 Breaking Together, A Freedom Loving Response to Collapse, is written by Gem Bandel and published by Good Works in 2023. The front cover includes an image called Kintsugi Atlas that was made by Daringa Montico and Gem Bandel. It is part of a Kintsugi World Art Exhibition, each image of which corresponds to a chapter in the book. The audio book is narrated by me, Matthew Slater, and is comprised of the following 15 chapters. First the introduction, recognizing and responding to collapse. Then chapter one, economic collapse, a time for limits and contradictions. Chapter two, monetary collapse, it was made inevitable. Chapter three, energy collapse, and problems with net zero. Chapter four, biosphere collapse, killing our living home. Chapter five, climate collapse, cascading failures. Chapter six, food collapse, six hard trends. Chapter seven, societal collapse, recognizing collapse and cultural decay. Chapter eight, freedom to know, critical wisdom in this era of collapse. Chapter nine, freedom from progress, humanity is not on trial. Chapter 10, freedom from banking, how the money power drove collapse. Chapter 11, freedom in nature, a foundation for eco-libertarians. Chapter 12, freedom to collapse and grow, the doomsday way. Chapter 13, freedom from fake green globalists, resistance and reclamation. Finally, there is the conclusion, taking the green pill in an age of collapse. What follows is the extended introduction, released as free audio. Other free audio chapters in the book as well as purchasing information can be accessed via gembendell.com. Then, Grandpa knows best would be her favorite phrase while shuffling off to peel some spuds. As a child in the 1980s, I didn't relate to her thoughts, but now I wonder if she was well adjusted to her situation. We all welcome some distractions, keeping our minds and bodies busy, film, news, sports, music, celebrities, housework, cooking, schooling, or perhaps some neighborhood and workplace dramas. Even painful distractions can serve a purpose, like reading a book about our civilization's demise, or worse, actually writing one. One sign of our times is that polters have started doing surveys on whether we think the world is going to end, or at least our worlds within the bigger one. They are asking such questions as, do you think we will solve climate change, or do you think your children will be better off financially? If you think like the majority of people in the majority of countries where the polls were taken, you have already thought, probably know, to both of those questions. I know these aren't glib answers. Those of us who pay attention to what's occurring around us are increasingly anxious that so many aspects of life on this beautiful planet are becoming more difficult and uncertain. Energy bills are through the roof. The cost of food and drink climbs so high that it spoils the meal with an aftertaste of debt. The threat of nasty infection, as well as the perceived threat of people with different views on what to do about those infections. Then the threat of belligerent leaders, or just senile ones. On top of all that, there is the ecological crisis, including our changing climate. Is it just a hoax aimed at controlling us? We only need to compare the weather we experience in recent years with the less erratic weather we, or our parents, recall. Online, we can all look at real-time measurements of average world temperatures or levels of atmospheric gases like methane, and see them rising at speeds unprecedented over the last 10,000 years. That people with riches or authority want to control the rest of us is not news. That some of them want to use current problems, such as pandemics or climate change, to control us should, therefore, come as no surprise. But that doesn't mean there aren't real problems that threaten both the well-being and freedoms of all of us. In conversations with friends about the future, so many now express worries about how difficult life is becoming. Yet still we live in the world as we find it. Our daily routines of work, bills, taxes, relationships, hobbies, entertainment, and debating the news are all overshadowed by the subtle knowledge that we are distracting ourselves from what lies ahead. Part of the reason is we do not know what we could do that would matter. This sense of futility is not something I'm going to try to shift you out of. Many commentators on our current situation see a dash to positivity as their obligation, but that can be part of the ongoing problem. Instead we could let ourselves accept the breadth and diversity of that which seems futile today. We know that recycling won't fix the jet stream, or stop the heat domes messing with our weather, landscapes, and agriculture. We know that buying fair trade organic chocolate won't make capitalism a fair and ecologically sane way of organising society. That is why some people have turned towards actively expressing their conviction and concern. But gluing ourselves to roads, paintings or railings has not achieved much either. What is needed isn't new legislation being passed, but a transformation of the whole of human civilization, everywhere on the planet, and immediately, simply to give the younger generations a slightly better chance of a decent life. That is not happening. Although some may start talking about violent resistance, we know what a nonsense that can be. The days of armed insurrection are well and truly gone in most societies, and violent rhetoric from activists typically sets back efforts at political change. Our discomfort and criticism when the rich and powerful finally take these collective problems seriously is another sticking point. The bold moves of governments in response to the pandemic are increasingly seen as having not managed to curb the impact of the disease, while damaging people's physical and mental health and triggering economic disruption and inequality. Some rich people are always ready to profit from any crisis-mandated government action, as the scandals in many countries over the awarding of government contracts during the pandemic now illustrate. On environmental issues, we have seen similar unfair enrichment. The policies on climate change that created markets for carbon offsets have generated new profits for polluting companies that were able to play these markets for their own benefit. Bold government actions on climate change have also backfired. In the name of environmental protection, the previous Sri Lankan government banned artificial fertilizers overnight, so their citizens suddenly had difficulty feeding their families. Sometimes legal action causes similar disruptions. When the Dutch courts told farmers they must stop using fertilizers, there were large protests against the perceived threat to businesses and employment, and then a revolt had the ballot box. The concern that governments are about to turn authoritarian on climate issues is stoked by the statements of increasing numbers of environmentally concerned commentators about applying lessons from Covid. For instance, philosopher Bruno Latour suggested the climate might necessitate restrictions on liberties in the way used against Covid-19. Even top politicians have argued that we need measures to deal with climate change that are analogous to the restrictions on personal freedom imposed to combat the pandemic. It may be that a panic-driven authoritarianism becomes as destructive to societies as the stressors that I describe in this book. Finding our bearings in a world that's lost. Faced with this mess, it is normal to feel frustrated and confused. Some of us might want to save the world but hate being told what to do. But what political options are there? We already have experience of what doesn't work in this disturbing era. Like punch-drunk boxes, many of us have been reaching for the ropes of false support. It is apparent now that nostalgia politics sweeping the globe that speaks of returning to a better time offers nothing to steady anyone against the pummeling from multiple crises. We also know that even if those evil cabals described by conspiracy theorists were suddenly to disappear, our lives would not change one bit. Instead, the causes of the difficulties run far deeper. The call of our mass media to steady ourselves with a kind of authoritarian centrism, with a belief that technology and enterprise can fix everything, also fails to convince. When we hear the same eco-modern belief in technological salvation coming from magical thinking socialists who claim all we need is massive state spending, it sounds an unconvincing escape from reality. Sadly we also know that ignoring the disturbing trends in society by focusing more on our families, gardens, communities or churches will not stop the blows coming in heavier and faster. Even rejecting the dominant culture to be more appreciative of indigenous cultures or alternative spiritualities will not help defend us against insatiable hunger and domination of a globalized capitalism and its offices in government and beyond, the people now often referred to as globalists. Instead of all the limited responses that I have just described, it is reasonable to want another approach, one which offers steadiness without denial, so we can contribute from there. The first step towards that steadiness is to realize just how bad things are and will become no matter what we do. Then we can get real about what aspects of the world we might wish to save. We can also aspire not to repeat the same patterns that caused the problems in the first place as we try to respond to them. That requires us tackling the true cause rather than the piecemeal activities addressing the symptoms which will be swept away by the tides of history. It also means we should not ditch what we believe to be right just because we have become anxious and more vulnerable to manipulation. The aim is not just to save more of the world, but to sense the world more fully, respect its beauty and help keep it worth living in. Therefore it is critical that we keep in mind some universal values as we consider the size and significance of the troubles faced today, such as the belief in fairness for all people. Another value which resonates widely throughout history and geographies is freedom, both personal and collective. By freedom I mean the ability to think and act as we choose without coercion or manipulation and with meaningful awareness of our situation and the possible effects of our choices. The desire for freedom is natural to us, because it is also natural to the living world. We hate being told what to do, especially when we perceive little or no clear benefit to ourselves or the community. Without relative freedom of