Next week I will share the second part of my essay on the benefits of collapse acceptance. One of those benefits is discovering a new impetus for acting on one’s sense of personal power and privilege. In this essay I want to delve into this topic more substantively. I want to address the rhetorical question “why bother fighting for social justice if everything is collapsing anyway?” I also want to address the very real concern that it is only people with financial means who are able to begin to prepare for the breakdown of world systems. I will do that through sharing my notes on questions put to me by Silvia di Blasio in a recent interview for Gaia Education. Born in Argentina and based in Canada, Silvia has been exploring the concepts and practices of resilience for decades. She interviewed me in her role as a course manager and facilitator for Gaia Education, which offers courses and spaces for people to explore community-based initiatives to face climate change and the combined crises. As someone who offers my own online course on similar issues, I recognise the value of such education. The question of power and privilege came up not only because Silvia is attuned to such issues but because new waves of people with relative riches are seeking to ‘live the good life’ with homesteading and ecovillages as they realise how modern societies are breaking down. It is no longer the anti-consumerists and hippies driving the ecovillage movement. What does that mean for its ability to help wider societies?
You can watch the video of the interview here. What follows is not a transcript of the conversation but the notes I made in response to questions Silvia shared with me ahead of the interview. In them I delve deeper into the questions of power and privilege in the face of collapse than we did in the interview.
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Q: Your new book Breaking Together is a long and scholarly read. What is your message to a layperson and why did you write it?
Believe it or not, I don’t go around talking about collapse that much. But if the topic comes up, then I tend to start with the problem that most people on average incomes are facing – the cost of living – and how it is becoming impossible for many people to live without capital to draw upon or going into debt. I then say that if you are concerned that it appears as if many important systems are breaking down, then you’re neither alone nor wrong. They are indeed breaking and that’s why things aren’t so easy anymore and have become far more expensive. The first half of my book pulls together the relevant data and scholarship to explain what’s happening and why it won’t stop. The second half is not just about why this happened, but about how people have been changing their lives after accepting we are in a new era of creeping collapse. I mention some of the people doing amazing things, both practically and politically, to emphasise that the end of this way of life is not the end of everything. I always acknowledge with people how this is not an emotionally simple topic. It’s painful to realise what’s been done and what’s coming. If it isn’t shocking and destabilising, then we aren’t really understanding what we are talking about. I explain how it is only by fully facing reality, and joining others, that we might live without our rational fears about a turbulent future diminishing our vitality and our agency.
I wrote the book because I think people are being misled about the state of the world and bullied into keeping quiet about their views, so that many people are confused about what to do. Which means they are in a limbo. I knew that with my skills in research analysis, I could look into how bad things are, if a breakdown is indeed coming or not, and if so, what that would involve. After 18 months of research, I concluded that things are breaking down already and so then I switched my focus into why that’s happening, what can we learn from that, and what is important to focus on from now on. I wanted to celebrate the rise of what I now call ‘doomsters’. That’s people who are not captured by denial, or panic or despair, but are seeking to live to the max while making a positive contribution to the world. There’s a whole chapter on them (now out as a free audio).
Q: You mention in your book that Western societies started to break down or collapse by 2016, and you base this on a series of parameters. Can you share what those parameters are?
Societal breakdown in most countries on all populated continents, not just in the West, began before 2016. I explain this with data about the cracks on the surface, fractures in the foundations, and decay in what I call the ‘cultural cement’, of industrial consumer societies.
