Thesis #20: Collapse is an economizing process.
by Jason GodeskyMany will no doubt find the long foregoing discussion of collapse depressing or pessimistic. In “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse” [PDF], John Michael Greer hints at why this is, writing, “Even within the social sciences, the process by which complex societies give way to smaller and simpler ones has often been presented in language drawn from literary tragedy, as though the loss of sociocultural complexity necessarily warranted a negative value judgment. This is understandable, since the collapse of civilizations often involves catastrophic human mortality and the loss of priceless cultural treasures, but like any value judgment it can obscure important features of the matter at hand.” Greer goes on to characterize collapse in terms of ecological succession. In The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter makes a distinct point that collapse “is an economizing process.”
The notion that collapse is a catastrophe is rampant, not only among the public, but also throughout the scholarly professions that study it. Archaeology is as clearly implicated in this as is any other field. As a profession we have tended disproportionately to investigate urban and administrative centers, where the richest archaeological remains are commonly found. When with collapse these centers are abandoned or reduced in scale, their loss is catastrophic for our data base, our museum collections, even for our ability to secure financial backing. (Dark ages are rarely as attractive to philanthropists or funding institutions.) Archaeologists, though, are not solely at fault. Classicists and historians who rely on literary sources are also biased against the dark ages, for in such times their data bases largely disappear.
…
Complex societies, it must be emphasized again, are recent in human history. Collapse then is not a fall to some primordial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity. The notion that collapse is uniformly a catastrophe is contradicted, moreover, by the present theory. To the extent that collapse is due to declining marginal returns on investment in complexity, it is an economizing process. It occurs when it becomes necessary to restore the marginal return on organizational investment to a more favorable level. To a population that is receiving little return on the cost of supporting complexity, the loss of that complexity brings economic, and perhaps administrative, gains.
In other words, collapse happens precisely because it improves our lives–and it happens when the alternative is no longer tolerable. The process of catabolic collapse becomes self-reinforcing, as individuals decide that further complexity is not a worthwhile investment and refuse to make further investments, which makes the prospect even less attractive to other individuals. In the same manner as a “run” on a given company’s stock, the process of catabolic collapse snowballs quickly, until support for a complex society drops so low that that society can no longer be maintained. A “freefall” of lowering complexity follows, until it reaches a level where the marginal returns for it have become favorable again, and people are willing to invest in it again. In “The Old Cause,” Joseph Stromberg illustrates this process with the example of the Roman Empire:
Collapse loomed, but collapse had definite advantages, as shown by its aftermath. The Germanic kings who replaced the empire in the west were better at defending their (smaller) territories against invaders and could do so more cheaply than the overextended empire. In North Africa, the Vandals (victims of a bad press) lowered taxes and economic well-being grew, until Justinian brought back Roman rule and, with it, imperial taxes. “Investment” in this lower level of political “complexity” paid for itself, so to speak, by being less costly. Collapse is not all bad: a disaster for the state apparatus may not be one for people as a whole. Devolution of power to smaller geographical units is “a rational, economizing process that may well benefit much of the population.”
In another light, the essential crisis of civilization is a problem of scale. There are inherent problems to creating any society of humans of the size and scope that civilization requires. When a cell in your body becomes too large, it becomes more difficult for nutrients to reach the nucleus from the outer wall. Civilizations that grow too large face similar problems of scale; they become too large to administer, and face increasing problems with a diminished ability to answer those problems. In the face of such pressures, they fission into smaller entities that are easier to maintain.
Humans are adapted to a band-level society (see thesis #7), and have a very difficult time operating in any unit of society with much more than 150 persons. To accomodate such a maladapted scenario, drastic measures must be taken. These measures make an ill fit to the human animal, and it is precisely this adaptation that leads to all those social ills which we find endemic to civilization, but startlingly absent, or at the very least in a much diminished form, among band-level, foraging societies, such as war, poverty, corruption, chronic stress and even hunger and disease. These are the penalties a large-scale society pays for force-fitting humans into a society larger than they are adapted to. These penalties may be outweighed for a time by the high marginal returns of complexity, but when those marginal returns diminish, civilizations collapse.
In such a collapse, the complexity that allows for such large-scale societies crumbles first, meaning that for a time, there is still a large-scale society and all the problems of scale that accompany it, but without the benefits that complexity offers. During these periods, all those social ills mentioned above–war, poverty, disease, hunger, etc.–spike remarkably. Those ills also serve to reduce that large population by catastrophic means. Though it is a terrible, brutal process, it is so far the only one that has reliably allowed humans to escape the positive feedback loop of ever-increasing complexity, and reap the benefits humans gain from living in the kind of small-scale, band-level societies to which they are best adapted.
Because our civilization has now succeeded in spanning the whole earth with a fragile network of interdependence, no one element can collapse independently, even though much of the world has “collapsed” in the past century. Rwanda, Haiti, the former republics of the Soviet Union and much of the Third World shows what happens when part of a complex system needs to collapse, but remains artificially propped to a higher level of complexity by neighboring concentrations. This trend of localized collapses has even begun to intrude into these concentrations themselves. The destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was an example of a localized collapse inside the United States itself.
