Dark Renaissance

Research and Sense-Making
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UPDATE: 2025-04-04: we now have a lexicon entry Dark Renaissance

Term for the second renaissance story where there is “darkness before dawn" aka "winter before spring” . That is some kind of “dark age” before the (second) renaissance – as there was in the last renaissance where you had the mini-dark age of the 14th century (famine, black death with a third to half of European population dying).

In this case, seeds may go in the ground and hibernate for a while – “Last through winter until spring” – rather than renaissance happening immediately.

Section on SecondRenaissance.net

There is a section on this in 2R home page core narrative

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This is a topic that is worth its own mini-essay.

3 pathways

Jamie Bristow and Rosie Bell wrote a 3 pathways piece with this summary graphic.

Dark Renaissance can be thought as a name for the middle pathway(s) especially the one where there is a recover. ie. there is a collapse but is not total and there is some recovery in the long-term.

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Renaissance and dark renaissance as alternatives to the prevention and doomerism narratives

Here are some notes written in dialog with Jamie Bristow in May 2024 that fed into the 3 pathways narrative (see below):

•⁠ ⁠original narrative: there is potential disaster/problem (climate change)
•⁠ ⁠we can prevent it by taking action now … (Prevention scenario)
•⁠ ⁠growing sense that we weren’t doing that and weren’t going to do that => doomerism and resignation (adaptation as best framing)
•⁠ ⁠so end up with 2 options: a) averters b) doomers (there is, of course, in mainstream culture pure denialists who think there is no problem but within space of those taking action on this issue these aren’t relevant)
•⁠ ⁠what if there were a third option?
•⁠ ⁠renaissance: this recognizes significant likelihood of breakdown on more or less serious scale and sees that after (and indeed through this) there is the possibility of renewal.
•⁠ ⁠or, for those who like their game of thrones: winter is coming, but so is spring.
•⁠ ⁠emphasize this option does not and should not minimise the likely awfulness of major societal breakdown, nor should it impede ongoing efforts to avoid such breakdown or, at least ameliorate the worse effects of that.
•⁠ ⁠what it does do is to avoid the trap (that we increasingly see) of either a blind optimism verging on denial or a simple doomer resignation

Aside (do we include because it can sound like we are welcoming breakdown): pursuing the metaphor, winter may even be necessary for spring. That is, without some kind of breakdown, the profound change (transformation) that we need may be impossible. We once asked a zen master: when do people change and he answered when they have to. We often only change - and grow -

Caveat: or course this story is only valid if collapse is not terminal. If winter is so severe that all seeds die then there is no spring. In risk terminology, these would be existential risks.

Winter is coming … and so is spring

This is one succinct way to describe the positive perspective on this.

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This is it, absolutely. Firstly it is too late to avoid the breakdown. Secondly, even if we’d had all the time in the world we would not have voluntarily made the changes required. Collapse is required both as the only means of clearing enough of what is unsustainable out of the way, and as the teacher who will teach humanity the hardest lessons it is ever going to have to learn.

Here is a thread from four days ago on /r/collapse trying to explain this to the doomers. Some of them get it. Most don’t. Believing humans are going extinct is very appealing in the sense that no more thinking is required. It is similar in effect to holier-than-thou postmodern virtue signalling. In this case it is “collapsier-than-thou” – claiming the moral and intellectual high ground because “I’ve faced up to how bad it is and you haven’t.” In both cases what is required is more realism.

Collapse is not the end. It is only the end of the beginning. : r/collapse

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I think that the healthiest perspective is to head towards something better and see the inevitable dissolution and unmaking of the world as what’s there giving way to what’s coming next. That would be an alternative to the reactive, defensive and defeatist stance that other views represent.

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Here is something I drafted recently for a textbook project. Replace “information technology” with “civilization” and the same general observations still work (at least for me).

"1.3.1.1.6 How Much Theory is Just Enough?
Albert Einstein once gave a talk which is summarized as: ““Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. How simple can we get in projecting the future of information technology, without making it too simple? Historians and theorists like Ian Morris (2011), Jared Diamond (2005), and Peter Turchin(2007) generally reject single-factor theories for things like civilizations or human futures. All of them have done extensive statistical and empirical studies of societies all over the world, spanning all of recorded history. None of them would buy in to the idea that everything is straight up progress with no reversals or major side effects. Likewise, none of them would accept we are in some inevitable downslope to civilizational death and decay. They would all take note that environmental overshoot has destroyed societies in the past, and none of them would exclude that as a future possibility for our current society either. These theorists do not find evidence for a grand scale cycle or dialectic that has determined the entire past history of the world. But they do identify smaller patterns that have repeated themselves over and over again. That seems like a prudent approach to future forecasting for information technology. Are there patterns of technological development in the past that may point to the most likely emerging trends in the immediate future?

