Thinking about societal collapse isn’t a heartwarming experience, so we tend to avoid it. It seems so remote and unlikely. Why bother? This post identifies some benefits of giving collapse some serious thought and why it makes sense to prepare for it, even if we think the prospect is remote.
I’ll argue that there are two main reasons for preparing for societal collapse:
you and yours will suffer less if you are well prepared; it could be the difference between survival and the alternative
if you prepare well, keeping biophysical limits in mind, you will help avoid the more serious threat of ecological collapse.
A previous post offered the following proposition:
The best way to transform the current systems that direct our civilization is to prepare for societal collapse while acknowledging that we have already exceeded biophysical limits.
This proposition acknowledges that the systems directing our current civilization have created a series of existential threats that are likely to lead to ecological and societal collapse. The climate and broader environmental movements have largely attempted to alter the existing system to avert these impending threats. These efforts have largely failed and show little promise of succeeding in the time available before irreversible ecological tipping points occur.
This proposition acknowledges that the existing economic and cultural systems that describe our global culture are operating as designed. They produce enormous wealth for those elites that dominate the system, at the expense of both the majority and the biosphere. A feature of such complex economic and cultural systems is stability; don’t expect to transform them. Such systems will continue operating as designed. Until they can’t.
Collapse has been a feature of every civilization that has ever existed. Multiple signs indicate the current global system is headed in this direction. Preparing for societal collapse may be the most constructive way of minimizing the disruption associated with collapse. Significantly, preparing for collapse while acknowledging our current advanced state of ecological overshoot could also create new opportunities for escaping ecological overshoot. Preparing for collapse while prioritizing biophysical limits could reduce our ecological footprint and mitigate the worst aspects of societal collapse.
This post will discuss the benefits of this approach from the perspective of biophysical limits and personal security. I’ll argue that preparing for societal collapse while prioritizing biosphere integrity is both a sensible risk-management strategy for personal security and necessary for ecological sustainability and social justice. Details below.
Previous posts provided some background perspectives regarding:
The context is that humanity is undergoing a significant energy transition, and it is not only about reducing fossil fuel use. It is essentially about the decline of cheap, abundant energy. Our global civilization has been built on cheap, abundant energy. The transition to a lower energy future will profoundly affect how we live. And the energy transition is not the only significant existential threat we face.
Yes, cheap, abundant energy has provided enormous economic and technological benefits over the past few decades. But the most significant consequence of our use of cheap, abundant energy is humanity’s displacement and disruption of natural systems that support the web of life. We are outcompeting and displacing the rest of nature to the point of threatening our own survival. This is a terminal condition. Reversing this condition is essential to live well. New visions of what living well means in an energy-constrained future are called for.
The magnitude of our disruption of the biosphere is global in scope, requiring a reduction in our demands on natural sources and sinks of more than 70% to restore biosphere integrity. Our disruption of natural systems is so severe that we may only have a decade or two before cascading irreversible ecological thresholds are breached. The pressure for change is mounting daily.
This bleak perspective is not a prediction. No one knows the future. But it is a possible scenario based on evidence from a variety of disciplines and scholars.
Even if you believe the prospects of societal collapse are remote, there are sensible reasons to prepare for it. One of the most conservative professional groups you could imagine does just that for major financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies. The actuarial profession helps keep these institutions from catastrophic outcomes.
I like the approach actuaries take to high-risk events, even though such events have a low probability of occurrence. Actuaries take these high risks seriously because of the severity of their impact and make recommendations about how to avoid large-scale negative outcomes. That’s why we insure our homes and take out life insurance policies. We need to do the same for the web of life. That’s how we ensure stability.
Actuaries are not doomers; they are risk managers who generally apply their skills to financial institutions like banks and insurance companies. These modern cathedrals of our growth-driven culture must remain solvent in our current value system; hence, they receive the actuaries’ attention.
