Speaker 1: Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
Speaker 2: I'm Adressage and I run the YouTube channel Andrewism. But
Speaker 2: this is not Andrewism. This is it could happen here
Speaker 2: today with Garrison yet again, and we are tackling really
Speaker 2: the genesis of this podcast everyone's favorite subject, collapse.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, you know, just a.
Speaker 2: Light topic for your morning or commute. I mean, if
Speaker 2: it's twenty twenty four and you don't know what collapse
Speaker 2: is allowed me to illuminate.
Speaker 3: Also, why are you listening to this podcast? It is
Speaker 3: ostensibly about collapse.
Speaker 2: Indeed, in essence, collapse is the significant loss of an
Speaker 2: established level of complexity towards a much simpler state. It
Speaker 2: can occur differently with him areas, orderly or chaotically, and
Speaker 2: be willing or unwilling. It does not necessarily imply human
Speaker 2: extinction or a singular global event, although the longer the
Speaker 2: duration the mod resembles a decline instead of a collapse.
Speaker 2: So collapse is really a lot of things happen all
Speaker 2: of once. People typically side. You know, you're talking about
Speaker 2: the climate, talking about resources and the decline of resources,
Speaker 2: talking about vast extinction, talking about societal unrest and break
Speaker 2: down and the inequality and truly pick your poison. Rather,
Speaker 2: we're talking about, you know, the f increase in global
Speaker 2: energy demands, to graddingly slow transition to renewables, the destabilization
Speaker 2: of our food and water systems. There's no one cause,
Speaker 2: but several compounding pressures, as Pablo Serlophine and Raphael Steven's
Speaker 2: aptly summarize. To maintain itself and avoid financial disorder and
Speaker 2: social unrest, I'll industr your cap with civilization is forced
Speaker 2: to accelerate, to become more complex and to consume ever
Speaker 2: more energy. Its dazline expansion has been nurtured by the
Speaker 2: exceptional availability though this will not last long of fossil
Speaker 2: fuels that are very energy efficient, coupled with their growth
Speaker 2: economy and highly unstable levels of debt. But the growth
Speaker 2: of our industrial civilization today, constrained by geophysical economic limits,
Speaker 2: has reached a phase of decreasing returns. Technology, which has
Speaker 2: long sail to push these limits back, is less and
Speaker 2: less able to ensure this acceleration, and locks in this
Speaker 2: unsustainable trajectory by preventing the development of new alternatives. Sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: At the same time, the sciences of complexity, discovering that
Speaker 2: beyond certain thresholds, complex systems, including economies and ecosystems, suddenly
Speaker 2: switched to new and unpredictable states of equilibrium and may
Speaker 2: even collapse. We are more and more aware that we
Speaker 2: have crossed certain boundaries that guarantee the stability of our
Speaker 2: living conditions as a society and as a species. The
Speaker 2: global climate system and many of the planet's ecosystems and
Speaker 2: major biochemical cycles have left the zone of stability that
Speaker 2: people familiar with herald in a time of sudden, large
Speaker 2: scale disruptions which internally stabilized industrial societies, the rest of
Speaker 2: humankind and even other species.
Speaker 3: Yes, I agree.
Speaker 2: In terms of the hows of collapse, you know, it
Speaker 2: might be slow, or it might be quick, It might
Speaker 2: be happening now already, or maybe just really kicking off
Speaker 2: seriously in their future. Today we'll really be talking about
Speaker 2: the sort of different ways of conceptualizing collapse, different frame
Speaker 2: devices we can use, and addressing the variety of responses
Speaker 2: that people have to collapse in a future episode I
Speaker 2: want to take a look at. I suppose a more
Speaker 2: this could be like the pessimistic episode in a sense
Speaker 2: and the next one will be a bit more. You know,
Speaker 2: how not to spiral into despair?
Speaker 3: So yeah, how do I have a good understanding of
Speaker 3: the reality of our crumbling systems, but not just be
Speaker 3: a doomer who stays inside and scrolls all the time.
Speaker 3: It is just depressed.
Speaker 2: Well, but thankfully you have more options than just being
Speaker 2: a duma. And we're going to get into all of
Speaker 2: those responses very soon. There are quite a few interesting ones.
Speaker 3: Alrighty.
Speaker 2: First of all, we need to talk about some different
Speaker 2: ways of conceptualizing collapse. For example, we have Dmitry Orlovs
Speaker 2: five stages, which is like a roller coaster of chaos,
Speaker 2: which each stage more intense than the last. First, we
Speaker 2: have stage one financial collapse. Everyone losing faith in business
Speaker 2: as usual, financial institutions going belly up, savings vanish, financial
Speaker 2: free fall, say goodbye to your savings, account, loans, pensions,
Speaker 2: basically what went down in Argentina. Back into the and
Speaker 2: one sounds familiar.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, Next.
