Tried to email you about this piece, but rejected as spam. Perhaps you could contact me and whitelist me, at least if you do want to chat. (No response to a message at X and can't message you at Bluesky, perhaps because we aren't mufos.
I see the message on X but it went to the "gaius" account, which I rarely check. Just saw it today. Sorry.
Just sent a DM to you from the TN X account. You should be able to email me. I'm absolutely interested in your take on this piece. Thanks for the compliment!
I have not viewed it so much as "collapse" although the word is often used, but I prefer to think of it the natural order of use creates changes.
When the powers that be use the resources and the people then the resources of the earth alter and the life forms alter which once again alter the environment.
The same is true with the power structures over humans; eventually their use as a resource by the empowered becomes unbearable to them and I suppose this is what is called collapse.
Sometimes, the empowered recognize a course change is needed when "revolution" is attempted..Europe 1848; U.S. 1877....but these are minor adjustments that stave off immediate threat to the empowered.
The big question for humanity is if collapse comes how do you prevent the cycle of the empires being rebuilt by those who crave control.
I think maybe we need to figure out where we want to be after the collapse and what we are going to do to keep the reemergence of the psychopath....the latter being key to post-collapse survival....because if they are left free to roam they will roam right back into trying to take over.
Peculiarly, I think Ayn Rand may have hit on something. The John Gault Reservation for the Superior where we march them off to prove how well they can survive washing their own dishes.
They won't really want to go, though, because dropping out of power is the last thing on their mind.
Of course that's foolish because you would need a 'power' to keep them unempowered.
If Graeber and Winthrow are correct and ancient communities exiled those wiith such tendencies; then more than likely that is how the "hunter-gatherers" collapsed when they came marching from the steppes.
So the question, which you bring up in your article, is not who is John Gault; but how do we keep John Gault at bay.
> if collapse comes how do you prevent the cycle of the empires being rebuilt by those who crave control
I think the answer is in Graeber. Around the world, humans have simultaneously chosen many different ways. It's the (mainly but not exclusively) Western need for empire, which managed to metastasize throughout the globe, that most of us struggle against. A restart from a New Old Stone Age may not go the same way.
I have long been a fan of Schumacher's 'Small is Beautiful' and his proposition of the 'appropriate' scale of communities. It helped me recognise how, even in cities, we can live in local 'villages' where we recognise the faces we see every day as we see neighbours or go shopping, all within a mile or two of our own home
Of course all that is likely to disappear if we live in a tower block, and get in our car to go to some distant work place, or shop in an anonymous hyperstore. Even worse if we work and shop online, unless one consciously walks to the local cafe or library, or walks the dog, and joins some local classes or community projects, to re-establish human links locally.
I have always assumed that with the end of the surplus energy of profligate fossil fuels, would come an end of the mass so-called middle classes, the mass of excess humanity, and the massive cities and their suburban sprawl that now house them. That is now underway as populations top out and start to decline, albeit not yet quickly enough to save the rest of the Earth's species.
But I don't think such a collapse can be managed. Humans are too aggressive, fearful, ego-driven, greedy for advantage, competitive...... the cities will become lethal places as systems collapse.
I would like to think that 'voluntary communities' could be a solution, but having had some experience of such places, they seem to attract the well-meaning people that have few actual skills, either in practical use of self sufficient technologies, or in living in small communities.
To me the most likely solution is to find a long-existing rural community with people that have lived that way forever, and join them by making yourself amiable and useful whilst you try to adopt their skills and knowledge. Though of course so many such communities are also under threat, not least by climate changes that may destroy the fabric of their existence. And some countries are themselves too dangerous to plan a future within. Including Trump's America, I think.
At the end of the day (or perhaps more likely, 'the end of days'), it might all come down to luck and accidentally being in the right place, as much as foresight and planning. I have chosen and moved to my best place, for me in my circumstances, but I am 'fortunate' to only be planning for my own safety and comfort for my remaining years.
