Avoiding Dystopia
Beyond oligarchy and collapse
So: a Trump victory.
I’m not going to speculate on the reasons for this electoral win. I’ve heard lots of theories. Lots of blame, too. I think my favourite is a friend’s take on Facebook: “The world has historically been run by bastards and psychopaths and enabled by the masses for all manner of reasons, none of them very sound.”
What I would say is that I think free elections are now very difficult in an age of information warfare fuelled by dark money. Undue influence is pervasive, emotional manipulation abounds and algorithms routinely shape perceptions of reality. I often wonder how any of us could make fair and reasoned choices under such conditions.
Whatever the reasons, the immediate outcome seems pretty dire. On November 7th, the climate scientist Michael Mann claimed that the US was now a “failed Democratic state,” poised “to become an authoritarian state ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests”. On 12th November ecological philosopher Rupert Read suggested that the future now looks like “oligarchy and collapse”.
There of course remains the question of just how bad, and persistent, the Trump regime will prove to be. The historian Heather Cox Richardson already noted significant divisions emerging between old-guard Republicans and the MAGA faction. There is also much speculation about how long the Trump-Musk alliance will remain viable.
Still, it seems hard to deny that we’re living through very dangerous times. The Trump victory will likely be a destabilising force politically worldwide. Le Monde (6th November 2024) suggested that the “informed decision” made by the American people presents an existential risk to the EU. Europe, the article stated, is at risk of “fracturing”. The Trump victory is also another nail in the coffin for a moribund COP climate process, which leading climate policy experts in any case have declared “no longer fit for purpose”. (Guardian, 15th November 2024).
So Rupert Read’s predictions of oligarchy then collapse seems unfortunately all too plausible. What’s happening in the US is a power and resource grab by elites. This rarely ends happily for anyone, even the greedy elites. According to Peter Turchin, who studies large-scale patterns in history, the outcome of such grabs is often calamitous:
As we examine one case of state breakdown after another, we invariably see that, in each case, the overwhelming majority of precrisis elites…were clueless about the catastrophe that was about to engulf them. They shook the foundations of the state and were surprised when the state crumbled (Turchin, 2023, p. 158).
I’d say that the proposals in Project 2025 certainly count as “shaking the foundations of the state”. The soon to be incumbents of the White House are playing with fire, and they may well get burnt, along with everyone else. It is going to be up to those who resist Trump to limit the damage, any way they can.
Now throw climate breakdown into the mix. It’s well known that Trump and his enablers want to demolish any environmental protections and put their foot on the fossil fuel accelerator. By doubling down on fossil fuel production, these bad players seem to be almost willing collapse upon us. Actually, some apparently are.
And the situation’s already bad. An article in the Guardian (13th November 2024) reported that there was “no sign” of a transition away from burning fossil fuels since the last COP. Add to this a new ‘State of the Cryosphere’ report which suggests that passing 1.5°C of warming would likely irreversibly lock in 10+ metres of sea level rise. And according to the prudent Zeke Hausfather, 2024 marks one year above 1.5°C. In New Scientist, (16 November) Hausfather stated that this would hopefully “serve as a wake up call to policy-makers” (Quoted in Cuff, 2024, p. 8).
I’m not holding my breath.
An ‘inevitable’ future?
So perhaps understandably, I’ve noticed a grim fatalism from some commentators. In a Guardian Column (7th November 2024), George Monbiot noted that “we were losing slowly. Now we are losing quickly”. Worse, Monbiot suggested, “Trump’s conquest of the US is widely seen as something new. But it looks to me like a reversion to the default state of centralised, hierarchical societies”. This ‘default state’ is also potentially extremely destructive:
On almost all fronts, decency and humanity have been retreating for years. Genocide, colonial conquest, the seizure of resources from the poor: all are resurgent, even before Trump returns to the White House. The rich have learned how to game our political systems. (Monbiot, 2024).