1.3.1.2 Forecasting Overview
Based on the idea that relatively small-scale pattern recognition may be the best way to implement Einstein’s advice about keeping things simple – but not too simple – there are a variety of methods we can use to place bets on what might happen next. These include both quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative methods are based on statistics and on ways to interpret statistical data. Qualitative methods involve personal human experience, and the stories people tell. There are also hybrid forecasting approaches to futurism combining the quantitative and the qualitative and we will close this chapter with an example of one such hybrid approach.

Diamond, J. M. (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Penguin Books.

Morris, I. (2011). Why the West Rules - For Now. McClelland & Stewart.

Turchin, P. (2007). War and peace and war : the rise and fall of empires. Penguin Group.

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@rufuspollock I would note that there is a core neoreactionary strand of literature called ‘The Dark Enlightenment’ by Nick Land; and so memetically the Dark Renaissance could be conflated with this in a negative light.

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I know, I know :+1: In fact, when i described this to Zak Stein that was the first thing he mentioned too … :grimacing:

Obviously, Dark Renaissance is distinct and has no relationship with Dark Enlightenment.

I’m not sure what to do as I can’t think of good alternatives. And maybe it is not the end of the world to have this initial confusion if you then can clarify …

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I’m not sure what to do as I can’t think of good alternatives.

I think comparing it to the “dark ages” is the wrong metaphor. The “dark” stage isn’t necessarily a long period of ideological darkness. The darkness in this case is collapse itself – the eco-apocalypse. This is shaping up to be a period of profound ideological change – there will be chaos, destruction, immense suffering – but this is exactly what provides the impetus and motive for radical change.

The following is a quote from the end of the introduction to my forthcoming book. It is directly relevant in summing up what it is you’re trying to encapsulate in the term you are looking for:

This book [which is about 2R in all but name] is about transformation – both the socio-cultural transformation of the current, broken and unsustainable forms of Western and global civilisation into a mature global ecocivilisation, and my own transformation from an evangelical materialistic atheist into a magical realist. Common to both transformations is the traumatic process of breakdown and collapse of existing structures as a necessary pre-requisite to the creation of new and better ones. Cultural Anthropologist Victor Turner called this “liminality” – the “between and betwixt” part of a rite of passage, such as a coming of age or a marriage, when the participants no longer belong to the old state but do not yet belong to the new one.

Liminality is the disorienting, in-between stage where old structures have collapsed, and new ones are not yet formed – a state of profound possibility. The deep bonds that emerge in such moments exist outside the normal hierarchies of structure and anti-structure, fostering equality and shared purpose. Turner called this “Communitas”. Collapse can be thought of as a perilous journey through liminality on a global scale. Just as in personal transformation, societal collapse brings both loss and opportunity: the loss of what no longer serves us, and the chance to rebuild with intention, imagination, and a deeper sense of what it means to be human.

So the question is what can we call this that is better than “dark rennaissance”?

I fed this discussion into ChatGPT and this is the response:

Good points all around—“Dark Renaissance” risks confusion with Nick Land’s “Dark Enlightenment,” and the “dark ages” metaphor doesn’t quite fit the transformative, liminal nature of the period you’re describing.

Here are some alternative terms that might capture the idea of collapse as both destruction and the liminal phase preceding transformation:

  1. Liminal Renaissance – Highlights the liminality of the transition, avoiding the “dark” connotations.
  2. Phoenix Era – Emphasizes rebirth through destruction.
  3. Kairos Collapse – “Kairos” in Greek means the opportune moment for transformation, capturing the deep rupture and potential.
  4. Chrysalis Age – Evokes metamorphosis, gestation before emergence.
  5. Threshold Revolution – Reflects the liminal state before emergence.
  6. Catabolic Awakening – If you want a more technical-sounding term, this plays on catabolic processes (breaking down) leading to new synthesis.
  7. The Interregnum – Borrowing from Gramsci: “The old world is dying, and the new cannot be born.”
  8. Ecotastrophe and Renewal – A stark but direct formulation.
  9. The Rift and Renewal – “The Rift” evokes separation, collapse; “Renewal” balances it.
  10. Post-Collapse Renaissance – More descriptive and less dramatic.
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Nice to know me and Zak Stein are both familiar with the darker ideological corners of digitial subculture :sweat_smile:

Think you’re right that you can just clarify this :+1:

A similar concept I have is that we’re in a time of ‘Metachrysalis’:

Metachrysalis: meta meaning ‘recursive’ + chrysalis meaning ‘change’ = ‘recursive change’

‘In the broadest historical terms, the metacrisis can be understood as a dangerous transitional period from the current global civilization, to something new and uncertain’ – The Civilisation Research Institute

The term ‘metachrysalis’, a phonetic play on the term ‘metacrisis’, reframes the metacrisis emphasising its transformative nature as a ‘time between worlds’: as not ‘the end of the world’, but rather the ‘end of this world’. On this metaphor of metamorphosis, we live in a time before a ‘phase-transition’ where, failing to see the imminence of a disjuncture from normality, we narrowly extrapolate status quo trajectories into the future and miss the possibility of a radically divergent future (another possible world) on the other side. Further, the metaphor recognises that we are part of the crisis and that, upon recognising this - the meta-cognition of the metacrisis or self-awareness of (human) superintelligence - we can become part of the change to resolve it (second order cybernetics).

