Thank you Bill. I think we're inherently unsustainable. I think about the Easter Islanders, the ones who cut the last tree. They must have known that it would irrevocably change their lives, their culture, given their dependence on the wood for building their boats for fishing and their shelters and their religious rituals, and yet they cut it anyway. When I think about Easter Island I understand humanity's willingness to push it all the way to the end. Their religion was exemplified in large rock statues; ours by how much we consume and the size of our houses, yachts, etc. We will not stop until we are forced to, and then it will be entirely over.
There is, I think, a growing consensus that what we thought we knew about what happened on Easter Island didn't happen. We have to think of a new exemplar for societal collapse.
Strangely enough I only read Silent Spring last year, even though I read Catton's Overshoot and Limits to Growth many years ago. Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction an Unnatural History somehow seemed tame by comparison.
I think Silent Spring is not depressing because of the general slaughter of wildlife it depicts, but because humans claiming to be perfectly reasonable and rational beings can come up with deliberate untested ideas and implement them regardless of outcomes.
Regarding cultural imperatives that impose limits, some tribes did that, but it only takes one adjacent tribe to decide not to live within limits, and all the others some become overridden, driven out, absorbed or conquered.
This one did appear recently which is an interesting example of a culture trying to live within some kind of limits:
Thanks for this, Mark -- I hadn't heard of a old civilization that periodically set its cities on fire. Is it an example of biomimicry? It certainly reminded me of some ecosystems that go up in flames every few decades to 're-set.' For example, lodgepole pine forests in Canada burn on an 80-120 year cycle -- lodgepole pine-cones apparently need to be roasted to open and release their seeds for the next generation. I don't think the concept will catch on today, though I can come up with a few candidate cities (evacuated first ,of course).
Thank you for continuing to endure beating your head against the wall, which you've been doing as long as I've been aware of your writing and work. Excellent post.
Great to hear from you Helen, particularly on the relevance of human evolution to our current predicament. So few people seem to thing our innate behaviours are relevant (and many don't even believe they exist). Thanks too for access to your article -- I found lots with which to resonate; I particularly liked your reference to the human brain and the fact that instinct and emotion (over which we have little control) often influence or dominate our decisions and behaviour.
Some time ago I wrote an article on the human brain and cognitive obsolescence that goes a little further -- I argued that cultural evolution has so outstripped bio-evolution that the modern world in all its hyper-complexity is beyond human understanding, let alone control. We have actually made our wonderful brains obsolete and incapable of an adequately knowledgeable and comprehensive response to our predicament. If interested, you can find it here: https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/855-Article-Text-4479-1-10-20230131.pdf .
How intelligent this would be!!!! "A Government-sponsored independent Council for the Future27 that includes experts in science, economics, political theory, foreign policy, international law, psychology, and ethics. They could design policy on solving climate change, which could then be put before the government or a Citizens’ Assembly for a conscience vote." Not "solving climate change," though, but it would deal with what to do in the face of it.
As part of the UN NGO team drafting the SDGs, proposed a workable plan for the UN to sponsor a WORLD SDG network of representatives from the different sciences and disciplines to evaluate investment plans for true sustainability, a World SDG. It would really work, over time, though it probably needs to start small, some kind of constructive critique of new plans from every angle.
Are there one or more such organizations that advise both societies and investors on the risks of pursuing growth to collapse and offer consulting services across multiple factors? It might start with rating investors on the impact of their economic footprints on the Top 100 World Crises Growing with Growth.
Dr Rees avoided use of the word "hope" in the article, but it has come up in the comments. Here are the three definitions of "hope" given by Google referencing "Oxford Languages."
As a noun
1.a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.
2.(archaic)a feeling of trust.
As a verb
3.want something to happen or be the case.
In other words, hope is empty emotional wishful thinking, not implying action.
Here are the Google definitions of "courage."
1.the ability to do something that frightens one.
2.strength in the face of pain or grief.
Courage implies action in the face of very bad odds.
It appears that people who are aware of the predicament we are in, as so eloquently and thoroughly laid out by Dr Rees in this article, should abandon hope, adopt courage, and do whatever they can, as limited as that may be, to lessen how horrible the oncoming collapse will be.
World GDP in 1992 was $25.5 T. World CO2 emissions that year were 22.3 giga-tonnes.
World GDP in 2023 was $100 T and CO2 emissions were 37.4 Gt in 2024.
So, that seems great. World GDP quadrupled but emissions went up 67.7%.
However, with inflation, $25.5 T in 1992 would be $58.88 T today. So, that means world GDP went up around 70% while world emissions went up around 67.7%. So, that is not great.
I'm an independent researcher Ecological Economics and broader multidisciplinary studies. I've just started posting regularly on Substack, yet to build any kind of audience, but you can see what areas I'm exploring.
My background is perhaps a little unusual. I was a forum moderator at peakoil.com ~15 years ago, and was deeply involved in the 'movement' at that time. I've never stopped studying.
I've recently written a pair of papers on this topic, one presenting a novel thermodynamic model of the human economic construct I've developed myself, the other providing the background rationale. Would it be possible to forward them to you? I'm planning on submitting them to a preprint server, but I'd really appreciate any feedback you could give me. I've never formally published, but I think it's about time.
Hi fellow PeakOiler! Indeed. I feel like we were quite prescient. The forum started off focussed on "Peak Oil", but quickly became a biophysical reality hub, especially after the conventional production peak. By the way, I was "sjn" on peakoil.com.
Thanks again for a wonderful, reflection-provoking synthesis. It's disturbing to know that this was all known - as just one example among countless, here's a link to a 1970 edition of Scientific American:
Couldn't agree more as my thoughts on human (un)sustainability reveal. That issue of SciAm was a favourite when I was just getting started on faculty at UBC. Hutchinson had been one of my 'hero' scientists as a student. Few pay much attention to real field ecology these days and we have indeed tripped into our own perceptual trap.
Id like to think, 50 years ago, with better messaging, humanity could have made the switch.
Today, the truth is far too uncomfortable for the common person. Most will people will choose blissful ignorance over the hard choice of facing the grimm reality ahead. The elections around the world have already shown this imo. People want to be fed lies at this point.
And if most people choose this illusion, i fear its hopeless… that is until reality shatters their mirage with the blood of billions.
I think that's a false dichotomy though. Civil existence only came about with agriculture and established cities. Catton has shown how cities are quite extractive and parasitic to the surrounding environment (and now the world).
On the other hand, you present "raw survival" as the alternative. Would you consider indigenous tribes of the Americas to be engaging in raw survival prior to the imposition of civilization some 500 years ago? Many of those tribes (our their ancestors) had attempted to live in cities and abandoned the practice. These people were really post-civilizational. Yet, far from raw survival, everything we have from them depicts people who were happy, fulfilled, and satisfied, the vast majority of whom preferred their lifestyle over colonial options later on.
It's tempting to take the Hobbesian view that life outside modern civilization must necessarily be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," but anthropology tells us that this has pretty much never been the case.
I mean, if you offered young people today a lifestyle that made them happy, fulfilled, and satisfied, one that gave them a place to live, food to eat, friends and family for socializing, and an actual reason to exist... And all they had to give up was the smartphone, the taxes, the social media, the road rage, the oppressive bosses. I dunno, Bill, but I think you'd have quite a few takers.