Speaker 2: We have commercial collapse. Now it's not just about money,
Speaker 2: it's about losing faith in the market shall provide commodities
Speaker 2: and up being hoarded. Shopping centers are closing for business
Speaker 2: and we might even bring back barter, and then boom,
Speaker 2: we have the next stage, political collapse. Trust in the
Speaker 2: government will take care of you crumbles. Governments try to
Speaker 2: maintain oiler with curfews and martial law, but local corruption
Speaker 2: takes over services, the roads un maintained, the rubbish piling
Speaker 2: up all of actually makes a really bold claim here,
Speaker 2: and that is that the US might be on the
Speaker 2: track of these like stages. Like I know, I know,
Speaker 2: that sounds like a really like a radical claim to make.
Speaker 3: I feel like everyone listening to this has a decent
Speaker 3: understanding that, like, these things aren't just switches that are
Speaker 3: either on or off. This is like a sliding scale,
Speaker 3: and the US is a decent ways on this scale already.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's what the first five episodes of
Speaker 3: the second season of this show was really all about,
Speaker 3: specifically in terms of the climate and how it's not
Speaker 3: like everything all falls apart at once. It's that these
Speaker 3: systems that we've grown to rely on will slowly crumble
Speaker 3: away until they've become basically nothing, or they've just become
Speaker 3: like corporate puppets, or they've just become like like they're
Speaker 3: not actually real anymore in any kind of impactful way.
Speaker 3: And I mean we saw a little bit of this
Speaker 3: during COVID. How many systems that we relied on just
Speaker 3: weren't really around anymore, or weren't we're not actually reliable.
Speaker 3: And you see this whenever, like whenever there's a massive
Speaker 3: amount of wildfires that takes over a whole region and
Speaker 3: it displaces hundreds of thousands of people. Usually the response
Speaker 3: to that is not the government's going to come in
Speaker 3: and say everybody, it's a whole bunch of really poor
Speaker 3: anarchists set up a series of tents to give people
Speaker 3: food and to get people organized, to find places to sleep,
Speaker 3: and like that's the actual response to these crumbling institutions.
Speaker 3: It's not just like you know, fallout New Vegas, We're
Speaker 3: living in the apocalypse immediately. It's a lot more fuzzy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And in a sense, I kind of get
Speaker 2: people who wish it was a bit more straightforward. And sure,
Speaker 2: you know, because if it's like if it was like
Speaker 2: a major event, right like if it was an alien
Speaker 2: invasion that just happened, I think it's a lot easier
Speaker 2: for people to conceptionize something like that and respond to it.
Speaker 2: And I just mobilize, all your efforts and all your
Speaker 2: focus is on solved in this issue, because it's right
Speaker 2: in front of your face. We're talking about like geological
Speaker 2: time skills and multiple decades of you know, slowly break down,
Speaker 2: and you know, I have all these election cycles, and
Speaker 2: you have all these tipping points the scientists are telling
Speaker 2: you about, and then you know, someday eventually it's raining
Speaker 2: during the dry season and dry during the rainy season,
Speaker 2: and there's no snow in January, and all that jazz onward.
Speaker 2: The social collapse. This is where, according to all of
Speaker 2: faith in your people will take care of you, disintegrate,
Speaker 2: civil wars brew the population becomes a thing, clans take
Speaker 2: over like a post apocalyptic drama unfolded. And then and
Speaker 2: then the grand finale is cultural collapse, which is a
Speaker 2: loss of faith in the goodness of humanity. And as
Speaker 2: a result of that loss of faith, kindness, generosity, empathy
Speaker 2: all falls out the window. I completely disagree I think
Speaker 2: with loves solution here. I think that these types of
Speaker 2: crisis kind often bring out the best in people. Of course,
Speaker 2: we also do see the worst in people. But I
Speaker 2: don't think it'll ever reach a point where the bad
Speaker 2: of people's behavior so vastly outweighs the good to the
Speaker 2: point where people just completely lose faith in our capacity
Speaker 2: for mutual aid and that kind of thing. There is,
Speaker 2: of course, a bonus stage that all are throughs in,
Speaker 2: which is ecological collapse, where reboot in society in an
Speaker 2: exhausted environment. It's like good luck with that, you know,
Speaker 2: it's very difficult to do. It becomes a sort of
Speaker 2: a well that we end up trapped in. So that's
Speaker 2: one way of understanding collapse. And there's also C. A. S.
Speaker 2: Halling's four phase model of ecological change, and according to him,
Speaker 2: all systems go through cycles of four faces. A phase
Speaker 2: of growth where the system accumulates matter and energy, phase
Speaker 2: of conservation where the system becomes more and more interconnected,
Speaker 2: rigid and therefore vulnerable. A phase of collapse or loosening,
Speaker 2: and then a phase of rapid reorganization lead into another
Speaker 2: phase of growth in often very different conditions. This is
Speaker 2: more of a I suppose optimistic I mean I read
Speaker 2: it as kind of optimistic because it recognizes that, you know,
Speaker 2: something like things break down and that's it. Like even
Speaker 2: in death, there's like a life, and there's like a rebooth,
Speaker 2: and then there's of course the conditions that rebooth will
Speaker 2: be different. But it's not like things completely come to
Speaker 2: an end. It's just that the conditions that growth and
Speaker 2: healing might be kickstarted with would be very different from
Speaker 2: the ones that with the conditions that were there originally.
