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DEEP
ADAPTATION
QUARTERLY | | | |
Welcome to a summary of
recent opinion and activity in the field
of deep
adaptation. This independently-produced,
free publication explores collapse risk,
readiness, and response. We take a critical
perspective on the culture and systems that led to
our predicament, and celebrate the solidarity
amongst people in response. To unsubscribe,
use the link at the end of this email. If you
prefer only to receive content from DAF, we
recommend subscribing to their blog or events
newsletter. | |
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“This is a prophetic
book,” remarked Satish Kumar, founder of
Schumacher College, about my new book: Breaking Together: a freedom-loving
response to collapse. Co-founder of Extinction
Rebellion, Clare Farrell, said “if you want to
save some of the world, but hate being told what
to do, this book is for you.” Charles
Eisenstein reflected that the book is part of a
“healing movement” wider than the ecological. I
was very encouraged to receive their advance
endorsements, as the ebook went in at #1 on the
Amazon bestseller list in the ‘political freedom’
category. You can read more about the book on my
blog, and already order it here, if you use
Kindle.
Although the hardback is not cheap (being
aimed at organisations), the paperback is out on
June 18th, and from July 10th the book will be
free as an epub from the Schumacher Institute. That date
marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of
Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher. I
have come to regard that classic text as offering
a coherent analysis that the environmental
profession increasingly ignored as it became more
compromised and self-serving. That day I will
participate in an online Q&A with participants
from the Deep Adaptation Leadership group on
LinkedIn. If interested in joining us, sign up here.
I am
focusing on my book in this editorial partly
because it results from a hard two years of
research. But also because I want to invite you to
consider what a policy and politics agenda for
collapse-anticipators could involve, if you
haven’t done so already. You can get a summary of
the ideas via a free audio of the introduction and
of Chapter 1 on economic
collapse.
I recently spoke with GQ Magazine about the
writing of this book. The research process
was not fun for any of us involved, because we
were analysing so many interconnecting problems
and discovering the limitations of so many
proposed solutions. However, the second half
of the book offers a positive way of making sense
of this situation and celebrates the people who
are responding creatively and courageously. I hope
it will help more people move into a ‘post-doom’
mindset and experiment with different ways of
living as a result. Some early reviews of the book are
indicating that kind of impact.
I
will launch the paperback and audiobook of
Breaking Together in the UK in Glastonbury Town Hall on June
18th (with speakers including Rachel Donald
and Gail Bradbrook), and will also discuss it at
a movie premiere in Berlin on August
1st.
If you are interested in joining
others wanting to integrate these ideas into your
own leadership, then I recommend the only academic
course I am teaching this year, online in November with my
University. To be updated on when the various book
formats are out, and on my presentations over the
next 12 months (in Italy, Belgium, and Indonesia),
subscribe to my blog.
In
this edition of the DA Quarterly, we provide
summaries of recent publications and opinions that
indicate a potential politics of collapse is
becoming visible. That indicate the field of
collapse-readiness is developing beyond
psychological support, local 'prepping', and
self-analysis. In addition, we highlight instances
of censorship by Bigtech, which suggests an
apolitical stance on collapse-anticipation would
mean accepting it will be marginalised in public
discourse. We append news from the DA Forum,
which has switched to an entirely volunteer-led
initiative. As it was designed to not become
dependent on funding to serve its function of
connecting people around the theme of
collapse-readiness and response, I hope it will
continue to provide a meeting place for people who
come to this awareness and could use support in
exploring what to do next.
To keep
producing the DA Quarterly we need some funds.
Therefore, if you would like to continue receiving
these summaries of key information in the broad
field of societal disruption and collapse,
please consider contributing to the DA
Quarterly crowdfund (information below). If
the target is not reached, this issue will
unfortunately be the final DA
Quarterly.
Warm regards,
Jem Bendell,
Publisher, DA
Quarterly | |
HELP US KEEP THIS
INFO CIRCULATING!
Our 2-week crowdfund
ends May 30th.
We are crowdfunding a target of
3500 GBP to cover the costs to produce and
circulate four issues a year. Unless requesting
anonymity, every donor of a one-time gift of 50
GBP or more will be listed as a patron of the DA
Quarterly in the subsequent issue. Every regular
donor of 25 GBP or more per month will be listed
as a patron in each issue, with a link to their
relevant activities.
