I think we could all benefit from a conversation focusing on what a post-capitalist society should be. Less consumption. Less environmental degradation. Less competition. More collaboration. More energy for love, compassion and empathy to be passed around.
From my own experience, I have observed the rise in narcissistic traits within my own social group. Or, they may have always been there and I wasn’t well equipped to identify it back then. Regardless, narcissism has been the media talking point for a long while now. The tendency itself is purely driven by envy. You mix that in with greed and the ever-growing gap in inequality and bam! late stage capitalism in full swing.
I have been observing the same, and wondering the same. I think narcissism is what we might be slipping into to cope with the enormity and complexity of what is going on. It's a bit like when you're in an overwhelming conversation and you embarrassingly, cringely, find yourself spurting outsomething about yourself to cope. Narcissism is a way to bring it back in closer, and to bring yourself back into the picture...we are familiar to ourselves.
Thai culture has next-level tolerance towards narcissistic behaviours (monarchy, patriarchy, military coup - just to name a few!). The narcissism I’ve experienced personally definitely has a malice undertone, because it’s associated with the entitlement and desire for control.
Parallel to the rise in narcissistic tendencies, I’ve also observed that people are becoming more “accepting” of bad behaviours. Our life philosophy is “sabai sabai (chill chill) - don’t think about things too much”. I guess comparing to the west, we lean a lot more towards social harmony at all costs.
I guess in times of turmoil and chaos like this, these logical and compassionate voices need to be a lot louder.
re the times of turmoil point - we get tribal and we will prioritise belonging and looking like we fit in over truth or other morals. So I think the accepting of bad behaviours kicks in as primal protective mechanism. Ditto accepting authoritarianism.
Also Wabi Sabi in Japanese means finding beauty in perfection... i wonder if there's ANY connection...?
Good observations here, and both societies create beautiful levels of harmony and peace. I love Japan and Thailand for that. Fundamentally it is a good attitude to live by. BUT
Both societies allow for the most devious acts of abuse imaginable. Understanding and an intention to bring things back into harmony is the starting point. But the Zen stick must be placed next to the tea pot 🫖. Good manners and custom have to be balanced with eye gouging and a kick in the nuts. Or at the least good bye from my life 👋🏼.
I have been pondering the idle hands of intelligent men Sarah. Made me think of Nigel Farage, Trump, Scott Morrison, Rishi Sunak, Ben Shapiro, and many more gentlemen either in power or currently upsetting the apple cart. It occurs amongst the ladies also, mostly in the corporate world, but growing in the political world also.
As you say, the French Revolution was not driven by the paupers and peasants, they were just the cannon fodder. I have a sneaking suspicion that the revolutionaries were good chaps, but mostly assholes. As humans mostly just want to get along, chop wood and gather water.
Not much to do with it, but I wish that we could teach ourselves when we are doing such things to ourselves, to others or are having them done to us.
That is the sad thing with woke culture , it began in earnest to identify and change where we are being pricks. Our biases, prejudices and fears. But it turned us into the exact thing that we were hating.
How do we bring a little tea ceremony feel to our lives , so that we have a spot at the table, can have a good chat, while also being able to flick the bird or throw deuces in the air?
Maybe a chapter in the book re rebuilding ourselves and our communities?
Citizenship studies, debate and conversation back in the schools, for everyone, not just the smarty pants?
How do we meet the wave form and frequency of the narcissistic right or left, without adding to the volume of the wave, causing it to crash violently?
I picture a cute Japanese surfer girl on a longboard , a dude drops in on her, so what does she do? Goes high and nose rides past him saying excuse me , and then blows him a kiss as she glides off into the sunset.
I watched Elon Musk talk to Ben Shapiro last night, while watching Pornhub on my phone, while waiting for my poly friend to arrive for our 8:30 session 😅
Just kidding 😆
I did watch Elon and Ben have a “chat” or rather watched Ben talk to Elon and steer the conversation precisely where Ben wanted it to go.
These guys are amazing at getting insecure billionaires , or brains to sit under their 15 minutes of fame spotlights. And throw gasoline on the end of the world.
Elon wants X to be THE BEST source of truth on the planet 🙃
I believe Elon has a good heart , underneath that big brain of his. It is scary to watch people who have the ability and means to steer the crash being co opted into fucked up cabals.
And yes Poly is just a distraction, fun for a bit, but always ends in tears. I had a discussion once with a potential lover, she wanted to keep things open. I was, you can do as you wish, enjoy your life, but just keep us safe.
She asked what I wanted, my reply was I only have enough time and energy, for me, my daughter and you. The guilt of that scenario and imbalance in sexual gratification or who knows what, blew it out of the water instantly 😅.
It is amazing when people foresee or rather observe human behaviour in the now but only makes sense when seen in the future. This wholesale distraction goes far into activism, sport, politics or online rants like this one
Back to work
OBS sorry for discussing suicide, and Tim in the same discussion. I did not know that was the choice that he made.
I get it though
This comes back to new age distractions, and distractions in general
To live with an open heart , burst open naturally, via spiritual technology and techniques, or more likely by grief, is a blessing and a curse.
Distractions are needed, in order to manage life, and our nervous systems, they are as important as deep presence.
A lover, a song, a walk, a glass of wine, a line of coke. Brilliant, as long as we are able to put them down and get back to engagement just as easily as we picked up bliss.
Maybe a reframe and a rename from distraction to distance is needed to give us all a break. Relationships to anything need distance to maintain its health.
Like the narcism and narcissistic story telling you mentioned in another comment, it does give a distance in order to either protect or reconnect. In order for empathy one has to understand and feel it first for ourselves. And for the big stuff it’s a difficult journey to navigate to stay out and open hearted.
If it comes from the place that knows birthdates then it is relevant and essential
I have a friend who experiences similar things re married men, that could just be loneliness, and also the excitement of speaking openly with a woman without pressure.
In that relaxation they may feel turned on , and mistake that for connection. Plus the before mentioned head space 😅
Libra and Sag moon with a good old Gemini rising and a glorious fire trine 👌🏼 very much me and my life.
And thank you Anna , we will see.
But it felt actually more like a celestial test, the truth is the woman was nothing that I am looking for, and the reason I was lonely and cerebral is my heart is still beating for someone else.
She is unavailable and I am stubborn as a mule , and my heart gets what it wants. Or it keeps me in the fire until I am done with the lesson and I come home to myself.
But as any good Buddhist knows , the more you cling, the more you reach, the further it moves away.
So that is why I walked this morning in the forest, no phone, no agenda, no time to be anywhere, nothing to grasp for. Just to breathe , watch my mind try to figure it all out , and soak up the forest and the water hole ☺️🙏🏼
This guys a prick, I can react, but do I need to? I can have my reaction and take its lesson and make an appropriate response. But do I need to attach my self worth to someone’s behaviour?
Do I need to change that person and make them better? Oh shit, now I am the arsehole 🙃😅.
It is not easy but can be done.
YES! God in drag, that is probably the easiest method of meditation and grace going 👌🏼🙏🏼
Takes out analysis and brings in humour and fun.
