I see the phrase “the collapse of civilization” used around AP circles quite bit. I use it myself sometimes. But I’ve come to think that it doesn’t represent the future I see as probable.
The implication is that civilization will cease to exist in the world. I think it far more likely that it(to the degree that it is a single thing) will contract into smaller, more ecologically productive/resilient areas and return to the pre-industrial pattern of growth, overshoot, decline, and regrowth.
To most people this is indistinguishable from collapse. In many parts of the world it will be, by any meaningful definition. But pockets of agricultural civilization are likely to persist and pastoralism is likely to be more widespread than a few hundred years ago, simply because the various species suited to a particular area are much more available.
It is highly likely that areas inhabited by HG people will be much greater than today in North America, South America, northern Asia, Australia, and possibly parts of Europe.
In south Asia, most of Europe, subSaharan Africa, and parts of the regions mentioned above I expect large areas to be some sort of agricultural society and a lot of pastoralists.
Collapse is definitely the correct word, but it’s important to understand collapse as a process rather than an event.
The breakdown of a mass society, whether it leads to a perpetuation of old habits or not, is still collapse. Some things just die harder than others. Contraction implies that the same society will simply breakdown into smaller, more manageable chunks and perpetuate itself. Quick elaboration below:
Two problems here:
The world has changed. The arrogance of technocrats and politicians renders former methods of subsistence obsolete. Outside of smaller scale, “artisanal” and often “craft-esque” levels of subsistence, the global restructuring plans of the IMF (where their implementation was forced instead of opted for) ensured the globalization of industrial agriculture into the last places where it wasn’t happening already. The reliance on industrial inputs is not to be overstated. And no where did people attempt to really adapt older methods for monocropping applications, they simply did away with the dated technology to borrow money to buy new, specifically created machines which require a massive difference in terms of approach and technique.
This means there is no scale back option. The division of labor and specialization is so specific and catered absolutely to unsustainable methods that it’s not like a “turn back the clock” option exists nor are those tilled fields likely to be quickly turned around once the industrial fertilizers that act as artificial life preservers are no longer an option. I’ve seen grass-fed, management intensive graziers turn technologically demolished crop land into living soil. I’ve seen that take anywhere from 3 to 5 years. Without having massive organic inputs from grazing and flocking wild animals, that return is likely to remain slow.
In my personal experience, I’ve found that by planting native plants intent on bringing back pollinators that fairly nuked soil could get back to a relatively healthy state within a year or two. Though more sustainable methods of farming and gardening will typically incorporate fallow periods, they don’t necessarily entail intentional rewilding with native plants. Some very hip or progressive plots, sure, but since the intent is to keep the soil healthy enough to take another round of agricultural beating, they’re not dropping a lot of money on seeding diverse natives.
What I’m getting at here is that neither the technology nor the technique nor the soil is ready for some kind of immediate “draw down” from industrial technology, save the niches where such activity is already occurring.
Thanks to globalization, that’s far more widespread than not. But a collapse (in terms of historical and anthropological discussion, collapse really just means significant simplification of a society due to internal or external pressures, in our case, that’s a major process) doesn’t mean everything goes back to zero, it won’t be smooth, easy or universal. Pockets of people will try to down scale and for certain periods, they might be successful, but considering the collapse of this civilization is induced by peak energy and that has determined the principle means of all forms of production, distribution and communication, it’s simply an uphill battle to reanimate something that’s already been dead.
Climate instability means that the Holocene, the period of relative stability that made agriculture possible, is ending. That’s a massive issue that seems to be continually overlooked. We’re seeing examples of this already, in terms of; declines in arable land, increased desertification, lack of winter snow pack, decrease in reliable rain patterns, increases in torrential rain that leads to increased run off and decreased soil absorption, and even genetic changes in primary grain crops that lead to increased toxicity. Likely we’ll continue to see new and emerging parasitic and bacterial emergences that target what crops are likely to make it.