Any funds raised
above 3500 GBP will go to educational activities
for youth engagement in positive responses to an
anticipation or experience of societal
disruption and collapse (activities that will be
reported on in future DA Quarterlies). Funds are
managed by the Schumacher Institute, a
UK-regulated charity. So please contribute, or encourage
someone richer than you (by forwarding them this
newsletter)!
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Extinction Rebellion's
The Big One. By Jessica
Groenendijk. | |
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As a window on the
world of collapse, this newsletter reflects on
ways to find meaning, and to support the work and
healing of others.
| |
The debate continues on
just how bad future changes in climate will
be, whatever is done to curb emissions and
draw down carbon. Sometimes an independent scholar
can analyse the latest science in a field that's
not their own to provide an insightful overview.
That can happen when they seek salience amongst
the noise from the volume of publications, as well
as understanding wider contexts that might be
ignored by specialists. This piece by Matt Colborn on
catastrophic scenarios from climate science
demonstrates the power of such external analysis.
Sometimes someone takes the
time to analyse why mainstream climatologists
working with the IPCC failed to get the message
out for decades, but now support fairytale
technologies in order to make it seem like modern
civilisation can tame future climate change. One
such analysis came from Jackson Damian. The backlash
from experts at top universities was predictable,
including their ‘shoot the messenger’ approach. At
some point, serious climate activists will drop
their deference to scientists who seek to defend
the status of the establishment that they are
wedded to.
Whenever someone
allows the latest analysis of our environmental
predicament to impact them, an existential crisis
is never far away. For many people, reflecting on
deeper questions of the nature and meaning of life
are part of the process of trying to find a way
out of despair. The organisation Media Lens
published a blog on their co-editor’s
journey with despair. Unfortunately, the learnings
and outputs from the people engaged in Deep
Adaptation were not cited - a sign of the
continuing need for people to discover each other
when grappling with their anticipation or
experience of societal
breakdown.
The need to
meet and process emotions around the environmental
predicament remains, even if various vehicles to
meet that need come and go. An article in The
Guardian, Singing to trees and Indigenous
wisdom: the UK festival aiming to prevent
ecological collapse, highlighted how
there are increasing numbers of cultural
gatherings in the UK that show similarities with
Deep Adaptation methodologies, such as authentic
relating and ecopsychology.
In
her blog Hero Addiction, Anja Byg,
volunteer editor with the Deep Adaptation Forum,
explores ‘the dark side of our hero fixation’ and
her own feelings of despair in the face of
humanity’s ‘logic of overcoming and subduing.’ How
can we move away from hero and anti-hero
stereotypes and expectations, and instead value
stories of community and collaboration, acceptance
of failings and helplessness, and wisdom in the
face of something ‘too strong, too vast’? Anja
doesn’t have the answers (she’s no hero, she
writes). And that’s okay.
The
tactics of people involved in the last few years
of climate activism have been evolving in myriad
ways. This was well articulated by former finance
lead of Extinction Rebellion, Andrew Medhurst, in
an article for Resilience, Life after Extinction (Rebellion):
From raising the alarm to starting a
farm. He explained that although XR has
stuck almost entirely to an emissions-cutting
agenda, its founding members are choosing new
paths that incorporate their anticipation of
societal collapse. It leads some to talk of the
potential for revolution as systems break down,
others to focus on community resilience, others to
concentrate on international solidarity, and
others to do all of those and
more.
For years many climate
activists have avoided being too specific about
their politics. That has meant they have served as
external pressure that venture capitalists then
benefit from as they drive their ecomodern agendas
through governments around the world. The backlash
to the resultant policies is growing. For
instance, the Post Carbon Institute has increased
the volume on its criticism of the corporate
hijack of environmentalism in How Ecomodernists Hijacked the
Environmental Movement: Technotopian Bullshit and
a Raging Case of God
Complex.
With Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. entering the US presidential race, some
additional attention is being paid to a
traditional environmentalist theme that has
otherwise waned in recent years. It is the
critique of the alignment, or even merger, of
the interests of large corporations and
institutions of government. RFK Jr. has been
known for not only legally challenging corporate
abuse of power regarding environmental concerns,
but also for health concerns, which meant he was
cast by corporate media as a radical and
illegitimate voice during the pandemic. In May,
the NGO he founded published a call for a return to a
freedom-loving environmentalism, that
recognises current corporatism is accelerating
societal collapse.
With that
critique in mind, the big elephant in the room we
need to talk about is capitalism. Or perhaps
‘necrocapitalism.’ The term was coined by
Scholars' Warning signatory Professor Bobby
Banerjee, in 2008, when describing contemporary
forms of organisational accumulation that involve
dispossession and subjugation. Now, a contemporary
blogger on societal collapse, George Tsakraklides,
mentions the term when exploring why humanity
has been unable to avert collapse. A vibrant
voice on collapse, George rightly points to the
heart of the problem: capitalism. Sometimes he
equates that with the whole of humanity, with
statements like "Humanity has, rather
unconsciously, decided to engage in a futile war
with the entire planet." However, when not
downplaying any distinction between peoples,
cultures, and classes, Tsakraklides is a lively contributor to
discussions in this
field.
One hub for
content on the potential political agenda of the
collapse-aware is Planet Critical. Hosted by
Rachel Donald, guests cover topics such as the role of economic systems in
societal collapse, why appropriation of the resources
of the Global South means it can’t go green,
why transitioning to renewables is not
possible without economic transformation, and
the importance of community-based approaches to the
predicament we
face.
Unfortunately, the dark
arts of public persuasion and neo-censorship are
beginning to be applied against those of us who
conclude that the future is going to be further
disrupted by environmental change. It is now known
that organisations working with, and/or funded by,
the US government, are involved in editing what
the world sees through platforms like YouTube,
Google, Facebook, and Instagram, that are owned by
US bigtech companies. This is done within the
context of ‘national security’, yet extends into
areas of public discourse that have nothing to do
with actual threats to national security. This
explains why Facebook censored the aforementioned
GQ article on climate doomism. Worse, there
are now efforts by parts of this ‘censorship
industrial complex’ to encourage media outlets to
connect realistic outlooks on the future as
leading to extremism and violence. Take, for
instance, Generation Doomer: How Nihilism on
Social Media is Creating a New Generation of
Extremists. Linked to this approach is the
argument that the youth mental health crisis
in the US stems from the views of people with
realistic expectations of the future, rather than
the gaslighting and lack of compassionate and
creative engagement around that situation. As
elites increasingly seek to silence discussion of
reality and blame, or even criminalize those who
point to that reality, it will no longer be
possible to remain apolitical if
collapse-aware. Sharing content like this
newsletter by emailing individuals, rather than
relying on social media posts being seen, is one
response. | |
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An academic article explored
what anticipation of collapse might mean for
imagination and therefore action. Deep
Adaptation is about positive action without
attachment to outcome. However, the way it
might shape new motivating visions for the future
has been little explored before
now. | |
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“The world as we have
created it,” said Albert Einstein, “is a
process of our thinking. It cannot be changed
without changing our thinking.” What, if
anything, can change our thinking? Jane Gray
Morrison and Michael Charles Tobias wrote Terminal Philosophy Syndrome: A
Wake-Up Call for All | Psychology Today to
explore “whether there might not be some
alternative to humanity jumping off that cliff.”
Their conclusion? “Recognition that our
species’ capacity to venerate nature in all her
quirks and ellipses, stochastic incalculables
and steadfast patterns, her graces and
unimagined diversity, is our only chance of at
least partial survival into an unknown
future.” Read this sobering, wise, and
insightful book and see if you
agree. | | |
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A free online book, ‘A Little Book of Insurgent
Planning’, from the group Just Collapse,
provides examples of what action we can take
collectively at the local level. It’s about
communities organising, planning, and taking
action for their basic needs as systems
crumble, and includes examples of what the authors
describe as "insurgent planning" in cultures and
communities around the
world. | |
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In his review of Breaking Together, Andrew
Medhurst (formerly the finance lead in XR)
writes that "For a long time I had assumed,
like the author, collapse was a specific future
event, but Bendell explains how the study of
ancient and recent history indicates “collapse
of a society is typically a process, not an
event”. The evidence for the “uneven ending” of
some of the most basic needs of people in
industrial consumer societies (e.g., sustenance,
shelter, health and security) is provided in the
first half of the book. Each of the first six
chapters considers a specific aspect of collapse
– economic, the biosphere, food and societal
(culture), with the seventh chapter summarising
how they combine to show the “inevitable
breakdown of modern
societies.”” | | |
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֎ On June 18th, in the UK,
Gail Bradbrook and Rachel Donald will join Jem
Bendell when he launches his book Breaking Together: a freedom-loving
response to
collapse.
