I did not say that there will be no end, however, the end will retroact as a motive for the present. The future, in order to be able to call itself a future, must be able to feed back into the motor for the present; therefore, in a completely theoretical way, what does not have a future cannot even be foreseen.

What will not be predictable is not predictable. Nothing physical we mean chemical or biological, pure principle of causality and knowledge. Only what is possible in the future is foreseeable. Confirm what the religious preached long ago? Evidently continuing to preach the end has not done so badly to the "development" of humanity. "Development" let us not be "progress". Fighting or dancing against the end of the world is the greatest and most wonderful refrain of humanity. Difo Voukang Harouna Thanks for the reply.

Difo Voukang Harouna Certainly the future is a road that, if it claims to exist, must be thought of as and as it is finished. The apocalyptic theories offered to us by religion deal with ontological themes that aim to sacralize (and consequently nationalize) the very balance of life as "stability, harmony, correspondence and certainty" for an infinite potential tomorrow. An infinity that cannot be explained according to the dynamics of the imagination but according to every possible solution to every potential unauthenticity. So to conclude what religions today, remaining faithful to the aporetic season of judgment, say about "human progress", is that "this human prediction" is increasingly trying to find you another "in-if equal to same" inside himself, and this is absurd. Every progress must always be in line with the will to be as we should, and not be as we will be by virtue of what progress will be. Progress must not be by virtue of its power to do, but the relation to our correspondence of life and openness. Love is the word that best expresses this desire for forecasting without possible apocalypses.

Progress is forecast. End of the world is the end of the forecast.

The collapse of a system, in this case the existing everything as a possible system, can develop a discourse towards its object if and only if it takes into account the nature and the "contrary" of the "phenomenon in question". A necessary collapseology, more than possible, bases even before any possible rooting, an inevitable discourse on it. The logical discourse on the end of an atro system is nothing but a strong and urgent request for meaning, on the part of those who live there, recognizing everything and recognizing themselves as co-preventive for any possible collapse.

Dear Francesco Rizzo thank you very much for your views and insightful and enlightening comments on the issue though very technical and philosophical. I am getting more knowledge.

Thanks for the philosophy jargon.

If the end itself is a forecast, then there may be no end it seems.

So to you there will be no end of the world and no collapse of anything. You seem to have cleared the matter long ago.

However, the collapsologist defend themself by the fact that many ressources of the world are reducing while population is encreasing, the petroleum industry will collapse and will affect many human life sustaining factors among others...

I would like to hear from any pro-collapsology scientist in this matter!

Thanks

I did not say that there will be no end, however, the end will retroact as a motive for the present. The future, in order to be able to call itself a future, must be able to feed back into the motor for the present; therefore, in a completely theoretical way, what does not have a future cannot even be foreseen.

What will not be predictable is not predictable. Nothing physical we mean chemical or biological, pure principle of causality and knowledge. Only what is possible in the future is foreseeable. Confirm what the religious preached long ago? Evidently continuing to preach the end has not done so badly to the "development" of humanity. "Development" let us not be "progress". Fighting or dancing against the end of the world is the greatest and most wonderful refrain of humanity. Difo Voukang Harouna Thanks for the reply.

Hi! Fiann Paul thank you for your view. Do you mean that the Venezuelan Government seems to be aware of the collapse of industrialization and is taken measure to reduce wasting of ressources and getting ready for the time? If the issue is serious I think the whole world need to be prepared and take it serious if not it will have little impact.

We shall hear more in this discussion from different views.

Dear Fiann Paul now, I understand your point. Thanks for clarifying!

Difo Voukang Harouna,

I think its a bit disingenuous to call scientists focusing on collapsology as believing the world is soon to end -- all civilizations have collapsed because civilizations are unsustainable, requiring the importation of resources at increasing or stable energy flows -- a feat which is impossible in a closed energy system like the universe, hence why all complex adaptive systems eventually collapse. Civilizations collapse for the same reason stars collapse: they run out of energy flows. Industrialization just intensifies and catalyzes this process, depleting energy sources at extreme rates.

