The Era of Response
The third stage of the process of collapse, following what I’ve called the eras of pretense and impact, is the era of response
collapse of complex civilizations
The Era of Pretense
The decline and fall of a civilization isn’t a single event, or even a single linear process; it’s a complex fractal reality composed of many different events on many different scales in space and time.
John Michael Greer: The God Of Technological Progress May Well Be Dead
The stories running our heads influence everything from our beliefs to our values to our actions.
Planet of the Space Bats
As my regular readers know, I’ve been talking for quite a while now here about the speculative bubble that’s built up around the fracking phenomenon, and the catastrophic bust that’s guaranteed to follow so vast and delusional a boom.
Soil erosion may get us before climate change does
The real story is one of thousands of years of accelerating population growth, ruthless greed, countless wars, enormous suffering, and catastrophic ecocide.
Dark Age America: The Hoard of the Nibelungs
Of all the differences that separate the feudal economy sketched out in last week’s post from the market economy most of us inhabit today, the one that tends to throw people for a loop most effectively is the near-total absence of money in everyday medieval life.
Achieving Sustainable Societies: Lessons from Modelling the Ancient Maya
The ancient Maya provide an example of a complex social-ecological system which developed impressively before facing catastrophic reorganization.
Dark Age America: The Senility of the Elites
The illusion of invincibility is far and away the most important asset a mature ruling elite has, because it discourages deliberate attempts at regime change from within.
Dark Age America: The Cauldron of Nations
It’s one thing to suggest, as I did in last week’s post here, that North America a few centuries from now might have something like five per cent of its current population. It’s quite another thing to talk about exactly whose descendants will comprise that five per cent.
Dark Age America: A Bitter Legacy
Civilizations normally leave a damaged environment behind them when they fall, and ours shows every sign of following that wearily familiar pattern.
How to destroy a civilization
Mathematical models may be a lot of fun, but when you use them to project the future of our civilization the results may be a bit unpleasant, to say the least.
Why the elites are so ruthless that they destroy themselves
The recent announcement of a paper by Motessharrry, Rivas and Kalnay (MRK) on the collapse of complex societies has generated much debate, especially with the publication of an enthusiastic comment by Nafeez Ahmed who defined it a "NASA-funded" study.