All fair points -- I was being a bit glib in my haste. 'Raw survival' was a bad choice of words without further explanation and by 'civil', I meant considerate, respectful and polite (not post-agricultural urban). You suggest that: "...if you offered young people today a lifestyle that made them happy, fulfilled, and satisfied, one that gave them a place to live, food to eat, friends and family for socializing, and an actual reason to exist..." there would be a lot of takers. Agreed. But in I have arrived at a point in my imagining where the kind of indigeneity that enables people to have lives that are "happy, fulfilling and satisfying" will not likely be possible in the event of the uncontrolled implosion of the current MTI mode of so-called civilization. Will there be enough of anything left to enable any folks who make it through to reorganize at any level above "raw survival"? Civility in the sense I meant it may be in short supply, at least difficult to muster.
The next century or two, if humans survive going forward, will be pretty awful. I think our species will need to give up civilization (in the sense I described earlier) and become indigenous again to stand a chance. I don't really think anything else is going to be sustainable. Thanks for the chat.
Check out Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp. Kemp refuses to call the current global socio-political construct a "civilization" because it lacks all the positive innuendo of the word civilization. He calls it a Goliath. There have been past Goliaths, from Ghengis Khan to the ancient Aztec kings. Each one contains the seeds of its own demise.
What a great summary of our predicament, Dr. Rees! The reason the youth of today haven't heard of the landmark The Limits To Growth is that such research is actively suppressed so people are conditioned not to talk about it. Luckily a free PDF copy is still available for anyone who wants to read it by a free download from the original publisher, The Club of Rome: https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/
I think you underestimate how much of this is happening already: “Until ordinary citizens understand that we have been conned and medicated, and act accordingly, there is little chance that anything resembling ‘civilization’ can survive the coming implosion.”
Living in the heartland of neoliberalism this might be so evident, but globally more and more people are seeing it.
I think ecoliteracy is on the rise.
Also, I would like to add that human competitiveness is also a cultural construct and that there are many indications that humans are natural collaborators.
Well, Tycho, I'd like to have confidence that "more and more people are seeing [our predicament], but: a) I have been hearing that premise for several decades; b) even if true: i) it isn't making any substantive difference -- the world is going deeper and deeper into overshoot; ii) has the number of people "seeing it" increased as fast as population (which has doubled in fifty years)?
Similarly, is ecoliteracy on the rise? faster than population? And again, what's the effect on crucial trends? Certainly any increase in impact is difficult to document.
I would actually argue that the "environmental movement" is stumbling -- it is not nearly as 'in your face' as it was a couple or a few decades ago. Many key environmental organizations have become financially dependent on corporate donors so have pulled in their claws, unwilling to touch on sensitive issues like consumer life-styles or population planning (the Sierra Club is a notable example). What's left of 'the movement' has been subsumed by climate concerns, a much narrower, more simplistic focus that encourages folks think that the issue is readily solvable technologically (with green renewable energy which is neither green nor renewable and, even if successful, would worsen overshoot).
Finally, and regrettably, it is just nonsense that human competition is a social construct. It may be reinforced by any number of social constructs, but said constructs are built on a solid foundation of innate behaviour.
As for cooperation, of course humans cooperate but, as mentioned in a footnote in my article, individuals who are predisposed to cooperate (as in hunting groups, for example) greatly increase their probability of success compared to non-cooperators. I.e., cooperation enhances the cooperators' competitive edge; it increases the 'fitness' of cooperators and since they are better at surviving and reproducing, the responsible genes accumulate via natural selection. Cooperation is most notably an 'in-group' phenomenon, improving the group's competitive advantage. Competition reigns between unalike groups which are often mutually hostile (every known human society/culture exhibits in-group/outgroup behaviour. (As an aside, I would argue that admirable deliberate efforts to highlight cooperation makes it at least as much a social construct as is competition.)
If you don’t think another reality is possible why do you bother writing about it, I wonder. If things indeed cannot be different from how they are, because humans can only behave in one way, then we know what is going to happen, there is little to talk about and no point in making plans. Then it is just a matter of sitting back and seeing it unfold along predictable lines, isn’t it?
Tycho, by definition there is only one biophysical 'reality'. Other ways of seeing it are mere social constructs, interpretations. When a construct differs significantly from reality problems will 'emerge'. Perpetual growth driven by greed and techno-advances on a finite planet is our dominant narrative and a flawed version of 'reality'. In short, modern techno-industrial society is operating out of a social construct that differs from, and is destroying, the biophysical reality upon which it utterly depends. Dozens of problems are emerging and eventually will be fatal.
So, what I would like to see -- and what I write about -- is raising this false vision to consciousness an constructing an alternative social construct that 'maps' well to reality and which overrides H. sapiens natural expansionist tendencies. Many of society's rules and regulations exist to override or counteract natural human predispositions that, if ignored, would make 'civilized' existence impossible. (Wanting revenge -- i.e., killing opponents -- is a behaviour we suppress with laws against homicide.)
If an alternative realistic cultural narrative were adopted by enough people it would reduce the suffering from slow (or fast) collapse at least in some places and would enable the continuation of some form of viable society living within the means of the REAL ecosphere.
I admit that the probability of this happening in time is low, but a personal to civilizational transition to a new way of thinking, of relating to Earth and each other, is the only thing that can make a difference.
I believe that nowadays we conflate "civilization" with the centralization of power in the frames of the state. Civilized existence in the past was possible even in the case of revenge, i.e. vendettas or duels, and they were accompanied by a "code of honor". The aforementioned expressions of revenge were possible even customary where central power was not tight. Today, only the state owns the monopoly of violence. I use the term "monopoly of violence", in order to highlight that civilizations only divert or channel natural predispositions, they don't counteract them. Marriage, for example, is mostly the diverting of reproductive urges. Natural predispositions remain unbridled where "competition" is desirable, even institutionalized and embedded in political rhetoric. For it is one thing to be aware that humans are competitive, and totally another to raise "competition" into an ideology and eventually praxis. And now Psychology wonders and ponders why the world is full of "psychopaths"...
Competition (or better rivalry), as ideology, will inevitably stifle cooperation. People like to think of themselves that they are "co-operating", but this happens only at a limited scale. When one looks at the big picture, large collectives -i.e. international corporations and states- engage in relentless antagonism, and the "law of power". This is an observed phenomenon from the times of Thucydides: "the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must", albeit augmented today, despite the existence of so-called international and/or supranational institutions. Needless to say that centralization of power gives rise to the totalitarian organization of societies, and totalitarianism was made possible after the formation of strong central power structures. I would agree that "many of society's rules and regulations exist to override or counteract natural human predispositions" only if there was a way to abolish war, as a form of widespread violence which disrupts civilized existence/co-existence. But the reality is much different, and war is part of the human condition and the continuation of politics by other means. So, "civilization" has become a monstrous edifice, precisely because it did not fail in accumulating and exerting power (and violence). When I was talking of "diaspora", dispersion, I imagined it as a way of preventing the formation of systems with centralized power. Civilization is not the offspring of the state, the opposite has happened and it has started in Europe. In feudalism there were no states. What happens today in the West is that it has identified "civilization" with the Roman Law and bureaucratic-administrative machinery (a French invention). A centralized system of power gives rise to homogenization, and eventually the loss of autonomy and agency. Homo sapiens may not be a "superorganism" biologically, but the modern state and power structures aspire to, usually employing grotesque narratives. What we experience in today's world, is institution-building process (top-down), and not a community building process. It is the state with its paraphernalia that makes the rules, not societies themselves.
