It Could Happen Here - Paths of Collapse Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Andrew and Gare discuss balanced realism and giant squids as modes to think about collapse.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night. I'm Andrew Sage and I run the YouTube channel Andrewism, but this is It Could Happen Here.

Today I'm carrying on my discussion of everyone's favorite subject, collapse. I'm here, of course, with Garrison. And last time we spoke about the what, why, and how of collapse, as well as the many ways people respond when confronted with this crisis. So if you're curious about that, you can listen to the previous discussion. One thing I didn't touch on last time was the various levels of awareness that people have about collapse because as with most things in this life, it exists on more of a spectrum than anything. We're all on this learning journey and some people are further along if you could even really

relate it's not way than others some discussions of collapse are informed by author paul shafirka's stages of collapse there are five stages in total and the first stage is dead asleep which is where you're really just vibing you know you can see some issues in the world here and there, but that could be fixed, right? All we got to do is organize a bit better, change our behavior slightly, tweak the rules and we'll be fine. But then you move on to the next stage, which is the awareness of one fundamental problem. It's when you realize, oh, there's something structurally wrong but you only see in one part of that structural flow so it seems everything is not you know cash money you know maybe you found out about the depths of systemic racism or imperialism or overfishing or mass

extinction or fracking and you know as one does you start to freak out a little bit you know maybe you mobilize to bring some awareness to this issue just so people know that you know as one does you start to freak out a little bit you know maybe you mobilize to bring some awareness of this issue just so people know that you know something is wrong let's fix it and that one problem can even consume you entirely and then consuming all that knowledge about that one problem you keep learning and if you really do keep learning and are open to learning more and more about the issue, you're eventually reaching awareness of many problems, the next stage. The more you learn, the more you worry.

You're taking all sorts of information and begin to see how complex and multifaceted the world's problems are. Now it's hard for you to even prioritise which issue needs to be dealt with first. In fact, you're so overwhelmed that you might be reluctant to acknowledge new problems because you already have so much on your plate. Alas, you cannot ignore the other problems forever, not unless you want to keep running in circles. So you get to the stage of awareness of the interconnections between the many problems. It starts to dawn on you that there are no easy solutions. Shutting down factory farms may lay off millions and leave perhaps hundreds of millions without a complete meal. Or efforts to raise the standard of living in the developing world through industrialization in the footsteps of the developed world

just might accelerate the Earth's demise and profit a select few. At least you're thinking on the systems level now. Beyond the symptoms, toward the source. Perhaps there is no one solution. Perhaps the gravity of such a solution may be too much to bear. So finally, at the last stage, you get to awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life. So much so that you might even pine after ignorance as you realize that this series of problems, or rather this all-encompassing capital P predicament, includes everything we do, how we do what we do, how we relate, and how we affect the entire planet. The predicament is so massive, you might even reach a point where you're just like, there is no capital S solution to this capital P predicament. No easy answer, no quick fix, and you can't do it alone.

So, now what? Now, in the last episode, I would have spoken about a couple different responses that people have had to collapse. Slumber, denial, apathy, preoccupation, hedonism, overwhelm, and blind hope, individual change, progress worship, leader worship, apocalypse worship, despair. But as promised for this episode, I want to be a bit more constructive in focus. And so to answer the question, really, is there any way out? But before I get to that, Garrison, do you think there are any stages I might have missed in that progression of understanding? Or what have you observed in your experience? I mean, one thing I kind of will reiterate that is this is something that was talked about a lot when when robert was putting together

the the second season of it could happen here is is trying to avoid yeah like like like looking at collapse as one singular moment and more as this like it's a more gauzy and more fuzzy slow crumbling of things that we have grown to rely on. And sometimes you could envision it eventually reaching some sort of tipping point, but other times that tipping point's never really ever reached.

It's just this forever kind of crumbling and then rebuilding and then crumbling and rebuilding. And you get to a Shipathesius situation where eventually at one point, the thing is completely different from what it used to be. But there was never like a full moment of quote unquote collapse.

