Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. The
Speaker 1: world is facing a series of large scale crises ward
Speaker 1: declining democracy, climate catastrophe. So is it all a sign
Speaker 1: that our civilization is reaching its limits and that our
Speaker 1: economic and political systems are nearing collapse? That's the question
Speaker 1: Australian author Sarah Wilson has been interrogating for the last
Speaker 1: three years. Today, writer Sarah Wilson on what happens when
Speaker 1: the systems that hold us together begin to fray all
Speaker 1: at once and what the future looks like after civilizational collapse.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, June one. Sarah, your new book is all
Speaker 1: about civilizational collapse, which you say we're in the midst
Speaker 1: of right now. We'll get to that part in a moment,
Speaker 1: but first, could you just tell us what you're talking
Speaker 1: about when you talk about civilizational collapse.
Speaker 2: It's a hard thing to enter into because when we
Speaker 2: talk collapse, we're not necessarily talking the collapse of humanity,
Speaker 2: although that is definitely a possibility according to most modeling
Speaker 2: that's out there at the moment. What we're really talking
Speaker 2: about is the collapse of the system.
Speaker 3: And this is sort of a bit of a misnomer.
Speaker 2: I think we think the collapse is going to be
Speaker 2: like the movies, you know, people wandering around with a
Speaker 2: shopping trolley, you know, through apocalyptic scenes. That is not
Speaker 2: how it goes. It's a very gradual at first, and
Speaker 2: then a sped up sort of undoing of all the
Speaker 2: complexifying that has been happening for the last two hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy years or so. We tend to explain things
Speaker 2: in a very linear format, where we grab an issue
Speaker 2: and work with it as a system in isolation. But
Speaker 2: to understand actually what's happening to the world today, we
Speaker 2: need to actually think in terms of complex systems theory,
Speaker 2: which is about understanding that we are in a complex
Speaker 2: system of complex systems.
Speaker 3: That is essentially what our civilization is.
Speaker 2: Every complex civilization throughout history has collapsed, and it has
Speaker 2: collapsed because of its complexity. So if you think of
Speaker 2: the Roman Empire, the Mayan Empire, the Jin dynasty, they've
Speaker 2: all collapsed because they've just got too many armies, too
Speaker 2: many cities. It's required too many taxes, too many farmers
Speaker 2: that are required to pay the taxes. And then what
Speaker 2: happens is some small volcano, small climate catastrophe, perhaps a
Speaker 2: small army entering the system, it can't actually deal with
Speaker 2: something like, for instance, a flood or a volcano eruption
Speaker 2: or something like that. And that is essentially what brings
Speaker 2: a civilization to its knees, and every complex civilization has
Speaker 2: gone this way. We are a complex civilization, and we
Speaker 2: are at a point where all the systems that make
Speaker 2: up our civilization, the post industrial civilization, are under all
Speaker 2: kinds of stress and they're interacting with each other. So
Speaker 2: trade route system, the AI system, the nuclear threat system,
Speaker 2: the food security system. They're all wobbling, they're all feeding
Speaker 2: into each other. And the extra element tool of this
Speaker 2: ruby is that, unlike the Roman Empire, our civilization is global,
Speaker 2: and so what is happening in South America, what's happening in.
Speaker 3: The UK is going to affect all of this.
Speaker 1: Can we talk a little bit more about how that
Speaker 1: might look, because you reference collapsology and collapsologists in your work,
Speaker 1: So tell me a bit about I guess the field
Speaker 1: here and what you can kind of glean about how
Speaker 1: how this might.
Speaker 3: Go well in some way.
Speaker 2: Is the best way to put it is to say
Speaker 2: collapse looks like what we're in and instead of kind
Speaker 2: of getting better, which I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: have this sense that we're going to return to some
Speaker 2: sort of sense of normal, some sense of order once again.
Speaker 2: That ain't going to happen, according to most of the
Speaker 2: modeling done in think tanks and institutes around the world. Instead,
Speaker 2: it's going to get a little bit worse and then
Speaker 2: a little bit worse.
Speaker 3: So this but worse.
Speaker 2: When I say this, I'm talking about fragmentation, the collapse
Speaker 2: of democratic institutions. Seven percent of the world, only seven
Speaker 2: percent of the world today lives in a liberal democracy,
Speaker 2: and that percentage is likely to decrease over coming years.