Collapse has already begun, and progressed quite far without our notice. Rumblings of awareness have become increasingly ambient in the popular imaginaton in recent years, though full acceptance of the situation remains rare. The current level of complexity cannot be maintained, and individual regions cannot collapse on their own–they must collapse as a system. Whether the final blow is dealt by environmental problems, health issues, or the inability of diminishing resources to fuel our continued growth, the fragile interconnectedness of our globalized, industrial civilization will eventually propogate a catastrophic, catabolic collapse that will cascade through the entire system, feeding on itself until we have reached the next lowest level of sustainable complexity: the Stone Age.
There were great fluctuations of complexity throughout the Stone Age. Throughout most of human existence, social complexity was at its most basic. The Upper Paleolithic Revolution introduced art, music, philosophy, religion, science, medicine, mathematics and all those other things that we value as defining our humanity. These are all at least four times older than civilization, and universal to the entire human race, whether civilized or not. Human societies found a new dynamic equilibrium about a new, higher level of complexity that was sustainable and allowed humans to prosper for 30,000 years.
It was only 10,000 years ago that another jump in complexity was made with the Neolithic Revolution, and the twin innovations of agriculture and hierarchy (see thesis #10). This one proved distinctly unsustainable, and touched off a positive feedback loop of ever more complexity (see thesis #13), leading inevitably to collapse (see thesis #14). Thus, the global collapse of such a system is its inevitable destiny. That destiny has been averted at various times in the past, but each aversion has merely postponed that collapse–and, in postponing it, intensified it, by allowing for even more complexity that must be collapsed, a smaller surviving resource base to fall back on, and a larger population dependent on that complexity.
At the same time, while the sustainable complexity of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution gave us many of those things we value most about our species, the only innovations unique to the unsustainable complexity of the Neolithic Revolution have been the unnecessary evil of hierarchy (see thesis #11), the difficult, dangerous and unhealthy life of the agriculturalist (see thesis #9), and the dehumanizing denial of the open, egalitarian band life to which humans are adapted (see thesis #7).
Collapse ends those things that define complex society–hierarchical oppression, war, disease, toil and others. It restores society to the lower level of complexity to which humans are best adapted, a level which still enjoys art, medicine, science, mathematics, and technology. It is no idyllic utopia, but it is a life to which humans are naturally adapted. We are not descended from “noble savages”; what nobility there is in savagery is simply the product of humans living in a manner to which they are adapted, rather than a dehumanizing system that denies and hems in human nature. It is, in the words of Marshall Sahlins, “the original affluent society.”
The transition, however, will be the greatest ordeal that any species has ever endured. Industrial society currently supports a population of some 6.5 billion humans. The Stone Age can only support a human population measured in millions. The loss of the complexity on which so many people depend for survival can only mean catastrophic die-off. Genocide, war, disease, starvation and widespread suffering will be involved. Essentially, complexity has allowed us to overshoot our sustainable carrying capacity, and that will have to be addressed–catastrophically, if need be.
Unfortunately, it will almost certainly need to be. The alternative to catastrophic increases in mortality would be an unprecedented memetic feat. As we have already seen, the escalating complexity of civilization is a game of prisoner’s dilemna, and thus, a tragedy of the commons. Appeals to conscience, or to any kind of reformed, ecological “vision” are ultimately self-defeating in such a context. Incredible shifts of a population’s ideology have occured in the past–but always in the context of catastrophe. When the Hohokam and Anasazi collapsed, those that survived did so by adopting a new vision of the world and living in a manner that was independent of complexity. They became the Pueblo Indians, one of many Native American groups so often mythologized for ther sustainable, ecologically wise way of life. To the extent that such a characterization is true, it is the product of collapse, and it arose because the alternative was their own destruction.
The collapse of our globalized, industrial civilization will be most similar to the collapse of the ancient Pueblo peoples. Like them, we have left little behind us to rebuild a civilization out of, precluding the possibility of a new civilization in its place, or simply a lower level of agrarian life. Also like them, an alternatve already exists: namely, to adopt a new vision of the world now, to divorce ourselves from complexity, to form band societies in the midst of civilization, and to end our dependence on it so that when it collapses, we do not need it.
Collapse will mean the death of billions, and in aggregate, there is nothing that can save the mass of humanity. But, to quote one of the twentieth century’s most cold-blooded murderers: “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” As we have previously discussed, the human brain is incapable of understanding more than 150 full persons. We aspire to a philanthropic love of the whole human race, but ultimately such concerns become little more than posturing. Worse, our pretenses have often motivated our worst atrocities. While the Chinese remained in haughty dismissal, Christians enslaved whole continents to bring heathens the redemption of Jesus Christ–and shatter their sustainable, affluent societies in the process. In Nazi ideology, the extermination of “inferior races” was a project undertaken for the good of all mankind. “Tribalism,” though, in its usual, pejorative sense–looking solely to you and yours–preserved human tribes for millennia sustainably, in a peace that was, if not absolute, at least sufficient to leave no archaeological hint of violence before the Neolithic. It is difficult to consider our own morals in such an analytical light, but philanthropy has caused great suffering, and “tribalism” was a vital component of the only true peace our species has ever known. Finally, as guilty as it seems, we must all confess that the fate of an abstract “humanity” does not truly interest us in the least. We are concerned with our own fate, and the fate of our family, our friends, and those close to us. We may not be able to do anything for the abstract, anonymous hordes of “humanity,” but the fate of those we truly care about is entirely in our own hands.