Fortunately, some actuaries have recently teamed up with earth scientists to apply their skills to what they call planetary solvency, taking a systemic look at the multiple crises we face, including biosphere breakdown. They identify both the range of risks we face and how they exacerbate each other in applying a sophisticated risk management methodology to the metacrisis.
This approach uses the best science available but does not require scientific precision or certainty about what is most likely to happen. I like this approach because it seeks to avoid disastrous outcomes, is precautionary, and doesn’t allow low levels of scientific certainty to preclude sensible action based on what we already know with high certainty. It focuses on what’s catastrophic, but possible, rather than what seems most likely.
So that’s the context of this post. Various scholars identify serious risks ahead for humanity. To avoid the worst outcomes, a risk-management approach to identify priority responses would be prudent. An earlier post suggested that societal collapse is more likely than systems reform. So what is the worst outcome to avoid?
Is Societal Collapse the Worst Outcome?
Societal collapse seems highly undesirable; it would be grossly disruptive to what civilization has achieved over the past century. But is collapse the worst possible outcome of the metacrisis?
Here’s an argument that the answer is “no.” Consider what “societal collapse” could mean. Disruptive, yes, very disruptive and unwelcome. But societies have collapsed for millennia. People typically regrouped in a new location and started over.
What should worry us more than societal collapse is the continuation of a society that is destroying the web of life that we are part of and depend on. The longer we continue on our current trajectory, the more likely there will be nowhere liveable remaining. Collapse of complex societies would be permanent.
Luke Kemp has argued that key features of all civilizations play a central role in their inevitable decline. Those features are elite dominance hierarchies, organized violence, and gross inequality.
Pre-civilization societies were characterized by egalitarian self-management, including in large settlements toward the end of the Paleolithic Period (see Kemp for details). Organized violence was absent in these egalitarian societies. Organized violence occurred only when civilizations arose, and elite dominance hierarchies used violence to maintain control when control via the elite narrative needed a boost.
Kemp documents how the majority of people benefited when elite hierarchies no longer controlled their lives. Collapse is most dramatic for the ruling elite, who lose their power and position. Collapse can improve life for those most abused by the system, the majority. The evidence indicates that general population health improved post-collapse. Societal collapse is not the worst outcome we could face; collapse of the web of life is a far more serious threat.
This is not to ignore the suffering that would be an inevitable part of societal collapse; violence is a common phenomenon post-collapse. Preparing well for collapse could mitigate the inevitable suffering to some degree. Continued destruction of the web of life is likely to cause more suffering than societal collapse.
Our current global civilization has the same features Kemp describes: an elite dominance hierarchy, a powerful elite narrative (growth is good; tech leads growth), and legalized state violence. This system’s growth imperative has already destroyed much of the only biosphere we know of and depend on, and impoverished many.
It would be desirable to reform this system and avoid collapse. However, that seems unlikely. Kemp found no historical examples of collapsing civilizations reconstituting themselves in the face of existential risks. Civilizations remain ignorant of their decline until it becomes so obvious that it is too late for reform. I see no evidence that we are avoiding this blind spot.
Viewing the disruption from societal collapse as an opportunity to improve life for the majority focuses our energies on the future rather than depressing us with the loss of convenience we enjoy in the current system. We could gain more than we lose with proper planning.
Attributes to guide our opportunity-making will require embracing disruption, as well as tolerating ambiguities, trusting ourselves and others, making values matter, and being excited and energized by a vision of a genuinely sustainable and equitable future. Learning to rely more on community rather than solely on governments may be needed. Attitudes that prioritize survival over convenience, and community over individualism, might also help.
What’s the Vision for the Future
A better question might be, what is your community’s or bioregion’s vision for the future? There’s no one-size-fits-all for the future vision thing. Bioregional resources and territorial features will play a big role in answering this question, as will historical and cultural features. Relying on local resources for basic needs will provide greater security and resilience than global supply chains. Determining how to balance the per capita standard of living with population size will also be relevant.
