To all those who feel fear, sadness and anger.
To all those who act as if we were all in the same boat.
To the ‘rough weather networks’ inspired by Joanna Macy, that swarm and connect.
polity
First published in French as Comment tout peut s’effondrer: Petit manuel de collapsologie à l’usage des générations présentes © Éditions du Seuil, 2015
This English edition © Polity Press, 2020
‘For The Children’ by Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island, copyright ©1974 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4140-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Servigne, Pablo, author. | Stevens, Raphaël, author. | Brown, Andrew (Literary translator), translator.
Title: How everything can collapse : a manual for our times / Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens ; translated by Andrew Brown.
Other titles: Comment tout peut s’effondrer. English.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity, [2020] | “First published in French as Comment tout peut s’effondrer: Petit manuel de collapsologie à l’usage des générations présentes © Éditions du Seuil, 2015.” | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “A brave book that confronts directly the very real possibility that our civilization will collapse”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019045588 (print) | LCCN 2019045589 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509541386 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509541393 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509541409 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Regression (Civilization) | Crises (Philosophy) | Climatic changes--Effect of human beings on. | Global environmental change--Forecasting. | Forecasting.
Classification: LCC CB151 .S4713 2020 (print) | LCC CB151 (ebook) | DDC 909--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045588
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045589
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Ecological catastrophes looming worldwide at a time of demographic growth, inequalities due to the local scarcity of water, the end of cheap energy, the increasing scarcity of many minerals, the undermining of biodiversity, soil erosion and pollution, extreme climatic events and so on will produce the greatest inequalities between those able to protect themselves from these problems (at least for a time), and those who will suffer from them. These catastrophes will undermine the geopolitical balance, and trigger conflict. The extent of the social disasters they may cause has led, in the past, to the disappearance of whole societies. This, alas, is an objective historical reality. […] Once the collapse of the species appears as a conceivable possibility, the state of emergency will have no time for our slow and complex processes of deliberation. The West will be panic-stricken, and will transgress its values of freedom and justice.
Michel Rocard (former French Prime Minister), Dominique Bourg (Professor at the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, University of Lausanne) and Floran Augagneur (Professor of the Philosophy of Ecology at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris), 2011
There is some probability that oil production will peak around 2010, and this will have consequences for security within fifteen to thirty years. […] In the medium term, the global economic system as well as each national market economy could collapse.
Report of the Bundeswehr (German Army), 2010
The following risks are identified with great certainty: […] 3. Systemic risks due to extreme weather phenomena leading to the breakdown of infrastructure networks and essential services such as electricity, the water supply, and health and emergency services. […] 5. Risk of food insecurity and disruption of food systems.
Fifth Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014
Our global civilization today is on an economic path that is environmentally unsustainable, a path that is leading us toward economic decline and eventual collapse.
Lester Brown (founder of Worldwatch Institute, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute), Plan B 2.0, 2006
Probably the greatest agreement among scholars, though, is that the failing civilizations suffered from growing hubris and overconfidence: the belief that their capabilities after many earlier tests would always rise to the occasion and that growing signs of weakness could be ignored as pessimistic.
Jeremy Grantham (investor, co-founder of Grantham Mayo van Otterloo (GMO), one of the largest fund managers on the planet), 2013
Systems often hold longer than we think, but they end up by collapsing much faster than we imagine.
Ken Rogoff (former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund), 2012
Can humanity avoid a starvation-driven collapse? Yes, we can – though we currently put the odds at just 10 per cent. As dismal as that sounds, we believe that, for the benefit of future generations, it is worth struggling to make it 11 per cent.
Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich (Professors of Biology at Stanford University), 2013
When we read the latest news of disasters, extreme weather, changes to our planet and scientists’ warnings, it is natural to feel unease, even fear. Some of you may have even suffered direct consequences of climate chaos, such as failing harvests, forest fires or political unrest from prolonged drought. If so, I want to recognize at the outset that my own anxiety about the future is nothing compared to what you have already been through. And that people like me can learn from you. Yet all of us are now being affected by the climate crisis in some way, whether it is from rising prices or the rise of extremism as people feel unsafe and uncertain. Many of us have busy lives and obligations, which means that although we sense this growing danger, it is difficult to turn towards it. Without time to delve into this issue, how can I know what the real situation is? What are the issues to consider or the options we have? Who should we talk to about it all?
