Funny – Prof Jem Bendell

Bedtime Doom

December 5, 2025December 5, 2025 jembendell

Lying in bed, I was too tired to read but not yet asleep. “Can you read me a bedtime story,” I said, half jokingly. “Sure,” my partner replied, and began to read aloud. Drifting off to sleep, I suddenly heard a word I never hear in normal life — relinquishment. “Huh, nobody uses that word.” My partner laughed, as if it was really funny. “Is this a Deep Adaptation story?” Rolling over, I looked towards her phone, and saw the text on the screen, which looked like the output of a chatbot. “What was your prompt?” She scrolled back up to show me: “Write a short story that Professor Jem Bendell would enjoy.”

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Collapsis – a public health emergency of international concern

October 8, 2024October 8, 2024 jembendell

There is now significant evidence of an ongoing breakdown of industrial consumer societies, worldwide, due to hitting natural limits and internal contradictions. As this is a painful realisation, many experts avoid saying it publicly, while the mainstream media have been ignoring it. Nevertheless, opinion polls reveal that most people know something is seriously wrong, as we have been experiencing years of disruption, degradation and decline. Consequently, a new epidemic is taking hold, which offers a distraction from the worry and pain. As this ‘Collapsis’ may soon become a ‘public health emergency of international concern’, here I’ll describe what is currently known about it 😉

Collapsis is 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. There are already many variants of Collapsis, which will be superseded by new ones, due to the susceptibility of human hosts and the economic drivers behind spreading infection. In this blog I list fifteen variants I am already aware of.

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The Doom Vindication Blues

March 20, 2024March 20, 2024 jembendell

Although there are many potential benefits from accepting societal collapse, there is nothing inherently beneficial about being right about one’s expectations of catastrophic change. Having held more accurate assessments than the majority doesn’t reduce the pain about what’s happening or what’s to come. It doesn’t compensate for the alienation experienced with those who would not see, or even condemned our clarity. It doesn’t compensate for the pain of witnessing the lost opportunities for people to process this reality for themselves. If there is any benefit in being right, it comes from how we acted with our awareness until now. Has it influenced us to do more of what we consider wholesome, and less of what we consider unwholesome? Has it meant we have tried to develop our capabilities for coping better as life becomes more difficult? Perhaps, also, to help others develop their own capabilities? You know the basics – mindfulness, letting go of old habits and expectations, and having a way to make sense of life in an era of collapse. For some of us, we can experience a liberation from past compromises and the permission to ‘go wild’. Without evolving ourselves in such ways, then feeling we were right could generate a further alienation, through a pointless sense of superiority. And what we definitely don’t want is to be isolated in our pain as things unfold, in the same way many of us have been isolated in our anticipation. So, when our outlook is confirmed by current observation, it is a time to assess whether we have made good use of our knowledge. Then, if not sure, to commit to try again.

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New Italian premiere Mario Monti vows to make Neutrinos run on time

November 20, 2011November 20, 2011 jembendellLeave a comment

After announcing his new cabinet, which includes no elected politicians, Mario Monti got to work in reassuring the public and markets of their focus in restoring confidence in Italy. “Further evidence this week that Italian scientists have measured neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light, has damaged confidence in Italian precision and efficiency,” said banker Monti. “I vow to make the neutrinos run on time,” said the leader of Italy’s first unelected government since the War. Along with creative austerity measures, such as making politicians redundant, Italy may be able to restore confidence in its bond issues. “This will enable us to fund international banker bonuses for another two years” explained Monti, demonstrating an acumen from his vast banking experience.

Some speculated that if the physics experiments are actually correct, it could be more unsettling to the markets. “For a neutrino to arrive faster than the speed of light means we must ask whether it is the same neutrino. Instead, could it be that the neutrino is being created out of nothing in the expectation of the arrival of a future neutrino? Might that create a momentary quantum debt that could be unsustainable if replicated on a larger scale?” pondered a theoretical physists who preferred not to be named. It is rumoured that the potential for this quantum-debt-default alerted Monti to settle the markets by outlining his neutrino doctrine. “There are so many quants in banking, who design the algorythms that do the high frequency trades, these neutrino results could knock their confidence in Italy’s science, or worse, in Italy’s time-space continuuum,” said the anonymous source. He added “being a Goldman Sachs man, Monti is used to controlling the universe, so subatomic adjustments might not be beyond his imagination.”