The cracks on the surface are shown by the declining Human Development Index and declining Numbeo quality of life index. Life expectancy is going down in many countries, and started its descent in the years prior to the pandemic in many modern societies. Perhaps the most obvious crack on the surface is the spiralling cost of living that we all experience. One factor in that has been the response of various Central Banks to the effects of the fracturing of economic and biophysical systems that underpin modern societies. Explaining this can get quite theoretical and technical but I believe it is essential to understand what is happening at a macro scale. So I will attempt a swift summary…
The fracturing of the foundational systems of modern societies is occurring as an expansionist economic system hits environmental limits at the same time as an internal contradiction of capitalism can no longer be avoided. Limits include not only non-renewables such as mined metals, but also soil erosion and habitat loss, as well as reaching the absorption limits of the oceans and atmosphere. The internal contradiction in the economic system is the fact that, collectively, workers earn less than they need to buy the products of their labour. The shrinking of state employment, and a slowing of the ability to expand abroad, are just two of many factors that mean this contradiction can no longer be postponed. This contradiction along with the biophysical limits have threatened economic growth and therefore led to novel monetary policies that flooded the economy with new money, which was issued to the richest institutions. That has disrupted the connection between economic success and our needs and desires. It has also led to spiralling prices for everything. I describe these economic system aspects of the collapse in Chapter 1 (free audio) and Chapter 2 (free audio).
Then there is the decay in what I call the ‘cultural cement’ of modern societies. Declining belief in the future, in democracy, and in capitalism, all disrupt our emotional commitment to the idea of delayed gratification… where we work hard now, study now, and save now, because we think it will help us and our loved ones in the long run. The growing problems with mental health, with political polarisation, with trust in institutions, with trust in each other, all point to a decaying of the cultural cement that holds modern societies together. I detail all of that in Chapter 7 (free audio).
Although I describe this as a process of creeping collapse, it is likely to lurch forward at some point in many countries. The main way that this will happen involves the international food system. In Chapter 6 (free audio), I describe the six hard trends that are breaking that food system. That means the recent jump in global malnourishment by 100s of millions is very unlikely to improve. That is an awful situation for anyone on low incomes, but particularly for people who rely on humanitarian food aid as it becomes far more expensive to resource. Getting real about this predicament is the first step to rethinking our priorities and moving from panicked and defensive responses to more collaborative ones that uphold active solidarity, worldwide. It is why I have been arguing for years that international civil society needs to be involved in open dialogue about this era of breakdown and collapse, rather than it be the preserve of elites behind closed doors.
Q: Maybe for those in the middle classes in certain privileged countries the collapse started to show in 2016. For many others, the collapse started many years ago, sometimes centuries. For many people, collapse is the only reality they have known. So, is this conversation about collapse a bit privileged?
It is important to recognise that the creeping collapse of all industrial consumer societies is currently hurting the poor far more than the middle classes. Food and fuel poverty is spreading fast. The indicators of declining life expectancy and health are worse for the poorer members of any society.
The evidence I present in the book is that this creeping collapse is happening in the vast majority of countries right now. That phenomenon is additional to the past societal and community collapses due to colonialism, to war, and the extractive activities of multinational corporations. It is occurring everywhere due to a fracturing of the biophysical foundations of modern societies as well as the internal contradiction of capitalism coming due.
Recognising this wider and creeping collapse does not mean ignoring either past collapses or currently intense breakdowns, or the role of international actors in driving that damage, or the immediate humanitarian needs of some peoples. Instead, it could help us to reassess and recommit to cooperation both nationally and internationally. It could even increase attention to the need for reparations and for healing. It was with this in mind that I engaged the decolonisation scholar Vanessa Andreotti in the early stages of launching the Deep Adaptation Forum, and encouraged discussion between my colleagues and hers in the ‘Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures’ initiative. We recognised that if people choose to respond to the terrible environmental predicament by turning inwards, not outwards, that would be a problem. That possibility of a defensive turn doesn’t mean we should pretend that this predicament doesn’t exist. As I have argued in a paper for a psychotherapy journal, that would only makes the problem worse, by supressing anxieties. Instead, I have discovered over the last 5 years that so many people who become collapse aware then rethink their lives and change behaviours in ways that mean they participate less in the global systems of destruction. I have some data on that, but more research could be done.