choice, any life form would not be able to learn. Without relative freedom of choice then, evolution would be impossible, something I will explain in more detail in chapter 11. This insight means we can be suspicious of those people who prefer to describe nature as involving instincts for either competition, cooperation or hierarchy, rather than in part involving relative free will. Instead in this book I will show how systems that oppress our freedom of thought and behavior have brought our civilization to the precipice, and so argue for the importance of a politics based on a refreshed and recontextualized commitment to freedom. My wish to support you, my reader, to move through any shock about the full scale of our predicament on planet earth, to then find your own wise response to it, is why I attempt to summarize the whole argument of the book in this extended introduction, so you can come back to it as you later engage with others on this topic in the future. Wanting to help us save some of the world without us being ordered around is the passion that drove me to finish this tome. I have been engaged in environmental work of various kinds since I was a teenager. Over the years I tried to contribute to change through campaigning with charities, as well as researching the situation, teaching students and executives, advising organizations, being on the board of an investment firm, and even working at the United Nations. Those efforts had me noticed by that country club of global elites, the World Economic Forum, when they recognized me as a young global leader, in 2012. If only it really was the command centre of global control, as both their chairman, Klaus Schwab, and the alternative media liked to pretend. If it was, then my attending a lot of their meetings and parties in Davos some years ago might have proved useful. In this book I won't recount my inconsequential successes from those high-level engagements, but my analysis and recommendations are the results of realizing that there is no enlightened leadership to coordinate a positive response to these difficult times. I am now 50 years of age. To become a full professor, I spent a lot of time writing articles and books for publication. A phrase in academia is publish or perish, and there is an expectation that we publish our articles in academic journals in our specialist areas. Although I started out in an interdisciplinary field called international development studies, my foundational field was sociology. I became a professor in the field of management studies, focusing most recently on leadership and change. Since my first job at the environmental group WWF in 1995, my passion had always been sustainable development, and how to enlist the power of business and finance to make a decisive difference. Like many people who worked on environmental issues, I knew we had systemic problems with humanity's destruction of the biosphere, but thought we had plenty of time to reform and ultimately transform our socio-economic systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, was assumed by most of us to be the gospel on climate change, and gave us the impression something bad might happen in 2100 if we didn't change faster. That seemed an eternity away. However, by 2014, I was becoming worried. The unprecedented flooding and forest fires, permafrost melting and sea ice retreat reported on, were the kind of future changes that I had learned about when an undergraduate at Cambridge University in the 1990s, although as events that might occur by the middle of the century if nothing was done. My worry triggered me to take a year's unpaid leave from my university job to look more closely at the primary science for myself, to then discover that the IPCC conclusions had systematically excluded some of the most concerning data and calculations. See chapter 5. I emerged from these months of analyzing the most recent climate research to conclude that it was too late already to prevent both catastrophic change to human societies and the inevitable collapse of the industrial consumer way of life. I wrote up my findings to explain to my colleagues in the field of corporate sustainability that our work was based on a false premise, and to offer an ethos and framework for engaging this reality, which I called deep adaptation. After the paper was rejected from a journal for mainly arriving at unworkable conclusions, I was in shock. With my emotions riding high, I decided to release it through my university. The paper was something of a cry of anguish. What a waste of my career and life, I thought. To hell with academia. It was time to publish and perish. A month later, I had over 300 emails from people unknown to me, from all around the world. Logging into my server, I discovered that the PDF of the paper had been downloaded 5000 times. Some of my old friends said they were deeply affected by the paper and were joining a new activist group with the dramatic name of Extinction Rebellion. I saw tweets from people who had given up their jobs because of my paper, and were joining that rebellion. Later, I was asked to speak to launch the International Rebellion in Oxford Circus on their pink boat of truth. The paper and its impact on the new wave of climate activism were commented on in the Financial Times, The Times, Bice magazine, Radio 4 and more. A year later, my server indicated the paper had been downloaded over a million times. More than a paper, deep adaptation had become a thing. People started asking me what to do about this anticipation of societal collapse, but as this outlook relates to everything in our lives, I thought it would be nuts for me to offer advice. Worse, I had realized this tragedy was caused by the culture and systems that had shaped me. Having an old white guy from the west, telling people how to cope with the problems created by systems designed by such guys, just didn't seem right. Therefore, my response was to set up an organisation connecting people affected and motivated by the concept of deep adaptation. Although unpaid, the work was deeply rewarding, and helped me to cope with my outlook, as well as serve the moment as best I could. I had always intended to leave the new organisation once it had funding, so its participants could co-create something together. Philosophically, I still didn't want any one bloke to be in charge. Having a bleak outlook on the future felt an inappropriate reason for having influence on people's decisions. This was also why I rejected book deals and TV documentary offers at the time. I was feeling raw from my conclusions about the state of the world, and felt drawn to help people who were similarly affected, whether by reading my analysis or not. I also had a personal reason for leaving the Deep Adaptation Forum. When I concluded in 2018 that modern societies, and therefore my own way of life, would be breaking down in the coming years, I experienced a transformation in my identity and sense of meaning. I had a yearning towards spiritual practice, nature immersion, music, organic farming, and therefore leaving the world of intellectual argument and advocacy. What gave me pause was when the anticipation of collapse began to be demonised in the mass media, and by coalitions of environmentalists. In response, most people who anticipated collapse shied away from challenging critics and focused more on their networks of fellow travellers. I understood that reaction. After all, I was about to opt for a less stressful approach to life. But I began to wonder what would be lost due to the coordinated attempts to demonise people who anticipate societal collapse. More people might invest their energies in futile strategies, like I had done for years. More people would lose the time to emotionally and intellectually process the implications of a future that would be very different from the past. Through a lack of validation of their distress about the future, and a suppression of discussion of potential implications, people's free-floating anxiety might lead them to be manipulated by elites, as we see in Chapter 13. Previously, I had thought that time itself would be the teacher on this issue, but seeing how aggressive, tactical and coordinated some of the criticisms of collapse anticipation were, I realised they would not stop even if reality proved them wrong. I wondered whether to continue with the plan of leaving my educational and advocacy role. It was often tiring and emotionally upsetting work, even before the new attacks on my scholarship, character and influence. I no longer believed in my previous stories of agency and impact. Realising the whole edifice of knowledge and culture that I am part of would soon crumble had helped strip me of those illusions. I remember agreeing with friends that the worst way to spend my last years of modern convenience would be arguing with people about the evidence base for societal collapse. The psychologists with whom I had discussed this phenomenon of doomabashing had told me that because this topic was triggering deep fears of death and insignificance, I could not change anyone's minds through public dialogue. The phrase, hiding to nothing, came to mind. My plans to start a new kind of life began to feel premature. I was reading surveys of attitudes around the world that were revealing how the general public in many countries expected difficult futures and even societal collapse. Yet the topic was being aggressively maintained as taboo. I worried that this emotional suppression and systematic lying would provide the conditions for illogical and hateful attitudes to spread in society that would likely be impossible to stop or even to slow. Rather, it would accelerate societal collapse. Not acting on my sense of this cultural blockage did not feel right to me. If I was not going to delve more into the intellectual basis for a deep adaptation approach to life, who would? There seemed to be only a handful of scholars with the interdisciplinary capabilities and commitment to work on this topic at that time. This was the moment when being close with climate activists shaped my next moves. For about a year, I had been discussing the broad field of climate science, policy, and activism with one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, Claire Farrell. Pinging audio messages back and forth on WhatsApp was our preferred means of communication. One weekend, I was away at the beach and seeing a new message from her decided to listen as I strolled along the coast. Earphones on, I walked past where my young friend Oscar with his mum had stared at the sea two years earlier and cried about his future. In my ear, Claire said, it's time you got on the front foot. As