Speaker 2: Another author's views on the subject, a guy named John
Speaker 2: Michael Greer One said that quote. The difference between my
Speaker 2: view and that of many others in the collapse field,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of them assume that the first wave
Speaker 2: of crisis will be followed by total collapse, and I
Speaker 2: argue that it'll be followed by muddying through and partial recovery,
Speaker 2: then by renewed crisis and so on. Thus, I don't
Speaker 2: think it's actually that useful to have a single metric
Speaker 2: for what counters collapse, because collapse is a process, not
Speaker 2: an event. The collapse of industrial civilization has been underway
Speaker 2: for quite some time now and will still be a
Speaker 2: going concern for longer than any of us will be alive.
Speaker 2: And then there's David Krowitz's sort of choose your own
Speaker 2: adventure style collapse, where we have sort of three options
Speaker 2: that we could go down there's one of linear decline,
Speaker 2: there's one of oscillating decline, and there's one of systemic collapse.
Speaker 2: First step, we have linear decline, which is optimistic in
Speaker 2: a sense. It's assuming everything will respond proportionally to its causes. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, if oil consumption goes down, GDP follows suit.
Speaker 2: It's a very gradual and controlled decline, which gives us
Speaker 2: time to transition to renewable energy and to change our ways.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a dream scenario for some dee growth enthusiasts,
Speaker 2: So some of those who champion a transition to a
Speaker 2: greener future, we kind of want it to be a
Speaker 2: slow collapse, not a rapid collapse, because it gives us
Speaker 2: time to respond and adjust accordingly. Of course, the other
Speaker 2: side of that, the catch is that when it is
Speaker 2: that slow, it also sort of gives an excuse for inaction,
Speaker 2: an excuse for delay and putting off and procrastinates in
Speaker 2: on the changes that are necessary. A more realistic scenario,
Speaker 2: according to to Coross, oscillating decline, where you have economic
Speaker 2: activity bounce in between peaks of recovery and recession, but
Speaker 2: with an overall downward trend. It's almost like an oil
Speaker 2: priced roller coaster where the higher prices lead to recession,
Speaker 2: then a dipping prices sparks bit of growth. Both each
Speaker 2: cycle the system loses a bit more of its mojo
Speaker 2: for lack of a better word, The debts the pile up,
Speaker 2: the investment possibilities dwindle, and it's kind of like the
Speaker 2: catabolic collapse idea that John Michael Career came up with.
Speaker 2: It's not too fast and so innocence. It still gives
Speaker 2: society some room to adapt. And the last model that
Speaker 2: Chris has is the systemic collapse model, which is our
Speaker 2: civilization as a super complex system with all these intertwined
Speaker 2: feedback loops and so by crossing these invisible change over
Speaker 2: points and deal with small disruptions can end up leading
Speaker 2: to unpredictable changes. It's like a roller coaster without a
Speaker 2: clear track, nonlinear, pumulative and potentially brutal. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like no kind of safety approval was passed on this
Speaker 2: roller coast to whatsoever, a death trap and there's no
Speaker 2: telling where the cart will vy. Of course, really the
Speaker 2: how of collapse depends on who you ask, But with
Speaker 2: all these models, they do seem to be a couple
Speaker 2: of clear points best articulated again by Savine and Stevens. One,
Speaker 2: the physical growth of our societies will come to a
Speaker 2: halt in the near future. Two we have irreversibly damaged
Speaker 2: the entire system, at least on the geological scale of
Speaker 2: human beings. Three we are moving towards a very unstable,
Speaker 2: non linear future where major disruptions will be the norm.
Speaker 2: And four we're now potentially subject to global systemic collapses.
Speaker 2: Prospects look bleak to me. They look extra bleak when
Speaker 2: you consider that some people are still stuck on the
Speaker 2: is climate change real ha ha ha global warming and
Speaker 2: yet it's cold ha ha ha level of discourse. But
Speaker 2: for those who are made away of the issues, I've
Speaker 2: noticed people adopt a range of responses. I think one
Speaker 2: of the first responses that I see to collapse is slumber. Right.
Speaker 2: They catch a whiff of what's going on and decide
Speaker 2: to just turn over and go back to sleep. To
Speaker 2: purposefully embrace ignorance, disregard new information, and shun any understanding
Speaker 2: of what's going on. Perhaps you know their garden, their
Speaker 2: fragile sanity, which is understandable, but people sleep in or
Speaker 2: we need to face these issues is a disaster waiting
Speaker 2: to happen. These issues are not going anywhere, and we
Speaker 2: really need people to have the courage and the boldness
Speaker 2: to face them seat of turn and over and going
Speaker 2: back to sleep. Similarly to that response, we have to
Speaker 2: denial response, where people face with this reality, reject it
Speaker 2: consciously and construct their own or they search for information
Speaker 2: that comforts them rather than exposes them to the truth.
Speaker 2: They construct a media bubble that shields them, or a
Speaker 2: social circle that could protect them and reaffirm their core beliefs.
