Collapse Ft. Andrew

of once. People typically side. You know, you're talking about the climate, talking about resources and the decline of resources, talking about vast extinction, talking about societal unrest and break down and the inequality and truly pick your poison. Rather, we're talking about, you know, the f increase in global energy demands, to graddingly slow transition to renewables, the destabilization

of our food and water systems. There's no one cause, but several compounding pressures, as Pablo Serlophine and Raphael Steven's aptly summarize. To maintain itself and avoid financial disorder and social unrest, I'll industr your cap with civilization is forced to accelerate, to become more complex and to consume ever

more energy. Its dazline expansion has been nurtured by the exceptional availability though this will not last long of fossil fuels that are very energy efficient, coupled with their growth economy and highly unstable levels of debt. But the growth of our industrial civilization today, constrained by geophysical economic limits,

has reached a phase of decreasing returns. Technology, which has long sail to push these limits back, is less and less able to ensure this acceleration, and locks in this unsustainable trajectory by preventing the development of new alternatives. Sounds familiar. At the same time, the sciences of complexity, discovering that beyond certain thresholds, complex systems, including economies and ecosystems, suddenly switched to new and unpredictable states of equilibrium and may

even collapse. We are more and more aware that we have crossed certain boundaries that guarantee the stability of our living conditions as a society and as a species. The global climate system and many of the planet's ecosystems and major biochemical cycles have left the zone of stability that people familiar with herald in a time of sudden, large scale disruptions which internally stabilized industrial societies, the rest of humankind and even other species.

and the next one will be a bit more. You know, how not to spiral into despair?

basically what went down in Argentina. Back into the and one sounds familiar.

government will take care of you crumbles. Governments try to maintain oiler with curfews and martial law, but local corruption takes over services, the roads un maintained, the rubbish piling up all of actually makes a really bold claim here, and that is that the US might be on the track of these like stages. Like I know, I know, that sounds like a really like a radical claim to make.

like everything all falls apart at once. It's that these systems that we've grown to rely on will slowly crumble away until they've become basically nothing, or they've just become like corporate puppets, or they've just become like like they're not actually real anymore in any kind of impactful way. And I mean we saw a little bit of this during COVID. How many systems that we relied on just weren't really around anymore, or weren't we're not actually reliable.

And you see this whenever, like whenever there's a massive amount of wildfires that takes over a whole region and it displaces hundreds of thousands of people. Usually the response to that is not the government's going to come in and say everybody, it's a whole bunch of really poor anarchists set up a series of tents to give people food and to get people organized, to find places to sleep, and like that's the actual response to these crumbling institutions.

It's not just like you know, fallout New Vegas, We're living in the apocalypse immediately. It's a lot more fuzzy.

in front of your face. We're talking about like geological time skills and multiple decades of you know, slowly break down, and you know, I have all these election cycles, and you have all these tipping points the scientists are telling you about, and then you know, someday eventually it's raining during the dry season and dry during the rainy season, and there's no snow in January, and all that jazz onward.

The social collapse. This is where, according to all of faith in your people will take care of you, disintegrate, civil wars brew the population becomes a thing, clans take over like a post apocalyptic drama unfolded. And then and then the grand finale is cultural collapse, which is a loss of faith in the goodness of humanity. And as a result of that loss of faith, kindness, generosity, empathy all falls out the window. I completely disagree I think

with loves solution here. I think that these types of crisis kind often bring out the best in people. Of course, we also do see the worst in people. But I don't think it'll ever reach a point where the bad of people's behavior so vastly outweighs the good to the point where people just completely lose faith in our capacity for mutual aid and that kind of thing. There is, of course, a bonus stage that all are throughs in, which is ecological collapse, where reboot in society in an

exhausted environment. It's like good luck with that, you know, it's very difficult to do. It becomes a sort of a well that we end up trapped in. So that's one way of understanding collapse. And there's also C. A. S. Halling's four phase model of ecological change, and according to him, all systems go through cycles of four faces. A phase of growth where the system accumulates matter and energy, phase of conservation where the system becomes more and more interconnected,

rigid and therefore vulnerable. A phase of collapse or loosening, and then a phase of rapid reorganization lead into another phase of growth in often very different conditions. This is more of a I suppose optimistic I mean I read it as kind of optimistic because it recognizes that, you know, something like things break down and that's it. Like even in death, there's like a life, and there's like a rebooth, and then there's of course the conditions that rebooth will

be different. But it's not like things completely come to an end. It's just that the conditions that growth and healing might be kickstarted with would be very different from the ones that with the conditions that were there originally. Another author's views on the subject, a guy named John