For those with young families and the potential of a long life ahead, the choices are far more complicated.
This is a well written and thoughtful essay, and enjoyable read to boot, thanks for writing it! The only area where I think it may be benefited by further exploration, is its lack of grounding its vision of post collapse renewal in concrete civic and institutional traditions. I say this because, in my personal opinion, collapse alone doesn’t generate liberty, liberty is generated and sustained by systems, and the removal of one regime doesn't automatically produce a better one. That’s where I’d suggest looking to the institutional structures of the American Old Republic, I'm specifically referring to the period from the 1830s to the 1950s (outside of many parts of the South, which for two different sets of reasons, one before the Civil War and one after its, weren't fully part of the program) which had concrete institutional designs that were successful in their "physical" purpose of generating a paradigm that simultaneously had deep integration AND decentralized pluralism. That long era saw a consciously designed architecture of decentralization, diffusion, and institutional pluralism, built on mass-member democratic parties, locally controlled capital, competitive but redundant economies, and a legal framework that allowed for policy variability and local semi-autonomy. It was far from utopia, but it was a working civic system who can provide important technical-mechanical insights and case studies for moving forward in the sort of situation you describe. Thanks again for the interesting writing, have a nice day. -- Mike
The idea of a re-localized society is totally out of the question unless paired with a massively scaled back level of technology (think pre-electrification, at least). The techno-industrial order requires an incredible level of coordination and centralization, so if the central hub starts to "collapse" it will be a much bigger catastrophe than depicted here.
I appreciate hearing a different perspective on what co-lapse can mean. Thanks for sharing about insights from Scott's book. There is more work to envision and nurture the small collective communities to make it more humane, especially with great medical and food needs in our world.
I was going to bring up the herding of British farmers into factories (à la Stephen Marglin), but you beat me to it.
I'll look forward to reading Scott's book. Though I sympathize with the line of reasoning, I'll be wary about the evidence being depicted too rosily, to fit a narrative. Also there are some logical gaps that the book would have to fill: for example if there was a 4k-year gap between sedentary villageization and domestication of crops & livestock, how did they subsist? (Maybe this is the "wetland abundance"—continuous harvest of littoral bounty.)
There was a fad about ten years ago of predicting a wave of splintering (John Feffer for example), in part as backlash against globalization and its economical & cultural discontents. Brexit seemed consistent with that. I'd say though that there's a difference between splintering and collapse: the former can be planned or at least adaptive, with minimal loss, whereas collapse leaves voids and causes collateral damage, which kill and immiserate lots of people.
Lastly, what examples are there of civilizations that invested heavily and successfully in resilience, meaning the capacity to resist sudden or sustained adversity like drought? Or perhaps splintering into smaller, more mobile and agile units was a planned form of resilience.
The USA didn't become deeply economically and governmentally centralized until the advent of the so called Neoliberal Era, and it wasn't until the Regan admin that we entered deep economic central planning and standardization, absent the imperial structures of capital "G" Globalism, there extremely immoral economic extractions, and the resulting ability for the System to run perpetual large trade deficits, budget deficits, and high liquidity (which came later then the first 2) then our economic performance would have been terrible, and even with all those fruits of evil we've still been performing worse than before! So some "collapse" in the form of re-decentralization, re-pluralism, re-democratization, etc. then it could be quite for the good
I read “Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization” by Richard Manning 20 years ago. It had a big impact on my thinking. Scott mentions the connection towards the bottom of page xv of the preface.
After much consideration and study I believe the oppressive systems could collapse if we stopped giving them attention, money and our energies. In reality , there will be many still seduced and blinded to the prison’s that enslave them that will continue in the failing systems. There will and always have been a minority who find ways to live outside of the dominant systems…that is where creativity and freedom abounds for those courageous enough to create them.
I really enjoyed this article Thomas and the clarity you have given to these options…I heard once that it all started going wrong when we became slaves to wheat and that is so true today , in so many ways.
