Living with Collapse

The art of mastering cognitive dissonance near the end of the industrial age

It will be repaired. For now. Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

After publishing last week’s post I stumbled upon a pretty good interview with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, university professor, educator and author. There were so many good points raised, that it would take much more than the few thousand words I trouble you to read every week to fully explore all of them. Instead, allow me to reflect on her ideas related to where we left off last week: collapse acceptance.

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As anyone fully aware of our predicament she, too, gets the same two responses after explaining that collapse is already taking place all around us: panic and dissociation. Panic is a bit of an overreaction, as the collapse of modernity is an awfully long affair (1). Those who have been so far shielded from the unraveling of our civilization, on the other hand, tend to deny that it happens and fall into the other extreme: complacency. ‘Nothing is collapsing for me. The stock market just keeps going up, as it did during my entire life. All is well, so why bother?’ For them the fundamentals of civilization means ‘market fundamentals’, not healthy ecosystems or a stable climate, let alone locally available resources such as freshwater. In their view everything can be made or sourced somewhere else then bought for money. If not from this planet, then from the asteroid belt (2). Case closed.

Cognitive dissonance is a bitch. Sure enough, holding two fundamentally contradicting ideas in one’s head is no small task: it takes constant attention and a lot of mental energy. No wonder most people just ditch one of the two conflicting concepts and stick to the one offering the most comfort. (No, not necessarily the “truth”, or what makes sense — those rationalizations come only after the “decision” which one to ditch was made.) Being complacent in the face of collapse is a perfect example. The idea, that our comfortable, secure, materially rich lives could soon give way to hardship, or at least a ton of inconvenience, insecurity and material deprivation is not easy to live with. Especially not if past experience suggests otherwise: all prior crises were eventually “solved”, the stock market always returned to growth, the pandemic went away (it never did), and despite breaching the 1.5 °C threshold of warming the sky did not fall either (3). Being asked to believe that all these crises, together with the sixth mass extinction, war and genocide, are all products of humanity overshooting every possible boundary on this planet is just way too much for many.

“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” ― Ayn Rand

All prior “solutions” from the advent of agriculture to colonization and eventually to the complete drawdown of a one-time natural inheritance (including fossil fuels) were just means to export and hide ecological overshoot. Take the bronze age collapse for example. Agriculture was “invented” to grow more food, and thereby support a larger population than what could thrive on a hunter-gatherer diet alone. Combined with the advent of trade, using the technology of sailboats, areas previously unable to feed large civilizations became densely populated. As the climate shifted to a colder regime, however, crops failed, exposing a major vulnerability; namely that we have became dependent on technology and a stable climate to survive. Problem was that the technology of the age all depended on bronze, an alloy of tin and copper. Since tin mines were few and far in between, as deposits of this mineral resource began to deplete, many previously common technologies became nonviable, making collapse all but inevitable.

Various iterations of civilizations followed, all grappling with the same issue: overshooting the natural carrying capacity of the land, and being forced to invent technologies, build empires, colonize other nations etc. to overcome local limitations. At least temporarily. Ever since the dawn of civilizations we were living on borrowed time, stolen from other nations and even our own kin. Rise and fall, rise and fall was a predictable pattern. Now, that the bill is coming due, yet again, as the climate destabilizes and we run out of the affordable portion of our master resource, oil, people turn towards denial. ‘No, this cannot possibly happen to us!’ Oh, yes it can. Yes it can, and will.

And what does our “wise” corporate-financier leadership class do? Do they try to ‘degrow’ the economy, or come up with plans how to power down this civilization safely and peacefully? Surely you jest. Judged by their actions they rather plunge the whole world into chaos, than face the music. Collapse is often initiated by a foolish, egocentric ruling elite, thinking that by leveling the playing field they can somehow come out on top. By not realizing that there is no way to continue with modernity on the long run, let alone rebuild what has been lost on a shrinking resource base, however, they threaten to collapse the entire system much sooner that it otherwise would (4). What was that quote from that British historian, Toynbee? Ah, yes:

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

The Buzludzha monument — left abandoned after the fall of the Communist regime in Bulgaria. Photo by Natalya Letunova on Unsplash

Having said all that, is it any wonder that most of us just ditch the concept of overshoot together with it’s dire consequences, and plan for business as usual continuing forever and a day? ‘Besides, if we indeed have no agency — as you say — then why do anything at all?’ Fair question, why bother, indeed…? Well, imagine a crisis hitting in about a year’s time. Nothing Earth shattering just a good old financial crash, making the ongoing cost of living crisis even worse, seeing the cost of necessities soaring and real wages falling further still. How would people still in denial react? If you guessed by scapegoating out-groups and believing every propaganda narrative about those evil “other nations ripping us off” then you are not that far from the truth.