So, instead of thinking in terms of ontology for a "superorganism", when none exists in biological terms, I would like to note what contemporary moral philosophy says about a particularly pervasive, invisible form of evil. When Elizabeth Minnich, a moral philosopher, tried to study evil in the contemporary world, she found that the famous quote by Hannah Arendt "the Banality of Evil" was not enough. Eichmann is no longer the personification of evil in contemporary human affairs, it seems. So, Minnich reversed the original quote into "the Evil of Banality". She talked about "extensive evil", a normalized, invisible evil based on perverse systems, which relies on social clichés, superficiality, "reliable workers" and mass participation, as opposed to "intensive evil" which is visible and contained. "Extensive evil" goes unpunished, as everyone is doing it (well, almost).
It is the first time I encounter, in a structured way through Minnich's thinking, that "group-think" is to blame, as a source of potential evil and as a form of collective responsibility. In older times, group-think was what kept the group together (aka social cohesion), and what gave rise to modern "Leviathans". Now it is backfiring. The purported human "social intelligence", what humans are supposedly proud of, i.e. being "social animals", turns out to be a mere mirroring mechanism leading to mimetism into unbearable conformity and banality (i.e. a "civilized and predictable world"). I believe that we ought to redefine and reconsider what "social intelligence" is, and whether it is overrated as it is understood today. Maybe it is more superficial than we think.
I apologize for the length of the comment but notions require clarification.
Yes, this is the challenge “…transition to a new way of thinking, of relating to Earth and each other…” As you say, we already have cultural rules that override basic impulses, such as homicide (unfortunately not honored everywhere), while ecocide is still largely sanctioned. While there is only one biophysical reality, humans play a shaping role in this reality, and therefore the biophysical reality on this planet is ultimately shaped by human behavior and the social constructs directing human behavior.
Hello, Professor Rees. I assume that most politicians, people in power and billionaires are aware of the graveness of the human predicament, but are at this point powerless to change it, and all they care is to maintain the veneer of governability, in order to retain their benefits and position. The reality is much different than presented, as we already live in a world of insurmountable contradiction and irreconcilable cognitive dissonance. Apart from it, there is no such thing as "global civilization". Civilization is (was) only local-regional, as it reflects certain aligned efforts and concerted coordination (common worldview, modus operandi, social norms) from whole societies. There is no such thing such as "humanity", the species as a total is unconscious. And this is not a civilization, it is a technocratic-bureaucratic-industrial dystopia, run by capitals, already having exceeded its life span, buying itself time until its eventual downfall. It fosters extreme homogeneity, where people and their (almost automated) lives are becoming more and more indistinguishable from LLMs and robots. One example: How are humans different from each other since they exceedingly rely on the same medium to spread their ideas (i.e. social media)? The platform determines the user, the algorithm determines the user, not the other way round. Yet, civilization thrives on distinction and discrimination, not in utilitarian homogeneity. There can be, there was, Greek civilization, Roman civilization, etc. There can be no universal human civilization, and of course one of this "civilization's" greatest delusions is "human rights".
I find it exceedingly difficult to think in terms of "humanity", as it requires a distancing from the species, and to reserve for oneself a "vantage point" of "non-human" intelligence and capacity. Moreover, to think in terms of biological "humanity" requires to set aside elusive concepts such as agency, autonomy, uniqueness, and the like. It means to conceive the species as unconscious biological machinery, like swarm AI. Paradoxically, it is futile to try to talk sense into and rationalize with an unconscious machine. So, how is the species different from AI nowadays? Humanity has grown exponentially as a collective, it hallucinates at an accelerating pace, it has become "misaligned" (i.e. created an environment that is exceedingly turning against it) and as a collective it is unconscious. AI is mirroring exactly these features, and this is why it provokes existential fear: Finally, the species can see itself in the mirror! The problem is the universal "we". In the human world there is no universal "we", only "I" (self) and/or a contained/limited "we" (families, communities, co-operatives). The species does not posses a hive mind, as bees and other insects do. Even the most "praised" in theory and modern history collective entity, the Proletariat, never gained collective consciousness, disproving Marx and his associates.
So, as humanity cannot think as a species, but at its best as consumer societies today, humanity will run its course into overshoot and collapse. Does nature even care if humanity suffers? Equilibrium in nature comes at the cost of cruelty: Decimation of populations, starvation, death of offspring in the mouth of predators and rivals. Paradoxical as it is, the individual mind cannot ponder on the whole and play God without abandoning the self and individual agency, in short individual consciousness and emotion. Kind of a "spiritual death", like John Calhoun noticed in his Mouse Utopia. Thankfully, there is no physical, omniscient and omnipresent "Eye of Providence" on this earthly plane for the species, like John Calhoun was for the Mouse Utopia, providing ample food. Hunger, even civil war, will most likely kick in eventually. What is worse? Hunger or spiritual death? "War is the father of all, king of all" (Heraclitus). And the collapse has already begun, since we are here discussing about it, realizing our situation.
Paradoxically, as well, Christianity evangelizes individual salvation, and advocates for individual faith (and subjectivity/individuality), and not "collective redemption". Christianity proves to be more realistic and sincere than the deluded techno-optimists. Paradoxically again, it is the Christian West that functions against Christian foundation. So, whom shall I believe and serve? Christ or the "United Nations" and the status quo's deluded humanitarians and techno-optimists? Apparently, I cannot believe in both of them simultaneously.
Well, George Dalayiorgos, we seem to agree in most important respects, though you are able to say it with greater elegance and fine-tuned erudition. (Much to discuss and fine-tune here.) You even dare to invoke the Calhoun experiments which I think have something to tell us but have been slammed for raising this possibility.
More generally, I have found it difficult to advance seriously the notion that "humanity [whatever one means by that] will run its course into overshoot and collapse". That journey is well underway but even journal editors have urged that I 'throw readers a bone'. My plea that there really are no bones in this bleeding corpse doesn't wash among those who call on alleged human agency. As for the choice between Christ and the UN/humanitarians/techno-optimists, I believe neither. What to do?
What to do? I want to live my life like a saint, but they won't let me, unless I am a member of the systemic church and live under its surveillance. I tend to believe that homo homini diabolus est. I agree with you that homo sapiens is unsustainable, in the sense that the State (Kratos of humans) seems to be the source of evil.
But if homo sapiens is a part of nature, an expression of life on the planet, and other species are more or less sustainable, then we are inherently sustainable, but situationally unsustainable. Besides, we are political animals and the Polis is natural (i.e. inherent), according to Aristotle. The Aristotelian logic seems more realistic than the Hobbesian one, a forced choice of surrendering freedoms out of fear of a life "nasty, brutish and short". What can be done in the long run? Dump the specific environment: the socio-economic edifice and the Kratos of humans as it is today.
I would appreciate if you commented on a recent case in Italy, where a court ordered the removal of the three kids of an off-grid family, and their placement in foster care. The case is relevant to what I mentioned before with regard to "human rights", and the court intervened under this pretext.
This unconscious technocratic-bureaucratic-industrial dystopia goes by many names. The Superorganism (Nate Hagens), Goliath (Luke Kemp), or Moloch (Daniel Schmachtenberger and others). It seems lots of people are studying it.
Hi Robin, thanks for your input. Yes, I am aware of Nate Hagens' work on the field. I would say that the term "superorganism" is a kind of euphemism. Humanity is no superorganism, as its members do not function in high integration and common purpose, like bees do. Technically, insect colonies can count as superorganisms, for example honey bees that share a common immune system, as "supersisters". I say that because the use of the term "superorganism" creates fear, overwhelms and gives the impression of invulnerability and clockwork efficiency, and of course of offering "universal solutions", aka utopias. Take for example the UN quote "No one is safe, until everyone is", with the advent of the recent pandemics. It is precisely when it gives this impression of invulnerability that the unraveling has already begun. The species probably works better on diaspora, dispersion, not centralization and various types of "universalities". Put another way, "humanity" is empty as notion, and it has become oppressive, not to mention "human rights". If I were a bee I would certainly count on my supersisters, but one cannot count on "humanity", only certain humans. Besides, the notion of "humanity" is very fresh in human thinking. The term was probably unfathomable until late Renaissance. There was only the term "Ecumene" (Οικουμένη, habitable world) which had a spatial dimension. What seems to hold "humanity" together is the theorizing and rationalization of fear, not some intrinsic purpose.