Michael Greer One said that quote. The difference between my view and that of many others in the collapse field, it's a lot of them assume that the first wave of crisis will be followed by total collapse, and I argue that it'll be followed by muddying through and partial recovery, then by renewed crisis and so on. Thus, I don't think it's actually that useful to have a single metric for what counters collapse, because collapse is a process, not

an event. The collapse of industrial civilization has been underway for quite some time now and will still be a going concern for longer than any of us will be alive. And then there's David Krowitz's sort of choose your own adventure style collapse, where we have sort of three options that we could go down there's one of linear decline, there's one of oscillating decline, and there's one of systemic collapse. First step, we have linear decline, which is optimistic in

a sense. It's assuming everything will respond proportionally to its causes. So, for instance, if oil consumption goes down, GDP follows suit. It's a very gradual and controlled decline, which gives us time to transition to renewable energy and to change our ways. It's kind of a dream scenario for some dee growth enthusiasts, So some of those who champion a transition to a greener future, we kind of want it to be a slow collapse, not a rapid collapse, because it gives us

time to respond and adjust accordingly. Of course, the other side of that, the catch is that when it is that slow, it also sort of gives an excuse for inaction, an excuse for delay and putting off and procrastinates in on the changes that are necessary. A more realistic scenario, according to to Coross, oscillating decline, where you have economic activity bounce in between peaks of recovery and recession, but

with an overall downward trend. It's almost like an oil priced roller coaster where the higher prices lead to recession, then a dipping prices sparks bit of growth. Both each cycle the system loses a bit more of its mojo for lack of a better word, The debts the pile up, the investment possibilities dwindle, and it's kind of like the catabolic collapse idea that John Michael Career came up with. It's not too fast and so innocence. It still gives

society some room to adapt. And the last model that Chris has is the systemic collapse model, which is our civilization as a super complex system with all these intertwined feedback loops and so by crossing these invisible change over points and deal with small disruptions can end up leading to unpredictable changes. It's like a roller coaster without a

clear track, nonlinear, pumulative and potentially brutal. You know, it's like no kind of safety approval was passed on this roller coast to whatsoever, a death trap and there's no telling where the cart will vy. Of course, really the how of collapse depends on who you ask, But with all these models, they do seem to be a couple of clear points best articulated again by Savine and Stevens. One, the physical growth of our societies will come to a

halt in the near future. Two we have irreversibly damaged the entire system, at least on the geological scale of human beings. Three we are moving towards a very unstable, non linear future where major disruptions will be the norm. And four we're now potentially subject to global systemic collapses. Prospects look bleak to me. They look extra bleak when you consider that some people are still stuck on the is climate change real ha ha ha global warming and

yet it's cold ha ha ha level of discourse. But for those who are made away of the issues, I've noticed people adopt a range of responses. I think one of the first responses that I see to collapse is slumber. Right. They catch a whiff of what's going on and decide to just turn over and go back to sleep. To purposefully embrace ignorance, disregard new information, and shun any understanding

of what's going on. Perhaps you know their garden, their fragile sanity, which is understandable, but people sleep in or we need to face these issues is a disaster waiting to happen. These issues are not going anywhere, and we really need people to have the courage and the boldness to face them seat of turn and over and going

back to sleep. Similarly to that response, we have to denial response, where people face with this reality, reject it consciously and construct their own or they search for information that comforts them rather than exposes them to the truth. They construct a media bubble that shields them, or a social circle that could protect them and reaffirm their core beliefs. Everyone is capable of denying reality, but it's become quite prevalent in the age of technology, where we can easily

shut out any truths that make us uncomfortable. And this apathy, you know, like slumber and denial. People respond with apathy to protect themselves in some way. After all, if nothing really matters, there's no need to try, no need to think, no need to bother Jesus, just disconnect as humans. I think we have a really tough time responding to non immediate threats. It's been said, as I said earlier, that no climate change isn't happening too quick, it's happening too slowly.