֎ On July 2nd, the ‘MEER Talk’ series on climate
change finally addresses both politics and
societal collapse, with Jem Bendell their
guest.
֎ Would you like to join
others in discussing the main messages of Breaking Together: a freedom-loving
response to collapse? Join author Jem Bendell
and others online in celebrating the release of
the book as a free epub on July 10th. Sign up
here.
֎ On August 1st, in Berlin,
there will be a special showing of the film We Are All Going To Die, with a
pre-film talk by Jem Bendell. Find out more
here.
֎ This September is the
start of a unique four-month initiative to support
and empower women activist-academics
who recognize the urgent need for radical change
within higher education in response to imminent
societal collapse. Facilitated by Katie Carr, who
helped to create the Deep Adaptation
Forum.
֎ ‘Leadership during
societal disruption and breakdown’ is an online
course at Masters Level, from the University of
Cumbria. The deadline to apply is in September. Find out
more.
֎ Are you a scholar? Have
you signed the Scholars’ Warning on societal
disruption and collapse? The fourth cohort of
scholars will start their leadership and
communications online course this November. It is
free, due to donations from previous participants,
and this one is suited to participants in the
Americas, East Asia, and Australia. You can watch testimonials, find out more, or apply to join (if a signatory to
the Scholars’ Warning).
For more
events on Deep Adaptation, view the events calendar of the Deep
Adaptation Forum.
Complete our form to submit details of your
own online event or course for consideration in
our next DA
Quarterly. | |
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Original artwork by
Gudim. | |
ARTS
AND CULTURE
Events like COP-27
signal the collective failure to imagine the next
steps. Let's inspire with new ways of seeing, open
windows to innovation, and reach through to
people’s hearts.
| |
You heard it here first.
The film We're all going to die will
premiere this summer in Berlin, and become a smash
hit later this year. It brings both the
soul-searching and doomer humour of people in the
collapse-aware space to the big screen for the
first time.
Film director Scott
Z. Burns wrote The Contagion, which many of
us watched again during the early phase of the
Covid-19 pandemic. He was also a producer of An
Inconvenient Truth, the 2006 Academy
Award-winning documentary that followed former
Vice President Al Gore’s campaign to raise
awareness about climate change. Burns' latest
output is Extrapolations, a series starring
Meryl Streep and Edward Norton about what life on
Earth might be like if/when carbon emissions
continue and more floods and fires ensue (it's on
Apple TV+).
British installation
artist Mike Nelson “works with the material
evidence of capitalism.” A review of his immersive
art collection, Extinction Beckons, at London’s
Hayward Gallery, suggests that viewing it is not
the crowd-pleasing experience you might reasonably
expect.
Jem wrapped up his 30+
series of Deep Adaptation Q&As with special
guest Satish Kumar. A former Jain monk and peace
activist, Satish founded the Schumacher Institute
in the UK. He talked about the importance
of unconditional love at this time of societal
disruption and breakdown.
A
16-year-old, collapse-aware documentary “What A Way To Go: Life at the end of
Empire” was recently highlighted on the very
active Deep Adaptation Facebook group.
“A middle class white guy comes to grips with Peak
Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Population
Overshoot and the demise of the American
Lifestyle.” One viewer’s comment: “this way of
living is done and we must finally accept that we
must let go of
it.” | |
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The worst thing by
far
would send you mad after
a while.
You’re in a race with it, worrying
at its riddles
bundled up in skins and
darkness,
its promise that nods like a
dandelion clock
rattled by a deadpan
wind.
This engine that draws you behind it
like a plough,
pausing at random to let you
hear the moon;
what does she sound
like,
the wide open mouth of night?