I walked on, looking at the crashing waves, I felt a strange but deep joy, knowing I must re-engage in the scholarship on the most annoying and uninspiring topic there is, the collapse of modern societies. If I was right, there would be little upside and years lost in front of my laptop doing the research. My eyesight and physicality would fade and my belly and exasperation would grow. But it just had to be done. So here we are. Although, back in 2018, I had written about climate change as the reason the collapse of industrial consumer societies is inevitable, my conclusion was not purely based on the climate science. It was based on my decades of research and practice in a variety of fields at national and international level, business, finance, government, politics, and activism. From that, I knew how deep-seated our patterns of behaviour are and how entrenched power is. In particular, I knew how growth demanding our economic and monetary systems are. Therefore, my analysis would include the range of factors that maintain modern societies. It would be a huge undertaking and require a team to help. Writing these lines three years later, I didn't realise quite what a drag it would be on both me and my colleagues. We were an interdisciplinary team including an ecologist, agricultural scientist, heterodox economist, psychologist, ethicist, physicist, theologian, and environmental journalist. I used an approach called critical interdisciplinary research analysis, which I will explain in Chapter 7. That approach allows me to embrace the power of science while not being as restricted by the cultural, economic, and institutional influences as those scholars who operate within single subject specialisms, or for establishment institutions. Such restrictions are widely recognised by scholars themselves, including a group of leading scientists who concluded it means the possibility of global systemic collapse is being dangerously downplayed. Since 2018, some people who appreciated the deep adaptation ethos and framework rightly encouraged me to become more specific about what I meant by societal collapse, as there are so many definitions in scholarship. I will review those definitions before referring to my own definition in the following chapter. What some enthusiasts also wanted me to do was water down my conclusions that this societal collapse is indeed inevitable. They thought we should make the message more moderate, appealing, and fundable. I didn't want such considerations to influence my analysis, but expected that my research for this book would lead to a summary of the evidence that perhaps modern societies might collapse. However, as the research progressed, I discovered the data was indicating things were already far worse than I had previously assessed. Indeed, they were already far worse in the years before 2018 than I had known. I had been wrong to conclude that societal collapse is inevitable, because it had already begun when I was reaching that conclusion. What is collapsing? This is heavy stuff, so I should clarify what I'm saying. First up, I'm talking about most societies everywhere. If nearly everything you use is something you have bought, then you live in what can be described as an industrial consumer society. Such societies are based on the mass production of consumer goods by industrial processes, whether within a particular country or imported. As I will describe further in Chapter 1, the majority of the people in the world today live either within an industrial consumer society or are partly dependent on its products and services. A key aspect of such societies is that they need mass consumption to continue to grow for them to be stable, just as a bicycle needs momentum to stay upright. In the first half of this book, I will provide evidence that we are already witnessing the beginning of an uneven ending of industrial consumer modes of sustenance, shelter, health, security, pleasure, identity and meaning. As this process seems irreversible, the most obvious way of describing it actually is societal collapse. Such a term can feel very sudden and dramatic, and yet the study of both ancient and recent history indicates the collapse of a society is typically a process, not an event. In the following chapters, I will provide you with the evidence for concluding the collapse of the foundations of nearly all industrial consumer societies began sometime before 2016. Although there are terrible instances of societal collapses in regions where the weather or conflict are already creating truly devastating effects, the beginning of this wider collapse has hitherto gone unreported. In the next chapter, I will present an analysis of data from the past few years which show a decline in key indicators of people's lives on every populated continent of the world since 2016. This covers the basics of life expectancy, health, earnings, education and such like. Because this is occurring everywhere, it indicates there are common and therefore global causes. It is the first time since these records began that the indicators are going backwards in most of the economically advanced countries. In addition, I summarise the data on the failure towards the so-called sustainable development goals, with performance on most of them going backwards before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. I provide an explanation for all this data and show how the internal contradictions and the external limits of capitalism started to disrupt it from 2015 onwards. Staying with economic matters in Chapter 2, I explain how the pandemic was used as an excuse by the world's leading central banks to help the largest investors and corporations in their countries to acquire international assets in ways that made it inevitable there would be ongoing inflation. I surmise this was a move in preparation for the likely demise of existing monetary systems, something that could be initiated at any time by the monied elites. In Chapter 3, we switch to look at the biophysical foundations of industrial consumer societies. The role of energy empowering nearly all aspects of modern societies is explored before assessing the ability to get off fossil fuels. Sadly, independent analysis finds it will not be possible to maintain modern societies in a decarbonised energy system, and a rapid shrinking of economic activity would be required. In any case, that shrinking is necessary due to the negative effects of industrial consumer societies on biodiversity and health. Chapter 4 There is already clear evidence that problems with energy availability prior to any conflicts have been affecting standards of living. Fossil fuels play a huge role in large-scale agriculture, while current forms of agriculture impact badly on diversity, health, Chapter 4, and global heating, Chapter 5. In Chapter 6, I look at the robustness of our global and local food systems in the face of increasing volatility from weather, shifting seasons, changes in insect populations, overexploitation, topsoil loss, falling water tables, and ocean acidification, among other factors. The conclusion I reach is that there is a frightening dependence on the mass production of a few key grains, with some of the major sources being at threat from extreme weather due to increasing irregularities in the northern hemisphere's jet stream. Although the inevitable disruptions to food supply could be ameliorated by the right kind of policies aided by local initiatives and international cooperation, we have not seen that, despite warnings being made since 2018. This indicates the dominant forms of communication and governance in societies are incapable of averting even predictable catastrophic damage. In Chapter 4, we look at the wider issue of humanity's demands on the world's natural resources. I summarise data that indicates how the ecosystems that provide essential foundational services to all human societies are now breaking down. With the theory of the land's carrying capacity for any life form, I explain how modern humans have collectively already overshot the ability of the planet to sustain us. With reference to the scholarship on both ecology and past civilisational collapse, I explain how deforestation is a driver of both new diseases in humans and of past civilisational collapse, likely due to new diseases it generated. I note that a defence against an era of pandemics was the rationale offered by some scientists for their extremely dangerous experiments on pathogens. That is before noting how Covid-19 itself and the counterproductive responses to it may hasten the breakdown of some societies. In Chapter 5, I focus on what I think is most important for you to know about our changing climate. A combination of the loss of forest cover and the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere will together cause additional heating and the associated shifting of seasons, erratic weather, and damage to ecosystems, agriculture and human settlements. The fact that the rate of the rise of sea levels is increasing means that the changes in the whole climatic system are not linear, and so the environment will be further destabilised at an unprecedented pace. Despite the rhetoric of establishment experts, these changes cannot be reversed and might not even be able to be slowed, given the damage already done and the additional role of future sunspot activity and massive ocean currents, obviously both beyond human intervention. These climate changes add stress onto the other crumbling foundations of societies. In Chapter 7, I summarise the way various changes chronicled in the previous chapters combine to show the inevitable continued breakdown of modern societies. I explained how scientists have been leaving their normal scientific principles behind in order to argue against such conclusions, therefore becoming evangelists for modernist ideology without even realising their assumptions when doing so. In Chapter 7, I also move beyond the biophysical aspects of modern societies to consider the evidence that the sociocultural and political foundations of such societies have been crumbling over recent years. For instance, opinion polls find that in most countries of the world there has been a dramatic decline in support for the institutions of government. I describe these trends as representing an uncementing of what holds modern societies together, as people are consciously or subconsciously making sense of the cracks in the surface and the fractures in the foundations of the societies they live within. In the original deep adaptation paper, I explained that I personally expected to see signs of societal collapse nearly everywhere by 2028. Some critics were correct to