Age of Aquarius is what the hippies all talk about. But it is actually starting right now, or has begun. It signals the creating of the wave, and the end of current systems. And the beginning of us all finding better ways to relate to ourselves, rebuild our lives and communities.
All based on astrology , which I am a little into , as I love patterns and the weavings of the universe.
Whether you believe in astrology or not, it does have benefits in labelling, explaining and illustrating archetypes and the patterns and rhythms in life.
But the basics of Aquarius is all about change, knowledge, revolution, and evolution, brought about by inner turmoil and the waves of change. Many revolutions began when the moon was in Aquarius, and happens again this year with all of the elections in play. I have never seen an event with such clear cut choices for humanity like this before.
The problem is though , both choices are lead by the old systems and completely devoid of heart and strong values.
I was speaking with a very friendly and extremely gorgeous young woman at the waterfall this morning. She was curious and was asking me for advice about the area.
So to answer your question I will illustrate it with a real life scenario.
I was a bit cerebral this morning and to be honest deeeeeeep down inside a bit lonely. So I was navigating this experience trying to figure out what this lovely event was. And letting myself feel what was actually occurring.
This is classic man, nuts and bolts, a plus b equals c. She does this, I should do this, etc etc. Many guys cannot even feel their fingers, or toes, let alone their balls or heart. So how are we supposed to navigate what we are feeling in the moment, and what is mirrored in the other?
The truth of the matter was , yeah , there was a slight attraction , I could feel my heart opening a little.
But mostly she was just a vivacious and curious woman interested in making the most of her stay. I shared the location of an unknown water hole and off she went into the sunrise ☺️.
I am glad that I did not ask for her number when we had our phones out. It just would have made a beautiful moment and morning awkward
But if I bump into her at the bar tomorrow night and the vibe is right, I will 😉.
It's interesting reading everyone's thoughts about whether or not folks are becoming more aware of the systems that shape our experiences. I'm seeing that come through, especially with some of the niches on TikTok, following in the steps of earlier platforms like Tumblr, LiveJournal, some pockets of Reddit etc. I do social research about how young adults engage with therapy culture (seeing therapists or counsellors, mental health memes online, listening to podcasts about therapy or psych ideas or wellness etc.) and so many of them can tease out the messiness of self-help, therapy, wellness, wellbeing - how it is shaped and pushed by capitalism (plus the blurriness between psych, therapy, wellness, spirituality, corporate wellbeing etc), Western ideas about brains and bodies, if it is narcissistic or not, the dominance of psychology to make sense of our lives, if we're shifting from collectivist to individualist cultures, etc etc etc. We can see the "is Western/Global North psychology a narcissistic tradition that promotes individualism" debates on TikToks and other platforms.
There's a sense of picking up something like therapy or some other self-care strategy for a while might be useful, but also a bit of ambivalence too about whether it addresses the bigger picture - capitalism, racism, gender inequities etc. Some go to therapy because of problems at work that ultimately are about a constant push to productivity and optimising and want to find a way to work through it, yet can see that therapy is a way to get through life at the moment, while they can't change things that feel all consuming (cost of living, generational stresses, climate collaspe etc). I wonder about this in-between-ness: complaining say about women's dating standards vs recognising gender inequity. What happens in between? What happens between noticing patterns and seeing the system awareness memes?
(And I have to admit that polycules remind me of going to uni in the early 2000s and making maps of who had been with who - wayyyy before the sex map on the new version of Heartbreak High. And yes we had time! And doing double degrees, student radio, activism, two jobs, seeing bands, cooking, cleaning, gossiping)
Natalie, it sounds like your late teens and 20s were like mine (but ten years earlier). Your work sounds fascinating. Your comments make me aware (again) of how much we layer on BandAids because fixing the wound is just too challenging.
More than half the world is set to vote in elections in 2024?! Oh my.
This weekend a friend and I were discussing the topic of collapse and she mentioned the World Economic Forum's Global Risk Report for 2024, more importantly, she commented on how different the identified risks are in this 2024 report. (Reference: Global Risks Report 19th Edition).
The report explores the most severe risks we face over the next 2 to 10 years . I can't post a photo so here they are:
Top 10 Risks over next 2 years:
1) Misinformation and disinformation
2) Extreme weather events
3) Societal polarisation
4) Cyber insecurity
5) Interstate Armed Conflict
6) Lack of economic opportunity
7) Inflation
8) Involuntary migration
9) Economic downturn
10) pollution
Over the next 10 years:
1) Extreme weather events
2) Critical change to Earth Systems
3) Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
4) Natural resource shortage
5) Misinformation and disinformation
6) Adverse outcomes of AI Technologies
7) Involuntary migration
8)Cyber insecurity
9) Societal polarisation
10) Pollution
The report's contribution towards mitigation is beyond my knowledge, but even if it is just government word salad, the ingredients for collapse are all there. It's a dense read, but it may be of interest to some here. They speak to a world being stretched beyond its limit and that a multiplicity of futures over the next 10 years are conceivable, if you make it to Chapter 3.
Thanks for typing all that out. I had to think about it...yes, climate stuff will no doubt take over from the polarisation within a decade, but I think for next few years, it will definitely be about the fractiousness that emerges as we realise the climate etc risks are so close
The other marker he identifies: when a society spends its free time in “philosophies of digestion, nutrition and hygiene. Alcohol questions and vegetarianism are treated with religious earnestness—such being the gravest problems.” The guy was a visionary.
Spengler’s point is that societies crumble when its people have become that distracted by narcissism and cringey indulgence. I am all for pushing gender and sexual norms, but an over self-conscious, self-important obsession with anything right now is striking me as, well, perfectly collaps-y.
He argues that inequality and polarisation “produces too many superrich and ultra-educated people, and not enough elite positions to satisfy their ambitions." and that this is what tips societies. Turchin identifies “the problem of an excess of educated men” who feel locked out of socially-accepted positions of success and who then stir up conflict.
I don’t have a ‘comment’ except to say this reflects what I have been feeling/sensing/observing but couldn’t put words to it.
There is a Reddit thread r/collapse, you can search for books within that. Or ask in the Deep Adaptation Facebook group. Or read Jen Bendell, Joseph Painter and Jared Diamond. Or follow Nate Hagen , The Great Simplification. That's just the beginning, it's a rapidly expanding field :(
I think the inequality issue is interesting. Especially because the media keeps reporting it like that:
“The world's five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes — while nearly five billion people have been made poorer.”
Those two things are not correlated. Five people got richer but that is not what caused 5 billion people to become poorer. That was the pandemic (which cut people off from jobs worldwide!).
(In their footnote Oxfam points out that that number is since 2019. If they were to look at since 2023 they would see that number is already rebounding).
We can see the proof of that by Oxfams next sentence: “If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years.”
So the trends are showing that poverty is on its way to being fully eradicated in only two centuries? How could that be if people are getting poorer?
(And wow, what remarkable progress if something that has been around for thousands of years is that close to ending!)
A number of thoughts in response to your wonderfully challenging points.
First, regarding the time frame, the Oxfam info is "Since 2020, five billion people have become poorer"...so in three years, things have declined. I've not seen any evidence pointing to a rebound...although I know the US economy is doing better overall.
