of Western Civ!! No let them die of war and famine and the industrial diseases like cancer and diabetes and poisoning like the rest of us!!!
Folks. I have news. Physics could give a hearty, "HI, HO RAT'S ASS!!" about your "machoism," "peace signs," "love and kittens in your hearts let's save absolutely everyone" mentalities.
NO. You have been, currently are, and will continue to be a planet destroyer. Unless you abandon all fossil fuel including nukes, and any fossil fuel used to create so-called alternative fuels, and you stop mining the soil, and you stop popping out babies like pez and you leave those dead zone cities and you cut down the population, by whatever means you want, to about one or two billion, PHYSICS SAYS YOU ARE SCREWED!!!!!! For all your specious whining about being humane (and that's only towards other humans) your days are numbered. Whine away! Exhort away!! HERE--SIGN MY PETITION!! I'LL SIGN YOURS!!!
No. It's too late. The unraveling will begin to pick up speed over the next few months or years--doesn't matter--and it will speed up and gain in ferocity and ugliness until one day you will remember this day, this very day that you read this rant in air-conditioned comfort with a microwaved coffee or tea on the desk, a warm and fuzzy memory of how it used to be.
If you live.
Unlimited growth is impossible.
There's a lot of "you" in this entry, and not much "we". But we are in it together. Please see nosurrender's entry below, which has a dignity and courage that may hearten you--whatever comes.
Paul Kingsworth brings up an imporatant and largely ignored fact: the exponential rise in world population alone will doom the planet. Thomas Malthus will be vindicated in the end, he was just a bit pre-mature in his predictions.
The western enlightenment concept of linear progress and the capitalist treatment of nature as a commodity to be exploited, destroyed, converted into toxic products and then discarded are the other main reasons for our slow collective suicide.
We can remain realistically hopeful, but let us also be honest with ourselves about the future. The two need not be mutually exclusive.
Honesty allows you to invest your hope in the most productive areas.
It's to late to save Industrial society as we know it. The decline has already started. The Chinese and Indians are going ahead with massive Industrial escalation that will push the climate over the edge. The disappearance of the Himalayas glaciers is already well advanced and Greenland is melting rapidly. The Oceans are rising everywhere and desertification is started all over the planet. Wars for resources like water are inevitable and will be extremely nasty. I'd predict India will fall first, late to the game it's population is just to large to exist with the coming water shortages in that area. Our big problem is that we built a huge part of our society on both coasts and the oceans are going to flood out many of our major cities. the cost for defense of these areas will consume us.
Humans are an experiment. From the evolutionary perspective it's a good question whether a big brain and high intelligence are advantageous or not.
We are smart enough to cause trouble, so we are too smart for our own good. But we are not smart enough to figure out how not to cause trouble and even cooperate in our own preservation, so that makes us too stupid.
I'm glad I'm not a cockroach, but they may very well survive us.
Something that doesn't exist can't collapse.
civilization
(also civilisation)
• noun 1 an advanced stage or system of human social development. 2 the process of achieving this. 3 a civilized nation or region.
civilize
(also civilise)
• verb 1 bring to an advanced stage of social development. 2 (civilized) polite and good-mannered.
http://www.askoxford.com
Nothing "good" could possibly come from the "free-fall" collapse of civilization. After this, ignorance combined with emotion will trump reason. The "knowledge base" of 6000 years of civilization will have been lost.
Paradoxically, the main attribute we humans have, which got us into this mess--the ability to observe, process information, generate mathematical models (ideas), and formulate policies based on these, is the only attribute that gives us hope in finding a way out that does not involve the untimely and unjust death of billions of innocents.
As fortune would have it, nature has left humanity an "escape hatch" from its current predicament. It's a technology that actually "takes advantage of" past and existing global warming to increase its output. Warm(ed) surface air is constrained to rise as a vortex from a single location over a region. External energy is needed only for start-up, after which the process is continuous--electrical energy (via internal wind turbines) can be extracted. Unlike hurricanes, which eventually run out of warm water-provisions can be made for a continuous supply of low-grade heat to maintain the vortex at "steady-state."
If a few key people would only stop for a minute and recognize the value of the Atmospheric Vortex Engine to mitigate global warming by providing low-cost renewable electricity to all people, express their support publicly, there is a chance to turn this around. What will occur without the deployment of this technology, is unthinkable, IMO.
Ref: http://vortexengine.ca
"How many people do you believe the world could support without either fossil fuels or an equivalent investment in alternative energy? How many would survive without modern industrial civilisation? Two billion? One billion? Under your vision several billion perish. And you tell me we have nothing to fear."
Regardless of what we do or do not do, the number of people that will die in the future is precisely the same: the number that have been born...