argue that it was just my personal opinion, not a provable fact. But in this book, I am presenting credible evidence that the breakdown had already started before 2016. I now realise my mistake back then was to assume, like so many, that any collapse would be a singular dramatic event. Although the collapse had already begun through a buckling of the structures that uphold modern societies, the effects were not instantly disruptive to many with privileged lifestyles. It is as if we are on a large ship that has already hit the iceberg, but is steaming on with passengers and staff not wanting to upset others by talking about the strange noise and the listing deck. Most of us experience the ship as only partially broken. For instance, at the time of writing, most of us still have bank accounts with money in them and bank cards that work, most of the time, that can buy what we need, most of the time. If we don't ask what's going on below the waterline, we can ignore the situation for a bit longer. In my case, once I concluded we are living within, right now, the unfolding collapse of modern societies, I was able to make sense of what was happening around me in new ways. The fact that I'm living within an era of collapse suddenly provided a conceptual lens for looking at current events in economics, politics, culture and psychology. It helped me make sense of why some people were embracing nostalgia politics, while other people were embracing conspiracy theories and others were slavishly following authority and the majority, which we look at further in Chapter 13. I also understood why the media was demonizing free thinking and why central bankers were helping firms in a neo-colonial rush for global power, Chapter 2. The backdrop to my research process was the Covid pandemic, and how the state and media began behaving in authoritarian ways. That doesn't just mean coercion or threatening it, but the use of weak or outright false scientific claims to justify denigrating people for their dissenting views. What I also noticed during that period was that the most extreme anti-dumer critics were also the most vociferous in promoting a corporate authoritarian agenda on Covid. I realized the common factor was an allegiance to the currently hegemonic view of societies progressing and humans being in control. These realizations drove me on to complete the book so that you, the reader, can also consider our world through the lens of unfolding collapse. Why is this perspective not widely known? If you're wondering whether I am someone to be believed, or why the view that modern societies are already beginning to collapse hasn't been laid out in a book before, then that would be smart. Or perhaps you're wondering more generally why such ideas are not being discussed in the media, or from a different angle entirely, perhaps you're wondering whether my depressing view of the situation might be just another attempt at fear mongering towards controlling populations. Let's start with the last of these ideas. Elites are not making up the threats to society that I describe in this book. Instead, most people with money and power, and those who work for them, have been distracting us from how bad our situation is becoming. They promote the idea that our problems can be fixed by technology, capital, enterprise, billionaires, government spending, and charismatic leadership, while the rest of us obediently do what we are told and hope for the best. They do not want us to lose hope that modern societies can respond effectively to the predicament faced, as that might mean we reject the systems and institutions that maintain their power and privilege. We might become rebellious. If you read the full analysis in this book, you will see how it demolishes the case for obeying the orders from on high. Those scholars whom the public have heard talking about catastrophic scenarios in both mass and social media are the ones who the tech billionaires funded to look at potential problems with asteroids and artificial intelligence. For years, their focus on extinction risk downplayed the risks to societies from the crumbling biophysical foundations described in this book. Such an outlook would not gel with their hope of a technological utopia. Although I recognize important concerns about the regulation of AI, this book is not about the danger of theoretical future threats to civilization or to our species. Instead, it is about the damages that are happening right now and that will continue into full collapse without us being able to control or reverse it, although hopefully being able to slow and heal from it. In Chapter 7, I will explain some of the factors with the fields of research that have kept honest discussion of this predicament hidden from the public view. But even if completely unfiltered bad news was arriving from the scholarship and experts, we would not likely give it sufficient attention because we live in a culture that has been shaped by the interests of the moneyed elites, both past and present. In chapters 2 and 10, I delve into how that works. Put simply, the expansionist way monetary systems operate then shapes the mass media, advertising, social media, fields of expertise, technologies, markets and politics which together shape our daily lives. That reproduces deep assumptions and values within that include individualism, materialism and progress. These are then encoded in habits, laws and budgets that incentivize harmful attitudes and behaviors at individual and organizational levels. As I will explain in Chapter 10, the dominant systems of communication and organization in modern societies have been built upon and encourage some of the worst aspects of human nature. That is the main reason why, collectively, humans in modern societies have not been making sufficient sense of over 50 years of information about the destruction caused by our way of life, nor looking at previous centuries of wisdom in that process of sense-making, which we look at in Chapter 9. In this book, I will explain how some military strategists are analyzing this situation and developing frighteningly counterproductive ideas on how to reduce threats, Chapter 13. That means we urgently need more public engagement with the topic. Unfortunately, as more of the world enters an era of disruption and anxiety, a new factor driving the denial of reality has emerged. Psychologists call it mortality salience, which leads to the phenomenon of worldview defense. Simply put, this means when we become more aware of our potential or likely death, we can become more deeply attached to our culturally derived stories about self, society and world, even becoming extremely and illogically attached to those stories. Unfortunately, this process means that some of the responses by authorities to disturbances can be illogical and counterproductive, as we have already seen in recent years. This kind of worldview defense can creep in under the proverbial radar through what psychologists call implicative denial. This happens when we acknowledge information but don't change appropriately in response. I believe that is why some experts prefer to describe societies as facing something generically worrying, which they name as mega-threats, polycrisis, permacrisis, multi-crisis or metacrisis. Or they say societies are declining, breaking down or beginning a transition rather than collapsing. Or they say the collapse of industrial consumer societies is likely but still avoidable. Chapter 7 and 13 The data in this book shows such perspectives can be seen less as descriptions of reality and more as efforts by experts to bargain with the death of their worldview in order to keep some of their existing identity alive. Instead, by turning into the trouble and allowing the full weight of it to disintegrate our old sense of self, something new can emerge. Introduction Part 2 of Breaking Together by Jim Bendell, published by Good Works, narrated by Matthew Slater. Allowing the emotion of it all. So how bad will it become and when? A lot of people have asked me that over the last few years. It is impossible to predict but depends on where you live. If your groundwater is being stolen by Coca-Cola or your society corrupted by nonsense in the media, then the collapse of the global economy might relieve the pressure and offer some years of more beautiful living. But if you are a subsistence farmer facing economic wipeout due to droughts made worse by global heating, then that's a horrible tragedy. If such droughts have tipped your society into war, that is even worse. In comparison to that, some of the symptoms of breakdown in the richer parts of the world may not seem so bad. For instance, your peaceful European town might now have an extreme right-wing government because of the way your neighbours were encouraged to blame the refugees arriving from conflict regions. Or your lifelong hippie friend has suddenly decided that climate change is a hoax, despite having lived through the weirdest weather in her lifetime. In any case, both your bills are going through the roof with no sign of ever coming down due to the converging crises that I describe in this book, so the future looks precarious even if basic systems are maintained. Looking ahead further than a year or two can sometimes feel too scary to attempt. It's why so many people, myself included, are now choosing not to have children. Working on this topic over the last few years has sometimes numbed me to the pain of it. Looking back at my notes from when I was first becoming aware of the situation, I was reminded of the shock and confusion I felt. One issue I struggled with was who to tell about my new awareness. For instance, should I tell my parents in their mid-seventies all of what I thought I knew. As my work started becoming more well known on this topic, an extinction rebellion brought similar concerns onto our TV screens in April 2019. We began to have conversations about how bad the situation might become. I drafted them a letter, which included the following. I've been telling people not to take my word for it. I wouldn't, but I don't expect you to read all the ins and outs of the science on climate and the scholarship on collapse risk. To help you understand how this is not just a marginal view, I could tell you about the heads of global consulting firms, former heads of UN agencies, senior folks at the EU, amongst hundreds of others who have been getting in touch privately agreeing with my conclusions. But rather than that, we can simply recall the strangeness of ice creams and sunbathing in the UK during the February just gone. The weather has already changed and will continue to do so in ways that destabilise