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Do you mind if I steal “metachrysalis”? :slight_smile:

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Memes have their own independent existence and their only goal is to proliferate themselves.

(Go ahead @GeoffDann haha. An acknowledgement that it came from me would be cool though; and instrumental towards my metacrisis meta-project. I’m actually thinking of starting a group called Metachrysalis so hopefully it will spread from there too!)

:v:

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You can have a mention in the acknowledgements if you tell me who to credit. I am already using the metaphor of a pupa. Let me know if you start your group.

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Ahh my name is Max Ramsahoye haha

The butterfly is a recurring, archetypal symbol of transformation.
Also has nice associations with dynamical systems theory: ‘the butterfly effect’ where a small yet significant change in a system leads to radical, unexpected changes across the entire system.

I’ll do a post about forming the group on the 2R Forum at some point!
And I’ll message you too!

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Relevant quote from John Berger (also cited on https://lifeguild.earth/)

What we have been living in the last twenty-five years is the beginning of a new dark age… In an illuminated age, although nothing is certain, there is a sense of direction into the future and a kind of path – more than a path, a kind of a Roman road, if not an autoroute! … In a dark age, there is no such road. There are only paths. Paths that have to be discovered and walked along by individuals, by groups of individuals, by groups coming together.

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Curious why no form of aftermath for restorative society is not possible with the hothouse Earth scenario (the trajectory we’re currently on). Deep Adaptation, which adheres to this scenario, allows room for forms of continuance in the aftermath of collapse. And a note on timing: collapse is already happening in parts of the world, and it looks likely to happen everywhere - to varying degrees of severity.

Oh and if you want to go into the nuances of the hothouse earth outcome, this is my forte. I did a thesis on it. I AM the hothouse earth (not literally).

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Here’s a paper that’s over 10 years old and has almost 500 citations that’s very germane to the dark renaissance concept, and coins a useful name for the upside of discussing collapse - “emancipatory catastrophism”

Emancipatory catastrophism: What does it mean to climate change and risk society?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0011392114559951

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In this context, hothouse earth scenario meant runaway heating leading either to extinction or at least to such a breakdown that recovery to current levels of complexity was impossible (e.g. next time round no fossil fuels to bootstrap technological take-off).

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In a Hothouse Earth scenario, the forms of modern civilisation we are familiar with would become exceedingly difficult—if not outright impossible—to sustain. Yet two broad possibilities remain:

  1. An advanced ecological civilisation—one that retains a degree of global connectivity: limited supply chains, a functioning internet, frameworks of shared knowledge. Such a civilisation would face immense challenges and likely be confined to specific geographical zones, but it remains within the realm of plausibility.
  2. A network of localised, resilient communities, grounded in bioregional autonomy. This is the vision championed by the Transition Movement, the Global Ecovillage Network, the permaculture community, and the work inspired by Joanna Macy. While such communities too would face considerable challenges in the face of collapse, their distributed nature and ecological grounding offer a degree of adaptive potential.

Perhaps the most hopeful path lies in a synthesis of both: a web of interlinked communities, sharing knowledge and mutual support across distance, even if only intermittently. But even without such coordination, human culture endures—adapted, rooted, transformed.

We should not dismiss the possibility of a second renaissance—even in the midst of collapse. If we accept that breakdown is a prelude to transformation, then our task becomes clear: to prepare now for what comes after. To seed the future with the knowledge, practices, and principles that might one day give rise to something wiser, something whole.

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To have an internet we need computers, fibre optics etc. atm that means chip fab facilities which are some of the most complex, expensive production environments we have ever made. In case of civilizational breakdown it could be pretty difficult to maintain those. Similarly, we need data centers and like which consume a lot of energy. (I get there could be low-tech internet type ideas with simpler systems but the overall infrastructure is quite fragile IMO).

Aside: I feel we are getting into “new topic” territory - please feel free to boot one and we can discuss there. (Both question of “what is hothouse earth” and, more importantly, what positive futures can we imagine in those kind of scenarios …)

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Maybe we should be starting to hoard old chips, then? There are an awful lot of them around, and vast numbers simply thrown away every day. Could we possibly make do with the chips that have already been made?