Speaker 2: Everyone is capable of denying reality, but it's become quite
Speaker 2: prevalent in the age of technology, where we can easily
Speaker 2: shut out any truths that make us uncomfortable. And this apathy,
Speaker 2: you know, like slumber and denial. People respond with apathy
Speaker 2: to protect themselves in some way. After all, if nothing
Speaker 2: really matters, there's no need to try, no need to think,
Speaker 2: no need to bother Jesus, just disconnect as humans. I
Speaker 2: think we have a really tough time responding to non
Speaker 2: immediate threats. It's been said, as I said earlier, that
Speaker 2: no climate change isn't happening too quick, it's happening too slowly.
Speaker 2: It's not ob us enough. Because it's not obviously enough,
Speaker 2: it's very easy for this next response to be made manifest,
Speaker 2: and it's preoccupation. Of course, this is more of a
Speaker 2: fault of the system. But people these days are all busy.
Speaker 2: You know that everyone can afford to invest and explore
Speaker 2: and understand the world's problems, even if the threat is
Speaker 2: so existential that their office busy work or ratail servitude
Speaker 2: would ultimately amount to nothing. But I'm not talking about
Speaker 2: those people when I talk about preoccupation. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: the people who respond to the issues of the world
Speaker 2: by purposefully distracting themselves with busy work, constructing a convenient
Speaker 2: excuse to not challenge the structures that they are under
Speaker 2: or maintained, like running away for the predicaments of collapse.
Speaker 2: But the predicaments of collapse hatches up to all of
Speaker 2: us sooner or later. And on the flip side of
Speaker 2: the people who busy themselves with busy work are the
Speaker 2: people who dive into mind less consumeris are which is
Speaker 2: coupled with apathy to some extent. If nothing matters, everything's
Speaker 2: falling apart, you might as well just indulge, consume, distract
Speaker 2: yourself with games, music, party and drugs and drinking. It's
Speaker 2: like slumber, except you're aware of the reality and just
Speaker 2: plug in your ears to just dance. But at least
Speaker 2: for those that plug their ears, they don't face what
Speaker 2: I've called overwhelment. Some people respond by trying to wrap
Speaker 2: their minds around the depth and complexity of collapse to
Speaker 2: the point of obsession and just kind of end up
Speaker 2: losing their minds altogether. I don't think there is any
Speaker 2: human mind that can completely consume and comprehend every minute
Speaker 2: problem we face. I think that's why we are social species,
Speaker 2: because we can kind of distribute that understanding of all
Speaker 2: the various problems so that no one person has to
Speaker 2: handle all of it. We really are going to need
Speaker 2: to come together to understand collapse, because as individuals, to
Speaker 2: deal with something to a complex, abstract, far flung and frightening,
Speaker 2: it's it's frankly, subjecting yourself to that is almost a
Speaker 2: form of self torture or self flagellation. And what we
Speaker 2: need is the opposite pity of people building each other
Speaker 2: up and healing our communities and coming together so we
Speaker 2: could solve this crisis. Of course, there is such a
Speaker 2: thing as being too caught up in that sort of
Speaker 2: hope and a trap that a lot of people fall
Speaker 2: naturally into because in a sense we are biologically predisposed
Speaker 2: towards optimism. We tend to hold on to hope in
Speaker 2: some future outcome they'll just work out, you know. And
Speaker 2: it's sort of a blind hope because it can't adjust
Speaker 2: to the ever shift in reality. It strips us of
Speaker 2: our ability to see clearly and to take realistic and
Speaker 2: necessary action. We give up our agency and leave things
Speaker 2: in the hands of the leaders and the experts. We
Speaker 2: stay passive. We waste time, precious time that we spent
Speaker 2: on real harm reduction, just going with the flow. We
Speaker 2: prevent the necessary conversations with the blind hope when we
Speaker 2: fixate so much and whether we can fix it or
Speaker 2: how we can fix it, without considering what we need
Speaker 2: to do. If we can't fix it, you know what happens?
Speaker 2: Then blind hope manifests in a few different forms. But
Speaker 2: I think whatever format comes into it ultimately and ultimately
Speaker 2: and inevitably leads to disappointment. Waiting forever for a future
Speaker 2: that won't come, that exists solely in one's mind, irrespective
Speaker 2: of reality. It's quite frankly a form of denial. It
Speaker 2: takes a bit of a journey to move towards a
Speaker 2: greater level of emotional maturity, to handle the tough conversations
Speaker 2: and let go of the false hopes, like the idea
Speaker 2: that will somehow reverse all the damage our plant has
Speaker 2: been dealt with scot free. But once we have done that,
Speaker 2: and once we have strengthened or resolve and strengthen our
Speaker 2: ability to process and to engage with the reality of
Speaker 2: what's happening, we can take action with knowledge that no,
Speaker 2: our leader is not going to do anything substantially enough,
Speaker 2: and no, this moves far beyond reform. It really is
Speaker 2: a hard pill to swallow, but if you can take it,
Speaker 2: you'll be better off to resist. We really don't need
Speaker 2: blind hope and resistance. I think hope is important. I'm
Speaker 2: distinguishing it from hope blind hope. However, distraction and sort
Speaker 2: of connected to the blind hope conversation are the people
Speaker 2: who respond to this crisis with the obsession with individual change,
Speaker 2: people who believe with a few tweaks here and there
Speaker 2: that we can continue or perpetual growth. We just have
Speaker 2: to switch to veganism or recycle or cockpool every once
Speaker 2: in a while, and that that individual level action on
Speaker 2: a large enough scale would resolve the crisis. They place
Speaker 2: a lot of stock and blame in individuals entirely, and
Speaker 2: they don't engage with the wider structures of society. A
Speaker 2: lot of liberals, of course, fall into this camp. And
Speaker 2: speaking of liberals, we see a very pernicious trend of
Speaker 2: progress worship as another response to collapse. The author Dennis
Speaker 2: Meadows actually points out a curious trend over the past
Speaker 2: four decades. There's a constant shift in justifying why we
Speaker 2: shouldn't change our behavior. Back in the seventies, critics were saying,
Speaker 2: no limits. You know, anyone who thinks they're limits, they
Speaker 2: just don't get it. The eighties they're saying, oh, actually
Speaker 2: there are limits, but they are very far away. We
Speaker 2: have nothing to worry about, nothing to lose sleep over.