That aside, the salient point regarding collapse/mass civil war is the *gap* btw the rich and poor. Even if poverty is eradicated at some stage, the gap will still be widening and widening. The French Revolution was actually not driven by peasants, it was driven by educated folk (not in poverty) pissed off that they were being shut out of opportunities.
The progress debate and the arguments put forward by Pink et al, I feel, are problematic. In big part because the markers they cite are things like GDP etc, which has the extractive mindset, and not the soul-based factors that I feel ultimately determine humane wellbeing, such as sacred connection to nature, congruency, belonging, etc.
They are using World Bank data to show how long it will take for the percentage of the world population living below US $6.85/day to go from 46.92 percent in 2019 to below 1 percent. You can see that it is already 45.90 percent by 2023, so the trends are still going down, even despite the pandemic.
To your point that even if we eradicate poverty there will still be a gap. That is very much true! And we do need to figure that out. My solve is still that we need to fix distribution, tying the salaries and equities of those at the top to those at the bottom.
But my point about the Oxfam stats is that they, like much of the media, are putting together stats from the top and stats from the top as if the five rich guys in America are taking money from the poor in India. But that is not true. Those five rich guys are getting richer because their companies skyrocketed during the pandemic. And 5 billion got poorer because India, China, Africa, and South America had horrible lockdowns, the inability to get vaccines quick enough to restart their economies, and horrible recessions that resulted.
The result is that we shouldn't be saying, "if only there wasn't a Tesla and an Amazon and a Google making these guys so rich!" We should be saying "If only China and Africa and India had a Tesla and an Amazon and a Google....." (even if we should still make distribution more equitable in the process 😊!)
Yes, save your hard comment work for a post! To your point about there not being a causation issue, the rise of billionaire wealth has massively driven up inflation, again contributing to the point I raise (which I know you're not disagreeing with).
If only India, China etc had Amazon, Tesla etc. I see your point but it's clear that poor old planet Earth doesn't have the resources to allow that to happen. And the pursuit of it will only collapse our ecosystems. So what then for poverty?
Further to Sarah's points about Steven Pinker, the economic anthropologist, author and degrowth scholar Jason Hickel wrote this piece in response to the frequent claims made by the likes of Pinker and Bill Gates that poverty is close to being eradicated and that things have never been better for the majority of the world's population:
Well this felt accurate. All of it. Collaps-y-ness and all.
It's been feeling like we're living on the edge of a precipice for a while now - perhaps since the start of the pandemic, give or take a bit. Social media is perhaps helping push us along quicker towards this inevitable collapse.
My recent musings have been centered around:
a) what are we doing to survive (thrive?) in the midst of this collapse and how can we support each other -- some of those 5 billion people who've become poorer in the past 3 years (I'm one of them, even if I do speak from a place of relative privilege!) -- through this?
b) what will all of this look like on the other side and is there even going to be another side to be on or are we doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs and if so, how can we do that with dignity and care for one another instead of simply ripping each other to shreds.
And yes, spot on with the observations re educated men with too much time in their hands and no where to put their energy.
I can feel all of those pressures and outlets that they talk about in that article within me. Both for egoic, but also just practical I want to provide reasons. This is a broader widespread issue though. For women and men.
Do I start a family, a career? Is it even worth it, I will not find a decent man, I will not be able to afford a home, or have enough spare money to pay for raising a child. The world is ending anyway. Etc etc.
This level of nihilism and despair is going to be difficult to deal with as a society. Fuck it’s and suicide will rise exponentially, YOLO will have a glorious resurgence.
The having a baby analogy is a perfect example, I have experienced bringing a child into this world as a distraction.
And also what it feels like to have the whole universe desire you to , almost demand, that you create a child with your lover.
Others need to bring offspring into the world in order to survive in their old age, and to build a family legacy and life, so that there are enough of us to provide for each other.
The answer? My two cents is.
Discover your sweet spot, discover how to keep yourself there with gentle discipline, and stay open to beautiful distractions, and dance with it all.
Within 10 years keeps going around and around in my head. And it definitely feels like 2024 will be a tipping point.
For what it's worth in an obvious art imitates life sort of way, the mammoth that is Hollywood, and European cinema, is increasingly becoming more collapse aware.
Every second movie or series seems to be about the apocalypse now. And in the last few years there's been a shift, it's not the blockbuster, bombastic "the world ends in a couple of days" type fare of the 90s and earlier 2000s. It's more subtle - there's so many of them but the adaptation of the Handmaid's Tale comes to mind. Midnight Sky, Don't Look Up, and the recent Leave the World Behind (which I thought was excellent and brought to you by Obama's production company no less). This summer right before the actual election, Civil War is due out, based on a modern U.S. at war with itself scenario. I.S.S with its premise about a Russia/US nuclear war, and the British the End we Start From due out soon is about a woman and her newborn trying to survive after extreme flooding in London.
someone here also pointed me to the French series Collapse, which I've just started, and is about the minutae of what a collapse in the supply chains will look like - internal unrest.
Do you ever consider these movies are propaganda ? Designed to prime us for what is people like the Obama’s are planning for us ? Just another perspective or conspiracy theory ? You Choose . Thinking they do this for us, could make a big difference in how you live in a world in collapse.
I think Frank Green water bottles are the equivalent to the Stanley cups here- my 11 year old says half the class has them and they have a special club.
I had the same thought re: the people in the polycule article - that they seemed to have an enormous amount of free time. And that their particular version of polyamory, at least, would be hard to do if you had children.
Re: this quote though... “When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard having children as a question of pro's and con's, the great turning point has come” - I disagree! I am childed myself, but I think it is good that people are asking questions before they have children rather than jumping into it by default. Not a sign of mass selfishness or the downfall of society.
I agree Rachel - having come from a world, a time, a community, where we all got married and had kids asap, young, with never a thought on impact, do we have skills, do we want the same thing, will my mental health cope, is this relationship sustainable, and most importantly, can I pause and dig deeper, and later carry in less shit to parenting. The questions my adult kids are asking now re being parents or not are breathtakingly honest and brave.
Hi, on this topic I saw and read this article in the New York Times - it is behind a firewall but for those that subscribe it’s relevant and provocative: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/opinion/polycrisis-doom-extinction-humanity.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare I scanned the comments and I found it interesting that a lot of people thought the author was asking us to be reassured that the climate crisis/multi-crisis was survivable based on a reading of history. I didn’t quite agree - his last comments were actually (my view) warning us not to give into doom mongering and dystopian gloom, but rather to fight, collectively to avoid such a fate. The authors in fact asks us to not give in because those that came before us and fought, managed to find a way to win. The message for me, was not that things are not bad, they of course are very bad. It was simply to say that the anxiety many of us collectively feel appears to repeat itself at times of change. That anxiety is broadcast, perhaps even amplified by the media and popular culture and exploited by politicians seeking a constituency. On first reading, I am not sure entirely why, I took some hope from the insights on offer. I am interested in what the rest of you read?