"Keep in mind, those of our species who pathologically love control, will not give it up easily, no more than an emperor would change place with a salt mine slave. Not a normal abnormal emperor at least, not Jamie Dimon, say, or Elon Gates.
This means that control will have to be torn from their grasp."
This assumes that control will be torn from their grasp. If human history is any guide, oligarchs come and go, but all systems eventually become oligarchies.
We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our ancestral Hunter-Gatherers/pastoralist just a few thousands of ears ago, with scattered embattled remnants still holding out in refugia. What could go wrong? Everything?
We line up to worship so many false idols these days. Greed, glitz and glamour are sought after more frequently than the goodness of God. So many are consumed with keeping up with Kardashians or any of the countless other social influencers, that sow discontent with our own lot in life.
Politicians, although tasked with representing the people, are for the most part dismal failures. Corruption and self interest too often take precedent, resulting in betrayal of the common good. No political party is innocent of this abandonment of principle. The current regime can't even be bothered to disguise the rot in its ranks. They are openly partnered with groups like Nazi racists, Christian charlatans and Technocrat antichrists. They all share the same rhetoric. A script of hatred for anyone that differs from their doctrine. Eventually, the glaring differences in the beliefs of this murky coalition against common decency will be their downfall. They will tear each other apart, fighting over the remaining scraps of civilization.
Will we people of compassion, kindness and love allow them to write the final chapter?
Tried to email you about this piece, but rejected as spam. Perhaps you could contact me and whitelist me, at least if you do want to chat. (No response to a message at X and can't message you at Bluesky, perhaps because we aren't mufos.
Anyway, excellent piece.
BTW, it was picked up at Naked Capitalism.
Thanks, Ian. We're now mufos at Bsky.
I see the message on X but it went to the "gaius" account, which I rarely check. Just saw it today. Sorry.
Just sent a DM to you from the TN X account. You should be able to email me. I'm absolutely interested in your take on this piece. Thanks for the compliment!
Thomas
I have not viewed it so much as "collapse" although the word is often used, but I prefer to think of it the natural order of use creates changes.
When the powers that be use the resources and the people then the resources of the earth alter and the life forms alter which once again alter the environment.
The same is true with the power structures over humans; eventually their use as a resource by the empowered becomes unbearable to them and I suppose this is what is called collapse.
Sometimes, the empowered recognize a course change is needed when "revolution" is attempted..Europe 1848; U.S. 1877....but these are minor adjustments that stave off immediate threat to the empowered.
The big question for humanity is if collapse comes how do you prevent the cycle of the empires being rebuilt by those who crave control.
I think maybe we need to figure out where we want to be after the collapse and what we are going to do to keep the reemergence of the psychopath....the latter being key to post-collapse survival....because if they are left free to roam they will roam right back into trying to take over.
Peculiarly, I think Ayn Rand may have hit on something. The John Gault Reservation for the Superior where we march them off to prove how well they can survive washing their own dishes.
They won't really want to go, though, because dropping out of power is the last thing on their mind.
Of course that's foolish because you would need a 'power' to keep them unempowered.
If Graeber and Winthrow are correct and ancient communities exiled those wiith such tendencies; then more than likely that is how the "hunter-gatherers" collapsed when they came marching from the steppes.
So the question, which you bring up in your article, is not who is John Gault; but how do we keep John Gault at bay.
Interesting thoughts, Ken. As to your question:
> if collapse comes how do you prevent the cycle of the empires being rebuilt by those who crave control
I think the answer is in Graeber. Around the world, humans have simultaneously chosen many different ways. It's the (mainly but not exclusively) Western need for empire, which managed to metastasize throughout the globe, that most of us struggle against. A restart from a New Old Stone Age may not go the same way.
Helps?
Good post! Thanks.
