Connected Community Conversations

In my opinion, not a single person I have encountered here (apart from yourself) fully “gets it”. They’ve not reached the moment where they realise “the metacrisis” has no “nice” solution. They’ve not accepted that things are going to get unimaginably worse before they can get any better, and without that they are left trying to imagine how the world will voluntarily change. It will not. The world as we know it is not going to be reformed. It is going to collapse.

Rupert Read has written of this, noting a ‘phoenix’ model as one of three possibilities.

This is the eco-phoenix:

So there’s definitely a gap to be filled.

Exactly. But it requires a change of thinking here at 2R. A very radical change of thinking, to which I sense too much resistance at the moment.

My message to 2R is this: we don’t have time for this.

We do not have time for the conferences and the podcasts. We don’t have time to carefully co-ordinate the whole 2R ecosystem and make sure we don’t leave anybody out, even if their ideas are part of the problem. We need much more rapid and radical change than that, and it starts with an acknowledgement that the world as we have known it is has already started collapsing. We need urgency. I do not see it here. With the greatest respect, this feels more like a deep thinking social club. It’s all very nice (until troublemakers like me turn up) but it isn’t actually going anywhere.

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Being more (less) energised and having a high sense of urgency may be to do with psychological differences between people. It’s more to do with temperament matching than rationalising. I also thrive on high intensity and high frequency interaction, but some people are exactly the opposite.

I honestly believe that in this case it is to do with how deeply people grasp the extent an intractability of the metacrisis.

Collapse-awareness is a psychological difference, but it is an awareness something happening in the real world, not just an internal thing.

There are only two possible responses to becoming collapse aware. One is resignation, which can be followed from anything from total despair to nihilistic hedonism. The other is to completely rethink everything you thought you knew, and try to prepare (in whatever way you can) for what is actually coming.

There is a “conveyor belt” of people becoming collapse aware, who currently aren’t being offered any vision of the future in which they can believe. It is a conveyor belt to nowhere.

2R is committed to offering them something much better than that, but mañana, mañana, mañana

Do you view collapse-awareness as something that guides you to opportunities or something that rings the alarm bell? It’s all about how you internally perceive what may be happening in the “real world”. You can’t easily separate the two.

Also, there’s no way of knowing whether this conveyer belt into nothingness won’t eventually result in something insightful and productive. If people have no idea how to react to some threat - it may be best not to panic and wait for a moment when an idea crystalises…

It was something that completely shattered my worldview and forced me to rethink everything I believe. It has dominated the course of my life, in all sorts of ways. It is the foundation of my worldview.

It’s all about how you internally perceive what may be happening in the “real world”. You can’t easily separate the two.

I think it is easier than we have been led to believe. Becoming collapse-aware is arriving at an understanding about the extent and intractability of our systemic problems. This isn’t subjective. It reflects something in the objective structure of reality. This is why realism is so central to everything I say.

I believe the claim that collapse is inevitable ranks among those statements that we should be able to agree is objectively true. We need to be clear exactly what that means, but I think that is perfectly possible too.

Also, there’s no way of knowing whether this conveyer belt into nothingness won’t eventually result in something insightful and productive.

There is nothing productive going on at r/collapse. If you so much as attempt to make positive noises about the future, the result is deep psychological-emotional turmoil. The majority response is a mixture of derision and anger. These people are sick and tired of the bullshit. They want something REAL. And all they are being offered at the moment is collapse.

If people have no idea how to react to some threat - it may be best not to panic

Do you see me as “panicking”?

I haven’t felt panic like that since before I went into the psychiatric hospital. I am a million miles away from panicking. What you see is not panic. It is a call to action. Panic immobilises people – it stops them from thinking.

Here is the beginning of the introduction to my book:

Introduction

We live in an age of deepening fear, anger and confusion. It feels like societies worldwide are falling to pieces, and any remaining hope that we can avoid a more comprehensive collapse is steadily draining away. Many of us react to this escalating chaos by searching for someone to blame, but this approach yields few effective solutions to our problems or meaningful responses to our predicaments. There is no shortage of opposition to the status quo, but it lacks structure and there is nothing resembling an ideology that could bring enough people together to make much difference to the general direction of world events. Most of us aren’t even looking for a unifying ideology – we have collectively given up hope that such a thing is even possible. And all the time we’re accelerating towards social, economic and ecological catastrophe.