In the face of more suffering around the world, focusing on imagined better futures is itself the product of privilege. It is no coincidence that elites like Prince William are moodsplaining us by admonishing people for being too gloomy. They pick one or two technological innovations to ignore systemic injustice and destruction to spin a story that entrepreneurs and elites can fix the world’s problems. One example stands out to me. I have helped fund a seaweed farming project here in Indonesia that is creating above-market rates for the farmers by creating new and local higher value end uses for their seaweed. Such farming has been around for centuries but the market price for seaweed is volatile and recently collapsed. If you listen to the people who fawn around the princely Earthshot prize, you might think seaweed farming is a new idea and we can substantially curb climate change and plastic pollution with a few seaweed entrepreneurs. Although the projects that Earthshot (and similar philanthropists) fund can be nice in themselves, the spin that elites put on them is self-serving ideological claptrap that distracts us from where we need to see dramatic policy changes to have a chance of reducing harm for the many. The moral admonishment coming from elites for those of us who don’t conform to their positive imaginaries reveals an emotionally fragile effort towards mutual delusion. In other words, middle class and upper class do-gooders are lying to themselves to dampen their multi-level anxieties from recognising the true nature of our predicament. Sadly, they are joined by the professional classes working on the environment whose fat salaries enable them to escape the reality of billions of people, and whose sense of self-esteem is provided to them by a system that’s destroyed its own foundations. Billions of people without such economic buffers must live in the real world, today and tomorrow, not the one that privileged optimists like to imagine is the future while attending their fancy events on climate change.
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Q: I have personally lived through two collapsing countries: Argentina and Venezuela. I’ve seen the quality of life and the “normal” getting turned upside down: I’m not only talking about financial and/or political collapses, but something worse, more pervasive and more difficult to heal and accept: the collapse of the sense of community, the emergence of crime and corruption. Those who were able to, reacted by running away and rebuilding their lives in other countries, with varied levels of success. This is a scenario we have seen through history, but that become a feature of our times: mass migrations from collapsing countries: Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and so many African countries. This mass migration compounds the existing challenges in the countries that receive them. When most people are in survival mode and in fear, how do we help them to see this other collapse you talk about, the “global” collapse?
I think we would benefit from hearing more from you, Silvia, and other members of diasporas from collapsed societies, as well as the people who stayed put during collapse, about what they all learned and unlearned through those experiences. From those who stayed, we could hear more about how they tried to reduce conflict and arrange alternative systems for providing basic needs: both their successes and their failures. The previous collapse in Argentina starting at the end of 2001 saw some interesting initiatives, such as local currencies, that were later sabotaged by the dirty tricks of private banks. Of course, there is a lot more to learn from such situations.
I am not a humanitarian professional, nor a psychologist, so I don’t know how to best help people who are in a survival mode and fearful for their lives. With the Breaking Together book I am not trying to influence people who are currently displaced due to specific localised breakdowns. I am not aiming for them to see the wider and creeping collapse of all industrial consumer societies. Instead, my analysis is for people who are not yet refugees, not yet in the middle of intense political strife.
I do believe an acceptance that we are in an era of societal collapse is relevant for professionals in the field of disaster risk reduction, because it highlights how external support is going to diminish due to an era of meta-disaster that will affect all parts of the world in the end. That means promoting local resilience and locally-led adaptation is more important. Hundreds of scholars jointly called on the UN to recognise this fact, and get real about ‘sustainable development’ being a misleading ideology.
Q: Many authors who are aware of collapse talk about the importance of community, we at Gaia Education encourage that in our courses. However, “community” is a tricky word. What is our community when the systems we live in and our own socialization have worked so much against this concept? How do create or join a community when more than half of the people on the planet live in large cities and there are so many forces making community impossible or even undesirable?