Though collapse will be the most terrible ordeal ever endured and billions will die in its course, any given individual can still decide his fate. There is a choice in it, even for those who do not understand that choice. Nearly all of humanity will choose to stay true to their culture to the very end, just as they have in all previous collapses. Some, though, will choose to create a new society, to embrace a new vision of who they are, what humanity is, what the world is, and how they all relate. Like the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians, some will choose to live sustainably.
Such a future may be less complex, but it will have more diversity. Michael Green’s Afterculture is an inspiring collection of art that explores some of the limitless syncretic possibilities that are far more plausible than the dystopian “Mad Max” scenarios of post-apocalyptic fiction. Green waxes poetic about his project:
The truth is that for the first time we are bereft of a positive vision of where we are going. This is particularly evident among kids. Their future is either Road Warrior post-apocalypse, or Blade Runner mid-apocalypse. All the futuristic computer games are elaborations of these scenarios, heavy metal worlds where civilization has crumbling into something weird and violent (but more exciting than now).
The Afterculture is an attempt to transmute this folklore of the future into something deep and rich and convincingly real. If we are to pull a compelling future out of environmental theory and recycling paradigms, we are going to have to clothe the sacred in the romantic. The Afterculture is part of an ongoing work to shape a new mythology by sources as diverse as Thoreau and Conan and Dances with Wolves and Iron John. The Afterculture is not “against” the problems of our times, and its not about “band-aid solutions” to the grim jam we find ourselves in. It’s about opening up a whole new category of solutions, about finding another way of being: evolved, simpler, deeper, even more elegant. Even more cool. Even very cool.
Our way of life is unsustainable, and it will not go on much longer. Willingly or otherwise, it will soon end; the only question is whether or not we will be ready and able to survive without it. The greatest crisis in the history of the human race looms before us, but that also means that the greatest opportunity in the history of the human race will also soon be opened. In sum, I must agree wholeheartedly with Steven Lagavulin, who concluded “The Future is a Free-For-All” with this:
But the one thing we should not be doing is just sitting on our hands. Because if the future is a free-for-all, then that means there is great opportunity to be seized as all the old rules, the ingrained habits, the institutionalized systems and the hard-fought hierarchies get shaken up and “redistributed” a little bit, and the playing field is levelled. I’m not saying this will happen completely or that it will happen overnight, but when our system collapses there will be as much creative energy released as there is destructive. It will be a time for gaining new things even as we’re being stripped of the old, a time for us to experience expansive new freedom as well as a desperate clinging for control. It will be a time of soul-searching and of blame-casting, of unanswered questions and unquestioned answers. But when all is said and done, we will no doubt look back on the events that are still to come with a bittersweet fondness, the way we do all our growing pains. Thankful that they’re over, but even more thankful that we had them.
Thesis #20 was delayed a few days due to a back injury I suffered on Thursday (it was icy, and I fell down a number of concrete steps). I’m only now able to sit up long enough to finish editing. Hopefully I’ll be able to look through the backlog of comments and make some responses (assuming any are needed) soon.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 18 December 2005 @ 8:49 PM
Sorry to hear that. Hope you’re well.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 19 December 2005 @ 2:22 PM
Well enough to sit up and walk around, so, well enough for most things! I’ll probably be feeling it for a while yet, but at least I’m functional again.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 December 2005 @ 3:04 PM
excellent analysis, this essay displays disciplined thinking and uses insightful examples.
i have been following your writings for a few weeks now and have been very pleased with the “no-frills” approach. i have concluded many of the same things, however i am revisiting one of my assumptions.
my perception of the collapse is that it is likely to end at some agricultural level of complexity. now i am not so sure after reading some of your posts, there is a compelling case for your thesis #10.
thank you for the rigorous work, patrick
Comment by patrick — 19 December 2005 @ 4:16 PM
The only thing I can quibble with in your analysis is the statement:
“complexity has allowed us to overshoot our sustainable carrying capacity, and that will have to be addressed”
It has been resources that have allowed us to overshoot our sustainable carrying capacity–specifically, hydrocarbons, used for the replacement of farm animals by mechanized farm implements, the use of energy to increase irrigation, and the green revolution. Without hydrocarbons (’fossil acreage’, according to William Catton) complexity would have certainly increased until other limits were imposed on us.
I look forward to your next thesis.
