[The Predicament Humanity Now Faces:
The Collapse of Modern Society]
I. Overviews
A. Best Videos. Three powerful video presentations by leading experts. (These are all on You Tube. )
2. Richard Heinberg: “Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival”
3. William E. Rees: William E. Rees “Our Ecological Overshoot”
B. Best Book: Richard Heinberg “Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival”
C. Best Web Site: Paul Chefurka http://www.paulchefurka.ca/
II. Evidence—Population; Consumption; Overshoot.
A. Population
Population has been growing exponentially, especially since 1950. Two years of growth today would about equal the world’s population at the beginning of the Christian era. Today’s population (7.9 Billion) is about 3 times the population of 1950 and 4 times larger than when I was born. It was only 1 Billion in 1804 when my great-great grandfather was born.)
B. Examples of other major exponential changes
3. Material Consumption
4. Land Use
5. Freshwater Use 1900-2014
6. CO2 Emissions Billions of tonnes
7. Decline in numbers of Species (World Wildlife Fund Index)
8. Change in biomass of terrestrial vertebrates 10,00 BCE & 2015
Red= humans; Blue= domesticated animals; Green= wild animals
9. Other major changes
III. Ecological Predicament How can the Earth support 8 Billion people at present–and with increasing– levels of consumption?
A. Global Footprint (1961-2017) (It would take 1.7 Earths to equal today’s demands on the Earth’s biocapacity. It would take 7.8 Earth’s if everyone consumed as much as do Americans.
B. Limits to Natural systems that may lead to Overshoot and radical change. (Of the 12 major planetary boundaries studied, seven passed a safe operating space.)[1]
Planetary Boundaries
J. Lokrantz/Azote based on Steffen et al. 2015
IV. What Personal Actions Might You Take While Living During the Collapse of Modern Civilization
A. Understand the Physical World. What is the ‘Real’ world of Nature?
The most important action we can take is to understand the physical world in which we live. The physical world of the “ 5 ‘E’s”: ecology, evolution, environment, energy, and entropy, must be understood to realize the magnitude of the predicament that human alteration of the Earth has created. We must learn about the world because humans are an integral part of it but are not the controller of it. And humans, like all organisms, grow and reproduce until they reach physical limits in their environment. Humans are reaching physical limits of their environment.
B. Recognize that the dominant modern worldview is unsustainable.
The modern worldview–the world of progress and growth–is dominated by power, production, property, profit, and publicity. (Lewis Mumford’s Pentagon of Power.) To understand the implications of the dominant worldview we must also understand the concept of exponential growth in a finite world. Most importantly, that continued forms of economic growth, which are based on consuming finite Earth resources, are impossible.
C. Realize that we exist in an unsolvable Predicament.
Technologies of modern society have greatly altered the ecological systems within which the human animal evolved and lived until Modern times. Several of those systems have exceeded their stable boundaries and have entered states that humans are unable to stop. (Now labeled ‘Overshoot’.) They are not problems that further technology can solve. That is a predicament. Predicaments are situations that are beyond our control. We must learn to live with the knowledge that our brief moment of human exuberance is expiring. More particularly, we will have to learn to act and think in a world in which the goods and services we have enjoyed in the last several decades will become steadily less available. And we need to contemplate life in which millions of people will live much shorter lives or die because of the collapse of modern society. That is the predicament we face in the remaining decades of the 21st century.
D. What are some of the humane ways in which you might adapt to the existential predicament before us ? How can we as individual humans live in a world in which our actions and our current belief systems are failing?
To learn how to live within the current predicament, we must address how and what it is to be human while living in a collapsing civilization. Our humanity does not reside with power, profit, consumption, or continued expectations of growth. We may alleviate some of the personal and communal traumas that are inevitable within a declining civilization by adjustments to our ways of thinking and acting.
My suggestions follow. Please add to them as you can.
1. Broad life processes (The 5 “L”s) At the broadest level Michael Dowd lists five personal actions we can all do at all times that do not increase the predicament of modern life:
a. Love; b. Learn something new; c. Laugh;
d. Leave a legacy; e. Live courageously.
2. Deep Adaptation. More specific ways of looking at the imminent future have been described by Jem Bendell in his essays on practicing life. He writes:
“Deep Adaptation is a framework for exploring ideas for how to attempt …. what we call the four Rs … These are all questions because we are in a very new situation where the expectation of simple answers given to us by somebody else (technical solutions to problem) is not going to help as much as us exploring together how to be and what to do.“
The Four Rs
a. “What do we most value that we want to keep and how,” is a question of resilience.
b. “What could we let go of so as not to make matters worse,” is a question of relinquishment.
c. “What could we bring back to help us in these difficult times,” is a question of restoration.
d. “With what and with whom shall we make peace as we awaken to our common mortality,” is question of reconciliation.”
“Deep Adaptation is a framework for exploring ideas for how to attempt …. what we call the four Rs … These are all questions because we are in a very new situation where the expectation of simple answers given to us by somebody else (technical solutions to problem) is not going to help as much as us exploring together how to be and what to do.“
3. I believe that Richard Heinberg’s advice to young people is probably the most important practical recommendation for preparing for the future of those who will have to live their lives in a disintegrating society. He writes:
- Learn to grow food. Study permaculture.
- Learn to read people. You’re going to need to know whether people in your vicinity are trustworthy.
- Be trustworthy. Otherwise smart and trustworthy people won’t associate with you.
- Learn to express yourself clearly and persuasively.
- Consider making a commitment not to reproduce. There are already plenty of people in the world.
