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Breaking Together came out on May 9th 2023 (my Dad’s 77th birthday). When he first became bed bound, I lived with him for a couple of months at the end of 2022. After every cup of tea I delivered to his bedside, he would ask how the writing was going, and reminded me of the book deadline. That encouragement from him meant it felt very satisfying to read sections of the published paperback to him when he was at the Rowcroft Hospice in Torquay (listen here!).
I am pleased with how the book is impacting people who work on sustainability or social justice issues, either as professionals or activists, around the world. Multiple translations are underway. On the off chance you are in Bali on October 19th, please consider joining my Asia book launch at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. But in this post I want to share some of the book reviews, as it is fascinating to see which parts of the book resonate with whom. Below I list the reviews that I know of, before reflecting on issues arising from my writing that haven’t yet been discussed.
World Literature Today is a magazine devoted to what it says on the cover. So I was delighted to see it carry a review that focused on the main message of how to respond positively to climate-induced disruptions in our lives: “Finding Freedom amidst Climate Collapse: Jem Bendell’s Breaking Together by Simona Vaitkute.”
On the website of the community economics focused NGO Low Impact, Dr Patrick Smith focused on the challenge of marshalling evidence for an unfolding breakdown of modern societies and the plausibility of such a conclusion” “If our civilisation were collapsing, would we even know? Review of Jem Bendell’s ‘Breaking Together’. I was also happy that my first interview about the book was with the boss of Low Impact, and that my cat Buki showed up at the end. I could not have coped with the isolation involved in writing the book if it wasn’t for him. Sadly he disappeared from my life soon after, to the heartbreak of both myself and all his human and cat friends.
The organisation Shareable also focuses on relocalising economies and their review of my book honed in on the need for economic systems to enable such relocalisation: “A new compass for navigating past the collapse: A review of “Breaking Together”.
In the UK’s left wing newspaper, the Green Party Mayor of Glastonbury focused on the freedom-loving environmentalism called for in the book. She identified it as an antidote to the recent bifurcation of views into eco-authoritarian technocrats on the one hand and conspiracy theorists on the other: “It takes a village | Morning Star”. In the US, that theme of a freedom-loving environmentalism was focused on in a review by the author Aaron Vandiver, when he asked “can we reboot the environmental movement — so it protects freedom, too?”
On her Medium page, Renaae Churches focused on the part of the book where I critique some of the ideas in the ‘doomersphere’ where they consider collapse as being predetermined and therefore nothing to learn about or change on the way down: “Loving that part of nature we call human”.
The cultural commentator Daniel Pinchbeck produced a series of essays reflecting on aspects of the book. The first of these was Earth’s Breaking Point? In it he states “Jem Bendell’s new book, Breaking Together, argues that modern civilization has already started to collapse. I agree with him.” I will be participating in Daniel’s online course soon.
One review attempted to summarise the whole book, with regular cross referencing of other relevant writings. An impressive engagement and helpful summary for someone who doesn’t want to read the whole thing! “Joining Together as Imperial Modernity Breaks — Book Review and Essay with excerpts.”
As a cofounder of Extinction Rebellion, Gail Bradbrook invited fellow rebels to read the book and reassess what to do next. In “Why read Breaking Together by Jem Bendell?” she kindly wished me well in my new pursuits (more farming and music), as well as hoping that the misrepresentation of my work to attempt to cancel this topic of collapse would not repeat itself. My sense is it will! Perhaps not in the mainstream media, which still prefers to hide these issues rather than platform them. However, in recent years niche outlets like the Ecologist and Open Democracy sometimes appear to police the Western environmental movement into maintaining anti-radical attitudes. Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised if something silly appears in publications like those. Which is not to say that there shouldn’t be critiques – there absolutely should! As I told Novara Media, I offer this book as a way to kickstart a conversation about what a postdoom politics might involve (you might call this a politics of transformative and deep adaptation). Key is that we debate and dialogue without misleading our readers with false statements about the scholarship, or the people involved, or the effects therefrom.
Looking at these reviews, I notice the following topics haven’t yet been discussed in depth in any review, so look forward to future reflections from readers:
- The limitations upon institutionalised scientists for them to coherently and saliently analyse complex systems.
- The extent to which the climate policy agenda should dramatically shift to prioritise the cloud seeding role of forests, the need for intervention in the Arctic to restore ice cover, and adaptation to severe damage to crops worldwide.
- The extent to which established green NGOs have misled the environmental movement and wider public about the nature of the predicament, because they watered down conclusions from the science to maintain a reformist outlook (and if so what to do about that).
- The nature of consciousness and why freedom of choice amongst sentient life is inherent and essential to nature (including the part we call human).
- Whether we need a fundamental reboot of socialist critique and proposals for a new era of collapse.
Perhaps these topics, and more, will come up in the online courses I co-teach on Leading Through Collapse. The book is available in all formats and as a free epub from: BREAKING TOGETHER – a freedom-loving response to collapse – Prof Jem Bendell
If you think people should know about this book, please skip sharing it on social media, and instead send a link to a few individuals by direct message or email. The reasons to avoid anti-social media algorithms are described in Chapter 13 of the book.
Next week I return to the Benefits of Collapse Acceptance. If you can’t join my online courses, then perhaps we can meet next year?
Jem in Oxford, Brussels, Geneva and Rome, April 2024
Jem in California, November 2024
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Prof Jem Bendell 