Positive
Resources related to
Positive Disintegration
and The Great Turning
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Contents
Collapse, Transition,
The Great Turning: Why Words Matter by
Carolyn Baker 5/21/10 - It may be that our species,
tortured and toxified by industrial civilization as it has been, is incapable
of beginning the world all over again without having lived through the ghastly
consequences of what unprecedented growth and disconnection from the earth
invariably produce. Perhaps we need this death in order to mould, shape,
treasure, and protect the new life we ache to create. Above all, it appears that we are being asked to allow our
old way of life to die. Perhaps we need that death in us in order to
unequivocally grasp in every cell of our bodies that disconnection, endless
growth, competition, and entitlement kill everything in the universe. Perhaps
humanity requires devastation of this magnitude in order to become a new kind
of species – the kind of species that will never again allow such madness
to prevail on this planet. I do
not wish to imply that we cannot experience joy or celebration until the Great
Turning is complete. Even in the face of horror, we can have moments of humor,
play, and elation. In fact, accepting the natural process of collapse as the
first step in the Great Turning is profoundly liberating and empowering.
BP
and the 'Little Eichmanns' by
Chris Hedges 5/17/10 - Cultures that do not
recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an
intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die.
They ruthlessly exploit the natural world and the members of their society in
the name of progress until exhaustion or collapse, blind to the fury of their
own self-destruction. The oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, estimated to be
perhaps as much as 100,000 barrels a day, is part of our foolish death march.
It is one more blow delivered by the corporate state, the trade of life for
gold. But this time collapse, when it comes, will not be confined to the
geography of a decayed civilization. It will be global.
Peoples
Agreement: Final
Declaration of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights
of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, April
2010 - We confront the
terminal crisis of a civilizing model that is patriarchal and based on the
submission and destruction of human beings and nature that accelerated since
the industrial revolution. The capitalist system has imposed on us a logic of
competition, progress and limitless growth. This regime of production and
consumption seeks profit without limits, separating human beings from nature
and imposing a logic of domination upon nature, transforming everything into
commodities: water, earth, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity,
justice, ethics, the rights of peoples, and life itself.
Zero Point Of
Systemic Collapse by Chris Hedges 2/12/10 - The levers of power have become so contaminated
that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. All resistance
must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should
stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the
end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It
means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather
the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a
cooperative effort. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we
cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we
may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours.
Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as
those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century
fascism and communism.
Dark Green by Robert C. Koehler 5/13/10 - No
matter how comfortable we are, no matter how securely gated our community, we
live with profound insecurity, at the event horizon, you might say, of
awareness: Civilization cannot go on this way. Our way of life is
unsustainable. If we are indeed poised on the edge of massive and unprecedented
change, and I believe we are, anyone pushing a comprehensive, detailed agenda
of what to do next is probably a charlatan. I agree that the
"solution" is not primarily technological. We have to give up the
idea of being in control of the natural world; more to the point, we have to
stop drawing the distinction between human beings and nature. We have to figure
out how to reconnect with and befriend the rest of the planet and surrender,
like an addict in a twelve-step program, to a higher power - to the universe
itself. And in the process of surrender, we will discover, I believe, not a dependence
on but an interdependence with, all that we have consumed, exploited and taken
for granted these last half-dozen millennia. We're part of the cosmos, but we
have to learn to listen to it.
The Imminent
Collapse Of Industrial Society by Peter Goodchild 5/9/10 - The collapse of modern industrial
society has 14 parts, each with a somewhat causal relationship to the next. (1)
Fossil fuels, (2) metals, and (3) electricity are a tightly-knit group, and no
industrial civilization can have one without the others. The decline in
fossil-fuel production is the most critical aspect of the collapse, and most of
the following text will be devoted to that topic. As those three disappear, (4)
food and (5) fresh water become scarce. Matters of infrastructure then follow:
(6) transportation and (7) communication. After that, the social structure
begins to fail: (8) government, (9) education, and (10) the large-scale
division of labor that makes complex technology possible. After these 10 parts,
however, there are four others that form a separate layer, in some respects
more psychological or sociological.
The Western World View: Past, Present And Future, Interview with Richard Tarnas
by Russell E. DiCarlo - A world view is a set of values, of conceptual
structures, of implicit assumptions or pre-suppositions about the nature of
reality – about human beings, about the relationship between humans and
nature, about history, the divine, the cosmos – which constellate an entire
culture's way of being and acting. A world-view shift reflects a very profound
archetypal dynamic in the psyche that closely resembles a perinatal process
– a birth process. One has been within a "womb," a matrix of
thought, a conceptual matrix, a conceptual womb for quite a while. You've
developed within it until that conceptual matrix is no longer large enough to
contain your evolving mind. It becomes seen as a problem, or constriction, as
something to be overcome, and a crisis is created. After a very critical period
of transition, of tension, of deconstruction, of disorientation, a sudden new
birth is precipitated into a new conceptual matrix. There is a sudden
revelation of a new Universe, which seems to open up. In this experience of a
shift in world view, one re-experiences one's own birth on an intellectual
level. It involves a very deep archetypal death and re-birth process.
