While a hegemonic crisis and shifts in geopolitical power structures undermine the liberal order the West has relied on in the past, there is a more fundamental challenge on the horizon: the prospect of global civilisational collapse. In this article we explore how to conceptualise this prospect through an ecological lens and what this interpretation can teach us about appropriate responses to it.
An Ecological View of History
Cultures or civilisations, understood as specific ways of life (e.g. hunter-gatherer, agricultural, industrial, or consumerist)1Marginnote ways-of-life1Civilisations as ways of life transcend geographic boundaries; our current industrial, urban and consumerist one, e.g., is not confined to the West but globally dominant. ↩, are participants in a process of co-evolution: They are populations of complex memes2Marginnote memes2Defined as units of cultural evolution, not just funny pictures on the internet. ↩ that reproduce, compete, get selected (or not), and grow or shrink over time.3Marginnote agents3This also means we understand civilisations as agents. See our article on scale-free abstractions. ↩
A way of life emerges out of the interaction of the people sharing it, and it constrains their perception and behaviour. It’s implemented in a set of incentive systems that produce the behaviour of smaller scale agents that is needed for the way of life to be successful as an agent, i.e. to reproduce and grow.4Marginnote ideology4An important part of these incentive systems are ideology and the hegemonic narratives it’s expressed in. ↩
In order to sustain themselves, these ways of life effectively employ different strategies, e.g. focusing on either expansion or efficiency. We can understand the logic of how they evolve through a simple principle: Resource availability determines strategy selection.
When resources are abundant, the most expansionist and extractive culture will be dominant – because without resource limitations, more growth-oriented strategies outperform less growth-oriented ones. Other things being equal, whichever way of life is best at hoovering up resources and converting them into growth and reproduction will win.5Marginnote fertiliser5An analogy from nature is that when you apply fertiliser to grassland, vigorous grasses out-compete and dominate all other plants (Whitefield 2011, 17). ↩
On the other hand, when resources are limited, more efficient and localised cultures will dominate as they fill niches and avoid competition for resources, instead forming mutually beneficial connections with other cultures.6Marginnote greer6To our knowledge, Greer (2005) has been the first to outline the juxtaposition of these types of civilisation and their adaptiveness in different circumstances. ↩
Historically, when resources became scarce, civilisations either managed the transition from an extractive to an efficient culture – or they collapsed, tipping their societies into temporary chaos. From this new, more efficient civilisations emerged that were better adapted to resource scarcity. Examples are the transformation of Native North American culture in the so-called Little Ice Age and the Bronze Age Collapse.7Marginnote examples7For an overview of the first, see Duval (2024), for one of the second, Cline (2014). ↩ This cycle is the equivalent of the feedback loop that keeps populations in natural ecosystems in check so that their resource base is not irreversibly eroded.
Over the course of human history, there has been another pattern emerging, though: For every resource limitation humankind was ever confronted with, there would eventually be an innovation somewhere that allowed a civilisation to circumvent it, stick to an extractive strategy – and continue to outperform and displace less extractive ones.8Marginnote innovation8To return to the nature analogy, the effect is like adding fertiliser to a natural ecosystem. ↩ Our current global civilisation can be seen as the result of this happening over and over again, from agriculture to fossil fuels to financialisation.
In other words, humanity has always been just smart (and cruel) enough to find a way around resource limitations. This is why, according to this view, the globally dominant way of life, the colonial, consumerist, fossil-fuel powered, innovation-fixated culture of high-income countries, is dominant: When resources are abundant, the most extractive culture will win – and innovation makes sure resources stay abundant. Our global civilisation is (still) dominant not despite its extractive nature, but because of it.9Marginnote modernity9Machado de Oliveira (2021) captures the character of this civilisation with the twin concepts of Modernity and Coloniality. ↩
Separation and Its Consequences
At the heart of our extractive culture is the idea that we are separate from others, from our communities, from nature. Only if we perceive them as separate from us can we exploit them; and by separating ourselves from them, we cut the feedback loops that enable the long-term survival and health of the larger-scale systems that we’re part of and dependent on.
This dynamic can be illustrated with a parallel found in Michael Levin’s work on cancer cells. When a cell becomes disconnected from the bio-electrical networks it shares with those around it, it doesn’t know that it’s part of a larger whole anymore, and it falls back to the behaviour of a single-cell organism: it starts to reproduce rapidly, forgetting its function and role in the larger organism and instead putting it at risk of destruction. Once it’s reconnected to the feedback loops with its neighbours, though, it stops reproducing and reverts to behaving as a good citizen of the larger whole.10Marginnote cancer10Levin (2022), 21 ↩
Our global civilisation has ignored its fundamental interconnectedness because it could (technological innovation allowed it to dismiss limitations and hence feedback loops) and because it needed to (exploitation required an “other” to exploit).
This strategy is reaching its limits as we are approaching planetary boundaries. Contrary to what techno-solutionists claim, biodiversity loss, soil depletion, ocean acidification, temperature rise, and climate collapse cannot be fixed by technological innovation alone – neither renewable energy nor large-scale geo-engineering, necessary as they are or might become.
What our global civilisation is confronted with, after extracting itself from all the feedback loops with nature that limited the civilisations it has displaced, is the ultimate feedback loop: The irreversible destruction of its resource base. The ensuing increase in uninsurable, unfarmable, and uninhabitable land might crash the global economy before ecological breakdown would lead to mass starvation, but either way Gaia is coming for us.
The End of the World as We Know It
Because our civilisation is the most extractive one that has ever existed (that’s exactly why it’s dominant!), it’s also the most unlikely to transform into an efficient civilisation. Therefore the most likely consequence of eroding its resource base is its collapse – which means global civilisational collapse, transcending the collapse of the Western Empire in both scope and scale.
Within that collapse, global untethered elites will cling on to whatever resources they can, insulating themselves against collapse by all means necessary, from bunkers and mercenaries to state capture and space travel.11Marginnote elites11For an investigation into what this strategy actually looks like, see Rushkoff (2018). The idea of “network states” (Srinivasan 2022) can be seen as a disguise for it. See our articles on the rise of the Right and the demise of the Western Empire for more on the political role of these elites. ↩ During and after that chapter, though, there will be space for new, better adapted, more efficient civilisations to emerge – new ways of life that enable societies to organise very differently, using alternative models of production and coordination that are based on interconnectedness, not separation.
References
- Cline (2014): “Climate Change Doomed the Ancients”
- Duval (2024): “A 600-Year-Old Blueprint for Weathering Climate Change”
- Greer (2005): “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse”
- Levin (2022): “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds”
- Machado de Oliveira (2021): Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
- Rushkoff (2018): “Survival of the Richest: The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind”
- Srinivasan (2022): The Network State: How To Start a New Country
- Whitefield (2011): The Earth Care Manual: A Permaculture Handbook for Britain and Other Temperate Climates, 2nd ed.