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Balázs Stump-Biró - Four causes of the collapse

Four reasons why our civilisation will collapse, not decline

As the shelf-life of modern civilisation slowly comes to an end, more and more scientists are turning their attention to the decline and fall of past civilisations. Competing studies have emerged to explain how certain societies collapsed and why civilisations disappeared. Meanwhile, a new and booming market of post-apocalyptic novels, films and TV shows has emerged for those who want to experience the catastrophic events of the dark and violent world to come from the comfort of their armchairs. But real survival will be about something else entirely...

The latent fear that the days of our industrial civilisation are numbered has given rise to a counter-reaction of sorts to the movement of insurmountable optimists who cling almost desperately to their belief in endless progress. Like the popular positivist, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, who reassures the anxious masses that the titanic ship of progress is unsinkable. Pinker's publications have made him the high priest of progress. While civilisation circles its shrinking concentric circles around the drain, his enthusiastic audience is reassured by his lectures and his books of hard facts that prove that life is better today than it has ever been, and that this progress continues unabated. But when the question is put to him, he himself admits it:

"It is wrong to conclude from the fact that we have progressed so far that it will certainly continue to do so."

Pinker's rosy statistics cleverly expose the fatal flaw in his argument. Progress of the past, built at the sacrifice of the future! All the positive facts he cites about life standards, life expectancy and economic growth are the result of an industrial civilization that has exploited and polluted the planet to achieve a temporary advance for a growing middle class and staggering levels of profit and power for a narrow elite.

Not everyone who understands that the progress made has been at the expense of the future thinks that the collapse of industrial civilisation will be swift and painful. Scholars of ancient societies, such as Jared Diamond and John Michael Greer, have accurately pointed out that sudden collapse is a rare historical phenomenon. In The Long Decline, Greer assures his readers that the same pattern repeats itself throughout history. Civilizations end in gradual disintegration, not in sudden catastrophic collapse. Greer estimates that the decline and fall of civilisations takes on average about 250 years, and finds no reason why modern industrial civilisation should not follow this 'normal timeline'.

But Greer's assumption is on shaky ground because industrial civilisation differs from all previous civilisations in four crucial ways. Each of these may accelerate and intensify the coming collapse, while greatly complicating the chances of normalisation.

1.
Unlike all previous civilisations, modern industrial civilisation is powered by an exceptionally abundant, NON-renewable and irreplaceable energy source, fossil fuels. This unique energy source dooms industrial civilization to a short, shooting star-like lifespan, with unprecedented boom and spectacular bust. Megacities, globalised manufacturing, industrial agriculture and a population approaching 8 billion people are all historically unique and completely unsustainable without fossil fuels. Today, the Earth's cheap and easily exploitable abundant reserves of oil and coal are being depleted. And while there are energy alternatives, there are no real substitutes that can provide us with the net energy with the intensity that fossil fuels do. Our complex, sprawling, high-speed civilization owes its short and intense lifespan to this single, rapidly depleting energy abundance.

2.
Unlike the civilisations of the past, the economy of industrial society is capitalist. Production for profit is the main guideline and driving force. The unprecedented surplus energy available to us from fossil fuels has enabled exceptional growth and huge profits over the last two centuries. But in the decades ahead, the sudden and unexpected phenomena of abundant energy, steady growth and predictable profits will be no more.

But we must see that, unless it is abolished, capitalism will not disappear just because the boom is over. Instead, energy-starved, growthless capitalism will become catabolic. Catabolism refers to the state in which a living being devours itself. Once the profitable means of production cease, capitalism is forced to produce profits by breaking down the social goods it once created. By eating itself, the profit motive only exacerbates the dramatic decline of industrial society.

Catabolic capitalism will profit from scarcity, crisis, disaster and conflict. Warfare, resource hoarding, ecological disaster and epidemic disease will be the new big profit-makers. Capital will flow into lucrative enterprises such as computer piracy, usury lending, financial fraud; bribery, corruption and organised crime; arms, drugs and human trafficking. As disintegration and destruction become the primary source of profit, catabolic capitalism will rage on the path of decline, following each self-inflicted disaster.

3.
Unlike the societies of the past, industrial civilisation is not Roman, Chinese, Egyptian, Aztec or Mayan. Modern civilisation is entirely human-centred and planet-wide in scale, threatening the very existence of the entire ecosystem. Pre-industrial civilisations have also depleted their soil, cut down their forests and polluted their rivers. But the damage they caused was more limited in time and space. Nature was able to heal the wounds inflicted on it. But industrial civilisation, having harnessed the vast energy of fossil fuels to market demands, has turned it to the exploitation of nature's resources, with dire consequences for the whole planet that are now obvious to all. Two centuries of intensive use of fossil fuels have resulted in excess carbon emissions that are changing the planet's climate and causing devastation for generations to come. The destruction of the Earth's highly complex living systems - the stability of the atmosphere and ocean processes, the biodiversity of the entire planet - is essentially irreversible.