I am not interested in peddling false hope (“hopium” in collapse-aware lingo). This book would have been a lot easier to write if I’d been willing to engage in that sort of business, and it would also have had a much larger potential audience. I believe a significant degree of collapse can no longer be avoided; the process has already begun and is gaining momentum all the time. It is not that it is physically impossible to avoid the catastrophe – even without any implausible technological advances (“techno-hopium”), we could avoid disaster if only we could sort out our political-ideological problems. And it’s not that these problems aren’t theoretically solvable in the long term, either. What makes catastrophe inevitable is that we do not have centuries, or even decades, to figure out solutions. We have run out of time. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we ran out of time at least 30 years ago and we have now reached the point where this should no longer be the subject of serious debate. How long can we go on saying “We must act now or it will be too late”? How late must it be before that message is no longer appropriate? Too late for what, exactly?

This book is not so much about collapse itself as it is about how acknowledging collapse could serve as a catalyst for radical transformation. We cannot afford to stop thinking. Giving up all hope for the future might relieve some of the psychological anguish, but it serves no other purpose than ending the conversation. A real future is coming and we must prepare and adapt, and that means we need to think about it and talk about it much more openly, honestly and realistically than we are now. Where do we go from here? Can we justify any sort of hope for a brighter future? Or must we face the conclusion that Homo sapiens is an evolutionary dead end, and that the sooner we go extinct, the better?

The challenge, then, is how to navigate a world in which the pursuit of holistic understanding has become nearly impossible. Without a coherent framework to guide us, the fragmentation of knowledge mirrors the fragmentation of our society, leaving us grasping at disconnected pieces of truth. If we are to make sense of the complexities facing us – let alone respond to them – we must find a way to think and act beyond the limits imposed by our current cultural systems. This is not about rejecting expertise or dismissing the value of specialised knowledge, but about recognising the urgent need for synthesis: a way of connecting insights from disparate fields and perspectives in search of a bigger picture.

Does that sound like panic to you?

I wasn’t referring to you - people who are “collapse-aware” are often in a deep state of fear-induced paralysis. I’m not “collapse-aware” in the same sense as you, but I’m neither here nor there - simply getting on with life to the best of my abilities. In your opinion, is that too little?

Yes. From my perspective such people are the raw material for the revolution that needs to happen. They are good and ready for it. They just need somebody to provide them with the conceptual tools to make it possible. They need to be offered a vision of the future that they can actually believe in, which will turn their paralysis into action.

I’m not interested in passing moral judgement on others for either their level of collapse awareness or their life choices. That is between you and Reality. Also, those who don’t prep will suffer because of it. Or as it is known in collapse aware circles: “Collapse now and avoid the rush.”

I am interested in assembling a meta-movement capable of turning a process of collapse into a process of transformation. I came to 2R because it seemed to me that this was a group of people who would understand that. It turned out I was wrong. I was quite surprised at much of what I found here, but lets not go back into that. I’m now well aware that whatever it is 2R is trying to do, it is currently not close enough to what I am trying to do for me to be much use here.

Maybe I can act as a bridge between /r/collapse and here, but I suspect it will prove difficult.

I genuinely don’t understand why anybody here would think collapse is avoidable.

The disillusioned lot comes into power after a revolution.
And then what? How do you enact a transformation?

Generally people are very good at echoing frustrations and anger.
Organising themselves into a movement under a leader is a step up.
Winning a revolution - another step up, but still feasible.

Then they find themselves clueless as of what to do next.

Every time I come across something where my sense-making disagrees with the reality - I know it’s me who needs to reconsider.

That is exactly what the book is about. It will require a new political movement – the political wing of the meta-ideology I am describing in the book. Chapter 6 is a future history written from the other side of the transformation. Chapter 7 is a the beginning of a fictional book from the future, which provides the ideological foundation for a transformed kind of civilisation.

Every time I come across something where my sense-making disagrees with the reality - I know it’s me who needs to reconsider.

I don’t need to reconsider anything about this. I am absolutely certain I am correct. Why waste my time reconsidering what I know to be wrong?

Just because nobody here understands why collapse is unavoidable, it does not follow that nobody understands it anywhere else. I’ve spent my whole adult life in the company of such people. We know something you don’t.

Because you won’t get far convincing others, so your movement will have precisely 1 revolutionary in its ranks.

You mean like the 530,000 subscribers of /r/collapse who are already completely convinced?

You aren’t understanding. I don’t need to convince anybody the collapse is inevitable. In my book, I don’t even bother trying to do that. Firstly it is a waste of time, because people have to see it for themselves. Secondly, I am very much aware that this group of people is only going to get bigger.

You can’t build a political movement in a “paint by numbers” exercise. It’s not an algorithmic problem. You need people with ideas, capacities and capabilities. You can’t “manufacture” those - that’s why it’s so important to be discerning and selective with your ideas and time in general

You need people who can pull levers - if the number of zebras grows in the savannah - it will only mean more food for lions, not a power dynamics / ideological transformation

I am supplying the ideas – the top level ideas which are currently missing. These are required before anything else can get properly moving.

