Collapse: attitudes and posture

I suspect the titanic, which Jem Bendall calls Imperial Modernity, has already hit the iceberg.

Owning that suspicion means I feel increasingly alienated. My growing awareness is of the likelihood of societal collapse. Or to use the titanic metaphor, the knowledge that the ship that carries the institutions of democratic capitalism (including economic and financial institutions, food systems, education systems, government institutions and systems, biosphere 'management' etc) has already hit the iceberg, and that the damage is already fatal. The bedrock pillars of modernity are unrecoverable. 

I say 'alienated' because so few of my friends have been digesting the material feeding that knowledge and awareness. If I weren't me, I'd think I'd lost the plot, or at least had gone a bit too far down the lefty rabbit hole. I don't blame them. If we have not been exposed to the idea of collapse, less dramatically called the great disruption, then all we have is the modern matra that 'we'll be alright' because smarter people than us will figure out how to avert catastrophe and governments will eventually swallow their egos, compromise their worldviews to accommodate the greater good and work together.

I'm not just talking about the warming climate and the environment. I'm talking about governments, about banking and finance, about food systems, health systems and education.

These next paragraphs are adapted from the introduction of Jem's Breaking Together. pp52-53. He's written these worlds as general comments, I have put them in the first person to experiment with how it feels to own them.

I am still largely insulated from the increasing difficulties in the world. The daily reality I live is not one that either witnesses or feels, fully and constantly, the horrific suffering and destruction that is involved in producing my everyday sense of safety and superiority. 

Therefore, I don't experience any relief or even elation from knowing this system of destruction is being disrupted, is being reduced, and may even come to an end. If I fully felt the pain of my entanglement with that obscenity, I would be open to and curious about that breaking down, including the instabilities, difficulties and hardships that will typify the rest of my life as a result. 

This does not mean I am against the industrial consumer societies that dominate humanity today or that I am anti-civilisation in my sentiment. It simply means that I am not grieving their loss and also that I do not see a useful role in trying to prop them up any longer. 

The multiple foundations of modern society that are all breaking together, at the same time, mean we can choose for ourselves to be either breaking together or breaking apart. When I say 'breaking together' I mean allowing the breakdowns in my privilege, comforts, worldviews and identities, to allow a new openness for connection with people, nature and even the eternal. 

I can also allow this breaking to reconnect me with aspects of who I am that have been hidden under the social conditioning I've experienced since birth. I have tended to cling to the products of that conditioning, in order to feel safe, respected, capable and able to have fun in ways I already know. But I've got to let go and begin breaking. We've got to let go, and begin breaking together.