Monbiot has an alternative: decentralised democracy, which he outlines in the remainder of the article. But still, an underlying unease about attainability remains. I’m reminded of the suggestion in Frank Herbert’s SF novel Children of Dune that “Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms”. Herbert also suggested that feudalism was the ‘default’ mode of humanity.
All of which paints a potentially very grim picture of the future, as our ecological base disintegrates. I can very easily imagine a scenario where (1) oligarchical fossil fuel states accelerate collapse, so (2) they begin to disintegrate, probably violently and (3) leave behind them fragments of states governed by warlords. This is the nightmare version of Chris Smaje’s ‘supersedure state’ where the neglected periphery has to rediscover local governance as centralised power declines. It is also familiar from the Mad Max movies.
There exist even grimmer possibilities, such as Jim Lovelock’s scenario of the Earth flipped into a hot, uninhabitable state, with a few human survivors clustered at the poles, waiting for extinction. This vision, described in his 2006 book The Revenge of Gaia, has haunted me ever since I first read it. Such a dire future cannot be ruled out at this point.
A defiant utopian
Right now, for many of us who care about the future, morale is at rock bottom. The forces that want to destroy human decency as well as the living planet might seem overwhelmingly powerful. Worse, any dream of a better world might seem childishly naive, quixotic and unattainable.
Personally speaking, I’ve found the days since the US election pretty unbearable in many ways. It has exacerbated an already significant depression. I’m the UK, so I’m mostly a bystander, but with the consciousness that we’re also potentially only one election away from having right-wing lunatics installed in government. I’m doubly concerned as a member of the LGBTQI+ community, as we’re in the cross-hairs of right wing populists everywhere.
But actually, one of the worst things I’ve had to endure so far is the denial. People have surprised me by almost apologising for Trump, and minimising what has happened. I have also found the ‘blame the democrats’ game fairly annoying. Whatever the faults of the democrats, the undue influence of the extensive and well-funded right wing media ecosystem which has especially ensnared young men seems a more immediate priority for exposure and critique.
Ece Temelkuran, a journalist who has described the spread of right-wing populism in her country, Turkey, warned of this “dark circus of emotions” when “everything you hear from your political side will add to your anger”. Ece has so far been bang on about this.
But I for one do not wish to wallow in the slough of despond forever. So morale raising must be a priority.
I think that the central mission of those of us who believe in democracy, decency, non-violence, kindness, self-determination, ecological care etc. is to prevent the grimmest futures emerging. This might seem quixotic, but I believe it to be a necessary focus. And the first step is to reject the idea that dystopian outcomes are ‘inevitable’.
Despite, and in defiance of, current events and seeming inevitabilities, I remain a utopian. I have faith that human beings, whatever their faults, are capable of far better. This has practical dimensions, of course, and there’s an emerging literature on how individuals and communities might adapt to what is to come. The Climate Majority project is one place to go for this. The Deep Adaptation forum is another.
But I'm primarily a writer and artist; I deal with imaginative visions. These remain indispensable, especially during challenging times. This is because I do not think that everyone can survive on practicality alone. The imagination is also surely crucial for any transformation in the direction of what Monbiot calls an “ecological civilisation”.
The first step is to envision alternative possibilities to current, apparently ‘unchallengeable’ realities. One source of inspiration for me remains utopian science fiction. Another source is emerging knowledge of the deep past of our species. A key work here is Graeber & Wengrove’s magnum opus The Dawn of Everything. This book is a great place to go if you’re in need of inspiration in these politically dark times.
Graeber & Wengrove describe new understandings of the deep past, along the way debunking common myths about the ‘inevitable’ emergence of rigid, top down hierarchical civilisations. Our deep past, it seems, was one of “bold social experiments”; why could this not be also true of the future?
References
Cuff, M. (2024 16 November). 2024 set to be first year to hit 1.5°C. New Scientist 16 November 2024, pp. 8—9.
Graeber, D. & Wengrove, D. (20210. The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity. Penguin.
Lovelock, J. (2006). The revenge of Gaia. Penguin Allen Lane.
Turchin, P. (2023). End times: Elites, counter elites and the path of political disintegration. Penguin.