The Real Paths to Ecocivilisation - Chapter 12: We must deal with reality, or it will deal with us.
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Chapter 12 We must act now or it will be too late!
Chapter 12: We must deal with reality, or it will deal with us.
We must act now or it will be too late! I am so tired of hearing these words. It is how books about the Eco-apocalypse have nearly always ended. What is the point in continuing to tell people that they must act now or it will be too late when almost nothing anybody can actually do will make a significant difference to the overall trajectory or limit the long-term damage? To sound virtuous? To inflict psychological cruelty? Who is this “we” who should act? What can we do? How can we act?
“Act now or it will be too late” doesn’t work. Repeating it ad infinitum and expecting it to suddenly have a different effect is the proverbial definition of madness. I think it is time to replace this tired old chestnut with “We must deal with reality or it will deal with us” – a mantra that stands some chance of actually working. It makes sense at every level, from the individual to the entire human race, and for each individual or group regardless of what anybody else is doing. Even if you live in a society that refuses to change, it is in your own interest to make decisions based on reality rather than delusion and fantasy. And it is also, on balance, in the interests of the whole of society for everybody to be dealing with reality. It’s a game-theoretical winner. “Act now or it will be too late” is a game-theoretical loser. Act now because nobody else is going to.
What would happen if we approached the ecological crisis with realism and acceptance rather than idealism and denial? What if we stopped focusing on global calls for change that rely on abstract unity, and instead concentrated on localised resilience, personal responsibility, and realistic expectations? This is not about saving the world in some grand, romantic sense. It is about dealing with the reality we actually face, understanding the boundaries within which we can act, and preparing ourselves for the storm that is actually coming. By focusing on what can be done within those boundaries we will maximise our collective impact. When enough people start dealing with reality on a personal and community level, larger systems can begin to shift.
Debunking the fairytales: growth, realism and collapse
In Chapter Two I discussed the Metacrisis, and in the section called Ecocivilisation, China and the West I stopped talking about contemporary politics almost as soon as I began. I just wanted to speak plainly, but I feared that this would cause too many people to stop reading. In normal situations it is not possible to talk about overpopulation without risking an accusation of ecofascism, or being immediately diverted into a pointless discussion about whether or not the Earth really is overpopulated. Of course it is overpopulated. If we were to look at this objectively, like people in a mature ecocivilisation will, we’d ask ourselves what the optimum population might be, in terms of both ecological sustainability and the welfare of human beings. [Footnote: But our culture doesn’t even permit us to use the term “optimum population”, which is why, in 2011, the Optimum Population Trust renamed itself “Population Matters”.]
By that time, both in my imaginary future and the real one, the carrying capacity of the Earth will have been drastically reduced, but let’s imagine we had got our act together 50 years ago when the Club of Rome originally published The Limits to Growth. What might we have concluded the optimum population would be? My guess (there are no official figures) is that we would have concluded that the Earth was already overpopulated at that time and that we should be aiming to reduce it to the region of 1 to 2 billion. In other words, the Earth isn’t just a little bit overpopulated, but horrendously so. There are already at least four times as many humans as there ought to be if we were getting civilisation right. I am not saying this because I hate humans – either generally or just “other groups”. The statement has nothing to do with any sort of political or religious belief, or my personal psychological condition. It is an educated guess based on ecological realism, and it is probably too optimistic.
Not dealing with reality has its advantages. It often works in the short term, and that has usually been enough for most people, which is one of the main reasons we have ended up in this mess. Now those chickens are coming home to roost. There are also advantages for people whose situation leaves them disadvantaged if reality is acknowledged, and that is deeply controversial. One group’s decision to deal with reality will all too frequently have catastrophic consequences for other groups. There are going to be a lot of losers. People have been saying “we must act now or it will be too late” for half a century now, but the exact meaning has often been unclear. “We must act now or there are going to be several billion losers in a global struggle to survive” is a reasonable interpretation, I think. We did not act, and now it is too late. There is no way to soften this message. No way to spin it so that it doesn’t seem so bad. Reality is what it is, and now we are going to have to deal with it.