Man has undoubtedly become the most invasive (violently expanding at the expense of his environment) species. Although we account for only 0.01 per cent of the planet's biomass, our domesticated plants and animals are taking over life on Earth. In terms of total biomass (total weight), 96 percent of all terrestrial mammals on Earth are farmed and only 4 percent are wild mammals (36 percent human, 60 percent domestic, 4 percent wild).Of all birds, 70 percent are domesticated poultry and only 30 percent are wild. About half of the Earth's wild animals are thought to have been lost in the last 50 years (~60% of wild populations since 1970).Scientists estimate that half of the remaining species will be extinct by the end of the century. There are no more pristine ecosystems or new areas where people can escape the damage they have caused and start their lives afresh after the collapse.

4.
Human civilization's collective ability to face its escalating crises is crippled by a fragmented political system of disparate nations, ruled by corrupt elites more interested in power and wealth than life and planet. Humanity is facing the compounding effects of global calamities and devastation in their own right. Profound hardships such as the chaos of climate change, the mass extinction of entire ecosystems, food and fresh water shortages, extreme poverty, extreme inequality and the spread of pandemics, which are becoming more frequent, will erode the foundations of our modern life with unforeseen speed.

A fragile and highly fragmented international political system based on a delicate balance makes it virtually impossible to take effective action and find a potentially successful response. And the more self-destructive industrial capitalism becomes, the greater the danger that hostile powers will fan the flames of nationalism and go to war over scarce resources. Of course, war is not a new phenomenon. But modern warfare is so destructive, destructive and poisonous that there is little left to do about it. It would be the final nail in the coffin of civilisation.

 
Rise from the ruins?

How people react to the collapse of industrial civilisation will determine to a large extent how bad things get, as well as what replaces them. The challenges are monumental. They will force us to question our identities, values and allegiances in ways and to an extent never before in our history. Who are we really? Are we first and foremost human beings, struggling to provide for our families, to strengthen our communities and to live peacefully with the rest of the world?Or do we owe our primary allegiance to our nation, our culture, our race, our ideology or our religion? Can we prioritise the survival of our species and our planet, or let ourselves drift hopelessly towards an end along national, cultural, racial, religious or party lines?

The result of the collapse we face is almost tangible. Will we overcome despair and denial? Will we overcome our dependence on hydrocarbons and break the hold of multinational corporations over our lives? Will we create real democracy, harness the potential of renewable energy, rebuild our communities, learn skills long forgotten, and heal the wounds we have inflicted on the Earth? Or will fear and prejudice drive us into hostile camps, and we will fight each other to the limit for the dwindling resources of a decaying planet?

Let us all look within ourselves... The stakes could not be higher.

This post is based on Craig Collins.

Four causes of collapse - deepadaptation.com

Balázs Stumpf-Biró - Behold The Man

The son of man, and sometimes even his daughter, is constructed - for he is an animal - in such a way that the limits of reward and punishment provide the framework in which he lives. He avoids the one and strives for the other. The extremely complex system in which we live our lives is the result of a long evolution, and the sophistication of social rules means that it is no longer necessary to cut off the hand or gouge out the eye of someone who breaks the rules of coexistence. We can be proud of this progress, and perhaps we should be, but we should have no illusions about the nobility of man.

There is one very important reason why we can live like this today: fear of consequences, fear of punishment. Some people are deterred from doing what they think of or feel like doing by the fear of imprisonment in this world, others by the fear of damnation in the next. This is the most solid foundation that allows us to walk the streets at night, to travel across countries, or to sleep peacefully while our daughter, our wife, is away somewhere... because the state, the law, religion, the abroncha of faith, does not allow it to be otherwise beyond a certain point.

Serial rape, infanticide, robbery, extortion, blackmail, human excrement everywhere... Hurricane Katrina, Superdome, New Orleans, 2005. People brought together by a disaster, in a vulnerable, miserable situation where it no longer mattered where they came from or what they had. Together, in a safe place of survival. But there were those who saw this as an opportunity. An opportunity to unleash their desires, because they had the determination and the weapons to do it. And the state, the law, retribution were not present. So Noah's ark became human in every way...

So let us see, through a sea of examples, a world where it no longer matters what you do, only that you survive. Where the values that have been the basis of our lives are transformed beyond recognition. Where the basic things that make life worth living, like water, food, land, women... Do we long for such a world? I don't think so. Can it come? It certainly can. Therefore, if we really count on that possibility, two things remain for us.

Firstly, let's look at what we have with different eyes. And even more so to our most precious asset, our human relationships. It's a good investment, it will pay off, because there may come a time when we have nothing left. On the other hand, let's think carefully about how our lives would be different in such a situation, what we would have to do differently to live, and what we need to learn from today to make that possible. Preparation doesn't take anything away from us, it allows us to keep more of what we have.

