THE MESS WE’RE IN
I wrote a post yesterday on how even though we’re basically going to have a big mess in our society in the US, we don’t have to go full apocalypse. This matters, because the fear out there is big and widespread.
There’s fear for lots of reasons. I don’t need to list them all here. We don’t need to make it worse.
One of the reasons there’s fear is because society as we know it will be disrupted or look different or work differently than how we’re used to.
That’s a fact.
You can’t change big things at the speed, scale, and scope that the Trump administration is doing and expect society to work the way it did before.
It won’t.
WHY IT MATTERS HOW WE REFER TO IT
Why does it matter what we call this big change that’s unfolding in the US?
I put forward that it matters, because it affects what we do about it.
It matters because it affects what we think we can do about it too.
It matters because we can also influence how it unfolds based on what we do about it all as it’s happening.
We can make it less bad.
We can hold society, institutions, infrastructure, lifelines, communities, and the economy together. We absolutely can.
Back to all that in a minute. Yesterday’s post also had some of the basics about how we hold things together.
DECLINE & COLLAPSE
I studied systems science a bit in college in 1992-1993 that was a 20-year update to the “Limits to Growth” systems science work first done in 1972. One of the points was that we were possibly on a path as humans on this planet to overshoot the carrying capacity of earth and to see a population decline. In 1992, it was a possibility. We still had options.
In 2012, I attended a 40-year update on the same systems science, this time at a Smithsonian Institution symposium in Washington, DC.
In 2012, the same scientists who started the work in 1972 had updated all the models, inputs, and science, and announced their conclusions.
They said that the challenge of our time would be managing the decline of civilization, because we would absolutely overshoot the carrying capacity of the planet. They said that the population “collapse” in combination with climate change would lead to huge disruptions and unpredictable system changes.
I think the large-scale disruption aspect is right on, and I think we’re in the beginning of it.
But I don’t think the “decline of civilization” part is right. I hate to disagree with the people who founded systems science, but excuse me here for a minute.
A population collapse or reduction is not the same as the decline of civilization.
It just isn’t.
First of all, there’s ecology. When a population of any kind “collapses” on earth due to overshooting its carrying capacity, the species itself often survives. For example, the moose population on Isle Royale in Michigan can only get so high, and then things happen and there are less moose there but still moose.
It’s an oversimplification, but it would be similar for humans.
Secondly, a loss or decline or even “collapse” in population does not mean that civilization itself would also collapse. It just doesn’t. There’s not a direct correlation.
A huge loss in population would absolutely be tragic and hard and devastating in all kinds of ways. It’s happened before to humans, particularly in the case of “the plague,” also known as “the black death.” That was a rare time in human history where the population declined rather than inclined.
To be fair, the kind of “collapse” that can happen ecologically in a population overshoot is often a more dramatic change (loss), but it’s still not a decline back to zero.
Human civilization will survive, too.
CIVILIZATION & DISRUPTION
So this brings us to the civilization part.
You can have a huge bunch of disruptive things that happen to a civilization that lead to population collapse and/or to other really hard things for the civilization. There could be war, famine, pandemics, disease, other violence, genocide, and so on.
In our case right now in the US, we have a growing authoritarian regime actively dismantling, weakening, disappearing, unfunding, and weakening the capabilities of a country that has been in the strongest position in the world militarily and economically for decades. The US has been a powerhouse, and it’s been in a certain standard of living. Right now that’s being disrupted in big, huge ways.
Just because it’s getting interrupted doesn’t mean it’s going to collapse.
What does collapse mean, anyway?
Do we mean that things completely stop working? Or do we mean that they work differently?
If that’s the case, why aren’t we just calling it disruption? Instability? A time where everything is changing?
As I said in yesterday’s post, humans will survive. We’re a resilient bunch. We get through a hell of a lot of adversity. It doesn’t mean it’s okay. It just is.
But using the word “disruption” to describe the widespread change that’s beginning in our society might help.
Using the word “collapse” makes everything sound inevitable. Final. Unfightable. Unworkable. Unfunctional.
Only — we can hold our society and our civilization together.
Just because huge change is happening doesn’t mean that collapse is inevitable.
What about if we understand we’re in a disruption that’s a time of huge change?
What if we work on transformation as we go?
What if we do things to help humans survive and maybe even thrive where we can as we go through all of this?
It’s food for thought. We can plant seeds and ideas.
THIS POST CAN START A CONVERSATION
This post is not meant to be a fabulous argument on the subject. It’s meant to inspire thinking and conversation.
Also, it’s not my best argument… as a person trained both in philosophy but also in ecology. But if I wrote my best argument it would be too damn long for anyone to want to read it.
How about if we use this as a reference point for conversations, and for more work to come?
Like what do you think about all this?
Do you think it’s navigable?
I wrote more in yesterday’s post on how we can find ways forward.
This nonprofit is going to be advocating for finding ways through. We’ve been working toward larger advocacy of community engagement. Now we’ll be promoting community engagement that can help us do all of this — hold society together.
More to come. Stick around.
Bring your friends.
Bring your hope, and your faith in humans.
This is going to be hard, for sure. We can find ways through, we can help each other, and we can make change as we go.
We go together.
Vanessa Burnett is the Founder of Shift the Country, a nonprofit promoting activities that increase connection, grow community, build resilience, & empower people to work through problems together. It’s community action and civic engagement for an era of disruption and change. Vanessa is a former homeland security professional with over 20 years experience in resilience, big disasters, wildland fire, critical infrastructure, emergency management, land management, continuity of operations, public communication, and disaster information sharing. Email to team@shiftthecountry.com. Links are here on Linktree.
Love this!