Collapsology ... kezako?

[Grelinette]

We hear more and more the word of Collapse to evoke the collapse of our society.

But who does he have behind this word Collapse, synonymous with collapse, and now used to talk about the decay of our industrial civilization?

The literary reference seems to be the book of Pablo Sevigne entitled "How everything can collapse. Small manual of collapsology for the use of the present generations".

Summary :
And if our civilization collapsed? Not in many centuries, but in our lifetime. Far from Mayan predictions and other millenarian eschatologies, a growing number of authors, scientists and institutions announce the end of the industrial civilization as it has been constituted for more than two centuries. What should we think of these dark predictions? Why has it become so difficult to avoid such a scenario?
In this book, Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens dissect the springs of a possible collapse and offer an interdisciplinary overview of this subject - very uncomfortable - which they call "collapsology". By putting words to intuitions shared by many of us, this book gives intelligibility to the phenomena of "crises" that we are experiencing, and above all, gives meaning to our time. Because today, utopia has changed sides: a utopian is someone who believes that everything can continue as before. Collapse is the horizon of our generation, it is the beginning of its future. What will be next? All of this remains to be thought about, imagined, and lived ...
Pablo Servigne is an agricultural engineer and a doctor of biology. A specialist in questions of collapse, transition, agroecology and mutual aid mechanisms, he is the author of Nourrir Europe en temps de crisis (Nature & Progrès, 2014).

The concept of collapsology is a young academic discipline that consists of thinking about the sustainability (or lack thereof) of our thermo-industrial production system by cross-checking the conclusions of the various existing research fields (biology, economics, environmental studies, etc ...). His eponymous thesis is simple: we are heading towards a collapse (collapse, in English) of this system and therefore of our current way of life.
From this observation, several options including, among others, the preparation for the end of the world as the famous American survivalists (to caricature: we dig bunkers, we arm themselves and we made food stocks). Or, to open a discussion space to evoke what such a collapse means, its stakes, the fears and anxieties that it can bring about in each of us, and the possible alternatives and ways of transition at our disposal ...
As the French collapsologists Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens and Gauthier Chapelle indicate, the first work to consider any transition in a collapsing environment is first of all interior. It is a work of reflection, of acceptance, of bonding with a community to preserve the hope and the strength to live tomorrow, and not just to survive it. We want to believe in tomorrow, and in ourselves, including in times of crisis, a kind of "Happy Collapse."

In short, the Collapsologie :
- Is it just a way to make the Buzz scary? ,
- to use an esoteric word to shine in society? ,
- to analyze and understand in a less consensual way the question of the decay of contemporary civilization?
- ...?

[eclectron]

Collapsology is the "science" of collapse, initiated by Malthus https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus
then Meadows in 1972.

It's better to say collapsology. it's more synthetic.
Always difficult to talk about science when it comes to predicting the future, by definition impossible to prove.
Fortunately, man has a solid sense to anticipate from a cluster of convergent clues (when he wants to see ... )

The science to date does not contradict the alarming predictions of the Meadows team.


Good luck !

[Ahmed]

The fact of inventing the concept of "collapsology" corresponds to the need to "put in a drawer" a traumatic event that we are unable to face other than by this subterfuge. It constitutes the medical equivalent of idiopathic disease (the causes of which are unknown and which we do not know how to treat, but which becomes the object of knowledge - and therefore of control - simply because of this name!).
The ideology of progress designates a continuous expansion of the technosphere at the expense of nature, and psychisms are therefore diametrically opposed to considering a radically different path *, which will be the cause of the sudden collapse, after the gradual collapse already in the past. work (with more or less virulence depending on the country and social class). It is already very ambiguous to present the collapse as inevitable and undesirable, but it is fully compatible with resignation to the market as the sole subject of history ...
As a corollary, you will never find the proposition of a voluntary and positive "collapse" as a counter-fire to an undergone collapse, or then perhaps in the only circle of decreasing, but in forms which have great difficulty in s. '' free from current representations (as is the case for Universal Income ...).