How Much Oil Is Left?:
interview with Richard Heinberg by Lars Schall 4/7/10 - The
reason it’s bad for both an energy crisis and a financial crisis to occur
together is that each makes the other harder to address. Without adequate
credit and investment capital, how will we build renewable energy
infrastructure to replace our current fossil-fuel-dependent transport and
electricity systems? And without cheap energy, how can we dig ourselves out of
a financial crisis? Both are
indeed happening now, and this should be no surprise given the inherent
linkages between energy prices and the health of the economy. Will we see
global violence as a result? Of course I hope the answer is “no,” but the
likelihood of war would be substantially reduced if the general public had a
better idea of why their standard of living is eroding. Since politicians don’t
really understand what is happening, I suppose they can be somewhat excused for
not telling their constituents. But that means that the most likely response
will be a hunt for scapegoats. If the world is to return to stability, an
entirely new economic system, based on a new and different form of money, will
be required. Our current money
system requires constant growth so as to enable repayment of the interest on
the debts that created the money to begin with, so it cannot function well in
the context of general resource scarcity and economic contraction.
What
Do Empires Do? by Michael
Parenti 2/13/10 - While we hear a lot about empire, we hear
very little about imperialism. Now
that is strange, for imperialism is what empires are all about. Imperialism is the process whereby the
dominant investor interests in one country bring to bear their economic and
military power upon another nation or region in order to expropriate its land,
labor, natural resources, capital, and markets – in such a manner as to
enrich the investor interests. Empires do not just pursue "power for power's sake." Empires
are enormously profitable for the dominant economic interests of the imperial
nation but enormously costly to the people of the colonized country. In addition to suffering the pillage of
their lands and natural resources, the people of these targeted countries are
frequently killed in large numbers by the intruders. The purpose of all this
killing is to prevent alternative, independent, self-defining nations from
emerging.
The Common
Link with Climate Change, Peak Oil, Limits To Growth, Etc. - Belief Systems by Nate Hagens 12/10/09 - Many of
the issues discussed on this bandwidth are large, long term, and threatening.
Consider the three primary society-wide topics of analysis and discourse:
climate, energy and the economy. It is my belief these 3 are linked by an
underlying cultural growth/debt imperative running into a planet with finite
sources and sinks. But within each category you have, still, despite the same access to facts and considerable passage of
time, widely disparate and strongly held opinions. If you find yourself in a
debate about any of these issues you'll find apathy or you'll find cognitive
biases underlying a polarized opinion. This post will address some social and psychological reasons why the
urgency of our resource situation may not be being addressed on an individual
level and only at a snails pace on the governmental level. Among the phenomena
we will explore are a) why we have beliefs and
how they are changed, b) our propensity to believe in authority figures, c) our
penchant for optimism, d) cognitive load theory, e) relative fitness, f) the
recency effect, and several others.
Collapse by Roger Ebert 12/9/09 - I have no way of assuring you that the bleak
version of the future outlined by Michael Ruppert in Chris Smith's "Collapse"
is accurate. I can only tell you I have a pretty good built-in B.S. detector,
and its needle never bounced off zero while I watched this film. There is
controversy over Ruppert, and he has many critics. But one simple fact at the
center of his argument is obviously true, and it terrifies me. That fact: We have passed the peak of
global oil resources.
Chris Hedges warns of pageantry's perils by Brad Buchholz
12/5/09 - Chris
Hedges, who wrote Empire of Illusion,
examines America's identity crisis in an age of consumerism and spectacle. He sees, in America, a nation
that has lost its way. He sees a country that places prosperity above
principle, celebrity above substance, spectacle above nuance and introspection.
He sees a "timid, cowed, confused" populace disconnected from
language, governed by consumerism, ambivalent toward the common good, enamored
by an American myth that has no basis in the American reality.
Bottleneck
by William Catton - A
Review by
George Mobus 11/24/09 - An ecological bottleneck (also
called a population
bottleneck) is where radical changes in the
environment of a species causes a die-off of all but the most hardy of the
population; hardy, that is, in terms of the selection pressures arising from
the change. Of course there may be no sufficiently hardy individuals left or
the ones that manage to survive cannot reproduce sufficiently to produce a new
population. In that case the species goes extinct. It is the rate of change
that matters as much as the degree or magnitude of change when it comes to
shocking a population. We are
changing the world in ways unfavorable to human survivability more rapidly than
we can either adapt or mitigate. And we have already passed the point of no
return.
