For years I felt quite timid about my concerns, and then my conclusions, on the dire future of modern societies under increasing environmental stress. When my Deep Adaptation paper went viral, I didn’t ride the wave onto TV screens and into bookstores. The topic was too sensitive for that, and I felt too raw. At the time, I was somewhat confused about how to integrate my own anticipation of societal collapse into my own life. Therefore, I focused on engaging people who already shared my outlook, to engage in open dialogue on the potential positive ways of responding. Five years later, I have learned much from the many people who made major life changes precisely because of their recognition that we are in an era of unfolding societal collapse. I discuss some such people, and their many positive ways of responding, in Chapter 12 of my book Breaking Together – a chapter now available as a free audio. Within it, I provide an edited list of the benefits of collapse acceptance. Because there are indeed benefits from not only being curious or aware of collapse risks, but actually accepting that such a collapse is coming or already under way. That is a key message from former Occupy Wall Street activist Karen Perry, who created the list of benefits.
I have found it useful to reflect on the extent to which I have been experiencing such benefits myself. In particular, it has helped reaffirm some of my choices as well as identifying areas where I have ‘stalled’ in my own transformation. Therefore, in this first of a two-part essay, I am sharing my reflections on the first seven benefits. After you read it, I recommend you find time to reflect on your own life in relation to these benefits. By asking yourself what you have started and where might you have stalled, it will be a useful way of exploring your own psychological and practical ‘deep adaptation’.
Next week I will release my in-depth discussion with Karen Perry on my YouTube channel, where she shares her thinking behind the list, as well as her experience with each of the 15 benefits. I will link to that in Part 2 of this essay on the benefits of collapse acceptance, in which I will describe my own experience in relation to the final eight benefits. In this Part 1, I introduce the first 7 benefits with the shorthand I used for them in my book, and share Karen’s original text for them at the end of the essay.
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1. FREEDOM – move away from shoulds to the open doors of coulds.
In our conversation, Karen and I discussed why freedom from past preoccupations is such a key feature of people’s response to accepting the creeping collapse of industrial consumer societies. There appears to be a psychological escape from the old stories that motivated and controlled us, whether personal or professional. For many people there is also a feeling of alienation from the modern societies that created such carnage – where collapse is a form of judgement of the systems and institutions that brought us to this point. In my own case, I dropped the story that I should try to be pragmatic in responding to the environmental situation, as well as the idea that being pragmatic must involve accepting existing power relations and institutions to try to nudge them or reform them. I also dropped the story that I needed to be regarded as responsible by sticking to, at least the edges of, what was considered reasonable by senior role holders in the fields that I participated in, such as academia, international governance, and sustainable development cooperation.
Reflecting on this benefit, I also notice I have stalled in my transformation. Because I haven’t yet dropped the story and habit of prioritising what is intellectual and using the written form for my communication of that. Instead, I have experienced a couple of years of the most intense intellectual activity and writing to produce the ‘Breaking Together’ book. That is partly because I also haven’t yet dropped the story of me contributing something that might ripple out to others. Reflecting on that motivation, I realise that I don’t want to be free of the wish to matter to others in useful ways, but now intend to be free from any compulsion or addiction; that would be where my intellectual work serves as a distraction from my pain about our predicament.
2. URGENCY – do not postpone what’s in your heart.
If we accept that processes of collapse are now underway, then we must accept that some key systems enabling our current way of life could even break down tomorrow. That brings a sense of urgency to living according to whatever it is that we believe in or value. Although that sense of urgency can lead some people to focus on their near-term survivability, and therefore those typical prepper-behaviours such as buying water purification tablets, tinned food, and a crossbow, in my experience that has been an unusual response. That is because such prepper responses reflect people not fully understanding the scale and duration of the breaking of modern systems. On the one hand, the tablets, tins and ammo will run out. On the other hand, a deeper realisation of our predicament triggers huge grief and a confronting of the inevitability of our own deaths. That typically leads to a connection with what’s in our hearts, as well as a softening of our views towards all life. In my own case, I prioritised goals other than my career or economic safety. I volunteered a lot, and then eventually moved country to start a regenerative farm school. But by reflecting on this issue of urgency, I realise that I haven’t prioritised my involvement in live music as much as I would like, nor my studying of Buddhism. These activities relate to a yearning I have for more transcendent experiences in my life, as a form of celebration of being alive and as a balm for the anxieties that I often feel about the state of the world.
