Prospering Through Collapse
Reflect on humanity, all 8 billion of us, huddled together on a noble planet, governed by insane sociopaths. We often speak of ‘we’ as though humanity could be reduced to a single person, an average of all the people on Earth. Let’s call this omni-person the Global-We or the Global-Us and what consider what the climate and ecological collapse of the Anthropocene means for them.
It’s just going to get worse and worse over the coming decades. Maybe in a century or two it will bottom-out, and then get better. Maybe it will get worse and worse until there is no-one else left to even notice.
This is not some hypothetical. It is already here. Millions of people in rich and poor countries alike are victims of conditions way out of the normal. The worst affected are the poorer amongst us, either in the global south or the poorer within the wealthy countries. Then the middle class. Then the rich. Then the richer. And eventually the very rich indeed.
Try as you like, you can't eat a superyacht.
In my twenty-plus years of watching this Anthropocene crisis grow, I have yet to come across a plausible scenario where things get better anytime soon. It’s just a matter of physics and social dynamics.
The physics say it’s going to get hotter in the coming decades, no matter what we do. There is a multi-decadal lag between adding carbon emissions to the atmosphere and feeling the heat. Plus the ocean acts as a huge buffer, delaying the thermal response on land. And then all those pesky positive feedbacks.
In addition, societies are slow to adapt. It takes time to build out new infrastructure, to shift the Overton Window, or to raise the rebellion to overthrow the oligarchs. We have been growing this problem for over two centuries. It’s coming to a boil now. It's not going away anytime soon.
We’d be going into hell even if Global-We had started reducing emissions, as per the Paris Agreement.
Instead, every year since that insipid document was signed - driven by global growth based mainly on fossil fuels - we have increased our carbon emissions, not reduced them. Shallow or deep the Global-We are going into hell.
A child born today who lives to 85 years of age will observe degrading conditions for the Global-We their whole life, and then they will die.
Sad but true. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that that individual will suffer.
Indeed, over the coming decades some people will do better than others, and some people will do better and better, year in year out. This collapse is stochastic. It is ridden with randomness. Sure, on the average, things are going to get worse for Global-We, but some individuals will ride it out.
Obviously, the more wealth/resources you have, the better your chances of surviving, even prospering. Money, properties, shares, bullion, family, connections, land, and luck; having these in abundance gives you better odds of riding-out what’s coming.
Alternatively, if you have no money, no friends in high places, no land you are just a sitting duck.
A sitting duck waiting for the next flash-flood, flash-drought, wild-fire, land-slide, typhoon, cyclone, hurricane, storm-surge, heat-dome, heat-wave, cold-snap, snow-storm, pestilence, or famine to take you out. The threat is not just physical, it is psychological, too. Eco-grief is real. So, too is solastalgia.
So, thinking on these things, accepting the inevitability that things will get worse for Global-Us for generations, what can an individual do to improve the odds of Prospering Through Collapse?
Here is my personal list.
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1.????Learn. Understand the climate and ecological crisis. This is cognitive function. Keep up to date on the science. Be aware.
2.????Feel and Act. Feel the climate and ecological crisis and do everything you can to help make it better. The more people working to fix it, the shallower the hell we go through.
3.????Acquire. Get resources. Money, land, bullion, networks, friends. All these things. Particularly social capital. People who care for you. You are all in this together. This is a call for a great global wealth redistribution, to make it equitable. But don't make wealth by exacerbating the problem, you'll be reviled and maybe pitchforked. Create and share wealth making things better. People will love you for it.
4.????Prepare. Prepare for calamity. Stockpile, and be able to move. Extreme weather events are becoming so intense that sometimes you are going to have to leave home, not knowing whether home will be there when you return.
5.????Psychology. Maintain a positive disposition. Look for the good in the bigger picture. Pursue active hope – wish for the best as you do your best. Make things better.
6.????Philosophy. Maintain a Life Philosophy that is grounded in reality and framed to around the challenges of the Anthropocene. Accept that while we may have already committed the Global-We to extinction, it is not necessarily inevitable. There are many rabbits to be pulled out of the hat yet. We have yet to see any major government act on an climate emergency footing. Things will change rapidly when that happens. This collapse need not be fatal.
This latter point is the driver for LIFEWISE, a sustainable life philosophy written to help people deal with the challenges of the Anthropocene. Lifewise Philosophy is advanced by Vita Sapien organization: vitasapien.org
The juggernaut of industrial civilization and the stranglehold of the rich over the truth made this collapse was inevitable. There were once 60,000 nuclear weapons on this planet. We are lucky to have made it this far.
So let's get busy prospering through collapse, by doing everything we can to make it better. And maybe we can get to the other side with enough of the global ecosystem intact, and with a sufficiently high proportion of people with nature spirituality. In this way, we can create a new civilization, one that endures.
Humanity has another 230 million years ahead of it, if we can survive this century.
The odds aren’t stacked on your side, but just because the world is collapsing, doesn’t mean you have to.
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Guy Lane
Founder Vita Sapien
Author Lifewise Philosophy