‘We need
dramatic social and technological changes’: is societal collapse inevitable?
Academic
Danilo Brozović says studies of failed civilisations all point in one direction
– today’s society needs radical transformation to survive
Damian
Carrington
Damian
Carrington Environment editor
Sat 28 Dec
2024 08.00 GMT
For someone
who has examined 361 studies and 73 books on societal collapses, Danilo
Brozović’s conclusion on what must happen to avoid today’s world imploding is
both disarmingly simple and a daunting challenge: “We need dramatic social and
technological changes.”
The collapse
of past civilisations, from the mighty Mayan empire to Rapa Nui (Easter
Island), has long fascinated people and for obvious reasons – how stable is our
own society? Does ever-growing complexity in societies or human hubris
inevitably lead to oblivion? In the face of the climate crisis, rampant
destruction of the natural world, rising geopolitical tensions and more, the
question is more urgent than ever.
“More and
more academic articles are mentioning the threat of collapse because of climate
change,” says Brozović at the school of business at the University of Skövde,
Sweden. The issue of collapse hooked him after it was raised in a project on
business sustainability, which then led to his comprehensive review in 2023.
The field is
not short of extreme pessimists. “They believe what we are doing will
eventually cause the extinction of the human race,” says Brozović. Some say
today’s challenges are so great that it is now time humanity comes to terms
with extinction, and even build a vault containing our greatest cultural
achievements as a record for some future – perhaps alien – civilisation.
Others, using data on deforestation and population, rate the chance of
catastrophic collapse at 90% or more.
Most
scholars are more optimistic, if not actually optimists. Brozović says: “They
say collapse for us will just be the end of life as we know it today. There
will be less globalisation and a lower standard of life, affecting public
health very negatively.”
This raises
the question of what is meant by collapse: most agree it is the loss of complex
social and political structures over a few decades at most. But by this
definition, many classic collapses, misinterpreted in the rear-view mirror of
history, may actually be better described as transformations. He says: “In the
last 10 years or so, people are asking did the Rapa Nui society collapse or did
it reinvent itself?” he says.
The search
for explanations of societal collapse has been a long one, going back at least
to Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population and Edward Gibbon’s
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which blamed decadence and
barbarian invasions.
Today,
collapses are seen as the result of combined factors, such as environmental
problems, disease, political or economic turmoil, religious crises and soil
exhaustion, even if one factor might precipitate the collapse.
Brozović
says: “But there is one theory of collapse that stands out as the most
frequently invoked: Joseph Tainter’s theory of complexity.” Tainter’s theory
was published in 1988 and has since been described as “peak complexity”.
Brozović
says: “He says the main function of every society is solving problems by
investing resources. But as society becomes more complex, the problems become
more complex, so you have to invest more resources. Painter says at the end of
this spiral, collapse is inevitable, because you cannot do this for ever.
Technological innovations can simplify increasingly complex problems. But,
again, this cannot go on indefinitely.”
After that
came the sunk-cost effects theory of collapse. He says: “[Societies] are
unwilling to abandon something – for example a settlement or the current global
economy – if a great deal has been invested in it, even if future prospects are
dim.” Others have blamed social hubris, he says, meaning excessive pride or
arrogance led societies to ignore warning signs and block preventive action.
“It’s like
being in a bad marriage,” Brozović says. “You know you should get out, but you
have invested a lot of yourself and a lot of time, and it’s really hard.”
Growing gaps
between the rich and poor also come up as a factor, he says. Research using big
data to model historical societies has found that elites and inequality appear
towards the end. “If it’s not a cause, it’s definitely a symptom,” he says.
There is a
problem, however, in attempting to draw insight for the future: past collapses
were local or regional. “But we live in a global and extremely complex
society,” says Brozović. “[Nonetheless], one very important insight is that,
regardless of the cause of collapse, how a society reacts seems crucial.”
In his 2005
book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond
identified two vital choices distinguishing societies that failed from those
that survived.
The first,
tackling the sunk-cost problem and political short-termism, is long-term
planning: making “bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when
problems have become perceptible but before they have reached crisis
proportions”. Diamond cites Tokugawa shoguns, Inca emperors and 16th-century
German landowners as positive examples, having faced and reversed disastrous
deforestation.
The second,
combating social hubris, is the painful process of overturning core values.
Diamond says: “Which of the values that formerly served a society well can
continue to be maintained under new changed circumstances? Which of these
treasured values must instead be jettisoned and replaced with different
approaches?” Here he cites Scandinavian settlers in Greenland during the
medieval period as a negative example, saying they refused to jettison their
European farming identity and died as a result.
Having
extensively surveyed the study of societal collapses, does Brozović think the
way humanity currently lives looks sustainable? “No, no – definitely not,” he
says. “We have to do something – that’s the conclusion that arises from reading
all this research.”
“At the end
of the day, we have to radically transform society, and we have to do it fast,”
he says. That means overhauling politics, policies and institutions,
safeguarding food production and the natural world that supports life on Earth.
“That’s the
recipe to mitigate collapse,” he says. “But nothing is really happening
substantially. We are shifting the discussion of what is acceptable and what is
not, and a lot of good, positive things are happening. But the question is,
will it happen fast enough?”
Brozović’s
review highlights a significant barrier to action noted by Paul and Anne
Ehrlich: convincing people of the necessity of such measures, a task made even
harder by the rise of online disinformation.
The idea
that humanity’s fate is in its own hands is not new. In the mid-20th century,
historian Arnold Toynbee, who had studied the varying fates of 28 societies,
said: “Civilisations die from suicide, not from murder.” But Diamond channeled
Winston Churchill’s thought on democracy to reach a more positive conclusion:
“A lower-impact society is the most impossible scenario for our future – except
for all other conceivable scenarios.”
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