The
Human Ecology of Collapse, Part One: Failure is
the Only Option by John Michael
Greer 12/9/09 - A great many people aware of the limits to
fossil fuels have assumed that the question that needs answering is how to
sustain a modern industrial society on alternative energy. The question that has to be asked is
whether a modern industrial society can exist at all without vast and rising
inputs of essentially free energy, of the sort only available on this planet
from fossil fuels, and the answer is no. Once that’s grasped, other useful
questions come to mind, but until you get past the wrong question, you’re stuck
chasing the mirage of a replacement for oil that didn’t take a hundred million
years or so to come into being. As the world’s political leaders busy
themselves in Copenhagen for a round of photo ops and brutal backroom politics,
though, the unasked question that hangs most visibly in the air is why human
societies, faced with choices between survival and collapse, so consistently
make the choices that destroy them.
Which Way
Out? by Jerry Mander 11/18/09 - This Forward to Richard
Heinberg’s “Searching for a Miracle: ‘Net Energy’ Limits and the Fate
of Industrial Society,” briefly summarizes the gist of that report: For the first time we are able
to fully realize the degree to which our future societal
options are far more limited than we thought. With fossil fuels fast
disappearing, and their continuing supplies becoming ever more problematic and
expensive, hopes have turned to renewable sources that we ask to save “our way
of life” at more or less its current level. Alas, the “net energy” gain from all alternative systems is
far too small to begin to sustain industrial society at its present levels. Our
beloved “way of life” must be reconsidered and more viable alternatives
supported. It is
mandatory that we build and take action at the local grassroots level, while
also demanding change from our governing institutions, locally, nationally and
internationally. But in any case, the status quo will not survive.
Searching for a Miracle: ‘Net Energy’ Limits and the Fate of Industrial
Society by Richard Heinberg 9/09 - A joint
project of the International Forum on Globalization and the Post Carbon
Institute, this report is intended as a non-technical examination of a basic
question: Can any combination of known energy sources successfully supply
society’s energy needs at least up to
the year 2100? In the end, we are left with the
disturbing conclusion that all known
energy sources are subject to strict limits of one kind or another. The
report explores some of the presently proposed energy transition scenarios, showing why, up to this time, most are
overly optimistic, as they do not address all of the
relevant limiting factors to the expansion of alternative energy sources.
Finally, it shows why energy conservation (using less energy, and also less
resource materials) combined with humane, gradual population
decline must become primary strategies for achieving sustainability. PDF, 83
pp.
Beautiful Ruination: Hard-core may be the new green for a town at
the end of the line by Ginger Strand 9/09 - Braddock, PA, is a formerly booming steel town near Pittsburgh that has
fallen into abandonment and ruin, like other towns in the Rust Belt. Instead of becoming a consumer mall
with big-box chain stores, Braddock is acknowledging the reality of the end of
industrialism and decay by turning to salvaging and recycling the remnants of
the past – and making art out of it. It is also turning to urban farming. It may represent the cutting edge of
the future.
"Peak
Civilization": The Fall of the Roman Empire by Ugo Bardi 7/22/09 - A delightful presentation, richly illustrated and peppered with dry
wit, on the collapse of the Roman Empire and how its lessons apply to
industrial civilization.
Definancialisation,
Deglobalisation, Relocalisation by Dmitry Orlov 6/16/09 - We
have to prepare for a non-industrial future while we still have some resources
with which to do it. If we marshal the resources, stockpile the materials that
will be of most use, and harness the heirloom technologies that can be
sustained without an industrial base, then we can stretch out the transition
far into the future, giving us time to adapt. I believe that people who start
the process now stand a fairly good chance of making the transition in time.
But I don't think that it is too wise to wait and try to grab a few more years
of comfortable living. Not only would that be a waste of time on a personal
level, but we'd be squandering the resources we need to make the transition.
Waking Up in a Former Empire at
the End of the Industrial Age - Or: Is It
‘Mean’ to Tell Someone Their House is on Fire? by Suzanne Duarte 5/15/09 - The reason that we are in a climate emergency – in
fact, a biological holocaust, as it was identified over 20 yrs ago – is
that the dominant Western, globalized culture has been in a ‘cultural trance,’
drunk on oil, living in a delusional bubble for about 60 years. Now, the question is, is it unkind or
rude or unskillful to try to wake people up from their cultural trance and
point out that we are endangering the future of our species, and many others,
to remain asleep? Is it ‘mean’ to
wake somebody up to tell them that their house is on fire? A lot of people seem to think so.