Speaker 2: It's going to look like increased AI threat, a nuclear threat.
Speaker 2: It's going to look like trade root disruptions. It's going
Speaker 2: to look like energy disruptions and Internet disruptions. And you
Speaker 2: mentioned the word collapsology, which is interesting because that's a
Speaker 2: French word, a frenchified word. It's called collapsology or the
Speaker 2: frondemont over in France and in Europe, which is where
Speaker 2: I'm based. Now, this is a term that's actually discussed
Speaker 2: on more than television programs. It's not an alien notion.
Speaker 2: The EU issued an edict to all leaders last year
Speaker 2: to inform four hundred and fifty million citizens of the
Speaker 2: EU to prepare a survival kit in the event of
Speaker 2: some collapsing existential risk, so nuclear war or otherwise. It
Speaker 2: is actually quite I think a fresh new phenomenon here
Speaker 2: in Australia. We have been I think cacooned from a
Speaker 2: lot of what is happening around the world. Australia until
Speaker 2: recently experienced more than three decades of uninterrupted economic growth
Speaker 2: apart from a small blitz during COVID, and we don't
Speaker 2: have the language for it, we don't have the leadership
Speaker 2: to discuss these kinds of things.
Speaker 3: And so do you think that's changing.
Speaker 1: Do you think that kind of sense of being protected
Speaker 1: from needing to talk about an issue like this, do
Speaker 1: you censor shift?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: I certainly sense it amongst everyday people. So I wrote
Speaker 2: this book, my most recent book, Guy at the Stars,
Speaker 2: as a serialization on Substack. It's an international writers platform.
Speaker 2: I had a lot of Australian subscribers, and they get it.
Speaker 2: I've come to Australia and I've done all kinds of
Speaker 2: events and you know, been speaking with everyday Australians and
Speaker 2: they understand these things, and they're feeling the same way
Speaker 2: I have, and that is that there's not enough discussion
Speaker 2: out there in the public. People are having these discussions
Speaker 2: at barbecues and over the dinner table, but there's no leadership,
Speaker 2: there's no sort of forum for this kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And I've found this before.
Speaker 2: You know, my books have tended to tackle subjects that
Speaker 2: the Australian I guess landscape hasn't wanted to embrace. You know,
Speaker 2: it was sugar, it was anxiety, it was the climate crisis.
Speaker 2: But what I found always is everyday Australians are well
Speaker 2: ahead of the curve compared with the rest of the
Speaker 2: world that the leadership ain't.
Speaker 3: There is quite behind.
Speaker 1: Coming up what comes after collapse? Sarah, I suppose part
Speaker 1: of the reason for not having conversations about this is
Speaker 1: just the difficulty of emotionally grappling with these ideas. So
Speaker 1: can you tell me a bit about how you have
Speaker 1: approached that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the neo liberal framework has
Speaker 2: tended to make individuals feel responsible for what's going on.
Speaker 2: So when we take that on, it's very hard to
Speaker 2: face the enormity of everything, you know, the everything that's happening.
Speaker 2: Overwhelm is a predominant response to all of this, and
Speaker 2: it's completely understandable, not aided by the fact that the
Speaker 2: bad faith actors in all of this, leaders who are
Speaker 2: coming in and filling out this space of uncertainty and disruption,
Speaker 2: they are bringing chaos to the situation. You know, Steve
Speaker 2: Bannon in the US who advises the Trump administration, openly advises.
Speaker 3: The Trump team to flood the zone with shit.
Speaker 2: You know, the Romans used bread and circuses to distract
Speaker 2: people from what was happening. The leadership that is actually
Speaker 2: filling this vacuum this space at the moment is doing
Speaker 2: the same thing, and so it's adding to the overwhelmed.
Speaker 3: So our ability to cope with all of this is extremely,
Speaker 3: extremely stretched.
Speaker 1: So what is your advice for coping? You know?
Speaker 2: A common question I get asked in all of this
Speaker 2: Rube is well, should we be prepping? Should we be
Speaker 2: you know, fleeing to the hills and homesteading. My answer
Speaker 2: to that is absolutely not, because it doesn't work. It's
Speaker 2: never worked. Less than five percent of these kinds of
Speaker 2: so called intentional communities ever last longer than five years,
Speaker 2: and that is because we as a species only ever
Speaker 2: get through tough, dark, limital times like the one we've
Speaker 2: find ourselves in now. As a collective, we actually need
Speaker 2: to be in a community of at least one hundred
Speaker 2: to one hundred and fifty people to survive difficult times.