Basically, agriculture is dependency upon reliable circumstances. Typically the system works because there are just enough cash crops to buffer a bumper crop on one end and a drought in another. Having watched grain and feed prices for the past seven years, there are absolutely 1:1 correlations between weather patterns and crop yields that rampantly infect availability and viability. The trend is towards instability. Heavier rains, longer droughts, significant late freezing; you can improve your methods in terms of gardening, you can increase the number and types of crops you are invested in, but we’re still playing within a rough patch of the Holocene where there’s still some degree of stability, but, by all means, that isn’t a probability that I would bank on. To rely on that is to disregard the kind of resiliency that saw humans and our predecessors through massive climate shifts.
There are many other points on the matter as well, but those, to me, are the two most apparent and prevalent reasons as to why this is a collapse scenario, not a contraction. We still believe that we are in control and we most definitely are not. We took the wheel, but we’re already headed towards the cliff.
Granted there are still societies that practice “more sustainable” variations of pastoralism or horticulture who will definitely fare better than the residuals of industrial agriculture, but many of them have highly complex societies but not civilizations. Having not tied themselves to this one, they hopefully will be spared its fate.
Nothing about AP critiques means that collapse happens only if everyone becomes nomadic, egalitarian societies again. The point is that if we’re looking for direction, the one that worked is probably the most ideal and, in an evolutionary sense, the one most inclined to work again. Conveniently, the one that worked out best is the one our minds, bodies and wants are catered to: the life of the nomadic hunter-gatherer. The ultimate message is that civilization is the delusion of control, a delusion we’re likely to be spared of within most of our lifetimes.
Did “post-civ” ever go anywhere? Is that where “Take the best, compost the rest.” came from? I remember an essay by Usul of the Blackfoot (?) that I wanted to like going in, and remember not liking it, but not exactly why (probably relied on the standard primitivist strawman).
I’m familiar with the arguments you are making, but consider it apocalyptic optimism to think that circumstances will simply wipe away civilization. Industrialism I think is pretty much done for, but with a severe shock comes reorganization. This version of civilization won’t continue, but some form of it will exist in places. I would expect those places to be mostly river valleys and for each of those to be subject to the usual growth/collapse pattern.
I’m not saying it’s impossible that civilization will be totally wiped out, but it doesn’t seem likely within the parameters of humans surviving and continuing to be widespread. I don’t buy the near term human extinction arguments and don’t think you do either.
I suppose what I’m saying is that I expect this collapse to be a lot like previous ones, but more so. And since the effects won’t be globally even some areas will act to mitigate them as other areas are struck. My base assumption is that a significant number of people change what they are doing or how they are doing it when they have to and that this will result in a patchwork of wildly different societies moving through and beyond the collapse of this civilization, but some form of civilization as a thing won’t disappear, no matter how much one might like it to. In large areas it will seem that way though and for people there it won’t matter that somewhere far away is a pocket of agricultural feudalism or whatever.
I highly recommend the book Dark Age America by John Michael Greer as an overview of what happens when civilizations collapse, and what that will probably look like for ours with the factors currently at play.
I don’t want to go too far into cuckoo sci-fi land, but I find the simulation argument interesting. I believe I recall JZ trashing it on Anarchy Radio, which I understand, and basically agree with. Everyone wants to talk about the simulation part of it, but the other side of the argument, which hardly ever gets talked about, is that if we’re not in a simulation, the math points to a very low-tech future after we pass peak industrialism or peak energy or whatever we’re calling it.
“Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?”. Nick Bostrom. Philosophical Quarterly, 2003, Vol. 53, No. 211, pp. 243-255. [html] [pdf]
I read Greer’s blog regularly. He has a very different preferred society, but is a good antidote to the emotional appeals and general excitability that are very common in radical politics/the peak oil scene/etc.
One thing from there that seems very sensible is “a strategy of discensus”. Meaning many different groups and individuals trying different things because we don’t know what will work in a given place and even if something does it likely won’t transfer well to very different places.
He does have a fondness for civilized things, but I like that his writing concerns itself with what actually happens rather than what he wants to happen. It’s all very well if I think that hunter gatherer societies everywhere, forever, would be better than more rising and falling civilizations, but the universe doesn’t care what I think is ‘better’ and will just do what it does.
