Thank you for your thoughts and inspiration on a working Saturday night Karen, - together we matter! What an wonderful end of the blog with having Charlie back. I wish he got to meet his brother Bob in Lofoten <3
Thanks for sharing your article, Gean. I had no idea that "curiosity killed the cat" was linked to Schrödinger's thought experiment! I like your idea that "ignorance killed the eco" and will continue reading the translation!
I am sorry to hear about your family’s cat. A year ago, I wanted my Buki back more than anything. The idea that he took himself off to die, or that he had been stuck up a tree and my cat sitter was responsible for his unnecessary death by not contacting me nor looking for him properly for 3 days, was awful. I looked for over a week, sometimes collapsing in exhaustion during the day and setting an alarm to go out at night when my voice would travel further. Spraying my urine for a mile radius to help him find his way home helped add a tragicomic aspect to the search. I’d try anything, and my cat lover friend told me it might work. That was despite in an altered state of consciousness from exhaustion on the 1st day of my searching, i had a vision and feeling of him being dead and his life force leaving this world, taking a bit of mine with it. It felt like through our love on this plane we conjoin with the consciousness of that which we love, in ways which go, attach, or imprint somewhere when they or we die. However, when some people told me to keep believing he was alive, similar to simply pretending that, my reaction was stronger than I’d imagined. I felt that they didn’t appreciate this situation enough to live in reality. Their invitation was for me to pretend, not to redouble my search or come up with new ways to search. Their idea was to convince myself he was alive in order to magically manifest that reality. It was then that I realised my own repulsion at that worldview, where I regard it as a cowardly solipsism. Yes strong words, but that is how I saw it. I did more than most people I know to search for my cat because I had a compulsion to try as hard as possible. At ten days I gave up. But I felt on that first day it was in vain.
“They do not matter” is what you wrote about people who share the Deep Adaptation worldview and ethos. Have you talked to many of us? Or seen research on the social engagement of such people? Both experience and research show we don’t think we don't matter. We don’t know if we matter or not at a large scale. That seems rational. But we know we can matter in many smaller ways and we don’t need stories of scale or lasting impact to motivate us. You repeat, when you wrote “If we believe that collapse is inevitable, we are unlikely to engage simultaneously with the practical, political, and personal spheres of transformation to shift the very systems and cultures that are having devastating outcomes for people and the planet” Again, research and activist testimony proves otherwise. We are living radically differently, some as full time climate activists, precisely because we have a catastrophic outlook. And we don't equate collapse of modern society as the end of everything. Stella Mbau wrote about it well here, including some links to relevant psychological research.
Your statements are not uncommon. They might be projections revealing your own value system rather than those you write about. It might be you think you need a story of impact at scale to motivate you to engage to create change. If you look into why you need that then it might reveal to yourself that you don’t need that after all! Instead, you may actually do a lot of things because it feels right to do it. Keep looking for the cat, not because you think he is alive or have the capacity to pretend he is alive, but because looking for the cat is the right thing to do... for a time, and not at the expense of many other priorities in your life.
I said during the seminar that my view is any fractal contributions we each might make at deeper quantum levels are not merely the ones we intentionally choose as ‘good’ actions. Rather, our reproduction of the tropes of our culture (e.g. consequentialist ethics) and our participation in its institutions (e.g. debt, credit, savings) etc, are all creating the current abnormal, which is the daily advance of omnicide that we have learned to be normal within the era of Imperial Modernity. It is our culture that has separated things into economic and normal, rather than political and unjust, and thus directed the desire for change into things which are secondary, rather than fundamental. Thereby preserving the current system.
“If we believe that collapse is inevitable, we are unlikely to engage simultaneously with the practical, political, and personal spheres of transformation to shift the very systems and cultures that are having devastating outcomes for people and the planet.”