Thanks Mark...yes, he is quite clear that he's picking apart where the real threat lies: " Hearing that historical echo doesn’t mean that today’s fears have no basis. Rather, it is crucial to helping us blow away the smoke of age-old alarmism from the very real fires that threaten our civilization. "
and "The takeaway is not that we shouldn’t be worried but that we shouldn’t panic."
I think he is taking an artful route to a narrowly defined optimism...he dangles the idea that, hey, we haven't died yet, as cause for hope, but certainly doesn't dismiss the idea that the situation is different this time. The polycris is globally connected (not isolated to a war in one region), the population is at a peak, energy and resources is at peak...biodiversity at a tipping point...
I agree , the observation re elites is interesting and explains the Musk crew calling for an AI pause etc. It also emphasises his point, that the panic isn't always founded (and in the case of AI takeover, I agree)
"this cynicism — and the unfettered individualism that is its handmaiden — greases the skids to calamity. After all, why bother fighting for change or survival if you believe that self-destruction is hard-wired into humanity?" And why bother fighting if as individuals there is nothing we can do? And of course there is the Jeanette Winterson quote: “History is not a suicide note — it is a record of our survival.”
I agree with you, the writer does say - its different this time, I don't feel he is an apologist for the status quo and argues hey its bad but we will be fine. I feel he gives us agency to lobby, to protest and to use all of our abilities to avoid the tipping points we cannot help but read about on a pretty frequent basis these days.
Also plenty of inspo for that list in your book of things we will be happy to lose when capitalism goes away 😂 (eg ott gender reveals, sea of iPhone screens at concerts etc)
This is a really fascinating topic. America turning away from democracy really worries me given how much their culture affects ours and the rest of the world so much. The Guardian Full Story recently did a brilliant podcast on Trump winning in Idaho and how concerning his rhetoric is. Alarmingly, there's a whole master plan to boot out literally thousands of public servants around the country, the people who do the actual day to day business of running the country, and chucking in Trump loyalists.
To answer your question, I think awareness of this system simplification is unfortunately not mainstream. Only very few of us seem to be engaging and thinking about this big picture. Everyone else just seems uninterested or in denial or they don't care about anything or anyone outside of their own lives. Or maybe people are but don't know how to talk about it in our communities because they don't want to be seen as 'too full-on.' I hope I am wrong. This is why this community gives me hope!
I absolutely love how you do these collections of materials and whip them into a coherent, intriguing theme for our consideration. Thanks Sarah.
PS - I'd love to hear a guest on your podcast talking about a 'wild' idea to end native forest logging in Australia, in particular Tasmania. I went there for the first time this month, to see the old growth, giant trees. I was inspired by the Bob Brown doco THE GIANTS. (Bob Brown! Have him! What a wild guy!). Before I went down, I think I was quite naive as to the scale of the problem. We spent a whole week going all around the forests of Tasmania and there was only a very small portion not surrounded by logging. It was so immensely appalling. It made me so sad to have to drive for hours past destroyed forests to get to one little untouched part. Some of the bases and stumps of these felled giants were as tall as me. I have a list of letters to write to my MP's, Tasmanian MP's and also the local Tassie papers and I spoke to locals about this to try to understand how this can be business as usual in 2023. Some of the most incredibly special and magnificent giant trees and forests I've ever seen in my life are only standing because activists convinced them to temporarily pause logging. I feel this issue is urgent, pertinent to the climate crisis and our overall view of our relationship to land.
Hi Sarah, thanks for all the work you put in to your writing and keeping up with comments and replies.
I've listened to a couple of interesting books recently that speak to the subject of collapse, one finished and one almost so. Dougald Hine's 'At Work In The Ruins' talks about the end of modernity, and that we're in a hospicing phase, composting what's no longer useful and looking to what we'll take with us into the new way of doing things. He also quotes that 'change will take 1000 years.' Jon Alexander's 'Citizens' talks about the end of a story, that we're coming to the end of the Consumer story, and that it is potentially (hopefully?) being replaced by the Citizen story. He also talks about being in a paradigm shift, a term I became familiar with since coming across all these ideas some 15 years ago while doing a residency at an Ecovillage in Scotland. Ever since I did that programme, I had been gripped by a sene of urgency to share the information, to help us all get on board with getting ready for what's coming. But reading these books has helped me shift my perspective to one that feels more calm and easier to cope with. We can't 'prepare' for a paradigm shift, it will be a gradual process, the full effects of which we won't be able to see until we're out the other side, some decades or hundreds of years into the future. We do have work to do if we want to, to take part in the shift by being open to, and experimenters of, new ways of doing things, assisting with unlearning, being co-midwives of the new. I love the reframing of the collapse, as put by Dougald Hine, that 'even though it means the end of life as we know it, it doesn't have to mean the end of life full stop'.
Thank you for the book mentions. I've been looking for new material that speaks to this (and of course awaiting Sarah's book :). I've heard that expression before that we are in a "hospicing" time and I really think it's apt. Unfortunately, I think we are in the early, but hard to tell until we are through it as you mentioned, phase where we are floundering, unsure and in pain, waiting for a solid dying plan to be put in place.
My experience is that there is much exciting experimentation going on, groups are iterating new ways of doing things - regenerative farming, ecovillage living, Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs). I think the pain comes in the feeling we're needing to let go of something (sacrifice), when actually, perhaps, we're moving towards something better. Change can be disruptive, but I think the point is to engage. Rather than wait for someone else to come up with a plan, we can have a go at exploring ideas, or engaging with others who are exploring ideas that resonate with us. These are unprecedented times that call for unprecedented solutions. No one knows what's the right way forward, which is exactly why we need to experiment, iterate, test things out.
Some ideas will work, and some will fail, but test we need to, because things sure as hell don't work in their current form. All this to say that yes, we're in the midst of a shift, but how we feel about it depends on how we choose to look at it. Are we to be driven by our fear or our curiosity, and our belief in our agency? It's a very important time of awakening to ourselves and our place in the world. We're going to look back at these next 20 years as being a hugely exciting and important threshold in human history.
I think we could all benefit from a conversation focusing on what a post-capitalist society should be. Less consumption. Less environmental degradation. Less competition. More collaboration. More energy for love, compassion and empathy to be passed around.
From my own experience, I have observed the rise in narcissistic traits within my own social group. Or, they may have always been there and I wasn’t well equipped to identify it back then. Regardless, narcissism has been the media talking point for a long while now. The tendency itself is purely driven by envy. You mix that in with greed and the ever-growing gap in inequality and bam! late stage capitalism in full swing.
I have been observing the same, and wondering the same. I think narcissism is what we might be slipping into to cope with the enormity and complexity of what is going on. It's a bit like when you're in an overwhelming conversation and you embarrassingly, cringely, find yourself spurting outsomething about yourself to cope. Narcissism is a way to bring it back in closer, and to bring yourself back into the picture...we are familiar to ourselves.
Thai culture has next-level tolerance towards narcissistic behaviours (monarchy, patriarchy, military coup - just to name a few!). The narcissism I’ve experienced personally definitely has a malice undertone, because it’s associated with the entitlement and desire for control.
