I deeply respect and admire #GinieMiklos. For many in the #collapse area, though, the red-hot flare of insights they had at first become tempered with the dull void of current culture's reception and the demands of constant attention relevance. I check in on her #ClubOfRome page occasionally to see if she left the link to this fabulous presentation. It is still there, as of today: https://www.clubofrome.org/member/miklos-ginie/
Had a great conversation with Samuel Arbesman on the podcast "The Orthogonal Bet" about all things collapse. If you are curious about the interdisciplinary nature of collapse studies, how it connects history to global catastrophic risk, and how societal resilience increases and decreases, check it out.
The ‘move fast and break things’ crowd of management geniuses are, in reality, just dumping their garbage on us. Externalising their bad ideas and acts.
"For if AI code — written at 10,000 times the speed of any human coder, designed to work well, but not to fail gracefully — is the digital asbestos we’re filling our walls with, then our descendants will spend generations digging that asbestos out of the walls.”
Tired of humanity.
Buried in algorithms, repeating dead rituals.
I write on paper while it lasts.
Electricity will fail first.
From the balcony by the seaside, I watch the collapse approaching.
Slowly. Inevitable.
I just observe. 🌑
A figure sitting on the floor in a dark room, wearing a lampshade on their head as a light source, smoking a cigarette, with a tired and vacant expression.
"The dominant narrative of our time scrolls endlessly toward catastrophe, each headline a confirmation that we’re locked into systems designed to fail, but #solarpunk emerges as something different entirely: a movement blending art, literature, activism, and tangible real-world projects that dares to ask not 'what’s the worst that could happen?' but rather 'what’s the best we can actually build?'
"At its core, solarpunk envisions a world reorganized around #RenewableEnergy, genuine #cooperation, and #SustainableDesign that doesn’t sacrifice beauty or dignity in the process. The key themes include #AntiConsumerism, #CommunityAction, #localism, and what activists call #PrefigurativePolitics, which is essentially the idea that we should live the change we wish to see starting immediately, not someday when conditions magically align.
"The 'punk' in solarpunk carries real weight. The movement is fundamentally #countercultural, resisting both technological determinism and the business-as-usual [#BAU] thinking that’s driving us toward ecological #collapse. Solarpunk centers #decolonial values, #PostCapitalist ideals, and genuine #SelfSufficiency rather than the performative sustainability of #CorporateGreenwashing."
"If your contribution to society consists of “allocating capital” and/or giving people orders, what, exactly, is the disaster that fulfills your fantasy of a world where your unique skills are the only thing that can save us all? What kind of disaster needs a boss?”
Sometimes, you learn a fact that makes everything else make sense - one of those keystone insights that puts a whole phenomenon into perspective. For example, the fact that preppers are engaged in a very specific type of wish-fulfillment.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
In Douglas Rushkoff's 2022 book Survival of the Richest, he describes a surreal "futurism" consulting gig in which a bunch of wealthy investor types asked him to help them figure out how to keep their mercenaries in line after "The Event" (the end of the world):
Level mountains and chop down trees to have electricity 100km away (They don't mention in this report but the electricity created is actually for Tokyo). This in a country that regularly experiences landslides due to earthquakes and typhoons (both common in this area). Madness...
My current pessimistic metaphor for the US collapse into fascism is a black hole. Once past the event horizon you can't accelerate away from the singularity. Any action taken makes you fall faster, no matter which direction you apply thrust they all point towards collapse. But doing nothing, you're still falling into the black hole.
[Thread] So, the book #LimitsToGrowth is back in the news after the projections were updated. I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about this topic (the preface of the book 1177BC, The Year Civilization Collapsed being the impetus).
My conclusion is that only #Degrowth and implementation of a lot of #SolarPunkSunday ideas (repairing stuff, building community, rewilding) will help us adapt to the coming changes. That's why I started SPS -- to highlight events, ideas and to build connections.
Yes, I am known for "Doomposting," but like with most things, I try and find solutions as well. Yeah, all the #Fascist BS isn't helping -- in fact, it's a symptom of the desperation of the elites to hold onto their #Capitalistic, #Colonial, #hierarchical ways. And, well, we all know where that leads.