Speaker 2: And then inta nineties, the limits are no longer at are,
Speaker 2: no longer is distant. And then the supporters of growth
Speaker 2: they chiming with, oh, well, you know the limits are close,
Speaker 2: but no worries. You know, the markets and technology will
Speaker 2: swoop in and fix everything. And then you reach into
Speaker 2: two thousands and it becomes clear that the tech and
Speaker 2: the markets might not cut it, and then the narrative
Speaker 2: spins again. Regardless of whether not the markets or tech
Speaker 2: and cut it, we still need to push for growth
Speaker 2: because that's the goal and ticket to the resources we
Speaker 2: need to tackle our of problems. It's basically a game
Speaker 2: of justification hopscotch. It's almost a cult of progress that
Speaker 2: any and all growth is good. That don't matter the
Speaker 2: consequences of on our finite earth. We can just expand
Speaker 2: and expand eternally. A lot of the responses I get
Speaker 2: to my discussions of the growth or post growth or whatever,
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, but you can't do that because then
Speaker 2: the GP you wouldn't grow and wouldn't elevate people's sounds
Speaker 2: of living. And you know, it's not fair that global.
Speaker 3: Wait Andrew, are you a Malthusian?
Speaker 2: Nothing of the sort, Nothing of the sort. But I
Speaker 2: think that we should not be fallen into this shop
Speaker 2: of being like, oh, well, you know, it's not fair
Speaker 2: that these rich countries they get to reach that level
Speaker 2: of development, and then we have to like and then
Speaker 2: what we're going to step in and stop other countries
Speaker 2: from doing so when it's not that I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: speaking from a not rich country. What I'm saying is
Speaker 2: that the what I say to the equal is that
Speaker 2: the path of development of these rich countries took it's
Speaker 2: not sustainable. It is literally dooming us all. Yes, the
Speaker 2: entire population cannot strive for the level of consumption that
Speaker 2: Americans strive for. Do I think the development days take place, absolutely,
Speaker 2: but not on the trajectory, not following in the footsteps
Speaker 2: of these rich countries, this Global North and it's legacy
Speaker 2: of decimating the world. You know, places like India, place
Speaker 2: like the Caribbean, places in Africa. You know, we do
Speaker 2: need to, you know, improve housing, and improve access to water,
Speaker 2: and improve access to education, all these different things. But
Speaker 2: chasing after this sort of careless economic growth narrative and
Speaker 2: path is just going to accelerate all of our destruction.
Speaker 2: I agree with the need for reparations from global not
Speaker 2: to Global South, that will allow us to reach the
Speaker 2: level of a they could, to reach the quality of
Speaker 2: life that I think every human should have access to.
Speaker 2: But I don't think that that is the same thing
Speaker 2: as saying that, oh, well, you know, every country should
Speaker 2: have their own equivalent of Britain and the US's Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 2: and who cares that that ship has sailed, that window
Speaker 2: of opportunity has passed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think going back to like your series
Speaker 3: of episodes on cults, when you're talking about the cult
Speaker 3: of progress, I think that is that gets thrown on
Speaker 3: as like a very trendy term, but I think it
Speaker 3: has a lot of truth in it for this specific reason.
Speaker 3: In order to maintain the type of progress that is
Speaker 3: necessary to sustain this at this current point, what seems
Speaker 3: to be a very unsustainable method of interacting with the planet.
Speaker 3: You have to rely on growth as this thing that
Speaker 3: you can't actually like predicts, You can't actually predict a
Speaker 3: real endpoint for it. You have to only assume and
Speaker 3: only hope that it will get there. It's this that's
Speaker 3: why there's this real sense of accelerationism throughout these whole industries,
Speaker 3: because people know that if we continue just doing this way,
Speaker 3: the planet will not be functional, at least for us
Speaker 3: in like a hundred years, probably you know in much
Speaker 3: less time as well. But the reason why they're all
Speaker 3: continuing is that they have the people have it have
Speaker 3: this idea in their heads that if we just keep
Speaker 3: accelerating if we keep going, we have to go fast,
Speaker 3: sturn fast and faster, because we'll find something along the
Speaker 3: way that will magically fix the problem. Well, if the
Speaker 3: only way to fix the problem is to continue accelerating,
Speaker 3: and we'll find this thing that doesn't currently exist, but
Speaker 3: we'll find like this like supernatural device or discovery that
Speaker 3: allows us to kind of fix the little problem we've
Speaker 3: made for ourselves. And it is a very like religious
Speaker 3: belief that if if we just keep going, we'll like
Speaker 3: get some like deep this, some like some like deep
Speaker 3: special insight.
