Decline of the Fiat Empire
Dmitry
Orlov
Friday,
February 22, 2008
The
Five Stages of Collapse
...
For those of us who have already gone through all of the emotional stages of
reconciling ourselves to the prospect of social and economic upheaval, it might
be helpful to have a more precise terminology that goes beyond such emotionally
charged phrases. Defining a taxonomy of collapses might prove to be more than
just an intellectual exercise: based on our abilities and circumstances, some of
us may be able to specifically plan for
a certain stage of collapse as a temporary, or even permanent, stopping
point. Even if society at the current stage of socioeconomic complexity will no
longer be possible, and even if, as Tainter points in his "Collapse of
Complex Societies," there are circumstances in which collapse happens to be the correct adaptive response, it need not
automatically cause a population crash, with the survivors disbanding into
solitary, feral humans dispersed in the wilderness and subsisting miserably.
Collapse can be conceived of as an orderly, organized retreat rather than a
rout.
For
instance, the collapse of the Soviet
Union - our most recent and my personal favorite example of an imperial
collapse - did not reach the point of political disintegration of the republics that made it up, although some of
them (Georgia, Moldova) did lose some territory to separatist movements. And
although most of the economy shut down for a time, many institutions, including the military, public utilities, and public
transportation, continued to function throughout. And although there was
much social dislocation and suffering,
society as a whole did not collapse, because most of the population did not lose access to food, housing,
medicine, or any of the other survival necessities. The command-and-control
structure of the Soviet economy largely decoupled the necessities of daily life
from any element of market psychology, associating them instead with physical flows of energy and physical
access to resources. This situation, as I argue in my forthcoming book,
Reinventing Collapse, allowed the Soviet population to inadvertently achieve a
greater level of collapse-preparedness
than is currently possible in the United States.
Having
given a lot of thought to both the differences and the similarities between the
two superpowers - the one that has collapsed already, and the one that is
collapsing as I write this - I feel ready to attempt a bold conjecture, and define five stages of
collapse, to serve as mental milestones
as we gauge our own collapse-preparedness and see what can be done to improve
it. Rather than tying each phase to a particular emotion, as in the Kübler-Ross
model, the proposed taxonomy ties each of the five collapse stages to the breaching of a specific level of
trust, or faith, in the status quo. Although each stage causes physical,
observable changes in the environment, these can be gradual, while the mental flip is generally quite swift.
It is something of a cultural universal that nobody (but a real fool) wants to
be the last fool to believe in a
lie.
Stages
of Collapse
Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in
"business as usual" is lost. The future is no longer assumed to
resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial
assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to
capital is lost.
[GOV
SUPPORTS BANKERS UNCERTAINTY. SAVINGS ARE A LOSS. INVESTMENTS ARE EATEN BY
BANKERS. LOANS UNAVAILABLE- Costick67]
Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that
"the market shall provide" is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes
scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and
widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.
[SEEING
THE SOCIETAL FRAMEWORK FALLING APART. STORES CLOSING-Costick67]
Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that
"the government will take care of you" is lost. As official attempts
to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival
necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses
legitimacy and relevance.
[GREECE IS HERE
ALREADY. ALWAYS HAS BEEN. PENSIONS DON’T EXIST. TAXES PILED ON TAXES-Costick67]
Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that
"your people will take care of you" is lost, as local social
institutions, be they charities or other groups that rush in to fill the power
vacuum run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.
[STRONG SOCIAL AND FAMILY NETWORKS. ACCUSTOMED TO OCCUPATION- Costick67]
Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the
goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for "kindness,
generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion,
charity" (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources.
The new motto becomes "May you die today so that I die tomorrow"
(Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.
[UNLESS
LOCALISM REIGNS- Costick67]