Earlier, you described "There is no such thing such as "humanity", the species as a total is unconscious." The unconscious behavior of the collective is what Nate Hagens refers to as the superorganism. It's more like a slime mold than like an insect colony. It has a metabolism, which I think is primary to his term superorganism. And yes, it is scary, rightfully so, as it is consuming the planet. It reminds me of the vacuum cleaner monster in The Land of Point, which vacuumed up its entire environment, and then vacuumed up itself. Right now, we don't know how to divert it, and we don't know how to put it on a diet. Slaying it is the wrong metaphor, because that would kill all humans, as it is composed of humans. I prefer to imagine healing it, so the best I can do is exercise healing within whatever domain is available to me. Are we converging?
The question is not whether both of us are converging, the question is whether the generations will converge. Millenials and GenZ are about to handle assets inherited by the silent generation and boomers, even early GenX, purportedly valued 90 trillion dollars. This inheritance has been produced and accumulated with no concerns as for Ecology and sustainability. This inheritance seems to not comply to today's and future standards and expectations.
The way that the heirs will respond and handle the matter, is the one that will define the course. To accept the assets, GenZ and millenials should consider whether they accept the accompanying terms and modus operandi. And all of this is going to take place in one to two decades. So, grand events are ahead of us, and are closer than we think (10 to 20 years at most). We already have an input of what millenials and particularly GenZ count as a way of living and purpose of life. The Avalanche is coming! Finally, I guess the question is not whether the "superorganism" will heal, it is whether it can be transformed and to what extent. The answer lies in millenials and GenZ.
Were I a betting man, I would gamble on there being near-zero probability that the so-called superorganism will -- or can -- transform. And let's not forget that the ecosphere must yet endure the energy and material onslaught of the six billion members of the human swarm (H. sapiens is no 'superorganism') who have yet to have their material wants satisfied. Yes, the avalanche is coming and there is not much 'we' can do about it.
Slime molds transform depending on the proximity of food or other resources. So if the Superorganism is more like a slime mold, there's some chance of some sort of transformation.
On the other hand, if it's more like a cancerous lump, then the only salvation for the planetary ecology is to kill the lump, killing all its component cells, extinction for homo sapiens.
Whether we dub it superorganism, Moloch, Goliath, or cancer, it is a life form of its own with its own metabolism. We can't (to my knowledge) characterize it well enough to tell whether its condition is treatable, or even to diagnose what's wrong. There are numerous diagnoses that get at part of the root cause, such as your diagnosis of Overshoot, but perhaps we need to look deeper into MPP and evolution to understand how we cornered ourselves into Overshoot. If I understand MPP, it's about finding an optimal balance, not unbridaled growth, like a tree producing the maximum foliage to nourish itself but not so much that the upper foliage blocks the sunlight of the lower foliage, unless there is an advantage to doing so.
I'm an amateur, you're an expert among experts - did I characterize MPP correctly?
Is Overshoot the bottom turtle in the stack of turtles comprising our complex predicament?
Are you, or the scientific community in which you function, able to characterize the superorganism better than my limited understanding? Well enough to diagnose it? I'd be interested to read any papers that go beyond Nate's superorganism paper.
Thanks, George. When I asked if we are converging, I meant whether our - yours and mine - interpretations of the term "superorganism" were converging. Nothing more profound.
Yup! Aware since the 1970s. No kids, here. Worked on nature conservation & teaching environmental issues and ecology since 1977. Fingers crossed. Check this out: beautiful vision, but thinks we can decouple 8 billion plus humans from destroying our planetary support system while saving other species....delusional, or wouldn't it be nice.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF3DXxfWXb0
You make a great case that our species is inherently unsustainable. In fact, we have empirical observation to confirm that. Look around. All humans might have seemed to be living sustainably, at one time, but this predicament was the inevitable result.
However, you seem to think that some kind of modern society can be retained at a lower level. One of the basic principles of sustainability is that non-renewable resources can't be a critical element of a sustainable society. Modernity, however, needs such resources. There is no de-growing to a sustainable modern society, it just isn't possible. Hunting/gathering is the only potentially sustainable way to live but, as I mentioned, we see how that turned out with humans.
Pop quiz people. In just a few words or less, what made humans stand out so ridiculously in the web of life?
If your answer is something like agriculture, fossil fuels, language, the written word, culture, etc... don't even bother reading anymore of this. Go back to your safe and comfortable Daniel Quinn or whatever.
Judges will accept a few answers, but the one that'll earn you the highest score is: cooking our food.
If the overshoot community could ever grasp this embarrassing simple concept, we'd get much better analysis circulating. Would allow people to easily trace it all back to fire. Or trace it forward to critical moment theory (full consciousness, extended theory of mind, full mortality salience, etc.)
Less of this insane fire blindness would also help to reduce all this disgusting hopium re the human race continuing on. Might even give people something worthy to strive for. Like this:
"I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." - Rust Cohle, AKA Thomas Ligotti
ps. In case anyone's interested, DQ's buddy Ishmael came out of hiding recently to say a few words on the matter.
Hi paqnation, we meet again. Check out Madeleine Beekman's new book, The Origin of Language: How We Learned to Speak and Why. She traces our problematic nature all the way back to bipedalism. Evolution produced hack after hack to solve problems introduced by the previous hack (extending back to bipedalism). Fire and cooking was one of those hacks. Not clear at what point the hominids crossed "the line", but it was a long, long time ago. Interesting to consider Nature as a series of hacks, analogous to the way humans hack our way through narrow-boundary problem solving, externalized consequences be da**ed. But for a little balance, also check out Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp. He comes up with a few indicators of potential for redemption.
Thank you Bill. I think we're inherently unsustainable. I think about the Easter Islanders, the ones who cut the last tree. They must have known that it would irrevocably change their lives, their culture, given their dependence on the wood for building their boats for fishing and their shelters and their religious rituals, and yet they cut it anyway. When I think about Easter Island I understand humanity's willingness to push it all the way to the end. Their religion was exemplified in large rock statues; ours by how much we consume and the size of our houses, yachts, etc. We will not stop until we are forced to, and then it will be entirely over.
Elizabeth -- you are almost as upbeat as I am!
There is, I think, a growing consensus that what we thought we knew about what happened on Easter Island didn't happen. We have to think of a new exemplar for societal collapse.
Excellent as ever Bill, thankyou.
Strangely enough I only read Silent Spring last year, even though I read Catton's Overshoot and Limits to Growth many years ago. Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction an Unnatural History somehow seemed tame by comparison.
I think Silent Spring is not depressing because of the general slaughter of wildlife it depicts, but because humans claiming to be perfectly reasonable and rational beings can come up with deliberate untested ideas and implement them regardless of outcomes.
Regarding cultural imperatives that impose limits, some tribes did that, but it only takes one adjacent tribe to decide not to live within limits, and all the others some become overridden, driven out, absorbed or conquered.