Speaker 2: We've reached the point where people are literally looking to
Speaker 2: the havens like almost in a supernatural sense, yeah, to
Speaker 2: find a sution. They're like, oh, well, we'll just be
Speaker 2: able to keep on going because asteroid mining Da da
Speaker 2: da da will just go on settle in other planets
Speaker 2: and I'll continue our expansion endlessly and we could just
Speaker 2: keep on going.
Speaker 3: Or you also see this with people like developing AI.
Speaker 3: They're like, if we if we get into AI smart enough,
Speaker 3: it'll be able to tell us how to fix our problem.
Speaker 3: And it is a deeply spiritual drive. It is a
Speaker 3: very cultish drive, like we have to keep going even
Speaker 3: though we are currently dooming ourselves by continuing. We have
Speaker 3: to continue because that's the only way that we'll get
Speaker 3: this out of this problem. It's like we can, we can,
Speaker 3: we can only dig deeper, Like we've gone so far
Speaker 3: into the center of the earth that it's faster. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's faster to dig out the other way than actually
Speaker 3: try to turn around and fill the hole again. It
Speaker 3: is a very cultish spiritual drive to like continue this,
Speaker 3: to continue and like explicitly like accelerate development because we've
Speaker 3: realized we've done something that's uh from our current point
Speaker 3: of view, almost irreparable. But there's this there is this
Speaker 3: belief that if we owe that the only way to
Speaker 3: fix it is is if we keep going, then will
Speaker 3: somehow stumble across the magical the magical thing that will
Speaker 3: fix our problem.
Speaker 2: I want to talk specifically about the sort of I mean,
Speaker 2: I know there are other people in the world who
Speaker 2: wars how there's response, in the Global South, who will
Speaker 2: owls how there's response. But I see a lot of
Speaker 2: Americans responding to my like degreth advocacy or whatever, saying, well,
Speaker 2: what about the global cell you know, I mean, never mind,
Speaker 2: I live in the Global South. What about the global cell.
Speaker 2: And what really gets me about it is just how
Speaker 2: it's almost like a way of comfort in themselves.
Speaker 3: Sure, it's it's using the struggles of marginalize people to
Speaker 3: not interrogate your own role in the continuing destruction and
Speaker 3: like systemic oppression that produces this great economic and u
Speaker 3: and like a difference in quality of life.
Speaker 2: Because it's like you have to then you'll have to
Speaker 2: confront the fact that maybe your lifestyle and the privilege,
Speaker 2: some of the lifestyle privileges you enjoyed really should not
Speaker 2: be enjoyed by anyone ever, Like maybe that level of
Speaker 2: the thing was never sustainable in the first place, and
Speaker 2: we could have done with lesson And I know it's
Speaker 2: really I really hate having this kind of conversation on
Speaker 2: the internet because I think it's very difficult to get
Speaker 2: into the level of nuance it's necessary because then you know,
Speaker 2: people will say, oh, well, I'm from a week in
Speaker 2: class background from this and that I've also faced level deprivation.
Speaker 2: I get all that, but then there are other things
Speaker 2: where I'm like, you know, can we live in a
Speaker 2: world where everyone has access to Amazon one day ship
Speaker 2: in two dayship in? You know, can we live in
Speaker 2: a world where everyone owns a car, even if it's
Speaker 2: an electric car. I think there are certain standards of
Speaker 2: I guess lifestyle or milestones of lifestyle that we've come
Speaker 2: to accept that I think in retrospect we will look
Speaker 2: back and say, Wow, that was an operation of human
Speaker 2: history that we were even maintaining that sort of infrastructure,
Speaker 2: even maintaining that level of consumption. You know, I'm sure
Speaker 2: a couple of generations online people will look back and
Speaker 2: be like, wow, to tell me nearly every household had
Speaker 2: a car, and that everybody was just on the roads
Speaker 2: driving all the time, and we built our cities or
Speaker 2: infrastructure around vehicles. When we knew very early on, when
Speaker 2: the oil companies knew very early on that eventually we
Speaker 2: would run out, we just didn't care. I'm kind of
Speaker 2: all over the place with this, But you were going
Speaker 2: to say something.
Speaker 3: Well, I was also going to mention like in these
Speaker 3: in these sorts of discussions, it also can be often
Speaker 3: overlooked that just because you live in the United States
Speaker 3: or in any other kind of big place, that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean like it's that's not The United States isn't one place.
Speaker 3: There is a difference between living in like a five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars apartment in a downtown like city center, versus
Speaker 3: living on the outskirts of town in like of house
Speaker 3: that's falling apart right or living on the street, or
Speaker 3: or living in the middle of Utah versus living on
Speaker 3: the coast like there's or living in uh like a
Speaker 3: montane like there's. There is such a large difference even
Speaker 3: for people in the States, for like many many like
Speaker 3: not everyone is able to live in this like very
Speaker 3: are arguably very very unsustainable, very like hyper hyper modernity.
