Community thread: Where we can process *that* very confronting collapse podcast together
Dark Matter Labs' Indy Johar joins us to chat through the horrific "no viable pathways" thesis, how long we've got, plus how we personally cope with our predicament.
This week’s Wild episode is a very confronting, reckoning conversation with systems designer and Dark Matter Lab co-founder Indy Johar about how collapsing systems will play out. You can go and listen to it here first, and then join us back in the comments:
With this episode, I issued a warning - that the content was very confronting, particularly for anyone new to collapse as a concept. I also offered to provide this space for everyone to chat out their responses to what we covered. So here we are.
In the episode (and you’ll need to listen to it in full to comprehend the magnitude of the reckoning it presents and to get to the landing pad at the end) we cover:
The “reagentification” of nature (as a way to comprehend complexity, apart from anything else).
Indy’s argument that a slow, possibly measured (?) collapse toward a “simplified” existence of possibly 1-4 billion humans on the planet (per the carrying capacity of Earth) is no longer/never was a viable pathway. This is because…
As collapse plays out, we are likely to descend into mass civil unrest (a thesis I’ve been expanding on in my Collapse book here on Substack). Indy argues this is most likely to result in some kind of catastrophic wipeout (nuclear). And so…
We will be sling-shotted into a new world.
This, according to Indy, will occur in 10-15 years.
There will be 4 pathways, or systems, operating around the world in coming years that will operate at the same time and will provide the velocity for the sling-shotting.
Our role - our “duty” - is to keep the farm calm.
This conversation was something of a sucker punch for me. No doubt for many of you, too. The ideas were not entirely new to me. I’ve heard this modelling and timeline discussed in other power-adjacent circles, but always “off-air”. I can follow the logic. I don’t know if it’s right or likely (although I know various institutes have modelled many of the points Indy raises).
Regardless, I land here: Uncertainty and hard times are ahead. This is all we really know. So we prepare for this, materially and psychologically. To run a few “threads” from my book: We focus on building resilience and community; we come back to human values; we support and foster the ideas that need to be “lying on the ground” after the crisis.
I like this line from Indy:
“I think one of the key journeys that we're in the middle of is one, to reimagine ourselves as not just beings, but becomeings”.
Anyway, I’ll respond to your comments in the thread. Indy will jump in at some point, so feel free to ask for more clarification on his points etc. Over to you guys.
Sarah xx
As a reminder:
Indy Johar is an architect and Professor of Planetary Civics at Melbourne’s RMIT and the University of Sheffield, and has worked with, and advised to, organisations around the world, including the Scottish Government, the Mayor of London and WikiHouse. Indy effectively re-imagines and redesigns systems for a changed world using emergence and entanglement theories.
To get a better feel for his ideas, this presentation he did in Australia at the end of last year, published on ABC’s Big Ideas podcast is helpful.
He also had this two-way conversation with the wonderful Bayo Akomolafe a little while back.
I’ve recently returned home (New Zealand) from a trip in America. I was in the States on voting day and spoke with a few people. What became apparent was that violence was definitely on the table for ‘both sides’. I sat on a domestic US flight next to a retired American woman, who described feeling so nervous about the potential violence - that she, at 67, went out and purchased a firearm. Spoke with another American woman on flight bound for NZ who described being ecstatic about the results and truly believed that the ‘savvy businessman’ now in power was going to fix their country. Her and her husband are currently in NZ, touring around. She asked about life here in NZ, and confessed her only understanding of things was being aware of the Ozone layer (or lack of). Little did she, or I know, that a day after they drove off in their camper a protest march of predominantly thousands of Māori (indigenous people of NZ) blocked roads, flooding public transport and walked to our nations Parliament. I left the US witnessing political unrest, and an underlying ‘hum’ of violence to arrive home to NZ to something truly significant. While the protest (Hīkoi) is peaceful, it has promoted a flood of strong emotions, viral videos, potential division and a general sense of unease. I always enjoy listening to your podcasts Sarah, and attempt to synthesis new learnings from the many wonderful experts you have. This episode is powerful and Indy’s words “given words to what I was feeling” ring true for me. I am a Teacher, currently out of the classroom - as waking up to the state of our world while working in our education system over the covid pandemic was too much for me, then. I’ve been building my own resilience and working on my well-being in order to clarify how I can be of value in the future. Thank you for your work. You add so much value and forever promote new learning for me and many more. Kia Ora. Mel.
This takes how I felt after the Meg Wheatley episode to a whole other level. I think you were wise to issue your warning and it's also very generous of you to offer this space to people who need to process it.
I'm currently sitting in the "fuck it all" headspace and I know I need to allow myself to stay here for a few days until I figure out what's on the other side for me.
I walked up the street to buy my groceries and it's a beautiful sunny day and there's people everywhere laughing and sitting at outdoor cafes enjoying themselves and I felt like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 watching the children in the playground.
I think I will just continue on with what I've been doing anyway as I am making some major life changes.
I need to build offline community and spend time in nature.
Indy's thoughts are very interesting and ring true for me and he's an amazingly intelligent person, but I struggle sometimes with lots of jargon and "heady" conversation. Even with you, Sarah, interjecting and breaking it down I still struggled. I will go back and listen to it and see if I can get more of an understanding of what's being discussed with a second listen.
I love Nate Hagen's podcasts and can only just grasp the concepts he discusses. But I understand that he is talking to a particular audience. I feel that the message (as well as our lives) needs to be simplified. You do a great job Sarah, with simplifying the message. I'm not sure why I struggled so much to understand a lot of what was being said, other than the scary timeline prediction.
I have felt in the past when "experts" or even intelligent commentators make it all a bit "heady" and wordy it leaves people such as myself behind. The message needs to be able to reach more people, but then maybe most people don't want to know.