It was just this continual like crumbling and then becoming into the next thing. That kind of sounds similar to what John Michael Greer described. No, not John Michael Greer described no not John Michael Greer uh David Corwitz he talks about this idea of like oscillating decline yeah yeah these these recessions these declines and you have a couple peaks when things start to climb up a little bit and then and the overall picture is like a downward trend, but there are some like brief respites of recovery. Yeah, and that's definitely a mode that I think about a lot.

You know, a lot of people are worried of like some like some event triggering a much kind of larger scale collapse. And I think it's good to focus on all of the smaller crumbling that's just always happening all of the time, no matter where you live. So, I mean, my experience is pretty similar. I think one of the first issues that I became fundamentally aware of was climate change. Sure.

Of course, I mean, you crack open any one of those, I don't know if you ever got one of those big books of knowledge as a child. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a few of those big books of knowledge as a child yeah yeah yeah i had i had a i had a few kind of plasticky pages yeah just so they have all these big amazing pictures yeah so i remember seeing in those in one of those books like this huge like mountain of trash and seeing like this this floating garbage patch in the ocean and i was just like wow uh and then later on so first thing wasn't even climate change it was pollution And seeing this floating garbage patch in the ocean, and I was just like, wow.

And then later on, so the first thing wasn't even climate change, it was pollution. And then later on, I started learning about climate change, and that really became my major thing. And then later on, as I got older and I learned history and that sort of thing, and economics and all that stuff, I came to realize just how big the situation was. And now I'm here so as I said in the previous episode we really don't need blind hope and as should be abundantly clear we definitely don't need hopeless despair it's a little rhyme there so how do we respond to this predicament

the short answer is that i don't know the long answer is this whole podcast episode i mean i could give some platitudes you know we need sobriety clarity lucidity i mean paul points out in his article that those in stage five awareness who see that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life, look to one of two paths. I mean, I've since adapted, interpreted,

and remixed the two paths, so they're not one-to-one with what he had in mind, but you should get the gist. The first path of response to the predicament of collapse is the inner path of self-healing. It's a manifestation of that fake Gandhi quote, be the change you want to see in the world. Sort of retreating into oneself, digging deep and personal,

developing your self-awareness. I mean, some people take this to mean some sort of hyper-individual thing and it low-key is if you tilt and twist your head slightly you can maybe see it in a different light I don't think it has to mean becoming a monk or an ascetic I don't think it means denying systems or ignoring the painful truth I think it involves taking in the gravity of what we're dealing with, such a grand scale issue, and putting it in a personal context. Unabstracting it and understanding it through a more manageable lens. I'm not one to fall back on evolutionary determinism or anything like that but i do think often about how we kind of weren't meant to be processing

this entire planet sure this entire population you know i think we're very good at dealing with immediate problems very good at looking at situations that are before us that are directly impacting us and looking at how we can solve that. And of course no local solution necessarily is going to by itself solve a global crisis but medley of local solutions can. But we're not even talking here with this inner path of local solutions yet. We're talking even at the smaller scale and local, at the base unit of society, which is the self. So you might continue pursuing knowledge of the

issues, start developing your practical skills and people skills, try to minimalize your lifestyle in preparation for the economic and social shocks of collapse. Perhaps seeking to settle somewhere you've determined is best suited to weather the coming storms which i believe i saw a video like some years ago where this guy

was saying the midwest might be the best place environmentally to settle i don't know if you'll cover that in the first or second season if it could happen here i mean there was something definitely we we look we were looking into during some of the research phases of a lot of the agriculture that is currently based in the south of of the united states every every every decade is going to start moving up and up and up and particularly like canada is going to enter a very large agricultural economic boom that process has already started but yes there's going to enter a very large agricultural economic boom that process has already started but yes there's going to like be this this slow rising uh level of like industrial farming which first of all isn't isn't actually great for the land itself like once all of the land that's abandoned in the

southern states like after it's been tapped for so long it's really just like dust like it's it's not actually useful dirt anymore but it's all of that stuff's going to start moving farther and farther north as the as the conditions for growth start changing um and i mean it's the same thing for a lot of a lot of things that are grown in like more like jungly forest mountain areas where every year uh like coffee and chocolate, they have to start, they have to, they have to start moving the crops further up the mountain.