This one did appear recently which is an interesting example of a culture trying to live within some kind of limits:
https://medium.com/bouncin-and-behavin-academy/the-ancient-civilization-that-set-its-cities-on-fire-every-80-years-e499653dfb4c
Thanks for this, Mark -- I hadn't heard of a old civilization that periodically set its cities on fire. Is it an example of biomimicry? It certainly reminded me of some ecosystems that go up in flames every few decades to 're-set.' For example, lodgepole pine forests in Canada burn on an 80-120 year cycle -- lodgepole pine-cones apparently need to be roasted to open and release their seeds for the next generation. I don't think the concept will catch on today, though I can come up with a few candidate cities (evacuated first ,of course).
Torah mandates a debt jubilee every 49 years. Or is it 50, not sure. A twice a century leveling.
It is interesting that religions, especially in the past, banned usury and had mandatory debt jubilees.
Something that should be adapted in mainstream economics, if we are not going to ban money altogether.
Thank you for continuing to endure beating your head against the wall, which you've been doing as long as I've been aware of your writing and work. Excellent post.
Thank you Bill, I am so pleased to read this article. I have been publishing on evolutionary psychology, climate change and sustainability for 15 years. I have made suggestions as to how we might improve our political institutions to deal with our intransigence in addressing this potentially existential challenge. https://www.prosocial.world/posts/evolutionary-mismatch-partisan-politics-and-climate-change-a-tragedy-in-three-acts
Great to hear from you Helen, particularly on the relevance of human evolution to our current predicament. So few people seem to thing our innate behaviours are relevant (and many don't even believe they exist). Thanks too for access to your article -- I found lots with which to resonate; I particularly liked your reference to the human brain and the fact that instinct and emotion (over which we have little control) often influence or dominate our decisions and behaviour.
Some time ago I wrote an article on the human brain and cognitive obsolescence that goes a little further -- I argued that cultural evolution has so outstripped bio-evolution that the modern world in all its hyper-complexity is beyond human understanding, let alone control. We have actually made our wonderful brains obsolete and incapable of an adequately knowledgeable and comprehensive response to our predicament. If interested, you can find it here: https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/855-Article-Text-4479-1-10-20230131.pdf .
Thanks again for your note.
Thank you for your generous comments William. I've followed your work for a long time. If you are interested in reading more try https://www.resilience.org/resilience-author/helen-camakaris/ or https://theconversation.com/profiles/helen-camakaris-12670/articles.
How intelligent this would be!!!! "A Government-sponsored independent Council for the Future27 that includes experts in science, economics, political theory, foreign policy, international law, psychology, and ethics. They could design policy on solving climate change, which could then be put before the government or a Citizens’ Assembly for a conscience vote." Not "solving climate change," though, but it would deal with what to do in the face of it.
As part of the UN NGO team drafting the SDGs, proposed a workable plan for the UN to sponsor a WORLD SDG network of representatives from the different sciences and disciplines to evaluate investment plans for true sustainability, a World SDG. It would really work, over time, though it probably needs to start small, some kind of constructive critique of new plans from every angle.
Are there one or more such organizations that advise both societies and investors on the risks of pursuing growth to collapse and offer consulting services across multiple factors? It might start with rating investors on the impact of their economic footprints on the Top 100 World Crises Growing with Growth.
https://synapse9.com/_r3ref/100CrisesTable.pdf
Do have a look and tell me what you think!
https://synapse9.com/signals/?s=World+SDG
Way too much to do justice to. Maybe you would send me things as per the Substack I put out today:
My money for your life
A WHAT TO DO Movement
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/my-money-for-your-life
Dr Rees avoided use of the word "hope" in the article, but it has come up in the comments. Here are the three definitions of "hope" given by Google referencing "Oxford Languages."
As a noun
1.a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.
2.(archaic)a feeling of trust.
As a verb
3.want something to happen or be the case.
In other words, hope is empty emotional wishful thinking, not implying action.
Here are the Google definitions of "courage."
1.the ability to do something that frightens one.
2.strength in the face of pain or grief.
Courage implies action in the face of very bad odds.
It appears that people who are aware of the predicament we are in, as so eloquently and thoroughly laid out by Dr Rees in this article, should abandon hope, adopt courage, and do whatever they can, as limited as that may be, to lessen how horrible the oncoming collapse will be.
My best recollection of someone else summing up hope...so, to paraphrase whatever Derrick Jensen actually said when giving his definition of Hope:
Hope is a desire for a future outcome to a problem over which you have no control.
Abandoning hope does not mean withdrawing into doomer despair. It means a choice. A choice between cowardice and courage.
World GDP in 1992 was $25.5 T. World CO2 emissions that year were 22.3 giga-tonnes.
World GDP in 2023 was $100 T and CO2 emissions were 37.4 Gt in 2024.
So, that seems great. World GDP quadrupled but emissions went up 67.7%.
However, with inflation, $25.5 T in 1992 would be $58.88 T today. So, that means world GDP went up around 70% while world emissions went up around 67.7%. So, that is not great.
Professor Rees,
I'm an independent researcher Ecological Economics and broader multidisciplinary studies. I've just started posting regularly on Substack, yet to build any kind of audience, but you can see what areas I'm exploring.
My background is perhaps a little unusual. I was a forum moderator at peakoil.com ~15 years ago, and was deeply involved in the 'movement' at that time. I've never stopped studying.
I've recently written a pair of papers on this topic, one presenting a novel thermodynamic model of the human economic construct I've developed myself, the other providing the background rationale. Would it be possible to forward them to you? I'm planning on submitting them to a preprint server, but I'd really appreciate any feedback you could give me. I've never formally published, but I think it's about time.
I followed peakoil.com back then. Not much has improved since then.
Hi fellow PeakOiler! Indeed. I feel like we were quite prescient. The forum started off focussed on "Peak Oil", but quickly became a biophysical reality hub, especially after the conventional production peak. By the way, I was "sjn" on peakoil.com.
I don’t remember my handle but it was a great group and my thinking about the world blossomed significantly from my interactions there.
Thanks again for a wonderful, reflection-provoking synthesis. It's disturbing to know that this was all known - as just one example among countless, here's a link to a 1970 edition of Scientific American:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/issue/sa/1970/09-01
So what happened here? We fell hook, line and sinker into our individual and collective
self-created and emergent megascale Evolutionary Trap. It really is now or never.
Couldn't agree more as my thoughts on human (un)sustainability reveal. That issue of SciAm was a favourite when I was just getting started on faculty at UBC. Hutchinson had been one of my 'hero' scientists as a student. Few pay much attention to real field ecology these days and we have indeed tripped into our own perceptual trap.
Id like to think, 50 years ago, with better messaging, humanity could have made the switch.
Today, the truth is far too uncomfortable for the common person. Most will people will choose blissful ignorance over the hard choice of facing the grimm reality ahead. The elections around the world have already shown this imo. People want to be fed lies at this point.
And if most people choose this illusion, i fear its hopeless… that is until reality shatters their mirage with the blood of billions.
Is civilization even a good thing, Bill?
Point taken! Perhaps not in its current form, but would you not prefer some form of civil existence to raw survival?
I think that's a false dichotomy though. Civil existence only came about with agriculture and established cities. Catton has shown how cities are quite extractive and parasitic to the surrounding environment (and now the world).
On the other hand, you present "raw survival" as the alternative. Would you consider indigenous tribes of the Americas to be engaging in raw survival prior to the imposition of civilization some 500 years ago? Many of those tribes (our their ancestors) had attempted to live in cities and abandoned the practice. These people were really post-civilizational. Yet, far from raw survival, everything we have from them depicts people who were happy, fulfilled, and satisfied, the vast majority of whom preferred their lifestyle over colonial options later on.