Geoff
Comment by Geoff — 19 December 2005 @ 8:10 PM
I am new to this site and finding so much good writ and stimulating thought–thank you to all! What a wonderful essay–non-sensationalist and very well thought out. Have been a self-proclaimed “conspiracy theorist” for years…always knowing that something utterly unfixxable was wrong…many seperate pieces (bubble economies, toxic poisoning of the earth, general unrest in the souls of many).Ha–we though Y2K was gonna be the Big One–it DID serve a good purpose in my life though–such as shaking my unwavering faith in authorities and leaders (it was religious leaders who really put the push and spin on this…Don McAlvany, anyone?)(Also–really cool life skills. I can idenitify, gather and prepare healing herbs, edible greens, take care of small livestock, butcher, and obtain potable water.) I think collapse is inevitable and really liked how this essay finished up: the inevitablity of such, and where do we go from here…? Hope this doesn’t sound naively Newe age-ish, but a really cool book I’ve enjoyed is authored by Sun Bear, I think its called “Dark Day, Bright Dawn”.
Jason–be well!
Comment by Beth — 19 December 2005 @ 10:16 PM
Geoff –
The basis of complexity in human society is energy. Agriculture allowed greater complexity because it yielded a higher number of calories per land area. In much the same way, the resources of fossil fuels allowed an increase in complexity. Your comments, then, are valid — but you must consider that complexity in civilization is part of a reinforcing feedback loop that leads to ever greater complexity. Looking at any one element in isolation and attributing the overshoot of the carrying capacity to that factor is missing the overall picture. One could come up with a number of other just as incriminating factors that led to our overshoot.
William Catton does an excellent job of establishing a basis from which to view human society, but his application of it was based on now-outmoded anthropology (notice his citation of Childe’s Social Evolution (1951)). He also does not recognize agriculture as a form of drawdown (due to topsoil loss and soil depletion, among other things). This is unfortunate, because the insights he has into the ecological basis of human society are very powerful. In fact, I’m going to use the frame he develops as the basis for my own analysis. But as it stands, his perception of hydrocarbons being the first form of drawdown is inaccurate.
Comment by Devin — 19 December 2005 @ 10:18 PM
Complexity opens up new energy sources, and has a specific energy cost of its own. So, on one level, you’re absolutely right–it was resources, specifically, hydrocarbons, that allowed us to overshoot our carrying capacity. In another sense, it was complexity (that allowed us to obtain said hydrocarbons, ) that allowed us to overshoot our sustainable carrying capacity.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 December 2005 @ 10:10 AM
Right, without hydrocarbons, societal complexity would have increased in another manner, and it might have taken us longer to overshoot the carrying capacity. So perhaps finding fossil fuels will be what, longterm, saves biodiverse life on earth, by accelerating complexity and bringing about collapse sooner.
As Devin says, “The basis of complexity in human society is energy.” Or, the basis of human society is energy. Or, the basis of humans (and animals, and plants, life as we know it) is energy. Nice insight on agriculture as drawdown, instead of only being takeover.
Comment by Geoff — 20 December 2005 @ 3:09 PM
You mentioned China and its apparent unwillingness to expand fast in your essay.
What are your thoughts on why the Chinese Empire never collapsed to stone age?
Comment by _Gi — 20 December 2005 @ 3:39 PM
China did expand–but more slowly. And, proving my “prisoner’s dilemna” formulation, they were effectively conquered by the West for failing to keep pace. Now they’re coming back, but only by being even more intensive. So, the reason the Chinese Empire never collapsed to the stone age is the same reason Europe never collapsed to the stone age: it’s happening now.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 December 2005 @ 3:45 PM
But how did China escape the fate of the Fertile Crescent? Why didn’t it turn into a desert region in five thousand years of uninterrupted agricultural civilization?
Comment by _Gi — 20 December 2005 @ 4:26 PM
I don’t know much about China, but I do know that, being more mountainous, China’s agricultural production relied on terracing and regular floods to renew the fertility of their fields. They were less intensive, and the flooding undid much of the damage done by their cultivation, in just the same way that agriculturalists were able to keep farming the Nile long after the Fertile Crescent had been killed off.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 December 2005 @ 4:29 PM
Does that mean that it will be possible for China to shrug-off the global collapse and go right back to their agricultural civilization, after necessary population “adjustment” occurs.
Is the world heading for collapse as a billiard ball sent to the pocket by a pool shark, or is it more like a golf ball driven by a rookie golfer on a par 5 hole?
Comment by _Gi — 20 December 2005 @ 4:53 PM
There will be some places that will still be able to engage in agriculture–like the Yellow River, the Nile, etc. But they also won’t be able to reach any significant veins of practical metals. That means their technology and their scale will be capped at the Neolithic. So, there will be a few uniquely viable areas for agriculture, but they’ll be capped at the level of a Neolithic kingdom. The loss of metals will not only deprive them of the weapons needed for conquest, it will also deprive them of the axes and plows necessary to farm those areas that are not suited for it.
Finally, besides the fact that most of what was once arable is no longer, we must remember that that spell was a temporary state of the Holocene interglacial which, one way or another, will not long survive the civilization it allowed. Whether global warming or renewed ice age, geological ages will pass before the global climate is again suitable for agriculture. Farming a jungle is only slightly easier than tilling a glacier.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 December 2005 @ 5:05 PM
To all –
I was a bit more specific, but Geoff got it right on — the basis of all life on earth is energy. Civilization must therefore be seen as a manifestation of this energy. This is basically just saying that civilization (humanity, all life, etc.) is subject to the laws of physics and the limitations of a finite world and finite energy inputs. As Catton says, the myth of human exceptionalism is the most dangerous myth there is, and must be exposed as such if humanity is going to do anything about its predicament. The insight of agriculture as drawdown is an important piece of this picture, as it forces us to reconsider the foundations of Our Glorious Civilization. It simply follows logically that civilization is unsustainable if it is dependent on agriculture.