And again, that's, that doesn't, that's obviously not a great long-term solution because the mountains only so high and it costs, and it costs a lot of money to constantly be moving your crops higher and higher up a mountain. Indeed.

But that is the sort of agricultural and economic drive that's going to start getting more and more common to supply the amount of food that Americans are used to eating. And it won't. In the case of coffee, actual coffee beans are not going to be as common as they were today or 20 years ago. It's going to become more of like a higher priced luxury item. And I'm sure we'll,

I'm sure Americans will get their caffeine fix some other way, but yeah, it's like that, the, those, those sorts of changes are going to become more and more and more commonplace. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his

piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant

community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And this is why, you know, anarchists get, I think, unfairly labeled like, like excessively agrarian or maybe parochial in their focus but i think that as we talk about the degradation of soils and talk about the failures in the long term of a monocultural large-scale farm and the only way that we're really going to see that sort of land restored again is through the sort of agroforestry,

permaculture, you know, small-scale practices that involve rebuilding that relationship between people and the land itself. Regarding outside of the U.S., I don't know what my game plan would be. The dry seasons are certainly drier, and I think last year actually was one of our driest wet seasons. So I don't really plan on leaving,

but I do think about it. I do find myself thinking about, OK, where am I going to, like, where am I going to settle? You know, like, where am I going to be able to, like, safeguard myself and stay connected with people and live, you know? Yeah. So in a a sense i am on that inner path uh educating myself as much as possible uh trying to develop my practical skills uh focusing on what i could do as an individual to make changes in my own life and partially in my surroundings in a way that is manageable. Do you see yourself in this path as well?

I'm not sure. I spend a lot of time thinking about the future, I guess, but I try not to lock myself into any particular pathway. I don't know. I've already started to move around the US, Like I've already started to move around the U.S., leaving the places where I've kind of grown up for the majority of my life that are actually decently suited have some form of hesitancy to like cede a territory or just like write off places as just being like not worth it. Especially like the South, the American Southeast. Just like there's kind of a notion just to like write off large swaths of areas, whether like agriculturally, like climatewise, or like even like politically being like,

oh, this is just where all of the fascists are going to live. And like, that's not true. This area of the country is actually one of the most diverse parts of the country. And to write it off all as like, just like Republican land is, I think it's grossly misguided. Absolutely.

On the other hand, if things get really, really bad, I'm also going to hold on to my Canadian passport and just go and have that, have that as a backup option just to, just to go up North into, uh, into the snowy desolate of Northern Alberta. Um, so, you know, if push comes to shove, Antarctica is the the final frontier right so like i i always kind of i'm i i have that backup option which is easier than a lot of people but it's it's it's something it's something i try not to like i i don't like relying on that kind of notion i feel you i feel you yeah and i mean that's part of why I don't see this inner path as fully satisfactory to me yeah even though I feel it's a path I've unconsciously chosen due to some of the challenges

I faced on the outer path but still what clicks with me more is the outer path I've also called it balanced realism which is you know hard to balance because a lot of people who confuse realism with pessimism you know you just see everything being awful that's oh i'm a realist you know but truthfully i think taking the outer path of balanced realism means shaking off the burdens and blinders of both pessimism and optimism and alarmism and denialism and fatalism and hedonism and all these other setbacks and obstacles all of the other things except for andrewism sure sure keep watching andrewism please but yeah really loosen yourself from your own hopes and fears. Really, I think the way I try to see it is I have no idea and no one can really know what outcome there will be, you know.

