Civilisational Collapse: Your Questions Answered

Thank you all for your enthusiastic response to the Q&A invitation (on substack). I was expecting a mixed bag of random queries, but a very clear theme of topics emerged, which in a way made my response easier. I present my answers to you below along with any relevant links. Where questions have been grouped and ordered, this was done to put some cohesiveness in the document and make it more digestible (or not!). Happy to do any in-depth follow-ups with paid subscribers.

If you were to give a single piece of advice to someone regarding our predicaments, what might it be? How do you stay emotionally and spiritually sustained in the midst of all you see and know?

The word “advice” implies that there is some sort of “action” that can be followed to “make things better”, when we are facing something inevitable where the impact of a single individual is negligible and futile. I will assume that the question refers more to “how do I live within this reality” as opposed to “how can I change the reality”, but before I delve into that, I want to linger a bit more on the word “advice”, because we have stumbled upon something important here that can mean different things to different people. As much as it is always good to have good advice and an action plan in place, collapse is something both collective and personal, and my advice depends on how far down you are on the road to collapse acceptance. Depending on how far down the road you are, you have different psychological needs at each stage of grief until you become at peace with the predicament. Personally, I am collapse aware, but will never be fully collapse accepting I think, and this is something I only recently realised. Collapse awareness is a confusing, overwhelming bundle of dozens of feelings happening at the same time. My best advice is to follow the journey, be open to what you are feeling, start a conversation with your inner world. Surprisingly you will discover incredibly positive impacts directly on your life from this journey. Collapse awareness brings us into contact with our vulnerability and our humanity, just when we are about to lose everything. How ironic is that. Think of the Palestinians. They have experienced the collapse of society, economy, biology, humanity. Yet they continue.

Humanity’s obsession with “advice” and “action” is, ironically, the reason why humanity is in a collapse predicament. As a species we are predisposed to “actions” and “solutions” rather than simply leaving things alone (e.g. leave nature alone) to resolve themselves. Humanity would be so much better off if, rather than obsessing about “what to do”, it thought about what to never repeat. Humans spend too much time seeking action, and too little time analysing and learning from the destructive results of their previous actions. We are too action-focused, and this is why degrowth does not compute to most people, as it advocates radical inaction. A reader yesterday commented that “we are all tyrants“, and this phrase has been ringing in my ear ever since. We quite dysfunctionally assume that only an action can “fix” things, when many things, especially in the ecosystem, can fix themselves if only we left them alone. We tend to top up on our actions to “correct” mistakes, which makes things worse most of the time as it opens up new problems. This terrible obsession with action is behind the technophilia I have previously described, and the trap of economic and population growth. A quote comes to mind from my book Frankenpolitics: This civilisation still thinks it can engineer, build and grow its way out of its problems, even though the problem all along has been civilisation itself. Also a similar quote from my essay Biology Lessons in Degrowth: Capitalism is a system of self-destruction simply because it only understands doing, building and achieving. It is fundamentally incapable of undoing, fixing, stopping or reducing.

So, having gotten all that out of the way, I do have advice for individuals, but it depends on who you are. First of all, accept the things you cannot change. When you do that, you actually don’t need any advice. But if, like me, you find meaning in activism, regardless of the outcome, then some type of “action” is a very healthy response, and it doesn’t mean you cannot be “collapse aware” at the same time. In fact, in my recent article on the birth of revolutions, I argue that revolutions most times take place on an ideological basis, irrespective of the probability of success or not. People fight for what is right regardless of whether “we are fucked” or not. I would put myself firmly within this category, because I practice my activism for myself and for my sanity, not because I believe it will bring results. You might find my conversation with the group Activism Is Medicine useful.

But you don’t have to be like me. People are wired very differently, which is why this species has been a hit-and-miss neuroscience experiment of evolution using randomly-wired neural permutations of our brain. One potential piece of advice is to become part of a community that is collapse aware, without necessarily partaking in activism. As a borderline autistic introvert, I know this is not for me, as I’m more of a lone player, but other people really need a community. So again, it really depends on who you are, and what will bring you inner balance. Somehow, we all need to make peace with the situation: the grief, guilt, horror, topped by additional grief for simply being part of this civilisation and a species that is annihilating itself and everything else.