These are the difficulties for even starting a conversation about the breakdown or collapse of the society we live in due to climate change. It is why this book is so helpful in starting the conversation. The first step in engaging with this topic is to allow yourself to consider ‘what if’ the future is as difficult for humanity, everywhere, as some of the scholars are now saying. If you do allow that outlook into your consciousness, then you are embarking on a bizarre ride.
Well, at least it has been a bizarre ride for me! Every person’s journey on this topic will be different, especially when the months go by and the impacts will worsen while more of our friends, colleagues and neighbours will wake up to our predicament.
First, there is the self-doubt.
Is it really so bad? Might someone or some technology be able to stop it? Is it helpful to have such a negative outlook on the future? Does that mean I have a negative view on human nature? Will I be able to cope with life if I accept such a bleak view of our future? Such doubts are natural, even before we begin to talk to others about our perspective.
Second, there are painful emotions.
Once one has accepted that our societies will break down or collapse, there can be great sorrow, fear and confusion. How did we do this to life on Earth? Who are we as a species? What could I do to help the people I love? What could I do to help humanity and nature? How bad will it get? Where and when? It can be normal to experience moments of panic. Some of us can also feel like blaming someone, as anger provides a momentary release from our fear. We might also jump from one simple answer or preoccupation to another. Yet none of these mental habits will distract us from the underlying pain for very long.
Third, there is a sense of isolation.
Who can I talk to about this? Will they think I am overly anxious or depressed? Will they be traumatized, so I will feel bad about triggering their pain? How can I talk about this with young people? Where is there advice or guidance on how to be with this perspective, let alone how to start changing my life as a result?
Fourth, there is a new community.
Suddenly we find people we can talk to about the situation and share ideas about how we live with it and what to do next. I have experienced the excitement of meeting people in this way. Yet also there is pain because the joy of connection then increases the sense of forthcoming loss. As the situation we connect with is so challenging, emotions can run high. More community means more of every human emotion.
Fifth, there is the backlash.
What did he say about me? Why would she say that it is immoral to have concluded how bad our situation is? Why is there such anger in their criticism? What are they hiding from themselves? Shall I just disengage in conversations with them and live my own truth? If I do, does that mean I am giving up on engaging in society to try and reduce harm? Why should I have to do that?
Sixth, there is the transformation.
But there is not one path of transformation. You will have your experience and come to your own conclusions. One reason I introduced a ‘deep adaptation’ framework was to open up conversations on the myriad of potential responses once we believe that the breakdown or collapse of our civilization is likely or inevitable within our own lifetimes. Your inner and outer transformation could be supported through new-found community and resources like this book, but ultimately you need to find your own path in what is completely new territory for humanity.
Seventh, there is dying well.
Although we all die, modern society seems to hide this away from our daily consciousness. An awakening to our climate predicament is an awakening to our common mortality and impermanence more generally. Often we talk of responding to climate chaos, including how it can transform our lives, can focus on what we can do differently, where there is an assumption it is only about how we live differently. That is not enough. Instead, we can ask what dying well might look like for us. What do I want to look back on? How do I want to approach death? What might I die for? How do I feel about what happens, if anything, after death? How might I help others to approach the death of themselves and others more consciously and lovingly?
I share with you some of these steps to map some of the new reality for people who are collapse-aware. I think I do that because I want to belong. I want to engage in conversations where we weave new stories of being in these troubling times. That is why I welcome the work of people like Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens and Gauthier Chapelle. Because the first step towards opening those new conversations that create new stories and belonging is to break the taboo around climate-induced collapse. When I wrote my paper on ‘deep adaptation’ to imminent climate collapse, I was not aware that Pablo and Raphaël suggested calling this nascent field of scholarship ‘collapsology’. There certainly wasn’t such a field within my own area of expertise. As I explained in my paper, it was taboo. Since the paper went viral around the world, I discovered people exploring this terrain and changing their lives. Thousands of people were getting in touch, and so I encouraged them all to connect with each other by launching a Deep Adaptation Forum. We are mostly an English-language network, yet I am keen to learn from the work in France and elsewhere. This book will help you to discover that work and join an ever-widening conversation about what to do in the face of this most difficult predicament.