Up to now, I haven't met a prophet. I haven't met a seer. I haven't met a fortune teller. I don't think any of us really know what the outcome will be and there's so many factors that we can't even calculate and take into account yeah i mean for all we know i mean it would be very disruptive of our reality right and personally i'm not really a believer in like there being interstellar alien species but you know imagine just out of the blue like on a random thursday afternoon there was an actual alien invasion i don't think any of us could really predict that of course there are things that we do have the ability to predict and work with and stuff like that but really of course that's an exaggerated example but i want to be able to recognize and

accept any number of possible outcomes in the face of such a grand predicament i think maintaining realism is difficult especially with so much information swimming around in the ether you don't know what's true and what's not but i think it's necessary you know you agitate you fight you build for the best but you also prepare and defend for the worst brief aside by the way on optimism i see really two sides of collapse optimism both i think are well placed but both unfortunately misled there's the optimism that collapse absolutely will not take place which i think is a sort of optimism that doesn't really quite understand where collapse what what kind what what forms collapse can take and there's a sort of optimism that collapse will

take place but we'll overcome it i mean the hows of collapse might not line up fully with our predictions but there is a very clear trajectory that we are on so the idea that collapse is just not in the cards at all really feels like wishful thinking humanity i don't think has the plot armor that we tend to think it does and that lack of plot armor also means that there's really no guarantee that we'll overcome collapse if it does occur. There are no sure outcomes to be sure, but that doesn't mean that we're destined to come out of this unscathed. But what do you think of optimism, considering what you do for work?

I don't know. I honestly don't think about optimism very much. I see a lot of, like, bad stuff, like, every day as a part of my job. I think about a lot of, like, grim stuff, I suppose. But it's honestly not something I think about. I think it's a little bit of its own bubble. I think there's a utility for having hope, it's a little bit of its own bubble. I think there's a utility for having hope,

but not having a sense of just like static optimism. I think, I think hope is a, is a, is a useful thing to have in your brain, but, but not, not have it be as like this, just like umbrella that you apply to every single aspect of your life and the

way like optimism is. But in terms of like, like when you're mentioning like the alien thing i think one one way that people do think about collapse to try to cope with it a lot is like it's kind of some form of like deus ex machina like like this this something will happen whether that's some other like catastrophic event or like apocalyptic event or it's like some new found scientific advancement that one day will pop into existence and then we'll we'll solve all of these problems i think both of those are kind of a form of a deus ex machina and both of those are actually ways of coping even though one is more apocalyptic and one's more utopian i thought you were talking about the video game series you know oh when you said you know no like i was thinking oh yeah like you know like cybernetics and yeah

sure sure we like that kind of that kind of is its own form of deus ex machina in in terms of this this this thing entering from backstage that now solves all of these problems we have in the story of the world. But I mean, that is, I think that's, that's the thing that I think a lot of people try to find some. So it kind of allows you to not be in denial about the current predicament, but still envision a future that is pretty similar to what we currently have

just with this like magical invention or this, or this like, or this like apocalyptic event that forces people to like actually solve some, some degree of problems. You know, it's kind of, it's kind of like the thing in Alan Moore's Watchmen being like, if there was a giant squid,

then the whole world would team up together, solve the problem. And I don't know, that seems a little bit less likely. Yeah. Unfortunately, climate collapse, ecological collapse is not a giant squid. And there is no Dr. Manhattan. Yeah, and even after COVID, right,

you have this massive world-threatening event. And it's kind of the perfect example of, it's like a version of the giant squid. And that did not lead to the whole world working together to solve this big problem i mean to be fair it was like a giant invisible squid yes it was to be fair as well the giant invisible squid is still there and like regularly claiming lives we kind of just go about with our days kind of ignoring it's like oh you know

there goes Fred you know snatched up by the giant squid I'm sure in the Watchmen world there would be a great many of like squid deniers of people who are like no this squid was never real this squid was all

fake that was all faked in new york city it was it wasn't real like that i've long said there's no opinion that everybody in the world will agree with you know like if you were to say for example that all humans need food to live there's gonna be a contrarian who's going to tell you actually i survive on photosynthesis i'm a breatharian you know there's there is no uncontroversial tics they will i think there'll be a deniers no matter what hi i'm ed zitron host of the better offline podcast and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite

has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible

Don't get me wrong though, I love technology I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of

the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, as you were talking about optimism and sort of the dark things you're dealing with, it reminded me of something that shook me yesterday. I was watching Sean on YouTube, Sean's video on Palestine. And he shared the story of this young Palestinian boy who had filmed a video celebrating himself winning uh gaining a thousand subscribers and he was sharing his goals of you know he may get in ten thousand and a

hundred thousand maybe even a million and he was killed last year by the IDF. So I think, I mean, it's connected but not entirely related. We're talking more along the lines of ecological collapse and systems collapse and this sort of thing. And while it's true that for much of the world, collapse is not going to look like a singular event, I think it is also important to recognize that and remember that there are people

for whom collapse or rather their subjective collapse the collapse of their world their way of life, their existence is staring them in the face right now. You know?

