Another End of the World is Possible

Living the Collapse (and Not Merely Surviving It)

Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens, Gauthier Chapelle, Geoffrey Samuel

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781509544677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique en matière d'environnement et d'énergie

The critical situation in which our planet finds itself is no longer in doubt. Some things are already collapsing while others are beginning to do so, increasing the possibility of a global catastrophe that would mean the end of the world as we know it.

As individuals, we are faced with a daily deluge of bad news about the worsening situation, preparing ourselves to live with years of deep uncertainty about the future of the planet and the species that inhabit it, including our own. How can we cope? How can we project ourselves beyond the present, think bigger and find ways not just to survive the collapse but to live it?

In this book, the sequel to How Everything Can Collapse, the authors show that a change of course necessarily requires an inner journey and a radical rethinking of our vision of the world. Together these might enable us to remain standing during the coming storm, to develop a new awareness of ourselves and of the world and to imagine new ways of living in it. Perhaps then it will be possible to regenerate life from the ruins, creating new alliances in differing directions – with ourselves and our inner nature, between humans, with other living beings and with the earth on which we dwell.

Part One
Recovery

What man can feel himself at one and the same time responsible and hopeless?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, trans. L. Galantière
(San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1986)

1
Experiencing the impact

You can always turn off the TV, but the news keeps on coming. It is difficult to avoid hearing about the catastrophes from around the world, and when one stops ignoring them or tries to imagine the repercussions, the news is overwhelming. It turns everything upside down. The world as we imagine it is breaking up, we no longer know what to believe in, our emotions come to the surface. We have always found it striking that in survivalist manuals, essays on the Anthropocene, presentations about the climate, political meetings, with a few rare exceptions,¹ little is said about our feelings, except to discuss people’s fear, and the fear of fear. The range of emotions is much wider than that, however, and they have a fundamental impact on the ways in which we think, talk and see the future, and on how we act.

During or after a disaster, psychological trauma affects only a few people directly. However, feelings affect everyone. Emotions are not just ‘options’ that many men never really acquired or that girls use to spice up their evenings when watching a chick flick. They have a tremendous influence on our judgements and decisions, and they are one of the main triggers of human behaviour.² They change our perception of risk³ and can affect our political preferences.⁴

To realize that it is too late to limit global warming to ‘less than 2°C’ and that the consequences are and will be catastrophic, to see the massive decline of animal populations, to discover toxic molecules in the blood of babies, all this causes feelings of fear, anger, sadness, resignation, guilt, helplessness, which disrupt the superficial denial that is our daily life.

There is the news in books and newspapers, but there are also the disasters themselves, that are already physically affecting thousands of people. Floods, droughts, tsunamis, vast bushfires, shortages, dead areas in the oceans, decimated populations of insects, birds, fish or large herbivores, and the rest of it. They have already brought about, and they still cause, real and considerable damage to people, populations or social classes. They all cause both physical and psychological shocks that we will have to continue to deal with in the course of this century.

It will be necessary to forge a heart of steel (though bamboo might be more useful, depending on the circumstances⁵) to endure the storms to come. This chapter explores the psychological aspects of disasters, and more specifically the reactions they cause in us.

Living through the disasters

Whether disasters are natural, caused by industry or result from terrorist acts, they can be sudden, overwhelming and often deadly. They kill, cause injury, depress, cause insanity, lead to sorrow and despair, fear, stress, lack of feeling, etc. They cause huge shocks to both body and spirit.

A global increase in the level of mental trauma

After disasters, the media take stock of human losses and quantify the material damage. The economic damage amounts to millions or billions of euros or dollars, and the victims number in the dozens, hundreds or thousands. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 killed 1,836 people⁶ and cost the American taxpayer the trifling amount of $160 billion,⁷ or nearly 1 per cent of the country’s GDP. In 2011 at Fukushima, after the earthquake and tsunami, there were 15,828 dead, 6,145 injured, 4,823 missing and more than one million homes destroyed.⁸ The cost was estimated at $626 billion, about three times the Japanese government’s first estimate.⁹

Such disasters affect millions of people every year (about 162 million in 2005, 330 million in 2010¹⁰). In the United States, for example, 13–19 per cent of adults experience at least one disaster in their lifetime.¹¹ These numbers are increasing worldwide in the face of climate change and increasing population density.¹²

If the number of deaths is relatively low compared to the number of people affected (in 2010, 0.1 per cent of the 330 million people affected died), what happens to the survivors?

Behind these cold, dry figures is hidden another reality, often forgotten and yet of vital significance: the psychological consequences of a disaster last even longer than the physical traumas.¹³ Their intensity and frequency will continue to increase. To know how to understand, manage and treat these types of traumas is fundamental to prepare us for future shocks.

During such an event, the first reactions are paralysis, denial, action (saving loved ones, for example) or flight. The shock can cause intense stress, then more lasting reactions such as anxiety, irritability, despair, apathy, loss of self-esteem, guilt, depression, confusion, insomnia, eating disorders or difficulties in making decisions.

Some people continue to react to the initial shock long after the danger has passed. When the reaction to trauma interferes with daily life, mental health professionals speak of ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD). In recent decades, hundreds of psychiatric studies have been conducted on this topic.¹⁴ They show that symptoms can take up to six months to appear. Specific social categories, including women and children, are more vulnerable.¹⁵ Note also that PTSD is not the only severe symptom; other major problems can include depression, generalized anxiety and panic attacks.¹⁶

A catastrophic event can also lead to serious but less visible disorders. In a recent study around Fukushima, researchers at Harvard University were able for the first time to compare the health of a population before and after a major disaster.¹⁷ It emerged that in people over sixty-five years of age, the rate of dementia almost tripled, mainly because of the loss of neighbourhood ties.

Gradual disruptions are also effective in disrupting our mental health. For example, in the USSR, as early as the 1970s, well before the Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991 in a ‘strangely peaceful atmosphere, without Kalashnikov fire or missile threats’,¹⁸ the country was already in serious decline. All the countries in the Soviet bloc suffered the consequences of these processes of economic, social and political collapse.¹⁹ An entire generation was marked by the experience of drastic fluctuations in available resources and by the increasing uncertainty appearing in all facets of life.²⁰

This period of collapse was characterized by an accelerating decline in life expectancy. For example, in Russia, between 1992 and 1994, men lost more than six years (from 63.8 to 57.7 years) and women over three years (from 74.4 to 71.2 years). The causes? Increased stress, a failing health system, infectious diseases, suicides, homicides, as well as road accidents and excessive alcohol consumption, especially in Russia for adolescents and young adults.

The suicide rate for men aged fifty to sixty, which increased sharply after 1992, was strongly correlated with the state of the economy (as measured by GDP). For women, it was found to be closely linked to alcohol consumption. Alcoholism played a major role in this social and health chaos, especially for people who were not solidly supported psychologically by those around them. The number of murders tripled be...