Every 5 months or so I send out a summary of some of what I’ve been doing. Last weekend I sent the latest. It follows below. If you would like to get the next into your inbox in about 5 months, sign up here.
How is your experience of social media these days? There is quite a lot of stress-inducing news and modes of interaction online. In my case, being kicked off Twitter a month ago with no explanation has had an upside – and not just less screen time! It has given people the opportunity to express their views on dialogue and censorship. Friends and colleagues have sent me messages from all kinds of people who are saying my account should be restored, as well as senior-ranking academics who are actually celebrating me being censored. That’s quite revealing, isn’t it?
Psychologists know how our fear of feeling painful emotions can lead to us suppressing them by directing our anger at people whose existence reminds us of the reason for our painful emotions (they call that response ‘experiential avoidance’). If you disagree or deny that environmental disruption is already so severe and self-reinforcing that the breakdown of industrial consumer life is unavoidable, then you may feel more uncomfortable as reality hits home. The world is witnessing major disruptions, ocean temperatures are freakish, and the month of July was globally 1.5C degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, indicating that many self-reinforcing feedbacks are likely [see endnotes]. As I describe in my book’s chapter on the food system, a ‘multi-breadbasket failure’ with huge implications for grain markets has been calculated as near certain within 3 years of such a global temperature rise. In response, many senior ranking climatologists are doubling down on criticising those of us who warned 5 years ago, or more, that the current situation was the most likely scenario. In my book chapter on climate, there is a section where I revisit the claims in my Deep Adaptation paper of 2018, and show that 2023 observational data and climate science corroborates what I concluded back then (you can listen to the chapter for free, or get the whole audiobook).
Unfortunately, the misrepresentation of the Deep Adaptation paper and nascent ‘movement’ by some in the mass media, has meant that many people were discouraged from engaging with the community of collapse-aware folks who are working out implications for their lives and work. Rather than admit their mistake, the psychological and commercial drivers to vilify people who anticipate the breakdown of industrial consumer lifestyles are going strong. In a recent essay, I described this phenomenon as ‘moodsplaining’ – telling us how we should feel for the good of ourselves and society.
Instead of elites telling us all to calm down and conform, we need more wise and courageous forms of leadership in all aspects of society. To help with that, I continue to teach leadership courses. Delivered online, one is for scholars who are speaking out, and another for anyone who is stepping up to lead within their profession or community.
If you like this analysis, then send it to someone influential, and if you want more, please help fund future writing.
In a psychotherapy journal a couple of years ago I warned how the ‘experiential avoidance’ that leads to moodsplaining could eventually lead to support for authoritarianism. That is because when the aggressive denial of unfolding societal breakdown and likely catastrophic futures becomes unbelievable, people without means of equanimity will seek new ways to suppress their difficult emotions. That is why I have been critiquing the explicit authoritarianism from some environmentalists, as well as the tacit acceptance of such views by their colleagues. In my book Breaking Together, I outline the philosophical and practical basis for a rights-defending and freedom-loving response to our predicament.
I am pleased with how the book is being received. I launched the book in Glastonbury Town Hall, and I recommend the video of my half hour talk as a glimpse into the analysis and recommendations in the book. The 5-minute introduction by Satish Kumar was exceptional (and my tweet recommending that was my last before being suspended). For more depth on the themes in the book, I recommend my interview with a local resilience NGO in the UK. The book is also finding its way into cultural discussions (e.g. Daniel Pinchbeck’s newsletter) and a nicely summative review appeared in World Literature Today.
As you are reading my words, you probably already know that people like me believe that there are many positive ways of responding to an acceptance of the demise of industrial consumer societies. I am beginning to see this as a trimodal response. First, we can get on with doing whatever we think might reduce harm and save more of the natural world, while networking together with likeminds to amplify our impact. Second, we can help each other with methods for attaining greater emotional awareness and ability to transcend fear-driven patterns of thought and behaviour. Those two broad modes of response I explain and illustrate in Chapter 12 of my book as the ‘doomster way’. A third mode of response remains important. It is to resist the people and ideas that are serving incumbent power in ways that accelerate the exploitation of people and destruction of the biosphere. We might not win, but nevertheless choose to ‘go down’ defending all Life.