An unwillingness to recognize that we are living through collapse already can thus easily lead to frame-ups, confusion, conspiracy theories, panic reactions and short term “fixes” making things even worse on the long run. Should a major downturn — such as a hot war — or a personal crisis arrive, people in denial would have to cope not only with the crisis at hand, but also with anger, despair and meaninglessness; all stemming from the realization that their way of life is indeed over for good. Needless to say, none of these feelings are particularly helpful in a survival situation. On the other hand, those who already went through these emotions in a relatively calm period before the downturn will be much better equipped to handle the crisis when it arrives.

Preparedness is an attitude, and does not necessarily mean “prepping”. Since we do not know what is going to hit us when and how badly, its very hard to figure out the best adaption method ahead of time. Should I build a bunker? Stockpile on food? Start a farm? Or shall I move into a small mutually supportive community, perhaps migrate abroad? The answer depends on your personal situation and on your beliefs about the future, not so much on how things actually turn out. There is no way of telling for certain what the future holds. No one knows all the answers, not even your humble blogger. Perhaps this is the hardest part: living with all this uncertainty and cognitive dissonance. However, keeping an eye out for more than one possible event, building up mental fortitude, setting realistic goals, picking up useful skills and habits (including remaining as healthy and physically fit as possible) are all good places to start. Remember: no one knows your situation better than yourself; only you can find the right answers for the questions bugging you. With that said, let me leave you with a quote from science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin:

“There’s no right answer to the wrong question. Now what do we do?”

Until next time,

B

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Notes:

(1) Collapse is not evenly distributed: it can be almost complete for one people, e.g. for those being trapped in the Gaza strip (or in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan etc. for that matter). Their lives were deliberately and methodically ruined just because more powerful nations wanted their permanent demise or treated them as pawns on a chessboard. And while it will take a century or more from here to run its course world wide, there will be periods when collapse will hit the world like a hammer, only to give way to reprieve and even short periods of revival. You can read more on this intermittent nature of collapse in this post by Dave.

(2) The OSIRIS-REx mission, with an aim to retrieve 60 grams of space rock from an asteroid, set NASA back with some $1.16 billion and lasted 7 years. Even if you neglect development costs, the launch of the 2-ton vehicle still costed $183.5 million. (Translated to a single gram of material returned to Earth, that’s $3 million per gram.) The reason is simple enough: after almost 60 years of daydreaming about antimatter engines, we are still using rockets to launch objects into space, 90% of the weight of which is fuel. Even if you assume that the space vehicle could bring back its own weight in minerals (which is physically impossible since it has to launch that weight back to Earth then slow it down by burning an equal amount of fuel) you would still get a whopping $91,750 shipping cost for bringing back 1kg of material, or $41,700/lb. Sounds realistic? Not to me. At such an exorbitant transportation cost mining companies would rather blow up the entire Andes from top to bottom and ship the complete mountain range to China for processing.

(3) Climate change, too, operates on a much larger scale than years or decades. The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, together with the immense amount of heat trapped in the oceans, suggests that warming will continue to accelerate long after we run out of affordable stuff to burn. The many feedback mechanisms — from Arctic sea ice melt to permafrost thaw and the die-back of the Amazon — will keep feeding back to that warming initiated by industrial civilization well into the second half this millennia. Where it will end (3, 4, 5 perhaps 10 degrees warmer?) is anyone’s guess, but recent model runs and paleo-climate data suggest it very well could be in the upper half of that range... Draw your own conclusions.

(4) Remember, once a complex system starts to use more energy to sustain itself than it gets, it begins to contract, no matter what. If you believe current GDP figures — indicating a 2–3% growth — then 97–98% of all our spending went into maintaining the economic system as is. Now, if world oil and gas production would start to shrink by 2–3% a year, then 4–5% as depletion accelerates, it would not only erase all future growth potential of the world economy, but would begin to actively shrink it. (Just take a look at this study to see how tightly oil consumption is coupled with GDP.) Having a foolish misleadership class (TM, Connor Gallagher) fighting imagined and trumped up enemies can only make matters worse by further reducing oil supply.