both wild nature and agriculture. There is crying to come. There is dismay. There is despair. There is anger. But then, after all that, it's worth remembering that we aren't in imminent danger. There's no need for a panicked response. We have some years ahead of us. But that doesn't mean we can get out of this. I think we won't. By that, I mean we are likely to experience exorbitant prices, shortages of necessities, reactionary and authoritarian politics, bouts of civil unrest, and international wars that will result from such stresses. Although anger and blame are natural, they can be a means of avoiding reconciliation with one's own life, regrets, hurts, limitations, and death. That is something we can all prioritise doing now, rather than leaving it to our deathbeds. We can also begin to prepare and to try to make things less bad. The first thing I think you could consider is to plan for living in a situation where food is so expensive you end up needing government rations or selling things to buy food. In that context, growing more of your own food is helpful. But that's not easy at any meaningful scale, especially when getting older. I think communal living is therefore helpful, so you can share the costs of heat, light and food, and work together on growing more. But I know the idea of the major change in lifestyle, that such a move would involve, seems an unattractive choice if it's only to protect oneself against a future crisis with an unknown arrival date. The second thing to consider is how that kind of prepping is unlikely to work, especially if the situation is bad enough to be affecting everyone. Hungry neighbours aren't people we want to ignore, nor would we have the choice to ignore them. So the urgent need is to find ways of living calmly with this awareness of unfolding disruption, breakdown and ultimate collapse. One of the biggest fears is of a painful or fearful death. I wonder whether this means we might all look for obtaining some drugs that relieve pain, like morphine. However, I don't know about how long they last and what the laws are. I also hope that is not something to have to act on that soon. The third thing is probably the most important. It is to find other people who are talking about it. I am setting up a network to connect people who have this awareness and want to explore together what it means for their lives. Some of them are getting involved in activism to try to get a shift in government policies on both slowing and preparing for these disruptions. Without talking to people, I believe we will be bulldozed back into denial by a media that tells us to be positive, hopeful and to carry on shopping and complying. Dad, when we last discussed this topic, you said I should give people some hope. I have thought about this and believe that hope is acting as an escape from reality. For most people, it involves wishing that something is not so. I am discovering that I don't need hope. Instead of hope, I have a sense of what is important to life, whatever may come, which for me is which for me is mainly about truth, love and courage. I think hope could sometimes be a lie to postpone letting reality change us. Instead, I know many of us will do good stuff amidst all the bad. I did not send the letter. Looking back at it now, my recollection is that I didn't want to suggest ideas for how to respond, which are not easily accessible to them. That could mean they just felt bad and then pushed it all away from conscious awareness. It was for the same reasons I declined appearing on TV during the International Rebellion in 2019. I didn't want to lie about my view of the situation, but didn't want people who were living alone watching TV to suddenly learn that they were vulnerable without having ways to talk about it, find support and explore their options for how to respond. Rather than sending that letter to my parents, I recall deciding to be more connected to all my family by setting up our first WhatsApp group, ironically embracing technology due to a sense of the coming loss of such capabilities. Fast forward to 2023, time certainly changed. As people have already experienced massive disruption, the vulnerability of societies is on everyone's mind. In addition, as I witnessed the way people have been lied to by governments, commentators and conspiracists to manipulate their emotions, views and behaviors, I felt a call to share my analysis more fully with those who would listen. There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried, said Oscar Romero, the late Bishop of San Salvador. What we allow ourselves to see through our eyes as we cry is essential to discovering a new basis for participating positively in society. As our old stories of society and the future disintegrate, there can be painful but positive disintegration of our old stories of self. In Chapter 12 we will see evidence from people about how, with the right guidance from people, nature and the beyond, we can reconstitute ourselves for a changed reality. In this sense, despair is not a luxury, it is more relaxative for purging our bullshit. There is a place beyond despair where we can begin again but, trying to avoid despair, people don't often allow themselves to reach it. When some of the people who speak publicly on existential risks tell us, it's not too late, we should always ask, it's not too late for what and for whom. Just because it is too late for modern societies to be maintained does not mean it is too late for influencing the future. Just because it might be too late to significantly influence that future, does not mean it is too late to learn how to participate less in destructive or delusional behaviors. In fact, precisely because we sense our mortality more immediately, it could increase our sense of gratitude for the experience of life, so we live in more kind and wise ways in the future. It is not inevitable we deny this knowledge, suppress the emotions and cling to our worldviews more tightly. We can let the despair pull us away from that. We can discover a renewed desire and capacity for lively engagement with the present, including creativity and play, precisely due to a collapse of our old stories of self, society and world. If that is how you feel sometimes then you are not alone, as research has found that's a key way people respond to the latest news and analysis on catastrophic situations for humanity. Indeed, it has proven to be the fuel for a new wave of environmental activism in recent years and what I describe in Chapter 12 as a new phenomenon of creatively engaged doomssters. From repentance to radicalism. If you are a young person then I'm grateful you're reading and I'm sorry for my own role in a misguided strategy over the last few decades. Although it's not particularly the fault of environmental professionals like me that the situation became so bad for too long we pretended we were making progress. For 30 years we chose wishful thinking over hard reality. I gave years of my life to the cause of corporate sustainability, working long hours and neglecting my personal life. But it was a delusion that part of me was always aware of. No matter how unlikely we needed a revolution to give modern societies a chance of changing enough to prevent environmental breakdown. Part of the reason I was misguided was that I had not taken the time to assess the science on climate change for myself. I assumed the experts were doing their job and the UN processes had it covered. By the time I became so scared with what I was seeing in the world's climate that I took the time out to study further it was already far too late to prevent a catastrophe, Chapter 5. We failed. And it is an unfair situation that younger generations must now live into. I know some young people can feel anger at people like me who seem to be accepting a fate they must live with. But I think the opposite is true. If you are a young person then you will have to live with the future that is to come. Not the one that older professionals imagine when dismissing realistic conclusions as merely negative thinking. I prefer to be as straight as possible with everyone I meet, including younger people, about the difficult choices that now need to be made. For instance, analysis finds it is unlikely that the decarbonisation of all industrial consumer societies is possible, Chapter 3, and even if so, that it would avert the catastrophes of climate change. Chapter 5. Young professionals need to understand that many people who live ecologically lighter lives than them, including Indigenous communities, will suffer the aggression of corporations seeking the materials to try in vain to prop up the modern societies that most of us live within. Just like the younger me was enticed by status and a sense of urgency, today's young activists are being approached to promote agendas that defend power, Chapter 13. Instead, hope and vision can be found in other ways. Indeed, even joy and personal growth can be found from the process of intentionally retiring many aspects of consumer life. That would only feel like defeat if accepting the insecure goals of older generations. It might sound churlish to say it, but collapse comes also as an opportunity. That becomes clear when we realise the myriad approaches to environmental change over the past decades have fallen far short of their objectives and that there is one major reason for their failure. People seeking to change society have tried politics, whether local, national or international. They've tried improving the knowledge base on the problems. They've tried raising awareness in society. They've tried harnessing the power of technology, business and finance. They've tried living differently, but none of it has worked at scale. As the systems of modern society were so impervious to these tactics over decades, if they were not collapsing now, then there would be no chance of any real change. To fully understand this opportunity, one needs to understand the causes of the problem and why things did not change. That is why I give close attention to the deeper causes in the second half of this book. Industrial consumer societies meet people's needs and desires through systems of mass production and trade. These systems require inputs of energy that are massive compared to human bodily capabilities and which must be sourced from somewhere, Chapter 3. Technologies powered by that energy enable the extraction of natural resources, both renewable and non-renewable, at scales otherwise impossible for humans. Just by itself, such a situation would hold risks for overshooting the ability of the environment to sustain humanity, Chapter 4. However, the key feature of such societies is that