These visions need to be developed by those destined to live them. The use of deliberative democracy approaches to make these difficult decisions holds the promise of developing high levels of consensus about a local vision for the future. These participatory decision-making strategies also provide an opportunity to relearn how to self-govern, a social skill that will become increasingly important as the current system unravels even more than it already has.
This post is about identifying the high-level essential conditions that each regional vision will have to satisfy to escape ecological overshoot and to ensure social justice. These overriding goals are most likely to be achieved if they are designed into a new system. Leaving them to market forces as we do now is a recipe for repeating current failures. While the visions for each self-governing bioregion may vary greatly, there are some conditions they all will have to satisfy to adapt to the new challenges our current system has produced. Unless we ensure these critical conditions are met, we will repeat past mistakes.
Six Critical Conditions for a Survivable Future:
Prioritizing biophysical integrity. Our current overconsumption of natural sources and sinks is a terminal condition. To ensure that global and local ecosystems regenerate sources and sinks continuously, it is essential that we significantly reduce demands on local ecosystems below their regenerative capacities. Unless we achieve this critical condition, no other human aspirations will be possible. Ecological collapse is a more significant threat than societal collapse.
Achieving biosphere integrity will require both a shared understanding of biophysical limits and agreement regarding the safety margin desired to optimize ecological resilience. Understanding the specific risks in each region will help establish this safety margin from serious ecological disruption. When ecological overshoot is eliminated over time, the biosphere will expand to create more productive biomass. This expansion of biosphere infrastructure will allow an adjustment of the resilience safety margin. Monitoring and adjusting this dynamic may become increasingly important over time, especially if global ecosystems remain disrupted.
Some discussions of preparing for collapse overlook this critical task of operating within biophysical limits. This oversight is the result of general ignorance about just how serious our current level of overconsumption is. Focusing on other aspects of collapse is also important, but not at the expense of continuing to ignore our advanced state of ecological overshoot. Eliminating it is an overriding priority. This priority imposes limits on the scale of technology we can sustainably use.
Deliberative democracy methodologies could assist with developing high levels of social consensus regarding how to ensure that, whatever the future holds, we will operate within biophysical limits.
Balancing population size with per capita consumption. Another often overlooked issue in both the environment and collapse literatures is population size. As a major driver of overconsumption, population size is something we cannot afford to ignore.
A larger population means the sustainable level of per capita consumption must be lower than for a smaller population, and vice versa. At any particular time, the biosphere can produce a finite amount of biomass for sustainable human use. To ensure biosphere integrity as above, human consumption must remain below the finite biosphere’s regenerative carrying capacities.
It’s for each region to decide how to balance these major drivers of our ecological footprint. Currently, per capita consumption is largely determined by market forces, and population size is determined by a variety of cultural values and available technologies. Little attention is given to the connection between these two determinants of our total environmental impact.
A balancing exercise would force us to consider how population size and per capita consumption together determine whether we are operating within biophysical limits, or not.
There has been a massive decline in the total biomass on the planet over recent centuries. This means that actually meeting everyone’s basic needs within the biosphere’s carrying capacity would require a much smaller human population than we currently have.
Voluntary methods of achieving such a balance over time are available. Each region’s task is to determine the desired balance for that particular region, and the means of achieving it.
Again, deliberative democracy methodologies are available to assist with finding the appropriate balance for each region.
Prioritizing the security of everyone’s universal basic needs, including both physical and social needs. Economic and political systems must be specifically designed to ensure this condition if the goals are ecological sustainability, social justice and living well. High levels of inequality are a key feature of collapsing societies; the data are there for us to learn this critical lesson.
Securing basic physical needs can be achieved without overconsuming because such needs are satiable.
Securing basic social needs leads to high levels of life satisfaction and can also be achieved without overconsumption, while serving social justice.
Focusing on universal basic needs may not seem very exciting and inspiring given the flashiness of our current techno-industrial society. Understanding what these universal needs are and the benefits of securing them will become increasingly important as societal disruption accelerates.