As it stands, however, it appears this insight is too little too late, as the feedback loop has run its course already and we’ve “painted ourselves into a corner”. The only thing left to do is prepare, and make funny observations like “Farming a jungle is only slightly easier than tilling a glacier.”
Comment by Devin — 20 December 2005 @ 8:28 PM
Jason, you warned us that it would be depressing, but I actually found it inspiring. These #20 ends on a very positive note about what humanity can have post collapse, if it rejects the mistakes of the past.
Comment by Peter — 20 December 2005 @ 9:51 PM
Well, I said many would find the “foregoing discussion” depressing, by which I meant the previous theses. I’ve been characterized as “pessimistic” because I keep talking about how we can’t avoid collapse. Thesis #20 is supposed to start setting that straight, that the inevitability of collapse is probably a good thing, overall.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 December 2005 @ 10:42 AM
I had a dream recently, of a post-collapse future, in which there were well-provisioned houses for the elderly, and for women who were pregnant or had very small children; and there were nomadic scavengers (I was one) who wandered abandoned cityscapes looking for food. Perhaps symbolic, it was snowing and there were wolves–also engaged in foraging–and unless they were after the same tin of stew, wild homonid and wild canid tolerated each other’s presence.
I woke up feeling something like bliss–
Comment by John Salisbury — 27 December 2005 @ 9:16 AM
I read this, and saw a vision of stacks of humanity and their complex forms building unstable towers, trying again and again, each time reaching a height at which the techniques they used failed and the tower fell, scattering all until they regrouped to try again. What were they building? The Tower of Babel, perhaps? What were they building towards? Perhaps the power that man seeks in his universities and research institutions, the budding fruit of the labors of the masses, knowledge of the tools and the mind of God (in a metaphorical sense). Some have suggested that were technology to reach a certain level of complexity, the factors that necessitate the collapse of unsustainable complexity could be rendered obsolete, such as food and shelter, leaving open a whole new field upon which to build our intricately detailed towers, perhaps collapsing again and again until we learn enough lessons to break through the second set of clouds.
I dunno, just thought I’d share that idea.
Comment by Nate — 27 December 2005 @ 4:47 PM
The author’s analysis is too ignorant of the realities of modern political economy; how wealth (things we value) is created and distributed.
I can identify no thoughts of value, no facts to support conclusions like “The current level of complexity cannot be maintained” in his entire post.
Without identification of the actual possible modalities of collapse it is unscientific babble since history has no great predictive value given modern inventions like mass literacy, democracy, travel, and science itself.
The author’s comment here: “But they also won’t be able to reach any significant veins of practical metals” indicates to me he knows not of what he speaks (ores are not veins).
This is not intended to criticize the thesis of collapse; I find much to agree with JH Kunstler about.
Comment by Troy — 27 December 2005 @ 7:10 PM
This post has been linked at Metafilter.
It might be interesting to address some of the issues discussed there as well.
Comment by Somebody — 27 December 2005 @ 7:56 PM
Troy,
The answer to some of what you say can be found in the title. This is the 20th post in a series of 30. Some of what you mention is discussed in greater detail in the previous 19 posts.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 27 December 2005 @ 11:38 PM
Your script has hijacked my key bindings. When I pressed Alt + B to open the bookmarks menu, it placed a “strong” tag here in this text box. This happens even if the focus (cursor, caret) is outside of this text box at the time.
This is obnoxious. Please change your script to correct it. Aren’t the buttons enough of a means for visitors to insert tags? Can’t you imagine that anyone might already be using their key bindings for something other than what you designate?
A Mozilla bug has been filed, but it will take a long time to get fixed. Meanwhile, please be a good “netizen” and do not interfere with visitors’ browsers.
BTW, the article was interesting.
Comment by Steve — 27 December 2005 @ 11:41 PM
I’m pretty sure that issue has already been addressed.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 27 December 2005 @ 11:58 PM
Mike: Redundancy is of course the key, and is the point I made about mass x,y,z being the differentiation from modern life and eg. the Romans.
Mass literacy and a common world-wide tradition grounded in the scientific method means you could vaporize 90% of the world population randomly and we’d still have enough science to not fall further than mid-20th century (though technology would be a different picture).
Focusing on the one of the things that is over-regulated and stretched pretty thin (the power grid) will of course illustrate the danger of lack of redundancy.
While I’m no free-market fundamentalist, I do have a healthy respect for the resiliency of the de-centralized market, and the wealthy nations have quite a surplus of capital — so much so, that we’re seeing capital chase land monopolies, resulting in empty asset inflation in the real estate sector.
Asserting that the stone age is the next stop of complexity entropy is dopey IMV.
Humankind isn’t going to forget the Industrial Revolution, even if we have to power stuff with oxen. There might be one helluva die-off, and riots that make LA ‘92 look like a picnic, but the social capital we have isn’t so fragile of stuff.