It's not ob us enough. Because it's not obviously enough, it's very easy for this next response to be made manifest, and it's preoccupation. Of course, this is more of a fault of the system. But people these days are all busy. You know that everyone can afford to invest and explore and understand the world's problems, even if the threat is so existential that their office busy work or ratail servitude would ultimately amount to nothing. But I'm not talking about

those people when I talk about preoccupation. I'm talking about the people who respond to the issues of the world by purposefully distracting themselves with busy work, constructing a convenient excuse to not challenge the structures that they are under or maintained, like running away for the predicaments of collapse. But the predicaments of collapse hatches up to all of

us sooner or later. And on the flip side of the people who busy themselves with busy work are the people who dive into mind less consumeris are which is coupled with apathy to some extent. If nothing matters, everything's falling apart, you might as well just indulge, consume, distract yourself with games, music, party and drugs and drinking. It's like slumber, except you're aware of the reality and just

plug in your ears to just dance. But at least for those that plug their ears, they don't face what I've called overwhelment. Some people respond by trying to wrap their minds around the depth and complexity of collapse to the point of obsession and just kind of end up losing their minds altogether. I don't think there is any human mind that can completely consume and comprehend every minute

problem we face. I think that's why we are social species, because we can kind of distribute that understanding of all the various problems so that no one person has to handle all of it. We really are going to need to come together to understand collapse, because as individuals, to deal with something to a complex, abstract, far flung and frightening, it's it's frankly, subjecting yourself to that is almost a

form of self torture or self flagellation. And what we need is the opposite pity of people building each other up and healing our communities and coming together so we could solve this crisis. Of course, there is such a thing as being too caught up in that sort of hope and a trap that a lot of people fall naturally into because in a sense we are biologically predisposed towards optimism. We tend to hold on to hope in

some future outcome they'll just work out, you know. And it's sort of a blind hope because it can't adjust to the ever shift in reality. It strips us of our ability to see clearly and to take realistic and necessary action. We give up our agency and leave things in the hands of the leaders and the experts. We stay passive. We waste time, precious time that we spent

on real harm reduction, just going with the flow. We prevent the necessary conversations with the blind hope when we fixate so much and whether we can fix it or how we can fix it, without considering what we need to do. If we can't fix it, you know what happens? Then blind hope manifests in a few different forms. But I think whatever format comes into it ultimately and ultimately

and inevitably leads to disappointment. Waiting forever for a future that won't come, that exists solely in one's mind, irrespective of reality. It's quite frankly a form of denial. It takes a bit of a journey to move towards a greater level of emotional maturity, to handle the tough conversations and let go of the false hopes, like the idea that will somehow reverse all the damage our plant has

been dealt with scot free. But once we have done that, and once we have strengthened or resolve and strengthen our ability to process and to engage with the reality of what's happening, we can take action with knowledge that no, our leader is not going to do anything substantially enough, and no, this moves far beyond reform. It really is a hard pill to swallow, but if you can take it, you'll be better off to resist. We really don't need blind hope and resistance. I think hope is important. I'm

distinguishing it from hope blind hope. However, distraction and sort of connected to the blind hope conversation are the people who respond to this crisis with the obsession with individual change, people who believe with a few tweaks here and there that we can continue or perpetual growth. We just have to switch to veganism or recycle or cockpool every once in a while, and that that individual level action on

a large enough scale would resolve the crisis. They place a lot of stock and blame in individuals entirely, and they don't engage with the wider structures of society. A lot of liberals, of course, fall into this camp. And speaking of liberals, we see a very pernicious trend of progress worship as another response to collapse. The author Dennis Meadows actually points out a curious trend over the past four decades. There's a constant shift in justifying why we

shouldn't change our behavior. Back in the seventies, critics were saying, no limits. You know, anyone who thinks they're limits, they just don't get it. The eighties they're saying, oh, actually there are limits, but they are very far away. We have nothing to worry about, nothing to lose sleep over. And then inta nineties, the limits are no longer at are, no longer is distant. And then the supporters of growth they chiming with, oh, well, you know the limits are close,

but no worries. You know, the markets and technology will swoop in and fix everything. And then you reach into two thousands and it becomes clear that the tech and the markets might not cut it, and then the narrative spins again. Regardless of whether not the markets or tech and cut it, we still need to push for growth because that's the goal and ticket to the resources we need to tackle our of problems. It's basically a game of justification hopscotch. It's almost a cult of progress that

any and all growth is good. That don't matter the consequences of on our finite earth. We can just expand and expand eternally. A lot of the responses I get to my discussions of the growth or post growth or whatever, it's like, yeah, but you can't do that because then the GP you wouldn't grow and wouldn't elevate people's sounds of living. And you know, it's not fair that global.