Reader Thoughts on Collapse, Part 1: What are we looking forward to? 5/4/09 - In April 2009, Culture Change put out a call for reader
responses on three questions about collapse: 1. What we are acting toward? What main outcome might we be
looking forward to? 2. What do we relish leaving
behind, as collapse begins or as it will be intensified? 3. What do we not
want to leave behind unresolved; or, what needs to be done before it's too late
to accomplish it? In this article, Part 1, we publish
responses to the first question.
Reader Thoughts on Collapse, Part 2: What do we relish leaving behind? 5/6/09
Reader Thoughts on Collapse, Part 3: What needs to be done before it's
too late? 5/9/09
Does
understanding complexity beget a tragic view of life? by Kurt Cobb 4/26/09 - Paradoxically, the tragic view of life doesn't beget mere
glumness. Instead, it teaches prudence which can be a good thing and
occasionally a lifesaver. It actually inculcates a more profound appreciation
of those moments of happiness and bliss. As we mature we are ushered into the
complexities of life. But when the willingness to accept these complexities is
blunted or eliminated, maturity never arrives. Many remain in an adolescent
state preferring an optimistic gloss on a simple-minded model of the world. The
tragic view of life teaches humility in the face of complexity.
A Beguiling
Veneer Of Normalcy by
Richard Heinberg 4/24/09 - Are we at the beginning of an epic
Depression, or at the bottom of a nasty recession with brighter days only
months away? These reasons
for concern pale in importance before the deeper, more profound and systemic
problems of our time. While surface appearances could
lead one to think that not much has changed from the status quo ante, in fact
the beams, rafters, and studs that hold up the façade of normal everyday
existence in modern industrial society are rotting and crumbling. In essence,
we are witnessing the shift from a century of unprecedented growth to a century
of contraction.
Thinking
About The Future by Keith
Farnish 4/22/09 - We are perhaps
in the terminal stages of a terrible collective state of denial, manufactured
by a system that dares not speak the truth about the future: Industrial
Civilization is close to ending, taking with it a great sweep of the global
ecosystem as the machine claws at the air, the earth and the seas in a
last-gasp attempt to stay alive. That future is one that even the most hardened
survivalist would struggle to contemplate in all its dystopian horror. It
mustn’t get to that stage; but have no doubt, it will if we don’t stop
Industrial Civilization soon.
Burning Our Bridges To The 21st Century by Dmitry
Orlov 4/7/09 - The
future does not resemble the past – or does it? When the lights go out,
people burn candles and oil lamps, just like they used to before the electric
grid came into existence. When we find out that the supermarket is out of food
and that the cupboard is bare, we hunt, fish, forage, plant kitchen gardens,
and start experimenting with raising poultry and rabbits. Those who are
incapable of doing so, or who feel that such lowly pursuits are beneath their
dignity, become dependent on the charity of those who are more adaptable, or
starve.
Timing by Richard Heinberg 4/2/09 - The general picture is clear enough. A combination of
peak oil, climate change, and the bursting of the mother of all economic
bubbles will result in a collapse of the global economy, perhaps of
civilization itself. If we are still to avert the worst of a crisis that could
eventuate in untold death, destruction, and tragedy, we need to restructure the
world's energy systems and money systems immediately. This message (in one form or another) is issuing from scores
of independent writers, environmental organizations, and economic analysts.
Indeed, even before anyone had ever heard of a Credit Default Swap, going all
the way back to the early 1970s if not earlier, similar warnings were
periodically heard.
Post
Carbon Institute Manifesto: The Time For Change Has Come 3/4/09 - Post Carbon Institute
is dedicated to answering the central question of our times: How
do we manage the transition to a post-growth, post-fossil fuel, climate-changed
world? It will be Post
Carbon Institute's role to publicly discuss these issues in accessible ways,
and as aspects of a systemic, interdependent web of crises. We will gather and
analyze response strategies (whether proven or under experimentation), and
disseminate them to the individuals, communities, businesses, and governments
who need them. We will develop the framing and messaging of these issues so as
to significantly raise the visibility and impact of emerging solutions.
Social Collapse Best Practices by Dmitri Orlov 2/14/09 - Based on his experience of the collapse of the USSR,
Orlov suggests how the American Empire can be expected to collapse. With ironic wit, he describes practical
ways to provide Food, Shelter, Transportation and Security in the midst of
social breakdown. “What we can do is prepare ourselves, and each other, mostly
by changing our expectations, our preferences, and scaling down our needs. It
may mean that you will miss out on some last, uncertain bit of enjoyment. On
the other hand, by refashioning yourself into someone who might stand a better
chance of adapting to the new circumstances, you will be able to give to
yourself, and to others, a great deal of hope that would otherwise not exist.”