Universal basic needs are not secure for a large portion of the global population today. All basic needs must be satisfied for a fulfilling life. Securing basic human needs for everyone will mean greater life satisfaction with a lower ecological footprint.
The basic needs we currently take for granted will be increasingly challenged by the impending existential risks we face. Every one of the existential risks we face has the capacity to disrupt basic needs fulfilment. While there is considerable uncertainty about what existential risks will occur, we can be certain that they will disrupt basic need satisfaction. The lives of the majority would improve in a society transformed to meet this critical condition.
Avoiding elite dominance hierarchies. Once civilizations arose, elite dominance hierarchies became common, and were considerably different from how humans lived for millennia during the Paleolithic Period. Once food surpluses became reliable, elite dominance hierarchies formed to control the surplus. These dominance hierarchies used organized violence and elite narratives to control the majority. Elite control led to increasing inequality, which was a major factor in the eventual decline of most previous civilizations. This dynamic has been repeated over millennia. Yes, there has been “progress” for some, but generally for a minority that serve the elite. This is another lesson we have so far failed to learn.
These same features characterize today’s elite dominance hierarchies.
Archaeological evidence from the Paleolithic period shows that societies were egalitarian and that organized violence was absent. Buildings and burials were similar; no evidence of special privilege or accumulation of surplus appears in these records.
Studies of indigenous peoples show similar patterns to those of the Paleolithic. We also know that indigenous peoples typically have non-dominance tactics to prevent the emergence of dominance hierarchies.
We can assume that Palaeolithic peoples developed similar non-dominance tactics such as humour, shame, banishment and even execution of frequent transgressors. Such executions might be considered organized violence, but these were community decisions rather than made by an elite hierarchy. Such extreme action is rare in indigenous societies, and perhaps also in Palaeolithic ones.
Given the history of elite dominance hierarchies generating control through violence and resulting in gross inequalities, serious consideration should be given to thinking about how to avoid their re-emergence in the future.
It is the elite and dominance aspects of these early hierarchies that allowed for the accumulation of power and surplus for their own benefit. Hierarchies themselves can be useful social mechanisms if managed by the majority rather than working to dominate the majority. Fluid hierarchies based on skills and values and other community-determined features could replace elite dominance hierarchies in which limits on the exercise of power are minimal and not subject to community control.
Adopting participatory democracy to make community decisions by consensus. How a community is organized, and how decisions are made, is highly relevant to fulfilling universal physical and social needs. It is a basic human need to have an acknowledged role in society, and a voice in decisions that affect one’s life.
There are a variety of deliberative democracy methods to encourage high levels of participation in community decision-making. High levels of consensus can be achieved with these methods (80% plus), reducing social polarization and increasing social cohesion. Such approaches emphasize the broader common good rather than personal or special interest priorities.
Relying on representative democratic methods in systems marked by elite dominance hierarchies and gross inequalities is no longer viable. Circumventing elite domination and minimizing power capture by special interests could be achieved with deliberative democracy approaches. Social cohesion requires placing a high value on achieving consensus. Consensus which emerges from widespread participation could replace consensus imposed by an elite narrative from above.
Agreeing on how to manage conflicts constructively. People will inevitably experience incompatible goals in the course of social interactions. Acknowledging this reality is a critical step in managing conflict constructively. An agreed procedure for constructively managing such conflicts can result in higher levels of social cohesion and personal well-being than allowing conflicts to escalate. Good conflict management is about ensuring everyone’s legitimate priority needs are met.
Perceived conflicts are often the result of misunderstandings about what is really important to the participants, rather than actual disagreements. Creative conflict management can help clarify and eliminate these misunderstandings. Where there are genuine disagreements about what the legitimate needs underlying the conflict are, resolution is possible by establishing new norms and minimizing ambiguities.
Perhaps there are additional essential conditions for a sustainable and equitable future that the above list misses. Please add your suggestions and ideas to make such a list more complete.