It requires some courage to break a taboo. It requires some courage to make people aware of darkness that they had not seen before or had turned away from. Especially when that darkness is not only in the changing climate and the institutions that have damaged our world but also within us. Because we have all participated in both the creation of this disaster and the ignoring of it. Or have been satisfied with ineffectual action that provided us with a believable myth of being a good person. As such, climate chaos is an invitation to go deeper into self-reflection and learn about why we have participated in such destruction. From that inquiry, we may find ways of living that avoid making matters worse. Bringing attention to the darkness around us, ahead of us and inside of us is essential if we are then to light candles of wisdom. People who are bringing attention to the darkness are also lighting candles of wisdom. Candles only shine within darkness. As more candles are lit, so we can see each other anew. We can connect with what is burning inside our hearts and live from that truth more fully than before.
Professor Jem Bendell, author of Deep Adaptation
Thanks are due to Christophe Bonneuil, Gauthier Chapelle, Élise Monette, Olivier Alléra, Daniel Rodary, Jean Chanel, Yves Cochet and Flore Boudet for their attentive, courageous and benevolent readings, with a special mention for Yves Cochet, who offered us the postscript, and our editor Christophe Bonneuil, who believed in our ideas and our project and who guided us with unfailing patience. Thanks also to Sophie Lhuillier and Charles Olivero at Le Seuil for their close and patient work. The idea for the final poem goes back to our brother Gauthier Chapelle, an essential link in the networks in these difficult times, and now a seasoned collapsologist. Thanks also to Agnès Sinaï, Yves Cochet (again) and to friends of the Institut Momentum for creating a place and opportunities for such fertile exchanges around these taboo topics, and to our friends at Barricade, Etopia, Nature & Progrès, BeTransition, Imagine and Réfractions for allowing these ideas to live before we wrote our manuscript. The material conditions of research and writing were particularly difficult at the end of 2014, and so we feel an immense gratitude for our partners, families, friends and neighbours who supported this birth by creating the right material and psychological conditions for us. Thank you, therefore, to Élise, Stéphanie, Nelly and Michel, Chantal and Pierre, Brigitte and Philippe, Monique, Benoît and Caroline, Antoine and Sandrine, Thomas and Noëlle, Philippe and Martine, Pierre-Antoine and Gwendoline, and the B’z! Finally, thank you to everyone who came to talk to us after the conferences, workshops and training sessions and who encouraged us to continue this research.
Crises, disasters, collapses, decline … Apocalypse can be read between the lines of the daily news from across the world. While some disasters are real enough and supply our newspapers with their news items – plane crashes, hurricanes, floods, the decline in the number of bees, slumps in the stock market, and wars – is it justifiable to suggest that our society is ‘heading for disaster’, to announce a ‘global planetary crisis’, or to point to a ‘sixth mass extinction of species’?
It has become a paradox: we have to face this deluge of disasters in the media, but we’re unable to talk explicitly about the really big catastrophes without being called alarmists or ‘catastrophists’! Everyone, for example, knew that the IPCC had issued a new report on climate change in 2014, but did we see any real debate about these new climate scenarios and their implications in terms of social change? No, of course not. Too catastrophist.
Perhaps we’re tired of bad news. And in any case, hasn’t the end of the world always been looming? Isn’t taking the darkest possible view of the future a typically European or western piece of narcissism? Isn’t catastrophism a new opium of the people, distilled by ecological ayatollahs and scientists in need of funding? Come on, everybody, give it a bit of welly – we’ll soon have put paid to the ‘crisis’!
But perhaps we don’t actually know how to talk about disasters – the real ones, those that last, those that don’t fit into the news cycle. After all, let’s admit it: we’re facing some serious problems to do with the environment, energy, climate change, geopolitics, and social and economic issues, problems that are now at a point of no return. Few people say it, but all these ‘crises’ are interconnected, influencing and intensifying each other. We now have a huge bundle of evidence suggesting that we’re up against growing systemic instabilities that pose a serious threat to the ability of several human populations – and indeed human beings as a whole – to maintain themselves in a sustainable environment.