Energy and
ecology: why societies really succeed and fail by Dana Visalli 2/1/09 - Most
members of modern society are currently psychologically bound by the genetic
command to obey the dictates of the clan; they are largely incapable of
thinking and acting from an ecological perspective. World military expenditures
illustrate this point; while the ecological and humanitarian needs of the world
go begging, global society taken as a whole spends two trillion dollars a year
on technologies and organizations whose function is the destruction of living
organisms and ecosystems. This sum represents the majority of human
discretionary wealth and resources. Individuals who wish to rectify this misguided
abuse of available resources will want to make other arrangements for the
assets flowing from their lives. Sustainable human culture will be impossible
until the individual’s first allegiance is to the earth and ecological
integrity.
Slo-mo Splat by Richard Heinberg 1/5/09 - Remember the wall that environmentalists (like the
1972 "Limits to Growth" authors) have long been saying that
industrial society would eventually hit? Permit me to make the formal
introduction: Industrial society, meet wall; wall, meet industrial society.
It's understandably taking a while for the recognition to seep in. We are not
accustomed to seeing every indicator of economic well-being, in virtually every
country in the world, slam into reverse over the course of a few short months.
I still have random conversations with businesspeople and bankers who say we've
hit bottom and recovery is at hand; in their view, this is just another
business cycle. I see things a bit differently: to my eyes the world situation
looks like a slow-motion film of a train wreck, and the sheet metal at the
front of the locomotive has only just begun to crumple.
History,
Meaning, and Choice by John Michael Greer 12/31/08 - Like
biological evolution, the cultural evolution I am proposing is in no way
inevitable. The crises that surround the decline and fall of civilizations very
often become massive choke points at which many valuable things are lost. One
reasoned response to the approach of such a choke point in our own time thus
might well be a deliberate effort to help the legacy of the present reach the
waiting hands of the future. The same logic that leads the ecologically
literate to do what they can to keep threatened species alive through the
twilight of the industrial age, so that biological evolution has as wide a
palette of raw materials as possible in the age that follows, applies just as
well to cultural evolution.
The Five Stages of Collapse by Dmitry Orlov 11/11/08 - I am quite certain that no amount of cultural
transformation will help us save various key aspects of this culture: car
society, suburban living, big box stores, corporate-run government, global
empire, or runaway finance. We can wait until the
lifestyle that is killing the planet and is making us crazy and sick is no
longer physically possible, or we can opt out of it ahead of time. And what we
replace it with can be difficult at first, but quite a lot better for us in the
end. The sooner we start letting
go of our maladaptive cultural baggage, the more of a chance we will stand.
Protecting Our Families
And Future In A Time Of Crisis - Carolyn Baker reviews Sharon Astyk’s Depletion and Abundance 10/15/08 - Protection equals preparation, which equals devoting a
significant amount of our time and energy to lifestyle changes and conscious,
arduous work as well as the expenditure of some money. It means devoting time
and energy to gardening, cooking from scratch, insulating one's home,
recycling, consuming far less than we do now, buying used items when possible,
heating and cooking with renewable energy sources, and so much more.
Sorry, No Gas: Survival Strategies For The Post-Petroleum World By
Peter Goodchild 8/24/08 - The
main difference between America and previous civilizations is that, from now
on, the cycle of "civilization" cannot be repeated. Oil is not the
only mineral that will be in short supply in the 21st century. In the future,
after the collapse of the present civilization, the necessary fuels and ores
will not be available for that gradual rebuilding of technology. The loss of
both petroleum and accessible ores means that history will no longer be a cycle
of empires. But village life has a way of transcending disasters.
The Tempo of Change by John Michael Greer 8/20/08 - The continuity
of history as a lived experience imposes requirements on planning for the post-peak
future that haven’t always been noticed. Like the imaginary lifeboat
ecovillages that would make perfect economic sense in an imagined world, but
can’t even scrape together the funding to get built in this one, a good many of
the plans and projects that have been discussed as a response to peak oil make
no provision for the fact that people will still have to live their lives and
make a living while they wait for those projects to justify themselves. Those
projects that make good practical sense here and now, or at least place no
great burden on the people who choose to pursue them, will be a good deal more
viable than those that can only support themselves in a radically different
world than the one we inhabit.
The Delusion Revolution: We're on the Road to Extinction and in
Denial by Robert
Jensen 8/15/08 - Our current way of life is
unsustainable. We are the first species that will have to self-consciously
impose limits on ourselves if we are to survive. We're in trouble, on all fronts, and the trouble is wider and deeper
than most of us have been willing to acknowledge. We should struggle to build a
road on which we can walk through those troubles -- if such a road is possible
-- but I doubt it's going to look like any path we had previously envisioned,
nor is it likely to lead anywhere close to where most of us thought we were
going.
