Collapsing Upward – A Commentary on the Works of Joseph Tainter and Jared Diamond by Jeremy Faludi




Assuming these are good models of societal collapse, what can we do to avoid it? (and forget the so-called Decline of the American Empire, let’s think about industrial society in general.)

  • Obviously making our societies less resource-intensive is top on the list for both Tainter and Diamond.
  • Creating more balanced relations with other societies is also clearly high on the list, which means having allies that are many and prosperous–a good argument for international development and non-exploitive relations with less-industrialized nations.
  • Having well-governed societies is also important, and Diamond has hit on a keen insight about having a close connection between rulers/upper classes and decision consequences/common life.
  • Tainter’s description of administrative/communication overhead as being the ultimate cause of collapse is one of the most useful insights, and one that we can increasingly deal with technologically, which has not been an option for past civilizations.

Beyond this, what if collapse is inevitable? And what if it’s not really a bad thing after all?

Tainter’s definition of a complex society is a centralized one with large administrative classes; one form of “collapse” is decentralization that dissolves social stratification and removes socio-economic overhead. This trend is already active in business and manufacturing, particularly in high-tech industries and streamlined production/distribution of commodity goods. The Internet and other technologies are starting to decentralize and streamline politics as well–the impact has been miniscule so far, but in another few decades it could be significant. Culture is much more anarchic and classless than it has ever been in Western history, with postmodernists coining terms like “no-brow” to refer to arts that cannot be described as “high-brow” or “low-brow”.

Collapse also usually means population shrinkage, but as Europe is showing us now, that shrinkage can happen gently and by choice, rather than by plagues and wars. Voluntary-simplicity movements are another shadow of collapse, as they result in people reducing their resource use and complexity of life, but they do so by choice rather than by need as people in collapsing societies do.

Finally, collapse means a society is no longer wealthier or more powerful than other surrounding societies. This also does not have to happen as a result of the dominant society falling apart, it can also mean that the other societies have been raised up to its level.

Avoiding societal collapse turns out to use roughly the same strategies as pursuing the soft-path collapse described above. And as it happens, these strategies are ones we’re already talking about constantly on Worldchanging. We have the tools, we just need to work on the implementation.

Full article at Worldchanging.com

Keywords : civilization, complex society, deminishing return, collapse, ecosocial crisis, social change, voluntary simplicity, population, interdependence, co-intelligence, self reliance, democracy
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Published::
4.13.07 / 10am
Category:
Appropriate Science and Technology, Democratic Democracy, Ecosocionomics, Global Governance, Life's Necessities, Means, Paths, Ends
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