Stage 3, they have become aware of several major problems. People who have arrived at this stage spend their time prioritizing one campaign or cause over another and convincing others of specific priorities.
At Stage 4, the inevitable conclusion is reached, they become aware of the interdependence of all of the world’s ‘problems’. Everything becomes appallingly systemic, in other words it can’t be solved by a few individuals or by miraculous ‘solutions’, and it can’t be dealt with by politics as currently conceived. ‘People who arrive at this stage tend to withdraw into tight circles of like-minded individuals in order to trade insights and deepen their understanding of what’s going on. These circles are necessarily small, both because personal dialogue is essential for this depth of exploration, and because there just aren’t very many people who have arrived at this level of understanding.’24
Finally, at Stage 5, people change their point of view irrevocably. They no longer see a ‘problem’ that calls for ‘solutions’ but a predicament (a situation like death or an incurable disease, from which we cannot extricate ourselves, and which we cannot resolve). This requires them to find ways in which they can learn to live with it as well as possible. At this stage, they realize that the situation encompasses all aspects of life, and that it will profoundly transform them. They can begin to feel completely overwhelmed: they see that the people around them are not interested in what is happening, that the global system is not responding fast enough, and the earth as a whole is suffering intensely. Practically everything is brought into question. This is not only exhausting, but can cut people off from whatever stable and reassuring emotional environment they have. ‘For those who arrive at Stage 5, there is a real risk that depression will set in.’25
Chefurka says that there are two principal ways to react to this unpleasant situation, though they are in no way mutually exclusive. We can engage in an ‘outer’ path: politics, transition towns, the establishment of resilient communities, etc.; or in an ‘inner’, more spiritual path. Such an inner path does not necessarily involve adherence to a conventional religion. If anything, the contrary may be true. ‘Most of the people I’ve met who have chosen an inner path have as little use for traditional religion as their counterparts on the outer path have for traditional politics.’26
Within this transforming landscape, ‘collapsology’ involves analysing and synthesizing the many studies which have been conducted on this inextricable global situation in a transdisciplinary manner. This is a process of opening up the disciplines and breaking down the walls between them, and is summed up well by Spinoza’s advice regarding human behaviour: ‘Do not make fun, do not lament, do not hate, but understand.’27 Collapsology could become a scientific discipline in its own right, but it would become truly official only if universities opened chairs in collapsology, if students and researchers in the field got funding, offered symposia and perhaps set up an Open Journal of Collapsology (complete with an editorial board) …
This collapsological approach, which is essentially rational, is necessary because it makes it possible to dispel the confusion surrounding the subject and, in particular, to remain credible with people who are aware of the subject but not yet convinced. But it is far from enough, because it does not tell us what to do. It does not tell us how to distinguish the good from the bad, how to cultivate powerful convictions, strong values, abundant imagination and a strong common desire. Scientific tools are relevant but they are not sufficient to encompass an issue as complex and multi-faceted as a collapse (which also includes the collapse of thought systems). In other words, by Stage 5 of the growth of awareness, collapsology is no longer sufficient.
In recent years, we have enriched our own scientific project through more awareness of human feeling and subjectivity, and this has led us to become involved with ethical, spiritual and metaphysical issues. We think that these are also part of the ‘first aid kit’ that we will need to open as we face this storm of unpredictable duration. Dominique Bourg, the French philosopher who wrote the Foreword to this book, says much the same in different words in his own book, A New Earth:28 the only choice we have left to us is to rethink our way of seeing the world, in other words, of being in the world.
We propose using the term ‘collapsosophy’ (from ‘-sophy’ = wisdom) for the whole body of behaviours and positions that arise out of this unavoidable situation (the collapses that are taking place and of the possible global collapse) and which depart from the strict domain of the sciences. The same process of opening out and of breaking down walls that is involved in collapsology is found here too, in a broader opening to questions of ethics, the emotions, and the imagination, and to spiritual and metaphysical questions. We do not aim to choose any particular camp, more to look for complementarities and connections which can be woven between all these areas, so as to help us in undergoing these external and internal transformations.
We are aware that this is not the usual approach in the scientific and political world (or at least it is not discussed openly), and that it can cause discomfort as well as enthusiasm. But it seems to us that we cannot do without it. To quote the American writer John Michael Greer: ‘The recognition that these two transformations, the outer and the inner, work in parallel and have to be carried out together is the missing piece that the sustainability movements of the Seventies never quite caught.’29 He also notes that ‘it’s not the technical dimension of the predicament of industrial society that matters most just now. It’s the inner dimension, the murky realm of nonrational factors that keep our civilization from doing anything that doesn’t make the situation worse, that must be faced if anything constructive is going to happen at all.’30
In these uncertain times, the voices of scientists are more important than ever. It is time for them to redouble their efforts and the rigour of their work, but also to find the courage to speak with their hearts, and to engage fully in the challenges that face us, with all the subjective and personal factors which that implies. Some of them are doing it already, for example the astrophysicist Hubert Reeves in the 2018 French-Canadian documentary by Iolande Cadrin-Rossignol, La Terre vue du coeur (Earth: Seen From the Heart).31
The disasters that lie ahead of us may lead to the suffering and even death of thousands or millions of human beings in ways that can easily be foreseen … not counting the other living species. If we shut ourselves off from all of this and look towards the future without compassion, we risk losing both any reason to live and our own humanity. If, in contrast, we take the decision to plunge body and soul into our coming predicament, with compassion and courage, then we need to learn to equip ourselves materially, emotionally and spiritually, in order to avoid madness, or again losing our empathy for the suffering around us. The idea of this book is to explore the changes that we can make inside our heads and our hearts, in order to be able to work with the world of our time. Or, as Carolyn Baker puts it, ‘we must ask: Who do I want to be in the face of collapse? What did I come here to do?’32
Breaking down walls
It has already been some years since we formed the desire to make as many people as possible come to understand the scientific work on this subject. We haven’t yet lost our spirits, or hope, or our reason. We appreciate now that going beyond the strict scientific framework has been a great help for us on this journey. It has even been a source of joy.
Both the partial collapses that are taking place already and the possible systemic collapses of the future are opportunities for transformation. We remain convinced that it is possible to understand, to speak and to live the catastrophes and the sufferings that they generate without giving up joy or the possibility of a future.
This book tells of our discoveries in the fields of disaster psychology but also of our encounters on the paths of ‘collapsosophy’. It is aimed at people who want to navigate this balance of light and dark, without giving up their clarity of vision or their sense of reality, but also without renouncing their sense of a future which