While we are here, suicide for me is neither an option or solution, especially since the world won’t become a better place if I remove myself from it. I think people should have the right to end their life, but only if they first gave themselves the chance to explore their grief, and have exhausted all other options. Empaths who consider the world’s problems their own fault are a high risk group, and they need to be aware of this. Besides, I don’t want doomers killing themselves! There are so many other people on this planet I’d rather see jump off cliffs. Doomers and Cassandras would be the very last on this list.

With regards to feelings of depression, guilt for being human and other negative feelings which are part of the collapse psycho-emotional complex, again I will respond based on my personal life and choices, which may or may not work for you/others: many people who read my writing assume I’m borderline suicidal, but this is completely false. Although I have a history of medicated depression and panic disorder, today I have a good separation of my time between staring at the abyss and smelling the roses. Staring at the abyss keeps me grounded to reality and the world I live in, while smelling the roses literally keeps me alive. I need to have both of these things. Again, this is me, other people are wired differently. I think that for most people denial is the only solution, and if that works for you, so be it. This is the reason why humans are an evolutionary dead end from a cognitive perspective, something I have written entire chapters on over the years, and which has been a huge part of my work. Writing about these things has been my way of coming to peace with human nature and the demons that we all carry inside of us.

So for the “smelling the roses” bit, this is literally what I do. Ever since I quit my toxic corporate career, I have dedicated myself to nurturing the 150 or so species in the shared garden I take care of. This grounds me to purpose, and to the beauty of the living ecosystem that remains. These plants are my children. They don’t know what is coming, and I never plan to tell them. I am creating a Noah’s Arc for plants, insects and small reptiles, ironically, around the fortress of a 2,500 year-old human settlement. So it’s already kind of a post-apocalyptic rewilding project. I also take care of my physical health to the extent I can motivate myself to, because mental and physical health go hand in hand. I go to the gym, I also live a few hundred metres from a beach where I go for very long walks and swim well into late autumn and sometimes winter. I have met many people there, they are my extended family. Many of my ideas come to me while I’m swimming, straddling that bizarre, bittersweet boundary between the abyss, and the roses.

Loving life, both your own life and that of other living beings, is maybe the most radical act of resistance against the daily reminder that this civilisation is determined to self-destruct, and take with it whatever remains of this tortured world.

You’ve written that we’re living through systems too vast for any one person to fix, and that consciousness/awareness may be our only real leverage. What does that awareness look like in practice? When everything feels too large to change, where should an ordinary person place their hands?

Some of this was answered in the previous question, where a mix of “acceptance and critique of the inevitable” along with “living and thriving in the present” is what I have personally chosen. For those who are stuck in both of these areas, a radical shift in consciousness is the way forward, but only if they can override their neural wiring. In my book Beyond The Petri Dish I talk about consciousness transformation, the type that allows one to rise above our petri dish world and witness overshoot, accept it, forgive it, even embrace it, as it is an integral part of who we are as a species. For this to happen, one must be able to see The Vastness, and when they do, they reach what I call The Infinity State. I call it that because it is a state of awareness where the ego disappears and one sees themselves as a part of the whole, not as a part within the whole.

The way that this looks in practice for me is to become an individual with a deeply ecological awareness. Only through an ecological education can one re-value and respect all life on the planet including their own, and gain the ability to be a systems thinker who recognises that all 10 million species are essentially one organism. We are all just molecules, converting into one another. But I’m afraid that this shift in consciousness is something I envision only for people who are already “almost there”. Throughout their history humans have had no respect for other biological life, let alone other human life. Genocide and supremacy run in our DNA.

However, if ecological education was compulsory, we could see a tremendous shift. We will never find out though, because we are faced with the most unfortunate conundrum: in order to have a shift in consciousness you need to have an ecological education, but in order to make ecological education compulsory for all, you need to first have undergone a radical shift in consciousness. Some humans have already reached the Infinity State. Most haven’t, and never will. I believe this because, perhaps as a scientist, I worship evidence. I prefer to judge human potential for change based on historical facts and evidence rather than on “hope porn”, which is so generously dished out on Substack and elsewhere. Humanity is an incorrigible pupil, however many rounds of detention it is subjected to.