Completely disagree with this. I believe that collapse is inevitable (nothing is going to stop global warming – governments are massively subsidising fossil fuels and chasing perpetual GDP growth). But I’m also working to build the commons economy (https://stroudcommons.org/), because I see self-provisioning and provisioning together (commons) as the only realistic way to prepare for what’s coming. And at the same time, those things can absolutely shift systems and cultures – and might be the only things that can. It’s the combination of capitalism and liberal democracy that’s collapsing, so we need something else to provide for and govern ourselves. Believing that we can persuade governments and corporations to change their ways is naive, imo, and we can’t overthrow them.
I actually think that both Karen and Jem make excellent points, to the extent they don't focus on the weaknesses of each other's arguments. (This is true of many debates. "In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny." - John Stuart Mill. We often need both/all sides to approach a sense of "the whole".)
In my view, what's most salient here is that diversity and redundancy are resources for systemic resilience (not primarily foes of efficiency). When every function in a system has multiple entities capable of fulfilling it, and when every entity in a system is capable of fulfilling multiple important functions, we're well on our way to resilience, which is what is needed in times of fraught uncertainty.
Thus it seems that the Schrodinger's cat of civilizational collapse is best served by having some people motivated by a belief that collapse will happen in such and such a way soon-ish (in various ways in various time frames) AND by having others motivated by a belief that collapse probably won't happen (or be so bad) IF we do such-and-such (of various sorts on various ASAP time frames). THEN, whatever happens, caring people will have taken actions that will ameliorate some of the direst aspects of collapse AND furthered some of its most promising possibilities.
In terms of people NOT taking action and/or not finding meaning, that can happen with people who believe collapse is inevitable AND with people who believe it won't happen (at least on any time frame they have to worry about) AND with people who don't or can't take the time (or have needed information) to even think about it one way or another.
Thus, I thank the gods and goddesses that we have both the Karen O'Briens AND Jem Bendells of the world to helps us participate - creatively and with felt agency and community - in addressing the possibility of collapse. We can try to cover all our bases while we look for our big home run.
Well, Jem, I have your book and appreciate your having written it. I have not yet read it, but several close friends have and have spoken to me about it. I was a longtime colleague of Michael Dowd and have for over a year been - and still am - immersed in Wm Catton, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Vanessa Andreotti, and Nate Hagens. So I am somewhat familiar with the “substantial evidence that a process of society collapse has already begun”. In fact, my sense of our stage in that process is probably more dire than most collapse-aware people regarding the likelihood of human extinction.
That being said, I can see why your certainty makes my argument for the resilience of multiple scenarios, perspectives, and preparatory strategies seem naive. Because the point I was making means I DO think “this” is about differing perspectives on the future. “Substantial evidence” - as any real scientist knows - is not the same as certainty. For a couple of hundred years, there was substantial evidence that Newton's mechanistic physics covered all the observable dynamics of earthly existence, and beyond. But now we know that it is and was profoundly inadequate for addressing phenomena at the greatest and smallest scales and in many forms of systemic complexity.
I agree with you that the preponderance of trends and dynamics (physical, ecological, economic, social, and so on) seem to lead towards the total or near-total collapse of civilization as we know it. I do not agree that that statement entails a comprehensive certainty. I think that the concept “collapse of civilization” - at the very least - includes an extremely varied set of local, regional and global possibilities about which no certain predictions are possible. The generalization is useful, but only if we recognize that the map is not the territory. It is in light of that ecosystem of possibilities that I appreciate the different approaches people with different expectations of the future are taking that, together, (in my view) increase our collective capacity for resilience (which, of course, could be further enhanced by the kinds of initiatives you and I and others explicitly oriented to resilience, regenerativity, and/or increased capacity for collective wisdom, advocate).
I further believe that we face a nontrivial possibility that none of what we’re all doing will come close to heading off human extinction and possibly the elimination of most complex multicellular life forms on Earth. (And perhaps the oddest aspect of this is that the last person on earth would not know that they were the last person…)
Thank you for your thoughts and inspiration on a working Saturday night Karen, - together we matter! What an wonderful end of the blog with having Charlie back. I wish he got to meet his brother Bob in Lofoten <3
Thanks Berit! I miss Bob -- and Lofoten. You are not the only one working on a Saturday night!
Beautiful!