Comment by Troy — 28 December 2005 @ 5:43 AM
Hey morons!
Some people are not waiting for the collapse to start economizing:
http://www.fuellingthefuture.org/edap.htm
Is those kind of ideas succeed that will be terrible!
No way back to the “happy” neanderthal way of life, what a pity!
To Troy:
Arguments are hopeless, the Anthropik “tribe” is a cult, they wish for collapse to get back to “primitive” conditions and the would-be dominant alpha-males are already rejoycing.
Comment by Ah no nymous — 28 December 2005 @ 3:23 PM
Morons?
It must be easy to name call when you are sitting behind a computer with an “Ah no nymous” name.
And no, not a cult..a TRIBE
Hence the name, The TRIBE of Anthropik
If you want to go through the definitions of both words, we can.
Comment by Miranda — 28 December 2005 @ 3:59 PM
Well, I just got in after a 10-hour train ride from Poughkeepsie to find the Anthropik Network spammed to hell and back, and that my beloved MetaFilter has passed judgment on me in my abscence. About what I’d expect a MetaFilter judgment to be, as it’s pretty much every MetaFilter judgment, but thanks to Mike for trying to raise the level of debate. Now, responding to those who commented in that interrim….
You’ll also note that this post’s title begins with “Thesis #20.” I’m building off of 19 previous pieces, including more than a few that back up that assertion, such as, “Thesis #14: Complexity is subject to diminishing returns,” “Thesis #15: We have passed the point of diminishing returns,” and “Thesis #16: Technology cannot stop collapse.”
The actual possible modalities of collapse are discussed, in detail, in the foregoing theses, as alluded to in the first sentence of this post, as are the reasons why the various elements you refer to are not only irrelevant to stopping collapse, but ultimately contribute to it.
Science has nothing to do with a society’s complexity; technology–being the application of science–does that. And since technology is bound by things like the availability of raw materials, such as veins of ores and metals which we have discussed here at various lengths, which are no longer found in sufficient quantities close enough to the surface to be mined without industrial, petroleum-running equipment. Moreover, setting aside the fact that scientific literacy in the U.S., much less worldwide, is abyssal, even scientific literacy cannot preserve science in the face of a catastrophic collapse. Too many of the crucial details, known only to the most specialized scientists, would be loss. Such is the fragility of escalating complexity, and its dependence on ever-increasing specialization, particularly in scientific research. Tainter discusses this at length in Collapse of Complex Societies, and I deal with this precisely in theses #15 and #16, linked above.
And never mind “Ah no nymous,” he comes around with that same little screed every few weeks. Never bothers to back it up. Just a silly resident troll. Think of him like our own little dios, if you’re a MeFite.
Steve — You’re the first person I know who’s done any key-bindings and visited this site. All my scripts are WordPress plugins, ’cause I know pretty much zilch about JavaScript, but I’ll see what I can do.
“Somebody” — I skimmed some of the posts at MetaFilter, so let me sum up the answers to what I saw.
1.) I’m hardly “redefining” civilization–we’ve discussed the definition of the word at length, most recently with “Thesis #13: Civilization always pursues complexity.”
2.) We’ve also had a fairly significant discussion on what kind of “complexity” we’re talking about here, in theses #14-16, linked above. We’re talking about cultural complexity.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 December 2005 @ 9:44 PM
First off, great article. Very thought-provoking, as usual.
Troy wrote:
Mass literacy and a common world-wide tradition grounded in the scientific method means you could vaporize 90% of the world population randomly and we’d still have enough science to not fall further than mid-20th century (though technology would be a different picture).
To build on Jason’s comments, not only is technology the basis of complexity, but it is crucial for the level of scientific discovery & usability of the knowledge we now enjoy. Without it, we can’t replicate the discovery of something like DNA or build on the Genome Project. The information we’ve discovered so far will be preserved in books, but what those books MEAN may well be lost (and the info itself will be de facto lost if stored on CDs, the Web, or similar media that require technology to access them, even if the CDs themselves are intact).
The level of knowledge we now have might DELAY how far a post-collapse society falls, but once the generation or two that actually remembers our present technology and can interpret the scientific literature accurately dies, some of the knowledge itself will begin to slide into mythology.
Of course, this somewhat assumes a gradual collapse. If collapse involves global war, the suddenness of change will likely make most modern science irrelevant more quickly (not to mention destroy the information sources themselves).
Geoff wrote:
perhaps finding fossil fuels will be what, longterm, saves biodiverse life on earth, by accelerating complexity and bringing about collapse sooner.
I take you don’t believe our technology has yet reached the capacity to cause mass extinctions, with nukes or other means. Now, I’m not sure it has… I think we MIGHT be able to wipe ourselves and other animals near the top of the food chain out, but the global ecosystem will survive in a simplified form.
In the extreme long term, fossil fuels, nukes and anything else H. sapiens does won’t matter either way; the web of life has weathered prior extinctions and will see future ones. About the only thing that can stop life on Earth is the sun’s eventual expansion to red giant status.