The Benefits of Meeting Essential Conditions
Not one of these essential conditions is likely to be achieved within our current system, which is characterized by an elite dominance hierarchy that pushes a dominant narrative that shapes our economy and institutions, and that is not reluctant to use organized violence to achieve its goals and maintain its status. The likely collapse of this system will be disruptive without doubt.
Let’s consider what the benefits would be to the majority if the current system disintegrates and the essential conditions summarized above are designed into its local replacement.
Note to reader. These benefits are not intended to describe a utopian alternative to the current system of widespread ecosystem destruction and gross inequality. Striving to achieve these essential conditions will not eliminate the disruption associated with societal collapse, but they may reduce its severity. They are simply fundamental conditions for ecological sustainability and social justice. Exactly how these base conditions get expressed locally, and built upon, can vary significantly, limited only by the laws of physics, ecology and the human genome.
The first two conditions, ensuring ecological integrity and balancing population and per capita consumption, are essential for surviving and living sustainably. The remaining four conditions are essential to living well sustainably. Together, these essential conditions can provide an opportunity to survive and lead to meaningful and satisfying lives, the two main benefits they collectively support.
Survival. The multiple crises we face have the potential to cause major human die-offs. The Planetary Solvency reports estimate that up to 4 billion people could die by 2050 if we continue on the current path. This is not a prediction of what is most likely to happen, but what is clearly in the realm of possibility and should be avoided; this is the prudent actuarial approach.
This is about your personal survival, your family’s and your communities’. As social animals, we need each other to survive and thrive. Obviously, if we don’t survive, nothing else matters.
The benefits of survival are that we can continue to enjoy the wonders of the world and those activities that provide us with the greatest life satisfaction. Part of our challenge is to appreciate that a much simpler life can be meaningful and gratifying, and that the collapse of our current system is not an obstacle to leading a good life. This is not to minimize the disruption associated with societal collapse, including the likelihood of increased violence in the immediate aftermath (this violence is mostly, but not solely, directed toward the dominant elites, and the blowback it generates). This may be unavoidable. Understanding the risks helps us prepare and reduce the disruption we experience.
However we organize ourselves, prioritizing biophysical integrity is essential for our survival. We cannot survive on a continually degrading planet.
Ensuring that natural systems can regenerate huge amounts of biomass to replace what we’ve destroyed over the centuries also increases the likelihood of our survival. It is this biomass that can provide all the food, fuel and fibre we need for a good life on a sustainable basis. Nature is the only genuinely circular economy.
To accomplish biophysical integrity will require balancing population size with per capita consumption. Since we are in an advanced state of ecological overshoot, we no longer have the luxury of ignoring population size as a major driver of overshoot, along with per capita consumption. Small island societies understood this dynamic.
Survival will depend on more than preserving the integrity of the biosphere. We face risks of wars and nuclear accidents, pandemics, climate disasters and whatever surprises AI gives us. And more. But working to preserve and enhance biosphere integrity when dealing with these other threats will inform how we direct and manage these threats to a safe space.
Meaningful and Satisfying Lives. The literature on human happiness and wellbeing indicates that the major determinants of living well are:
Our current system is grossly deficient in providing opportunities for either of these conditions. The elite narrative encourages acquiring financial wealth - that is the great challenge we are offered. This goal inspires individualism and competition (and corruption once successful). The reality is that opportunities for acquiring wealth are already stacked in favour of those who already have it.
More importantly, acquiring wealth is not the kind of challenge that brings meaning or satisfaction to life. Acquiring wealth involves creating the largest surplus possible, regardless of the environmental and social costs. The very role of “surplus” needs examination. We take it for granted that a surplus is desirable. Up to a point that makes sense. Best to have a year or more of wheat in the granary as a hedge against a poor crop in the future. But when the surplus exceeds our needs for securing basic needs, it becomes a means of social control and leads to elite dominance hierarchies. At scale, it also destroys the environment from which it is extracted.