Kill
the engine. Listen.
Kill the
engine:
put your good
ear
to the rough
ground
scattered with
other
people’s talk.
Dig down
beneath
the smother
of your
thoughts
of their thoughts.
Open
up to the tiny
shudders of
roots.
Hold the seed
you have
saved
in the mouth
of your
rage.
Place it in the soil.
Let
your tears fall.
Grow
something
beautiful
and
useful
By Janet
Lees
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NEWS
FROM DEEP
ADAPTATION FORUM
The Deep Adaptation Forum
is a community which began soon after the
publication of Jem Bendell’s
ground-breaking paper. It brings together all
sorts of people, helping them embody and enable
loving responses to our predicament, to help
reduce suffering while building supportive
communities to face the realities of eco-social
collapse. The following text is provided to the
Quarterly by the
Forum. | |
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Towards leaner and more
decentralised governance
The DA Forum is currently
engaged in a bold organisational experiment. While
for the past four years this network and community
has relied largely on a core team of paid
part-time freelancers to coordinate most of its
activities, this model has begun to show its
limits in view of an evolving funding landscape.
As a result, an ambitious community dialogue
process has been initiated to fundamentally rework
the Forum’s governance structures, on the basis of
helpful proposals formulated democratically by
various participants. Committed groups of
volunteers have been meeting weekly since early
February to examine these proposals, and consider
ways to transform the Forum into a more
decentralised and fully volunteer-led network,
largely based on the principles of Sociocracy.
This rich process of collective learning and
visioning is set to usher in a whole new phase in
the life of our community, which we hope will help
make it all the more relevant in view of an
increasingly troubling social, economic,
political, and ecological
context.
News from Earth
Listening
Every week, online spaces are
convened in the DA Forum for the practice of Earth
Listening - a guided collective meditation centred
around the purpose of listening to the Earth, and
exploring one’s connection with the wider natural
ecosystems of the planet. This April, two new
groups had their first meeting in very different
contexts: one is based in Lebanon, and the other
for German speakers. A new website has also been
created at earthlistening.net where basic
information on the practice and active groups can
be found. The Friday weekly Earth Listening Circle
as well as the bi-weekly Australian Earth
Listening Circle are well-established and meet
regularly. Information on meeting times and how to
connect can be found through the Forum’s events
calendar.
A Deep Adaptation 101
course is in the works
Thanks to the
efforts of a dozen volunteers, an introductory
course on Deep Adaptation will soon be made
available on the DA Forum’s e-learning platform.
This course was originally designed, developed,
and facilitated in German by two volunteers
from Netzwerk Tiefe Anpassung, one of
the Forum’s affiliated groups. It was then
adapted by one of its co-creators into English,
with the active collaboration of several other
volunteers, who also gave it a “test-drive.” Three
of them are poised to step up as its facilitators.
They foresee that this course may become an
important source of inspiration and a useful entry
point into the Forum for anyone new to Deep
Adaptation.
Helping to catalyse
support efforts in the Ukraine
Since the
end of 2022, several Forum volunteers have been
collaborating with Ukraine-based support efforts.
One such initiative is the Green Road of Ecovillages
project, which aims at rehousing internal refugees
within ecovillages in Ukraine and beyond, in
partnership with the Global Ecovillage Network.
Another one provides practical, legal, and
emotional support to women who have been sexually
assaulted during the Ukrainian conflict, for
instance, by supplying HIV testing equipment or
documenting their stories in view of war crimes
investigations. A third effort has the objective
of organising unarmed civilian protection to
protect the Zaporizhzhya nuclear reactor, which
has been repeatedly in the crossfire of conflict.
More information on these initiatives and how to
contribute can be found on the DA Forum’s Community Space. Read
also this testimony by one of the
volunteers most deeply involved in these
activities, on how doing so has been a source of
rich personal and social learning, and on the
importance of the relationships cultivated within
the Forum.
Support the Deep
Adaptation Forum
Help us continue to embody
and enable loving responses to our
predicament! Become a monthly donor
on our OpenCollective
page.
| |
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DEEP
ADAPTATION
Resilience |
Relinquishment | Restoration |
Reconciliation
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