Two films I recommend you watch:

The Road, Viggo Mortensen, 2009.

The Rover, Guy Pearce, 2014.

From where we are looking, it is difficult to identify with either the character or the situation in which he lives. But if we do, we can see a world in its reality that we could never in a sober moment wish for. But whether it comes for us or not seems to be less and less up to us...

Balázs Stumpf-Biró - Get ready

10 May - the day we ate the year in Europe. Since then, we have been living for tomorrow. Man is a self-aware being, and that is a great value, but it also comes at a great price. The never-ending fear of passing. The knowledge that what is born is also a fish. It dies. It is this repressed fear that forces our minds into the past, which is a clinging hold, and into the future, which offers hope. Because most people believe in a meaningful future that is becoming more, better, more beautiful. In the intergenerational promise of a better life for their children... we have come to the end of that.

It's time to reflect on the possibility that we are too late to avert an environmental catastrophe that will affect the entire planet, with all its consequences, in the lifetime of the people living today. To be more precise: in the lives of everyone under the age of seventy. We have lost the control that was perhaps never in our hands. This is a huge threat to the very existence of humanity, too. This does not, of course, mean that everyone and everything will perish. But our world as we have known it will be transformed beyond recognition.

Having accepted the possibility of the collapse of our environment, what is left for us? Where will we be without the vision we have for ourselves, our families and our wider communities? Where do we find the meaning in our lives that is necessary for the healthy existence of our consciousness? This is why it is so difficult to accept what may lie ahead. It is more natural than anything else that, when faced with this prospect, a person, especially a parent, is seized by despair, tormented by anxiety, overwhelmed by grief. He is essentially grieving, even if he is not aware of it. The opportunities she missed, the years she will not live to see, and those closest to her as she feels the fear and pain that awaits them as the world around them collapses.

Mother Earth is not to be feared, she will shake herself, heal herself (the immune response is already in place), and if need be, rest half a million years on it. She will be fine. The components of nature, plants, animals are already suffering in an extraordinary way and are disappearing en masse. But the animal least able to adapt to the changes will be the one that caused them... man. And especially its community, the artificial world created by mankind. We need a profound adaptation, involving changes at the personal and collective level, to help us prepare for the collapse of our societies due to climate change, and to live with that knowledge. A feasible plan that does not fool people into thinking that our current economic, social and political systems are resilient enough to adapt to massive change and thus survive unchanged.

Social collapse is a process that has begun, either gradually or abruptly, bringing to an end systems and values that are thought to be eternal and unsustainable, such as food, water, energy, security, housing, the state, morality and equal opportunities. Man, as a mass, is not able to transcend his own shadow and, especially in difficult circumstances, to make significant sacrifices in defence of higher values. The process is inevitable because humanity cannot do enough, fast enough, to protect and maintain its own water and food supply from environmental impacts. Those who accept that societal collapse is inevitable, or at least possible, will be the first communities to know that there is no more important task left today than to prepare.

The goal can only be to mitigate the physical and psychological damage caused by the collapse. This is the essence of a community-level response, not that some will survive in their caves longer than others...

Balázs Stumpf-Biró - Ghost Money

Basically, fictional money, the set of numbers in binary code (01101...) in your bank account, does not exist. If you like, it is not even part of the real economy. Accordingly, when a commonly agreed world order (monetary, economic, social) loses its equilibrium and then collapses, everything that was the subject of that agreement loses its meaning, or at least its value. We do not even need to look into the future to see this, just think of the unrealistic German hyperinflation after the First World War and the Hungarian hyperinflation after the Second World War, which put it on the back burner. You received your salary in a suitcase, but by the time you got to the shop you hadn't received a sausage. My grandmother told me how in one such case the suitcase was stolen... the suitcase(!), not the money!

But that won't happen now either, because in a few years the world's first completely cashless societies (Sweden) will be born, and this model will spread very quickly. Let's start from what we have: not from a friendly epidemic, but from one that will kill, say, one in three people. What does the state say? It takes the opportunity and bans cash... saying (rightly) that it spreads the infection. True, there is nothing dirtier than money... in every sense of the word. So, what you call money will remain 01101...

What happens to these numbers in a total financial collapse? We don't even have to imagine ourselves in Mad Max's world... just think of the poor Greeks or Cypriots... who spent weeks scraping the walls of the bank but couldn't access the money "in there". But at least they were promised it was there... and once they had it... well, what was left, guaranteed by the state. This currently ranges up to €100,000 in the EU. The rest... well, sorry.

So, according to the study, the following levels exist, or will become a reality as the process moves forward. Once again, it's all there today... the emphasis will shift from one to the other... steadily, or very quickly.

