The Terrifying Future Scenario (if there's no collapse)

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance
#1

The thought just occured to me, people are always talking about how the thought of a future collapse scares them. How Peak Oil is frightening to think about. But it just occured to me, what would the alternative be? Think about the possibility of a future scenario where oil never peaks and our growth-based agricultural & capitalist society goes on without internal limitations to encounter it’s true external limits.

Given that growth creates exponential growth curves (check this video out if you havent seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY ), our future would look pretty bleak without peak oil.

Imagine exponential human population, agricultural and industrial growth going on forever with no limit except the size of the earth (or the universe for that matter, I’ve talked to a physicist friend of mine who has done the math to show that even if we started colonizing space today, if our current levels of growth continued we would populate every planet in the universe to our current density within 1000 years). What would be scarier really, a world with limited petroleum energy supplies, or a world without?

Personally, I’d much prefer to see growth limited by the finite energy source which fuels it, rather than having a world where growth is only limited by the physical confines of the space it fills (i.e. the earth). If my car is out of control, I’d rather it stop by running out of gas than by hitting a wall. :-\

To me, peak oil and the collapse of complex societies (see Joseph Tainter’s book by the same name if folks haven’t already) actually offers the possibility and opportunity for a better world. It is a cause for hope just as much as a reason for fear.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share…maybe this has already been talked about here, I don’t know.

[hr]Admin note: fixed the link

#2

Nah, future horrors will be much stranger and more unpredictable.

Venter’s new project to genetically engineer a bacteria to eat CO2 and turn it into methane, for instance. One little genetic suicide switch fails and we all better learn how to breath methane!

#3

The biggest fear I have is that some way, some how, they find a way to make this civilization thing work forever.

Think of it, endless suburbia. An eternity of television, SUVs, 40 hour work weeks and lawns. I’d rather have anything, extinction included, than that.

#4

…and at the same time, there ARE some things that are terrifying about collapse. We’re not yet completely prepared to survive without civilization (hence, we’re still in the process of rewilding). I hate to say it, but every one of us here is still dependent upon it. If we didn’t depend on it, none of us would have anything to do with it … yet, we’re all still talking on a web forum, exchanging information and stories and ideas so that we can learn how to live in self-sufficient communities.

#5

i think that even if i could live fully independently of civ (had the skills, tribe and territory), i would still be connected to it in some way because i feel there’s so much work to be done outside of my own lifestyle.
part of the reason i love rewilding is because i can share it with others

#6

Kallisti!

I would say that most of us depend on civilization only because civilization still exists.

The survival of civilization quite effectively bars us from seriously rewilding in many ways. You need licenses to hunt or fish, for instance. You could ignore those laws, and get away with it for a long time, as an individual, but that choice alone strips you of the possibility of a community. Brent Ladd’s account helps highlight the ways that civilization’s existence keeps us from rewilding.

Besides, the earth skills involved don’t take a great deal of time or effort to learn. It mostly takes practice, and without civilization, you’d have every day for the rest of your life to practice. Sure, the more gradual you can make the transition, the nicer it can seem, but let’s not kid ourselves: if push came to shove, and civilization collapsed tomorrow, we’d still have decades to make that transition. In fact, civilization started collapsing probably a century ago, and we still have decades to make that transition.

By the same token, I really wouldn’t worry about the original terrifying future scenario, either. Civilization’s survival doesn’t just seem unlikely, it would contradict itself. The only solution civilization has lies with more technology, or more government, or otherwise increasing its complexity in one dimension or another. That might even solve peak oil, or global warming, etc. People say I don’t acknowledge the “X factor,” but I disagree. I say they fail to realize that the “X factor” only accelerates complex. Sure, you might solve the most recent crisis, but only by exacerbating the ultimate, underlying crisis of civilization, its diminishing returns on complexity.

Yes, you can reset that complexity so you no longer suffer from diminishing returns. That involves a paradigm shift that changes the whole way you see the world. I see that paradigm shift already taking form, with books like Tim Ingold’s Perception of the Environment. That could reset everything and give us a new age of discovery. But the only way to save civilization that way means eliminating civilization. Resetting that complexity defines what we mean by “collapse”!

Remember, every collapse in history happened precisely because most people on earth benefitted from it. The romanticized view of collapse-as-catastrophe comes from the elites, who wailed over the fact that they no longer had anyone to push around and had to support themselves for once. Truly, a tragedy.

#7
Remember, every collapse in history happened precisely because most people on earth benefitted from it. The romanticized view of collapse-as-catastrophe comes from the elites, who wailed over the fact that they no longer had anyone to push around and had to support themselves for once.

…This made me tear up, than cry (and I’m at a coffee shop!). We need more of this. I would like to see your post turned into a whole article on anthropik. It’s so hard for me to see things this way sometimes, but here you have done it in a few sentences. Thank you.