It’s not the end of the world, nor the Apocalypse. Nor is it a simple crisis from which we can emerge unscathed or a one-off disaster that we can forget after a few months, like a tsunami or a terrorist attack. A collapse is ‘the process at the end of which basic needs (water, food, housing, clothing, energy, etc.) can no longer be provided [at a reasonable cost] to a majority of the population by services under legal supervision’.1 So it’s a large-scale, irreversible process – just like the end of the world, admittedly, except that it’s not the end! It looks as if the consequences will last for a long time, and we’ll need to live through them. And one thing is certain: we don’t have the means to know what they will consist of. On the other hand, if our ‘basic needs’ are affected, it is easy to imagine that the situation could become immeasurably catastrophic.
But how far will it all extend? Who will be affected? The poorest countries? France? Europe? All the rich countries? The industrialized world? Western civilization? All of humankind? Or even, as some scientists are predicting, the vast majority of living species? There are no clear answers to these questions, but one thing is certain: none of these possibilities can be ruled out. The ‘crises’ we are experiencing affect all these categories: for example, the end of oil concerns the whole of the industrialized world (but not the small traditional peasant societies that have been left out by globalization), whereas climate change threatens human beings as a whole, as well as a large proportion of living species.
Scientific publications that envisage global catastrophes and an increasing probability of collapse are becoming more numerous and better supported by the evidence. The Royal Society published an article by Paul and Anne Ehrlich on this subject in 2013, leaving little doubt about the outcome.2 The consequences of the global environmental changes viewed as likely in the second half of the twenty-first century are becoming all too evident in the light of ever more precise and overwhelming numerical data. The climate is heating up, biodiversity is collapsing, pollution is ubiquitous and becoming persistent, the economy risks going into cardiac arrest at every moment, social and geopolitical tensions are growing, etc. It is not unusual to see decision makers at the highest level, and official reports from major institutions (the World Bank, the armed forces, the IPCC, banks, NGOs, etc.), discussing the possibility of collapse, or what Prince Charles calls ‘suicide on a grand scale’.3
More broadly, the Anthropocene is the name given to this new geological era, namely our own present.4 We – human beings – emerged from the Holocene, a time of remarkable climatic stability that lasted about twelve thousand years and allowed the emergence of agriculture and civilization. In recent decades, humans (or at least many of them, in growing numbers) have become capable of upsetting the large biogeochemical cycles of the Earth system, thereby creating a new era of profound and unpredictable change.
However, these findings and figures are ‘cold’. How does all this affect our daily lives? Don’t you feel that there is a huge gap that needs to be filled, a link that needs to be forged between these great scientific statements, so rigorous and all encompassing, and the everyday life that gets lost in the details, in the clutter of the unexpected and the heat of our emotions? It’s precisely this gap that our book seeks to fill, drawing a connection between the Anthropocene and your gut feelings. For that purpose, we have chosen the notion of ‘collapse’ because it allows us to play on several registers, tackling both the rates of biodiversity decline and the emotions related to disasters, and to discuss the risk of famine. This is a concept that involves both popular images drawn from cinema (who can fail to visualize Mel Gibson out in the desert, armed with a pump shotgun?) and narrowly focused scientific reports; it allows us to approach different temporalities (from the urgency of daily life to geological time) while comfortably navigating between past and future; and it allows us to draw a connection between, for example, the Greek social and economic crisis and the large-scale disappearance of populations of birds and insects in China and Europe. In short, it is this concept that brings to tangible life the notion of the Anthropocene.
