Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXXXIII
We’re NOT Saved! We’re Making Our Predicaments Worse.
This Contemplation is the sharing of the foreword to my latest collection of critiques of technological ‘solutions’ to our various predicaments.
Foreword: We’re Saved! Summing Up Volumes 1 & 2.
The need to believe tomorrow will be like today and yesterday is strong. Humans despise uncertainty. It creates immense anxiety; a ‘pain’ that needs to be avoided and replaced by ‘pleasure’, if at all possible. If our immediate environment can’t help with this, our minds can. It is in this vein that we seek stories which enable our bodies to decrease our anxiety and the physiological symptoms that accompany it. Particularly comforting are the tales that suggest we have more agency in our existence than we actually do.
It is here that narratives about ‘saving’ our planet and species from the consequences of our intense use of materially-intense technologies arise. “There are no problems that can’t be fixed!” is the mantra of the times. The ‘bug’ in our thinking, however, is that we tend to be focussed upon a ‘doubling down’ on the very technologies and their extractive and ecologically-destructive processes that have put us in this predicament of ecological overshoot. There are very, very few voices highlighting that enough is enough. Those that are present tend to get marginalised and shouted down for a variety of reasons; not least of which is the discomfort created by such ideas.
Across these almost two dozen “We’re Saved!” Contemplations critiquing supposed ‘solutions’ to the dilemmas that plague our species and planet, a pattern emerges: the technological and systemic ‘solutions’ tend to be overhyped, fundamentally flawed, and serve, in the end, to exacerbate the issues they claim to address. Each promised salvation rests upon a structure of human psychological defence mechanisms, wrapped in language that portrays them as innovative and progressive–the opposite of what they truly are.
If you’re new to my writing, check out this overview.
The commonalities that exist among the various ‘solutions’ include:
Narrative management via greenwashing: they are marketed through their supposed benefits while ignoring or suppressing their drawbacks, usually by way of suggesting these are temporary challenges requiring simply some engineering tweaks. The sales pitches focus almost solely on their promise of salvation while overlooking the trade-offs that arise and the physical limits impeding their possibility.
Avoidance of their additive nature to extraction and biosphere degradation: while presented as replacements for hydrocarbons, proposed technologies are actually adding to total energy consumption and material throughput. Hydrocarbon use continues to rise alongside the growth of alternatives demonstrating that the story about a ‘transition’ is fictional–albeit comforting.
Blindness to scale: proposals that may work within a small, local venue become resource-intensive and ecologically destructive when industrialised for global application. Niche applications do not scale up to societal levels without exacerbating the issues they are claiming to address.
Carbon tunnel vision: ignoring the broader ecological impacts of proposed fixes (e.g., biodiversity loss, waste streams, resource depletion, etc.) by hyperfocussing upon carbon emissions allows some ‘management’ of anxiety about climate impacts but it does zero to address the broader array of ecological destruction brought on by the mass-produced, industrial technologies typically presented as ‘solutions’.
Faith in unhatched chickens: almost all technological ‘solutions’ that get marketed rely upon technical breakthroughs that are invariably “just around the corner” and always seem to require continual funding to be achieved. This has tended to sustain hope while avoiding responsibility for the failure to meet promises.
Perpetuation of growth: virtually every ‘solution’ reinforces the perpetual growth paradigm; a paradigm that is driving ecological overshoot. Business-as-usual expansion is supported without confrontation. The hard discussions about degrowth and simplification are almost invariably avoided.
Enrichment of the global elite: the ‘solutions’ that are laid out before humanity as public goods for the benefit of all are concentrating wealth (including massive state subsidies) and power to the top of societal socioeconomic and sociopolitical structures. Continued extraction, industrialisation, and the inequality that results are masked behind an anxiety-reducing narrative of collective salvation.
If there exists a core message in these We’re Saved! Contemplations it’s that no innovation–technological or systemic–can solve the pursuit of infinite growth on a finite planet. Our species is in ecological overshoot having exceeded planetary boundaries across multiple dimensions and the ‘solutions’ being bandied about are not neutral tools but amplifiers of the very systems that are exacerbating overshoot.
Through these essays I have tried to show that believing in such technological salvation is a collective defence mechanism: it allows the avoidance of uncomfortable truths, especially that complex industrial societies cannot be sustained indefinitely. The narratives that have been created have granted most the illusion of agency–the sense that we can ‘fix’ our way out–while avoiding for the most part any fundamental changes to our patterns of consumption, extraction, and growth that have led us into overshoot.
The real need is not for better or more technologies but for honest acknowledgment of the biophysical limits we face and to engage in those difficult conversations about degrowth, simplification, relocalisation, and harm reduction; conversations that are foreclosed by those who profit from status quo arrangements, but also those with the best of intentions but continue to hold that more technology is our best pathway to pursue. Until we can face the anxiety and discomfort such conversations provoke and what it means for our future to accept limits and the harm we are exacerbating by chasing technological ‘fixes’, it seems we are destined to continue chasing the salvation stories. And with them, the acceleration of the ‘collapse’ they promise to avoid.
Volume 1 can be found here. Volume 2 here.
What is going to be my standard WARNING/ADVICE going forward and that I have reiterated in various ways before this:
“Only time will tell how this all unfolds but there’s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst by ‘collapsing now to avoid the rush’ and pursuing self-sufficiency. By this I mean removing as many dependencies on the Matrix as is possible and making do, locally. And if one can do this without negative impacts upon our fragile ecosystems or do so while creating more resilient ecosystems, all the better. Building community (maybe even just household) resilience to as high a level as possible seems prudent given the uncertainties of an unpredictable future. There’s no guarantee it will ensure ‘recovery’ after a significant societal stressor/shock but it should increase the probability of it and that, perhaps, is all we can ‘hope’ for from its pursuit.”
If you have arrived here and get something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website or the link below — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).
Attempting a new payment system as I am contemplating shutting down my site in the future (given the ever-increasing costs to keep it running).
If you are interested in purchasing any of the 3 books individually or the trilogy, please try the link below indicating which book(s) you are purchasing.
Cost (Canadian dollars):
Book 1: $2.99
Book 2: $3.89
Book 3: $3.89
Trilogy: $9.99
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You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially William Catton’s Overshoot and Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies: see here.
I can’t disagree, unfortunately.
Having been born near London during the second world war, I’ve had the opportunity to study firsthand, the outcomes of various predictions.
All I can say is:
Most things are not as bad as was feared.
Most things are not as good as was hoped for.
Seems we are two in a very, very small group. Check out some of my essays, as I will check yours.