If there are, at some point in the not-too-distant future, 7 billion people here, then, in the next hundred years or so, 7 billion people will die no matter what...that is because eveybody dies, with or without a refrigerator, with or without penicillin, with or without anything...everybody...we are trying to deny and prevent that, even to the point of destroying the very conditions with which our lives are inextricably entwined, which is not logical...the question is not one of population, it is one of behavior, and of dependency...humans are not an abstract, able to ball together in space and survive...they are a subset of the unique, functional, living environment we know as Earth, and without such, will, again, perish, even if by their own hand...no power plant or
electric car will ever stop that...we have made bad decisions in the paths we have chosen to follow, and, just like going miles down the wrong road with no other outlet, the only thing to do is admit our error, turn around and go back the way we came...the horrors of potential human conflict may eclipse both the species and the environment, but current behaviors will certainly do so if unchecked...our only hope is to restore functionality to the environment to the very extent possible, and try to realign our philosophies to support...I notice neither of these gentlemen truly addresses the human psyche...marijuana is an incredible substance on many levels, certainly one of them is the ability to alter the human psychological state, raise consciousness, if you will...the fact that no one (MSM) seriously addresses the very real need to alter our collective consiciousness in a concrete, physical way, and this specific substance as an outstanding way to do that, is very telling...without fundamental changes in the human psyche, there is no hope...compassion is a worthy goal...at least as worthy as consumption...
Alteration of our collective consciousness is jeopardizing corporate profits and political subjugation.
That's why alteration has been made illegal.
same goes for marijuana.............
Excellent and extremely timely exchange!!
Many thanks to the authors for making it public and for daring to speak about what in most quarters of the press, not to mention the near totality of present-day governments, lies outside the reach of acceptable discourse.
Although I applaud the authors, I find the use of socio-psychological concepts such as macho and quasi-political epithets such as 'fascist' silly and out of place. The stakes at that level of the discussion have nothing to do with psychology and the remnants of the authoritarian ideologies of the last century.
While I find myself in basic agreement with Paul Kingsnorth, there are a number of points made in the discussion which could be debated, if not in fact rejected.
I don't know whether my time will permit me to address all the points in question.
I begin with a rather massive assertion: industrialism (namely, societies that are constituted by the triadic structure of science, technology, and growth economy (market or state run), the three components of which are intimately connected to each other) is structurally unreformable. Why is this so? Because the techno-scientific procedures upon which the growth economy rests have a feedback structure that eventually destroys, runs counter, or undermines the very goal, aim, or purpose they were designed to fulfill or serve at their point of initiation. For instance, the car was meant to promote ease and speed of individual mobility; today, on the other hand, people, when using their cars, spend most of their overall driving time stuck in traffic jams. One can only imagine what will happen in this respect when most Indians and Chinese will own cars (if such a situation ever comes to pass). To that simple observation, we may add the pollution, the ever larger demand for parking facilities, the clogging up and noise of cities, and the thousands upon thousands of road deaths annually the car has given rise to. The car was intended to be a convenience, a facilitator of life in the modern world: it has turned into its oppposite, a nightmarish nuisance upon the Earth and our lives.
As you may see, nothing to do with psychology or extremist politics: it is a logical structure, in the wide sense of 'logic'.
The same argument can be applied to industrialism in its entirety: given enough time, it will turn into its opposite, and no action that relies on its presuppositions and modi operandi (some of which were described and identified by Paul Kingsnorth) will ever succeed, for the above described dynamic will eventually destroy it.
The way out of industrialism is not large scale planning (such is precisely doomed to fail), but localized and peacemeal easing into non-industrial (agricultural, crafts, use of horses and waterways for transportation, etc.) modes of making a living, and entirely different modes of understanding our relations to ourselves, to others, and to nature. There is plenty of work before us!
More later, if I find time.
A swell back+forth, but both men missed one important thing we should all be doing: preparing for the worst.
Arm-up, learn how to shoot/maintain your weapons, survival training, basic farming, water treatment, alt energy sources, stockpile necessities, etc.
IOW, time to go extreme Boy Scout. This way, when things really start to unwind, you're ready. And if things don't, ya got lots of good eBay crap...
"When civilisations collapse, psychopaths take over" -Monbiot
Who do you think has control now?
The corporate "model", a classic power pyramid, selects for its leaders the most rapacious and amoral in that they are best at the corporate goal: profiteering. Along the way, these highly competent corporate leaders have purchased information distribution and the legislative process.
Very nicely put!
YOU ARE CORRECT!
Unlimited growth is impossible.
This is a superb article, and I'm glad CD ran it for us to read. And I'm glad to see CD readers starting a good conversation of our own.
I can't add anything really new to what's already been said, but I would like to encourage everyone to check out "The Long Descent" by John Michael Greer, as well as his blog:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/
Also, as I grapple with the issues raised by Paul and George, I sometimes draw comfort from Robinson Jeffers' poem "The Answer." You can find it here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182214
Please check out "Endgame" by Derrick Jensen.