Do you have any suggestions? What I can’t seem to find anywhere is practical actions anyone could take to delay what seem to be various systemic collapses.

Really? You can’t find any actions anywhere? I’m surprised. There are hundreds of books out there with literally thousands of actions, and you have probably seen these. I don’t talk about these actions because others have done it much better than me. They range from various aspects of degrowth, reuse, rewilding, contraception, regenerative approaches and even technologies. The list is literally endless, and the vast majority of them are very good actions.

The problem is not the existence of suggested actions, and this is why I don’t deal with that problem. The real problem is the fact that these actions are not being implemented. This is why my mission as a writer has not been to provide solutions, because others have done that already and have done a very good job at it. I investigate why these solutions are not being implemented, something very few dare to address. All of my books investigate the nature of self-destruction and address the cognitive handicaps and biases that plague humanity, and which prevent us from addressing overshoot. I collectively refer to these issues as The Civilisational Lie, because it isn’t just two or three of them. It is an entire complex bundle of dogmas, beliefs and behaviours that form the basis of our civilisation, but which boil down to two big ones (for me): supremacy, and growth. If we don’t address these two lies, we are doomed for sure. I’m afraid there is no gadget, solar panel or renewable “solution” that can address these, which is again, why most other substackers and popular authors do not dare venture into this area. It’s not a band-aid you pick up at a 7-11 and then resell it for profit. It cannot be productised, marketed, installed and plugged into a socket. It is not a technology. It is a shift in consciousness.

So, start asking yourself why these actions are not being implemented. Once you do this, you may find yourself accepting the self-destructiveness of human nature and the inevitability of civilisational collapse, and the fact that as an individual your contribution won’t do anything (you said “practical actions anyONE can take to delay”, there is no such thing as a meaningful action of one person in a sea of ignorants).

Perhaps what I suggest you do is to implement actions in your personal life, without caring about the result. This is what I do, in full knowledge that we are collapsing. This will help you find some inner balance. But you need to accept collapse. You can also go full speed into denial or accuse me of being a death-worshipping nihilist that wants to see the world end, some people feel much better if they shoot the messenger and turn them into an extremist or villain: they find someone to blame for the truth, rather than face the truth. One way or another though, it won’t change the actual truth.

A quote comes to mind from my book The Unhappiness Machine: “Never before in its history has humanity built a civilisation that had at its disposal so many different technologies to monitor, measure and predict its own collapse – yet has been so unwilling to do anything about it”

Do you feel we have any chance of righting the wrongs we have done to the planet, or will we make the earth uninhabitable for humans, or all creatures? Personally, I don’t see a way forward for us unless society collapses and whoever is left starts from scratch. Of course, assuming anyone is left. I always look forward to your new posts.

A bit late for “righting the wrongs” as you cannot bring back species from extinction, the most heinous crime possible. We are still driving 150 species to oblivion daily. In terms of a “way forward”, you are too optimistic. Collapse will not change anything in our attitudes. As long as humans remain genetically identical to who they are today, I’m afraid they will collapse again, and again, after this coming collapse, and probably risk complete extinction. This is not speculation, but simply looking at historical evidence: over thousands of years we have collapsed pretty much constantly – anthropologists have documented the collapse of more than 82 (!!!) civilisations. We are now at the stage of a systemic, global collapse because we are one, united global economic machine that has used up everything on the planet. Our species is wired for growth, and we are designed to go through boom-and-bust cycles. What comes after the next bust will be a significantly smaller civilisation, possibly exterminated by an AI civilisation. There will be another, smaller boom, then collapse again. With each collapse many human, non-human, and even AI “species” risk disappearance.

Is it inevitable that, given enough time and contingencies, natural selection in any life system on any planet will produce a species with no natural enemies that will destroy all multicellular life? Do you think that once a species acquires a certain capacity for technical intelligence that ecological overshoot/catastrophe is locked-in (i.e. Ernst Mayr’s “lethal mutation” view of intelligence)?