speaking from a not rich country. What I'm saying is that the what I say to the equal is that the path of development of these rich countries took it's not sustainable. It is literally dooming us all. Yes, the entire population cannot strive for the level of consumption that Americans strive for. Do I think the development days take place, absolutely, but not on the trajectory, not following in the footsteps of these rich countries, this Global North and it's legacy

of decimating the world. You know, places like India, place like the Caribbean, places in Africa. You know, we do need to, you know, improve housing, and improve access to water, and improve access to education, all these different things. But chasing after this sort of careless economic growth narrative and path is just going to accelerate all of our destruction.

I agree with the need for reparations from global not to Global South, that will allow us to reach the level of a they could, to reach the quality of life that I think every human should have access to. But I don't think that that is the same thing as saying that, oh, well, you know, every country should have their own equivalent of Britain and the US's Industrial Revolution, and who cares that that ship has sailed, that window of opportunity has passed.

You have to rely on growth as this thing that you can't actually like predicts, You can't actually predict a real endpoint for it. You have to only assume and only hope that it will get there. It's this that's why there's this real sense of accelerationism throughout these whole industries, because people know that if we continue just doing this way, the planet will not be functional, at least for us in like a hundred years, probably you know in much

less time as well. But the reason why they're all continuing is that they have the people have it have this idea in their heads that if we just keep accelerating if we keep going, we have to go fast, sturn fast and faster, because we'll find something along the

way that will magically fix the problem. Well, if the only way to fix the problem is to continue accelerating, and we'll find this thing that doesn't currently exist, but we'll find like this like supernatural device or discovery that allows us to kind of fix the little problem we've made for ourselves. And it is a very like religious belief that if if we just keep going, we'll like get some like deep this, some like some like deep special insight.

into the center of the earth that it's faster. Yeah, it's faster to dig out the other way than actually try to turn around and fill the hole again. It is a very cultish spiritual drive to like continue this, to continue and like explicitly like accelerate development because we've realized we've done something that's uh from our current point

of view, almost irreparable. But there's this there is this belief that if we owe that the only way to fix it is is if we keep going, then will somehow stumble across the magical the magical thing that will fix our problem.

into the level of nuance it's necessary because then you know, people will say, oh, well, I'm from a week in class background from this and that I've also faced level deprivation. I get all that, but then there are other things where I'm like, you know, can we live in a world where everyone has access to Amazon one day ship in two dayship in? You know, can we live in a world where everyone owns a car, even if it's

an electric car. I think there are certain standards of I guess lifestyle or milestones of lifestyle that we've come to accept that I think in retrospect we will look back and say, Wow, that was an operation of human history that we were even maintaining that sort of infrastructure,

even maintaining that level of consumption. You know, I'm sure a couple of generations online people will look back and be like, wow, to tell me nearly every household had a car, and that everybody was just on the roads driving all the time, and we built our cities or infrastructure around vehicles. When we knew very early on, when the oil companies knew very early on that eventually we

would run out, we just didn't care. I'm kind of all over the place with this, But you were going to say something.

There is a difference between living in like a five thousand dollars apartment in a downtown like city center, versus living on the outskirts of town in like of house that's falling apart right or living on the street, or or living in the middle of Utah versus living on the coast like there's or living in uh like a

montane like there's. There is such a large difference even for people in the States, for like many many like not everyone is able to live in this like very are arguably very very unsustainable, very like hyper hyper modernity. Way there is there is, there's millions of people that of course like, oh no, I'm not saying that against

your point. I'm saying, like this is this is also part of the problem, like we have we have tricked ourselves into thinking that if you if you live in the United States, that must mean you are like you who are one of the elite few. But there's millions of people who are living in like the like some of the most some of the harshest conditions in the world, even in the richest country in the world, like it is, anti.

