A quick note for Readers

Rupert Read very kindly put up a recommendation for my earlier post on Cataclysmic, ‘Is Collapse Plausible?’, and in response I thought I’d put up a quick update on this blog. One reason it’s been a little quiet is that the topics discussed tend to be quite emotionally intense and like everyone I have my limits. To be more precise: I’ve had to back away from the collapse topic for a bit for my own sanity. However, I thought I’d put up a quick update, which mainly includes links to sources I’ve recently found informative, useful or inspiring.

Just at the moment, the main focus on my various feeds is probably appropriately the dire situation in the US. For mental health reasons, I’m having to limit my exposure to this but insightful posts on this topic include one by Jem Bendell, on the monetary aspects of what’s happening and an interview with WIRED’s Tim Marchman, explaining how WIRED has been crucial in informing us about what DOGE is up to. WIRED’s own articles on this are also worth checking out. Finally, a piece by FrameLab explains very well why fear is Trump’s main tactic and why it’s important to overcome it if possible.

My quick take on what is happening overall: it seems that pretty much everything the MAGA regime is doing will not only create untold misery, death and ecological destruction, but will also significantly increase the danger of collapse in the US and beyond. Deliberately destabilising a nation for your own selfish and hubristic ends seems unlikely to end well on any level. This is doubly so when we factor in climate breakdown. The question is what can be done about it.

My general sense here is that dissent and resistance, while essential, seem unlikely to be wholly successful in the short term. We seem to be in the middle of a major global wave of what has been called Disaster Nationalism, and I get the sense that the best most of us can do is to ‘batten down the hatches’ and survive this wave the best we can. One essential thing we can all do is hold to our values, and in this spirit I can recommend Ece Temelkuran’s book Together: A Manifesto Against the Heartless World. Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century remains an important source.

In his article, Jem Bendell states that he believes that “we are spectators to these processes and most people we talk to are misled by their media, so any organising towards realistic alternatives is a pipe dream”. Therefore, he doesn’t “see us having any impact at a national or international level.” His suggestion is instead to focus on “exploring how to live with more freedom from the grand games of global exploitation, and prepare to cope better as there are declines or breakdowns in banks, currencies and financial systems”. I’m afraid that I concur with this judgment.

It is important also to remember that there will be a world after the current wave of fascist strongmen are consigned to the dustbin of history. We need to keep thinking, imagining, planning and acting for better, healthier societies in a post-oligarchy, post-collapse world. Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens and Gauthier Chapelle’s book Another End of the World is Possible: Living the Collapse (and Not Merely Surviving It) is a good resource for this. I’d also recommend Adam Greenfield’s Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire and also Rupert Read et al.’s Transformative Adaptation: Another world is still just possible.

Personally speaking, the rise of fascism as well as the failure of political ‘centrism’ has triggered a renewed interest in anarchism. I have been finding the podcast Everyday Anarchism very informative (J.R.R. Tolkien as a conservative anarchist, anyone?!) and the interview with Kim Stanley Robinson on his 1990 utopian novel Pacific Edge is especially inspiring. I also find Chris Smaje’s writings on small farm futures and other topics very useful when thinking about the road ahead. Chris is currently completing a book with the working title Finding Light in a Dark Age: Sharing Land, Work and Craft , due to be published in the UK in mid October.

I have been slowly ploughing through a stack of ecological SF. The first was Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge; I wrote on Facebook that reading ecological utopias almost feels like an act of defiance currently. And so it does. But it has helped me to at least temporarily overcome the fear I’ve been feeling about Trump and keep envisioning alternatives. I have just got hold of Stephen Markley’s The Deluge, which is supposed to be very good but a bit grim, so I’ll likely leave that until I’m feeling a bit stronger. I have also noticed that I still have Margaret Attwood’s Year of the Flood unread on my shelf. Finally, I’ve started to write a dystopian/utopian SF short story of my own. This is my first fiction writing since 2021.

Anyway, I hope that these resources are some use, and KBO as Winston Churchill used to say.

Update 23/03/25

I think I come across as perhaps a little too negative about potential dissent/resistance in this post. I certainly do not mean to imply that action in the political sphere is futile. Just the opposite. It is just that equally, I think it is important to be clear about where our energies/ efforts are going, and realistic about plausible outcomes. Some salient questions; where are your leverage points? Where are your energies best placed? And what is your life demanding of you in this current situation? The answers to these questions will obviously differ from person to person. But remembering and acting on values like decency, compassion and truth seem especially important when faced with political philosophies that attempt to validate or rationalise tyranny, wanton cruelty and lies.