Ensuring all basic needs are met in your community means that people are generally happy and involved, social cohesion is high, anxieties are shared and addressed, and mutual aid is something everyone can rely on. There will always be challenges, both physical and social, but a greater sense of community means they are shared and addressed together.
Realistically, none of this is easy because our current system is designed to provide the opposite in most circumstances. And it’s the current system we live in and cannot entirely escape. But having a shared vision of what is possible and desirable is an important step. It’s the first step in building an alternative system.
Why Preparing for Societal Collapse Is Important (Even If You Don’t Think It’s Likely)
The essential conditions for living well sustainably can form the basis for a new way of societal organization. By preparing for collapse with these essential conditions in mind, we can minimize the disruptions associated with collapse, if and when it occurs. If we do what is locally possible to secure our universal basic needs, then regardless of which uncertain risks occur, we will be better off than if we had not prepared. Securing basic needs by working with others at the community level increases our resilience.
Preparing for collapse before it occurs is essential to averting the major disruptions associated with collapse. Adequate preparation will take time and effort. Waiting for collapse to unfold in real time means squandering the time to adequately prepare. Preparing well will require learning new skills and ways of relating to each other. These activities are inherently rewarding and satisfying. Having universal basic needs met for everyone in the community, even without the disruption associated with collapse, will increase community wellbeing, cohesion and life satisfaction for the majority. Reducing our ecological footprint means restoration of the biosphere we depend on. These are worthy goals and actions regardless of what threats unfold.
Focusing on securing everyone’s basic needs while acknowledging our advanced state of ecological overshoot means finding ways of securing needs with the smallest ecological footprint possible. The small footprint approach has two significant advantages:
it keeps the means of securing basic needs as simple as possible, using simple technologies that are under local control and maintenance, thereby optimizing resilience, and
it reduces our demands on natural systems, thereby escaping ecological overshoot.
Preparing for collapse in this way is a no-regrets strategy. We are better off with this approach whether or not societal collapse occurs now or in the distant future, whether it occurs quickly or over decades and centuries, or if it doesn’t occur at all. In fact, because of this approach’s focus on reducing ecological overshoot, it enhances future opportunities, rather than further degrading them.
There is no pretence that this approach will be easy to implement at scale. It envisions a future very different from that projected by our current culture. It emphasizes features that are diametrically opposite to our current dominant culture (cooperation vs competition; community and mutual aid vs individualism; sufficiency and frugality vs abundant surplus; urgency vs gradualism; just distribution vs market forces; consensus decision-making vs elite dominance; non-violent conflict resolution vs state-sanctioned violence; etc.).
We are all products of the system we might seek to escape; we have been shaped by this dominant system, and it is part of us. Attempting to create a new system while still embedded in the old dominant one is not for the faint of heart. Living dilemmas isn’t always fun. This approach is not likely to become a mass movement anytime soon.
Nonetheless, those who have some sense of our current wicked-problem predicament and are eager for action can connect to provide support for each other on this task. Their short-term benefits will be real. Working together to secure basic needs will require a lot of new skills and creativity. Every step toward resilience will be satisfying, feel more secure and hopeful about the future. There are no guarantees that the long term benefits will pan out, as so much depends on what happens in other communities near and far. But those that succeed in building community resilience around these essential conditions will have the best chance of coming through collapse intact.
To the extent your basic needs are secure, as well as those around you, you will have the freedom to challenge the worst offences against the biosphere and the majority that the current system commits. If your basic needs are not secure, then when they are disrupted by the threats we face, you will be scrambling to secure them and have no time or energy to stop the system’s worst abuses.
A more detailed consideration of how we might move in the directions outlined above will be the topic for further posts. This is very much a work in progress, and criticism and suggestions about both the What and the How offered here are welcomed.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jack Santa Barbara is a retired academic and entrepreneur, and a philanthropist with a long standing interest in sustainability issues.
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