I don't know if one can call this subject religious, though as a researcher at the confluence of ecology and religion there are certainly some parallels, and from a cultural materialist lens, one could say the regulating ideology of a social system is grounded in the infrastructure and relationship between culture and ecosystem: where strategies to live in harmony are turned into sacred rites and problematic behaviors are made into taboo. One could see the Pope's encyclical on the environment as one example of how a world religion is changing itself in order to address the concern of collapse.

Your question in particular as to whether prepping for the collapse confirms what religions have been preaching long ago is interesting. I would argue that the Axial Age religions were social reform movements that intuited the unsustainable nature of civilizations and created symbol systems meant to more equitably distribute resource flows within civilization, achieve a level of egalitarianism, and extend the idea of dignity to all classes of persons, while at the same time challenging traditional notions of legitimate authority, with Christianity perhaps synthesizing several of these streams of thought -- ultimately challenging imperial violence and those institutions mediating power and destroying autonomy through a spiritually innovative social movement. That is to say, these religions were responses to collapse that understood (perhaps unconsciously) the threat of collapse, and attempted to make reforms that would offer survival strategies as the empire collapsed (ultimately the Church (a network of communes) became the institution that survived the fall of Rome around which new social forms were able to re-constellate themselves).

That said, I wonder if "prophesy" is similarly an intuitive approach to looking at those trends empirically observed and extending them into the future. While an ancient prophet would not be able to make sense of the specifics of a future, they might be able to anticipate the larger archetypal dimensions, for instance the oppression necessary to maintain unbalanced power relations that has spread to become a global force, as well as the rebellious movements that would necessarily emerge to challenge them, the ecological degradation that is a byproduct, and the solution that would create peace and a new era of egalitarian political economy. Cast in the spiritual language of the time, such "futurologists" would offer new directives in religious communities, prepping, repenting, renouncing, reforming...

Collapse is characterized by two conditions, environmental degradation and oligarchy (inequity), which together undermine the life support structures and generate conflict. This is not a religious ideology, but an empirically verified trend observed by sociologists, anthropologists, criminologists...

That said, civilizations may collapse, but really what collapse means is contract. This results in lower energy flows, so that there is less complexity in the system. People go back to much simpler ways of living until the population stabilizes within the carrying capacity of the region, and then grows again and collapses again in Malthusian cycles. It might seem like the "end of the world" to those who cannot see past their own lifespans, and so see the collapse of civilization as the end of their own perspective, but a deeper view would see that "the end of the world" does not tend to mean the "end of everything that exists." That said, our industrial civilization today is generating the sixth mass extinction our planet has seen and destabilizing the climate, so that a growing percentage of species may be driven into oblivion, including humans. The end of the world then may simply be the end of the human capacity for "worlding."

Wow! Dear Matthew Thierry Thank you very much for this educative contribution. From your answer I got to understand (may be the real) concept of collapsology. You point of view shows that you are knowlegeable or specialist of the field. So, the collapse of a civilization does not necessarily mean the ''end of the world'' as end of evrything. However, I think that since many civilization have existed and passed, coupled to the fact that the origin of the world or life (Origin of Big Bang) was spontaneous (if my knowledge is up to date), one could also think of a spontaneous end of everything… may be!!

Yes, you are right; it is disingenuous to say that collapsologist beleive that the world will soon end. But I might have been missled by the Following video documentary hereunder attached, though in french and the source may be doubtful. They clearly talked about the father of the collapsology who himself is giving a date and using the expression ''END OF THE WORLD'' which is near to him. Please, what could be your opinion about the point and what comment can you make about the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX_RW5iYJcQ&t=2168s

Regards!

It is the study of the collapse of the industrial civilization and what could follow it.

Thank you Professor Nirmala S.V.S.G for adding your view. It help clarifying my understanding.