they have been designed to expand forever. That is due to the way monetary systems have been constituted. Contrary to popular misunderstandings, well over 95% of all money in modern economies is issued initially as a debt by private banks when they make loans or by bonds. The money in your bank account corresponds to nothing physical and simply represents the current numeric value of a promise from your bank to you, which can be transferred to other banks that participate in the same systems. The way the money is issued as debt, and then accumulates under the control of a minority of participants in any economy, creates a monetary growth imperative in the economy. In other words, unless the banks increasingly issue new loans for new economic activity, then the money supply shrinks over time as existing loans are repaid. Therefore, rather than achieve any stable size, any economy must keep growing, something I explained further in Chapters 1 and 2. This expansionist logic means that we are all incentivized as employees, entrepreneurs, investors and voters to constantly seek not only to expand economic activity, but also for new ways for life to be commodified into what can be bought and sold. The advertising executive who seeks to make us feel envious of people with a product. The charity fundraiser who seeks to make a large corporate sponsor look ethical. The journalist who avoids any serious analysis in their rapid pursuit of mass attention. The scientist who researches health in ways that provide opportunities for corporate profits. The parent who told us we need to get on the property ladder, or the politician who says we need economic growth to fund public services. All are expressing thoughts and behaviors that are the downstream effects of a society based on expansionist debt money in service of what I call the money power, and which I explore in depth in Chapter 10. What I mean by the money power is the complex of people, organizations, resources, norms and rules that maintains monetary systems to serve the monetarily wealthy. It has proved resilient throughout history. Although I just described modern monetary systems, there were often expansionist logics built into the older monetary systems, as many of those who controlled those systems wanted to accumulate more power and resources. After studying the history of monetary systems for some years, I concluded that self-interested individuals used the latest innovations in technologies to exploit others through evolutions in monetary systems. On average, they were allowed to do that due to public misunderstandings of such systems, and the ability of those with money power to commandeer force on their behalf. That is something which remains to this day. The social institution of money is a mechanism for an all-pervading and all-subsuming form of social organization. It means that the money power shapes societies in ways far deeper than would be captured by the word governance. The particular role of money means it is not completely synonymous with capitalism. It is an empire of the money powers where the dominance above and beyond the power of any government really does mean that the word empire is appropriate. It is not an empire of the USA, or the West, or of any nation-state, but an empire of the institutions of global capital and those that they fund. Nation-states serve as the administrators and enforcers of this global empire. As the norms and values it codes for in its own interests pervade all aspects of the lives of those affected, its influence can be described as a form of colonialism or imperialism. In so doing, the money power naturally feeds off and nourishes a set of norms and values which are described in sociology with the big terms patriarchy and modernity. I have found it can help enormously to recognize what those limiting norms and values are. Therefore, although I will explain more about these interlocking concepts in Chapter 10, I will take a moment to mention them here, before concluding my suggestions on what and who is at fault for the unfolding collapse and how that presents new opportunities for social action. Patriarchy describes a culture and social order where characteristics thought of as masculine are regarded as both more normal and of higher status than those which are not, that enhances the relative power of people with masculine characteristics. Both men and women participate in family and society in ways that maintain a patriarchal social order. It can be incredibly subtle, such as women more often holding baby boys outwards to face a group compared to baby girls, or their toy bears being assumed to be male unless large eyelashes have been sewn around the bear's eyes. Some historians argue the development of agriculture gave rise to patriarchy, as land started to be controlled in new ways and social hierarchies grew through that process. The way the money power both gains and gives in relation to patriarchy is complex. An example is how realms of activity not easily turned into market transactions have not been rewarded by money power, such as the essential activities in the home, typically or previously undertaken by women. Patriarchy is seen in sociology as a prerequisite for the rise of modernity. That describes a range of norms, attitudes and practices that spread after intellectual and scientific developments in the 18th century period called the Enlightenment. The relationship to patriarchy includes phenomena such as prioritizing that which can be measured rather than felt, something that culture regards as a more masculine approach. Although some sociologists argued the period since the 1950s has been increasingly post-modern, the underlying assumption of modernity maintained its dominance in structuring societies and spread massively around the world until recently. When one considers how modernity was spread through the globalization of capitalist relations, then the expansionist, mind-colonizing and wealth-concentrating qualities of this social order can be recognized. Therefore, in this book, I will be referring to it as imperial modernity, the interlocking set of political, economic and cultural systems that shape our everyday lives to favor the accumulation of power by elites. It is the ideological apparatus of a global empire of power that has taken hold over the last 30 plus years. Although the development of this ideology, or even paradigm, and its extractive dynamics was pioneered by the West, imperial modernity has globalized for many decades, and today some of the most extreme versions of it are found in some of the metropolises of the global South. One of the important ways that imperial modernity exerts its influence within our minds is through shaping our perceptions of nature. Regarding the more than human world, whether life forms, landscapes or oceans, as phenomena with less aliveness than humans is a prerequisite for some attitudes and behaviors. One way of describing this is the desacralization of nature, which numbs us emotionally to the pain in nature, or to the loss of it. By regarding ourselves as superior, we can feel justified in our domination and exploitation of nature, a hierarchical form of human-centered anthropocentrism that might be better labeled as anthroposupremacy, freedom from the failing of fables. When we accept that modern societies are beginning to collapse, it can lead to a critical view of the dominant systems and ideologies that produced this mess, distracted us from it, and channeled responses into decades of ineffective measures. That understanding means we begin to be liberated from the confines of respect for society as it is. Therefore the imperial modernity within us, and which we perpetuate, can begin to be seen and escaped. I have noticed in myself and others that the breakdown in old world views, identities, and even stories of meaning triggers a renewed desire and capacity for more vital engagement with the present, including creativity and play. Part of the opportunity of collapse is the dropping of old stories of self, society, and world to see what emerges, something I explore with examples in Chapter 12. This process of personal collapse, liberation, and reconstitution is also important for the future because it reduces the likelihood of us perpetuating the values and systems that caused the problem in the first place. However, many people want to avoid any personal collapse and therefore choose to frame the predicament as forms of crisis, as described earlier. Some of them recognize the cultural destabilization occurring and refer to it as a meaning crisis. What such discussions can ignore is that the meaning crisis is occurring intensively now because people are intuiting the collapse of the most widespread and uncontested source of meaning, which is the notion of perpetual progress, Chapter 7 and 8. The declining standard of living since 2016 is one input into their experience, Chapter 1, even before the effects of anxiety from environmental health and political challenges, Chapter 7. It is not easy to let go. The worldview defense I described earlier has been kicking in for some people when considering the possibility of societal collapse. That means they cling closer to the various sub-ideologies of imperial modernity, such as progress, control, technological power, and a narrow notion of scientific knowledge. As with all worldview defense, the clinging can lead to illogical views and behaviors even within the framework of the worldview being defended. For instance, top scientists in the field of climatology have been abandoning the normal scientific concept of falsification to imagine magical scenarios where technology rescues us and progress is maintained, as we will see in Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 13. More generally, in recent years we have seen people blindly respecting authority and corporations, thereby ignoring the diversity of scientific opinion, to then behave tribally over personal health choices while saying they were following the science. I describe this fanatical and illogical form of modernity as over-modernity. As with all fanatical thought arising from worldview defense, it can lead to violent ideas and behaviors. Chapter 13. There are other ways of becoming misanthropic, with a dislike towards humanity in general. It can occur when people witness the scale of destruction of planet earth by modern humans. If they don't recognize the particularity of the systems that manipulated us into expanding destructive and exploitative behaviors, then they can assume human nature per se is to blame. That misanthropy reflects a lack of awareness of the depth and breadth of human cultures, which