It's tempting to take the Hobbesian view that life outside modern civilization must necessarily be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," but anthropology tells us that this has pretty much never been the case.
I mean, if you offered young people today a lifestyle that made them happy, fulfilled, and satisfied, one that gave them a place to live, food to eat, friends and family for socializing, and an actual reason to exist... And all they had to give up was the smartphone, the taxes, the social media, the road rage, the oppressive bosses. I dunno, Bill, but I think you'd have quite a few takers.
All fair points -- I was being a bit glib in my haste. 'Raw survival' was a bad choice of words without further explanation and by 'civil', I meant considerate, respectful and polite (not post-agricultural urban). You suggest that: "...if you offered young people today a lifestyle that made them happy, fulfilled, and satisfied, one that gave them a place to live, food to eat, friends and family for socializing, and an actual reason to exist..." there would be a lot of takers. Agreed. But in I have arrived at a point in my imagining where the kind of indigeneity that enables people to have lives that are "happy, fulfilling and satisfying" will not likely be possible in the event of the uncontrolled implosion of the current MTI mode of so-called civilization. Will there be enough of anything left to enable any folks who make it through to reorganize at any level above "raw survival"? Civility in the sense I meant it may be in short supply, at least difficult to muster.
We absolutely agree there.
The next century or two, if humans survive going forward, will be pretty awful. I think our species will need to give up civilization (in the sense I described earlier) and become indigenous again to stand a chance. I don't really think anything else is going to be sustainable. Thanks for the chat.
Check out Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp. Kemp refuses to call the current global socio-political construct a "civilization" because it lacks all the positive innuendo of the word civilization. He calls it a Goliath. There have been past Goliaths, from Ghengis Khan to the ancient Aztec kings. Each one contains the seeds of its own demise.
Thanks! That one is on my shelf, but I haven't had the opportunity to dig into it yet.
"Civilized to Death" by Chris Ryan is a good book to get the reality perspective on civilized life and on paleolithic life.
One of my favorites.
What a great summary of our predicament, Dr. Rees! The reason the youth of today haven't heard of the landmark The Limits To Growth is that such research is actively suppressed so people are conditioned not to talk about it. Luckily a free PDF copy is still available for anyone who wants to read it by a free download from the original publisher, The Club of Rome: https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/
I think you underestimate how much of this is happening already: “Until ordinary citizens understand that we have been conned and medicated, and act accordingly, there is little chance that anything resembling ‘civilization’ can survive the coming implosion.”
Living in the heartland of neoliberalism this might be so evident, but globally more and more people are seeing it.
I think ecoliteracy is on the rise.
Also, I would like to add that human competitiveness is also a cultural construct and that there are many indications that humans are natural collaborators.
Well, Tycho, I'd like to have confidence that "more and more people are seeing [our predicament], but: a) I have been hearing that premise for several decades; b) even if true: i) it isn't making any substantive difference -- the world is going deeper and deeper into overshoot; ii) has the number of people "seeing it" increased as fast as population (which has doubled in fifty years)?
Similarly, is ecoliteracy on the rise? faster than population? And again, what's the effect on crucial trends? Certainly any increase in impact is difficult to document.
I would actually argue that the "environmental movement" is stumbling -- it is not nearly as 'in your face' as it was a couple or a few decades ago. Many key environmental organizations have become financially dependent on corporate donors so have pulled in their claws, unwilling to touch on sensitive issues like consumer life-styles or population planning (the Sierra Club is a notable example). What's left of 'the movement' has been subsumed by climate concerns, a much narrower, more simplistic focus that encourages folks think that the issue is readily solvable technologically (with green renewable energy which is neither green nor renewable and, even if successful, would worsen overshoot).
Finally, and regrettably, it is just nonsense that human competition is a social construct. It may be reinforced by any number of social constructs, but said constructs are built on a solid foundation of innate behaviour.
As for cooperation, of course humans cooperate but, as mentioned in a footnote in my article, individuals who are predisposed to cooperate (as in hunting groups, for example) greatly increase their probability of success compared to non-cooperators. I.e., cooperation enhances the cooperators' competitive edge; it increases the 'fitness' of cooperators and since they are better at surviving and reproducing, the responsible genes accumulate via natural selection. Cooperation is most notably an 'in-group' phenomenon, improving the group's competitive advantage. Competition reigns between unalike groups which are often mutually hostile (every known human society/culture exhibits in-group/outgroup behaviour. (As an aside, I would argue that admirable deliberate efforts to highlight cooperation makes it at least as much a social construct as is competition.)
If you don’t think another reality is possible why do you bother writing about it, I wonder. If things indeed cannot be different from how they are, because humans can only behave in one way, then we know what is going to happen, there is little to talk about and no point in making plans. Then it is just a matter of sitting back and seeing it unfold along predictable lines, isn’t it?
Tycho, by definition there is only one biophysical 'reality'. Other ways of seeing it are mere social constructs, interpretations. When a construct differs significantly from reality problems will 'emerge'. Perpetual growth driven by greed and techno-advances on a finite planet is our dominant narrative and a flawed version of 'reality'. In short, modern techno-industrial society is operating out of a social construct that differs from, and is destroying, the biophysical reality upon which it utterly depends. Dozens of problems are emerging and eventually will be fatal.
So, what I would like to see -- and what I write about -- is raising this false vision to consciousness an constructing an alternative social construct that 'maps' well to reality and which overrides H. sapiens natural expansionist tendencies. Many of society's rules and regulations exist to override or counteract natural human predispositions that, if ignored, would make 'civilized' existence impossible. (Wanting revenge -- i.e., killing opponents -- is a behaviour we suppress with laws against homicide.)
If an alternative realistic cultural narrative were adopted by enough people it would reduce the suffering from slow (or fast) collapse at least in some places and would enable the continuation of some form of viable society living within the means of the REAL ecosphere.
I admit that the probability of this happening in time is low, but a personal to civilizational transition to a new way of thinking, of relating to Earth and each other, is the only thing that can make a difference.
I believe that nowadays we conflate "civilization" with the centralization of power in the frames of the state. Civilized existence in the past was possible even in the case of revenge, i.e. vendettas or duels, and they were accompanied by a "code of honor". The aforementioned expressions of revenge were possible even customary where central power was not tight. Today, only the state owns the monopoly of violence. I use the term "monopoly of violence", in order to highlight that civilizations only divert or channel natural predispositions, they don't counteract them. Marriage, for example, is mostly the diverting of reproductive urges. Natural predispositions remain unbridled where "competition" is desirable, even institutionalized and embedded in political rhetoric. For it is one thing to be aware that humans are competitive, and totally another to raise "competition" into an ideology and eventually praxis. And now Psychology wonders and ponders why the world is full of "psychopaths"...
Competition (or better rivalry), as ideology, will inevitably stifle cooperation. People like to think of themselves that they are "co-operating", but this happens only at a limited scale. When one looks at the big picture, large collectives -i.e. international corporations and states- engage in relentless antagonism, and the "law of power". This is an observed phenomenon from the times of Thucydides: "the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must", albeit augmented today, despite the existence of so-called international and/or supranational institutions. Needless to say that centralization of power gives rise to the totalitarian organization of societies, and totalitarianism was made possible after the formation of strong central power structures. I would agree that "many of society's rules and regulations exist to override or counteract natural human predispositions" only if there was a way to abolish war, as a form of widespread violence which disrupts civilized existence/co-existence. But the reality is much different, and war is part of the human condition and the continuation of politics by other means. So, "civilization" has become a monstrous edifice, precisely because it did not fail in accumulating and exerting power (and violence). When I was talking of "diaspora", dispersion, I imagined it as a way of preventing the formation of systems with centralized power. Civilization is not the offspring of the state, the opposite has happened and it has started in Europe. In feudalism there were no states. What happens today in the West is that it has identified "civilization" with the Roman Law and bureaucratic-administrative machinery (a French invention). A centralized system of power gives rise to homogenization, and eventually the loss of autonomy and agency. Homo sapiens may not be a "superorganism" biologically, but the modern state and power structures aspire to, usually employing grotesque narratives. What we experience in today's world, is institution-building process (top-down), and not a community building process. It is the state with its paraphernalia that makes the rules, not societies themselves.