You can’t “manufacture” those - that’s why it’s so important to be discerning and selective with your ideas and time in general

…and…

You need people who can pull levers - if the number of zebras grows in the savannah - it will only mean more food for lions, not a power dynamics / ideological transformation

I am not trying to manufacture them. I am trying to provide the meta-ideological structure needed to co-ordinate the ones that already exist.

OK, you’re providing the ideas - why would people who are equipped with capacities and are already doing well in the world as is (and maybe increasingly well in ever more polarised world) buy your ideas? How are you attracting them to your ideology? What are their incentives?

If your ideology is only for the ones with no capacity - then you don’t have a movement capable of transformation. That’s really what I’m trying to get to. The most important thing is being neglected - the question of dynamics of power, incentives and capacities…

Some of them have the moral/spiritual fibre to do what they know to be morally right, and there is no reason for those people to reject my ideas. However, it is also the case that the dwindling majority who are doing well are probably not going to like my ideas one little bit. You can’t have a revolution without there being a group currently in power, which resists. Without that, it isn’t a revolution, is it?

How are you attracting them to your ideology?

The people who are doing well under the existing system? They are not my target audience. I don’t care about them. I want to co-ordinate everybody else.

What are their incentives?

Not wanting to be morally/spiritually bankrupt.

I am not wasting my time trying to change the thinking of people who only care about themselves, especially if they think “everything is fine”. There’s a meme for that.

@GeoffDann What Collapsed just now is my intended thread on “Connected Community Conversations”. It was working quite well in your absence. I got to post few coherent thoughts and meet people. Now I wake up this morning and what used to be a productive thread has been effectively spammed with things you must have posted a dozen times already. If it was not convincing then, it won’t be more convincing now. Change it up!

Some discussion rules to consider:

  • Stay on topic: Keep the conversations on-topic and relevant to the purpose of the group. Avoid sharing unrelated messages or spamming the group with unnecessary messages.
  • Be concise: Keep the conversation focused on the topic at hand and avoid going off on tangents. This helps to keep the discussion productive and respectful.
  • Share helpful content: Share content that is helpful or interesting to the group members. This could be news articles, memes, jokes, or anything else that adds value to the group.

I’d love to have a nice channel on “collapse” or “doom” or “inevitable destruction” or “sounding the alarm at 10000 decibels” or whatever it is you think the world the needs. Given such a thread, I might visit it occasionally. But not 24x7 in EVERY thread. There are other ways to view the world. There are other people in the world who have had transformative experiences. There are other ideas about the future worth considering. Yours is not the only voice.

@JamesBaker @Asimong @rufuspollock @JonahW @laurenw

Martin,

I am currently final proof-reading the book. This is a quote from the chapter on “the Metacrisis”

The rich are not guaranteed to win in this situation. History tells us that even though the rich go through long periods of getting their own way, at times of crisis they can become the biggest losers (the French Revolution being the prime example). What is guaranteed is that in those places where there is a rebalancing of wealth and power away from the rich and towards a fairer society, the winners in that process (which may well require civil war/revolution of some sort) are not then going to voluntarily give up their domestic gains in order to make the international system fairer. People who risk everything to fight for their own survival, and for that of people they care about, do not then selflessly give up what they fought for to help people in other countries whose situation is even worse than their own. They are unlikely to agree to this even if those other countries are themselves heading in the right direction, and they certainly won’t do so if those other countries are still heading in the wrong direction. What history cannot shed much light on is the fate of an “elite” ultra-rich class who see themselves as “above” the system of sovereign states, their immense wealth hidden away in unaccountable tax havens. I seriously doubt whether the existence of those categories of persons and places can be made consistent with an ecocivilisation. The ideology that sustains them is based on the myth of an ever-expanding pie. Without that, there can be no justification for a system that delivers them an ever-expanding slice. If nothing fundamental changes even when that myth has been exploded, then we are revolutionary territory – and this sort of revolution would have to be truly international.

I don’t believe that is fair. I’ve not posted anything in any threads for several days, and my contributions to this thread followed directly from the discussion that was already taking place between Justin and Simon.

I am aware that you don’t want people like me gate-crashing your comfortable world. I know I am not wanted here (by most people at least). Although to a certain extent I really don’t care. The world as we know it is ending. I make no apologies for thinking that is actually quite important. What is astonishing is that I need to explain it to anybody else here.

“sounding the alarm at 10000 decibels”

It seems that even at 10,000 decibels, some people still can’t hear it.

This is out of bounds and I don’t see an easy way forward. In response to this, I am putting a one week suspension on Geoff’s account. This will give admins time to figure out our next action.

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