Speaker 3: Way there is there is, there's millions of people that
Speaker 3: of course like, oh no, I'm not saying that against
Speaker 3: your point. I'm saying, like this is this is also
Speaker 3: part of the problem, like we have we have tricked
Speaker 3: ourselves into thinking that if you if you live in
Speaker 3: the United States, that must mean you are like you
Speaker 3: who are one of the elite few. But there's millions
Speaker 3: of people who are living in like the like some
Speaker 3: of the most some of the harshest conditions in the world,
Speaker 3: even in the richest country in the world, like it is, anti.
Speaker 2: Growth is not coming to take from one's meager lifestyle.
Speaker 2: If one lives in those circumstances. You know, de growth
Speaker 2: is really coming after those on the other end of
Speaker 2: that spectrum of life style.
Speaker 3: No, if if any, it would be, and it would
Speaker 3: be a greater equalizer between people living in countries.
Speaker 2: Elevation of your standard of living.
Speaker 3: Yes, as as as well as looking at you know,
Speaker 3: quote unquote like the Global South or quote unquote like
Speaker 3: third world countries, like there is there's this idea of
Speaker 3: like I think we've had someone on the show to
Speaker 3: talk about this before, Joey, like the fourth World, Like
Speaker 3: you're you are living in third world conditions but in
Speaker 3: a first world country. And how all of these, all
Speaker 3: of these types of these all of these types of
Speaker 3: systemic inequality and differences and uh like cost of living,
Speaker 3: living conditions, they all they all come bined together in
Speaker 3: really Gaussian fuzzy ways, even if you live in the
Speaker 3: United States, Canada, England, like Germany, wherever, and and and
Speaker 3: it produces this extremely extremely bizarre mishmash of of.
Speaker 2: Circumstances.
Speaker 3: Of circumstances. Yeah, you can you can walk by someone
Speaker 3: who's driving like a five hundred thousand dollars car. Meanwhile
Speaker 3: you are literally being forced to live on the street
Speaker 3: like that is that is and that is such a
Speaker 3: bizarre dichotomy.
Speaker 2: The few times I've been to the US, seeing that
Speaker 2: dichot to me like in real is something else. I mean,
Speaker 2: of course there's an incoming equality, and there's vastest parties
Speaker 2: in wealth and turned out as well. You know, there
Speaker 2: are people who you know live on the streets and
Speaker 2: they are people who you know go to yacht parties
Speaker 2: every weekend. What I want people to recognize is the
Speaker 2: way that these elites get you to advocate against your
Speaker 2: own interests is through that sort of and connect you
Speaker 2: to their culture progress and get you invested in their
Speaker 2: culture progress. Hook you in is through that sort of
Speaker 2: temporarily embarrassed to millionaire mantra. They hook you in by saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're coming for our stuff. Eventually you'll get to my
Speaker 2: level too, and then you wouldn't want people to take
Speaker 2: your stuff away either, you know, like my tech development
Speaker 2: is going to rise or bring all of us up,
Speaker 2: you know, and you shouldn't let these people stop you
Speaker 2: rather than no, well, obviously these RuSHA guys are going
Speaker 2: to get brought down a peg. But by bringing them
Speaker 2: down a peg, everybody will have a better quality of life.
Speaker 2: But instead of recognizing that they deceive people with this
Speaker 2: techno opim they bring people into this trap of capitalist
Speaker 2: realism that either you live in the deprivation of the
Speaker 2: worst of the worst of people's livelihoods and the capitalism,
Speaker 2: or you live in the excess are the best of
Speaker 2: the best of people's lives and the capitalism, And there's
Speaker 2: nothing beyond those two options. And so obviously the de
Speaker 2: growth people want you to be living in the former option,
Speaker 2: and you should oppose them because of that. Another response
Speaker 2: I see is that there are a lot of people
Speaker 2: who are just completely like have complete faith in our leaders,
Speaker 2: who believe that, you know, once we get just the
Speaker 2: right people in office, things will work out. The truth is,
Speaker 2: of course, the system corrupts even the best of intentions.
Speaker 2: Politicians are a class and to themselves, and their actions
Speaker 2: reflect ultimately their own interests and the interests of their backers.