Account money

Not much to say about this, it is, and will be, until it isn't. What you can do to reduce its vulnerability is to store it in multiple currencies and (yes) bank accounts in multiple countries. With regard to the latter, you need to consider that it should be a country with as stable an economy, political establishment, financial culture and infrastructure as possible. For indeed (this is another study), countries are ranked in terms of how resilient they are to change (relative to others), i.e. how slowly or quickly they fall apart. Not surprisingly, those with the conditions listed above will last much longer. In other words, we need to develop as intensively as possible here in the Carpathian Basin, because it makes a difference from where we will slide downwards...

Cash
Keep it until you have it. Either in a bank vault or, like your old mother, in a duffle bag. It's important - even if it's just banknotes - to have as many different currencies as possible that seem more stable. It is not yet possible to determine how long his career will last, but from the time that bill money becomes inaccessible to the time that only the suitcase is stolen... he will be the master!

Precious metal
Consider this a collective term. By this you can mean gold, silver, platinum and even precious stones. But this category can also include anything that, in some way, has value to someone. In this situation, of course, it is up to him or her to determine whether or not to give you a warm egg for your Fabergé. Because these will only be worthwhile as long as they are still worth something to someone somewhere. This period (as in the case of a war) can last from the complete devaluation of cash to quite a long time, by which I mean until we reach the lowest level... What else is important to remember about this category is that everything should be as small as possible: not only for the sake of transportability, but also for the sake of redeemability!

Raw materials and resources
Yes, this is the bottom of the barrel, and none of us really want to experience it that way. I will therefore not go into a detailed list. Because it includes everything you can eat, drink (although water is the real value, but you can pay for it by taking a shit while you're still human), heat yourself with, protect yourself with! And yes... what the oligarchs of the round world are already richly collecting: land... fertile, water-base, shade, defensible... in a good place!

When these phases will occur and how long they will last... no one will honestly tell you... simply because they cannot know. What you can do is start to plan and think strategically. You diversify, which means, if you can, you develop all four at the same time. And then you have nothing left to do about it, except what will be the hardest thing:

You have to watch carefully for the moment when the world switches from one to the other... because you have to do it before the others!

Balázs Stumpf-Biró - Talking about the collapse

So far, more than 500 scientists from 30 countries around the world have signed an open letter calling for an international and public dialogue with world decision-makers on the risk of a possible societal collapse.

A Hungarian translation of the open letter

We, scientists and academics from all over the world, call on decision-makers to engage clearly and openly in a debate about the risks of disruption and collapse of our societies. Five years after the Paris Climate Agreement targets were not met on time, we are facing the consequences.

While there is no question that significant efforts to reduce carbon emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere are essential, a range of scientists in different fields see systemic societal collapse over the course of a century as a realistic possibility. There are many different views on the place, time, scale, manner, duration and severity of such processes, but the way in which modern societies exploit both humans and nature to the limit is a common cause for serious concern.

Only and only if policy makers engage in an immediate and open dialogue on the real threat of the collapse of our societies, in a spirit of open ownership, will there be a real chance for communities and countries to start preparing, allowing us to delay its occurrence and reduce its severity, especially for the most vulnerable and for the natural disasters that await us.

Major world forces are already looking at collapse as a possible scenario that requires careful planning. Various surveys confirm that a growing proportion of people are anticipating some form of collapse of their societies. It is an unfortunate fact that many communities in the developing world have experienced or are experiencing a similar event. However, this issue rarely receives media, civil society or even political attention.

When it does happen, the media typically quotes people who are negative about the possibility of social breakdown and the meaningful dialogue that it can generate. Misleading, reality-hiding communication is aimed at making it impossible to inform, raise awareness and engage in real debate on the grounds of people's mental health and loss of motivation. At the same time, it essentially takes away the opportunity for people who want to act to find the motivation to take real action in anticipation of collapse to make a meaningful difference to mitigate climate, ecological and social problems.

Responsible thinkers with environmental and humanitarian concerns should not be discouraged from openly discussing the real risks of the breakdown and collapse of their societies. In essence, this allows the public discourse and the range of things worth discussing to be determined by people for whom none of the above, including this issue, has any serious relevance.

Quite a few of us believe that the transition to a new type of society is possible. It will undoubtedly require bold action, for climate, for living things and for human communities, including preparing for major disruptions to daily life. We are united in our insistence that every effort must be made to maintain a free dialogue on collapse so that its absence does not become an obstacle to the necessary transition.

We have all experienced the emotional strain of recognising the damage and dangers that threaten not only our way of life but our very existence. At the same time, we know the uplifting feeling of having a supportive community. It is time to engage in difficult but vital conversations with each other, reducing the emotional burden of our own guilt and doing our best to make the best of the challenging times ahead.

The original open letter, its references and list of signatories can be found here.