Civilization, in this case, is a global, high-tech network. So that will be gone, very quickly. I think you’re misconstruing my image of what collapse means, which I’ve tried to clarify, perhaps not enough. Collapse refers to the end of civilization as I just stated it. If the international exchange and communication erodes, the whole of it goes with it. For the reasons I mentioned earlier, that will lead to the disruption of its “local installations” on a global level. Some are more susceptible than others.
What that does not mean is that the collapse of this civilization means we all become hunter-gatherers again immediately and walk away happy and content. We’re in for a long, rough stretch, no way around that. The longer it takes for the grid to go down, the longer, rougher and more catastrophic the end results will be.
Will people try to keep this going? Definitely. Will they be able to? That’s a harder question. Just read Bill Schutt’s Cannibalism and his less optimistic view of pending climate catastrophe is that cannibalism will emerge as a major issue. As places like Syria are increasingly being locked in and decimated, that’s been a historical case point for people being left with few other options. That’s a consequence of politics intensifying ecological crisis.
I accept the possibility of it, but not the probability of it.
I think you’re seeing me as imposing my will upon the situation. I would say the same of your comments here. On a simple practical and pragmatic level, there is no emergency exit here in terms of technology and knowledge that means vast or significant portions of the global civilized community will be able to adequately “step back” to earlier or simpler forms of agriculture. On the small scale, those that are doing it likely will continue to. However, the same thing that makes them self-sufficient and able to produce a surplus makes them potential targets for the Mad Max future that these prepper lunatics are foaming at the mouth for.
I’ve spent the last 7 years working with organic Amish farmers. I’ve gotten closer to what could be considered a viable rendition of this “scale back” culture (emphasis on cult). Even with them, could they do it? They’d be relatively better off than the average person within civilization, but they still use plenty of technology; tractors, kerosene and propane for heating, etc and they’ve increasingly become dependent upon and geared towards a parasitic relationship with markets. I think that could shift, but their culture would have to change from production to subsistence and it would mean that their industriousness, living in areas where they’re already more than willing to clear out trees, puts them back in the same cycles of agricultural destruction the Cahokia faced.
In short, even in the most “idealized” community within the beast, they’ll need to make drastic shifts to alter their relationships towards something that might become more viable, but they’ve got the same industrial approach to it. If they aren’t preyed upon for that, then they’ll certainly fall victim to its consequences as well.
Again, that’s also assuming that in 5, 10, 25 years that the climate is still going to be supportive of agriculture, which is a significant question.
To clarify, my message has never been, “you will be a hunter-gatherer” but that “you are a hunter-gatherer.” That’s the life we’ve evolved for and its apparent in what it is we seek from the world. Captive, misdirected, rerouted? All of those things, but, at the base, we are all hunter-gatherers who’ve been trained not to be. That doesn’t mean we just turn it on and off, nor that recognizing or practicing those methods gives you a free pass. We have a lot of work to do getting back to that point, which is why rewilding is a process just like domestication, civilization and collapse are. We’re talking hundreds of years probably.
I don’t say that my will and want are going to change the fate of humanity, but that we fare better going with the current than against it. It’s not coincidental that the life it offers is the most egalitarian and sustainable. It’s not like this collapses and the internet shuts off and we suddenly have this knowledge, which is why its so important to put it out there.
What I am saying is that that way of living allowed us to thrive, going back millions of years. It was rooted in resilience that got us through climate shifts and adaptive strategies for coping with a world in flux. The universe has no cognizance of what we’re going through, so it has no basis for caring. If humans want to get through the coming chaos, there is a precedent for the path through it. And it isn’t agriculture. Will we learn enough to care? That’s a different question. But my guess is sadly that we probably won’t until we’re forced to. But that time is coming quickly.
I wasn’t referring to your message. I meant that, unlike the author I mentioned, I find myself falling into the trap of working out what the ‘best’ future would look like. A more useful pursuit would be to observe what is actually happening, determine what I can and want to do amid the circumstances, and do that.
I think that for me, part of the reason for this trap is trying to think large-scale. I find it easier to be general and abstract with large-scale thinking. I am tempted to be general and abstract because I do not yet have specific local circumstances to work with.
