The Sixth Stage of Collapse

Joel Robison

[In italiano]

I admit it: in my last book, The Five Stages of Collapse, I viewed collapse through rose-colored glasses. But I feel that I should be forgiven for this; it is human nature to try to be optimistic no matter what. Also, as an engineer, I am always looking for solutions to problems. And so I almost subconsciously crafted a scenario where industrial civilization fades away quickly enough to save what's left of the natural realm, allowing some remnant of humanity to make a fresh start.

Boat Bits

Sometimes collapse starts to feel like too tiresome a subject (more and more so as time goes on), and sometimes I wish to instead channel RLM of BoatBits and write about boaty stuff instead. We just got back from a week-long sailing vacation, of sorts, aboard our new boat. It was supposed to be a lot longer; the original “plan” (the word makes me laugh) was to sail to South Carolina and spend the cold months there, then sail back to Boston in the spring. But the new boat did not inspire confidence with its mechanics, or please me with its sailing ability, so we headed back.

Wombs, Work and Well-Meaning Wealthy Women

[A bit of sisterly advice by guest-poster Candace Makeda Moore, MD, along with a bitch-slap for those elite American women in positions of privilege and authority who drive women toward higher education and careers and, in so doing, are condemning most of them to a lifetime of debt servitude and childlessness.]

I have read many recent articles of supposedly sisterly advice for women from people in authority. The fact that this advice comes from people who are women themselves (e.g., Sheryl Sandberg et al.) makes it sound realistic. Much of this advice does make some sense—for wealthy, good-looking and otherwise privileged women. For the rest of us, I’m afraid we are being lied to.

Undermining the Surveillance State

[Guest post by Keith Farnish, who has a new book out.]

Some people are prone to sleepwalking. The zombie-fuelled idea of a sleepwalker, with arms outstretched and eyes closed, magically avoiding contact with walls and tables, really isn’t the way people do it. More truthfully, their eyes are open with a level of awareness usually sufficient to avoid serious injury, but with actions more akin to a computer program than a fully aware individual. Many can communicate, of a fashion, but it is cursory and stilted. It’s an appropriate metaphor when describing the functional level of a typical citizen, compared to the fully connected and aware pre-industrial human.

Wealth is not Property

Svetlana Jovanović

[Guest post by Ellen, a long-time reader of this blog that I've only just heard from recently. She makes a valid point, one I couldn't have made better myself. It makes me happy that a woman is making it, although that doesn't make it any less incendiary (for some people).]

Thank you for your series on Communities that Abide. I have been looking for a summation of successful and proven strategies for communities for some time. Reading your checklist was something of an “Aha!” moment.

What comes first?

Lua de Proverbia

Without exception, all communities that abide have a unique and specific ideology, or faith, or set of principles, which they accept unquestioningly, and which they attempt to practice to the greatest extent possible. I decided to use the term “ideology” because it is the most neutral term and gets us away from discussing the intricacies of religion versus other types of ideology. It may be argued that all ideologies possess an element of faith. Even faith in science is still just faith: the scientist believes that the truth is discoverable through experiment rather than, say, revelation, and, as is usually the case with ideology, it is pointless to argue either way. One either accepts it, and passes, or does not, and flunks out. If you join a community, you either accept its ideology, or you don't join.

How (not) to organize a community

[This post first appeared in October of 2010 and met with a mixed reaction. Some people found it painful to hear that resilience and sustainability are often little more than middle-class hobbies, while the overwhelming trend throughout the world is toward a different kind of steady state, one characterized by something called durable disorder. However painful, the point stands.]

Dire predictions made by authoritative figures can provide the impetus to attempt great things: establish community gardens and farmer's markets, lobby for improved public transportation, bike lanes and sidewalks, promote ride-sharing initiatives, weatherize existing homes and impose more stringent construction standards for new ones, construct of windmill farms and install solar panels on public buildings, promote the use of composting toilets and high-efficiency lighting and so on.

Communities that Abide—Part V: An Example of Success

Pete Ryan

Last week's post featured an extended excerpt from Peter Kropotkin, who counted off the main reasons of failure among communist groups: communal living, small size, and separatism from the wider world. Yes, an anarchist worker cooperative of a few dozen members that relocates into the American wilderness, shuns the world, and tries to make a go of it is likely to fail: the members will fall out with each other and live out Sartre's dictum that “hell is other people”; they will lose their young people who will flee to seek new experiences elsewhere; they will either become enslaved by a “big brother” or become “utterly depersonalized.” Give up the thoughts of farming and of complete self-sufficiency and zero in on the concept of gardening in close proximity to a city that can offer a stimulating environment, a market for the produce and opportunities for the children as they grow up. Keep in mind, says Kropotkin, who you are: you are not “monks and hermits of old” but industrial labor that wants to get out from under the heel of the capitalists and the rentier class.

Communities that Abide—Part IV: Causes of Failure

Up until now in this series my approach has been to present what works: the set of practices which, when put together into a package, allow communities to last a long time—in some cases, for many centuries. Many readers found this exposition useful, while others found some of the practices disagreeable. This week I will now take the opposite approach, and concentrate on what has been proven to not work, or to work very badly. In a follow-up to the previous post, which expounded on the superiority of communism in both production and consumption when it practiced at the scale of the commune, I now present a chapter I rather freely translated from Peter Koropotkin's Anarchy, which explains how such experiments fail socially in spite of their initial success in achieving self-sufficiency.

Interview on People First Radio

Author Dmitry Orlov says that if financial, commercial, and political collapse are met with appropriate responses, the more extreme aspects of social and cultural collapse could be prevented... (Read more)

Download mp3 directly.