That’s a brilliant question. It reminds me of the quandary I found myself in recently in London. I had been visiting the city for decades, as both a playground and professional centre. But back in London after 4 years, walking through the financial centre, on my way to give a talk at St Ethelbergas, I had an embodied reaction, a kind of panic attack. I no longer see the blend of old buildings, modern skyscrapers, and shiny black shoes, as solid and powerful. I know the systems sustaining all that ‘busyness’ are breaking. I know that a country that relies on the rest of the world for nearly 80% of its food, according to some estimates, is incredibly fragile. I know to try to live less harmfully and more resiliently in such a massive urban environment is incredibly difficult. So, in all honesty, I had no simple positive message for people living in cities in countries that rely on the rest of the world’s resources to get through even one day. Therefore, in my talk, I shared this embodied reaction I had to walking through the financial district of London. I shared how I had felt some calm over recent years by being closer to farmers in a country that does not need to exploit the rest of the world in order to maintain its way of life.
That was my honest embodied reaction to being back in London, and it helped me to realise why I had quit both living in cities and in the West. However, I explained there are ways that people can reduce harm and become more resilient in the major cities that rely on the rest of the world’s resources. I am inspired by various attempts to share resources, turn gardens over to horticulture or wild meadows, and plant suburban food forests. However, rich cities will still rely on exploiting the rest of the world and be some of the most vulnerable places in the world as the complex supply chains of global industrial consumer societies are disrupted.
People should not need a viable vision of a decent material future for city dwellers to avoid being castigated as uncaring or privileged – if we can’t see a viable one then it’s dishonest to pretend. I am supportive of efforts to work out how to meet the basic needs of the billions who live in cities, so long as those efforts aren’t scientifically impossible nor require destroying the homes and livelihoods of people with less power and privilege in the rest of the world. That is the key problem with the idea that societies can reach ‘net zero’ mainly through technological innovation, as I describe in Chapter 3 of my book (free audio).
I believe we are going to collapse into community and so the thing to play for is what we will find when it’s all we have. So, we need to make a decision about what is most important to us. If you live in a city in a country that relies on the rest of the world for its resources, you might want to ask yourself if you are going to stay put because other issues are more important for you than living lightly on the planet and its people, and more important than the longevity of you and your family. Instead, what might be most important for you is to raise awareness, or help reduce some local vulnerabilities where you live, or helping people to cope better as things get worse. For instance, I know people in the UK who are teaching their neighbours methods of non-violent communication as a way of helping their town prepare for inevitable future disruptions. Alternatively, you might choose to continue working and earning the way you do now, but channel more of your spare funds towards projects that respond to current suffering, or that seek to reduce future suffering (whether human or animal).
In my case, after a few years of reflection, I decided I wanted to live free of wage slavery, free to try to live lighter on the Earth and to contribute to my own resilience and that of my neighbours. I wanted to do that within a country that doesn’t rely on the rest of the world for its resources. I am not going to spend time trying to learn how to press oil, make soap, or other kinds of activities typically associated with people choosing to live as a homesteader. The skills for such production exist already and Indonesia does not need (nor welcome) foreign farm labourers! I am working with my friend to develop a regenerative farm, as the basis for a regenerative farm school, as the basis for a trading network of regenerative enterprises, as a basis for a community that is more resilient to external shocks. Our approach is deliberately non-colonial and collaborative. Therefore, we have leased a small piece of land for 15 years and are funding our NGO partner to train local smallholders in organic farming practices. In order to stick to our vision and principles, rather than be swayed by foreigners with their pet topics and zero accountability, we are currently self-funding and learning the financial challenges that face smallholders. Fortunately, I chose a place where I only need 185 US dollars a month for my accommodation, and have given up my academic job, which creates some breathing space to try to make this project work. However, it might not work – and my satisfaction is partly from knowing that it is good to try. That is because it feels right to try to use my relative privilege to live both well and in solidarity with others less well financed than me. To access that privilege, I had to leave a country where I was comparatively not well financed (as I don’t own a house in the UK and my pension would only pay a few thousand a year if I took it at 55 years old).