survived in a sufficiently self-sustaining relationship with nature before modern societies. That is why I drew on recent archaeology and anthropology for this book's discussion of the fundamental nature of humans and societies. That research supports the view that the collapse of human populations was not always inevitable due to some design flaw in homo sapiens, meaning that when the collapse unfolds, it is not a judgment on human nature per se. In Chapter 9, I will cite the significant evidence that societies of humans lived in a self-sustaining relationship with nature, even increasing the biodiversity due to their inhabitation with some of those societies still existing today, at least in some form. Second, I will mention the stories of societies that forgot the need to live in balance with nature, and so learned again to be in a better relationship with it after societal collapse. When ignoring this history, some people prefer to say humans are just like bacteria in a petri dish or algae in a pond, undergoing a rapid population explosion until the resource base is used up and the waste products become poisonous. Not only does such a view ignore indigenous cultures that lived for tens of thousands of years, even with access to fossil fuels they only used in moderation, but it is not natural for all species to boom and bust if they don't have a natural predator. We know that some species self-regulate their population size. To choose to think that nothing other than nature doing its thing, or human nature doing its thing, is what caused the omniside, is a form of denial. It momentarily escapes the difficulties of further analysis, and ends a worry about possible feelings of shame or hatred. That fear may arise due to people living in patriarchal cultures that promote the idea there is reason in life for shame and blame, and also that it is better to avoid awkward emotions. Instead, we could live with a sense of acceptance and pre-forgiveness about ourselves and others, and so be open to everything that might be seen as a cause of damaging situations. We could drop our aversion to the idea that the imperial modern culture we have learned to be human within is culpable for the damage, as are so many of our ways of working and consuming today. This fairly novel understanding of human history is important as an antidote to some of the views that are becoming popular amongst people who anticipate societal collapse. Some say give up on anything other than looking after your own and being supportive in your communities. Some like the idea of waiting for the second coming or believing aliens will help us. Others say we need to protect our borders. Others think we should secure access to key resources abroad. Instead of any of those ideas, I am pointing to a newly radical doomsday sentiment which recognises there will be opportunities for change that arise precisely because of a breaking of societal norms. In this extended introduction, I have taken the time to walk you through some ideas which I have only given a superficial mention of here, to show a path that leads to a radical doomsday sentiment which wants to reclaim our power to live in harmony with each other and nature. It is where allowing our despair can lead, through repentance, to a newly radical way of being, whether in one's personal, professional and political life, or all three. In the concluding section of this introduction, I want to tell you more of the philosophical basis for this outlook, which shapes the second half of this book, freeing humanity to our true nature. As we saw earlier, authoritarian attitudes and policy ideas for responding to the environmental crisis are growing. As people learn of how bad the situation is and how past efforts have failed, reconsidering everything is understandable. However, the idea that we all need to be controlled by authorities more rather than less manipulation by capitalist forces is not a helpful response. Rather, it is already generating suspicion and backlash against environmental initiatives as I will explore further in Chapter 13. Instead, with an awareness of how imperial modernity has led us into an era of collapse, we can seek to liberate ourselves and each other into a more harmonious relationship with nature. It is philosophically incoherent to deny the importance of individual freedom, due to an affinity with the natural world, because the relative freedom of all sentient life forms is central to nature. I describe this in more detail as natural freedom in Chapter 11, along with some attention to the ancient philosophical dialogues on the nature and existence, or otherwise, of free will, both in sentient life forms in general and humans in particular. Greater freedom from social conditioning, whether by imperial modernity or other systems, can release and reveal the qualities that are innate in humans. The idea that humans are innately problematic to themselves and each other, if not civilized by society or guided by religions, is a story that has been promoted for thousands of years. It is a story which encourages separation between the general public, while increasing the enthusiasm of elites and those serving them, to try to exert control. However, for years, I have been told there are other ways of considering human nature, that some Eastern wisdom traditions do not have the idea of either original sin or a fundamental badness within the human race. But it was only when I spent time at the Brahmavihara Temple that I learned about a whole framework that could make sense of my own experience. The phrase Brahmavihara refers to four underlying qualities or attitudes in people which were also recognized thousands of years before the Buddha. There is metta, which describes an attitude of general benevolence towards all life. Then there is karuna, which describes the empathy we feel for the suffering of other life. Then there is mudita, which describes our vicarious joy from the happiness of others. And finally, there is upeka, which describes a general equanimity about oneself, others, and life in general, so that we do not need to feel certain ways about other living beings. These are recognized as aspects of the underlying nature of people, so that it is only defilements from culture and from emotional wounds or confusions that lead to harmful intent or behavior. With this perspective, when we witness all manner of problems in the world, we can ask what it is that is pulling people away from living in a more harmonious way. In this book, I will elaborate further that it is the culture and systems of imperial modernity that have been pulling us away from our true nature. This perspective flows into an interest in freeing human nature from the manipulations of society. It can undergird and inform a holistic and balanced commitment to universal human rights, as well as the social and economic justice that relates to such rights. I have found many people understand this idea instinctively, despite the social conditioning we have undergone since birth in a culture where media constantly tells us to look down on each other, that we need discipline and are potentially dangerous. However, there does not appear to be, in English language circles at least, a popular common language for expressing that perspective on environment and freedom. I have noticed that many of us who think that our societies are breaking down share ideas about what is wrong with the politics and economics that brought us to this point, yet we do not easily fit into the existing frameworks of political theory or political parties, nor do we have a term for our perspective. That absence means it is more difficult to recognize each other as part of a potential movement that could learn together how to develop approaches from the personal to the political and from the local to the international. Therefore, in this book, I use the terms eco-freedom and eco-libertarianism for some of the deeper ideas that I believe many people share. Eco-freedom is that individual and collective state of being free and enabled to care for each other and the environment rather than coerced or manipulated towards behaviors that damage it. Eco-libertarians believe in seeking that state of eco-freedom. Both these terms help define an opposition to the eco-authoritarianism that is emerging as the latest phase of the establishment-friendly environmental profession. I describe this philosophy in chapter 11, but will conclude this introduction with a summary as it provides a way of understanding a key argument in this book. The people I am describing as eco-libertarians have concluded that societies destroy their own eco-social foundations because the self-interests of the powerful are institutionalized to then coerce or manipulate people to experience life as unsafe and competitive, so that more people cope by becoming more unthoughtful, uncaring and acquisitive. Therefore, today, those same institutionalized patterns of establishment power are distorting public awareness of the breakdown of societies and the best means of responding to that. In response, eco-libertarians believe less oppressive ways of being and behaving need to be restored and applied to obtaining greater control of capital and state organizations, thereby funneling resources into commonly owned organizations, resources, platforms and currencies so that a gentler and fairer collapse of societies might be possible. The agenda is about reclaiming our power from the manipulations and appropriations of our life world by the systems of imperial modernity. Around the world, various parts of this great reclamation agenda are being pursued, but apparently not yet with an overarching framework that enables integration and amplification of efforts. Although the pace of collapse might be so fast that we do not have much time for updating our strategies for social change, I believe it is worth sharing such ideas while international communications still exist in their current form. So please read on. The approach I am labeling as eco-libertarianism points towards a post-progress progressive politics. That sounds like an oxymoron, and yet refers to the importance of upholding the universal values of freedom and fairness as the existing systems of modern societies break down. Rather than arguing that authorities and powerful groups should do whatever they decide to try to save the world, eco-libertarianism seeks the freedom to care for each other and nature in the present moment. Rather than focusing mostly on planting the seeds of what comes next, after a collapse, or prefiguring the values, processes and technologies of a future civilization, instead it brings us to the here and now