Collapse: The “Comforting” and The Scary

NOTE: This is the latest in a series of posts about collapse: next time I’ll sum up some overall insights.

Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp provides an excellent context on collapse as we explore potential pathways to After Capitalism. Futurists will appreciate this work is driven by a theory of social change — Power Theory — “Human history is the story of a power struggle.” The author elaborates what he means by Power:  

• control of decision-making, including setting up a centralized government
• control of the resources that others depend on, e.g., food, energy, etc.
• control through threats and violence
• control of information, whether by a bureaucracy, a priesthood, or a big tech company.

The power accumulates in what he calls Goliaths, which are hierarchies in which some individuals dominate others … primarily through authority and violence. Historically, sovereign leaders emerge by taking power forcefully and negotiate with other elites to create a stable new order. We might think of states as similar to criminal gangs running protection rackets.

This wasn’t always the case. Human history was more egalitarian (before the Goliaths). For the vast majority of human history there were no chiefs, commanders, or aristocrats. Our Paleolithic ancestors were egalitarian. What changed and led to the rise of inequality in the Holocene was the use of lootable resources, which could be easily seen, stolen, and stored. Once you had resources that others depended on, you could leverage them for other forms of power. Pause here for a second, because this is the key point. Something like (my words) free-range humans were generally more egalitarian, until some figured out how to “enclose” and dominate. A Goliath is caged land with few exit options in which people can vote with their feet and easily leave an area.

What is collapse?

Historical collapses are neither uniform nor apocalyptic. Collapse is partly in the eye of the beholder. There are different types of collapse:

• Government: ancient Rome or modern-day Somalia – falls apart; a state failure
• Economy: e.g., Great Depression in the 1930s; an economic collapse
• Population: a large number of people die; a bust or population collapse
• Social: when all these power systems crumble together in a relatively rapid and enduring manner we call it a societal collapse

The social is the worst, and probably what most of us conjure up when we think of collapse. But interesting, the author suggests that collapse may be invisible until after it has occurred. We may be today living through a collapse that is for now slow and imperceptible. [I think many would agree this is true right now!]

Interestingly, at the University of Houston Foresight program we have long debated whether to change the archetype of Collapse to Dysfunction to more accurately describe what happens.

Why we might be comforted by this work

Let’s start with the [comforting?] thoughts that collapse and apocalyptic angst is nothing new and every age has its doomsayers and that collapse ain’t so bad. It is typically slower and more gradual than we think. Those in collapse are somewhat akin to the metaphor about frogs slowly being boiled and not noticing. I have seen this sentiment popping up in my recent client work. In so many domains now, the Baseline (or continuation) trajectory is toward Collapse. There’s almost a resignation seeping in such that, well, maybe we should just collapse and rebuild? [I’m personally uncomfortable with this idea, but let’s save it for next time.]

The author’s approach to telling the history of collapse is from the view of the masses (the 99%) rather than the elites (the 1%). This explains part of why collapse ain’t so bad. It’s bad if you’re the 1% who are benefiting from the existing order, but perhaps less bad if you’re part the 99% who are probably getting screwed anyway.

Historically, collapse is more a story of movement than apocalypse. Most people made the difficult decision to move out of harm’s way. Historical collapses involving massive declines in population reflected migration rather than deaths. The plot thickens here. Historically, we migrated out of harms way. But can we anymore? We’re tracking some off-the-grid movements and we explored Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway idea. Since this is the hopeful part, we’ll say it’s possible.

Why we might be scared by this work

Readers of this blog are likely to agree with the author’s point that we now all live in a single capitalist system, “pioneered by the British and then molded by the US.” Yep. The creation of this single super-Goliath may change the nature of collapse. Now that it’s all one big hyper-connected, hyper-concentrated, hyper-homogeneous, and hyper-accelerated system, it is also less resilient. It means sufficiently large shocks are more likely to occur and spread. He calls it the Death-Star Syndrome (one pilot and one well-placed shot blew the whole thing up).

More bad news. The climate change we are facing is an order of magnitude (ten-fold ) faster than the heating that triggered the world’s greatest mass extinction event, the Great Permian Dying, which wiped away 80–90% of life on earth 252 million years ago. We’ve had four mass extinction events in the last 541 million and climate change, namely global warming, played a key role in all of them. Gulp!

Despite his view that it is highly likely that the system will self-terminate, he does suggest the possibility of fundamental reform. The key is “democratizing political power.” This is exactly what we are seeing the After Capitalism images – a very strong direct democratic current.

Since this is the scary part, we’ll say that escaping collapse won’t be easy!  

The Best Strategy Is  …

… not building a bunker, although that appears to be a growing industry, but making friends!

The Importance of Your Theory of Change

It was interesting to think about what a Power viewpoint would suggest. In short, it isn’t pretty. But what if Power isn’t the most useful assumption? We are big on Development Theory, which suggests change in a consistent direction over time toward greater complexity and choice. If we believe Development Theory, we see Goliath’s not as inevitable, but as a stage of development. A few other places where this shows up:

• “This deeply ingrained desire for status is still central to the human experience.” We talk about values shifts in After Capitalism as a central driver of change.
• He also talks about our “growth fetish,” but we note the emergence of degrowth.
• Several times he mentions the “darker angels of our nature,” but here as well I’d suggest our values are evolving over time.  

I really liked this book. The author has done us a great service. It was challenging to write this review as there was so much in there. Stay tuned for more Collapse next time (and then we’ll leave it alone … for a while). – Andy Hines