Even if our Bekandze Farm project does work out in the near term, how would we fare when the global economy collapses due to the direct and indirect impacts of environmental change? That will depend on how the national and local governments respond and what population movements there might be. My chosen community might need to open its doors to displaced people, and then soon arrive at the problem of not having enough resources to cope. The government might decide to expel me or those close to me. I am under no illusions about the lack of certainty of personal or collective wellbeing in societies facing the kind of massive disruptions that are coming.
I recognise that most people who attend Gaia Education courses are involved in homesteads or ecovillages, or preparing to move to one, or to start one. That means they are engaged in something local and practical that lessens their negative impact on the world, environmentally and socially, as well as helping to regenerate a local environment. One criticism some people make is that this is only an option for people with the privilege of sufficient resources, such as capital or online employment. As I mentioned in the introduction, this question becomes more acute now that more people with relative riches are seeking to ‘live the good life’ with homesteading and ecovillages as they realise that modern societies are breaking down. I believe such privilege means people choosing the ecovillage way of life can explore how to have a wider impact. That does not mean being driven by superhero ambitions of saving the world, but paying attention to how to live in active solidarity and team up for wider impact. This is why I describe in my book the move towards local resilience can be part of a ‘great reclamation’ of our power from the manipulations and appropriations of ‘Imperial Modernity’. That is a rather grand term for “the interlocking set of political, economic and cultural systems that shape our everyday lives to favour the accumulation of power by elites. It is the ideological apparatus of a global Empire of power that has taken hold over the last 30+ years.” AKA ‘life as we know it’, in most modern societies. If we don’t try to participate in such a Great Reclamation, then we will have done little of significance to resist the aggressions of state institutions and corporations as they go to extremes of authoritarian control during future episodes of societal disruption. Therefore, ecovillages could become the hubs for spreading approaches and tools that help others to coordinate the provision of people’s needs and wishes as they are met less by either government or big business.
One approach that I was happy to learn about was when I shared a stage at the COP27 climate conference with John Liu. He was presenting on the 50+ ecosystem regeneration camps and communities around the world. They aim to address social needs, such as housing refugees, while also restoring degraded lands. Bringing together the most needy in society with the goal of ecological restoration and carbon sequestration is the opposite of a privileged activity and deserves philanthropic support.
Q: In your books and through various interviews you mention that your intention is to encourage a freedom-loving response to the crises or collapse. Could you expand a bit about that? How does that translate in the practice for individuals? For communities?
With my book I am intending to start a discussion about a political philosophy for this new era of collapse. Although they are not the norm, I know that some people who either anticipate or accept societal collapse can conclude that they should try to do nothing on issues and activities they consider ‘political’ or ‘activist.’ All such ideas and actions are considered by them as delusional. However, such attitudes ignore how our very acceptance of collapse can motivate us to live more lightly and kindly on this planet, where we care for humans and species that we influence through our everyday interactions, via our consumption, our work, our speech and our savings. If our privilege means we are not experiencing increasing suffering already, then it is more attentive to reality, rather than delusional, to try to reduce our contributions to the damage and help ameliorate it, without being attached to the idea of being a saviour or superhero.
Once reacquainted with our motivations to be useful human beings in a new era of societal disruption and collapse, we can quickly recognise how the dignity of all people demands that we support people’s freedom to know what’s happening and to choose to change their lives accordingly. That is why in my book I foreground the issue of human rights and freedoms.
A freedom-loving environmentalism arises from the knowledge that it was the manipulation of hearts and minds by systems shaped by the ‘money-power’, that drove such wholescale destruction of life on Earth, and so liberating our true natures is part of the response to our predicament. By money-power, I mean the constellation of people, organisations, rules and resources that control the form, issuance, distribution, and demands of monetary systems. We have been manipulated, coerced and encouraged by that money-power to objectify, commodify, dominate, compete, externalise, use up, trash and feel numb about life on Earth, including each other. Therefore, it is our unfreedom and oppression that has driven us to collapse.
