Subcultures of collapse – will there be a convergence?

A couple of years ago, Richard Hames interviewed me for Novara Media on the topic of whether we might see a solidarity-based politics of collapse. That’s what I encouraged in Breaking Together, by presenting my particular philosophy for these times. Richard is unusual amongst journalists on the left of politics for taking societal collapse risk and readiness seriously. He writes a blog on a topic he calls ‘critical collapsology’. His latest piece explores seven subcultures on collapse and suggests there could be a convergence over time. That hypothesis raises some interesting questions, and so I’m sharing about it here, in advance of a webinar in a couple of months (part of a new ‘Metacrisis Meetings’ initiative).

Richard Hames describes seven subcultures of collapse awareness, which engage with: Environmental Catastrophe, Bad AI, Nuclear Armageddon, Extinction Risk, Western Decline, Population Crash, and Far Right Supremacy (my labels). 

1. Environmental Catastrophe = collapse

Many environmentalists have shifted from climate activism to mourning and degrowth, influenced by recent climate data and science. Richard argues they see climate change as unable to be fixed technologically, and prioritise localism, harm reduction and emotional wellbeing, amid disillusionment with both state action and mainstream environmental narratives.

2. Bad AI = collapse

People who regard AI as driving collapse regard general AI as ensuring, at least, the breakdown of social cohesion due to mass unemployment, institutional erosion, and public manipulation. They regard regulation as ineffective. Some go further, viewing AI as an existential threat to humanity through the development of weaponry or other means of destruction.

3. Nuclear Armageddon = collapse

Geopolitical collapse narratives focus on renewed superpower tensions, exemplified by U.S.-China tech rivalry, as well as conflict between the nuclear powers India and Pakistan. Climate stressors are seen to intensify conflicts over essentials like water and critical minerals, ultimately leading to World War III and nuclear confrontations. 

4. Extinction Risk = collapse

Born from academic subject areas funded by billionaires, those working on X-Risk consider events like meteorite strikes, pandemics or events caused by bad AI. The field is focused on survival over lived experience and meaning and has ignored or downplayed key threats such as environmental catastrophe. 

5. Western Decline = collapse

Termed ‘reactionary civilisationism’ by Richard, this subculture on collapse repurposes existential risk rhetoric to defend traditional power structures and cultural norms. Often led by elites, it frames some social trends as apocalyptic threats. It blends a traditionalist cultural anxiety with techno-utopianism. The concern isn’t universal survival, but preserving specific civilisational orders—often nationalistic, racialised, and economically self-serving. 

6. Population Crash = collapse

So-called ‘underpopulation’ has emerged as a concern amongst some adherents of ‘reactionary civilisationism’. While shrinking workforces and aging populations pose real challenges, solutions like migration are politically rejected. This reactionary underpopulationism racialises fertility decline, blaming feminism or cultural pessimism, and ignores socioeconomic realities like precarious labour and unaffordable family life.

7. Far Right Supremacy = collapse

The resurgence of far-right politics—marked by racism, authoritarianism, and extrajudicial violence— is seen by some people as threatening societal collapse. Such far right politics is enabled by conspiracy thinking and inflames cultural conflicts. It means that actual societal difficulties are ignored. 

Richard concludes that some of these subcultures on collapse will converge in the coming years in ways that will exert political influence. The potential for that to happen is clear between participants in the subcultures of Western Decline and Population Crash. Which is unfortunate, as they are the subcultures with the least grounding in either analysis or universal values. For instance, the ‘Population Crash’ thesis makes an illogical leap from ‘too few kids’ and ‘too many immigrants’ to a total societal collapse. The many decades of obvious population shrinkage that would be observed and then responded to through policies and technology is an obvious flaw in the thesis. Meanwhile, the Western Decline thesis sidesteps the way Western elites have driven the policy agenda of past decades that has immiserated so many citizens in the West. It requires people to imagine they have more in common with their exploitative elites than people of similar social station in another country or with another ethnicity. Both of these two subcultures encourage a paranoid conspiratorial appetite, with ‘conspiracy porn’ including lasers starting fires, chemtrails, and the intentional depopulation of white people. Clearly these two sub-cultures are growing due to support from elites who prefer to channel public unease into whatever explanations that don’t threaten themselves. Such behaviour is nothing new, with elites often supporting the promotion of false enemies to frustrated citizens. 