The short answer is yes. We may have only one planet to use as evidence here, but the process of evolution is underpinned by one principle that undoubtedly repeats across the universe: evolution only selects for new versions of species that survive and compete better than the previous versions. As long as this is the case, the eventual rise of intelligence is almost unavoidable, as intelligence is the biggest survival skill a species can have. Most importantly, it is a skill which allows a species to overcome predators and therefore overcome the checks and balances of an ecosystem. For clarification, humans are not the only intelligent species on the planet. They are the only one who used their intelligence to overcome population barriers. The reason we only have only one “intelligent” species on Earth is not because intelligence is rare. Intelligence evolved multiple times on Earth, but homo sapiens quickly exterminated other intelligent hominid species. Among the first organisms an intelligent species exterminates are fellow intelligent organisms, because they represent the biggest threat. This should be a warning for the future. By this logic, the first thing on the planet AI will exterminate will be humans.

And yes, intelligence leads to overshoot, but not necessarily “destroying all multicellular life”. I remember saying in an interview years ago that “intelligence is generally not good for planets”, and I stick by it. The evolution of intelligence is the beginning of the end of ecosystems. What comes after? What does a planet without rich ecosystems look like? We already know. The diversity of our ecosystems pales in comparison to what it was, and any remaining life forms we see give us the false impression that we are looking at “an ecosystem“. We are actually looking at the remnants of one.

is it possible for humans to evolve so that the MPP no longer applies, or would that go against evolutionary biology and physics? For the readers:

MPP = maximum power principle, where evolutionary traits ensure any species extracts the maximum amount of resources from an environment in the shortest amount of time.

This question is related to a previous one, and the short answer is no. Evolution selects for skills that maximize resource exhaustion, and some of the hypotheses I developed in this area can be found in my article A Brief History Of The Human Brain: How We Got It All Wrong. All of my books explore various angles of the cognitive dimensions that form the root of overshoot. Once these dimensions become apparent, the self-destruction of civilisations does not look paradoxical or incomprehensible anymore: everything is going according to plan. It was all meant to collapse from the very start. Humanity is a Ponzi scheme, and has always been one. Being subject to the law of the Maximum Power Principle is not our fault, but equally, we haven’t made significant conscious effort to overcome our nature.

Do you ever find yourself apologizing to Mother Nature for the damage our species has caused? I’m sure our simian cousins want to distance themselves from us and I can’t say I blame them.

Every day. I wrote recently about the intergenerational guilt I feel about the crimes my ansestors committed. The burden is so immense that I don’t think I will ever come to terms with it, simply because its not possible. It is important for humans to forgive themselves for their ecological crimes and move on, but this requires recognizing these crimes in the first place. We have not recognized them. You cannot grieve what you cannot love.

Could humans become useful to the Earth by individually and communally growing moss around their apartment walls and homes on a global scale?

This is like trying to feed a whole army with one can of beans. It would be less than a drop in the ocean of overshoot. A bit of moss would not counteract the huge volumes of carbon being emitted and forests being cut. Also moss requires extremely humid conditions and predominantly cool temperatures. This limits the range of this to the countries where moss grows naturally…think Ireland, UK and some very humid tropical areas. So, it is not globally scalable. If you try to use irrigation then you are using precious water, and you are using energy, which burns carbon. Humans can only be useful to Earth if there is less of human civilisation: less population brings less consumption, less energy use, less destruction. Only degrowth can produce guaranteed results, but it should have been planned decades ago, it is too late now for an orderly degrowth. It will be very, very disorderly.

Is there any hope?

Hope is by definition not based on facts but on faith, so yes, there is plenty of hope available if you want to hope. Unfortunately, the more hopeful humans get the more complacent they become. Hope is used as a narcotic, as a monetisation tool for renewable necrocapitalism, and as a distraction from uncomfortable truths, rather than as a motivator. You would think hope motivates, but it achieves exactly the opposite: denial, complacency, and the trivialisation of existential issues that are, in fact, game-ending.