How Resource Depletion Leads to Collapse. The Story of a Lost Kingdom
By Ugo Bardi, The Seneca Effect
The idea that a civilization may collapse because of resource depletion is often hard to believe for historians.
Tag: collapse of complex societies
Collapse: a Helpful Guide for the Perplexed
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Archaeologist Joseph Tainter, whose book The Collapse of Complex Societies I mentioned in my previous post, uses this working definition: “A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity”.
Anticipating Collapse
By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life
Collapse can’t happen soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. By collapse, I mean the breakdown of the complexities of our current society. It's not that I long for the feral world, red in tooth and claw, portrayed in collapse fiction, although I know there are those who fantasize about mastering a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Crazy Town: A New Podcast from Post Carbon Institute
By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Resilience.org
If you recognize controversies and hypocrisies like these, then you know what it’s like to live in Crazy Town. Laugh along with Asher, Rob, and Jason (mostly so you don’t cry) as they explore the back alleys, figure out how to navigate sanely, and even find an escape route every once in awhile.
The Big Picture
By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org
It is only by pulling together that we can hope to salvage and protect what is most intrinsically valuable about our world, and perhaps even improve lives over the long term.
Brexit and Complexity
By Brian Davey, Feasta
The historian and archeologist Joseph Tainter made a name for himself with his book The Collapse of Complex Societies. At a certain point civilisations collapse because they become more and more complex
Prejudice, Ignorance and Granfalloons – Society in the Trump Era
By Brian Davey, Resilience.org
But what does it mean to say that a society becomes “more complex”?
Living in Unpredictable Times
By Brian Davey, Feasta
Economists make forecasts about what is going to happen in the world of that great God – money.
The Era of Dissolution
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
I suppose you could call the era of dissolution the Rodney Dangerfield of collapse, though it’s not so much that it gets no respect; it generally doesn’t even get discussed.
The Era of Breakdown
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
The fourth of the stages in the sequence of collapse we’ve been discussing is the era of breakdown.
The Butlerian Carnival
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
Over the last week or so, I’ve heard from a remarkable number of people who feel that a major crisis is in the offing.
The One Way Forward
By John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
As the conventional wisdom of flat-earth cornucopians crashes and burns around us, it's time for some real heresy.