The study of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliometrics is most probably the methodical key to understand systemic collapse processes.

Conference Paper The 'Babylonian' Accounts of Society

Conference Paper The Hidden Physics of Human Progress and Poverty

I stay with Henry George http://www.henrygeorge.org/whowashg.htm that a central concentration of wealth and power is the root cause of every collapse; this also applies to the Soviet empire. As mentioned in both related papers, the traffic accident that paralyzes all traffic should be avoided by rational and ethical morality, i.e. creating a win/win economy. The ownership of wealth is not more than a loan, which needs prudent stewardship by the power structure machinery.

Thank you very much Stephen I. Ternyik for these interesting links. Indeed very rich in knowledge and alerting messages for humanity to avoid the collapse.

Please take a look at this useful link.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-thoughts-on-collapsology

Thank you very much Arvind Singh for the link. Indeed very useful.

Difo - Collapsology or sooner there will be the end of the world may or may not be true but one thing is certain that 'if there is any permanent truth or reality in the world, it is the change'. Change is the law of nature. All things keep on changing except change itself. Civilizations have risen and fallen. Historical evidences are witness to it. Yes, it is true that 'collapse of a civilization does not necessarily mean the ''end of the world'' as end of everything'. It only means change by the law of nature.

Thank you very much Dr Manzoor Hussain for this pertinent point of view. Your point made me think that if the only constance is change, then there could be a critical level or threshold level of constancy of every phenomenon or event at which a constant change may be affected. may be if such a critical level is known collapses may be avoided or postponed or delayed or converted.

I am not a collapsologist, I am just trying to understand it deeply.

It is common knowledge that there is a tool called The Doomsday Clock. As for religion, it is interesting that Viking, Hindu, Jewish, Christianity, and Islam all converge on this theme with a significant level of harmony.

Thank you very much for your opinion Ryan Pickard

Difo Voukang Harouna

I don't speak french so unfortunately will not be helpful in analyzing the video. I am not sure one can say collapse, either of a civilization, a star, or the universe can be qualified as "spontaneous." Rather, their "collapse" is the point at which energy flows cease, or run out, which can be quantified and predicted for. A star has a lifespan. A civilization expands until it breaks down. The universe itself will experience "heat death" sometime in trillions of years (I believe). In the case of modern industrial civilization, I have heard that it can only be maintained as long as the energy return on energy invested (EREI) remains at a 5:1 ratio, along with humans acquiring a certain amount of water per year. Those are mathematical questions that, if found and predicted for, could help to give insight. That said, Malthusian predictions have been found to be problematic, in the sense that actually once a certain population is reached the technological and social innovation is able to address problems of scarcity, but it is also the case that capitalism requires environmental degradation to maintain profits/wealth, and crime increases as environmental scarcity increases. Further, the class system that capitalism reinforces produces increasing levels of inequality. These two factors -- environmental degradation and inequality -- themselves lead to collapse. So, capitalism, or really civilization, unless it undergoes a major overhaul, will likely be experiencing that at some point. The Limits of Growth study I believe anticipated 2030 is when resource depletion would produce major dislocations and collapses in human terms. (see attached image) Climate change will likely only exacerbate that time frame.

"The end of the world" seems to me like an archetypal psychic experience: people recognize the physical or socio-political trends as a threat to the macro-level system and don't (or in the past, haven't) had the language, science, or data to express what's going to happen, or understood the logical flow model for change, so they called it the "apocalypse," which I would guess is a long-ingrained paradigm that underlies much of the climate doomerism of contemporary social movements. Even Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolution of the workers stems from this Christian paradigm it seems, just secularized.

I am not sure who the "father of collapseology is," do you know his name? I would be curious about his claims as to a date (collapse tends to not happen in one moment, but over years, if not decades) and methodology. Again, I think he is conflating "end of the world" with the end of "his" world(view), meaning he does not anticipate living beyond a certain point (nor will others) which strikes me as more intuitive/archetypal than scientific. But again, would need to see the method and data.