Unfortunately Professor Finzione, from the Italian laboratory Gran Sasso, was unable to attend the press conference, after his train was delayed. He sent your correspondent the following sms: “Time is not so linear. It could be a little bit of history repeating… Me ne Frego! [I dont give a damn!]”

[For more news of this type, check out the onion, news biscuit, daily show, colbert report, or, well, the latest headlines!].

Vogue and Marie Claire report on sustainable luxury

November 29, 2010 jembendell4 Comments

marieclaire — Jem interviewed in Marie Claire

Can jewellery give miners decent work and livehoods, promoting sustainable development? Can India reclaim denim, as an organic, handwoven, naturally dyed traditional cloth? These issues are discussed in this month’s Vogue and Marie Claire. I talked to both, while sporting the organic denim Sherwani I created with Prema of Rangoli Fashion House and Rubina of Colours of Nature, when in southern India earlier this year (and photographed by famed photographer (and great chap), Paulo Pellegrin).

One focus of my work since 2006, has been helping promote more awareness of sustainable business issues amongst elites and middle classes across the global South, particularly in Asia and Latin America. So Im pleased that this month I get to promote sustainable fashion and jewellery in both the spanish Vogue and Marie Claire in India. In one of the articles I discuss the history of denim, and how it can be reclaimed as Indian. The side benefit of this work is that, as just an academic and consultant, I get to chuckle about appearing in top fashion magazines! So, don’t just stand there, let’s get to it (strike a pose, there’s nothing to it…)

Thanks to Noela Fernandez and Aekta Kapoor for the interviews.

Some snaps of us in action at Rangoli in Auroville….

planning — Jem and Prema plan the lining

Jem discovers how Rubina and Jesus make blue

Colourful Cuba (cos your gray ain’t my grey)

October 26, 2006April 17, 2009 jembendell2 Comments

I sometimes chat with my flatmate about what it was like growing up in the Communist East. We joke about how grey it was. In my books and films it was grey… the buildings, people, all shades of dull depressed and repressed grey. She tells me that books about the West that she read in East Germany showed the West as… also grey! “OK, so it was so grey in the East, that even our pictures of the West were grey!”.

Was an absence of neon lights and bright paints and colourful advertising actually grey? Its amazing how urban our thinking is… nothing is as colourful as nature. Walking through the UN today I saw paintings from an exhibition sponsored by Cuba. The artist from this communist country, Luis Antonio Espinosa Fruto, chose to paint all his pictures in… grey. But hey, they are bright, brilliant, beautiful images. They are all paintings of the natural environment in Cuba (continues below…).

Cuban nature is mentioned in the depths of a report published by WWF earlier this week. The Living Planet Report tells a shocking story of what we are doing to ourselves and our planet… as Frank Dixon said at a talk on Monday, “the science is telling us we are like the meteor that hit the Yucatan and wiped out the dinosaurs, we are the new great exterminator”. We really are behaving on this planet like we have another one to go to.

On page 19, in a section comparing the amount of resources each country is gobbling up in comparison to the social development they have acheived, as indicated by the UN’s Human Development Index, shows that only one country has achieved a level of social development and environmental protection that can be considered “sustainable development”. That country? Grey-painted communist Cuba. The journos seem to have missed that one in their coverage of the report.

This state of affairs should make us ask some serious questions about current forms of economy and capitalism… are they helping us get what we really want? Is the world any more colourful for its shining lights and gaudy adverts, if these help melt the glaciers, dry up the lands, and degrade nature? Is it any more colourful when people run the rat race to souless material excess while others are malnourished and oppressed?

I guess one reason Cuba comes out on top is because the HDI statistics dont place decisive weightings on certain political freedoms. Cuba probably comes out on top environmentally because of the US embargo has encouraged local production of foods for local consumption. Organic market gardening isnt a lifestyle choice for the middle classes wanting some more meaning to their lives, but a basic necessity for many Cubans. Whats the policy conclusion? That everyone needs to be embargoed by the US?

Open borders only work when you’ve got a fair game going on, with ground rules that mean you dont trade away the environment or people as mere ‘externalities’ that can be disregarded. The evidence from the Living Planet Report is more an indictment of the West than it is praise for Cuba. But, well done Cuba for reminding us that our brains are the only grey matter in nature, and its our choice to make them vitally brilliant or deadly dull.