#8

Yeah, according to Joseph Tainter, the hardest times are the times right before collapse…when the top-heavy complex structures still maintain themselves as a huge burden on those working to support them from down below. Once collapse comes, it’s a relief (at least to those who still have access to land and knowledge of how to provide for themselves).

The only reason Americans are terrified of collapse is because the vast majority of us stand in relation to the earth and the world’s peasantry as the merchants, soldiers and elites of Roman times did.

Someone once said: “I keep myself at the bottom of the pyramid – as low to the ground as possible, so when it all comes down I won’t have very far to fall.”

#9

That makes sense when discussing the collapse of heirarchial power, but we face the collapse of ecosystems, the threat of catastrophic climate change, the death of the ocean, and the collapse of the agricultural system that boosted the population to insane levels. I predict a bumpy ride…

#10

The NOT-COLLAPSE is certainly the least appealing future scenario we can think of. The Ever Expanding Emptiness, the corrupting corrosion. WE (whomever that may be?) might not be ready for it, nor do we need to focus on ourselves, because frankly this isnt about me an you. Humanity on the other hand in all its diversity will benefit from this collapse when it eventually happens as will all other life on earth.

Take care out there!

#11

It makes sense with economic collapse, too; by “economic,” we mean the system of exploitation by which hierarchy extracts wealth from the poor, to enrich the powerful. All previous collapses involved both collapses of hierarchy and economy, because they depend on one another, and they occurred for the betterment of most people.

Ecological collapse stands in direct opposition to social collapse; social collapse offers the only real solution to stop ecological collapse. Ecological collapse offers some truly horrible scenarios, but that will stop almost immediately once civilization collapses. Every day that civilization grows weaker, the living world grows stronger. So again, collapse looks like a good thing.

#12

I was raised (trained) to have a rollercoastering idealistic/cynical attitude about life, so if I got anything wrong in my post up there, well, just know that I’m working on fixing that. (Though I hate to use this particular metaphor, Rome wasn’t built in a day.) But truly, I do think that even for somebody who wants to rewild, if they haven’t yet got the skills and means to survive a quick collapse, it is a terrifying prospect. TimeLESS – I agree that it’s ultimately about something greater than ourselves, but we are part of that “something”, and I don’t think rewilding is about altruism or sacrificing yourself; I think you do have to keep your own best interests in mind, even if it makes you “hypocritical” (whatever that means) until you’re ready to take another step further into rewilding. I think we have every right to be terrified by having the rug of how we survive (no matter how threadbare) pulled out from under our feet.

I was talking about my therapist about this recently. At the Skill Share last month in northern WA, the discussion about natural childbirth TERRIFIED me. I had to find a friend and go to a safe place with her so that I could work through the terror. If I became pregnant tomorrow and decided to keep the child, I don’t think I’d be ready for a non-hospitalized birth in 9 months (and I wouldn’t call myself a hypocrite for choosing to give birth in a hospital). My own birth was prolonged and traumatic, eventually threatening my own life, and potentially my mother’s, so that the doctor had to perform a C-section. Knowing my mother quite well, and knowing the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy with me as well as her family history, I am sure that the drama was due to my mother’s emotional state during her pregnancy and her anxiety during my birth. It is an anxiety and terror that I also carry with me about the prospect of birth, and I would not be surprised if it took me many years to become comfortable enough with birth to deliver naturally.

At the skill share, what terrified me most was the thought, what if I became pregnant after a crash, and I wasn’t ready?

This is kind of off-topic, so I’ll stop here. But to sum up…I think that individually, there are things in some, most, or all of us that keep us tethered to civ for the time being, no matter what role in a hierarchy we serve. And rewilding is not a smooth, quick action of cutting the tethers. We’re not ready for an abrupt crash just because we want to be or say we are ready.

Edit: In my mind, the rewilding movement can be best achieved by an intergenerational effort, in which each new generation is challenged to unlearn what they know of civ and relearn a deeper knowledge of living as nature-based people. I think it is unwise to expect oneself to have it all set out for one’s children. Certainly there are values that you can impart, and knowledge that you can share, but there are some ways in which civ has affected you that you may not ever be able to shake. You are blind to many of them. It’s up to your children to continue your work and reject what you cannot reject for yourself – and synchronistically, to regain what you have failed to regain within your lifetime.

This is not to say that I’m at all an apologist for civ. I do believe in the goal of moving as far from it as possible. My skepticism lies in the question of whether complete freedom is really possible for us within our individual lifetimes, because people are limited in what they can accomplish by their own mortal bodies. This is not a bad thing or a good thing, it’s just the reality that we have to work with, and we have to accept it as something we can’t change (although we can change what we believe, what we want, and how we see ourselves).