Community failure: our worsening morass by Jan
Lundberg 8/7/08 - Loss of community cohesion and mutual support is the fatal
self-inflicted wound of the dominant culture. To hear most commentators and
politicians, we have so good a system and a caring, competitive citizenry, that
we must simply agree on how we might extract more energy for continued mass
production. Or how to assure that our corporate empire is not compromised by
embarrassing torture policies. Neither of these debates addresses the source of
the underlying problem we’re immersed in. It would be futile to try to solve
overpopulation or restore community without dealing with the dominance of
commerce and profit.
Personal Survival In A
World Gone Mad Carolyn Baker reviews Mike
Byron's The Path Through Infinity's
Rainbow: Your Guide To Personal Survival and Spiritual Transformation In A
World Gone Mad 3/6/08 - Examining the causes, consequences, and
interrelationships of the current crises with actionable advice for individuals
and governments.
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Bread Line |
Orlov
and the Wonderful, Terrible, Radical Simplification by Sally Erickson 2/29/08 - I see the
collapse as a piece of the story of the human, a real live myth, a very big and
very profound story. I see this time and these events in ways that I imagine
Gaia or Mother Earth may see them. What all of this represents is a vitally
necessary process of cleansing and balancing.
"Re-Inventing
Collapse" by
Dmitry Orlov, reviewed by Carolyn Baker 2/27/08 - Lessons
from the former Soviet Union on how to survive in a collapsing world.
The Five Stages Of Collapse, By Dmitry Orlov 2/26/08 - Rather than
tying each phase to a particular emotion, as in the Kübler-Ross model, the
proposed taxonomy ties each of the five collapse stages to the breaching of a
specific level of trust, or faith, in the status quo. Although each stage
causes physical, observable changes in the environment, these can be gradual,
while the mental flip is generally quite swift.
Responding
to Peak Oil and Global Warming: Beyond Power Hierarchies and Economic Growth by Dave Ewoldt 2/15/08
Back
Up The Rabbit Hole by John
Michael Greer 2/6/08 - A
concise overview of the connections between artificially cheap energy, the
delusional global economy, the throw-away consumer culture, the reckless
depletion of resources, and the realities/crises that we must adapt to.
"The Final
Empire" By William Kotke, Part 1, a review by Carolyn Baker 2/1/08
Shell
Game, By Steve Alten, A Review By Carolyn Baker 1/22/08 - Shell Game's value lies not only in underscoring the catastrophes toward which
the human race is hurtling but in analyzing the mindset of empire that has made
them inevitable.
Sowing
the seeds of a future society by Ken
Whitehead 1/17/08
Celebrating Collapse:
The Coming Adventure - Apocalypse No! Part 5 by Juan Santos 1/12/08
The Converging Crisis:
Ecology, Energy, and Economics by Paul Chefurka 1/08
The
Future that Wasn't, Part Two: The Phantom of Empire by John Michael Greer 1/2/08
The Post-Bush
Regime: A Prognosis by Richard K. Moore 12/27/07 - Hidden
agendas of Federal Reserve elites/Bilderbergers, biofuels, food, genocide,
capitalism, power and empowerment.
Agriculture: closing the circle by John Michael Greer 12/19/07
Stepping Into A New
Paradigm As The Old One Crumbles by Carolyn
Baker 12/13/07
Redefining ‘Positive':
Collapse From Beyond The Human-Centric Perspective by Carolyn Baker 12/06/07
Coping
or running when nothing’s working by Jan Lundberg
12/5/07
"Doomsday
Seed Vault" in the Arctic by F. William Engdahl 12/4/07 - Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t!
The
Deer Factor ~or~ Bambi vs The Collapse of Civilization
Lifeboat
Time by John Michael Greer 11/29/07
Fascism,
Feudalism, and the Future by John Michael Greer 11/14/07
Civilization
and Succession by John Michael Greer 9/26/07
The end of civilization and the
extinction of humanity by Guy McPherson 8/29/07
Eleven Inherent Rules Of Corporate Behavior by Jerry Mander 1995 - This list is an attempt
to articulate the obligatory rules by which corporations operate. Some of the
rules overlap, but taken together they help reveal why corporations behave as
they do and how they have come to dominate their environment and the human
beings within it. Corporations are inherently bold, aggressive and competitive.
Though they exist in a society that claims to operate by moral principles, they
are structurally amoral. It is inevitable that they will dehumanize people who
work for them and the overall society as well. In dominating other cultures, in
digging up the Earth, corporations blindly follow the codes that have been
built into them as if they were genes. We must abandon the idea that corporations can reform themselves.
Corporations, and the people within them, are following a system of logic that
leads inexorably toward dominant behaviors.