We each have our own strengths and opportunities for participating in each mode, and our focus may change over time. After ten years as a full professor, I am leaving my employment and taking a leap into a new life. I will be focusing more on devotional music and meditation retreats as well as enabling regenerative farming here in Indonesia. I have funded the launch of a regenerative farm, but our bigger plan for a regenerative region is far bigger than me! Therefore, we are inviting support for our bamboo-made training centre and rolling out training for local farming families to convert to regenerative methods. We are looking for just a handful of philanthropic backers for this project. If interested, please read more about the project here.
I will continue publishing the Deep Adaptation Review every 4 months, and, if supported, I will continue releasing essays on collapse risk, readiness and response via my blog. I list some of them below in case you are interested. I may also return to teaching leadership courses in person next year if the online ones are sufficiently popular.
I am telling you all this as I am seeking support for my new direction in life and hope you might be able to help. But that’s not the only reason. I know so many people who privately agree with me, but feel trapped. Publicly, in their professional circles, they explain their continued compliance with the old and delusional stories of our organisations, professions and societies. As the world changes at pace, I see fewer reasons for postponing one’s own transformation to live fully in this new era of societal disruption and collapse – our tomorrows finally became today. If you are on the cusp or have made the leap then there are awesome people who can help guide you.
As I remain suspended from X/Twitter, I am not able to respond when people comment on my analysis, ideas or character. So, if you are a tweeter, you can help people discover ideas and initiatives like these by posting a link to this newsletter/blog on twitter threads about me. I still have no idea why I was booted off that platform – it might have been a silly complaint or a hack of my account, rather than censorship. Maybe one day I’ll find out.
Cheers, Jem
PS: If you would like to receive updates from me on relevant news, initiatives and activities, more than once every 4 or 5 months, then please subscribe to my blog.
1] Hottest July on record hits 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial age, new data shows – The Irish Times
Some essays and talks in the last few months:
· Loving being human, despite a fracturing world. Despite the level of biological annihilation wrought by modern humans, there is reason to maintain faith in humanity that are backed by science.
· Do environmentalists secretly hate people? Without an understanding of how Imperial Modernity manipulated us all into being more acquisitive, competitive and domineering, our awareness of environmental destruction can turn misanthropic.
· Climate truth is a challenge to power – even that of senior experts. In a presentation to MEER, I spoke of what the latest climate data and science suggest we focus on, and how that means challenging some of the establishment-defending senior scientists.
· Breaking Together for free – and my launch speech. In Glastonbury I spoke to a couple hundred people about my book, and marked the launch of the book as a free epub.
· From doom-scrolling the latest climate news to doom-sensemaking. Comparing the Deep Adaptation paper in 2018 to current climate science reveals how the criticisms from establishment scientists, and from those who are entirely deferent to them, were baseless.
· Why Growth became God. In an excerpt from my book where I discuss one of my experiences at Davos, I explain how we are trapped in a system that requires GDP growth.
· I also hate this conclusion (on net zero). Unfortunately, renewables can’t get our societies off fossil fuels fast enough, and involve ecological damage of their own. The environmental agenda needs to be more honest and radical. Just stop lying!
· Audiobook and art for Breaking Together. The book is accompanied by an art project called Kintsugi World, of which the book cover is one picture.
· Alternative approaches to combat respiratory viruses – freedom from the failing corporate-induced orthodoxy of the early 2020s. The latest in a regular series of essays (since October 2021) on a more progressive and collaborative agenda on Covid and pandemics. The kind of writing that generates hate from terribly misinformed people who might have become deranged by their suppressed anxieties (but not irrecoverably).
· Should scientists moonlight as ideologues? An excerpt from Breaking Together, where I describe how senior-ranking scientists ditch scientific method in their desperate allegiance to cultural norms of human dominion and progress (and win loads of funding for doing so).
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