We may not be able to fix the climate or all the other things that are going wrong right away, but we can try to adapt, and make sure by doing so, we aren't making the problems worse for all the beings that live here on planet Earth.
I'll be posting some quotes in this thread -- some with commentary, some just by themselves. Do humans have all the answers? Not sure (I know I don't)... But sticking our collective heads in the sand is NOT an option!
"According to Joseph Tainter, who literally wrote the book on the collapse of complex societies, 'collapse is fundamentally a sudden, pronounced loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity.' That was exactly what happened back in 1177 BC."
Eric Cline, "1177BC, The Year Civilization Collapsed," Preface to the revised edition, page xvii.
"There are only a few instances in history of such globalized world systems; the one in place during the Late Bronze age and the one in place today are two of the most obvious examples, and the parallels -- comparisons might be a better world -- between them are sometimes intriguing.
"To give just one illustration, Carol Bell, a British academician, has observed that 'the strategic importance of tin in the LBA [Late Bronze Age] ... was probably not far different from that of crude oil today. At that time, tin is thought to have been available in quantity only from specific mines in the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan and had to be brought overland all the way to sites in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and north Syria, from where it was distrbuted to points father north, south, or west, including onward across the sea to the Agean. Bell contianues, 'The availability of enough tin to produce ... weapons grade bronze must have exercised the minds of the Great King in Hattusa and the Pharaoh in Thebes the same way that supplying gasoline to the American SUV driver a reasonable cost preoccupies an American president today!"
Eric Cline, "1177BC, The Year Civilization Collapsed," Preface to the revised edition, page xvii.
"The last chart assembles something from the data that wasn’t done in the original Limits to Growth work because the concept hadn’t been developed. But it is possible to assemble a #HumanDevelopmentIndex from the data, and reference it against the original model and the revised version. It doesn’t come out well.
(Source: Nebel et al, 2023, adapted Klement)
"On this last chart, Klement is most depressed, and I think with good reason:
" 'If [this chart] is true, it says that today is peak human civilisation, from now on we are going backward on a global level in terms of human development and quality of life, While some countries will continue to improve, other countries and the planet as a whole will start to go backward, ultimately dropping back to similar levels of human development and quality of life as in 1900 by the end of this century.'
"Tipping point
"The overall conclusion by the article’s authors is:
" '[T]he model results clearly indicate the imminent end of the exponential growth curve. The excessive consumption of resources by industry and #IndustrialAgriculture to feed a growing world population is depleting reserves to the point where the system is no longer #sustainable. #Pollution lags behind industrial growth and does not peak until the end of the century. Peaks are followed by sharp declines in several characteristics.
"They also note that the cause of this turning point is resources, not ‘pollution’:
" 'This interconnected collapse… occurring between 2024 and 2030 is caused by resource depletion, not pollution.
"They also have an interesting caveat. This is that the way the #World3 model works is a through a set of connections that exist within an environment of growth. In an environment of decline, they are likely to reconfigure themselves in different ways. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be a decline—just that the current lines in the model that describe it may not follow quite the same patterns.
"But one final note from me. Economists get over-excited when anyone mentions ‘#degrowth’, and fellow-travellers such as the Tony Blair Institute treat climate policy as if it is some kind of typical 1990s political discussion. The point is that we’re going to get degrowth whether we think it’s a good idea or not. The data here is, in effect, about the tipping point at the end of a 200-to-250-year exponential curve, at least in the richer parts of the world. The only question is whether we manage degrowth or just let it happen to us. This isn’t a neutral question. I know which one of these is worse."
From "Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the #World3 model"
by Arjuna Nebel, Alexander Kling, Ruben Willamowski, Tim Schell
First published: 13 November 2023
4.3 Future trends
"So far, the results have mainly been considered in comparison with the empirical data for the recalibration. However, the course of the variables is also interesting in terms of future trends. Here, the model results clearly indicate the imminent end of the exponential growth curve. The excessive consumption of resources by industry and industrial agriculture to feed a growing world population is depleting reserves to the point where the system is no longer sustainable. Pollution lags behind industrial growth and does not peak until the end of the century. Peaks are followed by sharp declines in several characteristics.