I don't want to compare misfortunes but you know there is that reality that you know some people are facing like cataclysm right in their face and for others it's like a slower burn but ultimately similar similar fates, you know? That was something we were also considering when putting together some of the climate change focused earlier episodes from a few years back. And like the effects of climate change or just collapse in general are not like uniform, right? They, they, it first targets on the periphery and like whatever

it's kind of a faulty way of doing that right like an old term would be like the third world is we're trying to find better better terms for there's so many terms and i don't really fully work yeah i was actually recently talking on a live stream about how like like i'm just like i feel like all these distinctions people try to draw like the west is just the east or you know global north is global south they're all a bit messy in actual application

but the people on like the edges of empire the edges of like the imperial engine are going to fix this a lot sooner than the people in the imperial core and like that that is just whether that's collapsed through like war like like like forced collapse uh or that's collapsed through like environmental factors

like but but both of those are often the case people are going to do a lot of work to maintain the Mecca of New York city, but they're not going to care if a small town, not even a small town, like Jakarta could sink into the ocean. And absolutely. Like, just like who cares,

right. Hurricanes taking out, like act like, I mean, I care just to be clear. Whole countries. Yeah, no,

absolutely. Like those, these things do not do not get held on the same the same level yeah yeah so i mean i supposed to answer my own question i think you do need a dose of optimism to keep you from falling into despair or completely checking out of the struggle just for the sake of your mental health but not to the point of blindness from the truth i don't think there's anything wrong with maintaining some level of emotional cushioning to keep you going to you know fuel you to wake up in the morning and and make it through your day but

not to the point of delusion i suppose i think this is this is the value of the outer path as well and i think this outer path is fueled by a bit of inner grace and peace you know you've let go of some level of naivety and passivity you're moving acting doing adapting and here of course i'm thinking of like the permaculture movement the transition towns network all the other ongoing movements and projects none of which are perfect mind you none of which are going to save the whole world or anything, but they're certainly trying. I'm also thinking of the movement for the MST in Brazil and the La Vie Campesina, who we would have interviewed some people about recently. These groups, these movements, these struggles are thinking,

are looking local, thinking global, and actually really making a difference. I think that outlook is necessary. I think we need more political movements that can be honest about reality, that aren't waiting for a savior or a politician, that aren't waiting until it's too late to act, that aren't removing power from the hands of people

and placing it elsewhere. Movements that are far less reactive and more proactive. Maybe we'll never see a global shift to degrowth or a steady state economy in our lifetimes without a major disruption and shift in the efforts of grassroots movements. But we can definitely see small-scale, local, resilient systems springing up and spreading that are better able to endure the coming economic, social, ecological shocks. I am as pro-social revolution as they come, but I think we need a

more expansive understanding of what that entails. I was reading actually this morning Anarchy, a Graphic Guide by Clifford Harper and he spoke about how 65 years of persistent agitation and organization culminated in the largest most far-reaching revolutionary movement of the modern times. I think when we discuss the Spanish Civil War and the CNT, FAI, a lot of people get caught up in what was happening during the Civil War, but I don't think there's enough focus on the fact that these organizations were moving and shaking in their communities and in their regions for decades prior to any major, you know, pop off. You know, like a general strike does not happen overnight.