A freedom-loving response to collapse involves letting go of familiar but failing systems of comfort and security, to begin to find mutually beneficial ways of living with all Life, including each other. It involves helping each other to live freer from the forces that manipulate us to degrade all life, so we can find those mutually beneficial ways of living. We defend and claim our rights and freedoms as we know them to be important in themselves and as well as being systematically oppressed to have produced the current carnage on Earth. We foreground this issue of freedom due to the counter-productive rise of authoritarian sentiments in some parts of the environmental profession.
In Chapter 12 of the book, I give examples of people changing their lives to build local resilience in their communities. For instance, they re-localise production and create alternative means of exchange. Unfortunately, most people do not have the practical freedom of controlling land to grow their own food in their own communities. The banking system has made that land too expensive to access for such purposes. Meanwhile accommodation and living costs have been made too expensive for people to find the time to work together on community projects. ‘Wage slavery’ feels like an accurate description of life for many people. That is an example of the unfreedom in modern societies. It is why I had to move country to be able to live according to my own values. I do not see that as a success, but as me coping with an unjust social arrangement.
As we free ourselves of the assumptions of Imperial Modernity we can recognise and learn from the wisdom of today’s indigenous communities. As I mention in Chapter 9 (free audio), today indigenous peoples constitute about 4% of the world’s population but steward about 80% of the world’s biodiversity. Despite disruptions from colonisers, they have managed to keep their traditions and beneficial relationship with all life. Therefore, a freedom-loving environmentalism should involve more of us giving our support to efforts preventing any further destruction of their way of life.
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Q: You talk about critical literacy (awareness of how power works in shaping narratives, structures and concepts in society) and how we may be manipulated into division and individual identity, shaming or blaming groups, etc. as opposed to working together for liberation and to face the common threat. Could you share about this and maybe give some examples?
In Chapter 8 (free audio), I argue that if we want to bring awareness to power and privilege, as a means of changing that, then we need to cultivate the ability to witness how language works in maintaining such power and privilege. Language influences us through ‘framing’, where one idea is associated with another idea and not another. That framing occurs in ways that reinforce power hierarchies. In the book I give the example of employment. The fact that the media reports on “jobs created” but not “jobs destroyed” means that praise of capitalists is possible in one situation, but critique is not invited in the other. Frames become what’s considered normal in a culture and therefore breaking the frame can seem contrived and silly. But such ‘normalising’ of frames serves power hierarchies. It works that way for nearly everything to construct what we sociologists call a ‘discourse’, or a way of thinking about things. There are really deep stories in our culture. For instance, imagining the environment as something we need profits in order to protect, or imagining it as a separate phenomenon to humanity. Assuming that ‘progress’ exists, persists and is always positive, is a key underpinning idea in modern societies. A capability for critical literacy helps us to understand the power of discourse and language and make conscious choices about how we wish to describe the world. That is why it is such a key aspect of the online courses I teach on leading through collapse.
A capability for critical literacy is also important to better resist the various attempts at manipulation by corporations and elites. Unfortunately, we live in a world of moral charades played out by various elites for the public in attendance. This is where our individual interests in being responsible people are weaponised in the service of the powerful. Whether our values include care, fairness, or freedom, we can be misled about what our values imply, or not, for our behaviours. This moral charade occurs in debates about power and privilege, specifically on ‘social justice’. We hear the most from elites, including scholars with different nationalities, ethnicities, and genders, about where our social justice concerns should be channelled. That is why economic justice has been coming second to identity politics in the past decade. For instance, we do not hear of the opportunities for the Majority World to rise up against imperialist trade and financial relations, to prevent cheap exports and drive degrowth in financially richer countries. We do not hear how that would create domestic pressure for fairer distribution of lesser resources, as I explained to Novara Media (and in my book). Such a neo-protectionist sentiment is not appealing to ‘social justice’ scholars based in rich urban centres, as they are wedded to the exploitative neo-colonial systems for their income and status. Instead, some scholars with wealth and status respond poorly to radical critiques of the imperialist systems that provide for their privilege. There can be some really strange intellectual contortions, such as an American race relations academic claiming that government subsidies of US corporations doing ineffective Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide is a form of reparation for slavery. Another one was a British Labour Party activist claiming that anyone concluding it is physically impossible to spread consumer lifestyles everywhere in the world is ‘anti-humanist’. Yes, these arguments have actually been published, but are so dumb I couldn’t be bothered to find the links.