Speaker 2: So that's something that we need to bear in mind
Speaker 2: at all times, and I think Australims are particularly well
Speaker 2: equipped for that. So rather than getting overwhelmed, what we
Speaker 2: need to be doing is accepting that it is bigger
Speaker 2: than what we can cope with. It is happening, and
Speaker 2: one of the best ways to actually hold humanity.
Speaker 3: Through this is to actually be together.
Speaker 2: The only framework that is going to be able to
Speaker 2: work for what's coming at us is community, and countless
Speaker 2: studies are showing that that is the only way forward.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what do you think the world then looks
Speaker 1: like after civilizational collapse?
Speaker 3: What is salvaged? What is salvageable?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think anyone knows, and uncertainty is the
Speaker 2: main feature of what we're confronting. That is actually where
Speaker 2: most people's fear lies is that we don't know. However,
Speaker 2: having said that, there is considerable modeling being done in
Speaker 2: various realms so population collapse is one space where we
Speaker 2: get a bit of a picture of how things are
Speaker 2: going to go. So according to multiple think tanks and
Speaker 2: institutes have been tracking this for many years, we will
Speaker 2: reach peak population of about nine to ten billion sometime
Speaker 2: between twenty forty and twenty sixty. So the global replacement
Speaker 2: figure at the moment, it's two point one babies per woman.
Speaker 2: That's what's required to maintain the population it's about to debunder.
Speaker 2: Three quarters of the world is well below that. Here
Speaker 2: in Australia we're at one point six. In parts of
Speaker 2: Asia it's zero point seven point eight, and we will decline.
Speaker 2: But down the other side of that hockey stick graph,
Speaker 2: that's a bell curve if you like, eventually reaching a
Speaker 2: bottomed out population of about one to four billion within
Speaker 2: a couple of hundred years.
Speaker 3: That is quite stunning stuff.
Speaker 2: Now, climate activists out there might be thinking, well, this
Speaker 2: is great news, because less people, less resources what to fix?
Speaker 2: How beautiful the impactable of that will come too late
Speaker 2: to be able to sort of assist.
Speaker 3: It's in that climate catastrophe situation.
Speaker 2: But the opportunity we have before us right now is
Speaker 2: to determine whether we tether ourselves to a system that
Speaker 2: is collapsing. It's collapsing without there being any kind of outpath,
Speaker 2: if you know what I mean. And so we can
Speaker 2: start to imagine where we're going to head next. And
Speaker 2: that's sort of why I wrote this book, because experts
Speaker 2: around the world are sort of trying to issue this
Speaker 2: Clarine call, you know, please wake up. This is when
Speaker 2: we need to actually be making significant changes to the
Speaker 2: way we interact with the world. It's potentially a blique picture,
Speaker 2: but potentially an era of stunning possible. Humans have gone
Speaker 2: through this before, Ruby, multiple times, and out of dark times,
Speaker 2: out of dark limital times like the one we find
Speaker 2: ourselves in great poetry, great art movements, great philosophy has emerged,
Speaker 2: you know, between the two World wars, existentialism emerged, socialism
Speaker 2: and communism emerged.
Speaker 3: As ideas that, you know.
Speaker 2: We're expressions of human flourishing and this I believe as
Speaker 2: an era we're about to enter.
Speaker 1: Sarah, thank you so much for talking with me.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Ruby.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, eleven Australians detained by Israeli forces
Speaker 1: while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza have submitted evidence
Speaker 1: to the International Criminal Court alleging abuse, torture and other
Speaker 1: violations during their detention. The Global Smood Flotilla called for
Speaker 1: independent international investigations, arms inbargoes, and reparations for alleged victims,
Speaker 1: and Buckingham Palace has once again been dragged into the
Speaker 1: scandal surrounding Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. The BBC's reporting that emails
Speaker 1: handed to the Palace six years ago appear to show
Speaker 1: that Andrew was sharing confidential government information while he was
Speaker 1: a trade envoy. The emails were given to the most
Speaker 1: senior officer of the Royal household in twenty twenty. Buckingham
Speaker 1: Palace says it can't provide comment because of the ongoing
Speaker 1: police investigation. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.