3. PARAMETERS – engage society with a different time horizon, whether with career, savings or family.
As with the previous benefit of ‘urgency’ it is difficult to predict when societal collapse will progress to such a degree that it removes more of our capabilities and choices. However, I still assess, as I did in 2018, that major disruptions will be occurring in all countries worldwide by 2028 in ways that will compromise most people’s health and wellbeing. At the time of writing, that is only 5 years away. I believe the 2030s look bleak for people who will be depending on complex industrial consumer systems for their way of life. That is in addition to the direct climate impacts on people in particularly badly-affected locations. That means I did not seek to buy land in the country I moved to, but purchased a 15-year lease on farmland and put more finance into creating the regenerative farm school. My outlook also means I feel comfortable with my decision not to have children. However, reflecting on this ‘benefit’ of collapse acceptance, I realise I have not prioritised my own health and fitness to help me cope as situations change in ways that might make medicines and other forms of support less available in future.
4. PRESENCE – focus on the here and now, with an openness to experiencing life anew.
The dissolution of our old stories of self, and our old preoccupations, can open us up to renewed attention to Life. This effect is similar to what happens when people experience a major illness, or the loss of a significant other. It is the widely acknowledged upside of emotional pain. In my case, one of the effects has been to slow down and notice flowers, wild animals, and pets a lot more than before. In particular, I began being nice to stray kittens, helping to find them new homes (and there are a lot of stray cats in Bali). Previously, I had avoided cats all my life due to being highly allergic to them. But after saving a few, I met a stray black kitten at a Buddhist Temple and within hours knew we were going to become family. Strangely, I discovered I wasn’t allergic to him. The reason I was at that temple was I had been volunteering to co-host meditation retreats. Sitting on your bum in silence for a few days is definitely one way to slow down! Buki, as I called my cat, became a close companion in the two years it took me to complete my book. Although I became a bit of a recluse in that time, I also noticed that I began to give more attention and money to a family that begs in a nearby street. Previously I had either been rushing past, or ‘in my head’ thinking about which charities might work on the issue of homelessness in Bali. I am incredibly grateful for the changes that have occurred in my way of being in the world. But reflecting on this benefit of ‘presence’ before my conversation with Karen also helped me to realise where I have stalled. Clearly, I still choose a high workload with much striving and intellectual sparring. Awareness is the first step towards changing that.
5. GRATITUDE – be thankful for the positive aspects of modern societies that will now disappear as well as the natural world before it changes.
Despite the destructiveness of modern societies, we do not need to condemn everything about them. Instead, the ingenuity of humanity can be celebrated, and we can feel gratitude for the conveniences we have experienced. I am grateful to have been born when I was. I see it as blessing to have had a childhood without the internet but then the internet to arrive as I became an adult, which also helped me to work from many places around the world. That is still true despite the internet now being used for unaccountable, elite-serving, massive, and decisive, psychological and political manipulation. I am also grateful I was able to experience many places without the traffic and pollution of today.
Due to my awareness of the destructiveness of a make-take-and-throw-away consumerist culture, I look at all modern conveniences with a strange mix of appreciation and alienation. But that aluminium can of fizzy water is no longer just a can of fizzy water to me, which I’d pay little attention to in the process of pouring the drink I desired. Instead, I look at the can and think: “It is amazing, but so energy intensive and wasteful, and one day it will be my last.” I also have a different experience of coral reefs, when I go to the beach every month or two. Years ago, my experience when snorkelling was purely “wow” nature is insanely complex, smart and beautiful. After some years passed, my inner response shifted to “how awful these ecosystems will be lost if we don’t change.” Now, as I float over the reefs, observing the mix of colourful fish and semi-bleached corals, my inner narrative has shifted again. “I’m pleased to see some of you are still alive, and grateful I am able to see you today; thank you Life, nature and the universe. I am so sorry for what’s happening and realise this time might be goodbye. But I know that life like yours will come again at some point in the future.”
Yeah, it seems I have a lot of chatter in my mind, even when snorkelling… but at least I can now witness that and let it go!
6. GROUNDING – don’t become occupied by catastrophic information in ways that disrupt your focus.
I don’t ‘doom scroll’ the climate news anymore. Back in March 2019, when I launched the Deep Adaptation Facebook group, we even created a rule against posting the latest tragic environmental news. We did that because my fellow moderators and I realised how posting bad news was becoming, for some people, a habit of distraction from actually changing one’s life based on the conclusion of what all that bad news was pointing towards. A case can be made that shouting about the bad news is a useful action to wake people up and generate the potential for social change. But if that dominates how we interact with each other on this issue, then we are reinforcing the story that these issues will get addressed by people with power in significant ways. Is that a useful story? All the evidence I have is that it is purely a myth that distracts from us getting on with living according to our own assessments of the situation.