And yet, in media and intellectual circles, the question of collapse is not taken seriously. The notorious computer bug that threatened to strike in 2000, and the ‘Mayan event’ of 21 December 2012, put paid to the possibility of any serious and factual argument. Anyone who publicly mentions a ‘collapse’ is seen as announcing the Apocalypse, and relegated to the narrow category of those ‘credulous believers’ in the ‘irrational’ who have ‘always existed’. End of story. Time to change the subject! The process of automatically dismissing such talk – a dismissal which, as it happens, itself appears truly irrational – has left public debate in such a state of intellectual disrepair that it is no longer possible to express oneself without adopting one of two simplistic standpoints which often border on the ridiculous. On the one hand, we are subjected to apocalyptic, survivalist or pseudo-Mayan language; on the other hand, we have to endure the ‘progressive’ denials of Luc Ferry, Claude Allègre, Pascal Bruckner and their ilk. These two postures, both frenziedly clinging to their respective myths (the myth of the Apocalypse vs the myth of progress), reinforce each other, view each other as a scarecrow and share a phobia for dignified and respectful debate. All of this just reinforces the attitude of uninhibited collective denial that is such a prominent feature of our times.
Despite the high quality of some of the philosophical reflections on this topic,5 the debate on collapse (or ‘the end of a world’) fails because of the absence of factual arguments. It is stuck in imaginary or philosophical speculation without any real factual grounding. The books dealing with collapse are usually too specialized, restricted by their point of view or discipline (archaeology, economics, ecology, etc.), while more systematic discussions are full of gaps. Jared Diamond’s bestseller Collapse, for example, sticks to the archaeology, ecology and biogeography of ancient civilizations and does not address some of the essential questions of the current situation.6 As for other popular books, they usually tackle the question by adopting a survivalist position (telling you how to make bows and arrows, or how to find drinking water in a world plagued by fire and the sword), giving the reader all the thrills of watching a zombie movie.
Not only do we lack any real inventory – or better, any systematic analysis – of the planet’s economic and biophysical situation, but above all we lack an overview of what a collapse might look like, how it might be triggered and what it would imply in psychological, sociological and political terms for the present generations. We lack any real applied, transdisciplinary science of collapse.
We here propose, by drawing on information from many scattered works published across the world, to create the basics of what, with a certain self-deprecating irony, we have called ‘collapsology’ (from the Latin collapsus, ‘a fallen mass’). The goal is not to indulge in the mere scientific pleasure of accumulating knowledge but rather to shed light on what is happening and might happen to us, in other words, to give meaning to events. It is also and above all a way of treating the subject as seriously as possible so that we can calmly discuss the policies that need to be implemented.
The issues that emerge whenever the word ‘collapse’ is so much as mentioned are many and varied. What do we know about the overall state of our Earth? Or the state of our civilization? Is a collapse in stock market prices comparable to a collapse in biodiversity? Can the conjunction and perpetuation of ‘crises’ actually drag our civilization into an inescapable whirlpool? How far can all this go? How long will it last? Will we manage to maintain our democratic reflexes? Can we live more or less peacefully through a ‘civilized’ collapse? Will the outcome inevitably be entirely negative?
Immersing ourselves in the word ‘collapse’, understanding its subtleties and nuances, distinguishing between fact and fantasy – these are some of the objectives of collapsology. We need to take this notion apart and conjugate it in different tenses to give it texture, detail, and nuance: we need, in short, to make of it a living and fully operational concept. Whether we are thinking of Mayan civilization, the Roman Empire or more recently the USSR, history shows us that there are varying degrees of collapse, and that, even if there are constants, each case is unique.
Moreover, the world is not uniform. The question of ‘North-South relations’ needs to be considered in a new light. An average American consumes a lot more resources and energy than an average African. However, the consequences of global heating will be far worse in countries close to the equator – precisely those which have emitted the least gas and contributed least to the greenhouse effect. It seems obvious that the temporality of a collapse will not be linear and its geography will not be homogeneous.
So this isn’t a book that is meant to scare you. We will not be dealing with millenarian eschatology, nor with the potential astrophysical or tectonic events that could trigger a mass extinction of species of the kind the Earth saw sixty-five million years ago. We have enough to deal with when we look at what humans can do all by themselves. Nor is this a pessimistic book that doesn’t believe in the future, nor a ‘positive’ book that minimizes the problem by providing ‘solutions’ in the last chapter. It’s a book that attempts lucidly to set out the facts, to ask relevant questions, and to assemble a toolbox which will make it possible to grasp the subject other than through Hollywood disaster movies, the Mayan calendar or ‘techno-bliss’. We are not just presenting a ‘top ten’ of the century’s bad news stories, we are mainly proposing a theoretical framework for hearing about, understanding and welcoming all the small-scale initiatives that are already facing up to the ‘post-carbon’ world, initiatives that are emerging at breakneck speed.