An insurrection does not happen overnight, especially not without the level of broad scale support that will be necessary to sustain those efforts. On the topic of the transition movement in particular, that movement was officially started in 2006 in the UK, but had some roots before then. In 2004, permaculture designer Rob Hopkins tasked students at Kinsale Further Education College with applying permaculture principles to the concept of peak oil, leading to the creation of the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan. lead into the creation of the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan. Two students, Louis Rooney and Catherine Dunn, developed the transition towns concept, presenting it to the Kinsale Town Council, which adopted the plan for energy independence. Then Hopkins later moved to Totneys, England, where he, along with Naresh Kianangrandi, developed these concepts into the transition model. Transition Town Totneys, founded in early 2006,

served as inspiration for other transition initiatives globally. In early 2007, the Transition Network UK charity was co-founded by Rob Hopkins, Peter Lipman, and Ben Brangwen to support and disseminate transition concepts worldwide. By 2008, the project had expanded with numerous communities becoming official transition towns. These are things you don't hear about in the news, but these are positive developments that have been happening under the radar for decades at this point. By May 2010, over 400 community initiatives were recognized as official transition towns in various countries, reflecting a diverse range of communities involved, from villages and neighborhoods to cities and city boroughs. The initiatives have developed

citizens cooperatives for renewable energy, local and sustainable food systems, new cooperative economic models, sustainable transport systems, energy descent action plans, and even heart and soul groups built to respond to the emotional components of collapse and transition. In the book How Everything Can Collapse, which I referenced in the previous episode, Pablo, Savine, and Rafael Stevens talk about the paradox of collapse, and I'll leave it in their words because I think it was really well put. Quote,

From a philosophical point of view, transition is a strange and paradoxical thing. It is both catastrophist and optimistic, that is to say, both lucid and pragmatic. Lucid because the people involved in these movements are not in denial about catastrophes. Most of them have given up the myth of eternal growth as well as the myth of the apocalypse. They know and believe in what awaits us and are generally receptive to catastrophist language because they already are committed to the search for real alternatives. Pragmatic because catastrophist political thinking is not apocalyptic in nature. It not claims you worried about the end of the world, but more precisely about a sudden and potentially traumatic reorganization of ecosystems and

societies. Neither business as usual, nor the end of the world. Just a world to invent together, here and now. End quote. The transition movement is vitally rooted in imagination and I've spoken about the vitality of imagination in the past. In fact, my video on the subject was partially inspired by Rob Hopkins' book, From What Is to What If. You imagine, you sketch out the details, and you roll up your sleeves and you make it real. During the development of the Transition Networks project, Rob Hopkins, along with others, published the Transition Handbook, which is structured in three parts. The first is the head, which are the facts of the situation. Then you have the heart, which are the emotional consequences and desired futures. And then you have the hands, which is how

you get from imagination to action. And I just thought that was a really great approach, even though the handbook is dated in some ways. Of course, guiding people through the process of even accepting transition and getting them on the outer path works well on the small and personal scale, but there is a challenge of scale. Savine and Stevens point out that you can't exactly announce on a large platform, listen up everybody, prepare for the end of the world. As you can imagine, it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's kind of like telling people not to rush out and buy up all the toilet paper. Transition on larger scales is difficult.

Not to say it's not difficult to build the local community's resilience from disruptions in food, energy, climate, etc. But on the macro scale, it's even more difficult, at least if you're determined to take on a top-down approach. You get what I'm saying? It's because this isn't exactly a problem that rulers are capable of solving. The debt system is not going to go away by decree. The energy system that fills their coffers won't shift until it profits them either. And in Seen Like a State, the anthropologist James C. Scott

spends a lot of time discussing just how that top-down perspective of the world is inherently limiting and incapable of effecting those sorts of changes. But thankfully, the people able to act where rulers won't. As Steven Stevens put it, transitioners do not wait for governments, they are already inventing ways of living through this collapse in a non-tragic way. They are not waiting for the worst, but building for the best. Ultimately, I'm trying

to get on the level of the Transition Town realists on the outer path that are building networks, building community, and building sustainability. I highly suggest that if you're looking for ways to help out in your local situation, check out the Transition Town network and see how you can tap in or start your own initiative in your own area. That's all I have for now. All power to all the people. This is It Could Happen Here. I am Andrew.

This is Gareth Sun. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join

hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again,

a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life life stories combos on the issues that matter to us and it's all packed with gems, fun straight up comedia and that's a song

that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.