Our ban on sharing bad climate news within that Facebook group was used by the critics of DA to claim we didn’t want to know the worst. That was an obviously silly claim to make in the same breath as claiming we were too alarmist or doomist! The illogical and aggressive behaviour of the critics of DA is one aspect of societal collapse that I have not been as ‘grounded’ about as I would like. Instead, I continue to fear the reactions of both authorities and manipulated masses during the unravelling of societies. Therefore, I pay close attention to news related to such processes and experience anxiety about that. Reflecting on this grounding ‘benefit’ of collapse acceptance is therefore helping me to explore whether I can become less emotionally affected by the counter-productive responses of some people to our predicament. That means I could accept that more elites will be aggressive, and that more people will respond bizarrely, as they act from their anxieties or suppressed anxieties about various aspects societal disruption and collapse. Despite trying to help people avoid it, as I do in Chapters 8 and 13 of my book, I could accept that there is little that any of us can do about it. That would not mean disengaging, but not being consumed by the craziness, and seeking some equanimity in relation to these psychological, cultural and political aspects of societal collapse.
7. COMMUNITY – contribute to local capabilities and defend them from destructive pressures.
In my Chapter 12 on “the freedom to collapse and grow” I describe a number of people and initiatives working to re-localise the economies of their communities as a means of improving lives while also making those communities more resilient to external shocks. In my case, I gave up my job as a full professor, and moved country, to begin to participate in community that I think has a good quality of life as well as better chance of doing OK as the international systems of industrial consumer society break down. Reflecting on this benefit, I also realised how much I have stalled on my engagement with my newly-chosen local community, due to spending so much time of my time on international research, education and advocacy. That has left me wondering whether I should put an end date for my writing of these essays, for my online teaching of leading through collapse, and also make my international book and teaching tour next year my last!
One question that can be asked about this emphasis on community is whether such efforts are delusional, as non-local events and processes could override anything achieved locally. When I discussed this with Karen, it became clear that neither of us are acting from either consequentialist ethics or a sense of certainty of outcome. Instead, we are working more on resilience and regeneration locally because we believe it is inherently positive to become closer to natural systems. If, in the future, there are authoritarian governments or militias taking our land or our produce, or suddenly many people are arriving from the cities, we will face such issues at that time with the same spirit of seeking what is right to do, rather than believing that us surviving collapse is the most important objective. I had all of this in mind as we hosted the local elders and priest for the blessing ceremony at Bekandze Farm last week (from which the image accompanying this blog came).
I look forward to sharing more of my conversations with Karen in Part 2 of this essay next week. What follows below is the original text of the first seven of her benefits of collapse acceptance. I list them here as they might be more stimulating for your own reflections than the shorter way that I described them above. For the benefit of ‘Urgency’ I re-wrote it partly to take out any implication of a consumerist assumption of “more” experiences being the normal desire. For the benefit of ‘Gratitude’ I re-wrote it to include aspects of the natural world that are disappearing, like coral reefs, rather than just the conveniences of modern living. Using either the list below, or my text above, I recommend you reflect for yourself. In addition, you could engage others in similar conversations either via the Deep Adaptation Forum, or via the post doom discussions (which Karen sometimes hosts).
The first seven benefits of collapse acceptance as Karen Perry first wrote them:
1. FREEDOM – the move away from shoulds to the open doors of coulds. “Get off the hamster wheel to stop building the castle, live where/how desired if possible.”
2. URGENCY – ‘No time like the present’ has never meant more. “Take that trip, quit that job, buy that house, do that thing — now.”
3. PARAMETERS – playing the game with a different framework and lens. “Baby or not? Pre-emptive medical procedures? Tax penalty concerns?”
4. PRESENCE – focus on today with heightened awareness of being here now. “Acceptance is the meditation. Be-ing is more important than do-ing.”
5. GRATITUDE – impossible to ignore all we’ve been given (and taken). “Make the list: hot showers, full grocery stores, internet, trash pickup, on demand everything…”
6. CALM GROUNDING – not disrupted by catastrophic information. “‘Can you believe it? The (fill in the blank) happened/is getting worse!’ (Yawn), yes I can.”
7. COMMUNITY / LOCALISM – ability to affect those in close proximity. “Restore a nearby land base, push back on development projects, connect with neighbors.”
..more to come next week.
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Prof Jem Bendell 