However, rationality alone is not enough to tackle such a subject. We have been interested in collapsology for some years now, and our experience – especially our meetings with the public – has taught us that facts and figures alone are not enough to give an adequate picture of the situation. We definitely need to add intuition, emotions and a certain ethics. Collapsology is not a neutral science detached from its object of study. ‘Collapsologists’ are directly affected by what they are studying. They cannot remain neutral anymore. They must not do so!
Taking such a path is a risky business. Collapse is a toxic subject that reaches right down into the core of your being. It’s a huge shock, a sobering wake-up call. During these years of research, we have been submerged by waves of anxiety, anger and deep sadness before feeling, very gradually, a certain acceptance, and sometimes even hope and joy. By reading books on transition, such as Rob Hopkins’s famous handbook,7 we have been able to connect these emotions to the stages of mourning. We can mourn the loss of one vision of the future. Indeed, starting to understand and then to believe in the possibility of a collapse finally involves giving up on the future we had imagined. It means being forcibly deprived of the hopes, dreams and expectations that we had forged for ourselves since earliest childhood and those that we had nursed for our children. Accepting the possibility of a collapse means accepting the death of a future that was dear to us, a future that was reassuring, however irrational it might have been. What a wrench!
We have also had the unpleasant experience of seeing the anger of those close to us projecting itself onto us and crystallizing in us. This is a well-known phenomenon: in order to stave off bad news, we prefer to kill the messengers, the Cassandras and the whistle-blowers. But besides the fact that this does not solve the problem of collapse, we will warn the reader right now that we are not very fond of this kind of outcome…. Let’s talk about collapse, but calmly. It’s true that the possibility of a collapse shuts down certain futures dear to us; this comes as a real shock, but it opens up countless other futures, some surprisingly cheerful. The challenge, then, is to tame these new futures and make them viable.
A gap has sometimes yawned between us and friends and colleagues who still clung to – and defended – an imaginary vision of continuity and linear progress. Over the years, we have clearly distanced ourselves from the , that is to say the general opinion that gives a common meaning to the news of the world. Carry out the experiment for yourselves: listen to the news with this perspective in mind and you’ll see the huge gap between and reality. It’s a strange feeling to be part of this world (more than ever), while being cut off from the dominant image that other people have of it. This often forces us to think about the relevance of our work. Have we gone crazy or become single-issue bores? Not necessarily. On the one hand, dialogue is always possible and, on the other, we cannot ignore the fact that we are far from being alone, as the number of collapsologists (which includes, strangely enough, many engineers and scientists) and other people sensitized to this theme is growing and turning into a self-aware movement, an ever denser and more interconnected network. In many countries, economic, scientific and military experts, as well as certain political movements (the degrowth movement, transition movement, Alternatiba, etc.), have no hesitation about openly discussing collapse scenarios. The worldwide blogosphere, although mainly English-speaking, is very active. In France, the Institut Momentum has done pioneering work in this field, and we owe it a great deal. It is now difficult to ignore the coming collapse.
In the first part of this book, we will discuss the facts: what is it happening to our societies and to the Earth system? Are we really on the brink of disaster? Where is the most convincing evidence? We will see that it is the convergence of all ‘crises’ that makes this outcome possible. However, an overall collapse has not yet taken place (at least not in North Europe – Greece and Spain may be premonitory examples). We must therefore tackle the perilous subject of futurology. So, in a second part, we will try to gather the evidence for this future. Finally, the third part will be an invitation to give concrete thickness to this notion of collapse. Why don’t people believe in it? What do ancient civilizations teach us about it? How do people manage to live with it? How will we as a social body respond if this process lasts for dozens of years? What policies should we consider, not to avoid this eventuality but to get through it as ‘humanely’ as possible? Can we suffer a collapse in full awareness of what’s happening? Is the situation so serious?