I have written a article on LinkedIn which I like to share, see link bellow.
Curiosity killed the...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/curiosity-killed-gean-van-erp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&utm_campaign=share_via
Thanks for sharing your article, Gean. I had no idea that "curiosity killed the cat" was linked to Schrödinger's thought experiment! I like your idea that "ignorance killed the eco" and will continue reading the translation!
I am sorry to hear about your family’s cat. A year ago, I wanted my Buki back more than anything. The idea that he took himself off to die, or that he had been stuck up a tree and my cat sitter was responsible for his unnecessary death by not contacting me nor looking for him properly for 3 days, was awful. I looked for over a week, sometimes collapsing in exhaustion during the day and setting an alarm to go out at night when my voice would travel further. Spraying my urine for a mile radius to help him find his way home helped add a tragicomic aspect to the search. I’d try anything, and my cat lover friend told me it might work. That was despite in an altered state of consciousness from exhaustion on the 1st day of my searching, i had a vision and feeling of him being dead and his life force leaving this world, taking a bit of mine with it. It felt like through our love on this plane we conjoin with the consciousness of that which we love, in ways which go, attach, or imprint somewhere when they or we die. However, when some people told me to keep believing he was alive, similar to simply pretending that, my reaction was stronger than I’d imagined. I felt that they didn’t appreciate this situation enough to live in reality. Their invitation was for me to pretend, not to redouble my search or come up with new ways to search. Their idea was to convince myself he was alive in order to magically manifest that reality. It was then that I realised my own repulsion at that worldview, where I regard it as a cowardly solipsism. Yes strong words, but that is how I saw it. I did more than most people I know to search for my cat because I had a compulsion to try as hard as possible. At ten days I gave up. But I felt on that first day it was in vain.
“They do not matter” is what you wrote about people who share the Deep Adaptation worldview and ethos. Have you talked to many of us? Or seen research on the social engagement of such people? Both experience and research show we don’t think we don't matter. We don’t know if we matter or not at a large scale. That seems rational. But we know we can matter in many smaller ways and we don’t need stories of scale or lasting impact to motivate us. You repeat, when you wrote “If we believe that collapse is inevitable, we are unlikely to engage simultaneously with the practical, political, and personal spheres of transformation to shift the very systems and cultures that are having devastating outcomes for people and the planet” Again, research and activist testimony proves otherwise. We are living radically differently, some as full time climate activists, precisely because we have a catastrophic outlook. And we don't equate collapse of modern society as the end of everything. Stella Mbau wrote about it well here, including some links to relevant psychological research.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-26/misplaced-positivity-on-climate-is-harmful-preparing-for-breakdown-could-help/
Your statements are not uncommon. They might be projections revealing your own value system rather than those you write about. It might be you think you need a story of impact at scale to motivate you to engage to create change. If you look into why you need that then it might reveal to yourself that you don’t need that after all! Instead, you may actually do a lot of things because it feels right to do it. Keep looking for the cat, not because you think he is alive or have the capacity to pretend he is alive, but because looking for the cat is the right thing to do... for a time, and not at the expense of many other priorities in your life.
I said during the seminar that my view is any fractal contributions we each might make at deeper quantum levels are not merely the ones we intentionally choose as ‘good’ actions. Rather, our reproduction of the tropes of our culture (e.g. consequentialist ethics) and our participation in its institutions (e.g. debt, credit, savings) etc, are all creating the current abnormal, which is the daily advance of omnicide that we have learned to be normal within the era of Imperial Modernity. It is our culture that has separated things into economic and normal, rather than political and unjust, and thus directed the desire for change into things which are secondary, rather than fundamental. Thereby preserving the current system.
“If we believe that collapse is inevitable, we are unlikely to engage simultaneously with the practical, political, and personal spheres of transformation to shift the very systems and cultures that are having devastating outcomes for people and the planet.”
