This is the talk I gave at this years Earthed Summit, How Preparing for Collapse Can Seed Transformation, a somewhat truncated version of this longer explainer.
What a time to be alive.
The rising seas, the breakdown of life support systems, the reveal of fascism, the ending of species.
The rising of resistance, the breakdown of failed stories, the reveal of interconnectedness, the ending of modernity.
How are we to really face these times and our place in them?
How do we make change with the best chance of finding a way through the ordeal?
Here are three different levels from which to consider and approach our predicament: ant, eagle and angel.[1]
The Ant level perspective from the ground, helps us to focus on the here and now, the actions to take, the plans to make, the next steps. But without a wider perspective we can find ourselves scurrying around, like ants, hoping somehow if we all just do lots of things it’s going to come good.
The Eagle level perspective is about soaring high, helping show the complex adaptive systems at play that locate us in a cultural, economic and historic context. A few thousand years ago we unleashed a life destroying system, from the fear-based paradigm of domination and control (which has mirrors in submission and co-optation). Extraction, exploitation and theft, accumulated resources in the hands of a few. These stolen resources can be used to shore up power to further control and dominate. This is called a success-to-success mechanism in systems thinking. We gasp at the resulting disparity in wealth, and the reveal of the fascist disregard for life and liberty. How can we resist such a powerful system?
The Angel level perspective lifts our despairing spirits and reminds us that we have always belonged to a paradigm that affirms life. From Angel perspective we can feel into enormous questions, some of which may not be ours to know. Why is this great living consciousness unfolding in this way? What does the animate world need from us at this time?
Life came up with our species, Homo Sapiens and I don’t think life makes mistakes; she learns and she unfolds in continual process. Life’s intelligence comes up with new responses to new situations. Sometimes in an instance, sometimes it can take a while for the return to balance, complexity and beauty.
Angel level perspective whispers that we are being called back into relationship with Life, to help find responses and to cocreate with life the forms that are needed at this time.
At Eagle level we can see these two systems at play, the life destroying one and the lengthy, enduring, life affirming system. How do we resist the former and reconnect with the latter?
The greatest leverage point to disable this life destroying system sits in alliances of solidarity with our Majority World family, who are resisting the neo-colonial programme of extractive exploitation, for example in the Alliance of Sahel States in West Afrika. Cultures of first nation peoples cultivate what Oren Lyons called “a collective good mind” with ways to protect themselves from sociopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian behaviours within the community. Gaia also now needs a self-organising global immune response to global forces of domination and control. I believe we are seeing the development of this global immunity, in response to the unspeakable horrors of genocide.
Our so-called civilisation is a manifestation of a belief in and felt sense of separation from life. We live with deeply ingrained fear of scarcity, as if we have been abandoned by life. We built a money system that runs on scarcity and whose simple rules perpetuate an economy that requires the cancerous impossibility of continual economic growth. And we are hitting the limits to growth, heralding climate chaos. This civilisation seems to be self-terminating.
The philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger identifies two directions that civilisations are collapsing towards, called, 'attractors' in Eagle level system thinking. The first attractor is towards catastrophe and chaos. The second attractor pulls towards a more dystopian state. These combined states are envisaged in the film 2073, which extrapolates from where we are now, with AI enabled surveillance, control of limited food and gated communities for the few; leaving most of us to die; targeting and killing those of us that resist. Cheery stuff eh?
Schmachtenberger, also provides the criteria for an alternative state, in systems thinking it’s called the third attractor. He suggests this form of organising is one where we contribute with our individual gifts, to a collective and intelligent whole, where information and resources travel rapidly in decentralised ways to where they are needed. This third attractor state must mitigate for catastrophes, affect core infrastructure for things like water, food and transport and support the social structures that tend conflicts and help with collective decision making. It will of course be underpinned by a regenerative, life affirming story.
Back then to ant level, what can we do to find ourselves heading towards the third attractor state instead of chaos and worse? Inspired by Adam Greenfields book Lifehouse, we call our local work, Lifehouse-collapse preparing communities and we are testing a detailed neighbourhood design in which groups of 150 people organise in Lifehouse units, to build agency, togetherness and power. These units link up to build and strengthen mutual aid networks, connecting to current provision and organising peoples and citizens assemblies.
Polarities can be overcome in times of difficulty, as people pull together and crises can drive change, especially if we scenario plan in advance and map our local assets, skills and vulnerabilities. Our community principles are simple, that everyone needs and voice matters and that we care for the future of life. In these times that is the core of antifascist organising, to live such principles in our community.
We in-reach through community organisations and outreach through door knocking. By building legitimate decision-making structures, in standing Citizens Assemblies, and having on hand skilled conflict facilitators and grief tenders, we will have more chance of finding a way through. Local anchor organisations can act as larger Lifehouse hubs, we make plans for 3 days, 3 weeks and 3 months. We prepare for the long emergency. And we connect local work to regional and national specialists in the many aspects of regenerative practice, as well as to internationalist solidarity.
Life operates in fractal layers and collaborative conditions allow new structures to emerge, for example at the bioregional level. You’ve heard the refrain- most of the things we need already exist, we just need to get them working together. And that we need to work smarter. But our changemaking often draws from the logic and operating principles of the life destroying paradigm, competition and operating in silos. We can consciously choose otherwise by relearning the practices for groups to co-regulate our nervous systems and committing to making decisions based on the awareness of and an expanding felt sense of interconnectedness. This involves practices to help us to enter flow states and listen to what the wider intelligence of life wants from us. Colleagues call this (and their collective) Organising From Elsewhere. If we stay with the commitment to interconnectedness and operate in learning cycles, systems thinking suggests we can support the emergence of the alternative, of a third attractor.
The pathway for individuals, organisations and networks towards deeper collaboration also involves consciously building the living systems for information and resources to flow where needed, listening for feedback, tending conflict and fostering community. We are calling this network of networks FABRIC.
We imagine through building collaboration and working with flow states, we will co-sense when change is ready to happen. The moments when our Citizens Assemblies decide to remove consent from the current system, shifting to bioregional commons economies and deliberative democracies at increasing scale. This will include upgrading current institutions or “hospicing” them - winding down harmful institutions when it isn't possible to put an immediate end to them and creating regenerative institutions that can take their place when ready. Institutions determined in local, regional and national democratic processes.
Life is looking for the forms, such as Life-houses in collapse preparing communities, life is finding the pathway through, that can carry us back home, to the FABRIC of the life affirming paradigm. Agency, togetherness and resilience, a commitment to expanding our felt sense of interconnectedness as we build the living systems for collaboration. We only really learn by doing. This isn’t about a map, but a dance, though we might have a few steps and moves to suggest as I guess you will too.
This cocreation is fundamentally about healthy human culture building. I’m guessing most adults won’t see the full fruits of this labour, but we might recognise we laid down the seeds of transformation. This friends, is the work for the rest of our lives. So don’t get lost in the fear – keep your eyes ahead, see the light through the cracks in the rubble and feel the Life that is guiding us. Thank you
[1] I first heard this framing, ant, eagle, angel from Juan Carlos Kaiten