The Perils of
Globalization: an
Interview with Jerry Mander by Scott London
The Columbian
Legacy and the Ecosterian Response by
Kirkpatrick Sale
The Imposition of Technology by Kirkpatrick Sale on
the history of the “logic of industrialism,”a chapter excerpt of Sale's Rebels
Against The Future: The Luddites and their War on the Industrial Revolution
Now
we are human commodities by Chris Maser
Globalization articles
from Resurgence magazine
Twilight of the Modern World by Paul Thompson
Positive
Disintegration by Joanna Macy
The Plan by
William Kötke
Fifty Million Farmers by Richard
Heinberg
Astrological
Interpretations
Uranus Square
Pluto, Part 1 by
John Hogue, Hogue Prophecy Bulletin 5/31/10 - The bad news
for those who wish to hold onto the moribund past at all costs is good fortune
for others who take these times as a challenge from existence to redefine and
recreate yourself and then join others of like courage and celebration to
recreate a better human civilization in harmony with nature. What existence is
first trying to teach us this summer with a Jupiter/Uranus square of Pluto is
to confront reality. Our spiritual, social,
economic and ecological systems are heading for systemic failure. Time
to sound the alarm, to "under-stand" and see what is the
source of all of our problems so they can be transcended.
Thrills and Chills: America In Transition,
November 2008 by
Jessica Murray 10/25/08 - Does it seem to you that Time is speeding up? The point of all this intensification
is not just to make us run faster in one place. The point is to usher
precedent-shattering new energies into the slow, recalcitrant systems built by
the collective mind.
Empire or Community: Globalization and Relocalization in the 21st Century by Bill Herbst 7/07 - This article focuses on one significant choice
among many in our making the necessary adjustment: continued corporate globalization
versus relocalization by revitalizing relatively autonomous human-scale
communities.
Power and the Collective by Henny Rückert & Suzanne Duarte 2004 – Our task today is to connect the question of our
own power with a system of beliefs that affirms the value of all life and
provides a vision of a sustainable, inclusive human culture for the wellbeing
of the whole.
Cassandra Club - Links to blogs on deindustrialization
Energy Bulletin – Covering all aspects and dimensions of collapse
Post Carbon Institute – PCI provides individuals,
communities, businesses, and governments with the resources needed to
understand and respond to the interrelated economic, energy, and environmental
crises that define the 21st century. We envision a world of resilient
communities and re-localized economies that thrive within ecological bounds.
CollapseNet – Michael C. Ruppert’s
Collapse Network
Wake Up Amerika: The End of the Amerikan Dream
The Dark Mountain Project - This project starts with our sense that
civilisation as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly
changing climate, a cancerous economic system and the ongoing mass destruction
of the non-human world. But it is driven by our belief that this age of
collapse – which is already beginning – could also offer a new
start, if we are careful in our choices. Our aim is to bring together writers
and artists, thinkers and doers, to assault the established citadels of
literature and thought, and to begin to redraw the maps by which we navigate
the places and times in which we find ourselves.
About
Empire - The monthly
show that questions global powers and their agendas. Be they state, corporate, military or
economic the Empire team, headed by
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, will analyse these
giants and how they strive to dominate everything from international security
and finance to communications and the news itself. Each month we fuse the best Al Jazeera field reporting and
in-depth studio debate with leading analysts and commentators to discuss the
most significant geo-political issues of the day. Empire can be seen on Al Jazeera in the last week of
every month.
The
Lifeboat Movement In Vermont: Confronting The Peak Oil Crisis by Michael
Ruppert 5/13/10 - Michael Ruppert, author of Confronting Collapse, discusses signs of collapse, the oil disaster
in the Gulf of Mexico, his predictions for the further breakdown of economic
and political systems, and tangible steps to confront the reality of oil
depletion.
Peak Moment: The Twilight of an Age 12/25/08 - In his book, The Long Descent,
John Michael Greer observes that our culture has two primary stories: “Infinite
Progress” or “Catastrophe”. On the contrary, he sees history as cyclic:
civilizations rise and fall. Like others, ours is exhausting its resource base.
Cheap energy is over. Decline is here, but the descent will be a long one. It’s
too late to maintain the status quo by swapping energy sources. How to deal
with this predicament? He lays out practical ideas, possibilities, and
potentials, including reconnecting with natural and human capacities pushed
aside by industrial life.
Peak Moment: Calm Before the Storm 6/19/08 - Richard Heinberg, author of “Peak Everything”,
reviews the accelerating events since mid-2007, including the credit crunch and
fossil fuel price volatility, noting that we’ve missed most of the best
opportunities to manage collapse. He asks, “how far down the staircase of
complexity will our global civilization have to go until we’re sustainable?”