Pre-collapse politics isn’t completely irrelevant, of course. It is only the fear of losing power at the next election that keeps our politicians honest to the extent that they actually are. Whether the UK is governed by Labour or the Conservatives makes a real difference both to people’s lives and the future of the country. However, it is irrelevant with respect to the broader, deeper issues of the Metacrisis, which is exactly why we are heading towards collapse. In that sense, nothing has changed since I gave up on politics in 1989. All the mainstream political parties are committed to fantasy growth-based economics. Eventhe Green Party is unwilling to clearly commit to its reversal – at the time of writing the mealy-mouthed official policy of the Green Party of England and Wales is that “growth should not be the default aim for governments”. I’d be willing to bet that most members of that party are fully aware that basing a national strategy on growth is ecologically insane, but there is no public commitment to this position. Insufficient people are willing to face the political consequences of actually speaking the truth, so the debate does not change. We are drowning in fairy stories.
To shift this dynamic, three myths must be exploded, and this must happen at their root sources. Growth-based economics can only be eradicated when economists find the courage to condemn it as ecologically insane. Our politics can only progress beyond postmodern anti-realism when politicians and activists rediscover the indispensability of realism. Metaphysical materialism will only cease to be a dominant paradigm when the scientific community acknowledges its shortcomings and stops resisting the paradigm shift.
Why an orderly transition is probably impossible
Let’s imagine we can wave a magic wand and force not only the politicians and economists but the whole of academia to accept realism and start talking the language game of ecocivilisation. Let’s imagine we can use magic to rid the world of political and economic fairy stories.
Theoretically we might expect this to lead to a great deal of progress in a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, the entire global economic-monetary system would collapse in an even shorter period of time. That system is based on the fantasy of today’s debts being paid off out of the proceeds of future economic growth. If the post-growth truth was suddenly exposed there would be an immediate, catastrophic and irreversible loss of confidence in the existing system. It would precipitate the biggest economic-monetary crisis in the history of the world, and there would be no means of reviving the collapsed system because that would require a restoration of confidence in a system that would have already failed because of the recognition that it is fatally detached from reality. A new system would be required, but since there is no theoretical groundwork to tell us what the new system should look like, and there would be no time to construct it even if we knew how, we’d find ourselves in something of a pickle.
My thought experiment is an extreme example of “accelerationism” with respect to the collapse. Some people might even welcome this, and maybe it is morally justifiable, although it is impossible to predict the consequences well enough to guess whether it increases or decreases net suffering. Facing up to reality will probably accelerate the demise of the existing economic-monetary system, but since that system is doomed anyway I can see no great objection to putting it out of its misery sooner rather than later.If the question is whether we should speak the truth even if it accelerates the collapse of the existing order, I believe the answer is clear: we have a moral responsibility to face reality, whatever the consequences, because the consequences of failing to do so will always be worse in the end.
Making contact with reality
In Chapter One I told the story of my own mental breakdown and stay in a psychiatric hospital when I first became fully collapse aware. My official diagnosis included the word 'psychotic' – detached from reality. The truth is the exact opposite – my problem was not that I had become detached from reality, but that I had managed to make contact with it. It was the society I was trying to live in that was detached from reality, and it still is. Collapse-related mental illness should be understood in these terms. Healing begins with the acceptance that the society we live in is literally psychotic, and that there is not much we can do to prevent this psychosis from deepening as we go forwards. Our best hope, as a society, is that we can collectively make contact with reality in a new way. The Metacrisis is a crisis of knowledge, and of perception of reality. Until we fix that, we cannot even begin the process of fixing our other ideological problems, and ultimately our economic and socio-political problems. We need to start thinking differently. The good news is that there is no reason why this can’t happen in the forseeable future. Socio-cultural change is never instantaneous, but in times of crisis it can happen quite quickly.
The Divided Brain and the Remaking of the Western World
Iain McGilchrist is a British psychiatrist, neuroscientist and philosopher. His 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World presents a new interpretation of Western history in the context of his theory of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. According to McGilchrist, the left and right hemispheres have distinct ways of perceiving and interacting with the world, and these differences have profoundly shaped the development of Western civilisation.
The Master and his Emissary are characters in an allegorical tale McGilchrist adapted from Nietzsche. It goes like this:
Once upon a time, there was a wise and benevolent Master who governed a large and prosperous land. He was deeply attuned to the needs of his people and the natural rhythms of his land. His wisdom came from not just from his knowledge and understanding, but his ability to see the big picture and intuitively understand what was best for his people. However, as his domain grew, it became too vast for one person to manage directly. To help him oversee daily operations, the Master appointed an Emissary. This Emissary was intelligent, efficient and capable, known for his analytical and organisational skills. The Master entrusted him with significant responsibilities, confident that the Emissary would carry out his will with the same care and consideration that the Master himself would. For a while, this arrangement was very successful. The Emissary took pride in his work and became increasingly powerful. However, as time passed, the Emissary began to see himself as more important than the Master. He started to believe that his way of doing things was superior, that his analytical mind and meticulous organisation were the true source of the kingdom’s success. Gradually, the Emissary usurped the Master’s position. He stopped listening to the Master’s guidance, convinced that he no longer needed it. He began to impose his own methods, focusing on efficiency, control and rigid order. But without the Master’s wisdom, which was rooted in understanding, empathy and a deep connection to the whole, the kingdom began to suffer. The Emissary’s rule led to alienation, fragmentation, and a loss of the harmony that once prevailed under the Master.