An absurd conciliation of causes without its consequences is almost the limit of ordinary psychic plasticity!

[eclectron]

L or so maybe in the only circle of decreasing

Meadows prefers the expression "healthy and lasting" (psychologically positive), decreasing (psychologically negative, not very exciting, not unifying ...), even if we are talking about the same thing at bottom.
Because we will have to move, prepare as much as possible for this collapse.

[Ahmed]

For that, one would have to understand a lot of things first!
The process of globalization presupposed an infinite extension of space and a generalization of the model of the central countries to those of the periphery (presupposed doubly absurd), whereas the extractivism which is the driving force of the Center is at the expense of Periphery: any thermal machine requires a hot source and a cold source and if the first is the most visible (because usually expensive), the second is just as important. Basically, if we follow this logic, it is not the decline of the physical or geological factors that prevails, but the impossibility of maintaining a flow between the hot and cold sources by excessive entropy in a closed system : Earth.

I have already written it, I repeat it, without a desire to break radically with a system in the process of saturation, one condemns oneself to try tinkering, to seize the shimmering "opportunities" provided by the new constraints which are not useful. only to make the causes last. Who could, in the diversity of situations and contradictory particular interests, get away from it enough to stimulate a conceptual revolution and act as a trigger?

[izentrop]

The ideology of progress means a continuous expansion of the technosphere at the expense of nature

Progress can also go in the same direction. Process optimization can go in this direction. For this we must get out of the dogmas, especially in agriculture *.

The hardest will be at the individual level. Change our habits with the firm intention to minimize our energy consumption. For now no awareness on the horizon.

* KS in front of dairy cattle farmers in my area, gives the very technical solution in fact, with his formulas of his own ... Notice how he expresses the jump to success

[eclectron]

For that, one would have to understand a lot of things first!

You are far from being the only one in France and on Earth, to know and understand ...

Who could, in the diversity of situations and particular interests contradictory enough to abstract enough to drive a conceptual revolution and play a role of trigger?

Your conception of the "revolution" via a leader, like a messiah, is somewhat dated to around 2000 years or 700 years, depending on the obedience ...

The time is for the many sources of inspiration as Konrad Shreiber eg, thank you Izentrop, on the initiative of individual conscious and responsible people, to create islands of sustainability in an ocean of unsustainability.
The system will not change, it will collapse.
We need islands that work in a sustainable way, as an example for the future.

I summarize your speech: nobody understands anything except you because you position yourself as a lesson giver and any action is doomed to failure since nobody understands anything.
ALARM! consciences have been evolving for a long time already. You have the gift to make me angry with your speech always defeatist and castrateur.
One wonders in which camp you are with your speech that always aims to discourage or denigrate initiatives?
There will be mistakes, so what?
That's how we learn and build.
In other words, only those who do nothing are not wrong.

That those who understand act.

[Ahmed]

Eclectron, I am sorry if my message can give rise to such interpretation. The only initiatives that I denounce are those which by construction are doomed to failure because they do not take into account all of what is at stake and therefore constitute only palliatives. It doesn't bother me that mistakes are made in the right direction, it seems inevitable and correctable (as long as there is no precedent and there is no miraculous "recipe").

You write:

Your conception of the "revolution" via a leader, like a messiah, is somewhat dated to around 2000 years or 700 years, depending on the obedience ...

This formulation is rather clumsy, I recognize it and it is indeed very far from my collective perception of solutions (I have often insisted on it being clear); what I wanted to say is that besides the difficulty of finding actors on a consistent scale (since the interests of the groups diverge), it is also necessary to agree on a sufficiently explicit conceptual vision to deduce the means adequate. Without direction (in the sense of horizon and not directoire), all action is Brownian agitation.

[thibr]

on the "current" part of the curves there is no trend reversal, we will have to talk about it again in 10 or 20 years
can be more seen that the evaluation of resources has been revised upward ...

[Janic]

TiBr
it's unfortunate that you do not have these curves up to 2018 because in such a short time, things could have changed in one direction or the other.