The moral charades were particularly acute at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Then we saw politicians and mass media framing any deviation from the orthodoxy on prevention and treatment as not only incorrect but as disgusting. That means some scientists and scholars were shamed and censored (myself included). That moral charade helped to justify human rights abuses, including the loss of employment, loss of free speech, and loss of free movement. It closed off curiosity for what else might help to curb infections and save lives. People were manipulated to believe that they were morally admirable by not being more curious and by shaming those people who pursued their curiosity. Which means in their moral self-righteousness they might even have been contributing to more suffering and death. Therefore, in Chapter 8 I explain the need for ‘critical wisdom’ to reduce the amount of people supporting poor policies from panicking elites.
It was the working classes, especially those in the serving professions, the precariat in the gig economy, and small business owners, who were most abused by the orthodox Covid-19 policy agenda. Many were forced into more awkward working practices, or were coerced to take a medical treatment, or were fired for not conforming, or lost their businesses and livelihoods, or were stuck in tiny apartments, or had greater difficulties with childcare and schooling. Hundreds of millions were thrown into poverty worldwide. Therefore, it is an indicator of privilege that the professional classes did not object to this orthodoxy, and instead willingly accepted the propaganda from politicians and mainstream media, often cheering on the censorship of expert dissent. That left the field open for populists and opportunists to build their followings and subsequently mislead people who were critical of the orthodoxy on Covid-19 (witness the rise of ‘conspiracy porn’). In particular, the dominance of the Western green movement by the professional classes and their ideology of deference to power, meant that it woefully failed to engage the public meaningfully during the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic on what might be wiser and more holistic responses to the situation. That is why I continue to mention this issue, despite how it has led to such hostility and shaming from ‘colleagues’ in the environmental movement. After all, if we aren’t prepared to risk anything or suffer a bit when using our power and privilege in solidarity with others, then aren’t we just full of manure?
The likelihood of people being manipulated by those in power to become abusive to their neighbours is one important answer to the question: “why bother fighting for social justice if everything is collapsing anyway?” Another answer is simply that it will feel better ‘going down’ while expressing our values as authentically as we can. At least, so far, it feels that way for me and many people I know. Next week I return to the Benefits of Collapse Acceptance. The video of my conversation with Silvia follows below. If you are interested in engaging on this issue of power and privilege in the face of collapse, I recommend finding this post within the Deep Adaptation Leadership Linked in Group.
Silvia di Blasio’s formal education is in psychopedagogy and adult education. She also has experience as a permaculturist, sustainability designer, Work That Reconnects (WTR) facilitator, and advisor on disaster management and emergency preparedness. She has worked extensively in food security, disaster preparedness and inner resilience. She is currently involved in three organizations: with Fritjof Capra at the Capra Course, with the WTR Network as a coordinator, and with Gaia Education as a course manager and facilitator. Silvia lived in Venezuela for two decades before moving to Canada.
[The image is of the first meeting with community leaders and farmers at Bekandze Farm, in September 2023. Yes the women at our event didn’t join this particular meeting!]
Some of my previous commentary on global social justice and collapse:
Deep Adaptation and Global Solidarity – a speech in Glasgow, September 2019, by Prof Jem Bendell
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