The story symbolises the relationship between the hemispheres of the brain. The right hemisphere is the Master, who sees the whole, understands context, and grasps the interconnectedness of things. It is more in touch with the broader, more human aspects of existence, such as creativity, empathy, and the ability to perceive the world in its richness and complexity. The left hemisphere – the Emissary – is highly skilled at analysis, categorisation and abstract thinking, but it tends to break things down into parts and can lose sight of the whole. It is useful for specific tasks but, when it takes over entirely, as McGilchrist suggests has happened in Western culture, it can lead to a fragmented, dehumanised world where efficiency and control are prized over wisdom and understanding. The left hemisphere is unaware of anything outside of itself, not even what is going on in the right hemisphere. Only when the right hemisphere can make itself heard can the whole system function in a healthy manner.
McGilchrist argues that Western history can be seen as a struggle between the dominance of these two hemispheres, with the left hemisphere gradually asserting control over the right. This shift has had enormous consequences for culture, science and human experience. Similar processes have occurred elsewhere, but the situation in the West is more extreme. In the cultures of the East, influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, the relationship between the two hemispheres is less of a problem.
The early classical period in Greece was a time of balance between the two hemispheres. The Greeks valued both rational thought (left hemisphere) and holistic, intuitive understanding (right hemisphere), as seen in their philosophy, art and politics. During the Renaissance the right hemisphere’s way of knowing was celebrated through art, humanism, and a renewed interest in nature and the individual. However, this balance began to tilt as the emphasis on analytical reasoning and control grew. The Enlightenment – reaching a decisive turning point with Kant – shifted toward the left hemisphere’s dominance. Reason, science and abstraction took precedence over the right hemisphere’s more integrated, holistic perspective. The rise of mechanistic thinking and the pursuit of control over nature are examples of this shift.
This was also the time when politics and religion were conclusively separated in the West, and when science and metaphysics were separated. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason played a pivotal role in solidifying the boundaries between science and metaphysics. By placing reason and sensory experience at the centre of human knowledge, Kant relegated metaphysical and spiritual questions to the realm of subjective belief, dividing science and metaphysics into separate spheres. This division was a double-edged sword: on one hand, it freed science from the constraints of theological dogma and political authority, allowing it to flourish on its own terms. On the other hand, it also stripped science of any connection to broader questions about meaning, purpose and the nature of reality itself. This separation became even more pronounced during the 19th century. Figures like Auguste Comte and later proponents of logical positivism argued that only empirically verifiable claims should be considered meaningful, dismissing metaphysical or religious inquiry as irrelevant or irrational. As a result, science became ever more isolated from other ways of knowing. In more recent times the left hemisphere’s dominance has produced a fragmented, decontextualised view of the world. Society has become increasingly focused on efficiency, technology and control, at the expense of meaning, connection, and the appreciation of the living world. Thishas caused or complicated many of our problems, including environmental degradation, alienation, and loss of meaning. McGilchrist warns that if this imbalance continues, it will have dire consequences for both individuals and society as a whole.
He interprets the shift to postmodernism as both a continuation and a critique of left-hemisphere dominance. Postmodernism, while challenging modernism, still operates heavily within the realm of the left hemisphere. Its modus operandi of the deconstruction of established structures and ideas is a left-hemisphere process, focused on analysis and breaking things down into parts. It does this in a way that is nihilistic or fragmentary, losing sight of meaning and coherence. Postmodernism’s strategies of ambiguity, irony, and the rejection of fixed meanings can be seen as an attempt to counterbalance the rigid, reductive tendencies of the left hemisphere, but this does not restore the right hemisphere’s holistic, integrative, coherent perspective. Instead, it further disintegrates meaning, leading to an ever more fractured and disoriented cultural landscape. Postmodernism is a deepening of the left hemisphere’s tendencies, exacerbating rather than solving the problems associated with modernism. The left hemisphere has turned against itself, questioning the very structures it once built, but without offering a constructive alternative grounded in the right hemisphere’s more connected, meaningful approach.