Unlimited growth is impossible.
Industrial civilization is doomed no matter what. By its very nature it is a system of unsustainable imperial overreach combined with domestic repression and merciless extraction of limited resources. Such an inequilibrium cannot be maintained. The only choice we have in the matter is how nasty it is when the crash finally comes: do we let even more damage be done and more resources wasted so that we're even worse off when the inevitable occurs, or do we actively attack industrial civilization, and bring it down ourselves while there's still a landbase to live off of in the aftermath?
Such staggering damage has already been done; this culture must be destroyed and the sooner the better.
YOU ARE CORRECT!
Unlimited growth is impossible.
Excellent.
There are solutions to all our problems, easily discovered in our online revolution. How long will it take for humans to understand and address the basic underlying issues of overpopulation, resource depletion, pollution, species extinctions and extreme money-power concentration to avert and cushion ourselves from the disasters mentioned, is the question.
The rapidly increasing rate of change means all the answers are being provided or will be soon.
As things worsen, pressure to resolve these issues will increase. Multiplying natural and man-made disasters, make it increasingly obvious that we are "not man apart". The time it takes for this realization to take hold in the private and public psychic and for all of us to act on it, will be directly proportional to the suffering, death and destruction we will be subjected to.
YOU ARE INCORRECT!
Unlimited growth is impossible.
?
I acknowledge that the time it takes for this realization to take hold in the private and public psyche and for all of us to act on will be directly proportional to the suffering, death and destruction we will be subjected to.
Sadly however the struggle will not be limited to environmental or supply matters but will increasingly become the struggle against established and un-reformable SYSTEMS. The 'democracies' we experience have been usurped by the masters of the system. Change will become a battlefield. The surveillance (patriots act), total control, political inertia, data automation, home security, propaganda and subjugation have been refined to such a degree that death and suffering will increasingly come from the thrashings of the death throes of the System(s).
'Home security' will fight hungry disillusioned American 'insurgents'.
The war business will continue on home soil.
Becoming a formal dictatorship is a possibility, but I think it could stay an informal one, with our puppet government.
Try as cons may to control the Internet, they haven't been able to yet. That gives me some hope that things can change.
Yes, yes, and no and Of course!! I and I sentence humanity to death. As death must visit all who dare to live, it is inviolate.
However who will address the main chance? What are we to realize in this brief window of time that is our life? A conscience? A transformation? An awakening?
A sufi transhumanist would suggest that the greatest opportunity in this short brutal life would be to stand once and for all in the brilliant light of the Imam, and remember the divine.
A fundamentalist christian would say wait till you are swept up in rapture to be placed at the right hand of Jesus.
A comic book reader would look forward to blasting zombies in a radioactive desert.
To hell with "survival" we are here to do something.
Lets do that something and get out.
Good old Paul must have read Daniel Quinn and Derrick Jensen.
Well, what Paul says is what I've been convinced of for ages as well.
In this second post of mine, I am assuming what I said below in my first post.
Monbiot asks two questions at one point in his first letter: "... to what extent should we welcome the likely collapse of industrial civilisation? Or more precisely: to what extent do we believe that some good may come of it?"
1) As for the first question, it follows from the tendency to inversion of industrialism that I identified in my first post, that the collapse of industrialism is an occurrence over which we have, and shall have, no say; it will happen, whether we like or not.
The question is not how to save industrialism; such is a futile enterprise. The question is how one is to behave to prepare for such an occurrence. The idea is to temper its effects, which are going to be painful for all of us at the very least.
Here one must avoid all grandiose plans. All measures should be taken strictly with one's local capacities and resources in mind. Why local, will one ask? Because one of the consequences of the collapse will be the return of life and of the act of making a living to the locality (in the sense of one's local environment, social and natural, and what it has to offer) which one inhabits, the return of all things small-scale, the end of everything global and of all giganticism (gigantic corporations, buildings, armies, etc.). With the collapse, the Earth and distances will become huge and daunting again, and traveling -- whatever there will be left of it -- will be an endeavor that requires good health, courage, and effort. Tourism, as the last century has known it, will be over.
2) As for the second question, whether some good comes of said collapse, it is a matter that cannot be decided a priori. However, one may act locally in such a way as to minimize the damage as much as possible. More than that, I am afraid one cannot do: the era of five-year plans is over, and the era of large-scale, universalistic ambitions, too, is over.
If Monbiot is seeking for some sort of assurance or guarantee of good which he could behold and examine before deciding what to do, there is none to be had: we are in an unprecedented civilizational breakdown and there are no civilizational collapse insurances in the same way that, say, there are terror or fire hazard insurances. As the collapse becomes ever more pronounced, we shall be more and more called upon to be inventive and creative with what we have left. The post-modern ironic gaze at the world is over, and the comforts of grand philosophical and political schemes are over as well: we are entering a situation where one will have to think on one's feet.