Parallel to the rise in narcissistic tendencies, I’ve also observed that people are becoming more “accepting” of bad behaviours. Our life philosophy is “sabai sabai (chill chill) - don’t think about things too much”. I guess comparing to the west, we lean a lot more towards social harmony at all costs.
I guess in times of turmoil and chaos like this, these logical and compassionate voices need to be a lot louder.
This is really interesting.
re the times of turmoil point - we get tribal and we will prioritise belonging and looking like we fit in over truth or other morals. So I think the accepting of bad behaviours kicks in as primal protective mechanism. Ditto accepting authoritarianism.
Also Wabi Sabi in Japanese means finding beauty in perfection... i wonder if there's ANY connection...?
Good observations here, and both societies create beautiful levels of harmony and peace. I love Japan and Thailand for that. Fundamentally it is a good attitude to live by. BUT
Both societies allow for the most devious acts of abuse imaginable. Understanding and an intention to bring things back into harmony is the starting point. But the Zen stick must be placed next to the tea pot 🫖. Good manners and custom have to be balanced with eye gouging and a kick in the nuts. Or at the least good bye from my life 👋🏼.
I have been pondering the idle hands of intelligent men Sarah. Made me think of Nigel Farage, Trump, Scott Morrison, Rishi Sunak, Ben Shapiro, and many more gentlemen either in power or currently upsetting the apple cart. It occurs amongst the ladies also, mostly in the corporate world, but growing in the political world also.
As you say, the French Revolution was not driven by the paupers and peasants, they were just the cannon fodder. I have a sneaking suspicion that the revolutionaries were good chaps, but mostly assholes. As humans mostly just want to get along, chop wood and gather water.
Not much to do with it, but I wish that we could teach ourselves when we are doing such things to ourselves, to others or are having them done to us.
That is the sad thing with woke culture , it began in earnest to identify and change where we are being pricks. Our biases, prejudices and fears. But it turned us into the exact thing that we were hating.
How do we bring a little tea ceremony feel to our lives , so that we have a spot at the table, can have a good chat, while also being able to flick the bird or throw deuces in the air?
Maybe a chapter in the book re rebuilding ourselves and our communities?
Citizenship studies, debate and conversation back in the schools, for everyone, not just the smarty pants?
How do we meet the wave form and frequency of the narcissistic right or left, without adding to the volume of the wave, causing it to crash violently?
I picture a cute Japanese surfer girl on a longboard , a dude drops in on her, so what does she do? Goes high and nose rides past him saying excuse me , and then blows him a kiss as she glides off into the sunset.
Thats enough random words for the day
Have a good one ✌🏼
Please do not comment here again with promotions.
Good Morning Sarah,
I watched Elon Musk talk to Ben Shapiro last night, while watching Pornhub on my phone, while waiting for my poly friend to arrive for our 8:30 session 😅
Just kidding 😆
I did watch Elon and Ben have a “chat” or rather watched Ben talk to Elon and steer the conversation precisely where Ben wanted it to go.
These guys are amazing at getting insecure billionaires , or brains to sit under their 15 minutes of fame spotlights. And throw gasoline on the end of the world.
Elon wants X to be THE BEST source of truth on the planet 🙃
I believe Elon has a good heart , underneath that big brain of his. It is scary to watch people who have the ability and means to steer the crash being co opted into fucked up cabals.
And yes Poly is just a distraction, fun for a bit, but always ends in tears. I had a discussion once with a potential lover, she wanted to keep things open. I was, you can do as you wish, enjoy your life, but just keep us safe.
She asked what I wanted, my reply was I only have enough time and energy, for me, my daughter and you. The guilt of that scenario and imbalance in sexual gratification or who knows what, blew it out of the water instantly 😅.
It is amazing when people foresee or rather observe human behaviour in the now but only makes sense when seen in the future. This wholesale distraction goes far into activism, sport, politics or online rants like this one
Back to work
OBS sorry for discussing suicide, and Tim in the same discussion. I did not know that was the choice that he made.
I get it though
This comes back to new age distractions, and distractions in general
To live with an open heart , burst open naturally, via spiritual technology and techniques, or more likely by grief, is a blessing and a curse.
Distractions are needed, in order to manage life, and our nervous systems, they are as important as deep presence.
A lover, a song, a walk, a glass of wine, a line of coke. Brilliant, as long as we are able to put them down and get back to engagement just as easily as we picked up bliss.
Have a sweet day everyone
Indeed, distractions are fine, so long as we're not controlled by them, or others are not controlling the means by which we're being distracted.
Maybe a reframe and a rename from distraction to distance is needed to give us all a break. Relationships to anything need distance to maintain its health.
Like the narcism and narcissistic story telling you mentioned in another comment, it does give a distance in order to either protect or reconnect. In order for empathy one has to understand and feel it first for ourselves. And for the big stuff it’s a difficult journey to navigate to stay out and open hearted.
I notice that you write and then delete Anna
Stop that 😂
If it comes from the place that knows birthdates then it is relevant and essential
I have a friend who experiences similar things re married men, that could just be loneliness, and also the excitement of speaking openly with a woman without pressure.
In that relaxation they may feel turned on , and mistake that for connection. Plus the before mentioned head space 😅
Libra and Sag moon with a good old Gemini rising and a glorious fire trine 👌🏼 very much me and my life.
And thank you Anna , we will see.
But it felt actually more like a celestial test, the truth is the woman was nothing that I am looking for, and the reason I was lonely and cerebral is my heart is still beating for someone else.
She is unavailable and I am stubborn as a mule , and my heart gets what it wants. Or it keeps me in the fire until I am done with the lesson and I come home to myself.
But as any good Buddhist knows , the more you cling, the more you reach, the further it moves away.
So that is why I walked this morning in the forest, no phone, no agenda, no time to be anywhere, nothing to grasp for. Just to breathe , watch my mind try to figure it all out , and soak up the forest and the water hole ☺️🙏🏼
I understand that, it can be a fine line between contributing and discussing or talking over the top of
Spot on Anna 👌🏼
This guys a prick, I can react, but do I need to? I can have my reaction and take its lesson and make an appropriate response. But do I need to attach my self worth to someone’s behaviour?
Do I need to change that person and make them better? Oh shit, now I am the arsehole 🙃😅.
It is not easy but can be done.
YES! God in drag, that is probably the easiest method of meditation and grace going 👌🏼🙏🏼
Takes out analysis and brings in humour and fun.
Age of Aquarius is what the hippies all talk about. But it is actually starting right now, or has begun. It signals the creating of the wave, and the end of current systems. And the beginning of us all finding better ways to relate to ourselves, rebuild our lives and communities.
All based on astrology , which I am a little into , as I love patterns and the weavings of the universe.
Whether you believe in astrology or not, it does have benefits in labelling, explaining and illustrating archetypes and the patterns and rhythms in life.
But the basics of Aquarius is all about change, knowledge, revolution, and evolution, brought about by inner turmoil and the waves of change. Many revolutions began when the moon was in Aquarius, and happens again this year with all of the elections in play. I have never seen an event with such clear cut choices for humanity like this before.
The problem is though , both choices are lead by the old systems and completely devoid of heart and strong values.