Modernism and postmodernism are both products of a culture that has become too dominated by the left hemisphere. What Western civilisation actually needs is a major re-engagement with the right hemisphere’s way of seeing the world – one that embraces context, depth, connection and meaning.
The Old Age
We have finally reached the point where I can define my own framing of the old and new paradigms, which divides the history of Western civilisation into three long periods.
Antiquity was the period from the Greek Golden Age to the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. It was characterised by the birth of Western philosophy, the development of early science, and the foundation of classical knowledge. Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle explored fundamental questions about reality, knowledge and ethics, laying the groundwork for Western thought. The epistemic paradigm was of early philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality and the cosmos, with a strong emphasis on reason and metaphysics. The eventual rise of Christianity marked a significant cultural and ideological shift, integrating spiritual and moral dimensions into a prevailing worldview that had until then been notably deficient in these things.
The Greeks were the first great experimenters in civilisation, but for all their philosophy and politics they never settled on a model and never managed to extend individual instances of civilisation beyond the scale of the City State. The Golden Age began when a united Greek army defeated mighty Persia at the Battle of Salamis in 480BC, and it ended with the Athenian surrender to Sparta in 404BC – Greeks fighting Greeks over how Greek civilisation should be run. The Romans solved the problems of unification and expansion, but their solutions were practical rather than philosophical. Roman civilisation worked rather well, at least most of the time, and certainly compared to anything else that was going on in Western Eurasia at that time, but in the Roman Republic spirituality and morality came cheap. This did not work for the Jews, and it was in that boiling cauldron of discontent that Christianity emerged.
Christendom is the period from the decline and collapse of the Western Roman Empire through the Middle Ages, culminating with the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. Christian theology was integrated with the classical heritage of Greek and Roman thought to create a unified worldview that permeated every aspect of life, from politics and law to science and art. The epistemic paradigm was a synthesis of faith and reason, with theology serving as the ultimate authority. The Reformation fragmented the religious unity of Christendom, challenging the authority of the Catholic Church and laying the groundwork for greater emphasis on individual conscience and the reinterpretation of spiritual and moral life. This period saw significant theological conflict but also the opening up of space for the eventual secularisation of Western thought. The Renaissance revived classical learning, and the Enlightenment further emphasised reason, scientific progress, and individualism.
The Age of Disjunction is the period from the Enlightenment to the present day, and it is now drawing to a close. This period saw the fragmentation of the unified worldview of Christendom. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and progress led to great scientific and technological advancements, but also to existential crises and ideological conflicts as traditional structures were questioned and dismantled. This is the old paradigm, though it turns out to not really be a paradigm at all – rather, it is the lack of one. The Age of Disjunction is the age of modernism, rampant capitalism, techno-industrialisation, and, latterly, of postmodernism and post-truth. It is a paradoxical age where metaphysical materialism still dominates science and yet, in a broader sense, our culture has lost contact with reality. The old paradigm – that of the final stage of the Age of Disjunction – is a collection of mutually incompatible epistemic-ideological systems, the most important of which are growth-based economics/politics, scientific materialism and postmodernism, each of which is founded on a false assumption. The old paradigm is what happens when the left hemisphere takes over and the right hemisphere suffers in silence. The new paradigm is still forming, and this book is my contribution to that process. I am advocating a post-postmodern epistemic meta-ideology, the purpose of which is to minimise both incoherence within, and radical incompatibility between, the new ideological systems that Western civilisation needs to create an ecocivilisation. I am proposing an epistemic peace treaty that binds its signatories to start with as much realism and reason as possible, without leaving anything important out, and to endeavour to co-operate with all other signatories on all matters pertaining to the creation of a Western ecocivilisation. The ultimate goal is global ecocivilisation. The new paradigm is what happens when the right hemisphere can make itself heard.
E.F. Schumacher
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher (1911 – 1977) was a British economist who towards the end of his life wrote two books that could not be more relevant. The best known of these is Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973) – a fierce critique of growth-based capitalism that rapidly became required reading for ecologists and environmental activists. Schumacher himself considered his most important achievement to be A Guide for the Perplexed (1977). His daughter wrote that her father handed her the book on his deathbed, five days before he died and told her “this is what my life has been leading to”. It was a statement of the philosophical underpinnings of Small is Beautiful. Schumacher describes his book as being concerned with how humans live in the world. It is a treatise on the nature and organisation of knowledge, and an attack on what Schumacher calls “materialistic scientism”. He argues that the current philosophical “maps” that dominate Western thought and science are both overly narrow and based on false premises.