Comment by Jay Denari — 2 January 2006 @ 4:19 PM
Well, I’m not sure scientific knowledge necessarily has to disappear as part of collapse. If that’s something we value, I think we can find some way to preserve it. So, if “collapse” means “we’ll lose everything we’ve learned,” then certainly not. Why can’t we have small-scale, egalitarian, sustainable societies that are also scientifically literate? I don’t see any necessary contradiction in that.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 January 2006 @ 4:26 PM
The post and also some of the discussion, is truly stimulating brain food.
While I agree with your assessment, that collapse will come and that it will be a world-wide and pretty unpleasant event, I differ on the point of “drama or not�. However, that may be a difference of perspective rather than a difference in perspective rather than one of absolute truth.
If there was a way to quantify happiness, you might indeed find that past or future stone age peo-ple do not “have� less of it than we do (on the average per time unit that is. Quantified for a whole lifetime, it would be less, because they did - and will - have a shorter lifespan).
However, if you think of evolution as the “story�, then collapse most certainly is a drama. Evolution seems to have been an exponential develop0ment of forms of life to ever more complex plants and organisms. Since the advent of humans, this trend is being continued through the development of mankind in more complex economical, political and social structures, and in rapidly increasing sci-entific and technological knowledge. In this respect, our development, much as it may be destruc-tive to “nature�, seems to be quite in accordance with ‘�nature�.
Therefore, in my opinion mankind is not destined to live happily (or not – if you consider the com-ment of Susanna Viljanen on “The Worst Mistake in History� (http://anthropik.com/2005/03/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race/#comment-2951) in small bands of hunter-gatherer tribes. In my view, if the pre-sent state of things is the result of evolution, than that is what evolution has “meant� us to be (which does not, of course, preclude a more intelligent use of scarce resources: that too should be something we ought to have learnt during evolution).
Much as I have not contributed personally to our scientific advancement, I still am proud of the level that our civilization has reached and which is unparalleled in history, also as being the first global “world system� (much as some historians try to detect – or rather define – former “world sys-tems�). It would be a pity to see all of that go down the drain of drained resources.
Ideally, my vision would be for mankind to jointly focus on using a maximum amount of our eco-nomic and ecological resources on advancing science and colonizing space, so that maybe our civilization will live on, hopefully on a still higher level, somewhere else. But that may be unrealistic even from a technical point of view, and certainly is a pipedream on the level of political feasibility.
Anyway, I do not think you can prepare for the post-collapse-period now anyway. That will be a very protracted process, for many generations. In the meantime, you will need the qualifications, or jobs, that kept people alive during times of hardship, like the postwar-period in Germany. The farmers will again be “lining their stables with Persian rugs� (like they used to say in postwar Ger-many). Government will operate a rationing system, and the black market will try to get around it (for the benefit of the rich). As a farmer, or a dealer on the black market (and maybe as a police-man, or as a soldier) you will be able to grab a greater share of whatever is left. If you know which herbs are edible and which are not, it may help to survive, but it will on a bare level of subsistence and not a very happy life in the crumbling ruins of society.
There will never be stone age societies like in the early days of mankind any more, because there is too much left of civilization that people will either try to hang on to, or that (like buildings) will stand in their way.
Too bad, that one of us will ever know what the world will look like in 100 years from now.
Comment by Canabbaia — 21 May 2006 @ 1:09 PM
That’s an illusion, as we saw in Thesis #2. See also Stephen Gould’s Full House.
As discussed there, her comment was baseless. Not only does it have absolutely no evidence, it also flies in the face of all evidence we do have.
What achievement is that? Everyone living the same way is a noble achievement? Or do you mean our science and medicine, which are no better or worse than any other culture’s knowledge or medicine? Our art which is, at best, no better than other cultures’ art? Or do you mean our ability to produce high body counts from wars and disease? That must be what you mean, because it’s the only facet in which our civilization is exceptional.
Kind of like the alien invades in Independence Day, consuming every natural resource until all life is dead, and then moving on to kill the next planet.
An accelerating process can take place very quickly. While most civilizations do cling on for a century or more, very often, most of the damage is done in a fairly short period of time. In 20 years, the places we’re moving to now where we have to deal with the U.S. government will be so far beyond civilization’s reach that we’ll be able to afford blissful ignorance of the martial law, fascist regimes, and grisly cannibalism going on in the remaining cities.
It doesn’t matter how much people try to hold onto, if there’s nothing to hold onto. Civilization is not merely created because we want it; it’s created from energy, and if that energy is no longer available, your desire for it becomes irrelevant.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 May 2006 @ 2:16 PM
Humans!
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 May 2006 @ 2:37 PM
Jason wrote:
>Well, I’m not sure scientific knowledge necessarily >has to disappear as part of collapse. If that’s >something we value, I think we can find some way to >preserve it. So, if “collapse” means “we’ll lose >everything we’ve learned,” then certainly not. Why >can’t we have small-scale, egalitarian, sustainable >societies that are also scientifically literate? I >don’t see any necessary contradiction in that.
Jason, if you decide to have kids, will you teach them to read?