#13

BlueHeron, you are totally right. I was talking about one side of the coin and you are now showing the other side. Take Care!

#14

While I don’t feel that an overnight collapse is realistic, if certain systems fall I think that will open the floodgates for rewilding energy to conduct itself across the land. While incredibly inexperienced in survival, I sense that rewilding within civilization has a good deal of limits. How far can we rewild while the monetary economy still stands? While squatting is illegal and enforced? While lawnmowers and paving machines halt the land’s dreaming? For me, rewilding isn’t just about preparing myself for post-industrial life, but it’s rewilding our contexts too. I can do my best to learn survival skills, un-learn the civilized habits (patriarchy, oppression, etc.), and all that jazz, but until civilization collapses, there are so many social pressures that feel like obstacles to rewilding – culture inundates us with advertisements, land ownership and law enforcement prevent squatting and rewilding of landscapes, machines and cars and computers traumatize us daily with the ever whirring rumble of engines and access to internet communities rather than face-to-face ones.

Imagining what would happen if collapse came tomorrow, I can’t say for certain whether I’d survive. I don’t have any “survival skills” with a bow-drill or bow-hunting or hide-tanning, but I do have a few good friends, some field guides, seeds, access to leftover useful civilized “junk” and good intuition. Forced into a scenario where rewilding becomes necessary, could I band together with friends and use the social and practical skills we do have to find ways to live without civilization? Maybe not, but then again, that kind of rewilding community would be hard pressed to spring up without collapse…

#15

Yeah. :’(

But somehow I think the land dreams on. The ghosts of the trees who used to live where we have roads have pulled my attention lately in a powerful way.

#16

yarrow dreamer: if you are able or want to, perhaps you could tell us more?

that actually reminds me of a ghost of a tree which spoke to me recently. an old white oak tree – perhaps aged three hundred years or more – used to sit at the top of a hill in the area where i grew up. before i knew the rolling hills of that place, they were bulldozed and turned into a mall and surrounding parking lot. but the planners spared the old tree – fenced in the hill it stood on, keeping animals nonhuman and human alike from it and built the parking lot around it. within ten years of building the mall, the tree died and was cut down.

#17

Perhaps what all this comes down to is that given our present state and trajectory, the future gives us serious cause to fear (and prepare) no matter what.

However, for me it was liberating to finally realize (since I see economic, industrial & agricultural collapse as virtually inevitable) that a future where current trends continue was actually more terrible to contemplate than a future where the forces fueling current trends run out of steam. People I talk to are always talking about how scary the notion of collapse is, but the question that must logically follow is: scary compared to what?

If current growth trends could continue, the future would be both essentially terrifying and completely pre-determined. Collapse may be scary as well (because it involves the unknown) but it opens up possibilities for a brighter future.

An alcoholic is certain to fear a world where the booze is likely to run out, but how much more reason would he have to fear a world where the booze flowed ever more freely and the whole world was turned into one big bar?

One scenario involves a painful detox and a world where he must learn to live without his favorite drug. The other scenario involves him drinking himself to death.

Of course, an alcoholic experiencing success in his or her recovery has less reason to fear either future.

#18

wildeyes,

thanks for sharing your tale of the lonely oak tree. :’(

this community of ghost trees has slowly crawled into my awareness over several months.

i first began to notice, traveling through city streets in portland, the tallest, oldest trees, and wonder what they’ve seen. how tall (or whether) they stood when people built various elements of the city (roads, buildings, etc.) around them. and who used to stand in between. i started to imagine and try to re-envision the whole forests that used to live here. following the contours, noticing where hollows run that once held moving water (where has that creek spirit gone? concrete sewerpipe runoff dungeon, many feet below, out of the sunlight)

then i noticed a story pop out of my mouth, while riding in the car with my son, about the trees who used to live where the road lies now. i felt that the trees told the story through me, wanting us to remember them, without any real conscious effort from me.

#19

Wow, thats some powerful stuff.
While going by cities in southern Arizona recently, ai noticed that they sometimes left large creosote bushes in the street margins. If you know about the creosote, then you know that they can live nearly as long as sequoias and redwoods, despite being a maximum of about ten feet tall. As ai went by, ai realized “those bushes were there before the road, are here now, and will still grow wen the cities die and the roads crumble” The desert gives me hope.

#20

I read this stuff about thorium ran prieur mentioned on his site and it really creeps the hell out of me to think everything will continue. that honestly frightens the crap out of me. Not just this thorium thingy, just the idea that civ will continue his destructive path. Till really the only collapse left will be the end of it all. Which might still be preferred, you know. More domination, more chips and more technobabblespeak bullshit slavery subsystems being rationalized in the name of itself. civ the tautology. Claiming all. freaks me out … just needed to get it off my chest