and how we are treating each other and nature during periods of turmoil. Although some people believe they need a story of the future where everything is better, my experience of the activist world is that can be a distraction from action right now. An emphasis on vision and hope can be related to consequentialist ethics, where we do things because we think, or say we think, that a particular result will be achieved, as I explain in chapter 8. Rather than naive utopian thinking or its variants, we can work towards an evotopia, where the majority of humanity appreciate the reality we live within and thereby end unnecessary destruction and unleash beauty, something I explore in chapter 11. As a political philosophy, I suggest that eco-libertarianism includes a return to a balance between consequentialist ethics and virtue ethics, where the latter approaches mean we act because we believe it to be right. Passion for the work, but non-attachment to outcome, is key. Bishop Oscar Romero was murdered at the altar by a US-backed death squad. I still remember staring at the bullet-hold and bloodstained tunic in a glass case in the small museum about his life. He had been fully aware of the risks he was taking by continuing to criticise the government and elites for the exploitation of the El Salvadorian people. Staring at the glass case on the wall, I realised in one moment both the potential brutality of the global capitalist system when it has been resisted by people with influence, and also what it means to put living ones principles of love, truth and fairness above one's own safety and well-being. Doing what's right with what's left will face opposition from the harsh reactions of elites and the people they manipulate, chapter 13. It means we need to identify what is right, no matter what inducements there might be to do otherwise or whether we think it will succeed. To do what is right without attachment to outcome will allow ourselves a more fulsome engagement with reality. That means acting while knowing there might be certain failure individually or collectively. That is not doing what's right only because of a slim chance of succeeding. Of course, knowing what is right to do in any given circumstance requires some wisdom. As part of social breakdown, many people no longer know where to look for credible information, let alone good analysis and opinion. In chapter 8 I explain the nature and need for critical wisdom to escape the manipulations of our thoughts and emotions that are pervasive in modern societies. Various ideas for personal, professional and political life can emerge from an acceptance of unfolding breakdowns, some of which I discuss in chapter 12. Over the last few years, I have witnessed people responding positively to their own conclusions that societies will be breaking down. Their positive pessimism, where they seek to contribute to others, has encouraged me that we can at least attempt a more gentle and just collapse of industrial consumer societies. Although the harms caused every day by the current system may lead some to wish such societies to collapse sooner, I do not advocate trying that but rather focus on avoiding further harm from propping up a failing system, now riddled with panic and dysfunction. Instead, we can abandon the ideology of progress and move into a period where we reclaim more aspects of our lives. Switching to an agenda of a great reclamation, rather than progress, will involve the active retirement of various aspects of modern societies, so will not be easy. Indeed, it will not even be considered until the not too late taboo is broken in mass media so that the situation humanity faces can be discussed more honestly. For us to be useful in that process of modern societies retreating rather than fraudulently progressing, will require each of us to lessen our dependence on various aspects of modern society. The more profligate forms of consumption are the most obvious habits to change. Will it happen? I'm not optimistic. For richer societies to degrow their consumption will require radical interventions to achieve greater income and asset equality, as otherwise there will be huge and justifiable resistance. Unfortunately, there is less potential now than in past decades for the kind of mobilization of the working classes in advanced economies that would be needed for such an outcome. Therefore, some pressure from outside such countries could help the process. Might the countries that currently export huge amounts of their raw materials, as well as the products of their cheaper labour, collectively decide to reduce that transfer of resources? Could that constitute a great reclamation of power at a global level? Such a geopolitical movement could be possible when the billions of people now being adversely affected by climate change become aware of the cause of their difficulties and find ways to express that politically. Western activists who are working on de-growing their economies in fair and creative ways could welcome this potential mobilization from the Global South and even seek to support it. Chapter 13 You may have noticed how different from right libertarianism these ideas sound. I will place eco-libertarianism in its political theoretical context in Chapter 11, but briefly, right libertarianism claims to be focused on personal sovereignty but illogically places all or nearly all attention on the threat of that freedom that comes from government. Instead, the control of private wealth and the manipulation of markets can restrict people's freedom. Therefore, there needs to be some collective action to restrain the power of large corporations and elites. Another incoherence within right libertarianism is its conservativism on many cultural issues where personal freedoms are suddenly de-prioritized. I do not see either nostalgia politics or right libertarianism as helping guide useful responses to the breaking foundations of modern societies. Without a period of great reclamation of power from elites and the active retirement of many aspects of modern societies, the convulsions of a dying system will cause further harm. Therefore, retreating into a quiet life and offering some help for people suffering nearby will probably not be successful in avoiding those convulsions. Nor would it respond to the debt of privilege that enables our current, perhaps fleeting, opportunity to consider this topic. Therefore, for now, I opt for the necessary conversations and efforts to defend universal rights, accountability and justice. If people like us do not try, then we leave the preparing, guiding and potential recovering from collapse to people and institutions who will not be approaching it with the same values. Breaking together. If recent changes in the world have left you feeling dazed and confused, then you are not unusual. If you sense the current responses are insufficient and hence we all risk getting hurt or even making matters worse, that is also normal. If you yearn for a new found steadiness within and amongst your peers in the face of increasing difficulties so you have motivating clarity of purpose, then we share that desire. If you now recognize that clinging to our distracting habits or proclaiming our ethics online is sadly not at all impactful, then I believe the arguments in this book will be useful. For I have discovered that insight into the cause and future of the troubles can help us to be more clear-headed and good-hearted once again. First is the insight this mess isn't because of human nature, but because of the oppression and manipulation of us all by systems that favour the worst aspects of people. Indeed it's not a crowd of Agent Smiths from the Matrix throwing blows at us, but one underlying code for monetary expansion which is generating the multiple blows. Second is the insight we don't need to be certain of achieving material outcomes in order to have a passion for doing what's right. Third is the insight past failure to create change matters less today as the breaking down of powerful systems frees us up to contribute in new ways. Fourth is the insight we can become better at allowing the waves of difficult emotions of fear and sadness without them defining or directing us. That is also because we recognize the love that precedes such feelings. Consequently our feelings of being dazed and confused can end through this four-fold realization. No matter how bad situations become we know we will have prepared ourselves to be as steady clear-headed and good-hearted as we could possibly be. If similar to myself then you are still largely insulated to the increasing difficulties in the world. The daily reality we live is not one that either witnesses or feels fully and constantly the horrific suffering and destruction that is involved in producing our everyday comforts or our sense of safety and superiority. Therefore we don't experience any relief or even elation from knowing this system of destruction is being disrupted, will be reduced and may even come to an end. If we fully felt the pain of our entanglement with that obscenity we would be open to an openness and curiosity to that breaking down including the instabilities, difficulties and hardships that will typify the rest of our lives. This does not mean we are against the industrial consumer societies that dominate humanity today or are even anti-civilization in our sentiment. It simply means that we are not only grieving their loss but we also do not see a useful role in trying to prop them up any longer. The multiple foundations of modern societies 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 our privileges, comforts, worldviews and identities to connect us to people, nature and even the eternal. We can also allow this breaking to reconnect us with aspects of who we are that have been hidden under the social conditioning we've experienced since birth. We have tended to cling to the products of that conditioning in order to feel safe, respected and able to have fun in ways we already know but we've got to let go and begin breaking together. If you are unconvinced about the empirical basis for such a perspective then I recommend the first half of this book which chronicles the evidence for the view that the collapse of modern societies is already underway due to a range of processes and constraints. If you are already convinced then you could skip to the second half. I hope these pages will help you to make further sense of your situation and how you will live in beneficial relationship with the rest of life during the rest of your time on earth. This introduction has 26 end notes of which most are references but some include paragraphs providing additional context.