Speaker 2: Nation states governments, rulers. Is their job. It's in their
Speaker 2: job description to maintain structures that ultimately harm humanity, and
Speaker 2: there's only so much they can do to affect the
Speaker 2: status cho placing our salvation in their hands. It's an
Speaker 2: exercise in futility. Invest in your future and the confines
Speaker 2: of the electoralism is a waste of time, but it
Speaker 2: also demonstrates how effectively mass media and schooling has broken
Speaker 2: down and limited our imagination. I like to call that
Speaker 2: status realism, the idea that there's no alternative to this
Speaker 2: hierarchy of rulers and rule. The people just need to
Speaker 2: submit to the wills and whims of others, rather than
Speaker 2: organizing for themselves in their communities. There's, of course, the
Speaker 2: response of apocalypse worship, rather classic response around those who
Speaker 2: end up obsessing over collapse and honestly that the worshipers
Speaker 2: of the apocalypse are also hould to a form of
Speaker 2: blind hope. You know, the accelerat doomsday preppers, cultists, extreme survivalists,
Speaker 2: zombie video game enthusiasts, believers in the end times. They
Speaker 2: all seem to have a whole so they seem to
Speaker 2: have a real excitement for collapse, or they fixate really
Speaker 2: heavily on the ideal version of the end of the world,
Speaker 2: like they can't wait for the world to end. They
Speaker 2: embrace the sort of we're all on our own mantra,
Speaker 2: barricade themselves, bunker down, stockpile weapons, and essentials. They get
Speaker 2: en up for a violent future because they anticipate that
Speaker 2: others will react to the situation similarly to how they
Speaker 2: intend to react. So they've taken like a page from
Speaker 2: ad Marxs and like, yeah, I'm going to be immortant Joe,
Speaker 2: so I don't end up a thrall of immortant Joe.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, if it's not obvious, the people who respond
Speaker 2: in this way freak me out, you know, those who
Speaker 2: look at what's going on and instead of resisting or
Speaker 2: trying to change the circumstances, they just accept it as
Speaker 2: things going according to schedule of prophecy, or they try
Speaker 2: to make it worse. I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 2: Leave the World.
Speaker 3: Behind, Oh my god, yes, horrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure you remember that one character and that
Speaker 2: prepper and his whole response to the crisis before him
Speaker 2: completing not a selfishness.
Speaker 3: Which is a betrayal to his character inspiration in the
Speaker 3: movie Tremors, which showed the correct way to be a prepper,
Speaker 3: which is to actually help the people in your community.
Speaker 2: I actually haven't seen that movie. It's my list.
Speaker 3: It's well, it is a It is an old movie
Speaker 3: about a worm that takes over a small town. It's
Speaker 3: pretty silly, but it's Stephen King movie. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: No, it sounds like something Stephen King would write.
Speaker 3: It's it's not really a horror. It's more of like
Speaker 3: a comedy thriller. Like it's a comedy. Okay, it's not
Speaker 3: a comedy, but it is a nately funny situation. Also
Speaker 3: because it's like filmed in the eighties or nineties, like
Speaker 3: it it just the way it's age just makes it
Speaker 3: more funny. But it is also a good movie. And
Speaker 3: and uh yeah, after after this, I mean it's it's
Speaker 3: kind of like what if like an earthquake or a
Speaker 3: tornado hits this small town, except this is more like adversarial.
Speaker 3: It's like this like worm is like like like causing
Speaker 3: like the town's buildings to like cave in because it's
Speaker 3: like digging underground. And and we we see we see
Speaker 3: this fantastic, fantastic prepper character is able to help everybody
Speaker 3: out because he is he is prepared for such a scenario.
Speaker 2: How kind of film, Yes, unlike unlike that throuchebag and
Speaker 2: and leave the World Behind. Yes, we'll talk about that
Speaker 2: movie after Yeah, I mean the last response I really
Speaker 2: wanted to cover was despair, pessimism, seeing the worst, expecting
Speaker 2: the worst, living and utter defeat weighing down actual efforts
Speaker 2: with pessimism jumping into my comment section to be more
Speaker 2: in our faith. I mean, according to those in despair,
Speaker 2: there's nothing that we can do to affect our future,
Speaker 2: and in my eyes, those on this dumor pillarre just
Speaker 2: as misguided as those who are hyped up with blind opium.
Speaker 2: I think it's okay to admit that we don't know
Speaker 2: what's going to happen. You know, I don't claim to
Speaker 2: your profit. I don't think anybody should. The IPCC reports,
Speaker 2: for example, are a consensus of scientists and their anistani
Speaker 2: of situation. Some scientists are going to be more in
Speaker 2: their reporting, others are a bit more catastrophes. But either way,
Speaker 2: I really don't think we need to get into the
Speaker 2: weeds of just how bad it is or exactly how
Speaker 2: it's going to happen. With matters that things need to
Speaker 2: change some way somehow. I think it's important to try
Speaker 2: and understand as much as the situation as you could,
Speaker 2: not to the point of obsession, to take note of
Speaker 2: how we respond to the issue to look at the
Speaker 2: various responses I cover it and see if you fit
Speaker 2: into any of those camps, and to recognize that the
Speaker 2: worst case scenario is far from inevitable. My advice is
Speaker 2: really to prepare for the worst in whatever way you can,
Speaker 2: and put hope and build for the best. Build community,
Speaker 2: build connections, build your skills, build your strengths, and push
Speaker 2: in any way you can, and whatever's fare, you find
Speaker 2: yourself for meaningful change. Because say it with me now,
Speaker 2: it could happen here, It certainly could. That's it for me.
Speaker 2: I'm on YouTube andwism, I'm on peatureon dot com, slash
Speaker 2: sent du and that's it. Well, paw what to older people? Peace?
Speaker 1: It could happen here? As a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for it could Happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening.