Collapse Now and Avoid The Rush

“We use these situations either to wake ourselves up or put ourselves to sleep.”

Pema Chodron (1996) When Things Fall Apart

This short post is largely a personal reflection on barriers that keep us from thinking about the possibility (inevitably?) of social collapse.

Unbelievably this is the first post of mine for nearly 9 months! Despite having committed to regular weekly and monthly blog posts, and reminders in my calendar, there has just been too much going on. I often prevaricate because i don’t think I have anything good or insightful enough to say, but fill up my paper journal on a regular basis. I’m not making any promises going forward!

So this Sunday morning came an insightful and challenging post from Joe Brewer in my Facebook Feed. Joe is….well it’s hard to know where to begin! I have come to know Joe through The Design School for Regenerating Earth and his involvement with the activation of the 7-Generation Greater Tkaronto Bioregion (GTB) work coordinated by The Legacy Project. His book The Design Manual for Regenerating Earth is a comprehensive and informative read, and a great introduction to the complexity involved in being a participant in Regenerative work- it makes a great Book Club/Discussion Group Read.

Anyway, Collapse…

I’ve been thinking about social collapse for a loooong time (but surprisingly done very little direct blogging about it!), but exploring in the last 5 years or so with a more a analytical eye through the works of Jared Diamond, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Joseph Tainter and Jem Bendell. More recently Ive been accontributor to the dialogue over at DoomerOptimism (where I first heard about Joe incidentally), including this podcast episode on Stories, Places and Feeling at Home in the World

In the following post, Joe speaks about the necessity of collapse for regeneration.

Its hard to think about the possibility of collapse-or even of change- and the ‘composting of civilization’ without a sense of despair and embedding-in to avoidance behaviour.

I’m in (another) period of change in my life right now and I can see it happening to me: watching too much Netflix, doom-scrolling, nostalgia over the past. Anything but living in the moments that arise. I’m also surrounded by narratives about myself against which I judge every action. Am I a good person, am I working hard enough, why aren’t I in the place I want to be and/or society expects of me?

I think our societies are doing much the same thing.

This week i came across an article in #themarginalian called “How To Bear Your Loneliness” based on Buddhist Teacher Pema Chodron’s book “When Things Fall Apart” https://www.themarginalian.org/…/pema-chodron-loneliness/

“The very first teaching of the Buddha is that suffering is inevitable..as long as we believe things last, that they don’t disintegrate. That they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security. From this point of view, the only time we really know what’s going on is when the rug has been pulled out and we can’t find anywhere to land. We use these situations either to wake ourselves up or put ourselves to sleep.”

Or as Morpheus puts it in “The Matrix” -do you take the red pill or the blue pill.

Chodron goes on to describe something she calls “Cool Loneliness”

“Cool loneliness doesn’t provide any resolution or give us ground under our feet. It challenges us to step into a world of no reference point without polarizing or solidifying. This is called the middle way, or the sacred path of the warrior“

Where I see “cool loneliness” and collapse intersecting is that place of uncertainty which asks us to step forward into the reality of the moment in all its hardships, because that is the only place “being”‘ is.

But in the same breath, the impact of social collapse will be unimaginable. We can see collapse play out in civilizations of the past and in Nation States today from the Roman Empire to Syria and Haiti; we can read books like The Road or Parable of The Sower and watch films like Children of Men and the upcoming Civil War. War, death and suffering and loss of freedom are the inevitable consequences. Yet we have gone to war for freedom before.

In my research I ask people if they are willing to talk about the future and to get their views on collapse. I ask them to respond to the metaphors of Dodo, Phoenix or Butterfly created by Professor Rupert Read. People are generally split between their head and their heart on which future they think we are headed for. I’m optimistic that people rarely choose Dodo.

What will we put up with to avoid collapse? What will we sacrifice? Will it be worth it in the hope of something new, more just and equitable, arising from the ashes?

Will we really have a choice?

I don’t have answers. I acknowledge the priviledged position of comfort and security I approach this, which is for me a concept, a shadow on the future. Listening to the stories of those who have lived or are living through collapse is an important starting point to make sense of the trade-offs and challenges. Still, no-one really chooses collapse, do they?

In a previous post, I quoted the poet John Keats about his idea of Negative Capability- the ability to live with uncertainties without any “irritable tendencies to reach for facts or reason.” This is a call to sweep away the narratives of certainty that keep us comfortable and unresillient to instead work with the flow and cycle of living that we see in the world around us.

Step back into the river.