His answer: when managed properly, with deliberate simplification, not as far
as we might otherwise. In addition to long term efforts to relocalize our
economies, he advocates developing community “resilience” to withstand short-term
catastrophic events like food shortages or extreme weather. Noting that healthy
fear can move us into action, he encourages an attitude of clarity, concern and
informed action in this “calm before the storm” that he feels is soon coming to
an end. (Audio or video, 27 min)
Joseph
Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies, part 1 of 3 - According to Joseph Tainter,
author of The Collapse of Complex
Societies, societies become more complex as they try to solve problems.
Social complexity can include differentiated social and economic roles,
reliance on symbolic and abstract communication, and the existence of a class
of information producers and analysts who are not involved in primary resource
production. Such complexity requires a substantial "energy" subsidy
(meaning resources, or other forms of wealth). When a society confronts a
"problem," such as a shortage of or difficulty in gaining access to
energy, it tends to create new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure, or social
class to address the challenge. In
Tainter's view, while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental
degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause
is diminishing returns on investments in social complexity. Video
Why Are Things Falling Apart? – Short video
clips from What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire
The Converging Crisis - radio interview with Paul Chefurka 1/08
Dr.
Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy
Peak Everything: Waking up to the
Century of Declines -
James Howard Kunstler: The Tragedy of Suburbia 2/04 - In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces
should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the
common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places
not worth caring about. Video.
Jerry Mander talks about
Paradigm Wars:
Indigenous People's Resistance to Economic Globalization. Video (56 min.)
The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard - A wonderful
little movie about the insanity of our economic system.
Collapse: It’s happened to Every Great
Civilization - "Collapse" is the name of the 2009 movie
about Michael Ruppert, his path and view of what collapse will look like. I
found it powerful and moving. Mike
Ruppert is kind of a tragic hero. He doesn't bother with the question of 'why' in the film, which he’s detailed
previously, but lays out 'what' he thinks collapse will look like, and how his
own path led to this view. I found
his path poignant - former Republican and LAPD detective, and at this point
lonely. This is the film's website
and trailer. -SD
What a Way to Go: Life at the End of
Empire – A white
middle-class guy wakes up to peak oil, overpopulation, species extinctions, and
the converging crises of industrial civilization. 2007 2 hours
Children of Men - A world one generation from now has fallen into
anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. The world's
youngest citizen has just died at 18 and humankind is facing the likelihood of
its own extinction. 2007 109 mins.
Manufactured Landscapes: A documentary by Jennifer Baichwal on the work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale
photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards,
factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates beautiful art from industrial
civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he
shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial
revolution, inspiring us to meditate on our impact on the planet as we witness
both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its
waste. Manufactured Landscapes powerfully
shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it, without
simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions. 2006 90 mins.
Dark
Mountain: Issue 1
- Issue 1 is a book-length collection of new writing that
goes deep into the roots of our culture, addressing the questions raised by the
Dark Mountain manifesto: what do we do after we stop pretending that our way of
living can be made “sustainable”? And where do we find new stories with which
to ground ourselves, as that way of living passes? The book brings together a remarkable combination of
thinkers, writers and artists whose work engages with these questions. 2010
Time’s
Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a
Global Crisis by Keith Farnish 2009
The
Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World by John Michael Greer 2009
Bottleneck
: Humanity's Impending Impasse by William R. Catton 2009
Sacred
Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse by Carolyn Baker 2009
Confronting
Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World by Michael C. Ruppert, Foreword by Colin Campbell 2009
Depletion
and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front by Sharon Astyk 2008
The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age by John Michael Greer 2008
The
Path Through Infinity’s Rainbow: Your Guide to Personal Survival and Spiritual
Transformation in a World Gone Mad by Michael P. Byron 2008
Peak
Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines
by
Richard Heinberg 2007
The Final Empire: The
Collapse Of Civilization And The Seed Of The Future by William H. Kötke 2007 - When our great, great,
great grandchildren look back at the crisis that their ancestors had lived
through they will understand why we changed ourselves, our culture, our
relationship with our mother the earth and our relationship with the creative
spirit of the cosmos.
Imperialism Without
Colonies by
Harry Magdoff - In the decades after
1945, a new form of imperialism was, in fact, taking shape—an imperialism
defined not by colonial rule but by the global capitalist market. From the
outset, the dominant power in this imperialism without colonies was the United
States.
Collapse:
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared
Diamond
The
Collapse of Complex Societies
Dark
Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire
by
Morris Berman
The
Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman
The
Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth
about Global Corruption by John Perkins
One
With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future by Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich
Nemesis:
The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project) by Chalmers Johnson
The
Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon
The
Case against the Global Economy, edited by
Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith
Alternatives
to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible by John Cavanagh, Jerry Mander
Globalization
and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz
©
2010 Suzanne Duarte