Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Rivi Jones, and you're listening to 7am.
Chapter 2: What large-scale crises is civilization currently facing?
The world is facing a series of large-scale crises. War, declining democracy, climate catastrophe. So is it all a sign that our civilisation is reaching its limits and that our economic and political systems are nearing collapse? That's the question Australian author Sarah Wilson has been interrogating for the last three years.
Today, writer Sarah Wilson on what happens when the systems that hold us together begin to fray all at once, and what the future looks like after civilizational collapse. It's Monday, June 1. Sarah, your new book is all about civilizational collapse, which you say we're in the midst of right now. We'll get to that part in a moment.
But first, could you just tell us what you're talking about when you talk about civilizational collapse?
It's a hard thing to enter into because when we talk collapse, we're not necessarily talking the collapse of humanity, although that is definitely a possibility according to most modelling that's out there at the moment. What we're really talking about is the collapse of the system. And this is sort of a bit of a misnomer.
I think we think that collapse is going to be like the movies, you know, people wandering around with a shopping trolley, you know, through apocalyptic scenes. That is not how it goes. It's a very gradual at first and then a sped up sort of undoing of all the complexifying that has been happening for the last 270 years or so.
We tend to explain things in a very linear format where we grab an issue and work with it as a system in isolation. But to understand actually what's happening to the world today, we need to actually think in terms of complex systems theory, which is about understanding that we are in a complex system of complex systems. That is essentially what our civilisation is.
Every complex civilisation throughout history has collapsed and it has collapsed because of its complexity. So if you think of the Roman Empire, the Mayan Empire, the Jing Dynasty, they've all collapsed because they've just got too many armies, too many cities, it's required too many taxes, too many farmers that are required to pay the taxes. And then what happens is some small volcano erupts
a small climate catastrophe, perhaps a small army entering the system. It can't actually deal with something like, for instance, a flood or a volcano eruption or something like that. And that is essentially what brings a civilisation to its knees. And every complex civilisation has gone this way.
We are a complex civilisation and we are at a point where all the systems that make up our civilisation, the post-industrial civilisation, are under all kinds of stress and they're interacting with each other. So trade route system, the AI system, the nuclear threat system, the food security system, they're all wobbling. They're all feeding into each other.
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Chapter 3: What does Sarah Wilson mean by civilizational collapse?
And we don't have the language for it. We don't have the leadership to discuss these kinds of things.
And so do you think that's changing? Do you think that kind of sense of being protected from needing to talk about an issue like this, do you sense a shift?
Yeah, I do. I certainly sense it amongst everyday people. So I wrote this book, my most recent book, Eye at the Stars, as a serialisation on Substack. It's an international writer's platform. I had a lot of Australian subscribers and they get it.
I've come to Australia and I've done all kinds of events and, you know, been speaking with everyday Australians and they understand these things and they're feeling the same way I have, and that is that there's not enough discussion out there in the public. People are having these discussions at barbecues and over at the dinner table, but... There's no leadership.
There's no sort of forum for this kind of thing. And I've found this before. You know, my books have tended to tackle subjects that the Australian, I guess, landscape hasn't wanted to embrace. You know, it was sugar, it was anxiety, it was the climate crisis. But what I've found always is that everyday Australians are well ahead of the curve compared with the rest of the world.
It's just that the leadership ain't there. It's quite behind.
Coming up, what comes after collapse? Sarah, I suppose part of the reason for not having conversations about this is just the difficulty of emotionally grappling with these ideas. So can you tell me a bit about how you have approached that?
Yeah, I mean, I think the neoliberal framework has tended to make individuals feel responsible for what's going on. So when we take that on... It's very hard to face the enormity of everything, you know, the everythingness that's happening.
Overwhelm is a predominant response to all of this and it's completely understandable, not aided by the fact that the bad faith actors in all of this, leaders who are coming in and filling out this space of uncertainty and disruption, they are bringing chaos to the situation.
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Chapter 4: How do complex systems theory and civilization relate?
However, having said that, there is considerable modelling being done in various realms. So population collapse is one space where we get a bit of a picture of how things are going to go. So according to to multiple think tanks and institutes have been tracking this for many years. We will reach peak population of about 9 to 10 billion sometime between 2040 and 2060.
So the global replacement figure at the moment, it's 2.1 babies per woman. That's what's required to maintain the population. It's about to dip under. Three quarters of the world is well below that. Here in Australia, we're at 1.6. In parts of Asia, it's at 0.7, 0.8.
And we will decline back down the other side of that hockey stick graph, that's a bell curve, if you like, eventually reaching a bottomed out population of about one to four billion within a couple of hundred years. That is quite stunning stuff. Now, climate activists out there might be thinking, well, this is great news because less people, less resources, what a fix, how beautiful.
The impact of all of that will come too late to be able to assist us in that climate catastrophe situation. But the opportunity we have before us right now is to determine whether we tether ourselves to a system that is collapsing, is collapsing without there being any kind of out path, if you know what I mean. And so we can start to imagine where we're going to head next.
And that's sort of why I wrote this book, because experts around the world are sort of trying to issue this clarion call, you know, Please wake up. This is when we need to actually be making significant changes to the way we interact with the world. It's potentially a bleak picture, but potentially an era of stunning possibility. Humans have gone through this before, Ruby, multiple times.
And out of dark times, out of dark, liminal times like the one we find ourselves in...
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Chapter 5: What factors contribute to the collapse of civilizations?
Great poetry, great art movements, great philosophy has emerged, you know, between the two world wars. Existentialism emerged, socialism and communism emerged as ideas that, you know, were expressions of human flourishing. And this, I believe, is an era we're about to enter.
Sarah, thank you so much for talking with me. Thank you, Ruby. Thank you. Also in the news, 11 Australians detained by Israeli forces while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza have submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court alleging abuse, torture and other violations during their detention.
The global Samud flotilla called for independent international investigations, arms embargoes and reparations for alleged victims. And Buckingham Palace has once again been dragged into the scandal surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
The BBC is reporting that emails handed to the palace six years ago appear to show that Andrew was sharing confidential government information while he was a trade envoy. The emails were given to the most senior officer of the royal household in 2020. Buckingham Palace says it can't provide comment because of the ongoing police investigation. I'm Ruby Jones. This is 7am. Thanks for listening.
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