Have a squizz here
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Aquarius#:~:text=Another%20view%20suggests%20that%20the,of%20the%20Age%20of%20Aquarius.
😅😆
That question is so serendipitous Anna.
I was speaking with a very friendly and extremely gorgeous young woman at the waterfall this morning. She was curious and was asking me for advice about the area.
So to answer your question I will illustrate it with a real life scenario.
I was a bit cerebral this morning and to be honest deeeeeeep down inside a bit lonely. So I was navigating this experience trying to figure out what this lovely event was. And letting myself feel what was actually occurring.
This is classic man, nuts and bolts, a plus b equals c. She does this, I should do this, etc etc. Many guys cannot even feel their fingers, or toes, let alone their balls or heart. So how are we supposed to navigate what we are feeling in the moment, and what is mirrored in the other?
The truth of the matter was , yeah , there was a slight attraction , I could feel my heart opening a little.
But mostly she was just a vivacious and curious woman interested in making the most of her stay. I shared the location of an unknown water hole and off she went into the sunrise ☺️.
I am glad that I did not ask for her number when we had our phones out. It just would have made a beautiful moment and morning awkward
But if I bump into her at the bar tomorrow night and the vibe is right, I will 😉.
It's interesting reading everyone's thoughts about whether or not folks are becoming more aware of the systems that shape our experiences. I'm seeing that come through, especially with some of the niches on TikTok, following in the steps of earlier platforms like Tumblr, LiveJournal, some pockets of Reddit etc. I do social research about how young adults engage with therapy culture (seeing therapists or counsellors, mental health memes online, listening to podcasts about therapy or psych ideas or wellness etc.) and so many of them can tease out the messiness of self-help, therapy, wellness, wellbeing - how it is shaped and pushed by capitalism (plus the blurriness between psych, therapy, wellness, spirituality, corporate wellbeing etc), Western ideas about brains and bodies, if it is narcissistic or not, the dominance of psychology to make sense of our lives, if we're shifting from collectivist to individualist cultures, etc etc etc. We can see the "is Western/Global North psychology a narcissistic tradition that promotes individualism" debates on TikToks and other platforms.
There's a sense of picking up something like therapy or some other self-care strategy for a while might be useful, but also a bit of ambivalence too about whether it addresses the bigger picture - capitalism, racism, gender inequities etc. Some go to therapy because of problems at work that ultimately are about a constant push to productivity and optimising and want to find a way to work through it, yet can see that therapy is a way to get through life at the moment, while they can't change things that feel all consuming (cost of living, generational stresses, climate collaspe etc). I wonder about this in-between-ness: complaining say about women's dating standards vs recognising gender inequity. What happens in between? What happens between noticing patterns and seeing the system awareness memes?
(And I have to admit that polycules remind me of going to uni in the early 2000s and making maps of who had been with who - wayyyy before the sex map on the new version of Heartbreak High. And yes we had time! And doing double degrees, student radio, activism, two jobs, seeing bands, cooking, cleaning, gossiping)
Natalie, it sounds like your late teens and 20s were like mine (but ten years earlier). Your work sounds fascinating. Your comments make me aware (again) of how much we layer on BandAids because fixing the wound is just too challenging.
More than half the world is set to vote in elections in 2024?! Oh my.
This weekend a friend and I were discussing the topic of collapse and she mentioned the World Economic Forum's Global Risk Report for 2024, more importantly, she commented on how different the identified risks are in this 2024 report. (Reference: Global Risks Report 19th Edition).
The report explores the most severe risks we face over the next 2 to 10 years . I can't post a photo so here they are:
Top 10 Risks over next 2 years:
1) Misinformation and disinformation
2) Extreme weather events
3) Societal polarisation
4) Cyber insecurity
5) Interstate Armed Conflict
6) Lack of economic opportunity
7) Inflation
8) Involuntary migration
9) Economic downturn
10) pollution
Over the next 10 years:
1) Extreme weather events
2) Critical change to Earth Systems
3) Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
4) Natural resource shortage
5) Misinformation and disinformation
6) Adverse outcomes of AI Technologies
7) Involuntary migration
8)Cyber insecurity
9) Societal polarisation
10) Pollution
The report's contribution towards mitigation is beyond my knowledge, but even if it is just government word salad, the ingredients for collapse are all there. It's a dense read, but it may be of interest to some here. They speak to a world being stretched beyond its limit and that a multiplicity of futures over the next 10 years are conceivable, if you make it to Chapter 3.
x
Thanks for typing all that out. I had to think about it...yes, climate stuff will no doubt take over from the polarisation within a decade, but I think for next few years, it will definitely be about the fractiousness that emerges as we realise the climate etc risks are so close
😅😅😅
A hippy from Byron would say it’s the dawning of the age of Aquarius 😇😂✌🏼
And it actually is ✨
Spooky 👻
To add to the spooky, I'm in Byron and I'm an Aquarian. hehe
Sarah - wow! This 100% got me hard:
The other marker he identifies: when a society spends its free time in “philosophies of digestion, nutrition and hygiene. Alcohol questions and vegetarianism are treated with religious earnestness—such being the gravest problems.” The guy was a visionary.
Spengler’s point is that societies crumble when its people have become that distracted by narcissism and cringey indulgence. I am all for pushing gender and sexual norms, but an over self-conscious, self-important obsession with anything right now is striking me as, well, perfectly collaps-y.
He argues that inequality and polarisation “produces too many superrich and ultra-educated people, and not enough elite positions to satisfy their ambitions." and that this is what tips societies. Turchin identifies “the problem of an excess of educated men” who feel locked out of socially-accepted positions of success and who then stir up conflict.
I don’t have a ‘comment’ except to say this reflects what I have been feeling/sensing/observing but couldn’t put words to it.
I know what you mean. The first description was written in the early 70s and describes all previous 28 complex civilisational collapses.
Sarah where do I find info on previous 28 collapses?
There is a Reddit thread r/collapse, you can search for books within that. Or ask in the Deep Adaptation Facebook group. Or read Jen Bendell, Joseph Painter and Jared Diamond. Or follow Nate Hagen , The Great Simplification. That's just the beginning, it's a rapidly expanding field :(
wow
I think the inequality issue is interesting. Especially because the media keeps reporting it like that:
“The world's five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes — while nearly five billion people have been made poorer.”
Those two things are not correlated. Five people got richer but that is not what caused 5 billion people to become poorer. That was the pandemic (which cut people off from jobs worldwide!).
(In their footnote Oxfam points out that that number is since 2019. If they were to look at since 2023 they would see that number is already rebounding).
We can see the proof of that by Oxfams next sentence: “If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years.”
So the trends are showing that poverty is on its way to being fully eradicated in only two centuries? How could that be if people are getting poorer?
(And wow, what remarkable progress if something that has been around for thousands of years is that close to ending!)
Hi Elle, thanks for chiming in.
A number of thoughts in response to your wonderfully challenging points.
First, regarding the time frame, the Oxfam info is "Since 2020, five billion people have become poorer"...so in three years, things have declined. I've not seen any evidence pointing to a rebound...although I know the US economy is doing better overall.