E.F. Schumacher brings the end of this book back into contact with its beginning. I began with my childhood, roaming the local woodland, learning to love the wild world and struggling to love humanity. It just so happens that at precisely the same time I was making my first big worldview-defining decision – to reject Christianity and embrace science as if it was a religion – Schumacher was writing A Guide for the Perplexed. This was before I had begun to engage with politics or economics at all, but even then I knew who E.F. Schumacher was. Or rather, I knew he was famous for writing a book called Small is Beautiful, and I also knew where he was, for he lived in a secluded house about a quarter of a mile from our own, nestled in the same woodland that I roamed as a child.
I have not included this anecdote as an example of a synchronicity. On the contrary – this is an example of a strange coincidence that wasn’t a synchronicity. It involved no orchestration of reality to produce a specific outcome. There’s no purpose, no goal and no meaning. The simultaneity was random. The only way it could be synchronistic is if the most important events in my own life, including the writing of this book, were predestined. And if that were true, then whither my free will?
The real paths to ecocivilisation
What loads the quantum dice? From the perspective of the New Epistemic Deal we cannot, at least for now, go further than the teleological process that guided evolution towards conscious life. Beyond that all we have is questions. Maybe one day science will find some of the answers, but my guess is that many of these questions will never have clear objective answers, and I see no reason why that should be a problem. There is nothing to fear from open questions. Each of us must come to our own conclusions. I still don’t believe in an Abrahamic God, although I’d officially describe myself as agnostic rather than the strident atheist I once was. I’m not convinced there is any “divine intellect”. I think it is more likely that, if there is a god, then it doesn’t have a brain, for if God exists and It has got a brain and an intellect, then both should surely be perfect, and that leaves us with the problem of evil. There is also another way to look at it. 0|∞ may not have a perfect brain but 0|∞ does have eight billion imperfect human ones. My conclusion is that, at least some of the time, the dice are loaded by what is going on in the complex systems created by the interaction of0|∞ and all those brains. I think of spiritual growth as a process whereby one’s brain becomes progressively more useful to 0|∞. To seek to align with the Tao is to seek to maximise the value and utility of your brain to 0|∞. The praeternatural is what determines which out of the available futures manifests, and which of the real paths are chosen.
Real magic is not evil, and neither was Aleister Crowley. His eccentric and turbulent life was, at least in part, an extreme negative reaction to the evangelical Christianity of his parents. Like Nietzsche before him, his intention was to free the West from the legacy of Christianity. God is dead. The Christian God has become unbelievable, and everything built on Christianity will fall apart. Crowley’s maxim, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” is often misunderstood. He was not advocating for capricious self-indulgence, but for living in accordance with one’s true will – a higher purpose aligned with the universe. However, Crowley’s blending of mysticism and radical individualism demonstrates a crucial flaw: when personal freedom is divorced from love, reason and collective responsibility, it risks degenerating into chaos. As Crowley himself wrote, “Love is the law, love under will.” “Do what thou wilt” cannot be the whole of the law because love – the principle that binds individuals to the greater whole – and reason – the principle that binds the whole together – must temper and guide it.
If there’s only one objective reality – or only one system of interdependent relational realities – then we need to reach an agreement as to how it should be shared. This is the primary purpose of all ideological systems, both religious and political. Christianity was a right-hemisphere-inspired upgrade on the left-hemisphere-dominated Roman system it eventually overcame and replaced, but it ceased to be believable a long time ago, and the West’s problem now is that not only do we have no agreement on how reality should be shared, but most of us have given up hope that such an agreement is even possible. We have neither a political system nor a religious system that is fit for the purpose of creating an ecocivilisation, and, at least if the postmodernists are to be believed, no effective means of creating new ones. Reality is dead. Nothing is true.
We cannot avoid the Eco-apocalypse, but we can view the psychotic breakdown of Western society as an opportunity for radical transformation. Ecocivilisation is not going to be utopia. There will always be bad people who do bad things. There will always be suffering. But an ecological civilisation is not an impossible dream. The question we should be asking is not whether we are going to get there in the end, but which path we choose, how long it takes, how much suffering is involved and what kind of ecocivilisation we ultimately co-create.
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