I have long been a fan of Schumacher's 'Small is Beautiful' and his proposition of the 'appropriate' scale of communities. It helped me recognise how, even in cities, we can live in local 'villages' where we recognise the faces we see every day as we see neighbours or go shopping, all within a mile or two of our own home
Of course all that is likely to disappear if we live in a tower block, and get in our car to go to some distant work place, or shop in an anonymous hyperstore. Even worse if we work and shop online, unless one consciously walks to the local cafe or library, or walks the dog, and joins some local classes or community projects, to re-establish human links locally.
I have always assumed that with the end of the surplus energy of profligate fossil fuels, would come an end of the mass so-called middle classes, the mass of excess humanity, and the massive cities and their suburban sprawl that now house them. That is now underway as populations top out and start to decline, albeit not yet quickly enough to save the rest of the Earth's species.
But I don't think such a collapse can be managed. Humans are too aggressive, fearful, ego-driven, greedy for advantage, competitive...... the cities will become lethal places as systems collapse.
I would like to think that 'voluntary communities' could be a solution, but having had some experience of such places, they seem to attract the well-meaning people that have few actual skills, either in practical use of self sufficient technologies, or in living in small communities.
To me the most likely solution is to find a long-existing rural community with people that have lived that way forever, and join them by making yourself amiable and useful whilst you try to adopt their skills and knowledge. Though of course so many such communities are also under threat, not least by climate changes that may destroy the fabric of their existence. And some countries are themselves too dangerous to plan a future within. Including Trump's America, I think.
At the end of the day (or perhaps more likely, 'the end of days'), it might all come down to luck and accidentally being in the right place, as much as foresight and planning. I have chosen and moved to my best place, for me in my circumstances, but I am 'fortunate' to only be planning for my own safety and comfort for my remaining years.
For those with young families and the potential of a long life ahead, the choices are far more complicated.
This is a well written and thoughtful essay, and enjoyable read to boot, thanks for writing it! The only area where I think it may be benefited by further exploration, is its lack of grounding its vision of post collapse renewal in concrete civic and institutional traditions. I say this because, in my personal opinion, collapse alone doesn’t generate liberty, liberty is generated and sustained by systems, and the removal of one regime doesn't automatically produce a better one. That’s where I’d suggest looking to the institutional structures of the American Old Republic, I'm specifically referring to the period from the 1830s to the 1950s (outside of many parts of the South, which for two different sets of reasons, one before the Civil War and one after its, weren't fully part of the program) which had concrete institutional designs that were successful in their "physical" purpose of generating a paradigm that simultaneously had deep integration AND decentralized pluralism. That long era saw a consciously designed architecture of decentralization, diffusion, and institutional pluralism, built on mass-member democratic parties, locally controlled capital, competitive but redundant economies, and a legal framework that allowed for policy variability and local semi-autonomy. It was far from utopia, but it was a working civic system who can provide important technical-mechanical insights and case studies for moving forward in the sort of situation you describe. Thanks again for the interesting writing, have a nice day. -- Mike
The idea of a re-localized society is totally out of the question unless paired with a massively scaled back level of technology (think pre-electrification, at least). The techno-industrial order requires an incredible level of coordination and centralization, so if the central hub starts to "collapse" it will be a much bigger catastrophe than depicted here.
As it stands, periodic mini-"collapses" are already baked into the system, and shocks tend to make it stronger, as I explore here in my discussion of America's resounding stability: https://tobyshandy.substack.com/p/american-society-is-incredibly-stable
I appreciate hearing a different perspective on what co-lapse can mean. Thanks for sharing about insights from Scott's book. There is more work to envision and nurture the small collective communities to make it more humane, especially with great medical and food needs in our world.
I was going to bring up the herding of British farmers into factories (à la Stephen Marglin), but you beat me to it.