Comment by _Gi — 22 May 2006 @ 6:46 PM
If they want to learn. I’m a big fan of the Sudbury model.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 May 2006 @ 7:39 PM
To reply on some of your other arguments, I guess I better read your thesis # 2 first.
However, I do not see how a society after collapse might be able to preserve “scientific knowledge”.
While it is impressive to read that already stone-age tribes practised trepanation (http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/hsc06b.htm) (which I guess they didn’t even do that in our civilization during the Middle Ages) this is not what we meaningfully understand by “scientific knowledge”. They (some of them, here and there) may have practised trepanation. But if they found a skull with a whole in it, they had no way of telling whether that whole came from trepanation or from a fight etc.
They did not have effective measures against the plague, and while our fight against cancer may not always be successful, at least we understand what cancer is.
Much as I am familiar with your argument that “our science and medicine, which are no better or worse than any other culture’s knowledge or medicine” (Oswald Spengler makes that same point in his comparison of civilisations, but you would probably extend it to previous stages of human development too?), we obviously live longer than our ancestors. We understand electricity and know how to use it. We may not morally be any better for it, but we did create a more complex society and amass more scientific information than history has seen before.
Obviously their is a big difference in whether you can travel between Europe and America in a couple of hours, or not at all, whether you can communicate simultaneously, or not at all.
Of course there was “science” and there were even “universities” in the Middle Ages, and our archaeology reveals astonishing achievements in ancient cultures.
But none of it is the systematic, rigid process of gaining and using information that we call “science” and “technology” today. A society without computers is a society without science. Or, if you prefer: the word “science” would not have the same meaning in their society than in ours.
As for the timeline of collapse, I very much doubt that it will be quick and neat. Rather, I fear it will be long and very messy. Peak Oil does not mean that we will suddenly not produce any more oil. So humans and states will try to get as much as they can as long as they can.
Already, there have been (involuntary) large-scale experiments with an oil shortage, at least if I can trust an article by a certain Dale Jiajun Wen “Peak oil preview: North Korea & Cuba. A tale of two countries: How North Korea and Cuba reacted differently to a suddenly diminished oil supply” (http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1462). (There is also a short reference to that “experiment” in the Sunday Times article “Waiting for the lights to go out” by a certain Bryan Appleyard. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-1813695_1,00.html)
And what we lack in mineral oil, we will try to make up for by “renewable oil” gained from plants (with the consequence, of course, that there will be a direct competition between food production and energy production).
Also, we still have the knowledge to construct watermills, windmills etc. And, much like the Roman population in the remains of the (West-)Roman empire, people will try to hang on to their old ways as long as they can and to whatever level is feasible. When there are no flights between the USA and Europe any more, there will still be sailboats operating, and from the junk piles of our civilisation people will still be able to “mine” enough iron in order to make axes and whatever medieval tools you need to build those ships.
No, if the collapse is due to resource depletion, I don’t think it’s going to be something like a one-step thing from civilisation back to stone-age. (If the origin is some cosmic catastrophe or global environmental collapse, things may be different, but then there will not be many people, if any, left.)
Comment by Canabbaia — 23 May 2006 @ 1:29 PM
This is going to be a quick recap of thesis #23. First, we need to seperate two things. (1) Science is a specific, rigorous means of attaining knowledge. It is one of many means of attaining knowledge, neither the only one nor necessarily the best one. (2) Scientific knowledge is the minimalist body of knowledge created by that process.
Now, aboriginal knowledge is not science. But they are not lacking for knowledge: trephanation is but one of the achievements of Stone Age peoples and modern foragers. Thesis #23 mentions quite a few others.
Sure they did. Only some of our specialists know how to distinguish such things; among foragers, that kind of knowledge was common.
Actually, they didn’t get plague, though their stories indicate a certain understanding that their living patterns kept them from getting sick. Plague is a zoonotic, so it only arises among agricultural peoples. Foragers are mobile and live in small groups, so plagues can’t spread very easily. Epidemic disease is really a product of agricultural society; see thesis #21.
Also, to say that foragers don’t understand what cancer is assumes that your idiom is right (by virtue of being yours), and theirs is wrong. You see an infection and talk about germs; they see an infection and talk about the poisoned arrows of the spirits. Theirs is invisible, just like yours; theirs makes you sick, just like yours. Your knowledge is minimalist; since you cannot prove that germs have intentions, you assume they don’t. Their knowledge is mythopaiec; they ascribe motivations. Both of you are reasoning in metaphors; you still talk about bacteria “invading” your body, and how you “fight off” infection. You draw up metaphors of battles and wars. Their idiom is different. There’s no evidence that they understand any less than we do; in fact, their ability to reason simultaneously on cultural, biological, and mythic levels is something that I find deeply impressive, especially compared to our myopic fixation solely on the material level of every situation.
We live longer than our agricultural ancestors. We now live as long (but no longer, and possibly not quite as long yet) as foragers. And then, only the wealthiest of us. We discussed this at length in thesis #25.
That is true, but most of us understand intuitively that greater complexty is the opposite of human happiness. I like the knowledge, and while we have more specifically scientific knowledge than primitive societies, we’ve lost just as much of other kinds of knowledge, so that our overall understanding of the universe hasn’t changed terribly much.