It also should be noted collapse is not always a bad thing. I think it was the case that after the collapse of imperial Rome, peasants had a longer lifespan because they were not so heavily exploited by elites. Hunter-gatherers are known to be healthier than all of the classes in agrarian civilizations I believe, save those at the top echelons, because they have healthier lifestyles. There are many arguments that state that civilization is an aberration that, while perhaps offering conveniences and comforts, do so at the expense of the wider world and majority of citizens. Collapse then might evoke existential fears, bringing up the recognition that we depend on a hyper-specialized and hypercomplex system of hierarchical structures, and we have lost so much traditional knowledge and indigenous wisdom since we have turned the natural world into an artificial environment. Collapse may offer a way back into the instinctual wisdom humans engaged in for 99% of their existence before the birth of civilization.

Judging from the short video I see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WRojM9_uAI It seems like he is making his case based on a study of agriculture without fuel. I would guess this study was done before people realized that "peak oil" is actually not so much of a problem -- turns out we have enough fuel to destabilize the climate long before we run out of it. And I would guess we use most of it unless the entire economic paradigm changes too.

But anyway, the point being, we can intend collapse while preparing for a "soft landing" by decentralizing food production and using techniques like biomimicry, permaculture, ecological restoration, etc while perhaps also stabilizing population and reducing energy requirements... if there is political will to do so. I'm kind of a pessimist, so while I see lots of people in western (major carbon-emitting) countries advocating changes, I do not know if they are really willing to sacrifice the industrial lifestyles they have come to be habituated to. Time will tell...

Dear Matthew Thierry thank you very much for this deep explanation of the science behind the collapse of civilization. Please, pardon my shallow understanding of the field because I am not a specialist, but i have learnt alot through this discussion and I am gettig more interested and curious to dig more.

As I said earlier, the first video I watched had just attracted my attention and Curiosity first from its title ''Fin du monde: et si c'était serieux = end of the world: what if it was serious? So, thanks for clarifying my doubts. And I realised that the journalist presenting the documentary was giving a scientific perspective of his presentation where he presentated Pablo Servigne, the scientist who is giving the conference speech on the video you shared as the person who ''invented'' or first coined the term Collapsology. I Don't know if my tranlation is very correct because I do understand a bit of french, to some extends. So, i became more curious. Pablo Servigne mentioned that collapsology will become a full scientific discipline if researchers in the field get more engaged in publishing findings and attracting funds for more research.

Therefoere, I am also trying to understand from this platform if there are scientists who are mainly dealing or specializing in this area of industrial collapse. What are some of their data and methods? Apart from methods leading to reducing envioronmental degradation and conscious food production and consumption as well as going back to indegeneous knowledge and practices, what could be the other alternatives to maintain the industrial civilisation and avoid the collapse which is scientifically predicted to begin before 2030 as Pablo and you mentionned? This is so near-- I beleive! What could be their conception and/or perception about the next civilization?And since the collapse seems inevitable, should we just start getting ready for it as others are doing? Then, this might look like we should have just better beleived in religious dogma!

I am enjoying the different conceptions of scientist in this discussion and I must say that I like your positive conceptual side of the collapse.

Thank you!

I am unaware of whether, for Servigne, he is specifically speaking about collapsology "as a full scientific discipline" with regards to past civilizations or the contemporary one. It seems to me there are numerous studies as to how past civilizations collapsed, and therefore lessons for contemporary societies...e.g. Article Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and u...

Your question as to data and methods is certainly relevant, as are current scholars in the field. Have you found any in particular? In terms of "alternatives to maintain industrial civilization," I am not sure this is possible, nor even am I convinced its worthwhile. Industrial civilization is unsustainable because it is reliant on fossil fuels, a nonrenewable energy resource. That means that unless a new energy resource is discovered, or the non-fossil fuels are able to make up the difference, some aspects of industrial civilization will collapse, or at least, contract.