I'll look forward to reading Scott's book. Though I sympathize with the line of reasoning, I'll be wary about the evidence being depicted too rosily, to fit a narrative. Also there are some logical gaps that the book would have to fill: for example if there was a 4k-year gap between sedentary villageization and domestication of crops & livestock, how did they subsist? (Maybe this is the "wetland abundance"—continuous harvest of littoral bounty.)
There was a fad about ten years ago of predicting a wave of splintering (John Feffer for example), in part as backlash against globalization and its economical & cultural discontents. Brexit seemed consistent with that. I'd say though that there's a difference between splintering and collapse: the former can be planned or at least adaptive, with minimal loss, whereas collapse leaves voids and causes collateral damage, which kill and immiserate lots of people.
Lastly, what examples are there of civilizations that invested heavily and successfully in resilience, meaning the capacity to resist sudden or sustained adversity like drought? Or perhaps splintering into smaller, more mobile and agile units was a planned form of resilience.
The USA didn't become deeply economically and governmentally centralized until the advent of the so called Neoliberal Era, and it wasn't until the Regan admin that we entered deep economic central planning and standardization, absent the imperial structures of capital "G" Globalism, there extremely immoral economic extractions, and the resulting ability for the System to run perpetual large trade deficits, budget deficits, and high liquidity (which came later then the first 2) then our economic performance would have been terrible, and even with all those fruits of evil we've still been performing worse than before! So some "collapse" in the form of re-decentralization, re-pluralism, re-democratization, etc. then it could be quite for the good
I read “Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization” by Richard Manning 20 years ago. It had a big impact on my thinking. Scott mentions the connection towards the bottom of page xv of the preface.
I have had thoughts along these lines, about how we might get started. Generally: https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/tag:TheCommunitariumProject
and more specifically, a focused four-part series of posts: https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/the-communitarium-project
After much consideration and study I believe the oppressive systems could collapse if we stopped giving them attention, money and our energies. In reality , there will be many still seduced and blinded to the prison’s that enslave them that will continue in the failing systems. There will and always have been a minority who find ways to live outside of the dominant systems…that is where creativity and freedom abounds for those courageous enough to create them.
I really enjoyed this article Thomas and the clarity you have given to these options…I heard once that it all started going wrong when we became slaves to wheat and that is so true today , in so many ways.
Thanks for the compliment, Susan. And *Against the Grain* is very much about when we became "slaves to wheat." Highly recommend it.
It’s on my list of books , thanks Thomas.
"Keep in mind, those of our species who pathologically love control, will not give it up easily, no more than an emperor would change place with a salt mine slave. Not a normal abnormal emperor at least, not Jamie Dimon, say, or Elon Gates.
This means that control will have to be torn from their grasp."
This assumes that control will be torn from their grasp. If human history is any guide, oligarchs come and go, but all systems eventually become oligarchies.
We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our ancestral Hunter-Gatherers/pastoralist just a few thousands of ears ago, with scattered embattled remnants still holding out in refugia. What could go wrong? Everything?
We line up to worship so many false idols these days. Greed, glitz and glamour are sought after more frequently than the goodness of God. So many are consumed with keeping up with Kardashians or any of the countless other social influencers, that sow discontent with our own lot in life.
Politicians, although tasked with representing the people, are for the most part dismal failures. Corruption and self interest too often take precedent, resulting in betrayal of the common good. No political party is innocent of this abandonment of principle. The current regime can't even be bothered to disguise the rot in its ranks. They are openly partnered with groups like Nazi racists, Christian charlatans and Technocrat antichrists. They all share the same rhetoric. A script of hatred for anyone that differs from their doctrine. Eventually, the glaring differences in the beliefs of this murky coalition against common decency will be their downfall. They will tear each other apart, fighting over the remaining scraps of civilization.
Will we people of compassion, kindness and love allow them to write the final chapter?
No , many of us are writing and living the next chapter for ourselves 💖
Thomas Neuburger, you go where others fear to tread: A very good piece, thanks.
Appreciate it, Mark. Hopefully food for thought.