These two subcultures are two examples of what I have previously termed ‘collapsis’ – “the novel psychological condition of believing illogical ideas to explain the unfolding breakdown of modern societies. Collapsis spreads like an infection, leading to disorientation and counterproductive responses, which might then accelerate the unfolding actual collapse of modern societies.” It is yet to be seen to what extent scholars in the Extinction Risk subculture might be drawn towards the reactionary subcultures or other variants of ‘collapsis’. If they follow the money, then the pull will certainly be there. 

On the other side of the political spectrum, the fear of collapse due to ‘far right supremacy’ can be seen as similarly overblown and tactical. That is because chauvinist policies like those of Donald J Trump are unlikely in themselves to starve a whole citizenry. The elements of the far right that might pose a significant threat to society were not explored in Richard’s essay, but are increasingly concerning commentators like Naomi Klein and and Astra Taylor, who dubbed it ‘end times fascism’. Key is the ‘accelerationism’ concept and community. That has been developed by some billionaires and the commentators they fund, who want to accelerate the collapse of many aspects of society to achieve a more rapid shift to a society that they believe in. Theirs is a form of far right ideology, but not a traditionalist or nativist version. Some strange ideas such as “longtermism” are adjacent to some forms of accelerationism. That is the idea that the potential for infinite amounts of future units of consciousness, either human or (claimed-to-be-conscious) AI, is more important than the current humans alive today, or those coming in the next few generations. With megalomaniacal techno-fantasies, natural resources can be viewed as something to defend from human consumption, so they can fuel the long term future. Therefore, some people have even speculated that if either or both the Covid-19 virus and the mRNA jabs were engineered to damage humans, then techno-fascistic ideas might have been involved. 

Such topics can take us into the realms of dark speculation, and lose credibility amongst some audiences who dismiss it as paranoid theory. Perhaps that’s why Richard didn’t go there in his essay. But this discussion does raise the question of whether we should be assuming that collapse subcultures are all ‘out of power’ and oppositional, rather than if some of the subcultures might already be influencing policies in some countries. Five years ago I wrote about some militaries assessing the strategic implications of societal collapse. Worryingly: in ways that would make matters worse. More recently, I shared the idea that collapse preparedness might already be shaping ‘deep state’ agendas and therefore the policies of some governments even if the politicians themselves don’t realise. Such a view certainly provides a compelling explanatory framework for some of the policies of the new US administration.

As you might expect from me, I think the Environmental Catastrophe, Bad AI, and Nuclear Armageddon subcultures on collapse are the most coherent of the seven identified by Richard. They involve significant amounts of current data, identify clear trends, and provide clear logic for how things can go terribly wrong. I know that some people and ideas are interpolating amongst these subcultures. In addition, some people concerned that ‘Far Right Supremacy’ portends societal collapse are also sharing ideas with them. Meanwhile some experts in the Extinction Risk arena are privately corresponding with people in the other subcultures on collapse, while remaining publicly distinct from them to maintain their brand of objectivity.

I think any generalisations across the subcultures that Richard identifies would need to be cautious, as they could be misleading. For instance, the subcultures on collapse are not all offering an oppositional culture to the mainstream. Instead, many of the collapse narratives are serving to distract anxious people in ways that defend the status quo. However, there are some common determinants that mean these subcultures, and others, will continue to grow. 