A fascinating exchange -- thanks CD.
In the end, you did share a common idea -- our myths and our culture have doomed us to acting in ways that are unsustainable.
I believe the question for our times (not to go all Ted Kazinsky here) is whether this is innate and hard-wired, a part of our DNA and an inevitable consequence of reason, or whether is is, in fact, composed of myth and culture. At least the latter is alterable.
It's guaranteed to be cultural. Gatherer-hunter cultures take good care (in a wide variety of ways, some of them awful (e.g. infanticide) but all of them ingenious (e.g. penis-slitting to reduce the ability of sperm to reach the vagina) not to overpopulate their living space. They have no technology to shield them from the effects of their bad decisions -- they get Nature full-strength!
Sioux Rose
JBA: What if the answer is a braid between both influences? There exists in every person raw self-interest; and when societies--like martial America--push those buttons, press those specific behavioral chords, then aggression of all sorts becomes the norm. The Biblical idea of an angry, jealous god and all those "holy" wars to follow has stamped human consciousness for centuries, as well. But is it inevitable?
Were societies to champion different types of ethics and a different view/version of "the hero" we would not see these outcomes to the extent that they now march across history's stage as if to suggest they present the only channel consensual reality can feature.
One could argue diet, economic systems (how vicious their basis for hierarchy), added to gender programming, religious delusions, and DNA/biology ALL factor into the mix. The human animal can be trained, his/her behavior taught to follow ideals. That is the true basis for education. In America, minds instead are codified to fight wars, buy useless products, and sit passively as others read them reality-as-script from their TV screens. And woe unto said viewer (like the guy who let loose in a shooting spree aimed at all those fitness women) when HIS reality doesn't match the televised ideal.
This from the article:
From the first observation, this follows: even if you are hardened to the fate of humans, you can surely see that our species will not become extinct without causing the extinction of almost all others. However hard we fall, we will recover sufficiently to land another hammer blow on the biosphere. We will continue to do so until there is so little left that even Homo sapiens can no longer survive. This is the ecological destiny of a species possessed of outstanding intelligence, opposable thumbs and an ability to interpret and exploit almost every possible resource – in the absence of political restraint.
From the second and third observations, this follows: instead of gathering as free collectives of happy householders, survivors of this collapse will be subject to the will of people seeking to monopolise remaining resources. This will is likely to be imposed through violence. Political accountability will be a distant memory. The chances of conserving any resource in these circumstances are approximately zero. The human and ecological consequences of the first global collapse are likely to persist for many generations, perhaps for our species' remaining time on earth. To imagine that good could come of the involuntary failure of industrial civilisation is also to succumb to denial. The answer to your question – what will we learn from this collapse? – is nothing.
My comments on the inverted comma quotes:
‘our species will not become extinct without causing the extinction of almost all others’
There is an ongoing mass extinction of species. www.planetextinction.com
‘this is the ecological destiny of a species possessed of outstanding intelligence’
our ‘outstanding intelligence’ has led us to the mess in which we find ourselves now.
‘the human and ecological consequences of the first global collapse’
Dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrate animals on earth for over 160 MILLION years. Homo sapiens have been here for only 200,000 years.
So this proves the point:
dinosaurs are better than homo sapiens………………..
dinosaurs of course didn’t have credit cards/television/vehicles/politicians/designer clothes/getawayholidays/religion/starbucks/scented candles/cloned teradactyls/land mines/depleted uranium/monsanto/pandemics/psychology/circuses/foxnews/graphs
the list could go on forever………………
there is no proof as to what happened to the dinosaurs, but the proof of what will happen to homo sapiens is staring us in the face……………..
In a way this exchange represents commentary that dances over the play that is acting itself out. (That is something intellectuals enjoy doing)
Fact is, people are not proactive; they will not change their behaviors until they have to. And second, they will adapt. Survival will make certain courses of behavior unacceptable and will favor others. Third, those that have wealth and power will not allow real change to occur if it puts their assets at risk. That is why governments will not achieve meaningful change.
It is fascinating to watch the drama. We know, in our hearts, the rough outline of how it will turn out. Some of us will survive in a diminished world. That knowledge should not prevent us from doing everything we can do to prevent apocalypse. Maybe I have seen too many Japanese movies that tell of the struggles of those doomed to failure who achieve nobility by persevering to the very end, but I believe in that message with all my heart. To live a good life is not to win but to struggle even as we fail.
Personally, I see no reason to presume we're doomed. I think it's better to take a Pattonesque view: it's not our job to die so that the elites can continue enjoying their pathology, it's our job to make sure that they do any dying that needs to be done, so that we can create a new system in which pathology is treated rather than admired, and all may live in peace and dignity.