a first world country. And how all of these, all of these types of these all of these types of systemic inequality and differences and uh like cost of living, living conditions, they all they all come bined together in really Gaussian fuzzy ways, even if you live in the United States, Canada, England, like Germany, wherever, and and and it produces this extremely extremely bizarre mishmash of of.

every weekend. What I want people to recognize is the way that these elites get you to advocate against your own interests is through that sort of and connect you to their culture progress and get you invested in their culture progress. Hook you in is through that sort of temporarily embarrassed to millionaire mantra. They hook you in by saying, yeah,

they're coming for our stuff. Eventually you'll get to my level too, and then you wouldn't want people to take your stuff away either, you know, like my tech development is going to rise or bring all of us up, you know, and you shouldn't let these people stop you rather than no, well, obviously these RuSHA guys are going to get brought down a peg. But by bringing them down a peg, everybody will have a better quality of life.

But instead of recognizing that they deceive people with this techno opim they bring people into this trap of capitalist realism that either you live in the deprivation of the worst of the worst of people's livelihoods and the capitalism, or you live in the excess are the best of the best of people's lives and the capitalism, And there's nothing beyond those two options. And so obviously the de growth people want you to be living in the former option,

and you should oppose them because of that. Another response I see is that there are a lot of people who are just completely like have complete faith in our leaders, who believe that, you know, once we get just the right people in office, things will work out. The truth is, of course, the system corrupts even the best of intentions. Politicians are a class and to themselves, and their actions reflect ultimately their own interests and the interests of their backers.

Nation states governments, rulers. Is their job. It's in their job description to maintain structures that ultimately harm humanity, and there's only so much they can do to affect the status cho placing our salvation in their hands. It's an exercise in futility. Invest in your future and the confines of the electoralism is a waste of time, but it also demonstrates how effectively mass media and schooling has broken

down and limited our imagination. I like to call that status realism, the idea that there's no alternative to this hierarchy of rulers and rule. The people just need to submit to the wills and whims of others, rather than organizing for themselves in their communities. There's, of course, the response of apocalypse worship, rather classic response around those who end up obsessing over collapse and honestly that the worshipers of the apocalypse are also hould to a form of

blind hope. You know, the accelerat doomsday preppers, cultists, extreme survivalists, zombie video game enthusiasts, believers in the end times. They all seem to have a whole so they seem to have a real excitement for collapse, or they fixate really heavily on the ideal version of the end of the world, like they can't wait for the world to end. They embrace the sort of we're all on our own mantra,

barricade themselves, bunker down, stockpile weapons, and essentials. They get en up for a violent future because they anticipate that others will react to the situation similarly to how they intend to react. So they've taken like a page from ad Marxs and like, yeah, I'm going to be immortant Joe, so I don't end up a thrall of immortant Joe.

It's like this like worm is like like like causing like the town's buildings to like cave in because it's like digging underground. And and we we see we see this fantastic, fantastic prepper character is able to help everybody out because he is he is prepared for such a scenario.

in our faith. I mean, according to those in despair, there's nothing that we can do to affect our future, and in my eyes, those on this dumor pillarre just as misguided as those who are hyped up with blind opium. I think it's okay to admit that we don't know what's going to happen. You know, I don't claim to your profit. I don't think anybody should. The IPCC reports, for example, are a consensus of scientists and their anistani of situation. Some scientists are going to be more in

their reporting, others are a bit more catastrophes. But either way, I really don't think we need to get into the weeds of just how bad it is or exactly how it's going to happen. With matters that things need to

change some way somehow. I think it's important to try and understand as much as the situation as you could, not to the point of obsession, to take note of how we respond to the issue to look at the various responses I cover it and see if you fit into any of those camps, and to recognize that the worst case scenario is far from inevitable. My advice is really to prepare for the worst in whatever way you can,

and put hope and build for the best. Build community, build connections, build your skills, build your strengths, and push in any way you can, and whatever's fare, you find yourself for meaningful change. Because say it with me now, it could happen here, It certainly could. That's it for me. I'm on YouTube andwism, I'm on peatureon dot com, slash sent du and that's it. Well, paw what to older people? Peace?