Risks of Civilisational Collapse

As we enter the second quarter of the century, signs of impending collapse are everywhere. Runaway climate change, resource depletion, ecological collapse, and the Sixth Extinction just to name the most obvious. Indeed, this has culminated in the Anthropocene – a claim that humankind’s impact is sufficiently significant to mark a novel geological epoch. Yet, the Anthropocene is more descriptive than analytical, and fails to direct research and response against this myriad of contemporary challenges facing global civilization.

This course tackles the risks of civilizational collapse from a broad range of disciplines and perspectives to try to separate the hype and hyperbole from the plausible and probable. It takes departure from the outside perspective: we analyse responses to the Fermi Paradox to consider whether there are lessons we can glean from the apparent silence of the universe. Might it be that intelligent or technological civilizations consistently fail to meet certain challenges and criteria for continued existence? Or are there other solid reasons for the apparent silence, and might there be hope for the future of Earth-bound civilization?

We then step back to consider what it is that we are actually concerned about, and seek to preserve. Is it terrestrial life? Or intelligence? Could we be seeking to preserve humanity? And if so, is it a particular set of values that we want to protect into the future (despite axiological change)? It is important to be clear what it is that we want to persevere, and why.

With this background, we take a quick tour through Global Catastrophic and Existential Risks, the predecessor for this course. What are the concerns from this particular vantage point, and how might we frame critiques of its approach? Broadly, the field distinguished between ‘natural’ (or background) risks, and ‘anthropogenic’ (or technological) risks and we will consider both in turn in relation to the risks posed to civilizational collapse. In previous courses, we have found that Global Catastrophic and Existential Risks do not cover the types of issues and concerns that the class sought to protect and this imperfect mapping was a source of frustration and restriction, but we may come to a different conclusion.

We then step back in time to consider archaeological and historical examples of societal collapse. It is obvious to anybody who has ever visited the ruins of earlier societies that these rise and fall with a regularity that is almost rhythmic. We read Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter, among others, to distill lessons from these smaller scale collapses in the past as a way of understanding our present predicament.

Moving to the present, we focus upon contemporary work around Planetary Boundaries which has proven to be a useful and intuitive concept to gauge the state of the planet and our impact upon its physical and ecological processes. We pair this with an analysis of the Anthropocene as a concept, and juxtapose this against the proposed Capitalocene which places capitalism as the driving force behind the myriad of risks of civilizational collapse.

The course finishes in an unorthodox fashion by leaving the last two sessions essentially open-ended and undetermined. This is intentional and appropriate, given that we do not and cannot know the risks of civilizational collapse. These open sessions allow us to pursue topics and threads from the course as it unfolds so that we can fill in some of the gaps or feel our way towards responses, or dig deeper into the literature in particular areas. It is impossible to know beforehand what captures the interest of the class, and what resources we will need to engage with that interest. As the course progresses, we will be keeping a running tally of the issues that we might address in these last sessions, as well as a catalogue of potential reading and resources that we will need for them.

Assessment for the course is an individual written assessment whereby the participants are given free-rein to choose their topics, approaches, and methodologies. Given the broad range of topics in this course, and the absence of an established literature or field proper, this assessment style enables participants to conduct their own, albeit limited, research project that reflects their interest in the area.

Sessions and Readings

1. Introductory Explorations
2. Fermi Paradox I: The Great Silence and its Lessons for Civilisational Collapse (Readings from: Milan M. Ćirković: ‘The Great Silence: The Science and Philosophy of Fermi’s Paradox’)
3. Fermi Paradox II: Other Responses and Lessons for Civilisational Collapse (Readings from Duncan H. Forgan: ‘Solving Fermi's Paradox’)
4. What are we concerned about? Life, Intelligence, Humanity… (Readings from James Lovelock ‘Gaia Hypothesis’, Erwin Schrodinger ‘What is Life’, and Merlin Sheldrake ‘Entangled Life’)
5. Existential and Global Catastrophic Risk I: ‘Natural’ Risks (Readings from Nick Bostrom and Milan M Cirkovic: ‘Global Catastrophic Risks’)
6. Existential and Global Catastrophic Risk II: ‘Anthropogenic’ Risks (Readings from Nick Bostrom and Milan M Cirkovic: ‘Global Catastrophic Risks’)
7. Civilisational Collapse (Readings from Jared Diamond: ‘Collapse’)
8. Collapse of Complex Societies (Readings from Joseph Tainter: ‘Collapse of Complex Societies)
9. Planetary Boundaries I (Readings from the Stockholm Resilience Centre)
10. Planetary Boundaries II (Readings from the Stockholm Resilience Centre)
11. Anthropocene or Capitalocene: (Readings from Jason W. Moore: ‘Anthropocene or Capitalocene?’ and ‘Capitalism in the Web of Life’
12. [Intentionally open session to be decided upon together as a class depending on what emerges as compelling or marginalized]
13. Tying it altogether: What have we learnt, and what to explore next?