"This interconnected collapse, or, as it has been called by Heinberg and Miller (2023), #polycrisis, occurring between 2024 and 2030 is caused by resource depletion, not pollution. The increase in environmental pollution occurs later and with a lower peak (Figure 3).
"However, it is important to note that the connections in the model and the recalibration are only valid for the rising edge, as many of the variables and equations represented in the model are not physical but socio-economic. It is to be expected that the complex socio-economic relationships will be rearranged and reconnected in the event of a collapse. World3 holds the relationships between variables constant. Therefore it is not useful to draw further conclusions from the trajectory after the tipping points. Rather, it is important to recognize that there are large uncertainties about the trajectory from then on, building models for this could be a whole new field of research.
"The fact is that the recalibrated model again shows the possibility of a collapse of our current system. At the same time, the BAU scenario of the 1972 model is shown to be alarmingly consistent with the most recently collected empirical data.
"#Herrington (2021) also concluded in her data comparison that the world is far from a stabilized world scenario where the #overshoot and #collapse mode is brought to a halt. As a society, we have to admit that despite 50 years of knowledge about the dynamics of the collapse of our life support systems, we have failed to initiate a systematic change to prevent this collapse. It is becoming increasingly clear that, despite #technological advances, the change needed to put us on a different trajectory will also require a change in #BeliefSystems, #mindsets, and the way we organize our society (Irwin, 2015; Wamsler & Brink, 2018). [SW model]
"At the point of collapse, the resolution of the model also reaches the limit of further plausible statements. The regional differences in demographic and economic terms are too great to be reduced to simple, highly aggregated variables. To address this problem, a new system dynamics model has been developed on the occasion of #LtG's 50th anniversary which is called Earth for all (Sandrine Dixson-Decleve et al., 2022). It introduces a regional resolution and a measure of social inequality and tension. There is also a greater focus on the causes and effects of the #ClimateCrisis. In #Earth4all, the authors no longer focus on scenarios with sharp declines in the main variables. Instead, the scenario Too little too late describes that the effects of the climate crisis will continue to increase and social tensions will rise, causing the well-being index to decline over time. In another scenario, #GiantLeap, it is shown that these negative developments could also be stopped. The authors then propose various policy changes to achieve this (Sandrine Dixson-Decleve et al., 2022). "
Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp, 2025
A radical retelling of human history through collapse – from the dawn of our species to the urgent existential threats of the twenty-first century and beyond.‘A brilliant, utterly convincing account of the evolution of human society and why we are probably reaching humanity's end days’ HENRY MARSH'
Absolutely essential reading for understanding why past civilisations collapsed, and how to protect our own from the same fate' LEWIS DARTNELLFor the first 200,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change.
As we reluctantly congregated in the first farms and cities, people began to rely on novel lootable resources like grain and fish for their daily sustenance. And when more powerful weapons became available, small groups began to seize control of these valuable commodities. This inequality in resources soon tipped over into inequality in power, and we started to adopt more primal, hierarchical forms of organization. Power was concentrated in masters, kings, pharaohs and emperors (and ideologies were born to justify their rule). Goliath-like states and empires – with vast bureaucracies and militaries – carved up and dominated the globe.
What brought them down? Whether in the early cities of Cahokia in North America or Tiwanaku in South America, or the sprawling empires of Egypt, Rome and China, it was increasing inequality and concentrations of power that hollowed these Goliaths out before an external shock brought them crashing down. These collapses were written up as apocalyptic, but in truth they were usually a blessing for most of the population.
"As conflation and confusion abound after 7 October, we need clear thinking about antisemitism"
by:
David Feldman, director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism,
Brendan McGeever, senior lecturer at the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism.
This essay calls "for a radical shift in language from narratives that obscure violence to those affirming Palestinian presence, history, and sovereignty."
Boss preppers ( pluralistic.net )
https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/22Nov2025.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 ...