That aside, the salient point regarding collapse/mass civil war is the *gap* btw the rich and poor. Even if poverty is eradicated at some stage, the gap will still be widening and widening. The French Revolution was actually not driven by peasants, it was driven by educated folk (not in poverty) pissed off that they were being shut out of opportunities.
The progress debate and the arguments put forward by Pink et al, I feel, are problematic. In big part because the markers they cite are things like GDP etc, which has the extractive mindset, and not the soul-based factors that I feel ultimately determine humane wellbeing, such as sacred connection to nature, congruency, belonging, etc.
I started replying but then it got way too long so I'm writing a more in-depth reply for my newsletter 😆. But, to look at Oxfam's report that world poverty will be eradicated in 229 years, go to their methodology report, table 1.6: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621583/mn-inequality-inc-150124-en.pdf?sequence=41
They are using World Bank data to show how long it will take for the percentage of the world population living below US $6.85/day to go from 46.92 percent in 2019 to below 1 percent. You can see that it is already 45.90 percent by 2023, so the trends are still going down, even despite the pandemic.
To your point that even if we eradicate poverty there will still be a gap. That is very much true! And we do need to figure that out. My solve is still that we need to fix distribution, tying the salaries and equities of those at the top to those at the bottom.
But my point about the Oxfam stats is that they, like much of the media, are putting together stats from the top and stats from the top as if the five rich guys in America are taking money from the poor in India. But that is not true. Those five rich guys are getting richer because their companies skyrocketed during the pandemic. And 5 billion got poorer because India, China, Africa, and South America had horrible lockdowns, the inability to get vaccines quick enough to restart their economies, and horrible recessions that resulted.
The result is that we shouldn't be saying, "if only there wasn't a Tesla and an Amazon and a Google making these guys so rich!" We should be saying "If only China and Africa and India had a Tesla and an Amazon and a Google....." (even if we should still make distribution more equitable in the process 😊!)
Yes, save your hard comment work for a post! To your point about there not being a causation issue, the rise of billionaire wealth has massively driven up inflation, again contributing to the point I raise (which I know you're not disagreeing with).
If only India, China etc had Amazon, Tesla etc. I see your point but it's clear that poor old planet Earth doesn't have the resources to allow that to happen. And the pursuit of it will only collapse our ecosystems. So what then for poverty?
PS Please do point me to any info that negates the collapse theory...I'm actively seeking it out at the moment and really want to be challenged
Hi Elle,
Further to Sarah's points about Steven Pinker, the economic anthropologist, author and degrowth scholar Jason Hickel wrote this piece in response to the frequent claims made by the likes of Pinker and Bill Gates that poverty is close to being eradicated and that things have never been better for the majority of the world's population:
https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
The excellent Citations Needed podcast also covered these claims in this episode:
https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-58-the-neoliberal-optimism-industry
Essentially, there's a lot of tricky accounting and data spinning going on!
27 milion. 18 years ahead of "schedule".
I heard Scott Galloway rattle off the various billionaires who would not exist without the govt loans etc
Well this felt accurate. All of it. Collaps-y-ness and all.
It's been feeling like we're living on the edge of a precipice for a while now - perhaps since the start of the pandemic, give or take a bit. Social media is perhaps helping push us along quicker towards this inevitable collapse.
My recent musings have been centered around:
a) what are we doing to survive (thrive?) in the midst of this collapse and how can we support each other -- some of those 5 billion people who've become poorer in the past 3 years (I'm one of them, even if I do speak from a place of relative privilege!) -- through this?
b) what will all of this look like on the other side and is there even going to be another side to be on or are we doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs and if so, how can we do that with dignity and care for one another instead of simply ripping each other to shreds.
Brilliant, thank you for sharing!
They are all the right questions....
And yes, spot on with the observations re educated men with too much time in their hands and no where to put their energy.
I can feel all of those pressures and outlets that they talk about in that article within me. Both for egoic, but also just practical I want to provide reasons. This is a broader widespread issue though. For women and men.
Do I start a family, a career? Is it even worth it, I will not find a decent man, I will not be able to afford a home, or have enough spare money to pay for raising a child. The world is ending anyway. Etc etc.
This level of nihilism and despair is going to be difficult to deal with as a society. Fuck it’s and suicide will rise exponentially, YOLO will have a glorious resurgence.
The having a baby analogy is a perfect example, I have experienced bringing a child into this world as a distraction.
And also what it feels like to have the whole universe desire you to , almost demand, that you create a child with your lover.
Others need to bring offspring into the world in order to survive in their old age, and to build a family legacy and life, so that there are enough of us to provide for each other.
The answer? My two cents is.
Discover your sweet spot, discover how to keep yourself there with gentle discipline, and stay open to beautiful distractions, and dance with it all.
oh , that last sentence - yes yes yes
Within 10 years keeps going around and around in my head. And it definitely feels like 2024 will be a tipping point.
For what it's worth in an obvious art imitates life sort of way, the mammoth that is Hollywood, and European cinema, is increasingly becoming more collapse aware.
Every second movie or series seems to be about the apocalypse now. And in the last few years there's been a shift, it's not the blockbuster, bombastic "the world ends in a couple of days" type fare of the 90s and earlier 2000s. It's more subtle - there's so many of them but the adaptation of the Handmaid's Tale comes to mind. Midnight Sky, Don't Look Up, and the recent Leave the World Behind (which I thought was excellent and brought to you by Obama's production company no less). This summer right before the actual election, Civil War is due out, based on a modern U.S. at war with itself scenario. I.S.S with its premise about a Russia/US nuclear war, and the British the End we Start From due out soon is about a woman and her newborn trying to survive after extreme flooding in London.
someone here also pointed me to the French series Collapse, which I've just started, and is about the minutae of what a collapse in the supply chains will look like - internal unrest.
Do you ever consider these movies are propaganda ? Designed to prime us for what is people like the Obama’s are planning for us ? Just another perspective or conspiracy theory ? You Choose . Thinking they do this for us, could make a big difference in how you live in a world in collapse.
I don't believe they are propaganda, or in any way coordinated for that reason.
How are you doing Sarah?
How are you coping, reframing and accepting that the journey you were on to find a way to steer this ship to safety is at an end?
Are you okay?
Thank you for asking Steve. I'm doing very okay. Very challenged, but getting met with a lot of love and connection the more I meet the challenges.
I think Frank Green water bottles are the equivalent to the Stanley cups here- my 11 year old says half the class has them and they have a special club.
Yep, lots of parents talking about this in my circles
I had the same thought re: the people in the polycule article - that they seemed to have an enormous amount of free time. And that their particular version of polyamory, at least, would be hard to do if you had children.
Re: this quote though... “When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard having children as a question of pro's and con's, the great turning point has come” - I disagree! I am childed myself, but I think it is good that people are asking questions before they have children rather than jumping into it by default. Not a sign of mass selfishness or the downfall of society.
I agree Rachel - having come from a world, a time, a community, where we all got married and had kids asap, young, with never a thought on impact, do we have skills, do we want the same thing, will my mental health cope, is this relationship sustainable, and most importantly, can I pause and dig deeper, and later carry in less shit to parenting. The questions my adult kids are asking now re being parents or not are breathtakingly honest and brave.