So, instead of thinking in terms of ontology for a "superorganism", when none exists in biological terms, I would like to note what contemporary moral philosophy says about a particularly pervasive, invisible form of evil. When Elizabeth Minnich, a moral philosopher, tried to study evil in the contemporary world, she found that the famous quote by Hannah Arendt "the Banality of Evil" was not enough. Eichmann is no longer the personification of evil in contemporary human affairs, it seems. So, Minnich reversed the original quote into "the Evil of Banality". She talked about "extensive evil", a normalized, invisible evil based on perverse systems, which relies on social clichés, superficiality, "reliable workers" and mass participation, as opposed to "intensive evil" which is visible and contained. "Extensive evil" goes unpunished, as everyone is doing it (well, almost).
It is the first time I encounter, in a structured way through Minnich's thinking, that "group-think" is to blame, as a source of potential evil and as a form of collective responsibility. In older times, group-think was what kept the group together (aka social cohesion), and what gave rise to modern "Leviathans". Now it is backfiring. The purported human "social intelligence", what humans are supposedly proud of, i.e. being "social animals", turns out to be a mere mirroring mechanism leading to mimetism into unbearable conformity and banality (i.e. a "civilized and predictable world"). I believe that we ought to redefine and reconsider what "social intelligence" is, and whether it is overrated as it is understood today. Maybe it is more superficial than we think.
I apologize for the length of the comment but notions require clarification.
https://humansandnature.org/banalitys-evil-an-interview-with-elizabeth-minnich/
Yes, this is the challenge “…transition to a new way of thinking, of relating to Earth and each other…” As you say, we already have cultural rules that override basic impulses, such as homicide (unfortunately not honored everywhere), while ecocide is still largely sanctioned. While there is only one biophysical reality, humans play a shaping role in this reality, and therefore the biophysical reality on this planet is ultimately shaped by human behavior and the social constructs directing human behavior.
Hello, Professor Rees. I assume that most politicians, people in power and billionaires are aware of the graveness of the human predicament, but are at this point powerless to change it, and all they care is to maintain the veneer of governability, in order to retain their benefits and position. The reality is much different than presented, as we already live in a world of insurmountable contradiction and irreconcilable cognitive dissonance. Apart from it, there is no such thing as "global civilization". Civilization is (was) only local-regional, as it reflects certain aligned efforts and concerted coordination (common worldview, modus operandi, social norms) from whole societies. There is no such thing such as "humanity", the species as a total is unconscious. And this is not a civilization, it is a technocratic-bureaucratic-industrial dystopia, run by capitals, already having exceeded its life span, buying itself time until its eventual downfall. It fosters extreme homogeneity, where people and their (almost automated) lives are becoming more and more indistinguishable from LLMs and robots. One example: How are humans different from each other since they exceedingly rely on the same medium to spread their ideas (i.e. social media)? The platform determines the user, the algorithm determines the user, not the other way round. Yet, civilization thrives on distinction and discrimination, not in utilitarian homogeneity. There can be, there was, Greek civilization, Roman civilization, etc. There can be no universal human civilization, and of course one of this "civilization's" greatest delusions is "human rights".
I find it exceedingly difficult to think in terms of "humanity", as it requires a distancing from the species, and to reserve for oneself a "vantage point" of "non-human" intelligence and capacity. Moreover, to think in terms of biological "humanity" requires to set aside elusive concepts such as agency, autonomy, uniqueness, and the like. It means to conceive the species as unconscious biological machinery, like swarm AI. Paradoxically, it is futile to try to talk sense into and rationalize with an unconscious machine. So, how is the species different from AI nowadays? Humanity has grown exponentially as a collective, it hallucinates at an accelerating pace, it has become "misaligned" (i.e. created an environment that is exceedingly turning against it) and as a collective it is unconscious. AI is mirroring exactly these features, and this is why it provokes existential fear: Finally, the species can see itself in the mirror! The problem is the universal "we". In the human world there is no universal "we", only "I" (self) and/or a contained/limited "we" (families, communities, co-operatives). The species does not posses a hive mind, as bees and other insects do. Even the most "praised" in theory and modern history collective entity, the Proletariat, never gained collective consciousness, disproving Marx and his associates.
So, as humanity cannot think as a species, but at its best as consumer societies today, humanity will run its course into overshoot and collapse. Does nature even care if humanity suffers? Equilibrium in nature comes at the cost of cruelty: Decimation of populations, starvation, death of offspring in the mouth of predators and rivals. Paradoxical as it is, the individual mind cannot ponder on the whole and play God without abandoning the self and individual agency, in short individual consciousness and emotion. Kind of a "spiritual death", like John Calhoun noticed in his Mouse Utopia. Thankfully, there is no physical, omniscient and omnipresent "Eye of Providence" on this earthly plane for the species, like John Calhoun was for the Mouse Utopia, providing ample food. Hunger, even civil war, will most likely kick in eventually. What is worse? Hunger or spiritual death? "War is the father of all, king of all" (Heraclitus). And the collapse has already begun, since we are here discussing about it, realizing our situation.
Paradoxically, as well, Christianity evangelizes individual salvation, and advocates for individual faith (and subjectivity/individuality), and not "collective redemption". Christianity proves to be more realistic and sincere than the deluded techno-optimists. Paradoxically again, it is the Christian West that functions against Christian foundation. So, whom shall I believe and serve? Christ or the "United Nations" and the status quo's deluded humanitarians and techno-optimists? Apparently, I cannot believe in both of them simultaneously.
Well, George Dalayiorgos, we seem to agree in most important respects, though you are able to say it with greater elegance and fine-tuned erudition. (Much to discuss and fine-tune here.) You even dare to invoke the Calhoun experiments which I think have something to tell us but have been slammed for raising this possibility.
More generally, I have found it difficult to advance seriously the notion that "humanity [whatever one means by that] will run its course into overshoot and collapse". That journey is well underway but even journal editors have urged that I 'throw readers a bone'. My plea that there really are no bones in this bleeding corpse doesn't wash among those who call on alleged human agency. As for the choice between Christ and the UN/humanitarians/techno-optimists, I believe neither. What to do?
What to do? I want to live my life like a saint, but they won't let me, unless I am a member of the systemic church and live under its surveillance. I tend to believe that homo homini diabolus est. I agree with you that homo sapiens is unsustainable, in the sense that the State (Kratos of humans) seems to be the source of evil.
But if homo sapiens is a part of nature, an expression of life on the planet, and other species are more or less sustainable, then we are inherently sustainable, but situationally unsustainable. Besides, we are political animals and the Polis is natural (i.e. inherent), according to Aristotle. The Aristotelian logic seems more realistic than the Hobbesian one, a forced choice of surrendering freedoms out of fear of a life "nasty, brutish and short". What can be done in the long run? Dump the specific environment: the socio-economic edifice and the Kratos of humans as it is today.