- Learn to make decisions by consensus and to work collaboratively.
- Be a person with whom others enjoy working.
- Learn to repair and use relatively simple technologies. Studying to be a computer programmer or hacker could pay off in the short run, but over the longer term you’ll benefit more from learning to fix farming and construction tools and small engines. Learn to make spare parts from junk.
- Learn how energy works.
- Be able to identify the sources of energy in your environment and find ways to harness that energy to do useful work.
- Learn to defend yourself. Sadly, for the remainder of this century the world is likely to be a more violent place. Even if that turns out not to be the case, martial arts can still be useful paths of self- discipline.
- Learn to heal the human body via nutrition, herbs, and basic emergency care.
- Learn to recognize the subjective effects of sex hormones, dopamine, and other brain chemicals, and find ways to use their effects to help achieve goals.
- Learn about nature. Memorize the names of local plants, birds, and insects, and observe their habits. Learn to be comfortable in the wild.
- Learn how to produce beauty via art, music, or movement, and how to engage others in creative, celebratory activities.
- Learn to emotionally process trauma and grief, and to help others do so.
- Learn when and how to use humor to release tension.
- Learn to grow food. Study permaculture.
- Learn to read people. You’re going to need to know whether people in your vicinity are trustworthy.
- Be trustworthy.
- Otherwise smart and trustworthy people won’t associate with you.
- Learn to express yourself clearly and persuasively.
- Consider making a commitment not to reproduce.
- There are already plenty of people in the world.
- Learn to make decisions by consensus and to work collaboratively.
- Be a person with whom others enjoy working.
- Learn to repair and use relatively simple technologies.
- Studying to be a computer programmer or hacker could pay off in the short run, but over the longer term you’ll benefit more from learning to fix farming and construction tools and small engines. Learn to make spare parts from junk.
- Learn how energy works.
- Be able to identify the sources of energy in your environment and find ways to harness that energy to do useful work.
- Learn to defend yourself. Sadly, for the remainder of this century the world is likely to be a more violent place. Even if that turns out not to be the case, martial arts can still be useful paths of self- discipline.
- Learn to heal the human body via nutrition, herbs, and basic emergency care.
- Learn to recognize the subjective effects of sex hormones, dopamine, and other brain chemicals, and find ways to use their effects to help achieve goals.
- Learn about nature. Memorize the names of local plants, birds, and insects, and observe their habits. Learn to be comfortable in the wild.
- Learn how to produce beauty via art, music, or movement, and how to engage others in creative, celebratory activities.
- Learn to emotionally process trauma and grief, and to help others do so.
- Learn when and how to use humor to release tension.
4. Environmentalists Anonymous. (Easing the emotional pain of living in a collapsing society.) Al Urquhart’s way of realizing more clearly the predicament in which we are living.
I believe that when a person, discovers that his/her unconscious actions in modern society are not reconcilable with his or her thoughts about and knowledge of the Earth’s ecology, she or he can only admit that his or her life is out of control; and that s/he is addicted to exploiting the Earth. If one realizes that he/she is caught in the double bind of a modern worldview versus the natural world ecology in which we are embedded s/he will feel pain. These conflicting messages cannot be easily reconciled and will deprive us of sanity and health unless we admit them.
Step 1. We Admit that we are powerless over our exploitation of the environment–that our lives have become unmanageable.
If we are to remain sane and healthy, we must find a way to recognize both (a) the life and culture in which we have lived and (b) that we are part of a system in which humans and environment, are not opposed. The realization that we are merely part of a naturally evolving and ecological world is truly a humbling experience for those of us raised in the traditions of The Enlightenment and Modern beliefs which stress the power, rationality, and individuality of humans and humanity
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Step 2. We have come to believe that we are but a small part of the Earth’s evolutionary and ecological systems. We accept that the power of those systems is greater than ourselves.
(If you want a name for that power, I suggest Gaia.)
Step 3. We have made a decision to turn our lives over to the care of Gaia.
Step 3 toward sanity and mental health may be as difficult as the acknowledgement of our addiction. To surrender to this new way of thinking is, for most modern Americans, a great threat to our current ways of life. But viewed in the context in which every technological triumph disrupts some ecological or evolutionary relationship, often in startling and precipitous ways, one catches glimpses of disasters far more threatening than alterations of our current life styles. Continued human survival in ecologic and evolutionary terms rests outside our own control; our technological addictions only precipitate the disturbance of the many interrelated natural systems of which we are but a small part. However, if we act within this new way of thinking–this new epistemology–that emphasizes the conviction that we are merely “part of” something much greater than ourselves we may extend the positive aspects of being human–love, learning, kindness, community, support (The 5 ‘L’s and The 4 ‘R’s) further into the future.
Steps 4-10.
If we accept this new fundamental perspective, we can actively and honestly become part of it by physically acknowledging, and wherever possible rectifying, the wrongs we have done in the past, not perpetuating them today, and avoiding them in the future. Additionally, through meditation about Gaia and by passing this message to others, we may awaken ways of gaining greater sanity within our communities.
Step 4. We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step 5. We admit to Gaia, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step 6. We have made a list of the environmental and ecological systems we have harmed, and have become willing to make amends to them.
Step 7. We have made direct amends to such systems wherever possible, except when to do so would further injure them.
Step 8. We continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admitted it.
Step 9. We seek to improve our conscious contact with Gaia through meditation and deep thought.
Step 10. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we try to carry this message to others addicted to exploiting the Earth’s natural systems, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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