Completely disagree with this. I believe that collapse is inevitable (nothing is going to stop global warming – governments are massively subsidising fossil fuels and chasing perpetual GDP growth). But I’m also working to build the commons economy (https://stroudcommons.org/), because I see self-provisioning and provisioning together (commons) as the only realistic way to prepare for what’s coming. And at the same time, those things can absolutely shift systems and cultures – and might be the only things that can. It’s the combination of capitalism and liberal democracy that’s collapsing, so we need something else to provide for and govern ourselves. Believing that we can persuade governments and corporations to change their ways is naive, imo, and we can’t overthrow them.
I actually think that both Karen and Jem make excellent points, to the extent they don't focus on the weaknesses of each other's arguments. (This is true of many debates. "In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny." - John Stuart Mill. We often need both/all sides to approach a sense of "the whole".)
In my view, what's most salient here is that diversity and redundancy are resources for systemic resilience (not primarily foes of efficiency). When every function in a system has multiple entities capable of fulfilling it, and when every entity in a system is capable of fulfilling multiple important functions, we're well on our way to resilience, which is what is needed in times of fraught uncertainty.
Thus it seems that the Schrodinger's cat of civilizational collapse is best served by having some people motivated by a belief that collapse will happen in such and such a way soon-ish (in various ways in various time frames) AND by having others motivated by a belief that collapse probably won't happen (or be so bad) IF we do such-and-such (of various sorts on various ASAP time frames). THEN, whatever happens, caring people will have taken actions that will ameliorate some of the direst aspects of collapse AND furthered some of its most promising possibilities.
In terms of people NOT taking action and/or not finding meaning, that can happen with people who believe collapse is inevitable AND with people who believe it won't happen (at least on any time frame they have to worry about) AND with people who don't or can't take the time (or have needed information) to even think about it one way or another.
Thus, I thank the gods and goddesses that we have both the Karen O'Briens AND Jem Bendells of the world to helps us participate - creatively and with felt agency and community - in addressing the possibility of collapse. We can try to cover all our bases while we look for our big home run.
If you read my book there is substantial evidence that a process of societal collapse has already begun. So this isn't about differing perspectives on the future. https://jembendell.com/2023/04/08/breaking-together-a-freedom-loving-response-to-collapse/
Well, Jem, I have your book and appreciate your having written it. I have not yet read it, but several close friends have and have spoken to me about it. I was a longtime colleague of Michael Dowd and have for over a year been - and still am - immersed in Wm Catton, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Vanessa Andreotti, and Nate Hagens. So I am somewhat familiar with the “substantial evidence that a process of society collapse has already begun”. In fact, my sense of our stage in that process is probably more dire than most collapse-aware people regarding the likelihood of human extinction.
That being said, I can see why your certainty makes my argument for the resilience of multiple scenarios, perspectives, and preparatory strategies seem naive. Because the point I was making means I DO think “this” is about differing perspectives on the future. “Substantial evidence” - as any real scientist knows - is not the same as certainty. For a couple of hundred years, there was substantial evidence that Newton's mechanistic physics covered all the observable dynamics of earthly existence, and beyond. But now we know that it is and was profoundly inadequate for addressing phenomena at the greatest and smallest scales and in many forms of systemic complexity.
I agree with you that the preponderance of trends and dynamics (physical, ecological, economic, social, and so on) seem to lead towards the total or near-total collapse of civilization as we know it. I do not agree that that statement entails a comprehensive certainty. I think that the concept “collapse of civilization” - at the very least - includes an extremely varied set of local, regional and global possibilities about which no certain predictions are possible. The generalization is useful, but only if we recognize that the map is not the territory. It is in light of that ecosystem of possibilities that I appreciate the different approaches people with different expectations of the future are taking that, together, (in my view) increase our collective capacity for resilience (which, of course, could be further enhanced by the kinds of initiatives you and I and others explicitly oriented to resilience, regenerativity, and/or increased capacity for collective wisdom, advocate).
I further believe that we face a nontrivial possibility that none of what we’re all doing will come close to heading off human extinction and possibly the elimination of most complex multicellular life forms on Earth. (And perhaps the oddest aspect of this is that the last person on earth would not know that they were the last person…)
Coheartedly
Tom