I would appreciate if you commented on a recent case in Italy, where a court ordered the removal of the three kids of an off-grid family, and their placement in foster care. The case is relevant to what I mentioned before with regard to "human rights", and the court intervened under this pretext.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/23/europe/bimbi-nel-bosco-italy-courts-intl
This unconscious technocratic-bureaucratic-industrial dystopia goes by many names. The Superorganism (Nate Hagens), Goliath (Luke Kemp), or Moloch (Daniel Schmachtenberger and others). It seems lots of people are studying it.
Hi Robin, thanks for your input. Yes, I am aware of Nate Hagens' work on the field. I would say that the term "superorganism" is a kind of euphemism. Humanity is no superorganism, as its members do not function in high integration and common purpose, like bees do. Technically, insect colonies can count as superorganisms, for example honey bees that share a common immune system, as "supersisters". I say that because the use of the term "superorganism" creates fear, overwhelms and gives the impression of invulnerability and clockwork efficiency, and of course of offering "universal solutions", aka utopias. Take for example the UN quote "No one is safe, until everyone is", with the advent of the recent pandemics. It is precisely when it gives this impression of invulnerability that the unraveling has already begun. The species probably works better on diaspora, dispersion, not centralization and various types of "universalities". Put another way, "humanity" is empty as notion, and it has become oppressive, not to mention "human rights". If I were a bee I would certainly count on my supersisters, but one cannot count on "humanity", only certain humans. Besides, the notion of "humanity" is very fresh in human thinking. The term was probably unfathomable until late Renaissance. There was only the term "Ecumene" (Οικουμένη, habitable world) which had a spatial dimension. What seems to hold "humanity" together is the theorizing and rationalization of fear, not some intrinsic purpose.
Earlier, you described "There is no such thing such as "humanity", the species as a total is unconscious." The unconscious behavior of the collective is what Nate Hagens refers to as the superorganism. It's more like a slime mold than like an insect colony. It has a metabolism, which I think is primary to his term superorganism. And yes, it is scary, rightfully so, as it is consuming the planet. It reminds me of the vacuum cleaner monster in The Land of Point, which vacuumed up its entire environment, and then vacuumed up itself. Right now, we don't know how to divert it, and we don't know how to put it on a diet. Slaying it is the wrong metaphor, because that would kill all humans, as it is composed of humans. I prefer to imagine healing it, so the best I can do is exercise healing within whatever domain is available to me. Are we converging?
The question is not whether both of us are converging, the question is whether the generations will converge. Millenials and GenZ are about to handle assets inherited by the silent generation and boomers, even early GenX, purportedly valued 90 trillion dollars. This inheritance has been produced and accumulated with no concerns as for Ecology and sustainability. This inheritance seems to not comply to today's and future standards and expectations.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/01/millennials-are-ill-prepared-to-be-the-wealthiest-generation.html
The way that the heirs will respond and handle the matter, is the one that will define the course. To accept the assets, GenZ and millenials should consider whether they accept the accompanying terms and modus operandi. And all of this is going to take place in one to two decades. So, grand events are ahead of us, and are closer than we think (10 to 20 years at most). We already have an input of what millenials and particularly GenZ count as a way of living and purpose of life. The Avalanche is coming! Finally, I guess the question is not whether the "superorganism" will heal, it is whether it can be transformed and to what extent. The answer lies in millenials and GenZ.
Were I a betting man, I would gamble on there being near-zero probability that the so-called superorganism will -- or can -- transform. And let's not forget that the ecosphere must yet endure the energy and material onslaught of the six billion members of the human swarm (H. sapiens is no 'superorganism') who have yet to have their material wants satisfied. Yes, the avalanche is coming and there is not much 'we' can do about it.
Slime molds transform depending on the proximity of food or other resources. So if the Superorganism is more like a slime mold, there's some chance of some sort of transformation.
On the other hand, if it's more like a cancerous lump, then the only salvation for the planetary ecology is to kill the lump, killing all its component cells, extinction for homo sapiens.
Whether we dub it superorganism, Moloch, Goliath, or cancer, it is a life form of its own with its own metabolism. We can't (to my knowledge) characterize it well enough to tell whether its condition is treatable, or even to diagnose what's wrong. There are numerous diagnoses that get at part of the root cause, such as your diagnosis of Overshoot, but perhaps we need to look deeper into MPP and evolution to understand how we cornered ourselves into Overshoot. If I understand MPP, it's about finding an optimal balance, not unbridaled growth, like a tree producing the maximum foliage to nourish itself but not so much that the upper foliage blocks the sunlight of the lower foliage, unless there is an advantage to doing so.
I'm an amateur, you're an expert among experts - did I characterize MPP correctly?
Is Overshoot the bottom turtle in the stack of turtles comprising our complex predicament?
Are you, or the scientific community in which you function, able to characterize the superorganism better than my limited understanding? Well enough to diagnose it? I'd be interested to read any papers that go beyond Nate's superorganism paper.
Thank you for your attention, and for chiming in.
Thanks, George. When I asked if we are converging, I meant whether our - yours and mine - interpretations of the term "superorganism" were converging. Nothing more profound.
Yup! Aware since the 1970s. No kids, here. Worked on nature conservation & teaching environmental issues and ecology since 1977. Fingers crossed. Check this out: beautiful vision, but thinks we can decouple 8 billion plus humans from destroying our planetary support system while saving other species....delusional, or wouldn't it be nice.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF3DXxfWXb0
You make a great case that our species is inherently unsustainable. In fact, we have empirical observation to confirm that. Look around. All humans might have seemed to be living sustainably, at one time, but this predicament was the inevitable result.
However, you seem to think that some kind of modern society can be retained at a lower level. One of the basic principles of sustainability is that non-renewable resources can't be a critical element of a sustainable society. Modernity, however, needs such resources. There is no de-growing to a sustainable modern society, it just isn't possible. Hunting/gathering is the only potentially sustainable way to live but, as I mentioned, we see how that turned out with humans.
The Godfather strikes again! Bravo Bill.
Pop quiz people. In just a few words or less, what made humans stand out so ridiculously in the web of life?
If your answer is something like agriculture, fossil fuels, language, the written word, culture, etc... don't even bother reading anymore of this. Go back to your safe and comfortable Daniel Quinn or whatever.
Judges will accept a few answers, but the one that'll earn you the highest score is: cooking our food.
If the overshoot community could ever grasp this embarrassing simple concept, we'd get much better analysis circulating. Would allow people to easily trace it all back to fire. Or trace it forward to critical moment theory (full consciousness, extended theory of mind, full mortality salience, etc.)
Less of this insane fire blindness would also help to reduce all this disgusting hopium re the human race continuing on. Might even give people something worthy to strive for. Like this:
"I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." - Rust Cohle, AKA Thomas Ligotti
ps. In case anyone's interested, DQ's buddy Ishmael came out of hiding recently to say a few words on the matter.
https://un-denial.com/2025/11/09/ai-on-collapse/comment-page-1/#comment-114730
Hi paqnation, we meet again. Check out Madeleine Beekman's new book, The Origin of Language: How We Learned to Speak and Why. She traces our problematic nature all the way back to bipedalism. Evolution produced hack after hack to solve problems introduced by the previous hack (extending back to bipedalism). Fire and cooking was one of those hacks. Not clear at what point the hominids crossed "the line", but it was a long, long time ago. Interesting to consider Nature as a series of hacks, analogous to the way humans hack our way through narrow-boundary problem solving, externalized consequences be da**ed. But for a little balance, also check out Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp. He comes up with a few indicators of potential for redemption.