But consider what industrial civilization maintains, or what it is contingent upon? It seems it is designed to maintain capitalism itself, which requires two things, extraction/degradation and repression of wages/inequality, both of which lead to collapse, according to the link above. Moreover, consider the psychological effects and so-called "diseases of civilization," depression, anxiety, etc. So, we are concerned that the polluting superstructure we call civilization, that maintains and reinforces economic and ecological scarcity for the sake of producing an elite rich class at the expense of everyone (human and nonhuman) else will collapse? Why? Are we so dependent on our own enslavement we can really not fathom another way of life outside of that power dynamic?

What I have attempted to share is the idea that civilization depends on unsustainable ecological relationships and inequitable social relationships, both of which contribute to collapse. Therefore, to avoid collapse may be to perpetuate degradation and inequality, institutionalizing systems that ensure these are not able to be challenged, meaning increased securitization and repression. And even then, civilization would still collapse, albeit at a slower rate, or at least, those elite would collapse less, because they would maintain their privilege in the system they control even as it dwindles and disintegrates.

Ultimately, to stave off collapse would mean non-destructive technologies decentralized to empower local autonomy, egalitarian communities, and networks of mutuality. It would require a decline of 90% of all products consumed, and the reallocation of basic necessities, along with the rapid descent of energy extraction/production/consumption, and a rapid contraction so as to establish a more simplistic lifestyle. Which is basically what collapse is anyway.

This is all to say then that collapse is inevitable, due to the rapid infusion of an energy source followed by the rapid deprivation of the energy required to maintain that structure, so the question seems to me at least to be, not so much "how can we prevent collapse," but rather, "how can we intentionally collapse in a way that does the least amount of damage and transition into post-collapse communities that are sustainable, equitable, and just.

Personally I think this requires looking at natural design so as to see how organisms distribute energy across mass over time, which tends to be done in fractal, branching systems that are self-similar across scale. The market may attempt to do this, but I think it requires a more intentional flow structure that can catalyze movement and reduce blockages in the process to ensure all components receive that which is necessary to endure. In this regard, Adrian Bejan's "The Constructal Law" seems relevant, though I myself would recommend Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's "Activation of Energy" perhaps, or "The Future of Man," or really anything maybe :)

Dear Matthew Thierry , Thank you very much sharing your views. Its Always good to read your answers on this issue. It's full of wisdom and I enjoy it.

Yes, Pableo Servigne has actually mentioned that collapsology will be a scientific discipline and he is advocating for that. Some students went to him to sign their thésis mentioning to him that they had researched in the area of collapsology. But i think it is not yet known by many researchers as a discipline.

I think you are right, our civilization need to examine the question of "how can we intentionally collapse in a way that does the least amount of damage and transition into post-collapse communities that are sustainable, equitable, and just'' with more seriousness if they all Believe that the collapse is near. And may be researchers should also try to examane or predict the post collapse existance of humans!

DearProfessor Mohsen Jaafarnia thank you very much for sharing you book with us and for making it freely available to us in two languages.

Indeed very interesting topic.

I’ve been thinking about exactly how I-Beam constructions collapse upon abandonment. What components fail first?

Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens' book, Comment tout peut s'effondrer (Seuil 2015) was recently (June 2020) published in English by Polity Press as How Everything Can Collapse. I recently translated a later book by Servigne, Stevens and Gauthier Chapelle, Une autre fin du monde est possible (Seuil 2018), and that will be published by Polity in Jan or Feb 2021as Another end of the world is possible. Pablo claims that the term "collapsologie" was only half-serious (though the books themselves are certainly serious). But it caught on. When I Googled it just now I got 957,000 hits.

WOW! Dear Geoffrey,

Thank you very much for this important information. I admire the way Servigne explain the concept of collapsology and I found it very real with the advent of COVID 19.

Thanks for the translations of servigne books, I like them.

Regards