Pablo Servigne - Another End of the World is Possible

Here we face a huge challenge. Even to be interested in these subjects in their scientific or sociological forms brings with it some risk for our mental health. As for people who take this question head-on and make it the central direction of their lives, they are confronted (and will be for a long time) with very strong demands, both psychological and in their relations with others, as well as in their social and political commitments.

Those who have thought about how bad the situation might get ‘will not have an easy time coping with it, but they are not as apt to be overwhelmed by it as those who refuse to contemplate it’. 20Between the person who is ready for action and the one who remains in denial, there is a whole range of people with various problems: those who just live through catastrophic events at a physical level, those who feel that something is wrong but cannot find the words for it (weak cognitive dissonance), those who know but cannot act in the way that they would wish (acute cognitive dissonance), and those who know and act but are exhausted or discouraged.

During these years of discussions with the public, we arrived at the same conclusion as that described by Carolyn Baker, who has accompanied many people struggling with the prospect of collapse: once the penny drops, most people don’t want to see more and more evidence (even if it was important to begin with); they want above all to learn how to live with the collapse. They become ‘collapsonauts’.

So, preparing oneself for this future does not just involve material and political aspects. It also has psychological, spiritual, metaphysical and artistic dimensions. The questions which the disasters pose for us are difficult to come to terms with. If we want to continue thinking about the collapse, if we seek to act, to make sense of our lives, or just to get up in the morning, it is important not to go crazy. Crazy with isolation, crazy with sadness, crazy with rage, crazy from thinking too much about it, or crazy from continuing one’s little routines while pretending not to see.

Some people think of this psychological dimension as a matter for women, or as a luxury reserved for fragile city dwellers who have known nothing but comfort. It’s not like this at all. The psychological challenge is a primordial one, and it affects all social classes, all peoples, all cultures. What do we say to the Sudanese refugee who suffers from anxiety or post-traumatic stress in a camp in Libya or in Calais? That his suffering is negligible? What do we say to the family of a young hyper-sensitive Belgian student who commits suicide because he has seen too much? How do we help the engineer in charge of oil-well drilling, who is reluctant to return to work every morning after kissing his children? How can you keep your spirits up as an activist trying to block a development project, when you create new ways of living in the territory you are defending, and you get bulldozers and grenades in reply?

The purpose of collapsology is not to state certainties that will crush any possible future, nor to make precise predictions, nor to find ‘solutions’ that can ‘avoid a problem’, but to learn to live with the bad news and with the changes that they foretell, sudden or gradual, so that we can find the strength and the courage to do something that will transform us, or, as Edgar Morin would say, will bring about our metamorphosis.

The Canadian Paul Chefurka is one of the community of ‘collapseniks’ (popular bloggers who are trying to make sense of the coming collapse). 21He has a striking talent for explaining complex subjects, and has given us a very simple but illuminating scale for describing the growth of awareness. 22‘When it comes to our understanding of the current global crisis,’ he says, ‘each of us seems to fit somewhere in a continuum of awareness that can be roughly divided into five stages.’ 23

At Stage 1, people do not seem to see any fundamental problem. If there is a problem, it is that there is not enough of what we have already: growth, jobs, wages, development, etc.

At Stage 2, people become aware of one or another fundamental problem (with a choice between themes such as climate, overpopulation, peak oil, pollution, biodiversity, capitalism, nuclear power, inequalities, geopolitics, migrations, etc.). This ‘problem’ grabs all of their attention, and they sincerely believe that if it can be ‘solved’, everything will be as it was before.

At Stage 3, they have become aware of several major problems. People who have arrived at this stage spend their time prioritizing one campaign or cause over another and convincing others of specific priorities.

At Stage 4, the inevitable conclusion is reached, they become aware of the interdependence of all of the world’s ‘problems’. Everything becomes appallingly systemic, in other words it can’t be solved by a few individuals or by miraculous ‘solutions’, and it can’t be dealt with by politics as currently conceived. ‘People who arrive at this stage tend to withdraw into tight circles of like-minded individuals in order to trade insights and deepen their understanding of what’s going on. These circles are necessarily small, both because personal dialogue is essential for this depth of exploration, and because there just aren’t very many people who have arrived at this level of understanding.’ 24

Finally, at Stage 5, people change their point of view irrevocably. They no longer see a ‘problem’ that calls for ‘solutions’ but a predicament (a situation like death or an incurable disease, from which we cannot extricate ourselves, and which we cannot resolve). This requires them to find ways in which they can learn to live with it as well as possible. At this stage, they realize that the situation encompasses all aspects of life, and that it will profoundly transform them. They can begin to feel completely overwhelmed: they see that the people around them are not interested in what is happening, that the global system is not responding fast enough, and the earth as a whole is suffering intensely. Practically everything is brought into question. This is not only exhausting, but can cut people off from whatever stable and reassuring emotional environment they have. ‘For those who arrive at Stage 5, there is a real risk that depression will set in.’ 25

Chefurka says that there are two principal ways to react to this unpleasant situation, though they are in no way mutually exclusive. We can engage in an ‘outer’ path: politics, transition towns, the establishment of resilient communities, etc.; or in an ‘inner’, more spiritual path. Such an inner path does not necessarily involve adherence to a conventional religion. If anything, the contrary may be true. ‘Most of the people I’ve met who have chosen an inner path have as little use for traditional religion as their counterparts on the outer path have for traditional politics.’ 26

Within this transforming landscape, ‘collapsology’ involves analysing and synthesizing the many studies which have been conducted on this inextricable global situation in a transdisciplinary manner. This is a process of opening up the disciplines and breaking down the walls between them, and is summed up well by Spinoza’s advice regarding human behaviour: ‘Do not make fun, do not lament, do not hate, but understand.’ 27Collapsology could become a scientific discipline in its own right, but it would become truly official only if universities opened chairs in collapsology, if students and researchers in the field got funding, offered symposia and perhaps set up an Open Journal of Collapsology (complete with an editorial board) …

This collapsological approach, which is essentially rational, is necessary because it makes it possible to dispel the confusion surrounding the subject and, in particular, to remain credible with people who are aware of the subject but not yet convinced. But it is far from enough, because it does not tell us what to do. It does not tell us how to distinguish the good from the bad, how to cultivate powerful convictions, strong values, abundant imagination and a strong common desire. Scientific tools are relevant but they are not sufficient to encompass an issue as complex and multi-faceted as a collapse (which also includes the collapse of thought systems). In other words, by Stage 5 of the growth of awareness, collapsology is no longer sufficient .