First, the real declines in many aspects of society are continuing and will lead to further anxieties of many kinds amongst many people in many countries. Second, a suppression of discussion of such declines by people aligned to incumbent power will mean that mainstream civil discourse will not incorporate collapse thinking in a transparent way. Within the environmental field we continue to witness large funding for the marketing of ecomodernist ideology (the fake green fairytale). Even without such campaigns, there are many reasons for such suppression of discussion. Experts in specialist fields, officials in establishment institutions, executives in large corporations, staff in funded NGOs, all have personal incentives to deny that the systems they are personally succeeding within are, in fact, collapsing, and, therefore, easily considered illegitimate. More generally, the ideology of progress and its connection to capitalist expansion helps to create an allergic ideological reaction to discussions which accept a creeping collapse of modern societies. 

The third reason the subcultures will grow is that this will be encouraged in order to divide opposition to incumbent power. Various fictional ‘collapsis’ narratives will help to channel criticism away from legitimate targets of blame – those who administer and benefit from the systems that have caused the wholesale destruction of the biosphere. As various collapsis narratives become well-known, many adherents to mainstream views will begin to consider any discussion of societal collapse as ‘conspiracy theory.’

A fourth reason that subcultures on collapse will grow is because the opportunity to bring into mainstream politics a sensible, informed, internationalist, humanitarian and environmentally-aware approach to softening societal collapse will be hampered from within. There are many self-identifying progressive, liberal or leftist persons engaged in subcultures on collapse, like the Deep Adaptation movement. A phrase used in the US for such persons is liberal preppers. Recently and unfortunately, I concluded that there has been a self-limiting of the potential political contribution of networks of such persons. That occurs due to the habits of the Western white middle classes that tend to guide and control such networks, when they either fund, volunteer, or participate with their more ample free time. Those habits include assuming the Western establishment’s view of political dynamics is a reasonable view, thereby risking them becoming apologists, or even advancers, of corporate and imperial narratives on current affairs. In recent years that has included public health emergencies, wars, humanitarian crises and human rights abuses. In doing that, they not only hamper their own subculture, but they prevent the mainstream conversation from hearing more from those of us who aren’t similarly misinformed. That is one reason why I encourage people to object to any ideological restrictions on discussions within key networks in the Deep Adaptation movement.

The upshot of all those factors is, whether or not societal collapse will proceed at pace in your part of the world, the subcultures on collapse will grow and shape your experience of society, culture and politics. That is why it really matters that you are reading about it now – if you choose to engage in positive social change. Richard ends his essay with the following: 

“Can we respond to the threat of collapse without shutting down our imaginations of what is possible, or by rushing to preserve our existing societies in exclusionary and dangerous ways? Can we find a new agency befitting this new world, with all its complex integrations and tendencies to unravel?”

Those are great questions, and ones that have animated me for the last 7 years, and led me to evolve the Deep Adaptation framework to 5Rs. The 5th R is “Reclamation” and invites discussion and action in response to the question: ”What can we reclaim about our lives, communities, economies and nature from dominant systems and beliefs?” There is a role for resistance but also moving beyond that. There is a need and opportunity for reclaiming both economic control and meaning-making, as well as relational depth from the alienation of modernity and global capitalism. 

My interest in these questions is also what led me to outline a political philosophy on the environmental crisis that is opposed to the agenda being promoted by global elites. The people I regard as ‘ecolibertarians’ have concluded that societies destroy their eco-social foundations because the self-interests of the powerful are institutionalised to either coerce or manipulate us to experience life as unsafe and competitive. That means more of us cope by becoming more unthoughtful, uncaring and acquisitive. So rather than arguing that authorities and powerful groups should do whatever they decide to try to save the world, ecolibertarianism supports our freedom to care for each other and nature.

These ideas are why I’m engaging with people who are working to meet people’s basic needs through commons-owned assets. It’s why I’m joining them at the Festival of Commoning in September in Stroud, UK and also participating in the Reviving The Commons series in London. It’s also why I hope to use such models for future projects involving Bekandze Farm, if we manage to survive financially during our start-up phase. Furthermore, it is why I will be discussing the politics of collapse with Richard Hames and members of the ‘Metacrisis Meetings’ initiative in a couple of months. Please consider joining us. 

Thx, Jem