Hi, on this topic I saw and read this article in the New York Times - it is behind a firewall but for those that subscribe it’s relevant and provocative: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/opinion/polycrisis-doom-extinction-humanity.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare I scanned the comments and I found it interesting that a lot of people thought the author was asking us to be reassured that the climate crisis/multi-crisis was survivable based on a reading of history. I didn’t quite agree - his last comments were actually (my view) warning us not to give into doom mongering and dystopian gloom, but rather to fight, collectively to avoid such a fate. The authors in fact asks us to not give in because those that came before us and fought, managed to find a way to win. The message for me, was not that things are not bad, they of course are very bad. It was simply to say that the anxiety many of us collectively feel appears to repeat itself at times of change. That anxiety is broadcast, perhaps even amplified by the media and popular culture and exploited by politicians seeking a constituency. On first reading, I am not sure entirely why, I took some hope from the insights on offer. I am interested in what the rest of you read?
Thanks Mark...yes, he is quite clear that he's picking apart where the real threat lies: " Hearing that historical echo doesn’t mean that today’s fears have no basis. Rather, it is crucial to helping us blow away the smoke of age-old alarmism from the very real fires that threaten our civilization. "
and "The takeaway is not that we shouldn’t be worried but that we shouldn’t panic."
I think he is taking an artful route to a narrowly defined optimism...he dangles the idea that, hey, we haven't died yet, as cause for hope, but certainly doesn't dismiss the idea that the situation is different this time. The polycris is globally connected (not isolated to a war in one region), the population is at a peak, energy and resources is at peak...biodiversity at a tipping point...
I agree , the observation re elites is interesting and explains the Musk crew calling for an AI pause etc. It also emphasises his point, that the panic isn't always founded (and in the case of AI takeover, I agree)
"this cynicism — and the unfettered individualism that is its handmaiden — greases the skids to calamity. After all, why bother fighting for change or survival if you believe that self-destruction is hard-wired into humanity?" And why bother fighting if as individuals there is nothing we can do? And of course there is the Jeanette Winterson quote: “History is not a suicide note — it is a record of our survival.”
I agree with you, the writer does say - its different this time, I don't feel he is an apologist for the status quo and argues hey its bad but we will be fine. I feel he gives us agency to lobby, to protest and to use all of our abilities to avoid the tipping points we cannot help but read about on a pretty frequent basis these days.
Always great ‘system-aware’ memes here:
https://www.instagram.com/humans_of_capitalism?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Also plenty of inspo for that list in your book of things we will be happy to lose when capitalism goes away 😂 (eg ott gender reveals, sea of iPhone screens at concerts etc)
This is a really fascinating topic. America turning away from democracy really worries me given how much their culture affects ours and the rest of the world so much. The Guardian Full Story recently did a brilliant podcast on Trump winning in Idaho and how concerning his rhetoric is. Alarmingly, there's a whole master plan to boot out literally thousands of public servants around the country, the people who do the actual day to day business of running the country, and chucking in Trump loyalists.
To answer your question, I think awareness of this system simplification is unfortunately not mainstream. Only very few of us seem to be engaging and thinking about this big picture. Everyone else just seems uninterested or in denial or they don't care about anything or anyone outside of their own lives. Or maybe people are but don't know how to talk about it in our communities because they don't want to be seen as 'too full-on.' I hope I am wrong. This is why this community gives me hope!
I absolutely love how you do these collections of materials and whip them into a coherent, intriguing theme for our consideration. Thanks Sarah.
PS - I'd love to hear a guest on your podcast talking about a 'wild' idea to end native forest logging in Australia, in particular Tasmania. I went there for the first time this month, to see the old growth, giant trees. I was inspired by the Bob Brown doco THE GIANTS. (Bob Brown! Have him! What a wild guy!). Before I went down, I think I was quite naive as to the scale of the problem. We spent a whole week going all around the forests of Tasmania and there was only a very small portion not surrounded by logging. It was so immensely appalling. It made me so sad to have to drive for hours past destroyed forests to get to one little untouched part. Some of the bases and stumps of these felled giants were as tall as me. I have a list of letters to write to my MP's, Tasmanian MP's and also the local Tassie papers and I spoke to locals about this to try to understand how this can be business as usual in 2023. Some of the most incredibly special and magnificent giant trees and forests I've ever seen in my life are only standing because activists convinced them to temporarily pause logging. I feel this issue is urgent, pertinent to the climate crisis and our overall view of our relationship to land.
PS - the Helen Lewis quote really made me laugh.
Hi Sarah, thanks for all the work you put in to your writing and keeping up with comments and replies.
I've listened to a couple of interesting books recently that speak to the subject of collapse, one finished and one almost so. Dougald Hine's 'At Work In The Ruins' talks about the end of modernity, and that we're in a hospicing phase, composting what's no longer useful and looking to what we'll take with us into the new way of doing things. He also quotes that 'change will take 1000 years.' Jon Alexander's 'Citizens' talks about the end of a story, that we're coming to the end of the Consumer story, and that it is potentially (hopefully?) being replaced by the Citizen story. He also talks about being in a paradigm shift, a term I became familiar with since coming across all these ideas some 15 years ago while doing a residency at an Ecovillage in Scotland. Ever since I did that programme, I had been gripped by a sene of urgency to share the information, to help us all get on board with getting ready for what's coming. But reading these books has helped me shift my perspective to one that feels more calm and easier to cope with. We can't 'prepare' for a paradigm shift, it will be a gradual process, the full effects of which we won't be able to see until we're out the other side, some decades or hundreds of years into the future. We do have work to do if we want to, to take part in the shift by being open to, and experimenters of, new ways of doing things, assisting with unlearning, being co-midwives of the new. I love the reframing of the collapse, as put by Dougald Hine, that 'even though it means the end of life as we know it, it doesn't have to mean the end of life full stop'.
Thank you for the book mentions. I've been looking for new material that speaks to this (and of course awaiting Sarah's book :). I've heard that expression before that we are in a "hospicing" time and I really think it's apt. Unfortunately, I think we are in the early, but hard to tell until we are through it as you mentioned, phase where we are floundering, unsure and in pain, waiting for a solid dying plan to be put in place.
My experience is that there is much exciting experimentation going on, groups are iterating new ways of doing things - regenerative farming, ecovillage living, Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs). I think the pain comes in the feeling we're needing to let go of something (sacrifice), when actually, perhaps, we're moving towards something better. Change can be disruptive, but I think the point is to engage. Rather than wait for someone else to come up with a plan, we can have a go at exploring ideas, or engaging with others who are exploring ideas that resonate with us. These are unprecedented times that call for unprecedented solutions. No one knows what's the right way forward, which is exactly why we need to experiment, iterate, test things out.
Some ideas will work, and some will fail, but test we need to, because things sure as hell don't work in their current form. All this to say that yes, we're in the midst of a shift, but how we feel about it depends on how we choose to look at it. Are we to be driven by our fear or our curiosity, and our belief in our agency? It's a very important time of awakening to ourselves and our place in the world. We're going to look back at these next 20 years as being a hugely exciting and important threshold in human history.